May 31, 2012 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Castro developments on track

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

Feingold leaves UOR

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he executive director of Under One Roof is leaving as the San Francisco nonprofit works to cut expenses and stay relevant.

Beth Feingold said Rick Gerharter she would stay on at the 518A Castro Beth Feingold Street shop, which distributes money to HIV/AIDS-related charities, through June as a consultant. She said she resigned because “it’s time.”

Feingold, who once volunteered at the nonprofit and joined its board in 1992, stepped into the executive director’s position on an interim, part-time basis in 2009.

In a recent interview, Feingold, board Chair Tony Hart, and board member Jennifer Kutz expressed determination to continue helping the 22 beneficiaries of the agency, See page 20 >>

Obama fires up Bay Area base

by Chris Carson

F

or the first time since coming out in favor of marriage equality, President Barack Obama visited the Bay Area last week. Although never using the word “gay,” Obama did draw huge cheers from the crowd at Redwood City’s Fox Theatre for supporting the right to be, “who you are and love who you love.”

Inside the May 23 fundraiser, which sold out with ticket prices between $250 and $1,000, almost every word of the president’s especially fervent speech was met with enthusiasm, and a few times chants, like “four more years!” and “fired up; ready to go!”

But outside, among the crowd just behind the barricades that bordered Courthouse Square, some gays and lesbians sang a different, more severe tune.

“I feel like the whole thing is an election year ploy,” said James Lee about Obama’s support of marriage equality. “It’s great that he said it, it’s a very symbolic move, you know, it shifts the culture a bit. But it’s not enough and I resent our community being used.”

It was May 9 when Obama, in an interview with ABC News, came out in support of samesex marriage. He made the remarks just days after Vice President Joe Biden said he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay couples marrying during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Lee, 32, said he worked for San Mateo Coun-

Group seeks funding for AIDS monument

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

n idea to place a memorial plaque in San Francisco’s Civic Center to honor participants of a decade-long AIDS vigil has morphed into an effort to erect an AIDS monument at the site.

Organizers of the project are hoping to secure $100,000 in funds in June from the city’s community challenge grant program. The money would help pay for the design and installation of the AIDS monument at 50 United Nations Plaza.

Last June the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution authorizing the creation and placement of a plaque in the public plaza along midMarket Street to commemorate the ARC/AIDS Vigil, ARC standing for AIDS Related Complex.

The sleep-in took place in front of the federal building at UN Plaza from 1985 through 1995.

Launched by two men living with HIV in order to draw attention to the lack of governmental funding for AIDS care or research into a cure, the vigil is believed to have been the country’s longest continuous AIDS protest. Over its 10-year duration numerous people took part by camping out on the sidewalk, helping to feed the protesters, or educating passersby.

The AIDS vigil was largely forgotten, howevSee page 21 >>

Vol. 42 • No. 22 • May 31-June 6, 2012

Lydia Gonzales

President Barack Obama spoke to a sold out fundraiser at Redwood City’s Fox Theatre last week.

ty up until a month ago, when he was laid off.

He currently is with Occupy Redwood City.

He thinks Obama should take a firmer stand.

“We have close to 30 states that have banned it already; we have couples being separated through deportation. It needs to be a national issue,” said Lee. Shaunn Cartwright agreed.

She said that, along with “almost everyone I know who is gay,” she is unsatisfied with the

B.A.R. election endorsements DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY President Barack Obama

State Senate (San Francisco) Dist. 11: Mark Leno

Dist. 3: John Garamendi Dist. 5: Mike Thompson Dist. 11: George Miller Dist. 12: Nancy Pelosi Dist. 13: Barbara Lee Dist. 14: Jackie Speier Dist. 17: Mike Honda Dist. 18: Anna Eshoo Dist. 19: Zoe Lofgren

State Assembly (San Francisco) Dist. 17: Tom Ammiano Dist. 19: Phil Ting

Judges Alameda County Superior Court Seat 9: Tara Flanagan

State Senate (East Bay) Dist. 9: Loni Hancock

South Bay San Jose City Council Dist. 6: Steve Kline

State Assembly (Regional) Dist. 15: Nancy Skinner Dist. 18: Abel Guillen Dist. 24: Rich Gordon

SAN FRANCISCO PROPS Vote NO on A, B

U.S. Senate Dianne Feinstein

Rick Gerharter

Then-Supervisor Harry Britt prepared to chain himself to the entrance of the Old Federal Building during a protest at the AIDS/ARC vigil on January 19, 1989. AIDS activists now want a monument at the site.

president, once viewed as “the big rainbow hope.”

To Cartwright, his support of marriage equality was “him trying to pander to all these people, the large segment of people he has already disenfranchised.”

Many of her friends, she said, have changed their party affiliation from Democratic to Green, or other third parties as a result, and apSee page 20 >>

Congress (Bay Area) Dist. 2: Jared Huffman

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

CALIFORNIA PROPOSITIONS Vote YES on 28, 29

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEES Democratic – District 17 David Campos, David Chiu, Matt Dorsey, Bevan Dufty, Zoe Dunning, Gabriel Robert Haaland, Leslie Katz, Rafael Mandelman, Hydra Mendoza, Carole Migden, Justin Morgan, Joaquin Torres, Christopher Vasquez, Scott Wiener Democratic – District 19 Kat Anderson, Kevin Bard, Kelly Dwyer, Tom Hsieh, Mary Jung, Susan (Siki) Kott, Meagan Levitan, Arlo Smith, Jim Weixel, Jason Wong Republican – District 17 Jason Clark Remember to vote on June 5!

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

Local churches see changes

by Seth Hemmelgarn

W

ebar.com

ith LGBTs becoming more accepted at mainstream spiritual centers, some local churches popular with gays and lesbians are experiencing declines in attendance.

For Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, which has served as the spiritual home to many Bay Area LGBTs for more than 40 years, though, the most recent trouble appears to be internal.

In an interview last week, MCCSF co-lay leader Kristine Poggioli said the board recently decided to let go of the Reverend Dr. William H. Knight, intentional interim pastor, when his contract expires in July.

Poggioli said without the additional salary, “We won’t be in constant fundraising crisis mode.” She said that “almost overwhelmingly” what people want the church to do is balance the budget. The church has a $60,000 projected budget deficit.

But in an email blast Sunday, May 27, board officials said many are “deeply concerned” about the decision to let Knight go. They announced that the board has put forth a motion to call Knight, who is gay, as senior pastor for two years.

Per MCC-SF’s bylaws, the proposal requires a confirming vote by 85 percent of the congregants present at the meeting. Board members said that the deficit remains and “the outcome of this vote will have a major impact on the future of our church, the church finances, and possibly your finances.”

In a Tuesday, May 29 interview, Poggioli said voting to keep Knight “would be a giant mistake.” It would mean something else, such as other staff, would have to be cut, she said.

Poggioli attributed the desire to retain Knight to “a small group of folks.”

However, she said, “It’s everyone’s church, and everyone needs to participate in the decision. We’ll see what happens.”

Knight didn’t respond to interview requests. Poggioli, who is bisexual, said the church is hoping for a budget of $300,000.

MCC-SF’s building at 150 Eureka Street, which the church bought around 1980, closed in June 2006 due to a structural problem. Services were held elsewhere until the church moved back to Eureka Street in 2008.

Poggioli indicated the temporary loss of the building was one of the reasons behind attendance dropping to about 800 a month. She said the number of attendees is stabilizing, as are contributions.

Troy Brunet, who’s gay and has been a member of MCC-SF for seven years, said the church has had its “ups and downs,” but “life will continue at the church as far as I know.”

Brunet was raised Catholic, but said that church is “close-minded,” unlike MCC-SF. The Catholic Church itself has seen plenty of controversy in San Francisco over the years.

In December, at least three gay and lesbian clergy members were disinvited from participating in Advent services at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro.

A man who answered the phone at Most Holy Redeemer last week said that Father Steve Meriwether, the church’s senior pastor, was out on medical leave. The man said he’d make sure somebody got the Bay Area Reporter’s interview request, but nobody from the church provided comment for this story.

Other Bay Area churches Another Metropolitan Commu-

Jane Philomen Cleland

Jane Philomen Cleland

The Reverend Dr. William H. Knight

The Reverend Elder Jim Mitulski

nity Church shut down in February.

The Reverend Rebecca Anderson, who served at MCC-San Jose before it closed, said that because of poor attendance, the church wasn’t able “to sustain itself financially.” She said she didn’t have details on the church’s finances.

Average Sunday attendance was from 10 to 17 when the church closed, Anderson, who identifies as queer, said. On the last Sunday celebration, however, they had a full house.

Many people had come to the church “because it was the only church where they didn’t feel like they were being criticized or dismissed or told they were unacceptable,” Anderson said.

She said other churches becoming more welcoming of LGBTs is one possible explanation for the drop in attendance at MCC-SJ. The fact that other communities are more accepting than when the church opened decades ago is partially because the denomination “has done a lot to help people understand you can be a person of faith and also gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

As MCC-San Jose was closing, the church received letters from several other spiritual centers throughout the Bay Area welcoming members.

One of those churches was San Jose’s Grace Baptist Church.

The Reverend Daryl L. Lavway, Grace Baptist’s senior pastor, said there were “already a number of gay people in my congregation, and a number of gay people in our leadership, so we felt they’d fit right in with us.” He said the two churches had already shared a number of attendees.

Grace Baptist has issues of its own, but Lavway didn’t appear too concerned about the future.

“We’re a struggling congregation like anybody else,” Lavway said of his church, which sees an average Sunday attendance of 60 to 70 people.

Lavway cited “the nature of our culture” as one reason behind Grace Baptist’s struggles. “I suppose there are so many other options for people on Sunday morning,” he said.

However, he said, “We’re not necessarily called to be big. We’re called to be faithful, and we work at that.”

Lavway estimated the church’s budget is from $220,000 to $250,000.

Over in the East Bay, the Reverend Elder Jim Mitulski, pastor of New Spirit Community Church at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, described how his church has been changing.

“The more gay people become part of the dominant culture, the less invested they are in creating a separate space, and that requires places like New Spirit to reinvent, which I think we’re doing,” Mitulski said. For example, they’ve

reached out to people with children and made the service on the fourth Sunday of the month “more something children and adults would do together, where in the past worship services were oriented more to adults, and children would go off to Sunday school.”

Mitulski, who is gay and was the senior pastor at MCC-SF for many years in the 1980s and 1990s, said the church has become an even mix of gay and straight. He said that during the school year there are usually 80-100 people on Sundays and 20 to 40 on Wednesdays, when a Taize service is held.

Strides in LGBT rights have been made, such as the move toward marriage equality, but Mitulski said, “I don’t want to overstate the notion that the revolution has been accomplished, because I don’t think it has.”

He said, “The Catholic Church continues to maintain a pretty hard line about homosexuality and the role of women” in church leadership.

New Spirit’s budget is about $110,000. Mitulski said the church doesn’t have debt, “but we don’t really have any savings either.” His hours have been cut from full time to about 70 percent this year.

Some churches, however, are seeing growth.

Ken Jones, a deacon at San Francisco’s City of Refuge United Church of Christ, said, “We are seeing more and more new people” every Sunday.

“People are really hungry for something now to help them through all the stresses of life.

They’re looking to make some meaning of this thing and to find their role, because things can be pretty bleak,” he said, referring to unemployment and other troubles.

Jones said the church is “probably 80 percent LGBT,” with a “very large” number of transgender parishioners.

“They’ve been shut out by churches all their lives, and finally they’ve found one where they’re welcome,” Jones, who’s gay, said.

The church is a place where they won’t “find people whispering and laughing at them and talking about them, and they can just be themselves.”

As far as finances go, Jones said, “Our collection plate is becoming less and less, but we mange to keep the doors open, and we manage to keep the organ running. ... We struggle, but we’re hopeful for the future, because we have faith.”▼ The vote to call Knight as senior pastor of MCC-SF will be Sunday, June 10. The meeting, which will also include a discussion of church finances, runs from 2 to 4 p.m. To vote, one must be a formal member in good standing and be at the meeting in person to cast a ballot.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

<< Election 2012

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

Mud flies in San Diego mayor’s race

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he mud is flying in the hotly contested race for San Diego mayor ahead of Tuesday’s election in the southern California city.

A gay candidate’s accepting money from anti-gay donors and his boyfriend’s past criminal record, as well as the political connections of the wife of another candidate who ditched the Republican Party to run as an independent, have garnered headlines in recent weeks.

The candidates have even fought over who went negative first. Locals say it is the nastiest political race San Diego has seen in decades.

With four main contenders, two of who are well known out local officials, it is expected that no one will garner the 50 percent plus one needed in order to clinch the office in the June 5 primary. The top two vote-getters for the nonpartisan post will advance to a November runoff, ensuring four more months of political sniping.

Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican whose daughter’s coming out as a lesbian led him to become a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, is termed out of office. Last June, a full year ahead of the election, Sanders endorsed lesbian San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis to be his successor.

Dumanis, 60, is one of the country’s few LGBT Republican elected officials. In 2008 when same-sex marriages were legal in the Golden State, Dumanis married her partner of 15 years, Denise Nelesen, a licensed social worker.

A former municipal and superior court judge, Dumanis first won election as DA in 2003 and her current term does not expire until 2014.

“I am a fixer and the city needs fixing,” said Dumanis, the only candidate to respond to the Bay Area Reporter’s interview requests for this story. “I turned the DA office around when it was a mess. I am ready to go to City Hall, kick ass, and take names.”

Courtesy Dumanis for mayor campaign

San Diego mayoral candidate Bonnie Dumanis

She is facing strong competition for GOP votes from San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio. The 37-year-old gay conservative leader is a favorite of local Tea Party activists and secured the local Republican Party’s endorsement in the

mayoral race.

Should DeMaio or Dumanis win, they would be the first out mayor to be elected by voters in a major California city. Toni Atkins, a lesbian who served on the San Diego City Council and is now a Democratic state assemblywoman, was appointed interim mayor for a time in 2005.

But state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, 35, is fighting hard to also win over GOP voters, despite his becoming an independent after leaving the Republican Party due to its extremist positions. The move cost Fletcher the endorsement of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, although the group did not in turn endorse DeMaio or Dumanis.

He has been vilified for his decision by activists on the far-left and far-right and has seen his wife’s support for Republican officials scrutinized as a way to turn off independent voters. DeMaio’s attacks on Fletcher’s record in Sacramento have been so relentless that his campaign designated a page on his website to refute each of them.

The dark horse in the race is Democratic Congressman Bob Filner, 69, who generated international headlines in May when he urged the U.S. Navy to name one of its vessels after slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk.

DeMaio has consistently placed first with the most support in polling ahead of the June election. In recent weeks a local LGBT press outlet has reported on the background of DeMaio’s boyfriend, Johnathan Hale, and how former roommates he was sexually active with took out restraining orders against him.

It is unclear if those reports, and more recent news about DeMaio taking campaign contributions from anti-gay donors, will hurt or help him in the race. Filner and Fletcher have been in a fierce fight for the second place spot, while Dumanis has consistently trailed in the polling.

There is growing concern among the military town’s LGBT community, Democrats, and more moderate GOP circles that Filner will compete against DeMaio in the runoff.

The worry is such a matchup will assure victory come November for DeMaio, who has pledged not to address any social issues as mayor.

Yet DeMaio has used social issues to attack Fletcher, sending members of the local Republican Party a 14-page memo outlining the state lawmaker’s support for LGBT issues ahead of the endorsement vote.

“The reality is this election has turned into a very difficult and, at times, very sad election,” longtime gay political columnist and San Diego city commissioner Nicole Murray Ramirez told the B.A.R. in a phone interview last week. “When all gay San Diegans should be celebrating the fact two of the front runners are from our community, in reality the front runner is a gay conservative, Carl DeMaio. He has gone on record and said social issues will not be on his agenda and he will not deal with them.”

Dumanis remains confident of her chances on Tuesday. Most people only began paying attention to the race in the past week, she said.

“I do think the other campaigns have been dismissive of me because I am a woman, but I am used to that,” she said. “It is really hard to predict right now, I think” who will win.▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

Volume 42, Number 22 May 31-June 6, 2012 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Duran Raymond Flournoy • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell John F. Karr • Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy David Lamble • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood

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▼

Chuck Reed’s marriage problem A

s leader of the Bay Area’s largest city, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has not demonstrated either practical or symbolic leadership on the issue of marriage equality.

It is time for Reed to end the waiting game and support the marriage rights of same-sex couples.

He doesn’t have to personally believe in same-sex marriage (and from what we’ve heard he doesn’t).

But as an elected official he should come out in favor of marriage for same-sex couples because it’s an equal rights issue.

For eight years now Reed has been silent on marriage equality.

He has turned down entreaties for San Jose to join other cities in various legal challenges; most notably he opposed San Jose’s formal support for the court case San Francisco filed to overturn California’s anti-gay marriage statutes. As we have reported, when he was a city councilman, he was the lone vote against asking members of the state Legislature to pass a same-sex marriage bill.

In 2008 Reed refused to take a stance on Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment passed by voters four years ago that banned same-sex marriage. During that heated campaign, his silence made clear to LGBT San Jose residents that they apparently did not have an ally in their mayor.

Now, he is balking at joining a nonpartisan initiative by the national Freedom to Marry group called Mayors for the Freedom to Marry.

The effort, launched earlier this year at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, currently has more than 200 mayors signed up, including Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego and Democrat Annise Parker, the out mayor of Houston.

But what’s really frustrating about Reed is his refusal to even meet with gay community leaders to hear directly from them. As we reported

online last Friday, gay advocates had a meeting set up with Reed to discuss joining the mayors’ initiative, but he canceled at the last minute.

That’s not leadership, that’s ducking the issue and disrespectful.

Over the years, many lawmakers and political leaders across the country have changed their stance on same-sex marriage, including President Barack Obama just this month. In many instances, their support evolved, as Obama so famously put it, because they talked to LGBT people on their staffs, or knew LGBT constituents, or had LGBT friends or family members.

Reed’s LGBT constituents want to meet with him, yet he won’t take the

time for a sit-down.

Business leaders in the South Bay should be alarmed at Reed’s intransigence and should exert some pressure on Reed, a strong ally of corporations. More and more companies have non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity and more CEOs are coming out in support of marriage equality.

In fact, business leaders’ support was an important factor when state lawmakers in New York passed a same-sex marriage bill last year.

On Wednesday, a council committee was set to vote on a resolution that calls on Reed to join the mayors who have signed the Freedom to Marry statement. It’s a shame that the reluctant Reed must be prodded to provide leadership in support of equal rights for all, including samesex couples.▼

Cuba’s unlikely trans advocate

by Theresa Sparks

L

ast week, when I was invited to speak at an event at the LGBT Community Center for Mariela Castro Espin, I was honored and a bit curious. She is a Castro after all, daughter of Raul Castro, the current president of Cuba, and niece of Fidel. I am of the generation that remembers the Cuban revolution, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis and the apparent control by the Soviet Union of a sovereign communist nation 90 miles from Florida. I am a product of the Cold War. I really knew very little about Castro other than she was founder and director of Cenesex, the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, a noted sexologist, publisher of the Sexologia y Sociedad, and an outspoken advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and (most notably) transgender rights. She is the Cuban version of our own Carol Queen. I also knew that the Human Rights Watch recently stated, “Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. The government enforces political conformity using harassment, invasive surveillance, threats of imprisonment, and travel restrictions.” How is it possible that this individual is able to walk the tightrope between a totalitarian political philosophy, within the context of an overwhelmingly Catholic populous, and open support for transgender health care, HIV compassionate treatment, same-sex marriage (it’s evolving), and opposition to homophobia and transphobia? The answer is, of course, after all, she is a Castro. But, after listening to Castro speak, one quickly realizes that both the issues and Castro herself are much more complicated than that.

Castro was born after the Cuban revolution that overthrew the Batista government in 1959.

She has lived under communist rule in Cuba her entire life. Both her father and mother have been members of the Communist Party Central Committee. She is a disciple of the socialist philosophy, the Communist Party and many of the policies instituted by her government. She is intellectual, disarmingly charming, very political, and unconditionally supportive of father Raul and uncle Fidel and, who knows, may be in line to take over the family business. Castro was

Jane Philomen Cleland

Mariela Castro Espin spoke in San Francisco last week.

in sync with the party line when she spoke passionately against a dissident blogger, the “Cuban mafia” in Miami, the U.S. embargo and travel restrictions and by later stating, “The Cuban people have been the victims of state terrorists ... campaigns to misinform the world’s population about the power of a revolution.”

It was interesting then to listen to Castro speak just as passionately, with excellent knowledge of the issues, about transgender rights and health care. She recalled how her mother, a former president of the Federation of Cuban Women, was an ardent supporter of transgender Cubans and never gave up the fight to include full transgender health benefits in the national health plan. After her mother’s death in 2007, Castro continued to lobby high-ranking members of the Communist Party and her father’s government to complete what her mother had started. In 2008, transgender Cubans were granted full health coverage by the Cuban government without restrictions or discrimination.

She also has been a driving force behind Cubans participating in the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, which she proudly boasts has now evolved into a monthlong festival of the arts and education. Clearly LGBT Cubans have not gained full acceptance,

only tepid tolerance, from the government and people of Cuba. But to have the daughter of the president of Cuba openly advocate for LGBT issues on the world stage is not only unprecedented but profound in its very nature. To then use transgender inclusion as the wedge issue to fight for a broad spectrum of additional LGBT rights and other basic human rights is astounding.

Of course, as we in San Francisco acknowledge, transgender activists have been instrumental in our own gay rights struggle at Stonewall in New York, and earlier at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. But we also recall how some prominent gay rights leaders and organizations have tried on a number of occasions to separate trans issues from gay, lesbian, and bi issues.

I think what Castro has been able to accomplish advocating first for transgender rights in Cuba could be instructional in our own struggle, within the LGBT community at large. I am hopeful she will continue to fight for LGBT, institutional, and basic human rights in Cuba, in her own way, according to her own culture and within the context of her current governmental structure. I believe that having the daughter of the president of Cuba on the side of LGBT Cubans is an advantage very few people have in any nation, irrespective of cultural, religious or governmental ideology.

In the United States, we still face open discrimination within our society and government. Only very recently has our own president “evolved” into supporting same-sex marriage.

In California, we still cannot marry whom we love. I am proud of how far we’ve come in San Francisco on LGB and transgender rights, but even here we still live in a glass house. Cuba is not without severe and substantive human rights failings. No one is arguing that. But, to a greater or lesser degree, so are many other nations and states. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently stated in Geneva, “Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.”

Castro was quoted on ABC News as saying, “If we do not change our patriarchal and homophobic culture ... we cannot advance as a new society. ... We will establish relationships [on the] basis of social justice and social equality...”

Astonishingly similar.▼ Theresa Sparks is the executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

▼

Letters >>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Just asking Are there any candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee that are not (a) employed by the city attorney’s office; (b) supervisors, wannabe supervisors, former supervisors, or rejected supervisor candidates; or (c) otherwise on the city payroll? You know, like regular Democrats? Just asking.

Eric Llaneza San Francisco

Mariela Castro’s visit Mariela Castro’s work and dedication on behalf of the LGBT community in Cuba and other parts of the world is laudable [“Cuban leader’s daughter discusses gay rights,” online, May 24]. Her Cenesex is a great example of what a gay community center’s mission can be. Its purpose to educate the society and culture in which it “lives” against homophobia and all types of oppression is an example from which we here in San Francisco need to study and learn. Thank you, San Francisco LGBT Community Center, for bringing her to our community. My suggestion to Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the center, and its board members is to take Ms. Castro up on her suggestion to go visit her center in Cuba, so that our own LGBT center can better reflect our community and purpose.

Marc Bossa San Francisco

Yes on Prop 29 Thanks to Tom Ammiano for the great op-ed on why yes on state Proposition 29 is in the interest of the LGBT community [“Don’t buy Big Tobacco’s lies,” Guest Opinion, May 24]. In the final days of the campaign, the tobacco industry will flood the airwaves and our mailboxes with carefully crafted lies to confuse the voters. Be on your guard. Their latest ad claims Prop 29 takes money away from education, an outright lie. They say money

will be spent out of California, another lie. On the contrary, if Prop 29 passes, the industry will lose a billion dollars annually in California from less smoking, money that will be spent on other goods in the state. This is not an across the board tax increase: it’s a tax only on tobacco.

The public already bears the burden of annual tobaccocaused health expenditures in the billions. If a pack of cigarettes reflected the true costs to Californians, it would cost $27. Prop 29 is necessary because the Legislature has refused to raise tobacco taxes more than 30 times in the last several decades, owing perhaps to the steady flow of tobacco industry campaign contributions. You think?

As Ammiano mentioned, the state has the 33rd lowest tobacco tax. We’re way below what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the state spend on tobacco control. This excellent proposition will remedy that and be a victory against unscrupulous influence on our elections by the 1 percent. Yes on 29.

Naphtali Offen San Francisco

Milk plaque unveiling was great The Harvey Milk Day plaque unveiling brought out a large crowd to Harvey Milk Plaza. Special thanks goes to the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band which was great fun and really helped draw a crowd, and to the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, which performed a particularly beautiful portion of a major new choral work, “Harvey Milk: A Cantata” by composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky. Both the band and the chorus made the event truly special. Of course, without support from Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which provided monies for the replacement plaque, and the support of the Department of Public Works, the plaque might not have been replaced. Thank you all.

Andrea Aiello, Executive Director Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District San Francisco

LGBT local heroes named compiled by Cynthia Laird

F

our Bay Area LGBT residents have been selected as Local Heroes by KQED and Union Bank and will be feted at an awards program hosted by Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black Tuesday, June 5 at the Castro Theatre.

Jei Africa, Psy.D.; Jeff Cotter; Roger Doughty; and Tom Nolan are this year’s honorees for Pride Month.

Africa is the health equity initiatives manager with the Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Division of the San Mateo County health system. Africa is one of the few Tagalog-speaking licensed clinical psychologists who is also certified as a domestic violence and addiction counselor in the Bay Area.

In her current job she promotes effective and culturally responsive services to her patients. In 2005 she founded the Alliance for Community Empowerment, an all-volunteer nonprofit that stages free biannual education seminars and resource fairs to promote healthy behavior and interaction.

Cotter is the founder of the Rainbow World Fund, the only international LGBT-based humanitarian aid organization that helps people who suffer from hunger, poverty, disease, oppression, and war. A psychiatric social worker for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Cotter leads regular trips to impoverished countries and also holds fundraisers for those recovering from natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti. In 2006, Cotter created the Tree of Hope, a global holiday project promoting peace, love, and humanitarianism.

Doughty is executive director of the Horizons Foundation, the nation’s oldest LGBT community foundation. The organization distributed grants to LGBT groups and allied groups that work on LGBTbased projects. Doughty started his career as an attorney specializing in refugee, immigration, and asylum cases involving gender-related per-

Jei Africa is one of four Local Heroes being honored by KQED and Union Bank.

secution and sexual orientation.

Nolan stepped down in January as executive director of Project Open Hand, which he led for 17 years. The organization provides food to those living with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses. Under Nolan’s tenure, Open Hand expanded services to Alameda County and the nonprofit picked up contracts to serve seniors after the Salvation Army declined to comply with San Francisco’s equal benefits ordinance.

In 1987, Nolan became the first openly gay person to serve as president of the San Mateo Board of Supervisors, where he co-created the county’s first response to the AIDS crisis. He currently serves as board chair of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Union Bank and KQED created the awards to help celebrate the national commemorative heritage months for the Asian Pacific American and African American communities. In 2011, the program was expanded in San Francisco to also recognize honorees as part of LGBT Pride Month.

“Union Bank is very proud to once again join KQED to celebrate these LGBT community heroes and to recognize and highlight their

dedication and the tremendous efforts they make each day,” said Pierre P. Habis, senior executive vice president and head of community banking.

The award program will be aired on KQED channel 9 Sunday, June 24 at 6 p.m. and Wednesday, June 27 at 11 p.m., and on KQED LIFE on Thursday, June 28 at 10 p.m.

“These heroes exemplify a tireless commitment to the Bay Area community,” said John Boland, president of KQED. “We are pleased to introduce them to our viewers through the video profiles airing on KQED throughout Pride Month so that millions of others will have an opportunity to learn more about the many contributions of these outstanding community leaders.”

For more information, visit www. kqed.org/community/heritage and www.unionbank.com/heroes.

Santa Cruz celebrates Pride This weekend kicks off Pride Month and Santa Cruz’s Pride Parade takes place Sunday, June 3 at 11 a.m. along Pacific Avenue. The festival has new hours – 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. – and also takes place along Pacific Avenue this year. The parade theme is “Life Gets Better Together.”

The weekend begins with the Dyke and Trans March on Saturday, June 2. There will be a rally at the clock tower at 4 p.m. (Pacific and Water streets) featuring performances by Frootie Flavors, Animal Prufrock, Beaver Fever, Gabriel, and more.

The march begins at 6 and ends up at a Pink Saturday party at the Museum of Art and History, 705 Front Street. All ages are welcome, there will be a cash bar and a suggested donation of $5-$10.

For more information on the parade and festival, visit www.diversitycenter.org. For more information on the Dyke Trans March, visit www.santacruzdykemarch.com/.

Sonoma County celebrates Pride “Gay By Nature” is the theme for this year’s Sonoma County Pride Parade, which takes place Sunday, See page 21 >>

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<<Commentary

▼ Cracked wrists, cut hair, and a split community 8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

I

n the run-up to North Carolina’s Amendment 1 – which limits the definition of marriage in the state even further than already-existing law – pastor Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville delivered a fiery sermon.

Allow me to quote his words: “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is 4 years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, ‘Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,’ you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

“Can I make it any clearer?

“Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.

Man up. Give him a good punch,

okay? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.

“And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you rein her in and you say, ‘Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful.

You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.’ You say, ‘Can I take charge like that as a parent?’

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

I should note that Harris has given the typical non-apology apology to anyone he “unintentionally offended.” He has since gone on record saying that he “never suggested children or those in the LGBT lifestyle should be beaten, punched, abused (physically or psychologically) in any form or fashion.” This in spite of what he said in his sermon.

I also should point out that Harris was not specifically talking about

transgender people, but gay and lesbian folks. Nevertheless, I think anyone reading the above can tell that Harris is not one for splitting hairs in regards to gender identity and sexual orientation: to him, a male acting effeminately – regardless of orientation or identity – should be squashed like a cockroach. They should have their wrist cracked. They should be given a “good punch.” Or if they’re born female, you apparently give them a good talking to.

I’m reminded, too, of another recent incident involving presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Several eyewitnesses have told of a time in high school when Romney and his friends pinned down a student they presumed was gay, John Lauber, while Romney cut Lauber’s hair. Romney, of course, says he did not know Lauber was gay at the time, and the hair-cutting was simply a “youthful indiscretion.” Perhaps it was.

Yet if this wasn’t about this student being gay, then it certainly was about gender presentation. “He can’t look like that,” Romney is reported to have said. “That’s wrong.

Just look at him!” All this was because Lauber sported bleachedblond hair that hung over one of his eyes. It was, perhaps, a daring look Christine Smith

for a time when The Beatles pushed the limits of hair length with tresses reaching their collars.

These are both incidents that so clearly illustrate why we are an LGBT community, and why transgender issues are gay and lesbian issues. While we do have a host of disparate issues, we all face discrimination for our gender identity or orientation.

While one can indeed be attacked for whom they love, I am of the opinion that one is likely targeted first for appearance or actions deemed “inappropriate” for their perceived gender.

Heck, in a very strict view, the notion of a man loving another man could be singled out as “gender inappropriate,” and more of a genderrelated issue than I suspect many in the LGBT community would feel comfortable admitting.

There is an opposite side to this, too: while there are plenty of transgender-specific epithets that can be flung, my own experiences seem to show that I’m much more likely to be called anti-gay or anti-lesbian slurs – I suppose depending on if a harasser thinks I’m a feminine male or a masculine female at the time.

We spend a lot of time in our community focusing on our differences.

We all call each other out when we feel slighted. We put up walls around our identities, and do all we can to keep out anything we view as somehow harmful to that identity. I’ve known some gay- and lesbian-identified folks who hate transwomen for reasons that seem to boil down to how much their existence affects their own identity. Likewise, I have known more than a few transpeople who focus an inordinate amount of energy on creating a distance from gay and lesbian issues.

Who do these divisions serve, though? Harris, the pastor, doesn’t seem to worry about the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, nor, presumably did Romney in his high school days. Indeed, we seem to only serve their interests by dividing us down in numbers, rather than providing a unified front against all who attack us.

We’re on the threshold of Pride Month. Perhaps, if one takes anything from the above, please consider that we’re all in this together.

Let us stand together.▼ Gwen Smith is no stranger to people like Sean Harris.

You can find her online at www.gwensmith.com.

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<< Politics

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

LGBT political newcomers seek Dem Party seats

by Matthew S. Bajko

M

ost aren’t household names yet. But they could be, at least locally, if they beat the odds and land a seat on the local Democratic Party’s oversight panel.

Half a dozen LGBT newcomers are seeking seats on what is known as the Democratic County Central Committee. Referred to as the “D triple C,” the body controls the San Francisco Democratic Party and its members elect who will be the local party’s chair.

For those looking to advance to higher office, gaining a seat on the DCCC is often seen as a good first step. The panel also endorses in local races and spends big to promote its favored candidates.

Thus, DCCC members running for supervisor seats or citywide offices historically have had a leg up in securing the party’s backing, which brings with it money, volunteers, and slate card mentions. For that reason, landing a seat on the DCCC has become increasingly competitive.

The 24 elected seats on the DCCC are divided between the city’s two Assembly Districts. The eastside Assembly District 17, where incumbent gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) is running for re-election, has 14 open seats.

In Assembly District 19 AssessorRecorder Phil Ting is facing stiff competition for the open Assembly seat from library commissioner Michael Breyer, the son of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Because the Westside district also covers parts of San Mateo County, it has only 10 DCCC seats

up for grabs.

This year six sitting members of the Board of Supervisors are in the mix for DCCC seats, as are top aides to Mayor Ed Lee and many longtime members of the panel who are seeking re-election. Most of the names that will appear on the primary ballot next Tuesday, June 5, are therefore well known to voters due to their city positions or elected status.

That has made it harder for those candidates with little to no name recognition to break through in a race given short shrift by the media and even less attention by the public. But a handful of the lesser-known LGBT contenders are waging strong campaigns for a DCCC seat.

Those to watch in the AD 17 race who have garnered key endorsements from elected leaders and landed on various group’s slate cards include bisexual Police Commissioner Petra DeJesus; transgender schoolteacher Jamie Rafaela Wolfe; lesbian retired Navy Reserve Commander Zoe Dunning; and gay BART community relations liaison Christopher Vasquez.

City attorney spokesman Matt Dorsey, while running in his first DCCC election, has the benefit of being considered an incumbent. He was appointed to fill a vacancy on the panel earlier this year, and he has earned the backing of the city’s two LGBT Democratic clubs.

Dunning and Vasquez both secured the backing of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Lee. They have been holding campaign events and sending out fundraising appeals.

Wolfe ran unsuccessfully in 2010

Stu Smith; and Democratic activist Rick Hauptman.

Gay SF supe candidate announces endorsements

Courtesy Vasquez for DCCC campaign

DCCC candidate Christopher Vasquez

for a seat on the city’s school board.

Since then she has taken leadership roles in the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and local transgender groups. Her increased activism has led to her securing a number of endorsements in the DCCC contest from various organizations and progressive leaders.

In the AD 19 race there are only two gay candidates, one of whom is a DCCC incumbent, Arlo Smith.

The other is housing activist Kevin Bard, who is also active in the Milk Club.

Bard would be one of the few African Americans on the DCCC should he win a seat. He too has racked up a number of endorsements from various political groups and is featured on several slate cards mailed out to voters in recent days.

Three other gay non-incumbents are running in the AD 17 race, but they have not received as much attention or support as their out newcomer counterparts. They are taxi advocate Dean Clark; AIDS activist

Another political neophyte is journalist Joel Engardio, a gay man seeking the open District 7 seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this fall.

He recently landed two big endorsements in the race. Former city supervisor, state senator and Superior Court judge Quentin Kopp has given him a sole endorsement.

“Joel Engardio has shown himself to be a clear-headed, extremely wellinformed and honest campaigner.

I’m pleased to endorse him because of the high standard of truth, veracity and beliefs he has displayed,” Kopp stated in an email sent by Engardio.

His backing comes just days after gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener endorsed both Engardio and Board of Appeals President Michael Garcia. His endorsements are not ranked and he does not intend to endorse a third candidate; voters can choose their top three under the city’s ranked choice voting.

“Joel’s energy and creative and common-sense approach to government are exactly what San Francisco needs,” said Wiener.

The frontrunner, in terms of name recognition and past electoral experience, would appear to be Norman Yee, president of the city’s school board. Others in the race to succeed Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who is termed out of office, include Port Commissioner Francis “FX” Crowley and businessman Andrew Bley.

Kudos to MTA for Pride messages San Franciscans returning to work Tuesday after the long Memo-

rial Day weekend found a double dose of LGBT Pride greeting them.

The LGBT Pride Celebration Committee had raised the rainbow flags along Market Street and select Muni routes carried electronic messages reading “Equality for All!” Due to how the days fall on the calendar this year, there is still another week in June following the last Sunday of the month, when cities across the country hold their Pride parades. To ensure the gay flags flew for a full month prior to June 24, the date of this year’s LGBT celebration, the annual display went up a week earlier than normal.

Pride is trying to raise $40,000 in order to replace the flags in time for the 2013 celebration. To make a donation log on to www.SFpride. org/donate, click the donate button, and under the program designation menu select Market Street Flag Replacement.

And following a suggestion made by the Political Notebook at the start of May, the Municipal Transit Agency added the pro-gay rights message to the electronic destination signs on the front and side of its buses on certain routes. A reporter saw a 48 Quintara-24th Street bus displaying the “Equality for All!” message Tuesday night.

No word yet, though, on if City Hall will be decked out in the colors of the rainbow flag or pink during the Pride weekend festivities.▼ Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion, is on hiatus until Monday, June 11.

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

Got a tip on LGBT politics?

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

e c a l P o N e m o H e k Li

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Vol. 41 • No. 22 •May 31-June 6, 2012

Shovels hit the dirt at Castro housing sites ~ by Matthew S. Bajko ~

T

he Castro, finally, is set for a building boom.

Close to 1,000 units of new housing and thousands of square feet for retail spaces should be built in the coming two to three years.

Construction is already under way, or about to break ground, at six different sites near the heart of San Francisco’s LGBT district. Combined, the developments will add 367 apartments, a mix of rentals or condos for sale.

Another five parcels along upper Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Castro Street are at various stages in the Planning Department’s permitting process. Should they break ground, the developments would add close to 600 more units to the gayborhood.

“We are going to see a construction boom in the upper Market area over the next two to four years.

People are going to be blown away,” said Peter Cohen, co-chair of the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association’s land use committee. “We haven’t seen that kind of a construction boom in the Castro in more than 10 or 12 years.”

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Jane Philomen Cleland

Work has started earlier this year on an 18-unit, 50-foot building at 2299 Market; the lot has sat vacant for decades after an arsonist set fire to a church.

<<

Castro housing From page 11

Residents have mixed feelings about the new developments.

Katherine D’Amato, who lives with her partner of six years on Waller Street near Laguna, is concerned about more congestion and noise that the additional housing will bring. At the same time, she is excited about seeing units designated for LGBT seniors at the 55 Laguna site.

“This community has a lot of people and is vibrant, but it is also calm,” said D’Amato, a social worker. “When you add 400 or more people that will change, so I am mixed.”

Curtis Moran, a gay man who lives on Hermann Street, joked he has been eagerly waiting for years to see the crane move at one site near his apartment.

“I definitely am considering buying into one of the new buildings,” said Moran, a screenwriter. “The only disappointing thing is it is so many years out. But if you can plan ahead, it is something to look forward to.”

It has been six years since a Bay Area Reporter article first detailed how the city’s gayborhood could see a dozen new mixed-use housing developments transform the streetscape along upper Market Street. Several factors led to the delay in seeing shovels actually hit the dirt.

Following the B.A.R.’s story thenDistrict 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty called on the Planning Department to hold a design charette with neighborhood residents to devise guidelines for what they would like to see built. While the charette and a rezoning of most of the area took place, the developments were held back from being approved by the city’s Planning Commission.

When the projects did win the necessary sign offs the housing market collapsed amid the recession. It has only been in recent months that banks are again loaning money for new construction.

With the financial spigots open and permits in hand, local builders and national housing developers are breaking ground on lots that have been underutilized or sat vacant for years, and in some cases, decades.

Soon the lot at 2299 Market Street will no longer be derisively referred to as the Hole-in-the-Ground. An arsonist burned down the church that once stood there 31 years ago,

and the property had remained an open pit since.

But in January developer Angus McCarthy started work on an 18unit, 50-foot building. Barring any delays, he hopes to have the mix of one and two bedroom units on the market in February.

“It is great to see it finally start.

I’ve never worked on a job site where we found the community so happy to see this project happen,” said McCarthy, president of the city’s Building Inspection Commission.

He said the fallout in the economy stymied many of the projects slated for the upper Market Street corridor.

“Locally, things didn’t really come to life until late last year. Until then the banks were not lending to the construction industry and were not taking a look at smaller infill projects like this,” said McCarthy. “They still require a tremendous amount from developers but they loosened up the ability to fund these projects.”

McCarthy opted to pay an in-lieu fee to the city instead of designating

West is seeking permission to open a 3,300 square foot branch at the site. It said the application would be heard at the Planning Commission’s June 14 meeting.

It is thought that many of the new retail spaces will go to national chains, as the rents are expected to be too steep for local merchants to afford. The prospect is raising the issue of whether stronger controls on formula retail are needed.

“I am hopeful the new commercial spaces create more energy and vitality. I also definitely think the neighborhood should be speaking up for what they want to see,” said Dufty, now Mayor Ed Lee’s homelessness czar. “Now is the time for people to think about opening up a new business or to be encouraging the business types they like in other neighborhoods to come here.”

New neighbor for LGBT center Susan Smart, the managing director for West Coast development at MacFarlane Partners, said she has already begun discussions with the LGBT Community Center about potential retailers for the new 113unit development going up at 1844 Market Street, next to the center.

“We want something that contributes to the vibe of the neighborhood. We don’t have anybody lined up yet,” said Smart, adding that the company is sponsoring the LGBT center’s Pride party in June. “We want to find ways to collaborate with them to bring a little bit more energy to that block. It is a fun opportunity for them and for us.”

The center’s executive director, Rebecca Rolfe, said she is glad to see activity again at the Castro’s other barren pit of a construction site.

“While, certainly, having an active construction site next door is a challenge, we are happy to have something be built,” said Rolfe as a giant dump truck loaded with dirt drove past her office window. “And to have a functioning building with neighbors rather than an empty lot with the kinds of graffiti and garbage that has generated.”

The project adjacent to the LGBT center was approved back in 2007 and work on the site had started several years ago. But the initial developer was forced to sell the project, then that buyer offloaded the $55 million project to MacFarlane in late May.

“The inventory is extremely low. These are badly needed housing right now.

People are coming back to the market to buy their homes again.”

–Angus McCarthy

several units as below market rate at the new building, which will sit prominently at the corner of 16th, Noe, and Market streets. He said he would not know until next year how much the units would be priced to sell.

“The inventory is extremely low.

These are badly needed housing right now,” said McCarthy. “People are coming back to the market to buy their homes again.”

As for the 5,000 square feet set aside for ground floor retail spaces, McCarthy would only say he expects to have an anchor tenant in place before construction wraps up.

“Right now we are getting interest in that arena and going over different options there,” he said.

The Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association reported in its latest newsletter that Bank of the

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May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Courtesy MacFarlane Partners

Architect’s rendering of the project at 1844 Market Street, next to the LGBT Community Center.

friendly,” with the F-line stopping practically in front of the building, which was another reason MacFarlane liked the location.

Market Street changes

Rick Gerharter

LGBT Community Center Executive Director Rebecca Rolfe is pleased that work should start soon on a housing project next door to the center.

The planned residential building will consist of 113 rental apartments (99 market-rate and 14 affordable units), 5,500 square feet of streetlevel retail, and an underground garage with 81 parking spaces. The project is planned to open in November 2013.

The one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments and ground-floor retail will face onto both Market and Waller streets and an interior courtyard. There won’t be any pool, as some had hoped, and plans for a hot tub have been axed.

A fifth-floor terrace will offer recreation space with views of downtown.

“We really like this location. We think exciting things are obviously going on along Market Street,” said Smart, adding that her company is exploring buying other sites in the immediate area. “It is at the nexus of Hayes Valley, the Mission and the Castro. We will draw from those three neighborhoods a base of potential residents.”

One of the prime selling points will be how easy it is for residents to walk to all three of those neighborhoods, said Smart. It is “transit

Up the street demolition work has begun at the old S&C Ford showroom and garage at 2001 Market Street at Dolores. The large building is nearly gone as workers prepare to build an 85-unit, 85-foot building whose anchor commercial tenant will be Whole Foods.

Nearby work is already under way at 200 Dolores Street at 15th on a new 10-unit building going up on the corner lot where an arsonist burned down another church. The parsonage, which survived the conflagration, is being turned into three two-bedroom units.

Construction should start soon at two other sites. Demolition permits were pulled in March for 2200 Market Street at Sanchez. A new 22-unit, 55-foot-high building is planned for the corner lot where the now-closed Leticia’s restaurant stands.

Down the street at the site of a former gas station at 1998 Market Street at Buchanan a groundbreaking for the 115-unit, 85-foot building should occur by the middle of June. Approved back in 2008, the development languished due to a lack of financing.

“Finally banks are back in business after a three-year hiatus,” said developer Brian Spiers. “It is just a great area. We should build housing along our most busy thoroughfare.”

Rather than have 17 below market units on the site, Spiers sought city approval last December to construct 23 units of affordable housing at the corner lot he owns at Market and Franklin streets. Both projects will start construction at the same time, and Spiers hopes to have them completed within 18 months.

He does not yet know how much the mix of one and two bedrooms will sell for. He suspects the below market units at the smaller project

will be priced between $210,000 and $220,000.

Nor has he settled on the kind of retailers he would like to see rent both projects’ commercial spaces.

But a new restaurant is planned to go into a corner lease at the 1998 Market site.

“I am very excited to be able to finally build the 1998 project,” said Spiers. “I think it is a tremendous design by the architects and will be a great addition to the upper Market area.”

Even more housing is being proposed at two other gas station sites in the Castro. Forrest City has been meeting with Castro groups about its plans to build an 80-unit, 65-foot high building at the 76 Station at Market and 15th streets not far from Spier’s project.

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Castro housing From page 13

A new 24-unit, 65-foot tall building is planned for the Arco station at the corner of Castro and Market streets. A proposal for the site at 376 Castro Street presented to Castro groups several years ago was widely derided, and even the city’s Planning Department told the architect at the time that his design was ill-suited for such a prominent, and internationally known, intersection.

The new redesigned proposal would include office space for the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District and a small community room. It is expected to go before the Planning Commission sometime in June.

In late July the developers of 350-units in multiple buildings at the former UC Extension site a block off Market Street on Laguna hope to secure approval for their plans. At a recent town hall meeting, Tovey Giezentanner with Wood Partners

said the company hopes to begin construction at the site in late November or early December.

The build out for the market rate housing, with at least 32 below market units, is estimated to last 30 months. An additional 110 units of affordable housing for LGBT seniors is slated for the site, and all of the 440 total units will be rentals.

Construction on the two buildings of senior housing will not start, however, until the nonprofit Openhouse can secure funding for the estimated $60 million development.

It is hoped the project will break ground by 2014.

By that time additional housing could be built at five other lots along the upper Market Street corridor.

There is a plan to add 16 units in an addition to the building housing Gold’s Gym. The owner of the former S&C Ford commercial sales building at 35 Dolores Street near Market won approval to build housing at the site.

But restrictions on the number of

Jane Philomen Cleland

Construction crews were at work last week at the site of new apartments at 200 Dolores Street near 15th.

parking spaces appear to have put the project on hold.

The vacant former Blockbuster store at 160 Church Street is on the market and the lot could be redeveloped into a mixed-use building. Sul-

livan’s Funeral Home, which comprises six lots totaling 23,100 square feet at 2254 Market Street, is listed for sale with an asking price of $10 million.

The vacant corner lot at 2198

▼

Market Street across from the Chase Bank is also for sale reportedly with an asking price of up to $5 million.

Cohen with DTNA has closely followed all of the planned housing projects for years. He believes the hours he and others have spent scrutinizing designs and negotiating for community benefits from developers has resulted in much better projects.

“When this stuff starts going up and people start grasping the huge change in population the Castro will see, I hope people think there are a lot of good outcomes,” said Cohen, who works at the Council of Community Housing Organizations. “I have a good feeling all that heavy lifting and sweat equity was worth it.”

His one criticism is not seeing more of the developments include below market rate units on site.

“There is no affordable housing happening in the Castro. Land is too expensive,” he said. “Our form of affordable housing is through those BMRs on site. If we don’t get those, we get nothing.”▼

Milk club prez survives apartment hunt nightmare

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he email came just two days before he was set to host this year’s Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club awards gala. In it Glendon Hyde, whose drag persona is Anna Conda, announced he would be resigning as the club’s president and moving to Fresno.

Having spent the last five months searching in vain for an apartment rental for less than $1,000 a month, Hyde decided to quit the city altogether and relocate east to the Central Valley.

“Look for a Milk Club in Fresno, or

Fres-YES as I like to call it. I am taking the fight to the valley where oppression is still a driving force and I plan to use all the skills you have taught me.

Thank you so much for all you have given. I am indebted,” wrote Hyde in the email announcing he would be stepping down as of May 23 and turning over the president’s duties to Alex Smith, the club’s vice president of internal affairs.

But during the May 21 dinner Hyde announced he no longer was relocating. After sending out his resignation letter, he ran into Terrance Alan, a former San Francisco Entertainment Commission member, who said he

could rent him a room in a house he owns in the Excelsior district.

Over the last week Hyde has been moving into his new home, which he is sharing with a roommate. He will remain Milk Club president as he attends City College working toward earning a degree in city planning at either San Francisco State University or UC Berkeley.

In an interview this week with the Bay Area Reporter, Hyde said he tried at first looking to rent his own place.

But studios in the Tenderloin were going for $1,900 a month.

And when he tried to land a roommate-shared rental, Hyde lost out in bidding wars for the apartments.

“I was finding a couple at $850 that would be perfect and I would get out bid. Someone would offer $1,000 a month,” said Hyde, who serves on the Entertainment Commission as a neighborhood representative.

He said the experience has made it clear to him that the city is not doing enough to protect renters who are low- or middle-income earners. And the new housing that is being approved, added Hyde, is not going to satisfy the current demand that has led rents to skyrocket.

“What we really need is another round of rent control, so that everything built to this date now can start on rent control,” he said. “Otherwise this place is going to become Venice, Italy where only 1 in 100 people live in the city and the rest are tourists.

None of the housing being built is for people to live in; it is for second and third homes for the rich.”

Hyde is supportive of the Housing Trust Fund Charter Amendment that Mayor Ed Lee has proposed go before voters in November. It is meant to be a permanent source of revenue to fund housing affordable to low and moderate households in San Francisco for the next three decades.

The fund would be started with $20 million in general fund revenue and

Rick Gerharter

Glendon Hyde will stay in San Francisco after all.

increase to $50 million over time. If approved by voters, an estimated $1.1 billion would be invested in affordable housing production over the next 30 years.

According to Lee’s office, the fund would create more than 9,000 units of permanently affordable housing for residents whose average median income (AMI) is 60 percent or below.

The projects would include the rebuilds planned for the Sunnydale and Potrero public housing projects and at the Hugo Hotel.

Over the trust fund’s first five years $15 million would go toward a down payment assistance program for residents to purchase a home in San Francisco with no-interest loans to first-time homebuyers. A homeowner stabilization program would also be started to help distressed homeowners remain in their homes.

The city would also have the ability to purchase up to 20 percent of a development’s units to create permanent below market rate units available for moderate-income renters and homebuyers.

“This would see the building out of 9,000 affordable housing units so we can meet the needs of our city’s population,” said bisexual District 5 Supervisor Christina Olague, a co-sponsor of the measure.

Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener is also a co-sponsor of the measure, as he has made building more moderately priced housing a priority.

“San Francisco has a housing affordability crisis,” stated Wiener in a press release about the proposal.

A companion revenue piece to establish the Housing Trust Fund is “still in flux,” Wiener told the B.A.R. this week. City Hall is also hammering out a companion ballot initiative and negotiators expect to introduce the proposals to supervisors in June. The mayor’s office had wanted to increase the real estate transfer tax for transactions involving all properties valued at $1 million or above by 0.2 percent.

Wiener said those talks are ongoing and more work is needed before the package of legislation can be approved by the board and then voted on in November. But he remains “cautiously optimistic” a deal can be reached.

“This trust fund, by funding affordable housing and helping create more housing, will move us in the right direction,” stated Wiener.

Otherwise places like Fresno could find more people priced out of San Francisco apartment hunting there.

“Why I just announced I was going to Fresno was I could go to school there and live there cheaply,” said Hyde, who is concerned that many people make too much money to qualify for below market rate units.

“We need to preserve the promise San Francisco represents to the rest of the world, in my opinion.”▼ A longer version of this story can be found on ebar.com.

▼

Travel>>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Gay in LA: Pride parade is coming up

by Ed Walsh

urally-lit open plan museum space in the world.

The world-famous La Brea Tar Pits are next to the LACMA. In the George C. Page Museum next to the pits, you can see paleontologists cleaning and repairing some of the ancient bones that were found in the black goo. The museum has exhibits that explain how now-extinct animals got trapped in the tar.

LA’s best-known museum is the Getty Center. It is in the Brentwood section of LA on the top of a hillside with sweeping views of the city and ocean. Admission to the museum

I

f you are thinking of traveling to southern California, next weekend would be a gay time to go.

West Hollywood is gearing up for LA Pride. The celebration starts on Friday, June 8, and ends with a parade on Sunday, followed by more parties.

This year, LA Pride will give an award named after a San Franciscan to a San Franciscan. The George Moscone Ally Award goes to a non-LGBT honoree each year. The 2012 award will go to California Attorney General Kamala Harris. For all the LA Pride details, visit www.lapride.org.

Harris’s office this week told the Bay Area Reporter that she is looking forward to riding in the parade.

If you can’t get down there for Pride, LA/WeHo is a great summer destination. Aside from the unpredictable June gloom, the LA area is a great place to experience that warm summer California sun that we often lack in San Francisco.

To get through the hottest summer days, LA has its own gay beach, about a 25-minute drive from West Hollywood. It is a section of Will Rogers State Beach opposite Entrada Drive and West Channel Road.

(See below for directions.)

Some of the best shows in town are free in LA. Toward the late summer, taping of new fall TV shows starts and productions actively recruit audience members. Many shows also tape through the summer. For more information, log onto www.TVTickets.com.

If you are a Disney fan, now is a good time to make your plans to attend Gay Days. It will be held October 5-7. Saturday, October 6, is the day for Disneyland. Sunday is for California Adventure. Click on www.GayDaysAnaheim.com for more information.

A few weeks later, West Hollywood

Ed Walsh

West Hollywood’s biggest landmark is the iconic Pacific Design Center.

will become the Halloween capital of California. Hundreds of thousands will converge on Santa Monica Boulevard, WeHo’s main strip, for drag’s biggest night. If you miss Halloween in the Castro, WeHo Halloween is the next best thing.

The sights Despite the stereotype about no one walking in LA, West Hollywood is one of the most walkable cities in the country. WeHo’s biggest landmark, the Pacific Design Center, has almost completed its expansion with a third red glass-clad building that adds to the existing blue and green buildings in the 14-acre complex. West Hollywood’s new stateof-the-art library opened last fall.

It’s in a brand new building across from the Pacific Design Center.

A guided tour is one of the best ways to see the highlights of LA without getting lost. The TMZ tour is one of the newest guided tours.

Like the TV show, the tour takes a wonderfully irreverent warts-andall view of Hollywood. The TMZ tour is done in partnership with Starline Tours, which offers more standard fare as well as other offbeat tours, including a Crime Scene tour that includes Hollywood’s true horror stories.

If you haven’t been to LA in a while, be sure to check out some of the city’s newer attractions, including a brand new one-acre addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibit Pavilion opened in 2010 with 45,000 square feet. The space bills itself as the world’s largest nat-

is free but parking costs $15. Public transit directions can be found on the museum’s web site, www.getty.edu.

The Getty’s not so-well-known sister museum is the Getty Villa in Malibu. It is dedicated to the arts and culture of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.

The Hollywood and Highland complex celebrated its 10th anniversary just last year. The stunning mega-mall includes 75 shops and the world-famous theater that hosts the Academy Awards. It used to be called the Kodak Theater but was renamed See page 17 >>

<< The Sports Page

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

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Giant strides

by Roger Brigham

A

lmost four decades ago, Dave Kopay served as a solitary inspiration for a generation of thencloseted athletes when he became the first former player in a U.S. men’s professional sports league to come out of the closet. Now, as he closes in on his 70th birthday in June, the former San Francisco 49er will be back in the San Francisco Bay Area, sharing the joy and inspiration with hundreds of proudly out athletes.

Kopay, who gave the Athletes Oath at the start of Gay Games VII in Chicago six years ago, will deliver a short speech to the racers as the official starter for the 33rd annual San Francisco FrontRunners Pride Run, Saturday, June 23, in Golden Gate Park.

Kopay came out in an interview with the Washington Star in 1975, and two years later his autobiogra-

phy, The David Kopay Story, was a New York Times bestseller. Last year his coming out was named the most important moment in LGBT sports history by Outsports.

“It’s been absolutely amazing. It’s mind-boggling,” Kopay said when I asked him in a recent interview about the strides made toward acceptance in sports since his coming out. “But I think even if I hadn’t come out, it would have happened sooner or later.”

Kopay has been an active advocate against homophobia in sports and in recent years endowed the Q Center for LGBT students at his alma mater, the University of Washington. He lived in the Seattle area for several years before relocating to southern California near Pasadena.

“I was seriously thinking of moving back to San Francisco,” he told the Bay Area Reporter. “I went and saw my mother and it was so damned cold over there. I thought,

e ‘It’s as cold as Seattle. environment for gay players, c I’m tired of being cold.’ I coaches and fans. couldn’t believe how much Kopay will speak on LGBT s of a southern California sports topics, along with H person I am.”

Helen Carroll, director of t National Center for LesA SoCal convert, Kopay the b is still a loyal 49ers fan and bian Rights Sports Project; K a devotee of head coach Jim Katharine Holland, a longt Harbaugh. time member of FrontRunn “The 49ers are one of the ners; and myself, on June 7 o KALW’s “Out in the Bay” few teams that are reaching on p out to me,” Kopay said. “The program.

Out in the Bay is the b other teams don’t even give benefi ciary of this year’s Pride R me an invite. Jim Harbaugh Run. should have been 50-0 [in Last year’s beneficiaries, F the voting for coach of the Family Builders by Adoption and Bay Area Young Positives, year] instead of 48-2.” e One advantage, beeach received $3,400. sides the weather, of movThe Pride Run offers timed 5 ing back to California for 5-kilometer and 10K runs and Kopay has been the abila 200-meter kids’ fun run. Top ove ity to become more engaged F overall finishers receive cash Former 49ers 49 player l Dave D Kopay K made d the h in sports anti-homophobia cover of Mandate magazine back in May 1977, prizes of $100 for first place, $50 efforts. He spoke of meet- after he came out as gay. for second, and $25 for third. All ing allies Hudson Taylor (“I runners receive running shorts saw a couple of pictures but and a drawstring bag. they really don’t capture how Online registration and other Cohen (“Boy was he articulate and good-looking he is. I told him, ‘You details are available at http://www. a smart guy.”) He wants to work probably make everybody nervous’ SFPrideRun.org. Cost is $30 until with NFL teams to become more and he sort of laughed.”) and Ben June 11 and $35 after that. ▼ proactive on creating an accepting

Grindr now has Blendr for women, straights

by David Duran

I

ncreased demand by heterosexuals for a “straight” version of a gay app for smartphones has led Grindr’s founder and CEO to create one.

Joel Simkhai, who introduced the world to Grindr just three years ago, developed Blendr, the locationbased dating app for “everyone.”

“I constantly had friends of mine – straight men, straight women, and lesbians – asking me when I was going to come out with a version of the app that they could use,” said

Simkhai. “I felt the timing was right once Grindr took off to further follow my passion for matchmaking and explore building a new app.”

Before launching Blendr, Simkhai spent a lot of time looking at different social networking tools, and discovered that there simply weren’t many options for meeting new people nearby. There were different concerns when developing Blendr.

“We know privacy and security settings are important to women, so we made those a priority,” stated Simkhai.

Blendr is an app for everyone, even gay men. There are features and options that allow a user to customize who they can see and who can see them. Although gay men represent a very small percentage of overall Blendr users, they are still present.

“We’re noticing that more and more lesbians use Blendr because we built the app with them also in mind,” said Simkhai. He went on to stress that Blendr was created to help everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, become more social

Grindr creator Joel Simkhai recently came up with an app called Blendr for women and straights.

and meet new people based on common interests.

In the nine months since the launch of Blendr, users have really gravitated toward using the app to chat, flirt, and meet with new people nearby and go on dates, according to Simkhai. They have received an enormous amount of new users and a lot of attention from users in the U.S., Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, particularly in the metro areas.

How it all started Like other gay men, Simkhai was curious to know who else was gay around him.

“We didn’t have a pocket gaydar three years ago,” he said.

After many missed connections, he realized there had to be another way to meet guys.

Traditional online dating sites do help people find dates, according to Simkhai, but he noted that they can also create obstacles to actually meeting people. Most dating sites require a tedious registration process. They also aren’t geo-targeted, so you may be talking to someone who lives across town, and usually, users have to do a lot of waiting.

“You have to wait to create your account, you have to wait until you’re sitting in front of a computer to read your messages, and then you have to wait for extended periods of time for a reply,” noted Simkhai.

The idea stuck around as a concept in the back of his mind un-

til the second-generation iPhone launched, with GPS. That was when the pieces finally came together for Simkhai and he used GPS technology to connect with other people around him in real time by using his smartphone. He felt that people were increasingly using their smartphones to connect and would prefer to meet others spontaneously who are nearby.

“I wanted a more intuitive and more fun way for guys to meet one another,” he said, “since smartphones have become an essential accessory, the idea was a natural fit, and Grindr was born.”

Grindr makes discovering new guys almost effortless. Users just need to download Grindr on their phones, upload an optional picture, include some optional stats and a very brief description about themselves, and they’re ready to meet guys around them. There’s no long process to sign up and create a profile. Users can just start instantaneously chatting with other users who are nearby.

“It’s a real-time connection, and it’s become a fun, engaging and useful app for gay guys everywhere,” said Simkhai.

When Grindr first launched, they had no idea that it would become such a global phenomenon.

“We really owe it to our users; they’re the ones who have made the app into an international sensation in just three short years,” said Simkhai.

Grindr now has more than 3.5 million guys registered in 192 countries.

Even with all the users on Grindr and Blendr becoming more and more popular each day, Simkhai is continuing to enhance the app with new features and wants to focus more on growing their global user base.

Blendr is still in its early days, and Simkhai and his team are focused on paying attention to how people use the app and what they like about it. With feedback, they plan to refine the app accordingly.

“You have to be passionate about what you do and create a product that users will find useful and enjoyable – and a product that solves a problem. As a consumer company, it’s all about your customers,” Simkhai said. “So make sure you listen.

Stay connected to them and don’t stop working at it. If you truly believe in it, make it happen.”▼

▼

Community News >>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

SF artist in hot seat over photo installation

by David Duran

I

n the Internet age a photo posted online may be used somewhere else and one San Francisco-based artist is involved in a dispute that he took images from a gay dating site and used them in a museum installation without permission.

Artist Marc Adelman is accused of taking 50 profile photos from GayRomeo.com and creating an art installation that was on display at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

The installation, “Stelen (Columns), 2007-2011,” shows different men posed in front of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany. According to Adelman’s website description, the installation is meant to show how the memorial has been appropriated by gay men and sexualized.

Stelen (Columns) was included in the Jewish Museum’s exhibition, Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex, a selection of photo-based works by seven contemporary artists.

“These artworks engage with conventions of art history and forms of popular culture while exploring overlapping national, ethnic, and sexual identities,” said Ann Scher, director of communications

of the museum.

After the museum received a complaint by one of the men in the photos, it quickly replied with a letter. The Bay Area Reporter has obtained a copy of the letter, which stated in part, “We had no intention of adversely affecting anyone’s reputation or invading anyone’s privacy. We understand, however, that the photographs Mr. Adelman used for his work were publicly available to any registered users of the website and that the website’s terms did not restrict use of the photos.”

Tim Rooks, who discovered his image in a Huffington Post article about the artwork, has been communicating with not only the museum but the artist as well. In an email communication between the two, which he shared with the B.A.R., Adelman says, “First, please allow me to apologize for the distress you have had regarding my work. It was never my intention to create a stressful situation for anyone in regard to the project, and for that I am very, very sorry.”

Rooks, who lives in Germany, said that the art has caused him aggravation in trying to set things right.

“It is irresponsible of the artist and the museum to show such

images. Even without my name attached numerous people saw it and knew who I was,” Rooks said.

But he also took issue with the premise of Adelman’s installation, pointing out that the monument “is a very common place for people to take photos regardless of their sexual orientation.”

GayRomeo.com, a.k.a. PlanetRomeo, the website from which the images were taken, has a clear privacy policy stated on its site. A spokesman said while they are concerned, they don’t hold the copyrights to the images.

“We are always disturbed when any photos or information posted by our users is used by a third party in a manner that they did not originally intend,” said Spencer Windes, communications manager. “However, as an open social platform, we do not hold intellectual property over any of the material posted by users on our site.”

The terms of use clearly state that no user should violate the intellectual property rights of another party. As soon as the site was notified, it quickly suspended Adelman’s profile.

“While we find Mr. Adelman’s project to be invasive, unfortunately, we have no legal standing to chal-

Ed Walsh

One of the attractions in Los Angeles is the La Brea Tar Pits; a museum next door offers history on how the now-extinct animals got trapped in the tar.

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Gay in LA From page 15

the Dolby Theater earlier this year. It’s next to the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The complex is playing a big part in the slow but continuing revitalization of Hollywood.

The Grove at Farmers Market, in the Fairfax District, opened about a year after Hollywood and Highland and is another very popular addition to the city. The collection of shops and entertainment venues is set in a pedestrian mall that looks something like Disneyland’s Main Street.

Gay beach info>> To get to the gay beach: If you are driving, take Sunset Boulevard west to the Pacific Coast Highway. Make a left on PCH and then turn left onto either Entrada Drive or West Channel Road. There is usually free street parking available there. There are also a couple of pay parking lots nearby, including a public parking lot at the beach. It is about 45 minutes if you take the bus. You can take the #4 or #704 bus to Broadway and 4th streets in Santa Monica, then transfer to the #9 bus to Entrada and PCH.

Nightlife The biggest concentration of gay nightlife is in West Hollywood, but there’s plenty more LGBT options outside of WeHo. The LA area’s other gayborhood is Silver Lake, a section of Los Angeles east of Hollywood that was gay before WeHo. Silver Lake experienced the end of an era last fall when the Le Barcito bar (formerly the Black Cat) closed.

It was the site of pre-Stonewall gay rights demonstrations and is designated by the city of Los Angeles as a Historic Cultural Monument.

MJ’s and Akbar remain among the most popular gay night spots in Silver Lake.

The gay nightclub center of West Hollywood is around the intersection of Santa Monica and San Vicente boulevards. The mainstays include the Rage, the Abbey, Micky’s, the Mother Lode, Trunks, Eleven, Here Lounge, and Fiesta Cantina.

Although like almost everywhere, the nightlife options for lesbians are not as plentiful as they are for gay men, there still are options. The Palms on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood is the Los Angeles area’s oldest lesbian bar.

Accommodations The San Vicente Inn is the only

gay hotel in the Los Angeles area. It is in a perfect location in the heart of West Hollywood on San Vicente Boulevard. The property is mostly, but not exclusively, gay. If you want to make a reservation for gay pride, you have to act fast. As of Monday, May 28, there was only one room left for that weekend.

The Ramada Hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood is just a short walk to the gay clubs and right across the street from a gym.

The upscale SLS at Beverly Hills is owned by SBE, the same company that owns the Abbey. It’s centrally located near the Grove, the Beverly Center shopping center, and West Hollywood. The hotel provides guests with a free shuttle service to and from the Abbey.

The Redbury Hotel is also one of the newest hotels in LA. It is in the heart of Hollywood at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine. It is next door to the nightclub space that hosts the fabulous Mr. Black’s on Tuesday nights. ▼ For more information: www.

GoGayWestHollywood.com and www.DiscoverLosAngeles. com (click on the LGBT section in the nightlife tab).

lenge him beyond suspending him from our site,” said Windes, “and we encourage any of our users whose intellectual property may have been violated to take all the steps they feel are necessary to legally protect themselves and assert their rights.”

Adelman referred all questions from the B.A.R. to his attorney Douglas Robbins. Robbins insisted that all images of Rooks were taken down and have been removed from all websites.

“Mr. Adelman is a legitimate artist working within a complicated international legal environment,” said Robbins. “As far as who has the moral high ground, in a debate between sexual orientation, privacy, artistic expression, Jewish history, and religious identity, that will be an issue for the public to decide.”

In a follow-up email conversation with Scher of the museum, what

Robbins stated was confirmed and not only was the image of Rooks removed, but the installation itself came down as well.

“As issues have been raised with respect to, in consultation with Mr. Adelman, we have removed Stelen (Columns) from the in-gallery exhibition and images from the work from our website,” said Scher.

Rooks, who knows more of the men in the images that were used, is still deciding if he or they as a group will pursue legal action against Adelman or the Jewish Museum.

“As a respected museum, by having had shown this work, they aided and abided in criminal activity and weakened the links between private and public space,” said Rooks. “They also promote the idea that anyone can take others’ property and do anything he or she wants with it in the name of art.”▼

<< International News

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

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State Dept. releases human rights report

by Heather Cassell

W

idespread abuse of LGBT individuals by government and police authorities were found in countries around the world, according to the 2011 Human Rights Report released by the U.S. State Department last week.

Abusive practices from governments and police included brutality, refusal to provide basic social services, a lack of rights for employment and housing, a clamp down on free expression, and simply ignoring hate crimes against LGBT individuals. Countries include those in Africa, Asia, Central America, the Middle East, and other regions around the world, according to the report.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reinforced her commitment to working with LGBT communities around the world to gain their rights to live fully within their communities in a statement to the press announcing the release of the report on May 24.

For excerpts on the findings of LGBT issues, visit http://globalequality.org/storage/documents/pdf/2011hr-report-sogi-references.pdf.

RWF reports on Cuban trip San Francisco LGBT humanitarians recently extended a helping hand to queer Cubans through the Rainbow World Fund.

RWF has been taking members on humanitarian trips to Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and other parts of the world for the past 12 years. Cuba is the most recent of those trips, said Jeff Cotter, executive director of the RWF, who traveled with a group of 13 volunteers to Cuba at the end of March.

The opportunity arose through a sponsorship by the Cuban Council of Churches.

Cotter spoke with the Bay Area Reporter while packing up $50,000 worth of donated medications being sent to Cuba. The shipment is the beginning of the organization’s humanitarian efforts, along with the $3,600 dollars raised for the Cuba AIDS Project by volunteers who went on the trip, Cotter said.

“We wanted to visit Cuba and learn how to support the LGBT population down there,” said Cotter.

One of the highlights of the journey was meeting Mariela Castro Espin, 50, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, who was in San Francisco last week. Castro has been the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana for the past 12 years, Cotter said.

She has been an outspoken advocate for queer Cubans and spearheaded free reassignment surgery for transgender individuals under the country’s universal health care policies that passed in 2008. Prior to her U.S. visit she took to the streets to march for LGBT rights for Interna-

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

tional Day Against Homophobia on May 17, according to media reports.

RWF hosted three major events for Castro, one of which was at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center on May 23, and can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube (see links online at ebar.com).

Castro’s U.S. visit was met with praise and skepticism from LGBT Cuban Americans and community members and Republicans who criticized the country’s human rights record under the Castro family regime.

In addition to the public discussion, Castro met with LGBT community leaders and toured the city’s queer historic sites, including the GLBT History Museum in the Castro neighborhood.

Cotter pointed out that RWF’s Cuban trip wasn’t about politics, but about helping people.

The trip was eye-opening for Cotter and the volunteers, he said, but it was also a message to LGBT Cubans that “they are not alone and that we care about them and we are here to support them.”

“The biggest takeaway was the sense of change happening in Cuba,” said Cotter, about the RWF trip. The LGBT community is “hopeful” that “things were going to change for the positive,” he said. LGBT Cubans see that “they’ve got a friend in a very high place and that’s helping to challenge homophobic attitudes in Cuba.”

Cuba’s LGBT community is simply struggling to survive under the weight of widespread homophobia and the ongoing economic impact of the U.S. embargo on the nation.

In addition to changing attitudes about LGBT people, Cuban queers were optimistic about the U.S. lifting the “blockade,” as they call the embargo, which is one of the contributing factors to widespread poverty in the nation, Cotter explained.

Cotter believes that the newfound relationship with Castro and the U.S. LGBT community will “continue to grow and it’s really going to reverberate around the world ... enlighten people,” and “in some ways it will help heal the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.”

LGBT Russian activist arrested in Moscow Russian police arrested an LGBT

Russian activist and Orthodox Christians who clashed in Moscow after opponents blocked the demonstrators’ unauthorized protest at the city council building demanding the right to hold a Pride Parade on May 27.

A second protest was attempted at city hall, but broken up by police, where Russian gay rights activist Nikolai Alekseev was detained by police, reported the Associated Press.

An estimated 40 individuals were arrested on both sides of the demonstration, according to media reports.

Alekseev, founder of Moscow Pride, and the Organizing Committee of the Moscow Gay Pride, announced in a May 28 press release the theme for the 2013 Moscow Pride Parade, “20 years without the article,” referring to the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1993.

The uprising was just one of the most recent since St. Petersburg’s anti-LGBT propaganda law went into effect in April as the issue continues to heat up with reports that a federal law is under consideration in the Russian parliament.

Other countries, such as Hungary and the Ukraine, are also considering similar anti-LGBT propaganda laws.▼ Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-221-3541, Skype: heather.cassell, or heather@whimsymedia.com.

Marriage lawsuits filed in Illinois

by Lisa Keen

L

www.ebar.com

ambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union filed separate lawsuits Wednesday, seeking the right to marry for same-sex couples in Illinois.

In Darby v. Orr in the circuit court for Cook County, Lambda Legal argues that a state law banning same-sex marriages violates the state constitution’s guarantee of due process and equal protection. The lawsuit also says the ban violates the state constitution’s prohibition against creating laws that affect just one group when a law “is or can be made” that applies generally to everyone, such as marriage laws.

In another state court lawsuit filed May 30, the ACLU reportedly makes the same argument.

Lambda Legal’s lawsuit is the second marriage lawsuit the group has filed in less than two months.

In April, it filed a federal lawsuit in Nevada, Sevcik v. Sandoval, arguing that the state’s denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates their U.S. constitutional right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. But, unlike Nevada, which bans same-sex marriage through a state constitutional amendment, Illinois bars same-sex marriage through a state law only.

Lambda Legal also led the successful lawsuit, Varnum v. Brien, in Iowa that led to the state supreme court ruling in 2009 that said the state constitution guarantees equal treatment of same-sex couples under the state’s marriage laws.

Lambda Legal’s lawsuit in Illinois involves 16 same-sex couples, including 80-year-old Korean War veteran James Darby and his companion of 48 years Patrick Bova, 73, who live in Chicago. David Orr is the Cook County clerk, who is authorized to issue marriage licenses.

The ACLU lawsuit in Illinois involves nine same-sex couples, in-

Courtesy Lambda Legal

James Darby and his companion of 48 years, Patrick Bova, are the lead plaintiffs in a marriage lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

cluding Chicago police detective Tanya Lazro and her partner of 15 years, Elizabeth Matos.

The two lawsuits were apparently developed separately, but the groups are coordinating the announcement of them.

The Illinois Legislature passed a law permitting same-sex couples to obtain civil union licenses and that law went into effect in June 2011.

But Windy City Times, the state’s gay newspaper, has documented a number of instances in which “government entities, hospitals, organizations, and employers either failed or struggled” to afford due recognition to civil unions. A bill in the state legislature seeking to repeal the same-sex marriage ban, reports the paper, has not moved this session.

The two lawsuits in Illinois now join many others around the country, in state and federal courts, seeking to undo laws than block samesex couples from equal treatment under marriage laws. In addition to Nevada, Lambda Legal has a third marriage lawsuit, Garden State Equality v. Dow, pending in New

Jersey state court, and that case includes some federal law issues.

The ACLU has a lawsuit challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act, pending in federal court in New York. That lawsuit, Windsor v. U.S., and two by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, challenges Section 3 of DOMA, which bans, for any federal purpose, the recognition of a legal marriage from any state or other jurisdiction. One of the GLAD lawsuits, Gill v. OPM, is consolidated with a lawsuit from the state of Massachusetts, Commonwealth v. HHS, and is awaiting a decision from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The other, Pedersen v. OPM, is pending in Connecticut federal district court.

And in California, a high-profile case, Perry v. Brown, challenging the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriages, has succeeded in federal district court and before a threejudge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel decision has been appealed but the full circuit has not yet indicated whether it will hear the case.▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

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Our 40th Annual San Francisco Pride Edition

<< From the cover

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

<<

Obama From page 1

parently do not plan on voting for Obama this November.

Cartwright, on the other hand, became “an Occupier” because of her feelings of disenfranchisement, handling media for the movement in San Jose.

Being an Occupier, though, does not automatically equate to feelings of total voicelessness. For example, garden designer Chip Crew, who identifies as an Occupier, an “everyday citizen,” and a gay man, sees potential in the polls, no matter what Obama says or does.

A Gallup poll published earlier this month said 50 percent of Americans support the extension of marriage rights to include all couples, compared to only 40 percent who thought it a bad idea.

With such “a wave of public opinion” moving in favor of same-sex marriage, Crew said he sees nationwide marriage equality as inevitable.

“There’s nothing anyone can do about it,” he said. “It’s going to happen.”

Not without the passage of time however, Crew added. Since politics reflect the populous, he sees changing the personal beliefs of all citizens, gay or not, as a must before real change can be made.

“In the 1970s when I was just coming out,” Crew said, “the idea was the only way gay people could have their rights is when every gay person comes out of the closet.”

As Crew spoke, behind him a group of Filipino voters called the International League of People’s Struggles chanted their demands, some waving flags, others with signs in hand. Each sign had a drawn picture of a thumb on it, pointing either up or down. Militarization in the Philippines, deportation; those issues got a thumbs down.

An increase in education funding, marriage equality; those issues got thumbs up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Courthouse Square a crowd, consisting of many Redwood City residents, was more quiet than the

<<

Feingold From page 1

which is more than 20 years old. At the next distribution, planned for June 7, they’ll be handing out just over $11,000.

The shop’s website says its mission “is to generate unrestricted funds for agencies that provide HIV/AIDS education and support services.”

But most of the money from the shop, which sells T-shirts, books, and other goods, goes to pay rent and other expenses. Relatively little is distributed to its partner agencies, which, while not having to fulfill specific commitments, help spread the word about Under One Roof via social media and other activities, such as attending events.

At $16,000 a month, the annual rent alone is almost $200,000. (A former board member has been donating $5,000 a month.)

For the fiscal year that ended in February, Under One Roof distributed a total of $40,000 to its beneficiaries. That included $10,000 that a former board chair provided for two of UOR’s partners, according to Kutz.

Asked in an email exchange how much of the $10,000 dispersed in February, the last time they distributed money, came directly from store sales, Kutz said all payouts come from multiple sources, including sales from prior periods, off-site events, and donations.

She said they couldn’t say how much money came from each funding source. They don’t separate funds, and they use all funds for multiple purposes.

However, of the $11,000 they plan

Lydia Gonzales

Filipino voters protested America’s presence in the Philippines but gave a thumbs up to President Barack Obama’s stance on marriage equality outside the Fox Theatre in Redwood City.

others, but no less excited about the president’s visit and the days of politics to come.

Among them was Matthew Harris, a 19-year-old student, who hoped to catch a glimpse of the first president to visit Redwood City since Herbert Hoover. Harris, who will vote this fall in his first presidential election, had to make a hard choice while dressing for the event – what T-shirt to wear.

Ultimately, he decided on one from Obama’s 2008 campaign that read, “One voice can change the world,” instead of his other one that read “Legalize Gay.” But marriage equality is still an issue of particular importance to him.

“As a gay man,” the possibility of marriage rights for all, “affects my life,” Harris said.

Seeing support for it, among other young people especially, has given Harris hope that one day, “it will change for the better.”

“Once this older generation stops voting, I think it will change and

we’ll see national legalization,” Harris said.

to distribute next month, $5,000 is from donations related to the AIDS Memorial Quilt display. Quilt panels were on display at UOR and other locations earlier this year.

Feingold, whose last day as director was in mid-May, said that the board, which has recently gained some new members, is “really strong right now” and the store is “ready to move forward.”

to do is stay here for the moment,” rather than moving, changing the lease, or other options. The figures are “certainly something we think about all the time,” Kutz said.

With so little money going to its partner charities and so much going just to keep the doors open, it may seem difficult to understand why Under One Roof continues to stay in business.

Asked why the shop doesn’t shut down, Hart said, “Why should it?” and said that they’re doing a lot of good work.

Feingold said, “It’s not just cash” that the shop provides. They also share volunteers and social media support, she said.

Two UOR partners contacted for this story seemed reluctant to say much about the shop.

Mike Smith, executive director of the AIDS Emergency Fund, said that the money Under One Roof has provided his agency has been “about $2,500 over the last year and a half,” which is “enough money to provide grants to about five clients.”

Smith declined to comment on whether he had any concerns about UOR. Visual Aid, which produces, presents, and preserves the work of professional visual artists living with AIDS or other life threatening illnesses, is another Under One Roof beneficiary.

Julie Blankenship, Visual Aid’s executive director, didn’t respond to an interview request left with a staffer.

Shoppers who were in the store recently appeared unconcerned with how much Under One Roof spends on rent and other expenses

‘Moving forward’ Part of the change is expected to include cutting costs.

At $60,000, Feingold’s salary is relatively small compared to the pay of directors of most other local LGBT nonprofits. But Hart, who joined the board in January and was voted chair the next month, said that the agency may go without an executive director.

The board is in the process of developing a strategic plan.

“It depends upon what we determine in our strategic plan about how we’re moving forward,” Hart said of the possibility of a search for a new director. He said there is a possibility the agency could go without an executive director. They have a capable store manager, and they’ll be looking at how much staff they need, Hart said.

Board members will be asked “to do a lot more,” he said.

The lease, however, is a tougher challenge.

“We’ve got a long-term lease that we entered into well before any of the three of us were here,” Feingold said.

In a follow-up email exchange that Feingold was copied on, Kutz couldn’t say when the lease would be up.

In the interview, she said they’ve been looking at the data, and the “most financially responsible thing

Obama’s remarks While there were plenty of people inside the theater that support marriage equality and Obama was in the Bay Area, home to thousands of LGBTs, his remarks focused mostly on issues like continuing the slow economic recovery.

“We built a house of cards,” he said, referring to previous tax cuts to the wealthiest, and allowed speculators to “bet with other people’s money.” He referenced charging “two wars on a credit card.” Eventually, it collapsed.

Obama asked the audience to help “reclaim the basic bargain that produced the largest middle class and wealthiest nation on Earth.”

Meaning, the American people work hard and the government will “create an environment where everybody’s got a fair shot.” The American people have been working harder than ever, he added.

“The challenge right now,” Obama said, “the challenge we’ve faced for over a decade is that harder work, for too many people, doesn’t lead to higher incomes.”

Obama argued that likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney and others among the conservative opposition do not have effective or responsible remedies to cure the economy.

They have been “peddling the same bad ideas that brought our economy to collapse the first time,” and what they “don’t seem to understand is that a healthy economy doesn’t just mean maximizing the profits for some,” Obama said.

Other issues highlighted by Obama included tax and election reform, improving support services for veterans, and increasing funds for education.

He even touched on politically charged issues like health care reform in order to provide insurance for all Americans, and immigration reform, as a way to allow the children of undocumented im-

as opposed to its nonprofit partners.

Earl Padayhag, 40, who was making his first trip to the store on a recent Sunday, said that the portion UOR distributes to partners is “probably enough.”

Staying relevant Feingold seemed pleased with the way business has been lately.

“People are more comfortable and more relaxed and shopping more easily now,” Feingold said. She added, “The tourists are back, which is wonderful.”

Hart said “staying relevant” is one of their biggest challenges.

“The focus on HIV and AIDS has changed,” he said. Feingold said the disease “doesn’t tug at heart strings like it used to. ... I think all our agencies are feeling that.”

Hart said the board’s strategic planning sessions include looking at how to stay relevant and increasing donations. They hope to complete their planning by the end of June, he said.

Expenses are being reforecast down. “With all the savings Beth has been able to push,” the shop’s “in a really good place,” Hart said.

But they’re hoping for more donated goods and merchandise so they don’t have to purchase as much.

Kutz said total expenses for 2011-12 aren’t yet available, and it’s too soon to project costs for the current year. They haven’t determined the organization’s budget for 2012-13. She did, however, provide some data.

Sales figures consist of three revenue streams: purchased merchandise, work from local artists and other consignment goods, and donated products, she said.

▼

migrants to stay in the country if they are students, active duty, or veterans. He did not mention the plight of binational LGBT couples, some of whom who face deportation because the federal Defense of Marriage Act does not allow immigration authorities to recognize the same-sex couples.

The country is best when it “harvests the God-given talents of every individual,” Obama said. That’s why a thing like the Dream Act is so important and why he repealed the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prevented LGB service members from serving openly in the military.

“We’re not going back to the days when somebody could be kicked out of the military just because of who you are and who you love,” he said. “America doesn’t want to spend the next four years refighting the battles we just had.”

The president’s message last week was clear; the country needs to move forward. Yet, of all the issues that he highlighted in his speech, Obama never mentioned any plans of heading toward that day of change Harris predicted so assuredly, when gays and lesbians are finally allowed the right to marry across the country, rather than just the six states and District of Columbia that now perform such nuptials.

“I may not be a perfect man or a perfect president, but I’ll always tell you what I think and where I stand, and I wake up every single day thinking about you and how I can make your lives better and your kid’s lives better,” Obama told the crowd inside the Fox Theatre.

Outside, Crew, the Occupier, didn’t hear those humble words from the leader of the free world, but he gave Obama the benefit of the doubt anyway.

“I would like to think that Obama is doing the best he can under the current political climate,” Crew said.

Because in his view, the real obstacle blocking marriage equality isn’t the president; it’s that “these silly divisive issues that we’re talking about have nothing to do with improving our society.”▼

For March through April 2012, UOR had $107,942 in total income.

Sales accounted for $75,938 of that, and $27,733 came from cash and merchandise contributions. Expenses were $73,982, according to Kutz.

In the same two-month period last year, total income was $110,410.

Sales were $75,183 and contributions of cash and merchandise were $35,227. Expenses amounted to $77,330, Kutz said.

“The vast majority of most retail businesses’ revenue comes in November and December every year,” she said in an email. “So the numbers we provided for March-April are the lowest you’ll see throughout the year on a month-by-month basis as a general rule.”

The nonprofit doesn’t have any debt, and it has about a month and a half ’s worth of reserves. There are one full time and two part time employees.

Among other efforts to draw business, Feingold has helped bring back an event where concierges from hotels around the city will tour businesses and attractions of the Castro district, including Under One Roof, to help promote the area to hotel guests this summer. This year’s tour is planned for Tuesday, June 5.

As for Feingold’s plans, she said, “I’m ready to go back to my consulting business after I take some time off.” Feingold, who does small business, nonprofit, and retail consulting, said nobody asked her to leave the director’s job.

Under One Roof is seeking more new board members. Those interested may contact Hart at thart@ underoneroof.org.▼

â&#x2013;ź <<

Community News>>

News Briefs

From page 7

June 3 at 11 a.m. in Guerneville. A festival follows from noon to 6 p.m.

Entertainment includes Safety Orange, Audrey Howard and the Misters, The Del Mars, and more. There will be a Radical Faerie Village, childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities, and arts and crafts.

For more information, visit www. sonomacountypride.org.

DSCS garden fundraiser Dolores Street Community Services will hold its annual garden party fundraiser Friday, June 1 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 220 Dolores Street in San Francisco. The benefit will raise funds for the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s programs, including its residential housing for people living with AIDS. The event will feature live music from the Mark Armenta Band as well as a silent auction, crafts from the residents, food from the chefs, and drinks for kids and adults alike.

A donation of $10-$20 is requested (or whatever you can afford).

The event will also serve as a formal welcome to new DCSC Executive Director Wendy Phillips and the agencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new housing director, Anthony Philip.

For more information, visit www. dscs.org.

Piano music to benefit gay chorus Join Oakland East Bay Gay Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chorus interim artistic director Stephanie Lynne Smith and Andrea Canepa and enjoy an evening of piano music on Saturday, June 2 at R. Kassman, purveyor of fine pianos, 843 Gilman Street in Berkeley. The evening begins with a silent auction at 6:30 p.m. followed by the recital at 7:30.

Funds raised at the benefit will help with expenses as the chorus travels to Denver in July for the GALA Music Festival.

Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by visiting www.oebgmc.org.

API Family Pride banquet Kicking off Pride Month, Asian

<<

AIDS monument From page 1

er, until former participant Terrrie Frye created a scrapbook about it that she displayed at the 2010 Pride celebration to mark the 25th anniversary of its start. That led to gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos introducing the plaque resolution passed by the board last year.

As Camposâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office researched what permits would be needed to install a plaque, backers of the effort began to envision creating a larger memorial. Brian Basinger, the executive director of the AIDS Housing Alliance, signed on and urged organizers to think bigger. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We could do a plaque, but I think that the significance of what those two disabled gay men with AIDS created, and the global impact it created, deserves a monument,â&#x20AC;? said Basinger in a recent interview. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Also, in that area, the plaque wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the visibility that I am hoping for.â&#x20AC;?

As part of the application for funding through the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grant program, the AIDS Housing Alli-

and Pacific Islander Family Pride will hold its ninth annual banquet Saturday, June 2 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market Street (at 8th Street) in San Francisco.

The event, while the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest fundraiser, is also a celebration and recognition of exemplary individuals, families, and organizations that have defied their cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s homophobic prejudices by demonstrating unconditional love and support for their LGBT family members.

The banquet will feature live cultural performances and testimonies to commemorate the festivities.

Tickets for the banquet and program are $45 for adults, $25 for students; and $10 for kids between 5-10 years of age and can be purchased online at www.apifamilypride.org.

Castro Lions anniversary dinner The Castro Lions Club will hold its 27th anniversary dinner and installation of officers on Wednesday, June 20 but club officials wanted to get the word out early as the RSVP date is Friday, June 1.

Castro Lions President Troy Brunet is slated to serve another term, he said.

The dinner will be held at the Patio Espanol, 2850 Alemany Boulevard in San Francisco. Cocktails begin at 6 p.m., followed by the dinner and program at 7. The cost is $65.

To RSVP, call (415) 90-LIONS.

May 31-June 6, 2012 â&#x20AC;˘ BAY AREA REPORTER â&#x20AC;˘ 21

The venue will include custom art installations, plenty of photo ops, a raffle, video confession booth, and live entertainment. There will be complimentary beverages and hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres. One hundred percent of the proceeds will go directly to Prideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ongoing outreach, grantgiving, and programming activities.

Tickets start at $50 and can be purchased online at www.sfpride. org/fundraiser.

Seminar for older LGBTs Horizons Foundation is sponsoring a lunchtime seminar for older LGBTs, Keeping the Golden Years Golden, on Wednesday, June 13 from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Transamerica Building, 600 Montgomery Street. A light lunch will be provided.

The forum will include information about legal planning, smart financial planning, and staying connected to the community. While geared toward older LGBTS the seminar is open to younger people as well.

Presenters will include Dipti Ghosh Sr. with the Ghosh Financial Group of Wells Fargo Advisors; Seth Kilbourn, executive director of Openhouse; and attorney Deb Kinney of DLK Law Group, PC. There is no cost to attend but due to security at the Transamerica Building, RSVPs are required and must be done by June 8. To RSVP, contact Dane Dugan at 415-3982333, ext. 115 or events@horizonsfoundation.org.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Be Sceneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at SF Pride benefit The San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee is having a fundraiser Thursday, June 7 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the W Hotel, 181 Third Street.

The partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theme is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Be Scene, the SF Pride Global Equality Fundraiserâ&#x20AC;? and is hosted by Rebecca Prozan and Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, both of whom are community grand marshals this year. The other community grand marshals are also expected to be on hand or participate, such as Edaj, who will be DJing along with Grind.

CCOP training class

ance committed to raising an additional $25,000 and pledged to care for whatever monument is eventually built. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hopefully, that will pay for the whole thing. I am not going to spend $100,000 on a design competition,â&#x20AC;? said Basinger.

Visual Aid, a local nonprofit that works with artists living with HIV or AIDS, is supportive of the monument idea and has offered some feedback about the proposal. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Brian asked our help and advice on this in its early stages,â&#x20AC;? Julie Blankenship, the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s executive director, told the Bay Area Reporter, â&#x20AC;&#x153;but we havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t spoken recently.â&#x20AC;?

Campos also has yet to see specifics about the monument proposal but is supportive of the concept. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think it makes sense,â&#x20AC;? he said.

He told the B.A.R. he is unsure if the board would need to pass another resolution due to the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s change in scope. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that it needs to,â&#x20AC;? said Campos, adding there is likely â&#x20AC;&#x153;some flexibilityâ&#x20AC;? in how the language in the resolution calling for the installation of a plaque is interpreted.

According to the grant programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s application posted online, the funding is meant for neighborhood beautification projects supported by local groups or merchants. It can cover anything from green spaces to public art. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is very competitive,â&#x20AC;? said Basinger.

Considering City Hallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effort to spruce up the mid-Market corridor, the AIDS monument idea â&#x20AC;&#x153;just kind of makes sense,â&#x20AC;? Basinger added.

Lanita Henriquez, the grant programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manager, told the B.A.R. that this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s winning proposals would be announced the week of June 11.

Irrespective of the funding ask, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will bring the ARC/AIDS Vigilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history to a wider audience this summer. The museum has a new show called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Occupy Bay Areaâ&#x20AC;? that will run in its South of Market gallery July 7 through September 16.

Maureen Dixon, a spokeswoman, said curators have included photographs of the AIDS demonstration in a display of posters and photographs from historical Bay Area protests.â&#x2013;ź

Castro Community on Patrol will hold its next volunteer training class Thursday, June 7 at 7 p.m. at the Chase Bank community room, 2112 15th Street (near Market and Sanchez).

CCOP is an all-volunteer community patrol group that enhances safety and security in the Castro and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods.

To date, over 200 patrol volunteers have been trained.â&#x2013;ź For more information, visit www.castropatrol.org.

Legal Notices>> City and County of San Francisco June 2012 Monthly BOARD of SUPERVISORS Upcoming 2012 Regularly Scheduled Board Meetings OPEN TO THE PUBLIC â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Come see your San Francisco government in action.

Tuesdays, 2:00pm, City Hall Chamber, Room 250.

-XQH Â&#x2021; -XO\ The Members of the Board of Supervisors sit on eight committees which are open to the public. Please refer to the Boardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website for up-to-date meeting announcements, information, agendas and minutes. www.sfbos.org Budget and Finance Subcommittee meets every Wednesday, at 10:00am in Room 250.

Supervisors Chu, Avalos, Kim Budget and Finance - meets every Wednesday, at 1:00pm in Room 250.

Supervisors Chu, Avalos, Kim, Cohen, Wiener &LW\ 2SHUDWLRQV 1HLJKERUKRRG 6HUYLFHV PHHWV RQ WKH QG WK 0RQGD\ DW 10:00am in Room 250. Supervisors Elsbernd, Chu, Olague *RYHUQPHQW $XGLW 2YHUVLJKW PHHWV RQ WKH QG WK 7KXUVGD\ DW SP LQ 5RRP 6XSHUYLVRUV )DUUHOO (OVEHUQG &KLX /DQG 8VH (FRQRPLF 'HYHORSPHQW PHHWV HYHU\ 0RQGD\ DW SP LQ 5RRP Supervisors Mar, Cohen, Wiener 3XEOLF 6DIHW\ PHHWV RQ WKH VW UG 7KXUVGD\ DW DP LQ 5RRP Supervisors Avalos, Olague, Mar 5XOHV PHHWV VW UG 7KXUVGD\ DW SP LQ 5RRP Supervisors Kim, Farrell, Campos -RLQW &LW\ 6FKRRO 'LVWULFW 6HOHFW PHHWV RQ WKH WK 7KXUVGD\ DW SP LQ 5RRP Supervisors Campos, Olague, Chiu All meetings take place in City Hall, #1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, 6DQ )UDQFLVFR Alert SF Alert SF is a free system that allows users to sign up to receive text and/or email alerts from the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) during an emergency LQ 6DQ )UDQFLVFR 7RSLFV LQFOXGH PDMRU WUDIĂ&#x20AC;F GLVUXSWLRQV ZDWFKHV DQG ZDUQLQJV IRU WVXQDPLV DQG Ă RRGLQJ SRVW GLVDVWHU LQIRUPDWLRQ DQG RWKHU DOHUWV To sign up, go to: https://www.alertsf.org/.

Department of Child Support Services 617 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105 Open Monday â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Friday, 7:00am â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5:00pm 1RW JHWWLQJ WKH Ă&#x20AC;QDQFLDO FKLOG VXSSRUW \RX QHHG IURP \RXU FKLOG¡V PRWKHU RU IDWKHU" +DYH IULHQGV RU DFTXDLQWDQFHV LQ WKLV VLWXDWLRQ" :H FDQ KHOS The San Francisco Department of Child Support Services offers the following services:

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insurance, medical expenses and child care cost.

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Â&#x2021; &ROOHFWLRQ RI XQSDLG FKLOG VXSSRUW ZLWK LQWHUHVW )RU D FRQĂ&#x20AC;GHQWLDO FRQVXOWDWLRQ SOHDVH FDOO RU email sfdcss@sfgov.org The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034321700

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034330300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ARIA PROPERTIES, 4406 18th St. #B, SF, CA 9114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed by Masood Samereie.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/03/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/03/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEWN, 2423 Polk St., SF, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed by Jak Home LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/08/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034314100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE SCORPION COMPANY, 617 York St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed by Nathan S. DeSomber.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/01/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034293300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BIG Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S INTERNET, 376 Ellis St., SF, CA 94102.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed by Orangevale Commons LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/23/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034320400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ALFIO BOUTIQUE ITALIANA, 526 Castro St., SF, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed by Aranciatamara Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/03/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034320100

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-030568500 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: COLE VALLEY FITNESS, 957 Cole St., SF, CA 94117. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Betty L. Doza. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/28/07.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES Dated 05/09/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: IBRAHIM ELIAS ALHAJ. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 2060 Fillmore St., SF, CA 94115-2709. Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE EATING PLACE MAY 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034331800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE, 101 Oakridge Dr., Daly City, CA 94014. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Julio L. Campos.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/08/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/08/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034326700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF ANTIQUE & DESIGN MALL, 1122 Howard St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed by Marmat Inc. (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/03/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JOHN K ANDERSON DESIGN, 1510 35th Ave., SF, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed John K. Anderson. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/04/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/04/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034320200

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-034340100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF ANTIQUE & DESIGN MALL, 538 Castro St., SF, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed by Marmat Inc. (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/03/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JJARDINE CATERING & EVENTS, 5235 Diamond Heights Blvd. #211, SF, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed James M.S. Jardine. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/15/12.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/11/12.

MAY 10, 17, 24, 31, 2012

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034339700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KATERINA’S IMPORTS, 4150 17th St. #22, SF, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Katerina Zisman. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/20/01. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/11/12.

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notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ISABELLA ANTIQUES LTD., 210 Post St. #918, SF, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Robin Chesler. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/12/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/11/12.

Dated 05/14/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: UNX ENTERPRISES LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 800 Post St., SF, CA 94109. Type of license applied for

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034348600

48 - ON-SALE GENERAL PUBLIC PREMISES MAY 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034367500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SFADM/SFFLEAMARKET.COM, 1122 Howard St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Marmat Inc. (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/09/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PURE SWEETS & SAVORY, 1448 Pine St. #204, SF, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Leonor R. Santos. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/17/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/17/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034339000

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034346900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POPSUGAR MUST HAVE, 111 Sutter St., 15th Fl., SF, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Sugar Publishing Inc. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/11/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034341000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CLUB 280, 280-284 7th St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PPK Holdings Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/14/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/14/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034336100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MARIO LEGAL SERVICES, 868 Lassen St., Richmond, CA 94805. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Mario I. Gomez. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/17/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/17/12.

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034342700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KAREN’S MAINTENANCE, 4064 Westridge Ct., Antioch, CA 94509. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Karen Navarrete. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/14/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/14/12.

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034300600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ILANA CAFE, 2314 Clement St., SF, CA 94121.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Ilana Coffee, Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/10/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/10/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: H & S LIMOUSINE, 4681 Myrtle Dr., Dublin, CA 94568. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Naqibullah Sayed Saadat. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/25/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/25/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-032575700

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034346700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUPER DUPER, 783 Mission St., SF, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by a limited liability corporation, and is signed Metburger LLC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/10/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/10/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JULIUS’ CASTLE RESTAURANT; JULIUS’ CASTLE, 302 Greenwich, SF, CA 94133. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Paul D. Scott. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/16/12.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-033655400

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034345800

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: LOTUS CAFE, 1551 Mission St., SF, CA 94103. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Suheir Michael. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/11.

MAY 17, 24, 31, JUNE 7, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 05/15/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: PRIME DIP LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1515 Fillmore St., SF, CA 941153515. Type of license applied for

41 - On-sale BEER & WINE Eating place MAY 24, 31, June 7, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 04/10/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: J AVERY ENTERPRISES INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at San Francisco International Terminal 3, Boarding Area F, Gate 83, SF, CA 94128. Type of license applied for

41 - On-sale BEER & WINE Eating place MAY 24, 31, June 7, 2012

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WAITAPP; MOBULLY, 300 Brannan St. #610, SF, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CRM Text Solutions Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/24/12.

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E49

MAY 31, June 7, 14, 21, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034362500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: S&S BROTHERS COMPANY, 101 UTAH ST. #130, SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed S&S Brothers Jewelry Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/23/12.

MAY 31, June 7, 14, 21, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034366900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAMYS LIQUOR, 2847 24th St., SF, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Shaya M. Shaibi. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/15/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/24/12.

Australian experienced apartment manager looking for apartment or motel in Bay area to manage. Call Lindsay 559-367-5212

E22-23

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The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: S & S BROTHERS COMPANY, 101 UTAH ST. #130, SF, CA 94103. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Rabinder Maheshwari.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE INN SAN FRANCISCO, 943 South Van Ness Ave., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Inn S.F. Enterprises Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/05/90. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/16/12.

MAY 24, 31, June 7, 14, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 05/23/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATRE FOUNDATION THE. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1115-1117 Market St., SF, CA 94103-1513. Type of license applied for

64 - SPECIAL ON-SALE GENERAL THEATER MAY 31, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 05/24/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: JAMES HUGO KOSTELNI. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 700 Valencia St., SF, CA 94110-1735. Type of license applied for

41- ON-SALE BEER & WINE EATING PLACE MAY 31, 2012

E52

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May 31-June 6, 2012 • Bay Area Reporter • 23

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Vol. 42 • No. 22 • May 31-June 6, 2012

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A taste for innocence Scott Wells & Dancers play at Counterpulse

by Paul Parish

I

cannot figure out why the choreographer Scott Wells is not universally popular. His 20th anniversary shows run through June 3 at Counterpulse, a hole-in-the-wall one block from Civic Center BART at Mission and 9th Streets (down from that gigantic building that has a Walgreen’s up at Market). There’s nothing recherché about Wells’ work – the only explanation I can come up with is that his playful dance style is radically innocent, like playing with your dog. The dancers (especially the guys) look buffed and hot as porn stars.

Perhaps the appeal is bisexual; it is subtle. In any case, I think they are beautiful, and cannot think of any dancers anywhere I more enjoy seeing perform.

His dances make me watch with the feelings I had as an adolescent queer – before I knew I was gay, when other people could see it: the way I gazed at beautiful guys. “What are you looking at?” They attacked me for it before I

Scott Wells & Dancers: Andrey Pfening jumps over Shira Yaziv.

knew what it was I was feeling. It is an absorbing beauty the dancers have, the same kind of beauty enshrined in Tarzan swinging through the trees, or Zorro jumping through windows, leaping off walls, and astounding the federales. Maybe a better analogy is Gene Kelly, who could take moves that only true dance-geeks find worth the mastery, and make the pleasures they enshrine availSee page 36 >> Photo: David Papas

What’s up in the galleries this June?

by Sura Wood

M

Photo: Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Untitled (2011), oil on canvas by Katharina Wulff.

emorial Day weekend is the official launch of summer, and though the same might not be said for the local galleries, there’s plenty to check out around town. Boutique exhibitions at major museums, those smaller, less publicized shows, are another place to discover exciting work. Herewith, a brief survey of what’s on view.

New Work: Katharina Wulff A Berlinborn artist based in Marrakech, Wulff brings the exotic and the macabre to bear in paintings, charcoals and oils inspired by literature, Old Masters and magazine photographs. Drawing on eclectic sources – Matisse, William Blake, the dark satire of George Grosz, the bleached North African light of her adopted home, the sunny frivolity of Gertrude Stein collabo-

rator Florine Stettheimer – she constructs imaginary universes, off-kilter tableaux, desolate alien landscapes exploding with a shock of primary color, and populates those surreal worlds with strange animals, odd, ill-at-ease personages and disfigured faces. We’ve arrived in expressionist territory. Color and setting are key, and are often dissonant; trees are yellow, the burnt ground is tangerine as if it had burst into flames; images of a Dark City’s alleyways conjure a crumbling Weimar Berlin, a waning cabaret in the shadow of the coming apocalypse. There’s a dated 1930s-40s feel of the Depression and wartime in some works, and a sense of otherness in all of them. A Hitchcockian dread that things are not what they seem pervades her tantalizing, unfinished narratives. It’s

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

like struggling to make sense of fragments of sentences, overheard from a distance.

Characters play their parts; one wonders who they were before they entered her paintings, and the tales they’d tell if they could talk. Through Sept. 4 @ SFMOMA. Wayne Thiebaud: Paintings and Pastels What better way to kick off the season than with cake and pie master Wayne Thiebaud? No one has painted the high cholesterol American diet better, which might account for why he has been affectionately dubbed “the poet of the food counter.” The 91-year-old Northern California artist, a courtly man, partial to bow ties, strong opinions and self-deprecating humor, may like to say, “I’m just an old painter – I don’t give a damn about art,” but deSee page 29 >>

<< Out There

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

Frameline approaches

by Roberto Friedman

L

ast week, Frameline executive director K.C. Price and director of exhibition & programming Desiree Buford graciously met with Out There in their offices overlooking unlovely 9th St. and gave us the low-down on what’s in store for the 36th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, coming right up on June 14-24.

If there’s a more iconic figure in gay film studies than the late film scholar and LGBT activist Vito Russo, then we don’t know who it could be. Director Jeffrey Schwartz’s Vito will be that rare documentary to open the festival, and it will highlight Russo’s Bay Area years – there’s even a scene in the Castro Theatre, Price told us, which should get a rousing reception in the Castro Theatre. Meta!

“Centerpiece” films will be Call Me Kuchu, centering on the courageous gay activist David Kato,

who was brutally murdered in repressive Uganda; and Ira Sachs’ critically lauded Keep the Lights On. Closing night will bring us actors Brenda Flicker and the sassytalking Olympia Dukakis (“she swears like a trucker” in the film, Buford told us) as a longtime couple in Thom Fitzgerald’s Cloudburst.

“It’s a beautiful portrayal of two old broads who have a tender affection,” Buford said. “Fans of Hannah Free will love it.”

The festival will celebrate the 20th anniversary of New Queer Cinema by screening four features from that era: All Over Me, Head On, The Living End and The Watermelon Woman – it will be interesting to see how these films hold up; and by bestowing the Frameline Award to the term’s coiner, queer scholar B. Ruby Rich. Price and Buford noted certain themes that emerged, unplanned, from this year’s programming: activism (such as that of Russo, Kato, and the first openly

Photo: Courtesy Frameline

Uganda’s first openly gay activist David Kato, in directors Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright’s Call Me Kuchu, coming to Frameline 36, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.

gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, who is profiled in Love Free or Die); dark, complex portrayals of anti-heroes and some rather unsympathetic queer characters; and a certain maturity that can be noted in gay film today.

The eight so-called “Showcase” films appear to offer some incipient blockbusters. In director Virginia Despentes’ Bye Bye Blondie, two French powerhouses, Béatrice Dalle and Emmanuelle Béart, play middle-aged women who reconnect years after their 1980s fling as teenage punk-rockers. Facing Mirrors (director Negar Azarbayjani) is the first Iranian narrative film with a transgender protagonist.

Gayby expands director Jonathan Lisecki’s beloved short into a rollicking feature. Kiss Me from Sweden explores the fluidity of sexuality and attraction. Bishop Robinson will be in the house for Love Free or Die. An Egyptian family negotiates the mean streets of London in My Brother the Devil. North Sea Texas is another entrée from the burgeoning world of Belgian film. And Stud Life is one more fresh new feature set in urban London, centering on a black lesbian stud, from terrifically named director Campbell X. The Frameline directors walked us through the catalog and pointed out worthy films that deserve not to get lost in the shuffle. Among them

are local director Travis Mathews’ Dragster drinkies I Want Your Love, Chicana teens OMG, some local drinkeries are feature Mosquita y Mari, the engetting into the Pride spirit by cresemble comedy My Best Day, and ating a few drinks named after local Ash Christian’s NYC-set Petunia, drag “celebrities.” Ask for the Vicki with a cast including Ugly Betty’s Marlane (X-Rated Fusion Liqueur Michael Urie. In the World Cinema – hereafter XFL – Skyy Infusions programs, look for the dark South Citrus, cranberry juice), the Pollo African/French feature Beauty; the del Mar (Skyy Infusions Pineapple, Israeli Joe+Belle, described to us as cranberry juice, orange juice), the a Thelma & Louise black comedy Anna Conda (Skyy Infusions Cherwith rom-com tropes; Almodovar ry, XFL), the Cookie Dough (Skyy regular Carmen Maura as the maInfusions Coconut, top with soda triarch of a French Jewish family in water, garnish with a lime), and of Let My People Go!; coming out in a course the Donna Sachet (Skyy Inrepressive society (Chile) in A Map fusions Pineapple, XFL, three hefty to Talk; Cheryl Dunne’s new work, pineapple chunks). And in that allthe raunchy queer sex film Mommy inclusive spirit, for those of us who Is Coming; Norwegian lesbian hikers dress up like boys, Alioto’s on the on The Mountain; sex-worker beats Wharf will be offering the Absoin the dark Our Paradise; director lut Mess (Absolut Citron, Absolut André Techiné’s new film set in VenMandrin, orange, cranberry & pineice, Unforgivable; and the first major apple juices and a splash of 7-Up), Thai lesbian rom-com, Yes or No? and Cityhouse at the Parc 55 Hotel Documentaries, anyone? will serve up the Little Hot Mess There’s Audre Lorde – The Berlin (XFL, orange juice and soda). So Years 1984 to 1992; three sportsthere’s no excuse ever to order anrelated doc programs: Ballroom other Shirley Temple.

Rules, Beautiful Games and Boy Cheerleaders; transgender profiles Beat goes on including SF’s Lynnee Breedlove It’s 1979, and Out There, 18, is in Girl or Boy, My Sex is Not My the only white boy working on the Gender; a bisexual deaf-mute Cuassembly line at the alfalfa sproutban man “blowing up assumppacking factory, sweltering in the tions on machismo” (per Price) summer heat in a warehouse on the in Habana Muda; five older trans wrong side of the tracks in downwomen in I Am a Woman Now; a town Baltimore. The transistor ragay Palestinian man living illegally dio is tuned, as it is all day every day, in Tel Aviv as The Invisible Man; to the soul music station: our museminal glam rocker Jobriath sical education. Disco diva Anita A.D.; YouTube celeb Chris CrockWard belts out “Ring My Bell,” and er as Me @ The Zoo; queer young our life begins. RIP Donna Sumpeople including Lance Bass in mer! RIP Robin Gibb! RIP Dietthe hostile environment of Missisrich Fischer-Dieskau!▼ sippi: I Am; Revealing Mr. Maugham (that’s Somerset); and Bay Area filmmaker Julie Wyman’s portrait of three-time Olympian power-lifter Cheryl Haworth, the allcapped STRONG! Shorts programs cover the waterfront, including the queer Latina program Con tu Nombre and the black queer compilation In the Life. We’re really only scratching the surface here. Seek out the Frameline 36 catalog in print or online, see what it is that appeals to you, and we’ll grok Do you remember you on the rebound Gregg Araki’s The Living End? at festival screenings at the Castro, Roxie and Victoria Theatres in SF, and the Rialto Cinema Elmwood in Berkeley. More info at your fingertips at www.frameline.org.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

<< Theatre

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

Priestly behavior

by Richard Dodds

A

(((((((((

www.ebar.com )))))))))

priest with doubts. Homosexuality in repression. Teenagers in rebellion. Mothers bewildered.

And a cleaning woman desperately seeking faith. These are among the ingredients in 100 Saints You Should Know, Kate Fodor’s play that takes on heated issues while strenuously not trying to take sides.

“It’s a lovely play, understanding to all sides of the religion/homosexuality debate, with no easy answers,” says Theatre Rhino’s John Fisher, who is directing its area debut opening June 2 at Thick House. “We had two priests come in to talk to us about the play, and they were very sympathetic to the portrayal and to the issues raised.”

100 Saints opened in New York in 2007, marking Fodor as a playwright to watch. An earlier play, Hannah and Martin, explored the complex relationship between philosophers Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, and her most recent play, Rx, takes a comedic look at Big Pharma and the invention of a miracle feel-good pill.

A former schoolteacher and journalist, Fodor says she first got the idea for the play that became 100 Saints from a dimly remembered news story about pedophilia in the priesthood that mentioned a priest’s housekeeper. “I knew I wasn’t interested in writing about the sex scandal itself,” Fodor said in an interview the year that 100 Saints debuted, “but I got fascinated by the idea of what it would be like to be a priest’s housekeeper, since it seemed like it would be your job to cross the line into some sort of intimacy.”

The play, Fodor says emphatically, is not about pedophilia. The priest has taken a sabbatical as he struggles with faith and carnal desires of the adult homosexual kind.

Coming at him from various directions are the cleaning lady (with a surly teenage daughter) looking for spiritual guidance, a delivery boy searching for a way to come out as gay, and the priest’s uncomprehending mother.

Fodor says she is “a spiritual person who doesn’t believe in God or tarot cards.” She is creatively drawn to the mysteries that affect her own life.

“Writing about an unsettled question doesn’t settle the question,” she said, “but it does create some peace around it. You’ve gone down that hole. Whatever the fears or doubts that are tied to that thing have a little less power over you.”

100 Saints You Should Know begins previews May 31 at Thick House and will run through June 17. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to www.therhino.org.

Photo: Kent Taylor

Wylie Herman plays a priest with spiritual doubts, and Michael Rosen a teen with sexual-identity issues, in 100 Saints You Should Know, being presented by Theatre Rhino at Thick House.

ACT is presenting The Normal Heart in association with Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., where the production is having a June run. Although Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe were billed as codirectors of the Broadway revival, only Wolfe (who directed Angels in America on Broadway) is now credited as director.

Productions already announced for ACT’s 2012-2013 season include a return run of Lorenzo Pisoni’s Humor Abuse, Artistic Director Carey Perloff ’s staging of Elektra starring Olympia Dukakis, ACT acting core member Rene Augesen as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, directed by Perloff.

Two world premieres and one rare site-specific event are also in the lineup. The premieres are George F. Walker’s Dead Metaphor, described as a dark comedy about a soldier trying to fit back into “normal” life after service in Iraq, and the hiphop opera Stuck Elevator by Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jefferis, based on a true story of a Chinese restau-

rant delivery man who must decide whether calling for help from a stuck elevator is worth revealing his illegal immigrant status.

ACT will head down to the Mission Armory, also home to kink. com, to present National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch. Written by Geoffrey Burke and directed

by John Tiffany, it’s an immersive multimedia production inspired by Scottish soldiers who served in Iraq.

Season tickets, with options for all or part of the series, are now on sale at www.act-sf.org.

Barbara Cook postpones Sometimes you gotta cut octogenarian legends a little slack. The Rrazz Room reports that 84-yearold Barbara Cook, who was set to replace 87-year-old Elaine Stritch, is ailing, and that her May 29-June 10 run has been rescheduled for Aug. 21-26. Several other West Coast dates have also been deleted from her immediate calendar.

The Broadway, concert, and cabaret star had been a last-minute booking for the inimitable Elaine Stritch, whose run was also postponed due to health reasons. The Rrazz Room says that Stritch is still expected to play the boite on dates yet to be determined.▼

‘Heart’ beats at ACT Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, an angry diatribe about political and media indifference during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, may have seemed an issue play rooted in its time. But when the 1985 drama drawn from Kramer’s own experiences as an AIDS activist was revived on Broadway last year, reactions were not those that a dated period piece might engender.

New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote that the new production “blasts you like an open, over-stoked furnace,” and his sentiments were widely shared. ACT has filled the final slot in its previously announced season with the new Broadway staging of The Normal Heart, and its turns out that that slot will come at the beginning of the season on Sept. 13.

Photo: David Shankbone

Early AIDS activist Larry Kramer wrote The Normal Heart as an angry response to indifference in 1985. A well-received recent Broadway revival has just been announced to open ACT’s season in September.

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Fine Art>>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Art galleries

Arts cover

spite its mundane subject matter, his painting is not as facile as it appears.

His work is characterized by brilliant color, shimmering light, thick, creamy brushstrokes so lush they seem three-dimensional, and by a sly, deadpan wit, emblematic of the man himself. Culture critic Adam Gopnik once described the Thiebaud oeuvre as “made from [a] strange alloy of de Kooning and the five-and-dime,” while leading a dual existence “in the worlds of Euclid and Betty Crocker.” Although for the last several decades he has painted precipitously hilly San Francisco cityscapes, rural landscapes, and more recently, the Delta near his home in Sacramento, paintings that are seductive in their complexity, Thiebaud remains best known for his pinball machines, pastries, hamburgers, hot dogs and ice-cream sundaes, a brand of oldfashioned Americana that has all but vanished. The 30 works in this show comprise a mini-retrospective of his 60-year career, from the early 1960s through the early part of the 21st century. Hey Mabel, while you’re up, bring me a plate and an extra fork.

Through July 7 @ John Berggruen Gallery.

Lee Friedlander: Mannequin Over the course of a mighty productive half-century, Friedlander has photographed the spectrum of American life in nudes, still-lifes, portraits, and workers toiling at various jobs, often grouping his pictures together in series after the fact. Still going strong in his late 70s, Friedlander is out there, perhaps in a neighborhood near you, gazing at people with camera in tow and prowling the streets with a “hungry eye.” The 30 recent black-and-white works on display here were shot with a hand-held 35mm camera over the last three years by a man who clearly knows his instrument, and understands how to use it. His surreal, collage-like photographs of inert, soulless, expressionless mannequins, enshrined in store windows and petrified in a permanent Twilight Zone, are not photo-shopped, and though they appear at first glance to be double exposures, they’re not. The elegant compositions are achieved in the camera and anticipated in the mind of the photographer in the process of shooting. Mannequins are bisected or beheaded, their upperstories replaced with reflections of buildings across the street; one such reflected edifice looks like a tornado sprouting out of a model’s neck. Taken in L.A., San Francisco, New York and Tucson, the pictures are reminiscent of Eugene Atget’s Parisian shop windows shot nearly a century earlier. Atget was an important influence for a host of photographers, includ-

Photo: Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

New York City (2011), gelatin-silver print by Lee Friedlander.

ing Friedlander and Walker Evans; his “Magasin, Avenue des Gobelins, 1925,” which hangs in an adjacent gallery, provides an interesting point of reference. Through June 23: www. fraenkelgallery.com.

My White Friends Growing up in the ethnic melting pot of New York City, African American photographer Myra Greene’s best friends were white. But as she reflected on her social circle and traveled the country, Greene uncovered a different America that led her to calibrate her understanding of racial politics. The experience sparked a project about whiteness, photography and what constitutes identity, and produced the posed color portraits of friends, peers and mentors in a show that’s likely to spur further conversation.

June 20-July 15 @ Rayko Photo Center: www.raykophoto.com.

Brian Rutenberg: Eight Landscapes The walls of this compact gallery are ablaze with color that could induce a trance-like state.

Rutenberg’s latest work, informed by poetry and music, has urgency, an irresistible pull like a rip current.

Juxtaposing bottomless earth tones that threaten to suck you in, with saturated, textured color you want to reach out and touch, his large abstract textured landscapes, a shoutout to the impenetrable backwoods and kaleidoscopic thicket of light and flora of his native South Carolina, set the stage for some primal initiation rite, an orgy of nature that transpires in the wild and promises transformation. Through June 30: www.toomey-tourell.com.▼

Photo: Courtesy Toomey Tourell Fine Art

Blue Drop 2 (2012), oil on linen by Brian Rutenberg.

<< Theatre

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

▼

Photo: Lois Tema

Schoolmates Eli (Evan Johnson, left) and Chris (Fernando Navales) have a love-hate relationship in Daniel Talbott’s Slipping at NCTC.

Romantic confusion

by Richard Dodds

T

www.ebar.com

here is puppy love, and there is also pit-bull love. The young hero of Slipping at New Conservatory Theatre Center has trouble accepting the former after having first experienced the latter. Daniel Talbott’s play goes down many familiar roads in a story of romantic gay discovery, but it also has a few detours that help distinguish it from similarly themed plays.

Numerous short scenes in the 75-minute play alternate between a university town in Iowa and flashbacks to San Francisco, with the locales providing the opposite lessons of what might be expected for a gay teen struggling with self-esteem issues. Iowa, it turns out, is more like Oz, with San Francisco stuck in the Kansas role. And yet the SF scenes have an edgier truth than the fantasy-fulfillment resolutions that Iowa offers.

The hero of Slipping is a young misfit named Eli who dares anyone to like him. After his father is killed in a car crash, his mother drags him to Iowa, where she has landed a prestigious academic position. For reasons not plausibly developed, the heretofore straight-identified BMOC at Eli’s new school not only befriends this surly outsider with a punk haircut, but after sharing a few pottery classes together, Jake cheerfully decides he and Eli should openly be lovers.

What helps save this scenario

from dreamy banality are the San Francisco flashbacks that reveal why Eli is alternately receptive and hostile to Jake’s affectionate advances.

Eli’s earlier sexual experiences were with a thuggish schoolmate spouting homophobic invectives even as he allowed moments of physicality and hints of affection with the aroused, smitten, and confused Eli. They also leave Eli emotionally damaged, and physically damaging to himself.

These moments have an unpredictable dangerousness, in contrast to the dramatically thin and pauseladen dialogue of much of the rest of the play under Andrew Nance’s direction. And while projected titles tell us the date and locale of intercut plotlines, Ron Gasparinetti’s abstract unit set doesn’t provide visual contrasts that might help integrate the cause and effect of Eli’s experiences.

Evan Johnson plays Eli with a prickly intensity that finds its opposite in Benjamin T. Ismail’s loping geniality as Jake, Stacy Thunes projects aching warmth as Eli’s mother, and Fernando Navales provides the play with its most heft by creating a bully of unexpectedly seductive layers. It gets better, as the slogan says, but not necessarily in theatrical terms.▼ Slipping will run through July 1 at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

Tickets are $25-$45. Call 861-8972 or go to www.nctcsf.org.

▼

Television>>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

GLAAD presents media awards

by Adam Sandel

T

he 23rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards, this Saturday, June 2, at the Marriott Marquis, will feature a Who’s Who of LGBT and gayfriendly celebrities – and those who play them on TV. Dianna Agron of Glee will host the event, which will honor Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, Facebook, and Wells Fargo, with performances by The Voice’s lesbian singer Beverly McClellan and Cirque du Soleil.

Special guests and presenters include Mario Lopez, trans model and People.com editor Janet Mock, MSNBC’s out gay newsman Thomas Roberts, Adam Pally of Happy Endings, stage, film and TV star Rita Moreno, hot young cast members of Pretty Little Liars and Days of Our Lives, plus many more.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past four years, Dianna Agron just graduated as the cheerleader turned gleek Quinn Fabray on Glee, which features eight LGBT recurring characters.

During a Toronto stop on last year’s Glee summer concert tour, Agron set the blogosphere abuzz with questions about her own sexual preference.

“During our second show, instead of wearing my usual shirt during ‘Born This Way,’ I decided to wear one that said ‘Likes Girls.’

It should actually have read, ‘Loves Girls,’ because I do. No, I am not a lesbian, but if I were, I hope that the people in my life could embrace it whole-heartedly.”

Although she was born in Georgia, Agron grew up Jewish in San Francisco, which contributed to her liberal outlook on equality for all.

“I was not raised in a family that accepted prejudice or hatred. For that, I thank my Mom and Dad each and every day. I am aware that not all minds meet equally about the rights and respect that we should pay to others,” she said. “Recently, I heard a lament about San Francisco. How it just didn’t sound like a fun place to be, or visit, because that person wasn’t gay. Wait, really?

I wanted to laugh! Why won’t San Francisco be fun for you? Do you think the whole city is gay? Do you think they will judge you? Perhaps they won’t let you have fun, the way they have fun?”

She’s also proud to be a part of the gayest show on TV. “Our show celebrates the GLBT community. We’re proud to be a part of something that embraces an often-avoided topic.

Hate is terrible, especially when we pass it down to a new generation of innocents.

“Sadly, we’ve gotten letters from people who explain that they love the show but hate the gay storylines – that we shouldn’t be pollut-

GLAAD honoree Shonda Rhimes: dedicated to diversity.

Glee star Dianna Agron.

ing their children’s heads. To this I’d sometimes like to reply, ‘Would you also like us to tell them that a stork is dropping off our offspring?

That it’s not practical to be true to yourself, because there are mean people in this world that will make them feel wrong for being honest? That instead of embracing themselves, they should lie to the world?’”

GLAAD honoree Shonda Rhimes,

Newsman Thomas Roberts.

who created TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and the new series Scandal, has always been dedicated to portraying ethnic and sexual diversity on her shows. She notes the recent, dramatic change in attitudes towards LGBT characters on TV. Rhimes recalled having to go to the mat with broadcast standards and practices at ABC in 2006 to insist on preserving a steamy (fantasy) shower sequence with three female doctors on Grey’s Anatomy. But now, six years later, the show includes two lesbian doctors who are married. “Nobody even blinked at the relationship,” Rhimes said. The only outcry she recalled came when one of those female doctors flirted with a man. “It was from lesbians who said, ‘How dare she sleep with a man!’”

Rhimes also fired back at a fan who tweeted her recently, accusing her of “pandering” to the gay/lesbian community. “Isn’t love universal?

Isn’t that the point?” she said. “That you can watch a straight couple in love or a lesbian couple in love, and what you see and feel is the love?

How is that pandering? Maybe I’ve been pandering to straight couples all this time.

“One of the reasons I cast the show the way I did is because I like to turn on the TV and see people who look like me living in a world of diversity,” she said. “I’m bet-

ting there’s a lesbian girl out there who likes to turn on the TV and see people who love like her, too.”

Rhimes believes that the bottom line is: “Love is universal. Life is universal. Grow up and stop complaining, and stop hating on a storyline because the characters are different from you. Because that? Is ridiculous.”

When he came out in 2006 while working at CNN, newsman Thomas Roberts (who will present the GLAAD corporate award to Wells Fargo) had to overcome fears that many LGBT people in the media face. “You have fears about acceptance, career limitations and rejection,” he said. “It’s both real and self-inflicted fear. You can still be fired in the majority of states for being LGBT. But I was at a very content place in my life, and it felt like the right time for me. I can now fully bring myself to my work at all times. I don’t have to hide behind a façade. It’s important for the next generation coming up to know that you can have a blended, successful life. You can be proud to be yourself.”

Roberts knows that others in his profession are still in the closet, and while none have so far asked him for advice, his advice would be: “The waters are safe and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I don’t regret it for a second. It’s important to raise your hand and be accounted for, especially with the President coming out in favor of same-sex marriage. We couldn’t have a more ringing endorsement than from the most powerful person in the world.”

Obama’s historic announcement came at a fortuitous time for Roberts and his partner of 12 years, Patrick Abner. “We were at a New York hotel to look at a space for our wedding [planned for Septem-

ber]. It just felt like the timing was perfect.”▼ 23rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards, Sat., June 2, 4:30-11 p.m., San Francisco Marriott Marquis,

55 4th St. Tickets: $350 ($250 is tax-deductible) includes cocktail reception & silent auction, dinner, awards show & afterparty. www.glaad.org/mediaawards/sanfrancisco or (212) 219-0111.

<< Out&About

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

Slipping @ New Conservatory Theatre

La Quebradora @ Mission Cultural Center

Searching for Queertopia @ Galeria de la Raza

Daniel Talbott’s drama about two high school students, and how one troubled gay teen and a charismatic athlete’s lives come together. $18-$32. Wed-Sat 8pm.

Sun 2pm. Thru June 10. 25 Van Ness Ave. www.nctcsf.org

Opening reception of curator Amy Pederson's group exhibition about Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling culture, with videos, sculptures, paintings and performances (Wed nights 7pm). $5. 6:30-9:30pm, includes a live match with legend Mil Máscaras. Reg. hours Tue-Sat 10am-5pm.

Thru Aug. 5. 821-1155. www.missionculturalcenter.org

Alex Hernandez and Neil Rivas’ visual documentation of what is called, the Vela de ‘Las Intrépidas,’ a 3-day event held annually in the town of Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, México, in honor of its Muxe community. Muxe, a Zapotec term for what is commonly known in the English-speaking world as Queer, has existed while evolving since Pre-Columbian times. Opening reception performance, Migrating Sexuality by Gracie Arguelles and Yosimar Reyes, June 2, 7pm. Exhibit Thu-Sat 12pm-6pm. Thru June 30. 2857 24th St. 826-8009. www.galeriadelaraza.org

Whoa Nellies @ Dolores Park Café The fab fun retro local band plays your ‘60s and ‘70s classic hits, from the Cowsills to the Monkees. 7:30pm. 501 Dolores St. www.whoanellies.com

Lurid @ City Art Opening reception of a group exhibit of art in various media that explores interpretations of what is “lurid.” 7pm-10pm. Reg. hours 12pm-9pm Wed-Sun. Thru June 30.

828 Valencia St. 970-9900. www.cityartgallery.org

Marga Gomez @ The Marsh, Berkeley

50 shades of gay

by Jim Provenzano

S

ome merely breathe a queer aesthetic as June, aka Pride Month, unfurls, while others are coming out full tilt homo and gay-friendly.

One of the most colorful is definitely Flagging in the Park (photo, above) at the National AIDS Memorial Grove. The popular outdoor flagging party returns Sunday June 3, 12pm-4pm. Bowling Green Drive at Middle Drive East, Golden Gate Park. www.aidsmemorial.org

Thu 31 >> Barbara Cook @ The Rrazz Room Broadway icon performs an intimate concert of classic songs. $50-$60. 8pm. Thru June 10; various times. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Liz Fain Dance @ Z Space The Water is Clear and Still, dances based on the short stories of Jamaica Kincaid, incorporates the full length of the space in an immersive sound-theatre experience. $25. 8pm. Thru June 3 (at 2pm).

450 Florida St. (800) 838-3006. www.lizfaindance.org

100 Saints You Should Know @ Thick House Theatre Rhinoceros' production of Kate Fodor's play about family love, homosexuality and teenage life. $15-$30 ('pay what you can' previews May 31 & June 1). Wed & Thu 7:30pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm.

Thru June 17. 1695 18th St. (800) 8383006. www.therhino.org

Bruja @ Magic Theatre Luis Alfaro’s modern take on Euripides’ Medea stirs up a haunting story about the modern immigrant experience; directed

by Loretta Greco, with scenic design by Andrew Boyce ( The Lily’s Revenge ). $22$62. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm.

Thru June 24. Fort Mason Center, Building D, 3rd floor. Marina Blvd at Buchanan. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

Crevice @ La Val’s Subterranean, Berkeley World premiere of Lauren Yee’s dark comedy about a family shaken by a sinkhole that appears in their home, unveiling a strange alternative world. $10-$20. ThuSat 8pm. Thru June 9. 1834 Euclid Ave. www.impacttheatre.com

Endgame, Play @ A.C.T.

Thu 31 Savage Jazz Dance Company @ Laney College Theater Oakland dance company with avibrant energy performs new and repertory works by Reginald RaySavage; special guest Menlowe Ballet Company. $5-$15. 8pm.

Thru June 3 (at 3pm). 900 Fallon St., Oakland. www.savagejazz.org

Mary Poppins @ San Jose Center for the Performing Arts Touring production of the 2006 Broadway hit musical based on the classic Disney musical film. Tue 7:30pm. Thru June 10.

255 Almaden Blvd. (866) 395-2929. www.broadwaysanjose.com

Thunder From Down Under @ the Rrazz Room Australian male strip troupe returns. $35-$55. 8pm. Thru June 3 (7pm). 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Fri 1 >> Grand Illusion @ Castro Theatre Restored print of the classic 1937 Jean Renoir film about French soldiers in World War I. $7.50-$10. 7pm, 9:20pm. Sat & Sun also 2pm 4:30pm. Thru June 3. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Tony Award winner Bill Irwin stars in American Conservatory Theatre’s production of two darkly comic Samuel Beckett one-act plays, directed by Carey Perloff. $10-$95. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru June 3. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Fwd: Life Gone Viral @ The Marsh David Ford, Jeri Lynn Cohen and Charlie Varon’s comic play about the foibles of Internet-ruled living. $20-$50. Thu 8pm, Sat 8:30pm, Sun 7pm. Thru June 10. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Good Goods @ Boxcar Playhouse Crowded Fire’s production of Christina Anderson’s play about a small Black town where the past and present link lost souls. $10-$35. Wed-Sat, 8pm, thru June 23. 505 Natoma St. 255-7846. www.crowdedfire.org

The Great Divide @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of Adam Chanzit’s timely play about a community divided over a gas pipeline’s economic and health effects in their town. $20-$30. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru June 24. 1901 Ashby Ave. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Ho-Down @ Thee Parkside New monthly queer music night, with wild comic and unusual acts; Jerber Jones, MC Crumbsnatcher, Vain Hein, Rodney O’Neal Austin, Mini Pearl Necklace, DJ Dingbat (comic David Hawkins); plus drinks and food. $15. 9pm. 2am. 1600 17th St. 21+. www.theeparkside.com

The Loved Ones @ Metreon Peaches Christ hosts a midnight showing of the prom slasher film, with a costume contest for fans. $9. 101 4th St. 369-6201. www.peacheschrist.com

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The lesbian comic’s Not Getting Any Younger, her witty solo show about ‘coming of middle age’. $15-$35, $50. Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Extended thru June 30.

2120 Allston Way off Shattuck. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Sat 2 >>

Piano Recital @ R. Kassman Pianos, Berkeley Benefit piano concert for the Oakland east Bay Gay Men’s Chorus, with include piano duets and solo works by Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Granados, Liszt, Mompou, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. Silent auction as well. $20. 6:30pm. 843 Gilman St. (800) 7062389. www.oebgmc.org

The Odyssey @ Angel Island We Players takes on another innovative environmental theatre project, the Homerian ancient Greek adventure tale, performed at locations on scenic and historic Angel Island. $40-$78. $10 lunches available.

Fri-Sun 10:30am-4pm (not including ferry travel times). Thru July 1. 547-0189. www.weplayers.org

Bay Area Rainbow Symphony @ SF Conservatory of Music

Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. Reg: $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm. Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm.

(Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

The Bi-larious Show @ LGBT Center Julie Cohen, Nick Leonard, Jennifer Dronsky, David Hawkins, Tammy Powers and drag artists Sandra O. Noshi-Di’n’t perform at a comedy night with bisexual themes. $12. 7:30pm. 1800 Market St. www.Qcomedy.com

Black N Blue Boys/Broken Men @ Berkeley Repertory World premiere of Dael Orlandersmith’s drama about urban families fractured by abuse. $10-$73. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru June 24.

Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. (510) 6472949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Burgavaganza @ Shotwell Studios Shahid Nadeems’ controversial play about fundamentalist hypocrisy in the land of jihad; banned in Pakistan! One night only. $10-$15. 8pm. 3252-A 19th St. www.ftloose.org

The Cult of Beauty @ Legion of Honor Subtitled The Victorian Avante-Garde, 1860-1900, this new exhibit focuses on the British Aesthetic Movement; paintings, architecture and decorative arts. Free-$20.

Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Thru June 17.

Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3620. www.famsf.org

Earthquake @ California Academy of Sciences New exhibit and planetarium show with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about our ever-shifting earth. $20-$30. Mon-Sat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Join GLBT hikers on a 7-mile hike to Azalea Meadow on Mt. Tam. Look for wildflowers in bloom. Dogs on leash are welcome.

Bring water, lunch, sunscreen, hat, sturdy boots. Carpool meets 9:00 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (510) 985-0804. www.sfhiking.com

Show Choir!

The Musical @ Children’s Creativity Museum American Conservatory Theater’s Young Conservatory actor-students perform Mark McDaniels and Donald Garverick’s lively comic “mockumentary” musical about a teenage glee club. $20.50. Thru June 9.

221 4th St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

This Side of Paradise @ Hillside Gardens, Mill Valley

The local symphony performs Conte’s Fantasy for Orchestra (Bay Area composer), Mihaud’s Scaramouche featuring David Henderson on saxophone, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel orchestration). $15-$20. 8pm. 50 Oak St. (800) 595-4849. www.bars-sf.org

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

SF Hiking Club @ Azalea Meadow

Fri 1 Mike’s Men: Sex, Guys and Videotape @ Magnet Opening reception for an exhibit of the gay-themed drawings and videos, with limited edition prints and posters, all by filmmaker and artist Mike Kuchar. 8pm-10pm.

Reg. hours Mon, Tue Sat 11am6pm. Wed, Thu Fri 11am-9pm.

Thru June. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Litquake hosts a stylish fundraiser, A Great Gatsy Garden Party, with 1920s styled cocktails, food, all at a lovely mansion estate, with hosts Amy Tan, Joyce Maynard Don Novello and Tiffany Baker. $75 and up. 4pm-7pm. 425 Sycamore Ave. www.litquake.org

San Francisco Dance Festival @ Cowell Theater Annual large-scale festival of diverse traditional and modern dance styles from local andregional companies who performs Indian, African, Cuban, Native American, Gamelan and other styles. Successive weekends at SF museums and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. June 2, 4pm & 8pm.

Fort Mason Center. Thru July 1. $12-$58.

978-2787. www.sfethnicdancefestival.org

Sun 3 >>

Nature @ Castro Country Club

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

Photography in Mexico @ SF Museum of Modern Art New group exhibit of historic prints documenting Mexican life and culture since 1920.

Also, The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area, and a new mural by Dutch artist Parra. Thru July 29. Free-$18.

Open daily (except Wednesdays) 11am5:45pm.; open late Thursdays, until 8:45pm.

131 Third St. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

Plantosaurus Rex @ Conservatory of Flowers New exhibit of prehistoric plants and flowers (giant ferns, spiky horsetails) from the Mezazoic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, with life-size models of dinosaurs! Free-$7.

Tue-Sun 10am-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 21. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 831-2090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

Tino Rodriguez, Virgo Paraiso @ Modern Eden Gallery Pagan Poetry, a duo exhibit of fantastic and vibrant paintings by the two artists. WedSun 11am-7pm. Thru June 10. 403 Francisco St. 956-3303. www.moderneden.com

Group photography exhibit of nature scenes. 1pm-3pm. Thru June 30. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

San Francisco Lesbian/ Gay Freedom Band @ Lakeside Park, Oakland Outdoor summer concert of works by Cichy, Gillis, Grainger and other composers, performed by the historic LGBT marching and concert band. Free. 3pm.

Lake Merritt bandstand (near Fairy Land).

Also June 10, 11am and the Golden Gate Park bandshell; Concert June 22, 7pm & 9pm at SF Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak St. www.sflgfb.townalive.com

Sonoma County Pride @ Guerneville Gay by Nature Pride parade 11am, Main Street celebration 12pm-6pm, with live music by Adonisaurus, Bobby Jo Valentine, The Del Mars and others. Plus, a party at the Guerneville Lodge, 15905 River Road. www.sonomacountypride.org

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

395-8595. www.harrydenton.com

GLAAD Media Awards @ Marriott Marquis Hotel 23rd annual San Francisco edition of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s awards show, with celebrity host Dianna Agron ( Glee ), guest presenters Mario Lopez, Sean Mayer ( Firefly), Zach Walls, Thomas Roberts, Chandler Massey and others. $325 and up. 5pm-11pm. 55 4th St. www.glaad.org

Marin Home & Garden Show @ Marin Center Fairgrounds Big annual exhibit of fab home and garden designs. Free-$10. 10am-6pm. Also June 3, 10am-5pm. 10 Ave, of the Flags, San Rafael. 507-1537. www.marinhomegarden.com

Thu 31 The Full Monty @ Eureka Theatre Ray of Light’s new production of the Broadway musical hit (music/lyrics: David Yazbeck; book: Terrence McNally) based on the popular U.K. film about unemployed working-class men who decide to form an amatuer strip act. $25-$36. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru June 30. 215 Jackson St. at Battery. www.roltheatre.com

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Out&About >>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

Saints and Sinners @ Visual Aid

Cyndi Lauper

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

Titanic @ Castro Theatre Screenings of the 3-D version of the immensely popular DeCaprio/Winslett film by James Cameron. $7:50-$10. Also June 6.

429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Thu 7 >> 19th Century San Francisco @ Robert Tat Gallery

Sat 2 Black and White Ball @ Davies Hall, City Hall San Francisco Symphony’s annual huge fundraiser, with food, drinks, concerts in tents and in arts buildings of Civic Center. Paul Simon headlines the Davies Hall concert, and Cyndi Lauper headlines the outdoor stage. More than a dozen other bands (Janelle Monae, The Drifters, Avance, Notorious) in various lavishly designed area of the War Memorial Opera House and other venues. $250, $350 and up. 6pm-1am. www.sfsymphony.org/ball

Mon 4 >> Hearts of the Viol @ St. Mark's Episcopal, Berkeley Concert of early music with viol master Sainte-Colombe and his student MarinMarais accompanied by a unique continuo comprised of 7 string bass viol (Keitel and Tobi Szuts), and archguitar (Jon Mendle). $10-$15. 8pm. 2300 Bancroft Way. www.alexplayscello.com

Katya Smirnoff-Skyy @ The Rrazz Room Russian exiled princess (J. Conrad Frank’s drag alter-ego) performs classic and contemporary tunes with a vodka-infused edge. $30. 8pm. Also June 5. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.therrazzroom.com

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

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

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

Royal Families of the Americas @ SF Public Library, Harvey Milk/Eureka Valley

Golden Wheel Awards @ War Memorial Bldg.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual awards gala and fundraiser, with drinks, nibblies, auction items, and complimentary valet bike parking. $75 and up. 6pm-9pm.

401 Van Ness Ave. www.sfbike.org

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

Dance concert and benefit for the Caner Prevention institute of California, with works performed by principal dancers from San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, ODC/Dance, Axis Dance Company, Smuin Ballet, Zhukov Dance Theater, Robert Moses’ Kins and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. $35-$125 (includes afterparty and silent auction). 7pm. 401 Van Ness Ave. www.getinfront.org

Jeremiah Jenkins @ Ever Gold Gallery

Singing the Golden State @ Society of Cali. Pioneers Exhibit of beautiful sheet music and artwork from 1849 -1930s, all with California themes; curated James M. Keller, the exhibit includes a few subtly gay and historically transgender subjects. $2.50-$50.

Wed-Fri 10am-4pm. First Saturdays 10am4pm. Thru Dec. 7. 300 Fourth St. 957-1849. www.californiapioneers.org

The weekly LGBT and indie comic stand-up night. 8pm-9:30pm. 3079 16th St. at Mission. www.comedybodega.com

Garrin Benfield, David Gans @ Frieght and Salvage Gay folk-rock singer and his friend perform at the popular coffeehouse. $20. 8pm.

2020 Addison St., Berkeley. www.garrin. com www.freighandsalvage.org

Felice Picano

Thu 7 Felice Picano, David Pratt @ Books Inc. Prolific pioneering gay author ( Twelve O’Clock Tales ) and firsttime novelist (My Movie ) read from and discuss their new books.

Free. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough’s weekly raucous drag show with gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Out in the Bay @ 91.7 FM David Kopay, the gay former pro football player, is the guest on Eric Jansen’s LGBT radio show. He’ll also be discussing his participation in the annual SF FrontRunners Pride Run, June 23; proceeds benefit Out in the Bay. 7pm. www.OutintheBay.com

Gayle Rubin

Exhibit of prints by the acclaimed 20thcentury photographer. Thru June 30.

Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm. 49 Geary St. 4th fl.

788-4641. www.scottnicholsgallery.com

Sony Holland @ The Rrazz Room

The Drag Show @ Various Channels

The gorgeous jazz singer who sings gorgeously returns for a night of cabaret classic songs. $35. 8pm. Thru June 10 (7pm).

2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Stu Smith’s weekly LGBT variety show features local talents, and not just drag artistes. Channels 29 & 76 on Comcast; 99 on AT&T and 30 on Astound. www.thedragshow.org

Voca People @ Marines Memorial Theatre

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gayfriendly comedy night. One drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Comedy Bodega @ Esta Nocha

Get In Front @ Herbst Theater

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104

Dorothea Lange @ Scott Nichols Gallery

SF Pride’s swanky fundraiser, with hors d’eouvres, cash bar, sponsored comp drinks, and schmoozing fun. $50-$1000.

7pm-10pm. 181 3rd St. W San Francisco, www.sfpride.org www.wsanfrancisco.com

Wed 6 >>

Shit doesn’t have to be so fucked up, the artist’s collection of ironic collage and sculptural works. Thru June 9. Wed-Sat 1pm-6pm. 441 O’Farrell St. 796-3676. www.evergoldgallery.com

Tue 5 >>

Be Scene @ W Hotel

New exhibition that celebrates the remarkable life and work of activist Harry Hay, who laid the foundation for the modern lesbian and gay rights movement. Free.

Thru July 29. Jewitt Gallery, lower level, 100 Larkin St. 557-4400. www.sfpl.org

Exhibit of photographs by Karen Massing of four years of pageantry and royalty in the LGBT International Court System. Thru Sept.15. 1 Jose Sarria Court at 16th St. www.karenmassingpix.com www.sfpl.org

David Perry’s talk show about LGBT people and issues. This week, Perry talks with Cecila Chung, transgender advocate and newly appointed San Francisco Health Commissioner, and the Rev Jim Mitulski of Berkeley and formerly of MCC. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm. Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.comcasthometown.com

Fascinating exhibit of vintage prints from the Bay Area’s early days. Tue-Sat 11am5:30pm & by appointment. Thru Sept. 1.

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

Thu 7

Local Heroes Awards @ Castro Theatre

Gayle S. Rubin @ GLBT History Museum

KQED and Union Bank-sponsored annual awards show, honoring Dr. Jei Africa, Roger Doughty, Jeff Cotter and Tom Nolan; Performers include SF Gay Men’s Chorus, Marga Gomez, Veronica Klaus, DJ Lamont Young, and host Dustin Lance Black.

6:30pm. Liited free seating. RSVP: LGBTpride@kqed.org 553-3330. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Prominent writer discusses her new book, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader, which includes her groundbreaking essays that helped form feminist philosophy and queer theory. Free-$5.

7pm-9pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistorymuseum.org

Unusual “alien” comic pop song theatrical octet lands amid their intergalactic tour.

Special benefit night for the Richmond/ Ermet AIDS Foundation June 7. $15-$39.

(Benefit $35 and up). 8pm and other times.

Thru June 17. 609 Sutter St. at Mason. www.reaf.org www.vocapeoplesf.com www.marinesmemorial.com

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

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

ebar.com

<< Leather +

34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

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Joe’s Barbershop reopens

by Scott Brogan

I

(((((((((

www.ebar.com )))))))))

’m happy to report that last weekend’s reopening of Joe’s Barbershop went off without a hitch. You may remember that several months back the shop was the target of arson. Luckily no one was injured, but the shop suffered extensive damage. Miraculously the repairs were completed in record time, and it’s now open. You’d never know the difference. Whoever they hired did an amazing job. It looks just like it did before. More importantly, when I stopped by last Saturday the shop was buzzing with activity and totally packed. I’m glad to see that the community has come out to support the shop. I’m also glad to see that everyone’s favorite barbers are back. Be sure to go. None of this would matter if they didn’t give great haircuts. They do! The atmosphere is always sizzling with a sexy vibe. You won’t get that at your salon or regular barbershop. This is due not just to the barbers but also the clientele. I have yet to go in there and not get turned on by at least one customer.

Joe’s Barbershop is located at 215 Market St. Mama’s 70th birthday bash The Beatbox on 11th St. was buzzing two Sundays ago for Mama’s 70th birthday celebration. Mama Sandy Reinhardt has been a tireless supporter of our community and campaigner for many local and national charities. Her “family” reaches across the globe, bringing together many people who might not have met otherwise.

It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating her 60th birthday.

I think we were up at the Russian River for that one. What a blast that was. And what a blast it was at the Beatbox. The club opened up their big industrial doors, bringing in the gorgeous San Francisco afternoon air. DJ Gehno Aviance provided the beats that kept everyone invigorated. The bartenders were fun and sexy, and we even had an all-balloon motorcycle on display. That’s something I’ve never seen before: a fullsize motorcycle made entirely out of balloons, and in the leather flag colors. I don’t think the clown at my kiddie birthday parties ever made

Photo: Scott Brogan

Joe’s Barbershop has reopened and is buzzing with activity.

one of those.

The Beatbox has been featuring a beer bust each Sunday afternoon. Opening up those big doors makes a big and positive difference.

I urge everyone to support these new Sunday beer busts at the Beatbox. Sure, nothing will replace the patio beer busts at The Eagle, but really, what could?

This is the best alternative I’ve experienced so far. It’s great, casual fun, and a perfect way to enjoy a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Getting back to Mama, she had a blast.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were on hand to bless the event and provide one of the afternoon’s delightful and entertaining numbers.

As you can imagine, all the entertainers were instructed by event producer Mark Paladini to perform numbers with a “Mama” theme. But even without the entertainment, it still would have been a good time.

Especially since we were treated to a steady stream of various demos.

So Mama, here’s to you! I sure hope that when I’m 70, I have even a fraction of your energy.

Woody Woodruff wins Int’l Mr. Leather As I sit typing this, watching the SyFy channel’s latest mega-dino-croc bimbo-himbo flick, International Mr. Leather is in full swing in Chicago. Thanks to Facebook, I’m able to live vicariously through my friends as they traverse the ins and outs, tops and bottoms, of the weekend’s festivities. This column goes to press before I can next page>>

Photo: Scott Brogan

“Mama” Sandy Reinhardt and producer Mark Paladini thank everyone for coming out to celebrate Mama’s 70th birthday at the Beatbox club.

Coming up in leather and kink Thu., May 31: Koktail Club Happy Hour at Kok Bar (1225 Folsom). 5-10 p.m. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Thu., May 31: Introduction to Massage presented by Tay at the SF Citadel (363 6th St.), 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30. $20. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Thu., May 31: Underwear Night at The Powerhouse.

Strip down for drink specials. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Fri., Jun. 1: Fuzz at Kok Bar. Come hang with the hairy dudes. No cover. $2 off first drink for the shirtless. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Jun. 3: PoHo Sundays at The Powerhouse. Dollar drafts all day! Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Mon., Jun. 4: Trivia Night with host Casey Ley at Truck. 8 p.m. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Mon., Jun. 4: SF Submissive Safe Space at the SF Citadel, facilitated discussion group open to all s-types.

7:30 p.m. $10-$20 sliding scale. Go to: www.sfcitadel. org.

Tue., Jun. 5: Busted at Truck. $5 beer bust. 9-11 p.m.

Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Fri., Jun. 1: Michael Brandon presents Locker Room at The Edge (4149 Collingwood). Wear/celebrate your favorite sports gear. Go-go boys. Go to: www. edgesf.com.

Tue., Jun. 5: Citadel’s Rope Peer Workshop hosted by Madame Butterfly and Mr. Madame Butterfly. 7:30 p.m. Doors close at 8:30 p.m. $10. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Fri., Jun. 1: Truck Wash at Truck (1900 Folsom). 10 p.m.-close. Live shower boys. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Tue., Jun. 5: Ink & Metal at The Powerhouse. 9 p.m.close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Jun. 2: SF Citadel Newbie Munch at the SF Citadel. 6 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Jun. 5: Kok Block at Kok Bar. Happy hour prices all night. Pool tournament 7-10 p.m., winner gets $25. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sat., Jun. 2: Steamworks at The Edge (4149 Collingwood). Lots of guys in towels. Go to: www.edgesf.com.

Sat., Jun. 2: All Beef Saturday Nights at The Lone Star (1354 Harrison). 9 p.m.-close. Go to: www.facebook. com/lonestarsf.

Sat., Jun. 2: Stallion Saturdays at Rebel Bar (1760 Market). Revolving DJs, stay for afterhours fun! 9 p.m.-4 a.m. Go to: www.stallionsaturdays.com.

Sun., Jun. 3: Monthly Men in Gear Beer Bust at Kok Bar. $8 if in gear, $10 if not. 3-7 p.m. Go

Wed., Jun. 6: Pit Stop at Kok Bar. Happy Hour prices all night. 5 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Wed., Jun. 6: Wolf! for Furry Men on the Prowl at The Watergarden (1010 The Alameda, San Jose). Join the hairy guys, lockers half-price. 4 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.thewatergarden.com.

Wed., Jun. 6: Naked Buddies at Blow Buddies (933 Harrison), a male-only club. Doors open 8 p.m.-12 a.m. Play till late. Go to: www.blowbuddies.com.

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Karrnal>>

May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

Bound for glory

by John F. Karr

I

s the BoundGods website too scary for you? Then here’s a bit of niche marketing you may like.

From BoundJocks.com and director Mr. Kristofer: bondage without SM. If that sounds good, try either of the DVD collections of scenes off the site, Training Sessions and Captive Men. I dove right for Training Sessions, because it had Nate Karlton, Gavin Waters, Marc Dylan, Adrian Long, and OMG Benjamin Bradley. I swear, I needed my smelling salts just seeing him on the box cover.

Here’s the set-up. Four scenes totaling one hour. The scenes take place mostly in a white, brilliantly lit space that has nothing more than a metal surgical table or a padded workout table or some other such simplicity. Tied in similarly simple fashion and rather loosely to that object is a young man (Mr. Karlton thankfully an exception). The youth pulls against the restraints, groans with effort, and sometimes sweats.

Somehow, one of his hands is loosened, and he jacks off.

Well, fuck, Benjamin Bradley’s just beautiful. Handsome, of course, and I’m sure there’s none other with such a brilliantly hard bone and a nutsack so explosively tight we fear every moment that we’re about to witness the second Big Bang. A whisper of treasure trail disappears under the elastic of Ben’s robin’segg blue tighty (very tighty, indeed) whities (which, as we’ve said, are actually tighty blue-ies). The camera is mostly focused on crotch. God, these sessions are so cockcentric.

Inside the distended leg band of Ben’s undies we can see the bit of white rope that signals his cock is also bound. The idea of which got me harder than all the tolerably acted but, let’s face it, fake show of struggling he’s putting on.

After some fine show-off-thecock moments, Ben’s suddenly naked and on his back with the splendor of his hogtied cock and balls jutting upward, whammo, with nuts swollen so tightly and cock so solid you’d think it saw the Gorgon instead of just being engorged.

What a gift to humanity. And then, as that purpling tower spears the sky and spears it again and all rational thought has been driven from our mind and we’re set to experience the complete stoppage of time and the divine vision of The Thing Itself – the scene fades out (The Thing Itself is not, merely, or only, cock, but that moment the cock heralds of Divine White in which, actually, one sees no thing at all.)

We’re not left completely high

<<

Photo: Bound Jocks

Nate Karlton and Spencer Reed in Bound Jocks’ Training Sessions.

and dry, though, for we see immediately the arrival of Nate Karlton, decked out in shoulder pads and a stylish red jock that’s just the accent for his red knee-high socks.

Such a manly man, low-key as a rock and as unbreakably butch. Spencer Reed follows Nate in, throws him face down on the table, and eats his ass.

Then he ties Nate to some convenient crossbar sort of scaffolding, exposes the stud’s cock, smacks it about, sucks it briefly, shoves his own dick briefly into Nate’s mouth, and then jacks off on Nate – and leaves.

Well, the attempt at some rough play does heighten the bondage some, but it’s all so casual and abrupt. What about the next scene, with Gavin Waters.

His legs are spread so we can see how inviting his exposed asshole is, and how swell his mound of cock looks inside a crisp white jock.

Hands bound at the wrists, he cuddles the mound for a promising moment, and then cuts loose the promise, pulling out his dick and jacking off.

Marc Dylan wears bright yellow knee-socks and is tied in brightly matching ropes (where do these ropen-sock sets come from, the Butch Boutique

at Cliff ’s?). Not much transpires; Marc struggles some, and looks utterly cosmetic while doing it. Adrian Long arrives to face-fuck Marc while finger-fucking him. Adrian’s smiling cockiness is hot. He jacks off on Marc’s face.

For me, wrigglin’ against restraint is too passive a presentation of sex. If it works for you, perhaps you’ll not mind the scene’s brevity or arbitrary development and truncation. In Captive Men, beside Nate Karlton wriggling, there’s time wasted in tickle torture, some noodling dildo application, and Chris Daniels fucked by Dylan Roberts.

Visiting the parent site more recently, I see the ante has been upped; no longer Bondage Lite, some touches of SM are being applied to the bound boys. ▼ www.BoundJocks.com

Leather + Previous page

get complete details about what our two SF contestants (Mr. SF Leather Jesse Vanciel and Mr. Hayes Valley Leather Michael Zane) were up to.

Ditto for our Mr. Bolt Leather (Sacramento) contestant Miguel Rubio.

All I can say at this point is that Mr. Michigan Leather Woody Woodruff has been “crowned” the winner, with Mr. Eagle NY A.C. Demidont as First Runner-up and Mr. DC Eagle Kevin Jordan as Second Runnerup. Congratulations to everyone involved. Anyone who competes is a winner for being there. We’re proud of our local and statewide contestants, who almost always represent us with dignity and class.▼

Photo: Scott Brogan

Mr. Powerhouse Leather 2012 Brent Ganetta enjoys his bondage demo at Mama’s 70th birthday bash at the Beatbox club.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

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Film >>

Estranged brother/sister act

by David Lamble

W

hen did you first think of yourself as an adult? Coming out at the dinner table, or over the phone? Bringing a conjugal companion home for an overnight? Doing a geographical half-a-continent or more away? Asking a sibling to drive you to that faraway new home?

In the bitterly funny new road comedy The Color Wheel, a volcanically estranged sister/brother duo find themselves slithering in a cluttered hatchback across some very lovely forested Northeast counties, ostensibly so that Colin (director/co-writer Alex Ross Perry) can help sis JR (co-writer Carlen Altman) get her stuff from the apartment of a bullying ex-professor who is now also an ex-lover. How embarrassing is this? On a scale of 1 to 10, the insult-laden, viciously hectoring brother/sister banter in the Honda, a right-wing Christian motel, a crummy diner, and perhaps the most excruciating high school reunion party since the heyday of the Brat Pack, weighs in way north of 50.

For fans of mosh-pit-worthy familial assault comedy, The Color Wheel ranks right up there with the best: Chuck and Buck, Spanking the Monkey, Y Tu Mama Tambien. In each case, characters who share increasingly embarrassing back stories spend the movie heading for a final exit, but not before a last possibly deadly embrace. Colin and JR’s modus operandi is to fight like coiled cobras when alone in the

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Scott Wells & Dancers Arts cover

able and visible to the audience.

Wells’ dancers are not preening macho thugs – they’re into their tricks. They don’t even have the levels of glamour and parade that male ballet dancers have. His dancers, male and female (there are a few women), move like yoginis, with an introspective bent – but, of course, in patterns that require them to be responsible to the partners flying towards them, whom they have to catch.

Remember Gene Kelly’s dance with the squeaky board and the sheet of newspaper? Wells makes dances that are grounded like that in the ordinary, but ecstatic in their content. He’s done dances with Frisbees (O altitude!) and with skateboards – now he’s done something with parkour.

Wells is a child of the 60s. He likes to expand consciousness to insane levels, the way marijuana taught us to appreciate peanut butter on

Accord, but to stand behind a suspiciously Freudian-slip cover story when confronting a common enemy like the Old Testament owner of a tacky roadside inn.

“You kids look an awful lot alike.

You sure you’re married?”

“Who wouldn’t want to marry and live with this person the rest of their God-given life?” JR playfully punctuates the sentence by squeezing Colin’s cheeks with what she prays passes for affection.

“I remember when me and my wife got married. I was 15, she was 14, had our first child at 16. Sixteen is a good age for a girl to have a baby.”

“We’d love to hear your life story as soon as we get some rest.”

“Let me see you two love birds kiss.”

“Why do we have to kiss?”

The clerk points to a hand-written sign: “I need to see married couples kiss.” They kiss. Handing them the keys, the clerk coos, “Have a good night, and God bless.”

Fellow filmmaker Bob Byington is deliciously vile as the ex, a cynical, thoroughly unrepentant tenured lifer who plows his female broadcasting students while failing to properly mentor them into the biz. As Colin and JR head for the professor’s apartment, they keep tripping over risibly humiliating bits of old baggage: high school classmates who clearly don’t wish them well, old crushes with unfinished business. In many ways, The Color Wheel represents a chilling rebuttal to the Facebook mantra for sharing intimate bits of personal

crackers. He takes cartwheels, somersaults, pommel-horse vaulting, rock-climbing, juggling and treats them like ballet – to find new ways of being ultimately coordinated and graceful, and to find ways of creating community out of shared skillsets.

The main piece in this show is Parkour Deux, which incorporates parkour, the French extreme sport of running through parks and public buildings – bounding over rooftops, down stairs, through windows, from tree to tree – that was developed in France by David Belle, who is credited with inventing the art with high levels of fitness (though it clearly is an urban version of Tarzan). It’s inherently romantic – though there’s no question there’s a thick overlay of machismo, the whole point of it is to swing through windows, over walls, up drainpipes, along ledges, over rooftops and down staircases by vaulting along the handrails like an ape-man, where the arms have become legs again, and we’ve be-

Colin (Alex Ross Perry) and JR (Carlen Altman) in the new road comedy The Color Wheel.

effluvia with an ever-expanding universe of strangers.

As their descent into the shameful hell of adolescent pratfalls spins out of control and they’re left with only each other’s company, we sense why JR, who desperately yearns for the unlikely brass ring of a big-market TV anchor job, has sought out the company of the only relative who’ll still speak to her. Colin’s a mess, to be sure, a sad-funny, unfocused, ambitionless clown with his stained jeans, whiny nasality and puerile sexual longings, but he’s also a sugar-tit comfy reminder of everything JR stands to lose forever as she pl aces feckless ambition ahead of the security of even the most stultified family ties.

The decision to shoot a film

called The Color Wheel in almost pixilated B&W may seem odd until you realize that Alex Ross Perry means to cradle his lonely siblings firmly in the American Beat landscape of rootless loners memorialized in Robert Frank’s pioneering 1960s photo-essay America. The effect is similar to one produced in Richard Linklater’s 1990 debut film Slackers, that of a nation of aging grownup kids forever stuck between youthful pranks and eccentricity.

Director Perry cites as an important influence Philip Roth’s trilogy of novels featuring the familybashing celebrity author, sexually self-loathing Nathan Zuckerman.

Perry zeroes in on an uncomfortable truth, ratified daily in tabloid media: that for all the taboo-smash-

come the creatures we were in the garden of Eden, despite the fact that they’ve paved Paradise.

To do this indoors, he’s had to resort to the training methods and equipment used by his collaborators at the Athletic Playground (the extreme-sports gym in Emeryville), Shira Yaziv and Andrey Pfening, using the huge gymnastics pads they employ for training. A big motif is to spring onto a wall-high pad and cause it to topple in slow-motion, in a Rube Goldberg fashion that leads to endless complications, most of them funny. They save their wallflips (aka “Donald O’Connors”) for the end.

The fabulous dancers include Zack Bernstein, Cameron Growden, Sebastian Grubb, Kellye McKee, Rajendra Serber, Ronja Ver, Miriam Wolodarski, and the aforementioned Mr. Pfening and Ms. Yaziv.▼ Photo: David Papas

Scott Wells & Dancers: Kellye McKee sails over Rajendra Serber.

Books >>

Love, Mom

by Jim Piechota Transitions of the Heart edited by Rachel Pepper; Cleis Press, $16.95

F

rom Cher’s son’s heavily-publicized transformation from Chastity to Chaz, to the Miss Universe Canada pageant’s recent firstever transgender contestant, gender issues (and the opinions they solicit) have graduated to the forefront of American media scrutiny and water-cooler conversations. But it is the many heartfelt and often heartbreaking stories of transitioning people who are not in the media spotlight who perhaps touch us on

a more personal level, and have the greatest impact on the general public’s impression of them.

Celebrated journalist, marriage and family therapist, gender authority, and frequent B.A.R. contributor Rachel Pepper (The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, 2008) expands on this theme with Transitions of the Heart, a collection of essays penned by mothers with transgendered children. Their experiences and reactions are expectedly wide-ranging, but the support and unconditional love shown to their children unify this anthology in a beautifully humane fashion.

The book includes more than 30

ing success of the 60s Generation in overthrowing sexual and vocational conformity, Americans still march to a family-values-dictated agenda little changed from that of the Eisenhower era. Back then, a 29-year-old Roth first decoded the anguish of middle-class Jewish assimilation in a pioneering first novel, Letting Go. Like the young Roth, filmmaker Perry hasn’t fully found his voice or located his ideal screen subject, but we hear a great audition in the third-act scene where brother and sister are sharing a couch in their grandparents’ remote summer cabin.

Rekindling old memories, JR urges Colin to “call me Jeanette.” “Nobody’s called you that since you were 11.” “I know.” “Goodnight, Jeanette.”

(Opens Friday at the Roxie.)▼

first-person narratives, and they collectively encompass a kaleidoscope of personalities, genders, ethnicities, sexualities, and circumstances. The commonalities among these mothers’ experiences surface soon after one reads the first few stories: many of these children began questioning their sexuality from early childhood, and began demonstrating attitudes and intentions to “rectify” their gender soon after. A mother’s love is a powerful one, and many of the writers in Pepper’s anthology fiercely protect their children from bullying and ostracizing, while performing a kind of internal reconciliation of their own feelings of doubt, fear, and deep-seeded disappointment.

Included among the many evocative profiles included in this superbly edited book are the difficult acceptance of a gender-questioning child as effectively rendered by a “hard-shell” Southern Baptist who submitted to Pepper’s project anonymously; revelations from a 60-year-old Kansas City former homemaker who is experiencing her own epiphanies in life in conjunction with her son’s; an 80-year-old Ohio mother who exNext page >>

Reserve tickets at CounterPULSE. org. Info at scottwellsdance.com.

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May 31-June 6, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 37

Film >>

Wherefore art thou, boychik?

by David Lamble

A

unt Ava, I don’t like how the story ended. Romeo and Juliet, we need a better story.”

“You want to negotiate Shakespeare?”

“Is it a crime?”

Trust director Eve Annenberg to sniff out a good story and then want to fix it, just a bit, like having the world’s #1 doomed couple have a future. The Julliard graduate who got a little splash of fame for her first budget feature, Dogs: The Rise and Fall of An All-Girl Bookie Joint, returns with a more ambitious farce with an equally memorable title, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish.

A thinly disguised vehicle for exploring one of America’s littleknown minorities hiding in plain sight – the teeming ultra-Orthodox communities, numbering up to a quarter of a million in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn – the film begins with a frustrated graduate student, Eve (Annenberg), struggling to produce an updated Yiddish translation of Romeo and Juliet. Wanting a version with modern slang that might tempt Orthodox kids to dip their toes into the Bard, Eve solicits the aid of two cute but distinctly shady Orthodox lads, Lazer (Lazer Weiss) and Mendy (Mendy Zafur), who spend their nights in a

stolen rental van and their days smoking dope and concocting credit card scams.

The characters will resonate with fans of the 2010 indie caper Holy Rollers, in which Jesse Eisenberg stars as a disgruntled young aspiring rabbi who stumbles into a drugsmuggling ring after his marriage plans are thwarted by his community’s fixers. Actually, renting Holy Rollers, with its more clearly articulated Orthodox Baedeker, might prove expedient for getting the full flavor out of Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish. The new film meanders a bit in the early going as the filmmakers introduce us to Orthodox lingo and practices while weaving in an updated version of the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. About midway through, the dueling plot-lines sync together, and we can enjoy the in-jokes that parallel Shakespeare’s warring clans with the often acrimonious relations between Orthodox and secular Jews, as well as the civil wars among Hasidim.

The Orthodox boys, drawn from life, steal the show with their indifference to their hunky God-given beauty, their odd mix of Yiddish, English and Yid-English, and their carefree, slippery ethics. Lazer Weiss’ dual role as peace-loving Yiddish Romeo and his own hippie-style self is

Scene from director Eve Annenberg’s Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish.

a revelation. The love scenes, tastefully and sensually disguised behind billowing curtains, are similar to the late queer British auteur Derek Jarman’s use of creative anachronisms to supplement a cash-starved production budget. As is true of many specialty films, a second viewing will reward those with the motivation to get through a first glimpse. While

not quite the breakthrough Peter Weir’s Witness proved for demystifying the Amish for a mainstream audience, R&J in Yiddish is a healthy dose of theatrically compelling PR, especially after the recent sordid New York Times revelations of cover-ups and bullying of witnesses in sexual molestation cases in the Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.

There is an easy-to-miss cameo of a gay male couple in the third act that could easily have been expanded. That said, at times Lazer and Mandy are so naturally affectionate and playful together that they constitute a kind of platonic couple – note their wonderful pranky antics piggybacking across the Brooklyn Bridge.▼

Stanwyck and Joan Blondell in Night Nurse that is “as sweetly and suggestively dyke-alicious a bit as any in Stanwyck’s career.” He is obviously a fan, but not a blind one.

I have rather more fond remembrances of Clash By Night, East Side, West Side, and Sorry, Wrong Number than he does, but his critical judgment is so well-informed and persuasive that I might have to take another look.

Stanwyck once said, “I’ve always had a burning desire to be the best of all, and though I know most things you dream of pass by you, I’ll go on working that same desire til the last role I play.” Indeed she

did, though a decline is in clear sight during her television years, from The Big Valley in the 1960s to The Colbys in the 1980s. Callahan can summon very few kind words for her small-screen career, Emmys notwithstanding. Once again, we benefit from Callahan’s good taste.

We lovers of Stanwyck would much prefer to remember her as Baby Face’s sexy opportunist, Double Indemnity’s black widow, or The Lady Eve’s irresistible temptress. In short, we want Stanwyck in vehicles worthy of her. We want her hissing and purring, sincere and ironic, her exact intentions forever clouded by a complex nature.▼

Books >>

Miraculous Barbara

by Matthew Kennedy Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman by Dan Callahan; University Press of Mississippi

I

recently gave myself the assignment of TiVoing Barbara Stanwyck films as they pass through Turner Classic Movies. I wanted to get a better feeling for her gifts as an actress, and see if she was as steadfastly good or great as I suspected.

The results are in, and time and again she comes through, making something interesting out of material beneath her. Breakfast for Two, B.F.’s Daughter, These Wilder Years, Lady of Burlesque, and No Man of Her Own are hardly immortals, but their common star is. She offered more depth of character with one arched eyebrow and a slightly offkilter line reading than anyone else in Hollywood. She willed herself into excellence when mediocrity surrounded her. As a result, her legacy is spectacular.

In Dan Callahan’s most welcome new book Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, he takes major risks. Billed as a biography, it more approximates a career memorial.

Chronology is loose here, as Callahan bundles Stanwyck’s films by genre or director, with particular attention paid to her work with Frank Capra, William Wellman, Billy Wilder, and Preston Sturges, and genre highlights in screwball com-

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Transitions previous page

presses pride in her “new son Sam”; and the amazing journey of western Pennsylvania’s Michelle Schnur, who, in addition to handling her son’s emotional and physical transformation from Heather to Damon, has also had to process her husband’s decision to change his gender, along with the death of her father and a breast cancer diagnosis.

Schnur’s incredible story, related in

edy, westerns, and film noir.

While The Miracle Woman largely dedicates itself to Stanwyck in front of the camera, Callahan gives us tantalizing asides. Her marriages to alcoholic Frank Fay and distant Robert Taylor are opaque.

Her right-wing politics are skirted, as is an association with artist Don Bachardy, Christopher Isherwood’s much younger lover. There is an intriguing May-September relationship with pretty boy Robert Wagner at the onset of his career, while her friendships, social life, and bouts of celibacy are noted in passing.

Callahan even pulled smiles out of this reader for insights not specific to his leading lady. His respect for Douglas Sirk, a director who has enjoyed a dramatic rise in reputation over the last quarter-century, is perfectly stated. And I empathize with Callahan’s need to announce Agnes Moorehead’s Aunt Fanny in The Magnificent Ambersons as “one of the greatest performances in film history.” Also appreciated are his admonishments of the modern film rep and DVD sales force that packages pre-Code titles as deliciously dirty old movies. Really, that line of marketing is awfully tired, though Stanwyck’s own Baby Face is probably the best exemplar of what he labels a “quasi-genre.”

Callahan soars when he takes aim at Stanwyck’s acting and films, so much so that The Miracle Woman’s primary value may be as

just six paperback pages (along with several other notable standouts) definitely deserves its own book!

Though brief (some disappointingly so), these true stories give a powerful voice to the transgender movement and resonate on a variety of levels, from emotional to psychological. Uniformly heartwarming and edifying, Pepper’s labor of love will prove enriching and galvanizing for parents currently in the throes of their own familial transgender odyssey. ▼

a friendly reference book to pull off the shelf every time you see a Stanwyck picture and wish to hear an erudite, witty voice offer much more than two cents. It’s cliché to call her the consummate pro, but there you have it. She not only showed up on time, submitted genially to make-up and wardrobe, knew her lines and hit her marks, she was also at her best on the first take.

But she was far more than merely reliable and hard-working. Callahan writes of her with the ever-present respect one shows a great artist, and The Miracle Woman is brimming with penetrating observations. She was “too honest and exploratory to fit into the house style” at MGM. In The Plough and the Stars, he notes that she “puts her full orchestral force behind the word ‘burned,’ so that it seems to explode outward like a shower of sparks.” In Ball of Fire, “We see a lacquered fingernail pounding out the beat to Gene Krupa’s ‘Drum d the nail Boogie’ on a curtain, and seems sexy, a little contemptuous, impatient. Even when she’s only acting with the fingers of one hand, Stanwyck manages to give a nuanced performance.” In All I Desire, “Stanwyck is so sensitive that she almost vibrates with barely controlled feelings.” She turned 30 in 1937, “and if something was lost in the passing of time – a certain vulnerability, a certain type of raw exposure – this loss was more than compensated for by gains in confidence and control.”

Callahan’s writing is often humorously piquant, hitting the reader like a lime spritz in a margarita.

He notes a bed cuddle between

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38 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 31-June 6, 2012

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Wisdom of youth T

he “ex-gay” movement, as it’s known, has taken quite a lot of hits in the press, primarily because it’s been proven repeatedly that praying the gay away doesn’t work. This short, very powerful documentary tells such a tale. The film is about Zach Stark, a likable teen in Tennessee who comes out to his parents. Their reaction is swift: against his will, Zach is carted off to Love in Action, a gay “rehabilitation” program run by John Smid, a Christian fundamentalist preacher.

The film primarily focuses on the local teen population. When Stark blogs about the abusive attempts to shame him, and others, into being straight, the kids organize. They park themselves outside of Love in Action’s headquarters and stage a noisy protest, demanding Zack’s release and an end to the program.

They attract major media attention.

Sprinkled throughout the film are interviews with a post-Love in Action, still gay Stark, and others who survived the program – not one of whom is “cured” (though one young man cites celibacy as an option for himself). Sometimes you have to laugh at the absurdity of it.

Smid’s techniques include not allowing residents to wear sandals without socks or listen to Broadway cast albums, as these are considered surefire signs of homosexuality.

More often than not, viewers will become enraged at the barrage of mental abuse that’s heaped on these kids in order to shame them into a life of heterosexuality.

Amazingly, Stark’s Dad, who speaks on camera, doesn’t come across as a villain, but as a poor, misguided soul who honestly loves his son and has no idea that harm is being inflicted. The portions of the film that deal with the protests outside the compound are inspiring.

It’s truly the wisdom of youth: strong, courageous kids stepping up to the plate to correct the errors of their elders. It should be noted that some of these kids are straight.

Intensely powerful and moving, Morgan Jon Fox’s film stands as a stunning indictment of a fraudulent movement, and of what can happen when LGBT people and allies work together. The com-

Lakki: The Boy Who Could Fly (Water Bearer Films) This Norwegian film was released in Europe around 20 years ago.

It’s only recently that it made its way Stateside via DVD. Lakki is an unhappy 14-year-old. His father is distant and uncaring. His Mom’s boyfriend, who’s also his gym teacher, is abusing him mentally and may be abusing him sexually.

No one is listening. No one cares.

Lakki descends into an underworld of drugs. He picks up a gay man under the guise of hustling, then beats and robs the man. He’s tormented, screaming for help.

Throughout the film, he imagines that he’s sprouting wings. He wants to, needs to, fly away. Lakki, an unwanted child, is struggling with his own identity. Though never clearly stated, there are hints that he may be gay.

Lakki: The Boy Who Could Fly was filmed on the cold, dark autumnal streets of Oslo, Norway’s largest city. It’s gritty stuff. Young Andres Borchgrevink gives a powerful performance, effectively conveying an anguish that many of us can relate to. We feel his pain, but we also watch the young man grow and learn from his experiences.

This is not a traditional film.

There is no linear storytelling.

Rather, the film offers various anecdotes from Lakki’s life to make its point: flashbacks to a younger, happier past are randomly interweaved into the film. Interestingly, the flashbacks are the only time that sunshine is seen in the film. The rest of the film is as heavily overcast as Lakki’s broken heart. (In Norwegian, with subtitles.)▼

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