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Castro fire
Sontag reexamined
ARTS
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Gay Chorus Deep South
Nightlife Events
The
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Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 49 • No. 47 • November 21-27, 2019
SF nonprofit to be AIDS quilt steward by Cynthia Laird and John Ferrannini Jane Philomen Cleland
T
he AIDS quilt – all 50,000 panels – will return to the Bay Area, under a new agreement that transfers stewardship of the mammoth AIDS memorial to the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco. Additionally, the Library of Congress will preserve the quilt’s vast archival collections in Washington, D.C. Details of the arrangement were announced during a news conference at the Library of Congress in Washington Wednesday morning. The quilt will be moved to a warehouse near the Oakland International Airport from its current location in Atlanta, John Cunningham, executive director of the AIDS grove, told the Bay Area Reporter in an exclusive interview Monday. Speaking by phone before leaving for Washington, Cunningham told the B.A.R. that the Names Project Foundation, current keepers of the quilt, had for some time been looking for a long-term permanent home for the AIDS memorial.
Dr. Alisson Sombredero, left, the new chief medical officer for the Community Health Center, was joined by Executive Director Lance Toma at a news conference Tuesday.
SF health center names medical officer by John Ferrannini
T
he San Francisco Community Health Center has named an HIV specialist as its new chief medical officer. Dr. Alisson Sombredero, who was introduced at a news conference Tuesday, November 19, said she remembers the moment she decided to go into HIV care. She was a 20-yearold medical student in Colombia. “I had a patient who was my age and he was dying from an opportunistic infection, and he was a gay man and had a partner,” Sombredero, a straight ally, said. “I needed to test the partner and when I came back to the patient’s room to give the news that the partner was positive, I thought to myself that I would not be able to forgive somebody for infecting me. “But what I saw was two beautiful men, in love, promising to be together and taking care of their disease together – and that made me realize that I always wanted to be surrounded with people like them,” she added. Sombredero, 38, headlined a meet-and-greet at the health center’s main office on Polk Street. Formerly known as the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, which was founded in 1987, SFCHC has grown from focusing on API clients to the LGBT community more generally, particularly transgender and HIV-positive people. SFCHC also has a clinic on the fourth floor of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center on Market Street. District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney was at the event, and highlighted the importance of the health center for the community. “This is a place where people can feel at home, be seen and understood and that’s critically important for health and wellness,” Haney said. “Dr. Sombredero has exactly the kind of background, knowledge, and commitment that the (health center) has long had.” After graduating in Colombia, Sombredero completed an internship in HIV and infectious diseases in Spain and worked at both Highland Hospital in Oakland and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She was most recently the chief of the HIV division of the Alameda Health System. Sombredero said she hopes to use her Oakland background to strengthen connections be-
The AIDS quilt was last fully displayed in October 1996 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Rick Gerharter
SFMTA looks to speed up J-Church
by Matthew S. Bajko
M
onday night the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency held a meeting in Noe Valley to present to the public its proposal for speeding up service on Muni’s notoriously slow J-Church subway line. The presentation kicked off at 5:30 p.m. Yet those downtown trying to make it to the meeting, held at a recreation center a short walk from a J-Church stop, left work that night to discover the next J-Church trains wouldn’t arrive for 28 to 30 minutes. They expressed their frustrations in text messages to District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, a gay man who represents most of the neighborhoods that the subway line traverses through on its route. “It is not functioning anywhere near close to how it could be functioning,” Mandelman told the Bay Area Reporter. J-Church trains, which carry 17,000 riders on weekdays, should arrive every nine to 10 minutes on weekdays and less frequently on weeknights – every 15-20 minutes – and every 12 minutes on weekends. But J trains are adhering to the schedule only 75% of the time. Since being elected in June 2018, Mandelman has been meeting with SFMTA staff to discuss ways to address the lackluster performance of the J-Church, which leaves the underground subway tunnel behind the Safeway shopping center on upper Market Street to turn left onto Church
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Rick Gerharter
Noe Valley residents check out information on proposed changes to the J-Church Muni line at a community meeting Monday.
Street. It then runs along the surface street through the Castro and Noe Valley before heading to Glen Park and its terminus at the Balboa Park BART and Muni station. “When we started down this process, I was hoping to see some game-changing solutions that would make the J work,” said Mandelman. “These may be good improvements – I think many or all of them are – but we are still looking for the game-changer.” As part of its J-Church Improvement Project,
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SFMTA plans to approve a slew of quick fixes next year. It has proposed timing several traffic signals along Church Street to benefit the trains and turning a four-way stop at Cesar Chavez and Church Street into a traffic light stop. It is looking to remove the inbound stop at 30th and Church streets – which is roundly opposed by residents in the area – since there are several other stops a short walk away. And it is reviewing if J-Church trains can travel faster than See page 12 >>