September 22, 2011 (Folsom Street Fair) Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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

Deviants’ fair returns to Folsom Street

Biker ethos kick-started Folsom scene

by Tony K. LeTigre

A

round the beginning of September when the black and blue flags go up, everyone knows it’s that special time of year again: two months of sunlight and a whole lot of leather.

On September 25 Folsom Street between 7th and 12th streets will be cordoned off for the Folsom Street Fair, as it has been for 27 years now, since “Megahood” started it all in 1984.

Many of Folsom’s attendees simply enjoy the fair for what it is today, without pondering its evolution through the years, or the South of Market neighborhood conditions that led to its creation.

The gay male leather culture that hangs on today in SOMA and peaked in the preAIDS era has its roots in motorcycle clubs and marooned sailors and waterfront bars of the 1950s like Castaways and the Sea Cow. The first leather bars popped up in the Tenderloin, and were usually short-lived and subject to police harassment: The Spur Club, Why Not, and The Hideaway were all raided and closed between 1959-62.

Author, anthropologist and leather historian Gayle Rubin, in her essential 1998 essay “The Miracle Mile,” traces the roots of

by Tony K. LeTigre

M

ore than 400,000 people from around the world attend the Folsom Street Fair each year, making it the largest leather/ fetish event in the world and the third largest outdoor oneday event in California.

Only San Francisco’s Pride Courtesy Jack Fritscher celebration and the Rose Parade Author in Pasadena top Jack Fritscher it in number of participants, but you can’t be flogged in public for charity at the Rose Parade.

“One of the great things about the leather

Doug Mezzacopa gives a celebratory cheer as the leather flag is raised on the flagpole at Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro, kicking off a week of activities culminating in the Folsom Street Fair this Sunday.

Rick Gerharter

today’s gay male leather culture back to sailors and bikers: queer men who confounded the prevailing notion of homosexuals as effeminate and easily identified sissies.

“If gay male leather can be said to have a core meaning, it would have to be masculinity,” Rubin wrote, adding that

See page 13 >>

Eagle Tavern site set for change

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he owner of the site of the former Eagle Tavern in San Francisco is working on replacing the famed leather bar with another business.

The fate of the shuttered space, at 398 12th Street, is unclear. However, landlord John Nikitopoulos has filed an application with the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to transfer a license from another business to the former Eagle site.

Nikitopoulos, who signed the paperwork August 17, hasn’t responded to the Bay Area Reporter’s interview requests.

The Eagle Tavern, well known for Sunday afternoon beer busts that raised money for numerous LGBT organizations over the years, closed in April after a rent dispute between Nikitopoulos and the bar owners.

Many, including members of the Board See page 12 >>

Vol. 41 • No. 38 • September 22-28, 2011

the motorcycle, more than anything else, symbolized that masculinity.

“Homomasculinity” was the word coined by Drummer magazine editor and pop-culture polymath Jack Fritscher to describe the gender expression of masculineSee page 10 >>

Service members come out post DADT repeal

by Chuck Colbert

J

ust past the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, Sept. 20, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the nearly 18-year-old ban on openly gay military service, became history.

Now currently serving gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members, both active duty and reserve, are at liberty to come out without fear of being discharged solely for being gay.

One soldier who has come out is Sergeant 1st Class Carmen Everinghman. A combat medic, the thirty-something California native, presently stationed in Sacramento, has seen duty stateside and overseas, including a deployment in Afghanistan, where she saved a Navy chief’s life. Altogether, Everingham has served for 14 years in the Army and plans to make it a career.

“Many, without my saying anything, knew about me; they knew I was gay,” she said.

Everingham is not only out. She is way out.

A member of OutServe, an association of more than 4,000 actively serving LGBT military personnel, Everingham is featured in OutServe Magazine’s September 20th repeal issue. There, she is spotlighted in the publication’s third edition with a bio and photo - along with those of 100 other LGB men and women.

“We could not be more proud of this magazine and the opportunity it gives us to

educate and inform all service members - gay and straight - about who we really are,” stated Air Force 1st Lieutenant Josh Seefried, codirector of OutServe, until now known by the pseudonym “JD Smith.” “There is so much misinformation out there about the LGBT community and as we begin a new day for the American military, OutServe Magazine will be a vehicle to tell our stories and a way of helping all of us understand each other better. As of today, we can speak up for ourselves honestly, so the troops on either side of us can understand, we have more in common than you might imagine.”

Recently, the magazine launched an interactive website (www.OutServeMag.com) where readers can share articles via Facebook and Twitter and order both digital and print versions of the publication. The website also includes videos and member blogs. In addition, the Army and Air Force have given permission to distribute the magazine at limited base exchanges.

“Profiles of currently serving people is how OutServe chose to celebrate September 20,” said Sue Fulton, the association’s communications director, an Army veteran and West Point alumna.

Pretty much, “the day was business as usual for active duty,” Fulton said.

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

courtesy of Carmen Everingham

Army soldier Carmen Everingham came out this week.

Meanwhile, during a recent telephone interview, Everingham said she “loves” her job and Army life.

“I love the morale within units,” she explained. “I am a hard worker and do my job well and get a lot of respect.”

Out to family and friends since she was 18, Everingham enlisted under DADT. “I pretty much grew up in the Army,” she said.

“I loved it so much that I was willing to stand by the whole ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”

She is half Filipino on her mother’s side and half English and Italian on her father’s.

Everingham was raised in a “warm” close-knit family. Her father is a retired Air Force veteran.

See page 12 >>

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

<< Community News

▼ Police probe gay man’s death

by Seth Hemmelgarn

P

olice are investigating the death of a gay San Francisco man whose body was found in his Franklin Street apartment.

San Francisco homicide Inspector Richard Martin said it appears that Clyde “Leo” Neville, 51, was beaten to death in his unit at Derek Silva Community, 20 Franklin Street.

Neville had last been seen on July 31 and his body was found August 3.

A website about the building describes it as low-cost apartments for low-income people who are living with disabling HIV/AIDS. Family members described Neville, who had AIDS, as being friendly despite having a drinking problem.

Asked if there are any leads or suspects, Martin said, “We’ve got some things that we’re working on,” adding police are “very hopeful” of resolving the case.

There were no signs of forced entry and Neville’s body was found partially clothed. Martin said it’s possible Neville was killed after hooking up with somebody, but he wouldn’t say much more about the circumstances leading up to the death.

He did say police believe the suspect is somebody Neville brought home. Police are looking into whether theft was involved, and Martin said he doesn’t believe Neville’s death was the result of a hate crime.

He wouldn’t say what had been used to beat Neville, who weighed about 250 pounds. DNA and other evidence are being tested while police review video footage. Martin wouldn’t say what the footage shows or where it was taken.

Neville’s nephew Anthony Harris, 44, who lives in Los Angeles, said he couldn’t understand why it’s taking so long to find out who was last with Neville. He said surveillance cameras should have at least captured anyone

Courtesy of Anthony Harris

Clyde “Leo” Neville

he brought into the building.

On its website, Mercy Housing California lists Derek Silva Community as one of its properties.

Requests for interviews with the building’s manager and a Mercy staffer weren’t returned.

Mercy Housing spokeswoman Gail Bransteitter did email the Bay Area Reporter a statement in which she said the nonprofit extends “our sincere condolences to the family and friends during this difficult time. The safety and well-being of our residents is our primary concern.”

She said Mercy is cooperating with law enforcement officials and engaging Derek Silva residents to address their concerns. Since police are investigating the incident, the nonprofit couldn’t provide further comment.

Both Martin, the homicide inspector, and Harris said the building’s management has been “very” cooperative.

Harris said his uncle was born in New York but estimated that he’d lived in San Francisco for more than 20 years. It’s unclear how long Neville had lived at Derek Silva.

He called Neville a “bubbly, cheerful person.”

“If you knew my uncle, you loved him,” said Harris.

Neville had been dealing with loneliness, said Harris, and liked to drink, especially Steel Reserve 211 and brandy. But that didn’t appear to diminish his friendly nature.

“You could tell he was gay, I guess, but not really. But when he got drunk ... he’d start telling you how cute boys were,” Harris said.

He said his uncle had a habit of meeting other gay men, “and then wanting to take them home. I kept trying to explain to him ... ‘You can’t just take people home any more,’ [but Neville] did what he wanted to do,” Harris said.

Harris also said Neville had been in the U.S. Air Force, “so he wasn’t afraid of anybody.”

Dorothy Greene, Neville’s 79-yearold aunt, said that despite the best efforts of his mother, Neville wouldn’t go to church. However, she said, he’d been “very excited” about the Black Brothers Esteem program offered by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and indicated that he’d attended their meetings regularly. “He was a nice boy,” Greene said. “... He called his mother just about every other day,” she said.

Neville’s mother is in a nursing home and could not be reached for comment.

Greene said that Neville was a drinker like his father but was also honest. She said he was always “particular” about the people with whom he associated.

“God bless his soul,” she said.

Neville’s funeral is set for today (Thursday, September 22) at a veterans’ cemetery in San Joaquin, California, according to his family.

Anyone with information regarding the case may call Martin directly at (415) 553-9183.▼

NLGJA joins Unity

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is set to be included in Unity: Journalists of Color Inc. after the two groups’ boards recently agreed to a partnership.

NLGJA’s mission to advance the interests of LGBT journalists is consistent with Unity’s work to ensure that U.S. newsrooms and news coverage reflect the diversity of the communities that they represent, according to a statement from the organizations.

NLGJA President David Steinberg stated that joining Unity would help his organization “further its goal of fostering fair and accurate coverage of LGBT issues in the news media and encouraging newsroom diversity.”

Unity President Joanna Hernandez stated, “We are delighted that NLGJA’s board has voted to accept our invitation to join the Unity alliance.

Our alliance will be stronger with NLGJA on board. It expands our mission to embrace diversity broadly, which is a logical progression for Unity.”

The move comes following the decision of the National Association of Black Journalists’ board to withdraw from Unity. But the group’s membership has since asked its board to reconsider the decision.

According to NLGJA Executive Director Michael Tune, the organization’s 16 members voted unanimously Saturday, September 17 to accept Unity’s invitation.

In response to emailed questions, Priya Barnes, a spokeswoman for

Unity, said that group’s 12-member board “voted in the majority to invite NLGJA.” However, she added, “We are not releasing specific votes because Unity is compelled to act in unison on a majority vote and our priority now is celebrating the new partnership and planning for the [August] 2012 Unity convention in Las Vegas.”

During the next year, Unity aims to continue and generalize its focus, which traditionally has been to ensure that newsrooms reflect their communities’ racial and ethnic diversity. The organizations feel a broader focus will strengthen efforts to advocate for specific types of inclusion, whether it’s racial, ethnic, or based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Joining Unity will allow NLGJA members to participate in a broader discussion of issues that affect LGBTs, along with other benefits. The agreement also will allow NLGJA to participate in the Las Vegas convention.

Representatives from the groups plan to meet in the coming weeks to formally execute an agreement giving NLGJA full membership in Unity, including appointing four members to the board of directors.

The organizations will have a chance to reassess the partnership after 12 months. “…Many major decisions are embedded in this partnership, such as whether we should change our name and what the financial allocations should be,” Hernandez stated.▼ More News Briefs are online at ebar.com.

▼

Community News >>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Water set to return to AIDS grove

by David Duran

W

ater is set to start flowing again through the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Overseers of the landscaped dell have broken ground on the restoration of one of the original 100-year-old Victorian waterfalls, known as the “Falls,” in the public open space. At one time the area originally known as the De Laveaga Dell included three waterfalls cascading into a creek at its western boundary, according to grove officials.

Today there is only one remaining waterfall and the adjoining Dry Creek. Family and friends of Frances McCormick, a mechanical engineer for the city who specialized in the improvement of public water systems, spearheaded the revival of the aquatic feature.

McCormick died on April 25, 2010 while scuba diving in the waters of Monterey Bay. Her wife and daughter, Lisa and Isabel Cohn, visited the grove to remember McCormick and decided to help restore the waterfall as a tribute to her.

The restoration project, a partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, is located in the western end of the grove in the Circle of Peace. It is the culmination of a long-awaited goal of returning water to the memorial.

A ceremonial groundbreaking took place Saturday, September 17 during a ceremony that marked the grove’s 20th anniversary.

Joining hundreds of volunteers and community leaders for the ceremony were former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos and grove co-founder Alice Russell-Shapiro.

Both presided over the original 1991 launch of the grove, which is located at the corner of Middle and

David Duran

AIDS grove Executive Director John Cunningham, left, grove cofounder Alice Russell-Shapiro and former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos break ground on restoring a waterfall in the AIDS memorial.

Bowling Green drives.

“We stood together here 20 years ago in what was basically an unwanted part of this park to break ground for what has become a hallowed place,” recalled Agnos. “It’s also a delight for me to stand with outstanding young public officials who carry on and do even better than those of us who started back in the day and carry cudgels of social justice of what is right for everyone in the community and the state.”

Each year on September 17, known as Founders Day at the Grove, volunteers gather to reflect, heal, and remember all those whose lives have been touched by AIDS. On the volunteer day, workers plant trees, shrubs and assist with the maintenance of the grounds.

Preceding this year’s ceremony, volunteers and friends gathered to form a large circle, holding hands, and recited names of friends and loved ones lost to the AIDS epidemic.

Twenty years ago, 1-in-25 San Franciscans were living with HIV and 1-in-50 had an AIDS diagnosis.

“On this day, 20 years ago, this space was completely different from what it looks like today,” said John Cunningham, the grove’s executive director. “This space was very similar to what was going on in the San Francisco community. It was devastated, had lost hope and needed life. And over the past 20 years, this space has been transformed.”

The grove was designated the National AIDS Memorial Grove in 1996, in large measure because of the leadership of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

President Bill Clinton signed the bill creating the grove into law, which elevated the greenspace to be of the same stature as the nations’ other 43 federally designated memorials.

Pelosi was unable to attend last weekend’s event but recently participated in a community volunteer workday at the grove with her grandchildren. In a statement, Pelosi said the grove’s significance is similar to that of Mount Rushmore and recognizes the leadership See page 6 >>

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<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

Volume 41, Number 38 September 22-28, 2011 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 • Raymond Flournoy David Guarino • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McDonagh • 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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DADT repeal, while welcome, is no panacea A

ll week since the stroke of midnight September 20, gay, lesbian and bisexual service members have been breaking out of the closets Republican congressional leaders and then President Bill Clinton imposed on them back in 1993 with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

The images and stories have been particularly moving. The Vermont marriage of Arizona residents Navy Lieutenant Gary Ross, 33, to partner of 11 years, Dan Swezy, 49, sparked coverage nationwide. The Youtube video of Air Force Senior Airman Randy Phillips, 21, of Alabama coming out to his father became an Internet sensation.

“For more than two centuries, we have worked to extend America’s promise to all our citizens. Our armed forces have been both a mirror and a catalyst of that progress, and our troops, including gays and lesbians, have given their lives to defend the freedoms and liberties that we cherish as Americans,” noted President Barack Obama, who signed into law the bill repealing DADT. “Today, every American can be proud that we have taken another great step toward keeping our military the finest in the world and toward fulfilling our nation’s

founding ideals.”

Outside San Francisco City Hall Tuesday afternoon Retired lesbian Navy Commander Zoe Dunning joined in a community celebration of DADT’s repeal after being a vocal opponent of the anti-gay policy for years. She told reporters she welcomed no longer having to be the voice for gays and lesbians in the various military branches who could not speak for themselves due to DADT. Keeping those service members quiet has had a damaging effect on how the public conceives the LGBT community. As Nathaniel Frank, Ph.D., a senior research fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Palm Center wrote this week, “One of the most insidious and effective - dimensions of the gay ban was that it deprived the world of witnessing gay people giving back, serving their country, exhibiting the same valor and self-sacrifice as their peers.”

The right wing has been, and continues to be, fixated on gays in the military, noted Frank, because DADT’s repeal shatters the myth they have created that LGBT people are self-centric and obsessed with sexual pursuits rather than serving the greater good and helping society.

For that reason alone, the death of DADT marks a watershed moment for LGBT rights.

Make no mistake: While DADT’s repeal is surely a welcome step forward in our long march toward full LGBT equality, it is by no means a panacea. Transgender individuals are still barred from joining the military. And while gays in the military can express themselves freely without fear of dismissal, they remain secondclass citizens among the troops.

Like their civilian counterparts, LGB military personnel are still denied the roughly 1,138 rights and privileges that come with federal recognition of marriage. DADT may be gone but the antigay Defense of Marriage Act still stands and laws such as the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act remain waylaid in the GOP-controlled House.

Obama’s retreat from backing marriage equality while a lawmaker in Illinois has dampened support for Obama within the LGBT community. Despite his reluctance to expressly support same-sex marriage, he has ordered his administration to pull back on enforcing DOMA as it is challenged in the courts.

And this week’s events should serve as a stark reminder of what is at stake in next year’s presidential election. Should the GOP reclaim the White House and gain greater control of Congress, it is very likely Republican extremists will push for re-instatement of DADT as well as roll back various pro-gay policies Obama’s administration has enacted.▼

Straight recruit welcomes DADT repeal

by Jesse Lee Mechling

S

ociety, an entity that thrives through cultures, expanding to borders, oceans, mountain ranges, and the indentations of continents, has always had its flaws. In American history, something of relevance is our unique military. Today it is still considered the greatest in the world, and when you truly let that sink in, you can envelope all the perceptions that the world has created and sought to make sense of that.

In every aspect of our military we seem to reign supreme from modern weaponry, drilling, technological advancement, aerospace dominance, cohesive tactics, and the long dwelling support for our troops that stems into every aspect of our American lifestyle.

We generally take care of our soldiers with the utmost respect and they seem to belong on a pedestal all their own. As a nation we understand that life is extremely precious and it takes strength, willpower, and dexterity to serve for our country’s interests and to protect our way of life.

In reality, however, there was a centuries old government failure that has destroyed lives and caused permanent damage to families and to our military. This agenda, unbeknownst to many Americans, is the stigma and discrimination against LGBT people in the military.

In history the first man to be discharged from the U.S. military was Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin in 1778 for sodomy.

As decades passed by, the military considered homosexuality a mental disorder and, besides being discharged, LGBT soldiers were also imprisoned, court-martialed, and marked as people to be harassed and beaten for the greater good.

During World War II the common classifications for discharge through the military for being homosexual were “blue discharge” or “general” and “undesirable.”

Years after WWII, a horrific event occurred, the gruesome beating of Navy petty officer Allen R. Schindler Jr., sparking criticism of how the military handles discrimination and attacks against homosexuals.

In 1992 Bill Clinton became president, the first president to actively oppose barring gays from military service. He sought to remedy the situation by repealing all legislation that stops LGBT individuals from joining the U.S. military. Through conservative politicians who would never see this happen and Clinton’s own weak willingness to compromise, he ended up signing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in an effort to create bi-partisanship.

Instead, all it did was make liberal-minded people look weak and made discrimination legal in a U.S. institution, an oxymoron as the U.S. has always prided itself as a nation that ended segregation and actively fights against racial discrimination and the inequality of women in the workplace.

Rick Gerharter

Jesse Lee Mechling

This piece of legislation never seemed to be fought over again; even though it had successfully destroyed positions in the military that were filled by gay and lesbian people, the most notable being over 54 Arabic translators and 750 decorated officers in critical occupations. To this day DADT has discharged over 13,500-plus gays and lesbians from serving their country in the name of the greater good.

Time and time again studies had proven that militaries who allowed gays and lesbians to openly serve did not have any lower ratio of troop morale, damaged unit cohesion, a decline in membership, or any problem whatsoever that would actually affect the military in a negative way. The irony of this is that this legislation, a disgusting piece of our legal system, poured hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars into discharging Americans just like us and creating more psychological trauma to people who served this country and who still do in the name of our people.

It caused more harm than it ever did good to people who protect us and risk their lives to make sure our little piece of the world survives and thrives to its fullest potential. They were scared to be who they are, stopping them from enjoying the leisures of being free.

It has torn away their civil right of free speech and their ability to share the 5th Amendment with everyone else. With DADT our government had written another discriminatory chapter into our country’s history books and today it has finally come to an end.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” affected us all, whether through the millions of family members who are part of the U.S. military or through the millions of people who never agreed with it. The majority of Americans,

liberal and conservative alike, never vouched for this discrimination, and it was ultimately enacted through bigotry and hate for LGBT people in our trusted government.

It never deserved to be in our legal system in the first place, and for me to be joining the military in the upcoming months without this piece of legislation is a breath of fresh air and a relief for me knowing I will be going into a proud institution to help defend my people, our people, from fear and hatred.

In tomorrow’s military, we will join the tens of countries who allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and I’m proud to say we will move on and carry our efforts to end bigotry and discrimination forever. When every American begins to finally open up their windows to see that the world still suffers from such things, perhaps one day all this hate will end and justice will be brought in the name of our people.

LGBT people are citizens just like the rest of us, even when we as a nation allowed injustices and attacks against them that will permanently stain our society for the years to come. They persevered and proved time and time again that they deserve the respect and loving care that the rest of our military embraces.

I’m joining the United States Air Force as a straight LGBT activist, who will live among other people like me who took the step not many can take, and I will be sharing this joyous occasion with all my brothers and sisters.

Whether gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, of different race, creed, nationality, or heritage; I will support them all.

In the end humanity thrives when we work together positively to evolve to move closer and closer to perfection. Even though we may never meet that epitome of society, I will always be fighting, and I will always be strong for the people who can’t be.

The fight is far from over, and I will continually push for legislation to protect our fellow military personnel from harassment and any other form of danger. Ending DADT was only the beginning of a huge change that will be happening in the military, and it may be a long journey ahead.

But I ask all of us to unite and work together, so that we can meet our common goals to bring humanism back into the picture for the military. Shall we stand together to live amongst the greats of old who made us the people we are today? Or will we idly stand by and let others do the work for us?

The latter will never make our dreams a reality, and I ask that we all progress ahead with the might that we all possess, to truly create change for the better. ▼ Jesse Lee Mechling is a 19-year-old military recruit and straight LGBT ally from Martinez, California currently waiting for an assignment to the U.S. Air Force.

▼

Letters >>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Nudists are obnoxious Mark Snyder should seriously reconsider his views on total public nudity in the Castro [“Nudists deserve thank you from gays,” Mailstrom, September 15] - or in any other public place. As has already been pointed out by numerous others, this is not about civil rights, free speech or “liberation.” It’s about obnoxious people pushing the envelope in the most pathetic, infantile way they can think of.

In 5-year-olds, it’s cute; in 50-year-olds, not so much.

Perhaps there is a reason why virtually every human society, now and in the past, has adhered to the use of some kind of clothing on so-called adults. Among other qualities, it can conceal one’s shortcomings, enhance one’s assets and generally contribute to one’s sexiness - if done right.

If these guys (and, significantly, they’re all guys; I haven’t seen any women among them … curious) want to parade in the altogether, there are places for them to congregate among themselves. But that’s not what they’re about.

It’s about shock tactics, it’s ridiculous - and no, Mark, it’s neither “brave” nor does it do a “great service to our queer community.” In fact, far from it!

Frank Brooks San Francisco

Criticism of Herrera misplaced The proposed Edward II housing development, which will house up to 24 “at-risk” youth is an excellent project that the city should approve. But as any housing developer - private or nonprofit - will tell you, getting a project approved in San Francisco - any project, no matter how worthy - can be challenging even for the most patient of developers. So it is perhaps understandable that the Edward II developers have turned their ire against City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose job it is to make sure that in considering a project the city complies with each and every legal requirement under state and local law [“Herrera criticized in housing fight,” September 15].

Their frustration may be understandable, but it is thoroughly misplaced. Herrera cannot, consistent with his role as city attorney, take a position in favor or opposed to this particular project; he certainly cannot allow his personal opinions about the project to change the way his office discharges its duties.

The job of his office is to ensure that when the Board of Supervisors does finally approve this project, as I strongly hope it does, opponents cannot challenge the city for having deprived them of their rights under the California Environmental Quality Act or any other law.

The frustrations of having to wait a few more weeks to get their project before the Board of Supervisors would, frankly, be dwarfed by the costs of defending a CEQA challenge in court.

As city attorney, Herrera has been an ally to renters and affordable housing activists in many battles, most notably the long-running fight against Citi Apartments. He has also shown himself to be an official of integrity, who doesn’t play fast and loose with the law to benefit powerful people or even popular causes.

These are some of the reasons why Herrera has earned the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, the United Educators of San Francisco, the San Francisco Democratic Party (# 2) and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club (#2), as well as former Mayor Art Agnos, former Senator Carole Migden, and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (# 2).

Rafael Mandelman San Francisco

Evans news obit one-sided I’m disappointed in your article about the death of Arthur Evans [“Gay pioneer Arthur Evans dies,” September 15]. Your statement that “Mr. Evans was a complicated man, working for gay liberation in its earliest days, but supporting local quality of life measures to the consternation of progressives in his later years” implies a contradiction where there is none. He repeatedly argued that safe neighborhoods should not be a left or right issue and he was correct.

The gay “leaders” you approached for comments on his life were one-sided and offensive, for example, slandering Mr. Evans by comparing him to Ann Coulter. It saddens me to see so-called progressives copying the tactics of the right in demanding adherence to doctrinaire views and vilifying those who disagree. Why didn’t you seek out other viewpoints?

To his credit, whether Mr. Evans was fighting right-wing homophobes or being attacked by left-wing dogmatists, he had the strength of character to trust himself and not care if he was holding an unpopular position. What a role model.

His greatest legacy, that will outlive all the posturing, is this: There may be others who were as instrumental as Mr. Evans in launching the modern gay liberation movement, but very few more so. He was a brilliant strategist, forcing the establishment to yield to our demands for justice by making it easier for them to give in than to refuse.

For that first generation of gay activists after Stonewall, he was an inspirational orator. Every victory we’ve enjoyed in the last 40 years - repeal of the sodomy laws, anti-discrimination protection, same-sex marriage, etc. -

is a result, in part, of the courage, brilliance, and passion for justice of this good man.

Hal Offen San Francisco

Evans recalled as “delightful” I was fortunate to meet Arthur Evans a few years ago through mutual friends. I found him an intelligent, gentle and delightful person. I have admired his taking a stand on issues and writing letters to the editor.

I have not always agreed with him, but I respect his views. I particularly appreciated his concern for his own neighborhood and its livability.

I found the article on his death dreadful. It seemed more important to tell who disagreed with him than to tell his story, which finally showed up in the latter part of the article. In reporting anyone’s death, I think it is important to tell their story first, but this article seemed more like editorializing than reporting the story of his life.

Richard Hewetson San Francisco

Evans will be missed I just read the Bay Area Reporter’s unique, mostly “self penned” obituary of gay historian and infamous neighborhood activist Arthur Evans. I don’t believe I ever met Mr. Evans, but we exchanged colloquial and occasionally barbed emails on neighborhood issues in the Haight when I lived there.

I will certainly miss his perspectives, and had nothing but respect for the elder who was an irreverent, irreplaceable, intellectual and controversial curmudgeon.

San Francisco is a place where the word “diversity” gets thrown around a lot, but to me Mr. Evans was truly an embodiment of an intellectual dichotomy that really helped make it so. His viewpoints could be “liberal” and “conservative,” “merciless” and “concerned.” He was interested in “personal freedoms” and “preserving law and order.”

I suppose for people used to seeing things only through their myopic rose-tinted advocacy lens, he was likely infuriating.

On his passing, I mourn not so much the man, as the fact San Francisco will never have a chance to get a radical reality check from anyone quite like him.

Mike Martzke Oakland, CA

Castro flag meant as artwork First, to Gilbert Baker in his letter last week, thank you for remembering the small part I played in getting his rainbow flag work of art installed in the Castro [“Flag creator weighs in,” Mailstrom, September 15].

Second, it might be useful to reflect on the genesis of this work of art. Gilbert approached Mayor Willie Brown at the Castro Street Fair in 1997 and quickly got his enthusiastic support (thank you Mayor Brown!) for installing a monumental rainbow flag artwork at Market and Castro.

Mayor Brown was a big supporter of public art at the time - remember the giant peace sign Stanlee Gatti tried to install with Brown’s support in the Panhandle, gateway to the Haight and Golden Gate Park?

Gilbert is an artist, albeit very much a political artist, and the flag piece in the Castro is one of his most significant works.

So as this debate about the flag and flagpole simmers, the first question should be what is it and why is it there? Is this a community flagpole that some appointed or elected group of neighborhood or community deciders control running this flag or that flag up or down, half mast or full mast?

Or is this a work of art as everyone involved acknowledged when it was installed?

Consider the implications of each view. If this is just a flagpole, then any flag can potentially fly. As a totally hypothetical example, if at some future date the Irish reclaimed the Castro (one thing is certain right now, the dequeering of the Castro shows no signs of abating), does the Irish tricolor then fly from the pole? Why not? Presumably they would have the community/neighborhood backing to do so and it’s a flagpole that belongs to the community.

Or, if as originally conceived and intended, the flagpole is a significant piece of art - highly political art, but art nonetheless - then the integrity of the artist’s vision should be maintained. I think Gilbert made his position clear in his letter last week.

For myself, I do think there is something to be said for a monumental art piece in the center of San Francisco and the heart of the Castro by a queer artist (who is also a legendary queer activist) that memorializes the queer community that emerged in this city and in the Castro in the latter part of the 20th century.

I also think the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro should be applauded for their hard work over the years in maintaining this important work of art.

Jeff Sheehy San Francisco

Correction Due to incorrect information, a seminar for LGBTs on estate planning featured in the September 15 News in Brief column will be held Wednesday, October 19. The online version has been corrected.

www.ebar.com

<< Commentary

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

▼

Bureaucratic Identity

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith asily one of the most challenging and difficult things for a transgender or gender variant person to deal with is government paperwork. No matter what we know we are, what our friends and family may know us as, and in some cases, regardless of any medical intervention, we still have to deal with what the government says we are.

It can be a difficult process to get such paperwork updated in the case of a gender transition. Some areas will not update your paperwork to reflect a gender change without a letter from your doctor claiming you had genital reassignment surgery. Even if you update with one agency, you may still have to get updates from any number of others - and their rules may not be the same as any other place you visit.

The needs of the DMV vary from state to state, and differ from the Social Security administration, the U.S. State Department, and any number of other agencies. Some may require you to provide documents from schools, employers, and others, which may require changes in paperwork from any number of private entities before getting official paperwork updated.

In the worst of cases, you might have an experience like Amber Yust, who received a letter from the clerk who handled her name and gender change paperwork at the California DMV in 2010. The letter told her that her “very evil decision” to change her gender would lead her “straight to hell.”

For those who prefer to avoid the male or female dichotomy altogether, you can quickly find this impossible when it comes to the government. In most cases, gender is not an “opt out” on government forms. The REAL ID act, passed in 2006, mandated standards for state driver’s licenses that required a gender designation be present - but also did not give much in the way of allowing for changes or updates to same.

While REAL ID remains controversial and many states have pushed to block implementation of

Christine Smith

E

same, gender remains a common constant for most paperwork. You simply have to choose one or the other.

In short, it can be a frustrating, humiliating, and even frightening experience.

I count myself somewhat lucky.

While I’m sure there are still bits of paperwork floating through the byzantine labyrinths of the federal government that list me as male - and may even show a name long-since discarded - the majority of my paperwork is clear as to what my name is and what gender I am. School records as far back as my elementary school days reflect my correct name and gender, and I’ve a wallet full of things that show who I really, truly am. I also know that I may be more fortunate than most.

With all this in mind, there’s been a whole lot of news lately – Google’s insistence on “real names” to use their Google+ social network notwithstanding - that encourages me.

For one, Amber Yust, who I mentioned above, received a $55,000 settlement for her case against the State of California and Thomas Demartini, the former DMV employee who wrote to her. Let’s hope that this will help keep the private information of people like Amber where it belongs: private.

Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration has reversed a policy from the Bush administration that required the SSA to send a “no match” letter to employers if the gender on an employee’s W-2 form did not match Social Security records. In 2010 alone 711,488 “no match” letters regarding gender were sent.

The policy change means that transgender people who may still have an old gender marker erroneously floating around with the SSA will not face possible outing and other difficulties on the job.

The SSA, however, still requires a surgical letter to get a gender marker

<<

AIDS grove

From page 3

countless San Franciscans provided over the last 30 years toward combating the AIDS epidemic.

“We have all been here pulling weeds and planting trees, dedicating names in the Circle of Friends, looking out over pink umbrellas and observing World AIDS Day, but we have always been here with mixed emotions,” stated Pelosi. “With deep sadness over those who we have lost but also with the great spirit of renewal that only something like the grove can bring about fresh new life coming forth.”

The wooded haven is the only federally designated AIDS memorial in the country. What once was a run down swamp area of the park is now one of the most beautiful and

changed, which can and will be an issue for those who cannot obtain surgery, or who simply do not want such. For that matter, if you do not want any gender designation, you will still be out of luck with the SSA - or other US state and federal bureaucracies.

Which leads to one more ray of sunshine, this time from down under.

Marcelle, a transgender woman from Canberra, has caused the Australian passport office to reverse their decision to reject her application to change her passport to reflect her female gender.

When she initially did this, the Australian passport office resisted, claiming that her birth certificate said she was male, and that she did not meet “humanitarian guidelines.” In her appeal, it was revealed that there were no such guidelines, and she has been granted her passport.

With her victory, Australian policy for passports is changing, meaning she and others will not have to present a letter from a medical practitioner for their passport.

Perhaps more importantly, those who do not identify with male or female will be able to check an “X.” This is one of the first modern instances where gender has been wholly optional via a government.

Will we see this in America?

A little more than a year ago, U.S. Passports changed to provide a physicians’ certification for gender change declaring the applicant had “undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.”

It does not require any certification that the applicant had undergone genital reassignment surgery, which is a big change from the past. It’s still not a move away from gender altogether, but it is a step in the right direction.

It will still be a long trek to get past gender markers altogether, but it’s a start. The SSA changes are another baby step. Let’s hope for more in the future.▼ Gwen Smith still has her elementary school diploma.

You can find her on the web at www.gwensmith.com.

important areas of Golden Gate Park, boast grove supporters. Over the past two decades, 18,000 individuals have contributed over 120,000 volunteer hours to convert the park and maintain it.

Newer volunteer Mark Huebmer, who was introduced to the community workday events through the Bears of San Francisco, said he pitches in to maintain the grove because “it’s a service to the community, which is important so that people have a place to go and it helps the park look nice as well.”

Construction on the Falls is expected to last through the end of the year. Water is slated to return to the rock-lined streambed by early winter; a celebration is being planned to mark the occasion.

For more information visit www. aidsmemorial.org.▼

▼

Politics>>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Day for gay vet goes unmarked

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

oday, Thursday, September 22, is Oliver W. Sipple Day in the city and county of San Francisco. It is the first time the late gay disabled vet has been publicly honored for saving President Gerald Ford’s life.

During a visit Ford made to San Francisco September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore nearly killed the president. Standing nearby in Union Square as Moore took aim at Ford with a gun, Sipple intervened and is credited with thwarting the assassination attempt.

His quick thinking brought him national attention, as did the fact he was gay, which was leaked to the news media by the late gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. His outing devastated Sipple and led to his estrangement from his family. He was found dead in a Tenderloin apartment February 2, 1989.

City leaders adopted the resolution creating Sipple’s day earlier this year. But most residents are unlikely to know about today’s honor for the former Marine and Vietnam War veteran.

Neither openly gay Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the legislation creating the special recognition for Sipple, nor Mayor Ed Lee, who signed it into law, plan to host any ceremony to mark the occasion.

The failure to do so has irked Allen Jones, a gay black man who pushed to see Sipple be honored. While thankful city officials created the special day, Jones nonetheless is upset that more isn’t being done to celebrate it.

“I made the mistake of resting when I thought San Francisco was going to express appreciation for what Oliver Sipple did with a little more style and class. Therefore, I will not rest until everyone who visits our City Hall will know that Oliver Sipple saved the life of a sitting president,” Jones told the Bay Area Reporter this week.

Unsatisfied with the one-day honorific for Sipple, Jones is now pressing to see a historical marker be installed on the sidewalk across the street from the Westin St. Francis where Sipple saved Ford’s life. He also has suggested a larger plaque detailing Sipple life and heroism be installed at City Hall and has tried to recruit the San Francisco Giants into marking Olive w. Sipple Day next year.

Sipple’s story needs to be told to LGBT youth in need of role models and heroes within the LGBT community, said Jones.

“The reason it is so important to me is personally, for more than 40 years, I’ve walked around with this shame of being a homosexual,” said Jones, adding that when he learned about Sipple’s actions that day 36 years ago,“It really meant a lot to me.”

Mayors race goes lavender LGBT residents are about to feel the love from a number of candidates seeking to be San Francisco’s next mayor as the race is going to take on a decidedly lavender tint over the next few days. For those wishing to avoid the political courtship, it might be best to steer clear of the Castro and South of Market gayborhoods this coming week.

The outreach efforts to LGBT voters kicks off tonight with a candidate meet and greet hosted

Oliver Sipple

by the San Francisco Police Department’s Pride Alliance.

Joining the contenders for City Hall’s Room 200 will be candidates for sheriff and district attorney.

The event is open to the public and free to attend. It starts at 6 p.m. at Castro bar Trigger, located at 2344 Market Street.

This Saturday, September 24 Supervisor John Avalos’s mayoral team will be swarming the Castro as it canvasses voters. Queers for Avalos will be stationed at Church and Market on the sidewalk in front of Safeway starting at 11:30 a.m. that day.

Sunday attendees at the Folsom Street Fair will likely run into several of the campaigns and candidates amid the sea of leather aficionados and fetish gear wearers.

Monday night the mayoral candidates have been invited to the LGBT Community Center to take part in a debate focused on water issues. It begins at 6:30 p.m. and is hosted the Bay Area Water Stewards group.

Next week, gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) will co-host a fundraiser for Avalos along with the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and Queers for Avalos group. The event takes place from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, September 29 at Limon Restaurant in the Bayview, 5800 3rd Street at Carroll. Attendees are asked to make a suggested donation of $25.

“John has shown the leadership we need from our mayor on every major issue facing our city - creating jobs, building affordable housing and ensuring that San Francisco has a world class education system,” wrote Ammiano in an email sent out by Avalos’s campaign. “I trust John’s values, and I am proud to endorse him for Mayor.”

And a mayoral debate focused on HIV and AIDS issues is being planned for sometime in October.

The same groups that hosted a similar forum with supervisor candidates last year are trying to find a date that works.▼ Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check www.ebar.com Monday mornings around 11 a.m. for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reports on a lesbian jumping into the race for a San Fernando Valley Assembly seat.

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.

<< International News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

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Pangaea opens new Oakland office

by Heather Cassell

W

ith the opening of the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation’s new offices and a Health Equity Summit in Oakland, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D) hopes her hometown will take center stage in efforts to reinvigorate the United State’s ongoing role in the global efforts against the spread and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Her efforts to attract international HIV/ AIDS organizations to Oakland have brought both Pangaea and the headquarters of the Global Forum on MSM and HIV to the East Bay city.

“What I’m trying to do is connect the domestic crisis with the international crisis,” said Lee. Pangaea Chief Executive Officer Ben Plumley, 44, noted that the problems “we have here are exactly the same we have around the world.”

“The Bay Area has an extraordinary history on the leadership on HIV, which makes it an extremely logical place for us to be,” said Plumley, a gay Englishman.

Dr. Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines, added, “Global is not far away, global is local and international together. In today’s world it is a global village,” he said.

With a budget of $4.5 million, Pangaea split from its parent organization the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 2010. It considers itself a sister organization to SFAF, said Plumley, whose salary is $250,000.

Along with an international focus it has projects in Cambodia, China, Tanzania, and Uganda among other countries - Pangaea also funds local programs.

It recently launched a project focused on late testing among African American and Hispanic populations that continue to be disproportionately affected by the epidemic. It teamed with the California Prevention and Education Project (CAL-PEP), La Clinica de la Raza, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Alameda County Public Health Department Office of AIDS on the project.

Pangaea recently won a $400,000 two-year grant from the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health to support local efforts and research Oakland’s HIV/ AIDS epidemic. Alameda County ranks fourth for AIDS and seventh for HIV among California’s top 10 HIV/AIDS populations, according to the California Department of Public Health.

According to Alameda County’s Public Health Department, the reported rate of HIV in African American men is 48 percent, while it is 12 percent for Latino men. The rate of AIDS in black men is 65 percent and 14 percent in Latino males.

Another grant Pangaea won from an anonymous donor is geared towards mobilizing access to

treatment and improving quality of drugs, diagnostic tests, and health systems.

Pangaea’s efforts globally and locally are timely as researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine found that young gay men of color aren’t taking their medications, or, perhaps worse, their health care providers weren’t prescribing medications, reported The Body September 7.

“Oakland has an epidemic that is much closer to African cities.

It disproportionately affects the poor rather than middle-class, white, gay males.

It’s really centered in the Latino and African American communities,” said Plumley.

Piot compared the Bay Area’s HIV/AIDS epidemic to its famous microclimates weather-wise, as the issues Oakland is faced with differ from those across the bay in San Francisco.

“In Oakland … in many respects looks more like what we are seeing in some parts of the world like Africa,” he said.

Piot and Jeffery O’Malley, director of the U.N.’s HIV/AIDS Group, were among the world HIV/AIDS leaders who came to Oakland this month to take part in the Health Equity Summit September 16 and the Global Commission on HIV and the Law town hall meeting on September 17.

The September 16 opening of the new headquarters for Pangaea, which means “one world” in Greek, also celebrated a number of recent actions and victories led by Lee on behalf of global efforts to maintain awareness and to remain vigilant against HIV/ AIDS. The day prior saw the launch of the first ever Congressional HIV/ AIDS Caucus.

Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Washington), co-chair of the new HIV/AIDS caucus, joined Lee and Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-California) at the Pangaea event last week. Lee also belongs to the 50-member bipartisan caucus, whose purpose is to foster a new generation of leaders in the fight against HIV and AIDS. It also will examine the U.S. response to the epidemic both at home and abroad.

Two years ago Lee helped repeal HIV travel restrictions into the U.S. allowing for the International AIDS Conference to return to America for the first time in more than 20 years.

Next summer more than 20,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries, along with more than 2,000 journalists, will convene in Washington, D.C. for the global AIDS summit. Scheduled to take place July 22-27, it is headed up by the International AIDS Society, a worldwide independent association of HIV professionals.

Lee plans to have a strong contingent from Oakland at the conference, she said.▼ For more world news, see ebar.com.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

<< Folsom Street Fair

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

<<

▼

Folsom scene

From page 1

identified leathermen.

Gay motorcycle clubs started with the Satyrs in L.A. in 1954.

The Warlocks and the California Motorcycle Club, both San Franciscobased, soon followed. The first CMC Carnival in 1966 marked the inception of a social institution for the emerging leather scene, continuing to the birth of the Folsom Street Fair.

“Leather culture was constructed on a discreet circuit of bike runs, bars, back rooms, and the annual autumn orgy of the CMC Carnival,” wrote Fritscher in his essay on the first Folsom, “Leather’s Burning Man.” Rubin identified the opening of the Tool Box on Harrison Street in 1962 as the catalyzing agent of the leather scene “South of the Slot,” as SOMA was called in the old days.

Tool Box featured Chuck Arnett’s legendary mural epitomizing the homomasculine ideal of the gay leather set and garnered national attention, including an infamous Life magazine spread in 1964 that crowned San Francisco the nation’s “gay capital.”

The Life exposé largely conflated “homosexual” with “criminal pervert,” but made some astute observations, including the objection of “homophile groups,” like the Mattachine Society and the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, to the military’s practice of dishonorably discharging known queers from its ranks. (In case you thought the now repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” started with Clinton.)

A police raid on a dance at California Hall on New Year’s Eve in 1965 has since been branded “San Francisco’s Stonewall” for the way it galvanized not only the nascent gay rights groups but also mainstream public sentiment through media coverage and the judicial system against police prejudice and abuse of power.

Fair nights in the valley So began the feast of the kings, a latter-day Bacchanalian orgy when, in the words of San Francisco recording artist Donald Currie, “Gays took over, and we turned the city into a bathhouse.”

Febe’s opened on Folsom Street in 1966 and long reigned as the leading gay biker bar. Mike Caffee’s iconic “Leather David” served as the bar’s logo. One elegist in the 1996 treasure trove Gay by the Bay recalled Sunday afternoons at Febe’s as “a massive grope-a-torium where anything happened.”

The Stud, eldest surviving statesman of the scene today, opened the same year as Febe’s. It started as a leather bar with a Hells Angels crowd but had morphed into a hippie haven by the time of Woodstock, complete with dance floor and psychedelic blacklight mural.

All through the 1960s and on into the superlative 1970s new bastions of the leather kingdom sprang up: Bathhouses and sex clubs (The Barracks, The Plunge, The Sutro Baths, The Catacombs), shops and galleries (A Taste of Leather, upstairs at Febe’s; a leather shopping mall called Big Town; Fey-Way Studio, the first gay art gallery), groups and events (The Warlocks’ “Witches Christmas,” CMC Carnival, the Satyrs’ annual Badger Flat Run).

And a plethora of bars joined the

Rick Gerharter

Participants at the 1990 Folsom Street Fair check out the scene in front of the Powerhouse bar on Folsom Street.

At the same time that the Miracle Mile was coming into its own, an antithetic current was flowing through the neighborhood, a trend of “slum clearance and urban renewal.”

Folsom Street Fair co-founder Kathleen Connell, together with LGBT historian Paul Gabriel, penned an in-depth history, “The Power of Broken Hearts” available at folsomstreetfair.org/history, that document-

ed the SOMA anti-gentrification movement.

Connell and Gabriel chronicled how neighborhood activists organized against ruthless developers and government agents that regarded the neighborhood as an example of “urban blight” and traced the way that movement led to the genesis of the Folsom Street Fair.

In 1980, while working for the South of Market Alliance, a neighborhood advocacy group, Connell met and befriended fellow gay activist Michael Valerio, who was also the assistant director for Tenants and Owners Development Corporation.

Valerio and Connell found common ground in their support for low-income families, artists, senior citizens and the gays in SOMA, and in their desire to incorporate their “gay selves” into their work.

The neighborhood was threatened by the encroachment of high-rise development, and the gay men’s community was under attack by a new plague first identified in 1981: AIDS. Connell and Valerio decided to launch a SOMA fair as the best resistance against the powers that would destroy (or displace) them.

“In addition to community preservation, we were making a big statement about the AIDS crisis, and trying to raise funds as there were no social services to speak of at that time,” Connell told the B.A.R. From their efforts came “Megahood,” the first Folsom Street Fair, in 1984. “South of Market Sizzles in September” promised a headline in the June/July 1984 edition of the South of Market News, a neighborhood paper whose hype helped insure a good turnout.

In the beginning Folsom was not explicitly a sex or leather event, but the gay leather scene was a significant presence from the start. Drummer endorsed the first fair, albeit with some misgivings.

“Leatherfolk anxiety ran deep in Orwellian 1984, rightly suspicious of event producers purposing leather for fundraising parallax to the way Harvey Milk started the Castro Street Fair to sign up voters,” Drummer editor-in-chief Fritscher recalled.

Up Your Alley Street Fair, which started in 1985 on Ringold Street, was a dedicated gay leather event from the beginning. Ringold is an alley south of Folsom between 8th and 9th onto which a number of the leather bars exited. It wasn’t the fair’s home for very long.

Connell’s history recalled, “Ringold is a residential alley, and the neighbors, while tolerating dead-inSee page 13 >>

Hopke, Wesley Sabren, Julie Brown Modenos, and Peter Gudd attended him during his final days. His mother Ida Sroka, father, as well as all of his brothers and sisters survive him.

Born in Chicago, he worked 22 years for the City of San Francisco at the Department of Social Services, as principal clerk at the Tom Waddell Health Clinic and at the Office of Vital Records. He was Richard’s best friend, hero, and Knight in Shining Armor. Carl was well known on Castro Street where

his many acquaintances, including local residents, shopkeepers or friends and clients would stop and chat. To walk with Carl in the Castro was to be introduced to a continuous stream of new faces.

At Christmas Carl would purchase and distribute hamburgers to people on the street. Carl had a strong sense of justice, spoke truth to power, and would fiercely defend his employees. He is loved and sorely missed. His husband suggests a contribution to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

scene. To name just a few: Off the Levee, Ramrod, the No Name Bar (known by many names over the years, presently Powerhouse), the Trocadero (where Sylvester performed), the Bay Brick Inn (a lesbian pleasure palace), Folsom Prison, the Black and Blue, the Red Star Saloon.

A spreadsheet maintained by the GLBT Historical Society lists 211 different names of gay bars, bathhouses, and related businesses in SOMA, past and present, though some are multiple names for the same location.

The SOMA scene, in particular the bars grouped on and around Folsom Street in the vicinity of the present-day street fair, also acquired nicknames, sociological markers of a legend-in-the-making: The Miracle Mile, Valley of the Kings.

The former name was bestowed by the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, the latter by “Mr. Marcus” Hernandez, first Emperor of San Francisco and longtime B.A.R. leather columnist before his death in 2009.

“Valley of Kings conveyed an image of powerful, cocky, independent, and sexy masculinity,” Rubin expounded.

“It contrasted with Marcus’ nickname for Polk Street, ‘The Valley of the Queens,’ in reference to the older and sometimes more effeminate population of gay men associated with the area.”

The Castro was “The Valley of the Dolls,” in reference to its “hordes of young and beautiful men” (in Rubin’s words) as well as its pharmaceutical drug culture, “dolls” being old-school slang for pills.

Circa 1971 the bandana or “hanky” code entered currency as a discrete way for leathermen to communicate their orientation and kinks. The first International Mr. Leather conference was held in Chicago in 1979, spinning off locally the Mr. San Francisco Leather Competition, as well as the Mr. Drummer Contest sponsored by Drummer magazine.

Mr. Drummer led to the inception of San Francisco Leather Pride Week, as Rubin discussed in her heartfelt essay “Elegy for the Valley of the Kings.”

Miracle on Folsom Street

Obituaries >> Carl F. Gerhardt Jr. January 26, 1958 – September 2, 2011

Carl Gerhardt died from liver cancer at home on Friday morning, September 2 in the company of Richard Kadel, his life partner of 22 years, and husband since August 6, 2008. His friends Mark

▼

The Sports Page >>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Games need transparency

by Roger Brigham

A

n unprecedented teleconference call this weekend could provide an animated preview of next month’s Federation of Gay Games annual meeting in Toronto.

Put together, the phone call and the annual meeting may serve as a kind of unofficial “vote of confidence” on how well the FGG’s decision to change its organizational structure is playing out five years later.

Delegates and former members of the FGG have been invited to take part in two conference calls this Saturday, September 24, to discuss the status of talks toward producing a modified Gay Games in 2018.

The subject of the “One Quadrennial Event,” which is what folks who have lobbied for the end of the duel between the Gay Games and the World Outgames have taken to calling their envisioned event, is scheduled to be covered on the final afternoon of the FGG’s annual meeting, October 22-25. It is the sole topic listed for the conference call this weekend for delegates and Honorary Lifetime Members.

This is the first time the FGG has ever scheduled a massive group call with its current and former members. If the m e m b e r- s u b m i t t e d motions thus far for the annual meeting and the vocal concerns of a lot of longtime Gay Games supporters are anything to go by, both the phone call and the annual meeting could be highly charged, emotional affairs.

Just under eight years ago in 2003, Montreal organizers walked out after two years of bellicose negotiations to host the 2006 Gay Games. Montreal then established the rival World Outgames and created the Gay & Lesbian International Sports Association to oversee the awarding of future WOGs. The inaugural WOG was a financial disaster, losing more than $4 million. After the subsequent WOG in Copenhagen in 2009 finished in the black but drew a disappointing number of athletes and insufficient numbers for quality tournaments in the smaller, individual sports, calls accelerated for an end to future World Outgames.

No longer unchallenged as the premiere global LGBT sports, the FGG examined what went wrong and accelerated the overhaul of its organizational structure. In 2006 the FGG formally adopted the bylaws that transformed it from a flat membership structure in which every member was on the board, into a two-tiered membership assembly that votes on who serves on a smaller working board.

As a representative from Wrestlers WithOut Borders, I was one of the key instigators behind the structural change. The goal was to achieve a more stable board without the massive overturn the assembly was prone to: a board that could listen to what the members wanted and execute the plans necessary to achieve it. What I and most other supporters envisioned was an organization in which two-way communications between board and constituents - total transparency - became more critical than ever before.

As most of my repeat readers have long ago gleaned, I do not think that is quite what has happened.

Individually I have no complaint with the members of the board.

With only one or two glaring exceptions, all have treated me with respect and courtesy and I consider them friends. I even believe that at

Former FGG President Sion O’Connor

a broad strokes level, they want the same things as the FGG membership organizations.

But the discussions with GLISA, an organization founded to challenge the LGBT sports oversight model on which the Gay Games were built, have been held over the course of the past year without FGG membership being kept up on the substance of discussions, issues to be evaluated, or asked for thoughts.

And as every public statement ever to come out of GLISA has insisted on inclusion of conferences in any joint venture (which has proven to be a costly venture at the expense of sports participants in the past) and been essentially dismissive of the FGG approach to sports event management, there has been a very natural distrust building among longtime Gay Games supporters - a distrust that has only deepened with every mention of tinkering with the name of the Gay Games itself.

Initially the FGG scheduled the teleconference for a week earlier before postponing the calls. In announcing the latest phone call invitation, the FGG sent out emails and posted a message on its membership discussion regarding the 1QE talks.

In addition to outlining the number of meetings the FGG representatives to the 1QE discussion group have held, the message stipulated, “Gay Games X will take place in 2018 based on FGG principles and values. The proposed event name is: Gay Games X |4th World Outgames: Together 2018. The 2018 sports requirements will be based on a recommended proposal from the FGG Sports Committee and will follow the FGG model of working closely with international federations, both LGBT and mainstream. There are absolutely no plans or discussions to merge FGG and GLISA. At this time, no approvals or agreements on any 1QE 2018 proposals have been finalized. Before the FGG is prepared to commit to 1QE 2018, the General Assembly will be asked to endorse any proposals or documents to be issued - as agreed at the Annual General Assembly in Cologne 2010.”

But that generic summary of the discussions for some Gay Games supporters has raised more questions than it answered, and with the deadline last week for submitting motions for this year’s meeting falling before the assembly review of 1QE talks, a rash of motions were submitted which are likely to take those discussions head on.

I drafted a blanket motion for WWB calling for the unaltered continuation of the Gay Games name; adherence to the sports and cultural focus from past Gay Games; FGG support for continental Outgames outside of North America and western Europe; resumption of

the full EuroGames calendar; FGG retention of exclusive site selection rights to future Gay Games; and relegation of any sports-themed human rights conferences to an external, tertiary role.

Sion O’Connor of London’s Out for Sports, a former FGG president, took a more piecemeal approach, drafting individual motions calling for term limits on FGG board members, calling for adherence to existing cultural and sports event requirements; continued branding of the event as the Gay Games; the directors to reaffirm they are respecting the legal requirements of the non-profit organization; an 87.23 percent share of control for the FGG in any ventures with GLISA based on the relative inequity of the resources they bring; detailed updates on discussions every two weeks; and allowance of more motions to be brought up once the assembly has had a chance to review the 1QE discussions.

While those motions collectively represent growing distrust in the current membership, just as or more disturbing is the unease growing among longtime supporters from Gay Games past. Reports are circulating that a number of key Gay Games supporters who have had the Gay Games in their estate wills are rethinking their bequests because of the suspected straying from the Gay Games brand and mission.

This weekend’s conference call is a nice touch and hopefully a first step toward getting leaders and supporters back on the same page.

But it will only serve to move things forward if the leaders can listen and respond to the concerns of the groups and individuals before they lose interest and leave the Federation to it’s ▼ For more Jock Talk see ebar.com.

ebar.com

<< Community News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

Eagle Tavern

From page 1

of Supervisors, have expressed a strong interest in seeing the 12th Street site maintain ties to the LGBT community.

John Gardiner and Joseph Banks, doing business as the Hole in the Wall Saloon Inc., still own the Eagle liquor license and are willing to sell it, but anyone buying the business would have to find a new location.

Nikitopoulos’s application to transfer a liquor license from Vimla Inc., doing business as the 16th Street restaurant El Rincon, is pending.

His ABC application, which the agency provided a copy of to the B.A.R., indicates that Nikitopoulos, doing business as Double Rainbow LLC, is willing to pay up to $70,000 for the El Rincon license. Vimalaben C. Yadav and others associated with the restaurant couldn’t be reached for comment.

John Carr, a spokesman for the ABC, couldn’t say how long it would take for the license transfer to be approved.

Part of the process will be a review by the city’s Board of Supervisors, including a stop at the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee. A date doesn’t appear to have been set for that hearing.

In April, Supervisor Jane Kim whose District 6 includes the Eagle space - along with out gay Supervisors Scott Wiener and David Campos sent the police a letter asking them to closely scrutinize any transfer of the liquor license for the bar.

In an interview this week, Kim said she’s not sure what Nikitopoulos’s plans are. She said she’s tried contacting him, but he hasn’t responded.

Kim said she’d “keep an open mind as this comes back to the board and talk to community and neighborhood folks about what they’d like to see in that space ... and how they’d like us to proceed.”

She said she isn’t planning any forums but there will be a hearing when the license transfer goes before the neighborhood services committee. She said the license issue “is not something we’d legislate, but something we hope would come from the community.”

Like others, Wiener said he hasn’t heard of anyone formally protesting the transfer application.

In an interview last week, he said he’s waiting to see what the proposal for the establishment is, but he expressed disappointment in what’s happened so far.

“There was an opportunity to save the Eagle and to have very responsible management come in who would have kept the Eagle alive, and if the owner is now proposing a liquor license transfer that will mean the end of the Eagle, I’m going to be very skeptical of that,” Wiener said.

The supervisor was referring

Former patrons expressed their sense of loss over the closure of the Eagle Tavern shortly after the South of Market gay bar closed in April.

Rick Gerharter

<<

▼

to Ron Hennis, the Eagle’s former manager, and Lila Thirkield, owner of the lesbian bar the Lexington Club, who at one time were in escrow to buy the bar before Nikitopoulos nixed the deal.

Hennis said this week that after the Eagle closed, he and others had been working on reopening the bar in the same space, but he wouldn’t say with whom he’d been working. There’s currently “no communication” with Nikitopoulos, he said.

Asked if he would formally protest the license transfer, Hennis said, “Well, I don’t know. It’s really a hard situation, because you have a person that owns property that has a legal right to have a business on it.”

Landlord’s complaint In mid-April, Nikitopoulos filed an unlawful detainer complaint in San Francisco Superior Court claiming that Gardiner and Banks owed almost $18,000 in rent on the bar. Gardiner denied owing Nikitopoulos rent.

Gardiner and Banks have surrendered their liquor license for the Eagle, which expires September 30, to the ABC. Carr said after the expiration, the license could be reactivated, but not at the 12th Street location.

“They have up to one year after the surrender of their license,” Carr

<<

DADT repeal

From page 1

“He is one of my biggest supporters,” she said, along with “my mother, brothers and sister.”

From personal experience, said Everingham, there is no evidence that the presence of out gays in the Army hurts morale or undermines unity cohesion.

“I think the military will be fine,” she said. “I don’t think there will be a lot of commotion post ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

“Strong leadership” is key to ensuring transition of the armed services into a new era, said Everingham.

“We’re here to enforce the new era for everybody regardless of rank, gender, or sexual orientation,” she said.

Everingham said she chose to come out so that her military colleagues understand she is no different than any other service member except for one quality.

“I want people to understand that I’m just a normal person but have a different sexual orientation. I am the same person who will do anything to save your life,” she said. “I also want people to understand that just because you are gay, it doesn’t mean you can’t do your job.”

After all, explained Everingham, “the whole point of military life is to do your job” and fulfill “your obligation” to serve “your country.”

Despite being nervous about her decision to come out, Everingham hopes by doing so she can make a difference in someone else’s life.

“My goal now is to take care of soldiers who are not being taken care of,” she said.

Out marines, too Corporal AJ Garcia, a Marine Corps rifleman, is another gay service member who has come out. Like

said in an email. “There are instances when a license can be re-activated even beyond a year of the date they surrendered the license if the department finds good cause for reactivating the license.”

Gardiner wouldn’t say how much they’re asking for the business, but at one point, they wanted $300,000 for the entire package, which Gardiner said would include the license, the Eagle name, and original artwork from the bar.

“If somebody was serious and wanted to find a place and do this, we would be more than willing to help them out,” Gardiner said.

Currently, though, he said, “Everybody wants it, but nobody’s very serious about it.”

Glendon Hyde, who’s also known by his drag persona Anna Conda, had been active in trying to save the Eagle but recently joined the city’s Entertainment Commission.

“Unfortunately, I kind of have to divorce myself,” said Hyde.

He still has criticism for Nikitopoulos, however, saying the landlord “obviously” doesn’t understand the bar’s historical significance, “nor does he seem to care. It’s kind of sad.”

Gardiner said anyone interested in buying the Eagle’s liquor license can reach him at john@hitws.com.▼

Everingham, Garcia has also come out in a big way. He is featured in a cover story in the September 19 issue of Marine Corps Times.

“We love. We bleed. We cry. We fight. At the end of the day, we’re people, too,” Garcia told the weekly publication. “And we want respect.”

The Marine Corps Times piece has been out in print for nearly a week, with its front-cover headline, “We’re gay. Get over it.” Immediately, the cover and story drew strong reactions.

More than 700 people have responded to the piece on the publication’s website.

One person named Mike wrote, “The cover makes it sound like all Marines are gay.”A staff sergeant wrote, “Nothing against homosexuality in the military, but the perception your cover gives about the entire Marine Corps is truly shameful.”

And yet, the Times’ piece covers a range of topics, including, close quarters - showers and the barracks - unit cohesion, and life after DADT. In a phone interview Marine Corps Times editor Tony Lombardo said the idea for the story came from a couple of Marines who are gay.

“They wrote into us and expressed their feelings about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ They were willing to come in and speak with us,” said Lombardo.

Over the course of several weeks, he said, “We had some really interesting interviews,” both in person and over the phone.

“There hadn’t been a lot in the press about the perspective of gay Marines, how they were feeling,” Lombardo said. “We wanted to have that perspective, and that’s what the story has.”

For the most part, many Marines are going to be pretty cautious, predicted Lombardo.

Initially, he said, “Some may tell an inner circle of friends and then broaden that.”

See page 13 >>

▼ <<

Folsom Street Fair >>

Folsom scene

From page 10

the-night activity, did not take kindly to this sudden explosion of leather and fetish men and women on their street. They successfully petitioned the city and the SFPD to rescind the granting of a license for a third year.”

If the move seemed a setback at first, the fair survived and then some.

Around 12,000 people - mostly gay leathermen - attend Dore Alley, as locals now know it, the last Sunday in July.

Panic at the bathhouse The Folsom Street Fair sizzled, but the SOMA leather scene fizzled. It was AIDS, of course, that killed the party.

The “Gay Cancer” triggered a wave of homophobic panic and revulsion directed at leathermen in particular.

Feast abruptly turned to famine.

The Castro survived to become the international attraction it is today, but the Folsom scene fell into permanent disrepair. The Castro’s core was politics, which were fanned to a blaze by the AIDS crisis; but the core of Folsom was sex, and sex lost its infrastructure when the bathhouses closed.

Bars closed, too. Tool Box had been torn down in 1971, a victim of redevelopment. A large fire in 1981, starting at the former Barracks, destroyed many homes and a number of key establishments. By the mid80s, as the effects of AIDS intensified, leather bars began dropping like dominoes.

When Febe’s closed in June 1986,

<<

Deviants’ fair

From page 1

community is the creativity and openness around sexuality and selfexpression,” said Jacob Richards, president of Folsom Street Events, during a recent coffee date with the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s not specific to the fair, but the fair is a wonderful celebration of this aspect of the community.”

Folsom is just one day, but there’s plenty of buildup.

It starts the last Sunday in July with Up Your Alley Street Fair – Dore Alley, in common parlance. Last Sunday, September 18 saw Mama Reinhardt’s Family lead its annual Leather Walk (now in its 20th year) to fight AIDS and breast cancer. The Leathermen’s Discussion Group holds a Fetish Fair.

Preceding the main event this Sunday, September 25 is Leather Pride Week: seven salacious days of film screenings, discussion panels, spanking parties, motorcycle rides, and a formal dinner, climaxing with the world-renowned street fair.

For some, kink is confined to just one weekend of each calendar year or their tourist photos of San Francisco.

To others it’s a pervasive hobby, even something approaching a philosophy, code of conduct, or way of life.

<<

DADT repeal

From page 12

Indeed the Marine Corps Times has struck a raw nerve. Last year, when the Pentagon surveyed troops about repeal, the Corps - more than any other service branch - was the most opposed to open service. More than 60 percent in combat arms specialties, for example, said out gays in the unit would negatively affect cohesion.

Similarly, 43 percent of Marines overall said unit cohesion would suffer if gays served openly.

Marines’ opposition to DADT, said Tammy Schultz, an openly gay professor at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia, may well be based on a “rigid warrior ethos.” As she told the Times, “Marines have an almost uber-warrior mindset.

The commandant has even spoken of this. They recruit based on that

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

“Even the TV news covered it,” as recollected in Geoff Mains’ 1989 novel-elegy Gentle Warriors, which provides a poignant look back at the Miracle Mile’s heyday in the form of a “last motorcycle ride” through the ailing bar district.

Partly due to the toll of AIDS, the producers of Up Your Alley merged with those of the Folsom Street Fair in 1990, and it was around this time that the official posters and promotional images for Folsom became overtly “leather-ized,” as they had not been previously.

One of the many casualties of AIDS was Michael Valerio. He had gone on to form other community organizations and win various awards before succumbing to the disease at the age of 40. The B.A.R. Rick Gerharter printed his obituary in 1995.

The bathhouses remain closed Men sport fetish wear at the 6th annual today: the legacy of public policy- Folsom Street Fair in 1989. makers swayed by hysteria and a virus we’ve learned to manage but not eradicate. A prowling sex fiend think that’s much less healthy than must cross the Bay Bridge and head having a private room with a bath that to Steamworks in Berkeley for a club you can wash up in - or the public with private rooms. It seems the state showers at the baths.” of affairs of the mid-80s persists in the Queer scholar Greg Jones, 36, mainstream LGBT community to this who has written on bondage and day, a watershed shift away from open sadomasochism in ancient Greece, and unbridled sexuality. recalled, “When I first moved to the What does this mean for a city in 1998 people were still smoking demographic whose defining trait is pot and giving each other blowjobs in sexual orientation? the back of the old Hole in the Wall.

“I understand the panic back in But the last time I tried to get frisky the day, but now most sex clubs don’t there the bartender came round and have proper cleaning facilities - aside scolded us. from bathroom sinks,” said B.A.R. “Now there are signs in bars, leather columnist Scott Brogan. “I literally posted every 5 feet - especially

during Folsom Weekend - that yell ‘No sexual activity!’” added Jones.

(Wicked Grounds Cafe now occupies the space of the original Hole in the Wall, which has moved a couple blocks away to 1369 Folsom St.) Former Lone Star Saloon manager Steve Hoffman, 46, said proprietors are caught between patrons who want Folsom to live up to its lascivious past and health and law enforcement officials reacting against that same reputation.

“I can see the customer’s point of view, but I definitely understand the owner’s perspective too, because if you let people have sex in the back room and get busted, you lose your liquor license,” Hoffman explained.

Just such an incident caused the closure of My Place, formerly the Ramrod (1225 Folsom St.) The space re-opened as Chaps II in 2008. (The original Chaps was located where the DNA Lounge is now.)

No one would suggest that sex itself is seriously endangered. But what about the leather community?

“It’s obvious the leather scene isn’t as strong as it used to be,” said Hole in the Wall bartender Miguel Chavez.

“And bars can’t survive if they cater to people who only go out once a month.”

That explains the re-branding of Chaps II as Kok in spring 2011. Lone Star changed management and most of its staff in 2010, alienating some.

(Hoffman hasn’t been there since the change.) Most recently, the Eagle

Tavern closed last April after nearly 30 years, ending a long tradition of Sunday afternoon beer busts that drew a diverse crowd including fetishists of all flavors. [See story Page 1.]

(El Rio now hosts a beer bust called “The Eagle in Exile” on the first Sunday of every month - 3158 Mission St. at Precita.)

Hoffman said that “leather” today has broadened into a catch-all term for kink in general, encompassing a profusion of fetishes – bears, military gear, sportswear, golden showers, exhibitionism, varieties of bondage and discipline. Furries, anyone?

The Leathermen’s Discussion Group, which meets the 4th Wednesday of every month above Blow Buddies (933 Harrison St.), held a panel discussion in July with historian Rubin as a panelist that asked, “Is Leather Dead?”

“The leather community has become more privatized, and its ability to occupy public space in the Folsom has become more limited and occasional,” Rubin wrote on the subject. “However, the Folsom is still a magnet, a piece of sacred ground, and a powerful symbol.”

Brogan attended the July discussion and described it and Rubin as “a blast.”

“The hanky code and leather uniforms in the old days were ways of letting people know what you were into,” Brogan added. “It’s true that things are much more open and accessible these days. Some might say too much so, but I believe things evolve naturally and there isn’t anything to do about it except to enjoy the ride.”▼

“The leather/fetish/kink community is made up of people of all genders and sexual orientations,” Richards explained. “But the different parts of the community often don’t interact very much with each other.

The great thing about Folsom is that it brings them all together, in a celebratory public space.”

In 2008 Richards curated a 25th anniversary exhibit at the GLBT Historical Society that explored the history and evolution of the Folsom Street Fair. He has been on Folsom’s board of directors since the end of 2005; this is his second year as president.

This year boasts an official Folsom after-party, Deviants, taking place near the fair site at Public Works (161 Erie St.) and continuing all through the night.

Deviants had a trial run in 2010.

It is expected to take off this year, with the help of collaborators Hard French, Some Thing, and Honey Soundsystem.

“We are really excited about the new direction for Deviants this year,” said Richards. “It will kick off at 3 p.m. with a block party that keeps the bigtent celebratory feel of the fair going.”

Richards added this will be the 6th consecutive year when Folsom will have a dedicated women’s space,

Venus’ Playground on Ninth Street.

“The space was created because of requests we’d been getting from the community. Women wanted to be able to find their friends, to escape from the crowd and have a safe space of their own,” he said.

The fair, in the opinion of some, has become tamer than in years past, in the sense of less overt sexuality.

Recent years have seen police push for a crackdown on public sex acts, and fair organizers have been stricter in enforcing rules governing proper behavior at the event.

But Gayle Rubin, an influential theorist and cultural anthropologist who has devoted years to first-hand study of the Folsom leather scene, offered a nuanced perspective.

“In some ways it has gotten more wild,” Rubin told the B.A.R. “There is more nudity, more masturbation, and more SM [sadomasochism] play in the booths. It was certainly far tamer in 1985. I suppose it depends on what is the point of comparison.”

The FAQ on the fair’s official website states, “Folsom Street Events maintains local community standards, such as at Bay to Breakers and the Castro Street Fair. As fair organizers, we do draw the line with public sex.”

Richards explained, “While the fair is all about celebrating sexual freedom,

we do have to stay within the bounds of what the law allows. Thankfully, there are many ways to have fun at the fair without crossing that line.”

This year’s fair will showcase more than 220 exhibitors and a dedicated artists’ area featuring 10 jury-selected artists.

PrinceHerman, a self-described “gay married ethical slut,” is one of the artists selected by the jury for a booth this year. He makes stained-glass pornography, and this year has a series of works made from copper.

“As we are recognizing the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I feel unusually patriotic,” princeHerman, whose real name is Ronald Symansky, told the B.A.R. “This fair celebrates American values by protecting many freedoms that allow this fair to occur. The right to assemble, free speech, freedom of religion.”

PrinceHerman, 43, said he has only missed the fair once in the past 20 years. When he first started attending, the fair felt to him like an

event primarily for leathermen, but he has seen it grow more diverse over the years.

“As an artist that deals with sexual subject matter, this fair has embraced me and celebrated me,” he said.

Jack Fritscher, author of Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer, noted that unlike with Halloween, when folks dress to conceal themselves, at Folsom folks dress to reveal themselves.

“For all its fetish wear, the Folsom Fair is really about openness, tolerance, and acceptance. What Folsom reveals about human nature is that sadomasochism is nearly everyone’s secret guilty pleasure,” he wrote.

The 28th Annual Folsom Street Fair takes place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Sunday, September 25. Suggested donation is $10, which provides $2 off beverage purchases.▼

warrior ethos.”

Moreover, “there’s the perception, in many cases wrongly, that homosexuals may display more effeminate qualities that may run counter to the warrior ethos,” she said.

Also important, tradition is sacred in the Marine Corps. In fact, Marines uphold their traditions with reverence.

Among the most cherished of those traditions is the Birthday Ball.

“It’s very important to every Marine,” said editor Lombardo, referring to the annual event, held on November 10 all over the world, to celebrate the Marine Corps’ founding on that date in 1775.

Last summer, celebrity pop musician Justin Timberlake made entertainment news when he said that he had accepted an invitation, schedule permitting, from Quanticobased Corporal Kelsey De Santis to be her date at the Birthday Ball.

“One question on Marines’ minds,” said Lombardo, “will gay Marines bring dates?”

A gay Marine named Mitch told the Times, “If I’ve got a date, I will take one.”

Marines also have another question: whether two leathernecks will slow dance at the ball?

“It’s going to happen one way or another,” said Robert, a field grade officer in combat service support in California, who has a partner and plans on serving openly as a gay man.

As he told the Times, “Will some Marines and family members not like it? I’m sure. But at the same time, just because they don’t like it, doesn’t mean they can’t respect those individuals for who they are.”

“Quite frankly,” he added, “if that’s the only thing we have to worry about in the Marine Corps, we have big problems. That should not be the focus of the Corps, period.”▼

For more information visit folsomstreetfair.org.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • Bay Area Reporter • September 22-28, 2011

Classifieds The

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SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033818900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as NEAT ASIAN THINGS, 1825 Post St.,#115, SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Etsuyoshi Shimada.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/13/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/13/11.

as YUGEN DESIGN,1115 Webster St.,#3, SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Christina Cavallaro.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/16/11.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/16/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033817500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as QUINTERO’S RESTAURANT MEXICAN FOOD, 393 Eddy St., SF,CA 94102.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Jose Jaime-Cabello.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 09/12/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033819300

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033822400

47- On-sale general Eating place 58 – caterer’s permit 66-controlled access cabinet permit sept.22, 2011 nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN for change in ownership of AlCOHOLIC BEVERAGE License To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : BAR TAP INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 3838 24th St., San Francisco, CA 94114-3811. Type of license applied for:

48- On-sale general Public premises sept.22, 2011 nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN to sell AlCOHOLIC BEVERAGEs

To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : DOUBLE RAINBOW LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 398 12th St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Type of license applied for:

48- On-sale general public premises sept. 08,15,22, 2011 nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN to sell AlCOHOLIC BEVERAGEs

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as 1.PURELY DELICIOUS,2.PURELY DELICIOUS GIFTS,2023 44TH Ave., SF,CA 94116.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brendan Witkowski.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 08/31/11.

To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : GALLERIA PARK ASSOCIATES LLC, HECHO EATS INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 185 Sutter St., San Francisco, CA 94104-4501. Type of license applied for:

To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : INDIGO PIE LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 687-689 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102-3111.

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47- On-sale general eating place sept. 08,15,22,2011 statement file A-033779200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as AMERICAN EAGLE CONSULTING & BOOKKEEPING, 22 Battery St., Suite 202, SF, CA 94111.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Dale RJ Peronteau.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 08/24/11.

SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011 statement file A-033777200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as K.O. KOMBO,2110 Irving St., SF, CA 94122.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Barry Yeung.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/23/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/23/11.

Fax to:

The following person(s) is/are doing business as The following person(s) is/are doing business THE INTERFAITH OBSERVER, 2107 Van Ness Ave., 395 Ninth Street S.F. CA as S.F. HEALTH CENTER,2721 Judah St., SF,CA #300, SF,CA 94109.This business is conducted 94122.This business is conducted by an by a husband and wife, signed Paul C. Chaffee.

PHONE 415.861.5019 FAX 861-8144 individual, signed Haobin Fang.The registrant(s) The registrant(s) commenced to transact business commenced to transact business under the above under the above listed fictitious business name listed fictitious business name or names on or names on 08/15/11. The statement was filed 09/14/11. The statement was filed with the City with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/14/11.

09/13/11.

SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011 statement file A-033741600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MYER’S HAULING, 1951 Oak St., #4, SF, CA 94117.This business is conducted by an individual, signed A Haley Myer.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/15/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/15/11.

Fax from:

SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011 statement file A-033779600

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033821700

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033802400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as 1.THE MIDNIGHT SUN, 2.MIDNIGHT SUN, 4067 18th St., SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Jeff Eubanks.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/14/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PRIDE OF THE FLEET,3150 18th St., #301,SF,CA 94110.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Roscoe Burns.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/06/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/06/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FOURTH WAVE, 1356 Polk St., SF, CA 94102.This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Bernard J Curran.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 08/24/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as INDIGO RESTAURANT,687 McAllister St., SF,CA 94102.This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Michael Whang.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/08/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/08/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MMMASSAGE,930 Sutter St., #408,SF,CA 94109.

This business is conducted by an individual, signed Gilbert Colorina.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 09/06/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as KATE’S KITCHEN,471 Haight St., SF, CA 94117.

This business is conducted by an individual, signed Hasan Khader.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/19/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/19/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011

Fax to:

395 Ninth Street S.F. CASEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file415.861.5019 A-033812000 statement file A-033803400 PHONE FAX 861-8144

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SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011 Fax from: statement file A-033772100

SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011

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Legal Notices>> statement file A-033783100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as EIGHT LIMB YOGA, 555 Mission Rock., #618, SF, CA 94158.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Stephanie Rubinstein.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/30/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/26/11.

SEPT.1,8,15,22,2011 statement file A-033789300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as KEIKO A NOB HILL, 1250 Jones St., SF, CA 94109.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Eiko Takei.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 08/30/11.

SEPT.8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033800400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as INFIELD DESIGN, 499 Carolina St., SF, CA 94107.This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Marc Infield.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/04. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/02/11.

SEPT.8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033794500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as I.A.M. BOOKS & THINGS, 740A 14th St., SF, CA 94114.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Mack A Isaac.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/01/11.

SEPT.8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033797600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ZAYA NAIL SPA,2970 Mission St., SF, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, signed Sen Huynh.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/02/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/02/11.

SEPT.8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033803000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as HOGAN’S GOAT TAVERN,2295 3rd St., SF, CA 94107.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Christopher Webster.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 09/06/11.

SEPT.8,15,22,29,2011 nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN to sell AlCOHOLIC BEVERAGEs To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : 550 VALENCIA LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 550 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA 94110-1115. Type of license applied for:

47- On-sale general EATING PLACE sept.22,29,oct.6,2011 statement file A-033815100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SLAM DUNK SOUND & ENTERTAINMENT, 1951 Oak St., #4,SF,CA 94117.This business is conducted by an individual, signed A.Haley Myer.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/09/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011 statement file A-033815300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as NUTRITIONALLYOURS,2670 Pine St., SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Jessica Nelsen.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/05/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/09/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011 statement file A-033807000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ZHANG’S MOVING CO.,1671 40TH Ave., SF,CA 94122.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Andy Zhang.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 09/07/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011 statement file A-033813600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LEE PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES,582 Market St.,Suite 708, SF,CA 94104.This business is conducted by an individual, signed William.Lee. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/19/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/09/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011 statement file A-033808200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BEX SPEX, 1215 Castro St.,#1, SF,CA 94114.

This business is conducted by an individual, signed Rebekeah Kouy-Ghadosh.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/07/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011

state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# cnc-11-548018 In the matter of the application of AMY RAPHAEL HANSEN for change of name. The application of AMY RAPHAEL HANSEN for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that AMY RAPHAEL HANSEN filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to AMY RAPHAEL CORSO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 3rd of November, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011 In the superior court of the state of california in and for the city of San Francisco Case # Pes 11-294955 In re: the Ludwig M. Gruber Revocable Living Trust Dated October 1,2003 Notice is hereby given to the creditors and contingent creditors of the above-named decedent, that all persons having claims against the Decedent are required to file them with the Superior Court at 400 McAllister, San Francisco, California 94102, and mail or deliver a copy to Ming Y. Suen,as trustee of the the Ludwig M. Gruber Revocable Living Trust dated October 1,2003,of which the Decedent was the Settlor, at 4477 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94112 within the later of 4 months after September 15,2011(the date of the first publication of notice to creditors) or, if notice is mailed or personally delivered to you,60 days after the date this notice is mailed or personally delivered to you, or you must petition to file a late claim as provided in Probate Code 19103. For your protection, you are encouraged to file your claim by certified mail, with return receipt requested.

Dated August 31,2011. Signed, Ming Y.Suen, Trustee of the Ludwig M. Gruber Living Trust dated October 1.2003.

Sept.15,22,29,2011 state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# cnc-11-548071 In the matter of the application of VERONIKA CAULEY for change of name. The application of VERONIKA CAULEY for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that VERONIKA CAULEY filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to VERONIKA FIMBRES. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 22nd of November, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033793600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as R.A. MARKETING, 2095 Jackson St.,Apt.204, SF,CA 94109.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Gerard Roy.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 08/31/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033817900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as JAKE’S ON MARKET, 2223 Market St., SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Tim Travelstead.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/09/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033780300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as INSCRIBE DIGITAL,444 Spear St.,Suite 213, SF,CA 94105.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Robb McDaniels.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/25/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033819700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GOLDEN MOUNTAIN CO.,1654 23rd Ave., #4,SF,CA 94122.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Qunhui Qi.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 09/13/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033782400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as THUNDERDOG,,4620 17th St., SF,CA 94117.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Eric Flaniken.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/26/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/26/11.

SEPT22,29,oct.6,13,2011 statement file A-033808100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as 1.HERITAGE WEALTH 2.MATURE MD CONCIERGE 3.LEGACY FINANCIAL 4.1 + MIND DESIGN 5.STABILITYSAFE GROUP 6.WEB CHANNEL 7.NOPAIN HOSPICE,301 Main St.,#28 A, SF, CA 94105.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Myron H. Marshall.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/06/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/07/11.

SEPT15,22,29,oct.6,2011

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 22-28, 2011 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

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Vol. 41 • No. 38 • September 22-28, 2011

www.ebar.com/arts

Every picture tells a story Photographer Scott Pasfield on portraying ‘Gay in America’

by Gregg Shapiro

Bryant from San Francisco, CA, from Gay in America: Portraits by Scott Pasfield (Welcome Books).

T

aking its rightful place alongside coffee-table photo books such as Tom Atwood’s Kings in Their Castles, David Fields and the late Anderson Jones’ Men Together, and Michael Goff and Out magazine’s Out in America is the new Gay in America (Welcome Books, $45) by Scott Pasfield. Consisting of photos of 140

gay male subjects and their unique stories, Gay in America is a colorful portrait of 21st-century gay life in all 50 states. I spoke with Pasfield about the book and future projects.

Gregg Shapiro: My partner and I have two dogs, so one of the first things I

noticed in the pictures was that there are more than a dozen pictures of men and dogs.

Scott Pasfield: And so many dogs got cut from the book! There was something like 35 dogs that I photographed over the course of the project. I was always excited to try and include pets when I could, they

are such an important part of gay men’s lives. If the pets were around and seemed intrigued by the whole process, I asked if we could try to get them in the shot, and most pet owners were happy about that.

The dogs by far were the most popular. I think there were five cats, some goats and See page 29 >>

Scott Pasfield

Devid Striesow and Sebastian Schipper in Tom Tykwer’s 3.

Bisexual sex romp ‘3’ & 2 more films opening Friday

by David Lamble

I Strand Releasing

n 3, an astonishing postmodern comedy from director Tom Tykwer, an unwed but very old-shoe couple are trying to recharge their sex life by recycling some of their favorite intellectual quarrels. Since this is an especially German comedy of sometimes rude manners – bi, hetero, queer, extremely explicit – with candid instructions on how to use and dispose of body fluids, stem cells and inconveniently dead mothers, be prepared for a no-holds-barred take on every possible topic that might make you queasy before it prompts you to howl, or at least chuckle.

See page 29 >>

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

▼

Gaze in the military

by Roberto Friedman

L

ast week HBO offered the world premiere of the documentary The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato at the Castro Theatre, before its TV broadcasts this week, when the hypocritical policy finally bit the dust.

Filmmakers were in the house, as well as a spirited audience that included gay vets

and others from Servicemembers Legal Defense, OutServe and The Palm Center. As the film detailed how DADT came about, and how it was finally dismantled, lusty boos greeted anti-gay villains like Sen. John McCain and Colin Powell, who gave cover to discrimination, while cheers greeted heroes of the struggle like the late Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, the first gay wearing a uniform to come out in national media; and President

Barack Obama, who pushed through DADT repeal in a lameduck session while the Democrats still controlled Congress (oh, days of yore). Sen. Joseph Lieberman was our steadfast ally in this battle, but Out There still booed when his pruneface appeared onscreen, because he is such a sanctimonious old hawk.

OT has a paradoxical relationship with gays in the military. We hate what a bloodthirsty warrior society we inhabit – in foreign policy, in Hollywood spectacle – but we’ve always been attracted to military men. Erotic highlights of our youth: the hot date with a discharged midshipman, the two-night affair with a Coast Guard officer. Coast Guard kept his dress uniform, starched stiff as a cadaver, standing sentry in his walk-in closet.

After the premiere, we went to the invite-only party at the Midnight Sun where, cutely, they were playing videos with a military theme, like Cher prancing around a battleship in a nylon onesie. We stationed ourselves next to the munchies table so we could make small talk with party guests about how McCain came off as a big petulant baby, stalking out of a Senate hearing when he didn’t get his way. We chatted with a nice young man who we could tell had military bearing.

When we asked, “Were you in the service?,” he replied, “Am in the service.” Turned out he’s currently in the Coast Guard, which sent us headlong into these uniform reveries. Thanks, HBO!

In verse gear Though we can be a close and concentrating reader, Out There doesn’t sample a lot of poetry – the form doesn’t often give up its mysteries to us. But when poetry does resonate, it can be a deeply satisfying experience. Touch, a new collection of poems by Henri Cole published this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, offered ample aesthetic rewards. Cole, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003 for Middle Earth, writes in a spare, plainspoken style, touching on such themes as his mother’s death and his lover’s drug addiction. Our favorite poems here are specific, precise and grounded in nature, human or otherwise. They’re tender and compassionate but cleareyed, and there’s something, if we

Courtesy HBO

HBO Documentary premiered The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at the Castro Theatre last week.

may presume to say, masculine in their stance.

From “Hairy Spider”: “Still, I love to watch their web changing,/ like this year’s words for this year’s language, not didactic,/ but affective, while absorbing the secret vibrations from the world,/ and I love it when she climbs across clear water and drags/ some horsefly back, like Beezlebub, to her silk coffer.”

About that using boyfriend: “Years later, I watch you emerge from the bathroom,/ having breathed your fix, and wonder what it feels like –/ the mild euphoria, the expression of power on your face,/ the burst of relaxation – a little mirror to mull over/ the question ‘Who am I and why?’”

Free-associating a bit if you’ll

allow us, we hear that this Folsom Street Fair marks the three-year anniversary for the continued sobriety of erotic film star Michael See page 20 >>

Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

<< Film

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

▼

Music Box Films

Alberto de Magalhães (Ricardo Pereira) and Elisa de Montfort (Clotilde Hesme) in Raul Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon, a sprawling, literate movie slightly longer than Gone With the Wind.

Long day’s journey into Lisbon

by David Lamble

P

ebar.com

ortugal is the European former colonial power that we know perhaps the least about. A long crash course in 19th-century Portuguese aristocratic intrigue, disguised as a modern movie soap opera, opens Sept. 30 at Landmark’s Embarcadero Cinemas. Mysteries of Lisbon offers a chance to luxuriate in a labyrinth of duplicity, scandalous gossip, and brazen affairs, punctuated by duels to the death and life-long vendettas. Set at the time of the civil wars that rocked the Portuguese aristocracy, the film is Chilean-born Raul Ruiz’s most ambitious work

to date: a sprawling, literate movie, slightly longer than Gone With the Wind. The story begins with an orphaned boy, Pedro de Silva (Joao Luis Arrais), a long-haired wisp of a man/child whose ivory white skin and sorrowful eyes promise a tale of innocence defiled.

“I was 14, and I didn’t know who I was at all. Sometimes the others would ask if I was Father Dinis’ son.

I didn’t know how to answer them.

They all had surnames; I was just Joao.”

Beaten by his jealous classmates, Joao is nursed back to health by the bossy Father Dinis (Adriano Luz), who entices the lad with nuggets of information about his missing parents, a supposedly dead father and a mother held against her will by a monstrous count. The boy is overjoyed to get a letter from mom detailing the tragedy that has upended her life and made Joao an orphan.

With a screenplay by Carlos Saboga based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco, in the hands of the cinema magician Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon becomes an enchanting way to wile away half-a-day at the movies. There’s an old Hollywood trick thrown in, an intermission, which you should use both to stretch and to ingest as much caffeine as your system will tolerate, for this movie, like most epic tales, has its longueurs, tedious patches where one feels that one more drawing-room scene will send one screaming out into the night.

<<

Out There

From page 18

Brandon. He is also reportedly signed on to be the spokesperson for a new personal lubricant that’s being launched in time for the Fair.

The new lube may or may not have a booth at Folsom, and if they do, we have a man on the beat who’ll give us the slick and low-down.

Star behavior Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find an excellent review of Desilu, a book about the production company founded by show-business immortals Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. A tidbit from Lucy lore: Although they clashed while working together late in their relationship, Ball had high regard for actress Ann Sothern, and even apologized to her for behaving badly.

As Ball aged, she worried about

But then Ruiz gets us reengaged with a stunning trick shot from an unusual angle, or some entertainingly bitchy exchange between one-time lovers, or best pals about to betray each other for a wellturned ankle. There are also glib if unreliable narrators, and low-budget movie tricks like the kid’s theatrebox in which Joao sometimes views the story’s largely bloodless, though erotically charged violence. There are also mesmerizing, delicate moves within the mise-en-scene: a man waits to see a friend in an elaborate if empty hall. Servants open the doors to an antechamber, plunk down two chairs for the scene, as if it were a live stage play, then, just as mysteriously, the friend and chairs are whisked away, and the grieving character is left in one of Ruiz’s many desolate spaces.

In a talented ensemble, the young Portuguese rising star Afonso Pimentel stands out as the young adult version of our orphan boy, Pedro de Silva. Giving off the overheated and somewhat slapdash romantic sparks that were once the trademark of the young Jean-Pierre Leaud, Pimentel is starkly sweet as a young fool who misinterprets every beat of his very shaggy coming-ofage.

Ruiz deftly photographs the film’s farcical duel from a distance, contributing to the tension it inspires, its loopy erotic charge, and the film’s Barry Lyndonlike, deliberate, and sumptuously hypnotic pacing.▼

being photographed. Sothern used face-lifting adhesive tapes that affixed to the top of her head. As the tapes dried, they lifted everything.

She then put on a wig to hide the tapes. When Ball appeared on her show, Sothern insisted that she try this technique. Ball reluctantly agreed. When she emerged from her dressing room, she asked a colleague, “What do you think?

Does my mouth look like an asshole to you?”

Speaking of the perquisites of fame, The New York Times recently carried a story about Christie’s upcoming auction of the late great Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels, designer gowns, and personal effects. The last includes her Louis Vuitton luggage, with name-tags that simply say, “Mine.” That’s the best example of self-assured celebrity we’ve ever come across. Onward with the stars!▼

▼

Theatre>>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Dynamo, octogenarian, star

by Richard Dodds

I

f you start performing professionally at age 8 and you’re still going strong as your 80th birthday approaches, with dozens of credits both prestigious and ignoble from Broadway, Hollywood, and television, there will be tales to tell. You can only wonder at the volumes that had to be left out as Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup was developed by Moreno and Tony Taccone to keep it from a War and Peace magnitude.

Clocking in at a little over two hours, Life Without Makeup actually does have a kind of war-and-peace motif in Moreno’s attitude toward her career that fed her literally and spiritually, but often left her feeling used and abused. On stage at Berkeley Rep, the good times – or at least the in-hindsight amusing times – predominate in this stylishly staged and beguilingly intimate reminiscence.

Part monologue, part musical, and part dramatic recreation, the show takes a more-or-less chronological approach with an opening scene aboard the ship that brought fiveyear-old Rosita Dolores Alverio and her mother from Puerto Rico to New York in 1936. A storm leaves the travelers tossing about at sea for days, and gives Moreno the first of many opportunities to comment on the

Latino mentality: “When in doubt, flip out.”

Moreno reveals an inner struggle with her heritage from an early age.

As a child performer, with strong maternal encouragement, she first sets out to be a miniature version of Carmen Miranda, illustrated with film footage of the actual Miranda shaking her maracas, and a vintage photo of Rosita with a fruitbasket headdress. But soon, Moreno tells us, Rosita made her “deal with the devil” as straightened hair, lighter skin, and the allure of the Betty Grable prototype become her aspirations.

Before she was 18, she had a Hollywood contract, and while her roles provided diversity in nationalities – Mexican, Cajun, Polynesian, Indian, Native American, Siamese – Moreno soon realized her niche was forever to be anythingbut-white. Even though she got the Oscar-winning role of Anita in West Side Story, she questioned why the Puerto Rican characters all had to be slathered in the same dark-brown make-up while their gang rivals could appear in the various hues of their Caucasian skin.

Moreno performs two numbers from West Side Story with two male backup dancers, and the sense of cinematic history hangs over these moments. Though slow recovery

Ageless forever

by Richard Dodds

O

MG! When Marga Gomez mentioned visiting Freedomland as a child, it was like hitting a speed bump while riding in a rumble seat. This was the first time in more than four decades that I have encountered another person who has acknowledged visiting the short-lived Disneyland knockoff built on swampy, mosquito-plagued landfill in the Bronx. My family visited Freedomland not once, but twice, at some points during its 1960 to 1964 existence.

Her memories of the place are much more vivid than mine; I can only specifically recall Casa Loca, a structure somehow tilted to throw off your sense of gravity, and the Plantation Fried Chicken Restaurant with its ceiling fans.

Gomez remembers the Borden’s Farm Exhibit, which had a special “boudoir” built for Elsie the Cow, and a Chicago fire recreation in which she was one of the lucky children chosen to help pump water from a horse-drawn fire truck. The disaster was repeated every 20 minutes.

Of course, admitting to these memories dates both Marga and me, but this kind of cultural carbon dating is central to the point of Not Getting Any Younger. Her latest solo show, now at the Marsh, is an enchanting stroll/lurch down a memory lane that loops to the future like a Mobius strip.

The startling experience when you realize you are actually getting old is widely shared, and some mosey forth with more sanguinity than others.

Gomez is one of the others.

Gomez would rather eat a piece of paper, literally, on which she has written her age than share it with a randomly selected member of the audience. Don’t bother going to Wikipedia, she says, which has an incorrect birth year that she herself posted while stoned and added years rather than shaved as she had planned.

Three incorrect tries at remembering her password have locked her out of

David Wilson

Marga Gomez explores the dilemma of being a young person who, unaccountably, is still growing old in Not Getting Any Younger at the Marsh.

lying in the right direction.

Gomez meanders in a savvy way to expose her fears of the numbers game, recalling how her own mother – also a performer – would not only lie significantly about her age, but would put on a performance of youthful abandon whether on a stage or among strangers. Gomez has been mining her fractured fairy tale of family life for years, and Not Getting Any Younger demonstrates that this mineshaft still contains precious ore.

Since Gomez is also a standup comic, she casually tosses off jokes and one-liners that nevertheless still hit on the main topics, which include a nostalgia for icons of her youth and a leery attitude toward age – not necessarily the specific digits enumerating her time so far as a sentient being, but the notion that the world won’t recognize the young person that she knows is still just beneath the skin, even as she occasionally grouses like a geezer about the loss of such things as manners. “I want to be the world’s oldest young person,” she says wistfully.

of her daughter, and the rediscovery of the stage with her Tony-winning turn as diva wannabe Googie Gomez in Terrence McNally’s The Ritz – which gets a live replay here with an English-mangling interpretation of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

Life Without Makeup is inevitably an autumn-song retrospective. But Moreno makes a case for turning past losses into building blocks for the present. This remarkable lady’s parting words to us: “Keep moving.”

Grand Larsen-y kevinberne.com

Rita Moreno, accompanied by dancers Salvatore Vassallo and Ray Garcia, takes us through her life and career in Life Without Makeup at Berkeley Rep.

from knee-replacement surgery pushed the premiere of Life Without Makeup from last season into this, Moreno makes no excuses from the stage for the limitations of her dancing that often suggest rather than recreate. There is a disconnect that can happen in these moments, because her storytelling vitality and her I-can’t-believe-she’s-79 fabulous looks belie all physical realities.

Actually, in an early moment in the show, Moreno tosses out a quip on this subject. As she talks about one of her first films as an MGM contract player, a clip from the 1950 Toast of New Orleans shows teenaged Moreno dancing like a tiny tornado in a scene with Mario Lanza. “Don’t expect that

from me tonight,” Moreno says after this eye-popping display of diamondin-the-rough talent.

Director David Galligan is astute in his use of stage-sized projections and clips, which even includes a delightful patter song from her five-year run on The Electric Company. This comes in the second act, which, despite occasional agonies and insults, is a much more settled time for Moreno, who had ended the first act with a gripping description of her mutually masochistic relationship with Marlon Brando, and an attempt to take her own life.

The later years bring her a long and happy marriage to cardiologist Lenny Gordon (who died last year), the birth

This is Gomez’s ninth solo show, of which I have seen five. Not Getting Any Younger may be my favorite thanks to any number of reasons, ranging from the friendly self-effacement, the sharp material that just skitters to the edge of pathos, and the killer energy that Gomez still brings to a performance.

And then there is the Freedomland connection. I imagine some audiences will think it’s an invention that Gomez created for comic effect, but I have walked the streets of Freedomland.

By the way, Gomez’s mother didn’t let her visit Elsie the Cow in her boudoir because she wanted to enter

Last year, when Impact Theatre presented The Play About the Naked Guy, a comedy about a high-minded theater putting on a porn-star vehicle to make some money, I parenthetically wondered, “Ronnie Larsen, where are you?” Well, the answer is, soon to be back in San Francisco after an eightyear hiatus.

The creator of such plays as Making Porn, Shooting Porn, Ten Naked Guys, All-Male Peep Show, and Cocksucker: A Love Story will be pitching a double header at the Box Car Studio Theatres in October and November.

First up, opening Oct. 7, will be the fifth San Francisco production of Making Porn, which has traditionally employed one or more genuine porn stars in a comedy that is a satire of the porn industry, with a pinch of the titillation that that industry provides.

On Nov. 6, Larsen will take on the title roles in Two Dead Clowns, a play See page 22 >>

a Twist contest. Like Gomez, I want to somehow go back while still marching forward with a vague dignity.▼ Not Getting Any Younger will run at the Marsh through Oct. 23. Tickets are $15-$35. Call 282-3055 or go to www.themarsh.org.

<< Film

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

▼

WIN TICKETS!

SEPTEMBER 22OCTOBER 9 Book by Arthur Laurents Music by Jule Styne Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Scott Green, courtesy Sony Pictures Classicsz

Henry Hopper as Enoch in Gus Van Sant’s new movie, Restless.

Orphan drama

by David Lamble

A

Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter’s weekly email newsletter and be entered to win a pair of tickets to the October 1 Performance. To enter, send an email to MyBayAreaReporter@gmail.com

The Peninsula’s Best Musical Theatre

Fox Theatre, Redwood City BroadwayByTheBay.org or 650-579-5565

nnabel tells me you’re a funeralcrashing dropout with a ghost friend.”

“That doesn’t sound so good when you say it altogether like that.”

In the new Gus Van Sant teen romance – wow, that doesn’t sound so good, either, when you say it altogether like that – Restless, an angry boy, Enoch Brae (the late Dennis Hopper’s kid Henry), finds his muse, a pretty lass dying of a brain tumor, Annabel Cotton (The Kids Are All Right’s Mia Wasikowska), while pulling the stunt that defined Bud Cort’s angry boy in Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude: bearing witness at the funerals of strangers.

We first see Enoch (these names are straight out of Hawthorne) in one of Van Sant’s patented, loving-that-boy close-ups. With an unkempt hairdo, wheat-colored hair in a cowlick so untamed that it resembles a praying mantis, Enoch signals that he’s got too much on his mind to follow the GQ pretty boy’s guide to success.

It turns out that Enoch’s parents were killed in a car crash that very nearly claimed the boy. Enoch awoke from a three-month coma to discover himself an orphan with a twist: a new best friend, Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), who’s actually the ghost of a WWIIera Japanese Kamikaze fighter pilot.

This gimmick, straight out of Topper, is actually one of screenwriter Jason Lew’s best subplots. It’s touching to have a suicidal kid restrained at the edge of a railway trestle by a pretend pal who’s already been down that path.

As for the main event, Enoch and Annabel, while pleasant enough company, don’t really set their screen moments ablaze. We get the conceit: boy who spontaneously combusts when outsiders intrude on his private

<<

pity-party bonds with girl who insists that her own end be kept free from negative thoughts or images. Annabel feels most alive when contemplating a rare breed of songbird, discovered by her avatar Charles Darwin.

Restless has its moments, such as the couple fleeing bullies with a score to settle with Enoch. Here Van Sant nimbly evokes the fallout from a blinkered deed – Enoch has injured a boy for uttering mean oaths about his dead parents – without needing to depict the fight in question. This unseen fight, with the boy as warrior prince rather than weepy clown, resonates powerfully in a film that goes to great lengths to downplay or even sanitize death’s pungent sting.

Annabel’s illness is marked only by a violent third-act seizure.

In Harold and Maude, the delicious black comedy evoked in the boy’s outrageous mother-baiting pranks is both tempered and amplified by Ruth Gordon’s gloriously cranky kleptomaniac senior, abducting the adorable mophead as both student and lover, and telling middlebrow critics to like it or stuff it. Heavyhanded though Harold and Maude’s depiction of adult authority figures may seem now, the spleen onscreen is still very funny, and may yet come back into fashion. By contrast, the adults of Restless bear a tired, lecturing vibe, like a marathon dose of preachy “wellness lady” radio ads.

Is Restless a nervous, organic, agnostic, Buddhist-leaning, Obamafollowing generation’s Love Story? To date, Van Sant’s conception of Eros has focused movingly on boy-loving convenience-store clerks, narcoleptic rent boys, and skateboarders with guilty consciences. As he so brilliantly demonstrated in My Own Private Idaho, Van Sant has a formidable grasp of Shakespeare, but his Winter’s Tale is yet to come. Opens Friday.▼

Backstage

From page 21

he wrote eight years ago but only last year put on its feet in a San Diego production.

In the first of the play’s two parts, Larsen plays serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr., who performed as a clown at children’s events when not murdering young men and burying them in his basement. In the second part, Larsen will portray Harris Glenn Milstead, better known as the drag character actor Divine, who died the night before beginning a new career out of drag on the TV series Married With Children.

“I’ve missed working in the theatre more than I can express,” Larsen said in a statement. “I was pretty burned out and I had other things I needed to deal with. I lost both my parents in the last five years, and that has profoundly changed my life and made me realize that life is incredibly short and that the future is now.”▼

The poster from last year’s premiere production in San Diego of Two Dead Clowns, part of a Ronnie Larsen double-header as he returns to the San Francisco stage after eight years.

Tickets to both shows are available at www.brownpapertickets. com.

BARstage@comcast.net

Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

<< Out&About

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

Cory Weaver

Turandot at AT&T Park

Costumery

by Jim Provenzano

S

Agathe Poupeney

ometimes, costumes are the big appeal of a show. And costumes, whether lit up or peeled off, are frequent in Gypsy at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City. The classic Laurents/Styne/Sondheim musical about burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s show biz life is given a local staging. $24-$50. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm (also Sat Oct 2pm). Thru Oct. 9. 2215 Broadway St. at Winslow. (650) 579-5565. www.broadwaybythebay.org Give ‘em a little, or a lengthy- leg! Smuin Ballet does that and more at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. The popular local ballet company premieres Amy Seiwert’s new dance, set to the music of Patsy Cline; also, Smuin’s 9/11 tribute Stabat Mater, his Gypsy duet, The Eternal Idol and the passionate Tango Palace. $25-$62. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Also Saturdays at 2pm. Thru Oct. 1. 3301 Lyon St. at Bay. 556-5000. www.smuinballet.org Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula and his male dance company perform more more more …

Smuin Ballet future, a vibrant life-affirming work, with live accompaniment by Flamme Kapaya, and some rather amusing costumes. $5-$20. 8pm. Sept 29 thru Oct. 1. Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St. 9782787. www.ybca.org Sometimes, casual wear is appropriate for the opera, particularly when it’s simulcast at AT&T Park. San Francisco Opera’s production of Turandot is shown live on the giant HD screen, Tom Hauck with playing field seating available.

Free. Sept. 25. 2pm. Register: 864-3330. www.sfopera.com/simulcast But the ultimate costume extravaganza this week has got to be Trannyshack’s Lady Gaga Tribute, part two at DNA Lounge. With special guest Lady Bunny and new acts by Precious Moments, Coco Canal, Kim Burly, Miss Rahni, Holy McGrail, Rotissary Ethnicity Jackson Houston-Ross, Faustin Linyekula Cookie Dough, Lindsay Slowhands, Serenity Heart, and more, it’s sure to be dragtastic. $15-$20. Friday, Sept.

23. 9:30pm-3am. Show at 11pm. 375 11th St. www.trannyshack.com www.dnalounge.com

Fri 23 >>

5 Cent Coffee, Rhubarb Whiskey, Palsterkatz @ The Plough & The Stars Three retro blues, hillbilly goth, steam punk Americana bands perform their unique music. $10. 8pm. 116 Clement St. www.rhubarbwhiskey.com

‘80s Cover Bands @ Café du Nord For The Masses (Depeche Mode tribute), Private Idaho (B52s tribute) and Japanese Baby (The Cure tribute) play live. $10. 9pm.

2170 Market St. 861-5016. www.cafedunord.com

Artery Project @ Various Venues San Francisco Arts Commission’s expansive lineup of arts events include gallery exhibits, store window installations, dance, music, outdoor performances and more. www.sfartscommission.org/artery

Big Book Sale @ Festival Pavillion SF Friends of the Public Library’s 47th annual massive book sale, with DVDs CDs and books on tape, too. Every item is $4 or less; all items $1 on Sunday. 10am-8pm thru Sept. 24. 10am-6pm Sept 25. Fort Mason,

Marina St. at Buchanan. 522-8606. www.friendssfpl.org/?Big_Book_Sale

Central Market Arts @ Various Venues Ambitious 24-day indoor-outdoor festival of performing and visual arts. Many independent events are grouped as part of the festival to showcase the area’s growth and artistic diversity. Thru Oct. 16. www.facebooks.com/CentralMarketArts

A Delicate Balance @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Edward Albee’s brutal comedy of manners about responsibility to others. $10-$55.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Tue & Sun 7pm, also Sun 2pm. Extended thru Oct. 16. 2081 Addison St. (510) 843-4822.www.auroratheatre.org

Farmageddon @ Roxie Theater Kristin Canty’s documentary exposes how corporate greed and even violence prevent small family farms from selling their produce. $7-$10. 7pm. 3117 16th St. www.roxie.com

Judy Collins @ The Rrazz Room Veteran folksinger performs in a rare series of shows. Also Sept 21-24, 27-29. $50-$55.

2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Lucrezia Borgia @ War Memorial Opera House

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

The Washington National Opera production of Gaetano Donizetti’s bel canto masterpiece about the historic femme fatale features soprano Renée Fleming in the title role; in Italian with English supertitles. $30-$389.

8pm. Also Sept 26 (7:30), 29 (7:30), Oct 2 (2pm), 5, (7:30) 8, (8pm) and 11 (8pm). 301 Van Ness Ave. 864-3330. www.sfopera.com

Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm. Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Marga Gomez @ The Marsh

Bound for Victory @ The Edge

Veteran lesbian comic performs Not Getting Any Younger, a new solo show about her ‘coming of middle age.’ $15-$50. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 8:30pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Oct. 23. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www. themarsh.org Special show Sept 23 at The Dance Palace, 8pm. $20-$25. 503 B St. Point Reyes, 663-1075. www.dancepalace.org

More than the usual beer bust and Jell-O shots event, this fundraiser –for two SF AIDS Foundation Seismic Challenge participants, Jim Rudoff and Brent Gannetta– also offers Folsom-themed bondage demos, a silent auction and no pesky raffle. Fetish gear welcome. $10 and up. 4pm-7pm. 4149 18th St. www.edgesf.com

Heart of a Soldier @ War Memorial Opera House

Night Over Erzinga @ Magic Theatre

World premiere of Christopher Theofanidis and Donna Di Novelli’s opera based on James B. Stewart’s story about Vietnam War veteran Rick Rescorla, who died after saving thousands during the World Trade Center attacks. $21-$389. Sept 24 (2pm), 27 (8pm) & 30 (8pm). 301 Van Ness Ave. 864-3330. www.sfopera.com

Hafiz Karmali’s new commissioned play about Armenian immigrants to the U.S. $20-$36. Thu 8:30pm, Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. South Side Theatre, Fort Mason, Narina St. at Buchanan. 345-7575.

Thru Oct. 9. www.fortmason.org

Once in a Lifetime @ A.C.T.

Line Dance Classes @ ODC Dance Commons

The hilarious Moss Hart/George S. Kaufman Hollywood comedy gets a visually inventive production by American Conservatory Theatre, with an ensemble cast of 15 playing 70 roles; directed by Mark Rucker. $10-$85.

Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Some different dates; pay what you can nights, lectures and special events; LGBT Night Out Oct. 5; pre-show silent films screened Sept 30, Oct 7 & 14. Thru Oct. 16. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

New fun line dance classes taught by Sundance Saloon’s Sean Ray, with a special LGBT-anybody-inclusive ambiance, and not just country music. $14. Weekly Saturdays, 6pm-8pm. 351 Shotwell St. www.odcdance.org

Sunday Skool with Baby D.

San Francisco Cocktail Week @ Various Venues

Band O’ Plenty, a concert of varied works: Courtly Airs and Dances, Hennepin County Dawn, Metamorphosis on An Original Cakewalk, 7th Suite – A Century of Flight and Hymn for the Lost and Living, a remembrance of 9/11. Free/donations. 8pm. 678 Portola Drive. 255-1355. www.sflgfb.org

Show Ho @ New Conservatory Theatre Sara Moore’s comic solo show about a quirky clown’s life in a low-rent circus. $20-$32. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 9.

25 Van Ness Ave at Market. 8618972. www.nctcsf.org

Russian River Jazz & Blues Festival @ Johnson’s Beach B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jackie Greene, Ana Popovic, Lightnin’ Malcolm and Cameron Kimbrough perform at the outdoor music festival, with two stages, a wine garden and food court. $10-$80. 11am-6pm. Also Sept. 25. 16241 First St., Guerneville. www.russianriverfestivals.com

SF Hiking Club @ Mount Diablo Join LGBT outdoors enthusiasts for a splendidly scenic yet strenuous 15-mile hike up and down the East Bay summit. Carpools meet 8am at the Safeway sign, Market St. at Dolores. 990-6474. www.sfhiking.com

Teatro Zinzanni @ Pier 29 Joan Baez returns to Teatro in Maestro’s Enchantment , the new show at the theatre-tent-dinner extravaganza. $117-$145.

Saturday 11:30am “Breve” show $63-$78.

Wed-Sat 6pm (Sun 5pm). Thru Oct. 9. Pier 29 at Embarcadero Ave. 438-2668. www.teatrozinzanni.com

Tour de Fat @ Golden Gate Park SF Bicycle Colaition’s annual beer and bikes mini-festival, with tasty brews, live music, product booths, a bike circus and parade. Donations. Valert bike parking.

10am-5pm. www.sfbc.org www.newbelgium.com/events/tour-de-fat.aspx

Claire Chafee’s comedy about a lesbian private detective hwo stalks adulterous married men. $20-$60. Wed-Sat 8pm.

Tue 7pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru Oct 2. Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

SF Irish Film Festival @ Roxie Theater

SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band @ Ebenezer/ herchurch Lutheran

actress’s life and times; with music, two very handsome back-up dancers, and a four-piece band. $14-50-$73. Tue, Fri-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Thu, Sat, Sun 2pm.

Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St. (510) 6472949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Why We Have a Body @ Magic Theatre

Seven-day upscale drink-tasting events, including dinners, panels, and parties, celebrating the art of the mixed drink. $35 individual to $700 full pass. Thru Sept. 25. www.sfcocktailweek.com

Sun 25 >>

Kent Taylor

Screening of ten Irish-themed feature and short films. $7-$10.

Various times. Thru Sept. 25. 3117 16th St. www.roxie.com

▼

Antiques and Collectibles Faire @ Candlestick Park

Body, Paint S

ave bodies while admiring art that visualizes it at Art for AIDS at the SF Design Center, Friday Sept. 23. The large-scale art auction (170 works; art below) benefit for the UCSF AIDS Health Project includes Phantom of the Opera star and donating visual artist Franc D’Ambrosio performing. Enjoy cocktails, beer, wine, delicious food, a VIP lounge and DJed music. $80-$200. ($5 attended parking) 6pm-11pm. Galleria, 101 Henry Adams Place. 5027276. www.artforaids.org Want to work your body? Get thee to Sunday Skool with Baby D at the Academy of Ballet. D’arcy Drollinger (Enrique) returns to San Francisco with a weekly campy aerobics workout set to music from the 80s-today. Retro Spandex and Solid Gold gear encouraged. Dance by donation. Sundays at 11am.

2121 Market St. at Church.

Art for AIDS

Browse through 100s of vendors’ furniture, jewelry, art, knickknacks and other items; Food and drinks also on sale. $5-$10 6am-3pm. (650) 242-1294. www.candlestickantiques.com

Bud E Luv @ The Rrazz Room Boisterous big band performs. $30. 5pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Classical Music @ SF Conservatory of Music Pianist Amy Chiu with violinist Chen Zhao; Free, 5pm. Violinist Ian Swensen with accompaniment in a faculty recital, performing Dvorak’s Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65, and Schoenberg’s Phantasie, Op. 47, Sept 26, 8pm, $15-$20. 50 Oak St. at Franklin.

503-6275. www.sfcm.edu

Sing-Along The Little Mermaid @ Castro Theatre

Desdemona @ Boxcar Theatre

Enjoy the Disney animated classic with sing-along subtitles, hosts Laurie Bushman and Leigh Crowe. Costumes encouraged; goody bags doled out. $10-$15. Fri, Sat, Sun 7pm. Matiness Sat & Sun 2:30pm. thru Sept. 25. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

A play about a handkerchief, Paula Vogel’s comic romp plays on the backstage drama of three women in Shakespeare’s Othello. $15-$35. Mon-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm.

Thru Nov 5. 505 Natoma St. www.boxcartheatre.org

The Tempest, The Complete History of America @ Forest Meadows Ampitheatre

Fall Free for All @ UC Berkeley Campus

The Shakespeare classic about an exiled king, and the comic three-man romp about US history, play in repertory. Fri & Sat 8pm.

Sun 4pm. Thru Sept 25. $20-$75 (season tix). 1475 Acacia Ave., Dominican Universaty, San Rafael. www.marinshakespeare.org

Sat 24 >>

Bay Area Now 6 @ YBCA Group exhibit of local visual artists in varied media. New upstairs exhibits include a video compilation by New York Cuban artists and Casteneda/Reiman’s minimalist installation, Portrait of the Ground. $5-$7 (free for members). Thu & Fri 2pm-8pm. Sat & Sun 12pm-8pm.6pm. (free first Tuesdays, 12pm-8pm). Exhibit thru Sept. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 9782700. www.ybca.org

Perverts Put Out @ Center for Sex & Culture Saucy sex-themed readings by Blake Aarens, M. Christian, Greta Christina, Marlo Gayle, Robert Lawrence, Kirk Read, horehound stillpoint, with hosts Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard. $10-$15. 7:30pm. 1348Mission St. www.simonsheppard.com

Phaedra @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ prodution of Adam Bock’s commissioned modern tabloid-style adaptation of Racine’s tragedy about a woman who’s in love with her husband’s son. $17-$26. Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm.

1901 Ashby Ave. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup @ Berkeley Rep Tony Taccone and Rita Moreno’s mustsee solo show about the award-winning

Jane Lynch ( Glee ) is one of dozens of performers at a free showcase on five stages in a dazzling array of local dance, music and theatre ensembles. Free. 11am6pm. Indoors and outside at Zellerbach, Wheeler and Hertz halls, Pauley Ballroom, Lower Sproul Plaza, Sather Gate, the Faculty Glade and the Eucalyptus Grove. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

Janis Siegel @ The Rrazz Room Grammy-winning member of the The Manhattan Transfer performs solo. $35.

7pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Paul Klee and Andrew Schoultz @ SF MOMA Exhibit of works by the Bay Area artist in response to Klee’s drawings and prints.

Thru Jan 8. Also, Less and More: the Design Ethos of Dieter Rams (thru Feb 20). Other exhibits ongoing. Free-$18. 151 Third St. www.sfmoma.org

▼

Out&About >>

Rimsky-Korsakov String Quartet @ Grace Cathedral

Dr. Ruth Westheimer @ Kanbar Hall

St. Petersburg ensemble performs classical works and by local composers Louise Canepa and Marge Wheeler. $25. 3pm.

1100 California St. at Taylor. 749-6348. www.gracecathedral.org

The fiesty psychosexual therapist gives a lecture on ‘good sex!’ $20-$35. 7pm. Jewish Community Center, 3200 California St. at Presidio. 292-1233. www.jccsf.org/arts

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet and Harry Denton host the fabulous weekly 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

Mon 26 >>

Arturo Cozenza @ Magnet Exhibit of creative photo portraits of Personalities, i.e. local drag performers. Thru Sept.

4122 18th st. at Castro. www.magnetsf.org

Marga’s Funny Mondays @ The Marsh, Berkeley Marga Gomez brings her comic talents and special guests to a weekly cabaret show.

Tonight, Samson Koletkar, Karen Ripley, Dhaya Lakshminarayanan and Yuria Kagan. $10. 8pm. Thru Oct. 31. 2120 Allston Way. (800) 838-3006. www.margagomez.com www.themarsh.org

Rex Ray @ Gallery 16 Exhibit of colorful graphic abstract paintings by the local artist-designer. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm. Sat 11am-5pm. Thru Oct. 29.

501 3rd St. 626-7495. www.gallery16.com

Fear No Art

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Tue 27 >> Charles Gatewood @ Robert Tat Gallery

New exhibit of prints by the popular photographer. Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm. Thru Nov. 26.

49 Geary Suite 410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

Eve Ensler, Sussan Deyhim @ Grace Cathedral The Iranian singer-composer’s performances bracket the Tony Award-winning playwright (The Vagina Monologues) who gives a speech about global violence against women, with a focus on V Day. $20-$150 and up. 7pm. 1100 California St. www.vday.org/grace

Extinction Burst @ California Academy of Sciences A Dance of Lost Movement, Chris Black’s dance-image work about extinct species, will be performed in various areas of the museum. $10-$12. Sept 27 (2pm) and 29 (11am). 55 Music Concourse Drive. www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife

Wed 28 >> Christophe Coppens @ Highlight Gallery

Unusual exhibit of the Belgian artist’s selfportraits videos and installation examining his life-long obsession with Barbra Streisand.

Thru Oct. 30. Wed-Fri 2pm-6pm. 3043 Clay St. 529-1221. www.highlightgallery.com

Leon Mostovoy @ LGBT Center Michele Serchuk

Death of my Daughter, a diptych photo series of female-to-male transgendered people with symbolic poses and imagery. Thru Sept 29. 1800 Market St. www.leonmostovoy. wordpress.com www.sfcenter.org

E

Fearless

David Allen Studio

mbrace and conquer your fears this weekend; fear of crowds, fear of leather and kink overload, or just fear of clouds of meat-on-astick-flavored smoke.

See beefcake and cheesecake –the human kind– strung up and artfully arranged at Fear No Art at Mark I. Chester Studio. The group show (curated by Shilo McCabe and Chester) of erotic/sexual photography by and of women and men (Michael Rosen, Phyllis Christopher and Michele Serchuk, others) is funny, scary, controversial and artistic.

Special readings and performances Fri. Sept 23, 7pm-11pm. Viewings also Sept. 24, 1pm-5pm and Sept. 25, 11am-6pm. Donations. 1229 Folsom St. at 8th. www.markichester.com The exhibit is of course timed with the annual Folsom Street Fair, where thousands of kink fans, pros and novices, converge at the hugest street fair of its kind. Two live stages, an erotic artists corner, dance areas and more than 200 vendors, plus the frequently freaky exhibitionists, should keep you entertained. $5-$10 donation at the gate. 11am-6pm. Folsom Fear Over Frisco Street between 7th and 12th Streets. www.folsomstreetevents.org Take another sidebar at the fair to see the Erotic Art Exhibition at Artists Alley, which showcases work with a kinky edge. Free. 21+.

4pm-9pm. Sat 1pm-9pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. Thru Sept. 25. 863 Mission St. at 4th. www.eroticaartevents.com At the Folsom Fair, you’ll see bodies of all kinds, Elsewhere, Body Shop: In Motion at Oddball Films showcases Martha Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue, a Buster Keaton short, saucy softcore 1950s gal models, and other films displaying the human form in motion. $10. Friday, Sept. 23, 8:30pm.

Should you fear drugs? Maybe not. But it makes sense to fear some drug addicts. However, vintage cinematic anti-drug efforts are, in hindsight, hilarious. Sept 24, 8pm, see Scared Straight 5, short groovy and/or anti-drug flicks with the likes of Porky Pig and Sonny Bono, plus a classic Dragnet episode about heroin, quaaludes, and Marijuana: Assassin of Youth. $10. 8pm. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilm.com Terror becomes art once again at the Hypnodrome, as Thrillpeddlers presents Fear Over Frisco, a new trio of Noir-Horror one-act plays penned by “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller. Prepare to be shockingly entertained. $25-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Nov. 19. 575 10th St. at Division/Bryant. 377-4202. www.thrillpedllers.com Afraid we’ve missed a bunch of nightlife leather events?

Never fear. That’s what BARtab, our monthly nightlife guide, is for. www.BARtabSF.com – Jim Provenzano

Thu 29 >>

All the Rage @ GLBT History Museum Special screening of All the Rage: Stories From the AB101 Veto Riot, with a panel discussion including filmmaker Steve Elkins, composer Bob Ostertag and protest organizers Lito Sandoval and Ingrid Nelson. $5. 7pm.

See the new mini-exhibit about the AB101 Veto Riot, a response to then-Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a 1991 LGBT rights initiative (thru Oct. 15); part of Our Vast Queer Past, the popular exhibit from the GLBT Historical Society, with a wide array of rare historic items on display. Free for members-$5. WedSat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Arse Elektronika @ Various Venues Four-day conference on alternative sexualities, with panels, exhibits, and receptions with contributors to the new ReSearch anthology, Of Intercourse and Intracourse: Sexuality, Biomodification and the TechnoSocial Sphere. $10-$50. Thru Oct. 2. www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika

Lola @ YBCA Brillante Mendoza’s heartbreaking film about two Filipino women caught up in a crime involving their grandsons. $6-$8. 7:30pm. Also Oct 2, 2pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Picasso @ de Young Museum Masterpieces from the Museé National Picasso, Paris, a new exhibit of classic early modern works by the Spanish master painter.

Free (members)-$25. Tue-Sun 9:30am5:15pm. Wed 9:30am-8:45pm (the Aug).

Thru Oct. 9. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive.

750-3600. www.famsf.org

Same-Sex Dancing @ Queer Ballroom Ongoing partner dance lessons and open dancing in a variety of styles- Argentine tango, Cha Cha, Rhumba and more; different each night. $5-$25 open dancing to $55 for private lessons. 151 Potrero Ave. at 15th. www.QueerBallroom.com

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com.

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

Scared Straight 5

For bar and nightlife events, go to www.bartabsf.com

www.ebar.com

<< Leather

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

▼

20 years of walking

by Scott Brogan

C

an you believe it? Last Sunday’s official Leather Week kick-off, the Annual Leather Walk (featuring the raising of the Leather Flag over Harvey Milk Plaza), celebrated 20 years of raising money for the AIDS Emergency Fund and Breast Cancer Emergency Fund. The crowd seemed larger than last year, no doubt bolstered by the anniversary and a new positive energy flowing through our community.

Among those on hand to help producer Sandy “Mama” Reinhardt celebrate were Mr. SF Leather 2010 Lance Holman, Mark Palladini, and my personal pick for Mayor of San Francisco, candidate Bevan Dufty. Some might say I’m biased because he performed my marriage to my hubby Doug on that first day of legal marriage at City Hall. But Dufty has been a consistent, hardworking advocate for our community and all of San Francisco. He has the time in the trenches that gives him the singular experience needed to be Mayor of San Francisco.

Also on hand was our amazing State Senator Mark Leno. Leno has championed so much for our community, and the human rights of all Californians, it’s impossible to list it all here. If you don’t know who he is, then you’re not from California.

I mention this because with all of the negativity surrounding politics in our country, it’s refreshing to be in the presence of people like Dufty and Leno. Both exemplify the positive aspects of holding office. These guys really care.

After the SF Leather Daddies raised the Leather Flag, some speeches (that I missed because I was chatting), the awards, and a blessing from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (led by Sister Pat N Leather), we headed out down Market Street. The SFPD led the walk, ensuring the crowd’s safety along the route, with scheduled stops at the Powerhouse, Kok Bar, the Hole in the Wall, and ending up at the Lone Star.

Scott Brogan

International Mister Leather 1992 Lenny Broberg and San Francisco Mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty at last Sunday’s Leather Walk.

Scott Brogan

California State Senator Mark Leno and Leather Walk producer Sandy “Mama” Reinhardt at last Sunday’s Leather Walk.

Great expectations The Folsom Street Fair just gets better every year. This is due to the diligence of the folks at Folsom Street Events (www.folsomstreetevents.org) who work all year to ensure we have a great, safe, and kinky time. But even they can’t do it alone. Part of the success is due to the vendors, local businesses, and bars. They go to great lengths to help create a seemingly endless array of events all week long, from the raising of the Leather Flag to the fair itself a week later.

Perhaps more importantly, a larger part of the fair’s success is due everyone who attends. That’s what it’s all about. Experiencing the world’s biggest leather/fetish fair (and the third largest single-day outdoor event in California) is like nothing else.

With over 400,000 people expected to attend, you know it’s going to be great.

I recently conducted a very scientific, serious study (OK, on Facebook), asking what attendees’ expectations are. Here are the very scientific results (only first names are given, to protect the not-so innocent): Santiago: “I just want to make it through the weekend with my perverted integrity intact, and finish my Sunday with a nice piece of ass on my face and a blow job. Is that too much to ask?”

David: “I am psyched about my outfit!

After years of gearing up in leather, denim, and uniforms for Folsom, I am going with a straightup gay nerd look this year: pink bow tie, pocket protector, tight shorts, suspenders, argyle socks and clunky dress shoes.

Oh, and really geeky glasses.”

Scott Brogan

The San Francisco Girls of Leather brighten up last Sunday’s Leather Walk in summery San Francisco.

Rick: “I want to show the community that not only is the leather community thriving and supportive, the rubber portion is on a roll. It will be a huge opportunity to educate the curious newbies and enlighten the rest of the community on how we all are one big family. I, for one, am ecstatic to be on the front line of all the excitement.”

Ray: “I hope my rubber doesn’t get snagged by another baby stroller.”

Patrick: “I’ll be seeing my kink-and-leather friends every day of the week! There’s something about big leather events that’s not just social but highly

personal, interior.”

Philip: “I want to see my friends, make new ones, and expand my limits!”

Tom: “I want to go to the Petting Zoo. Piggies and puppies and bears, oh my!”

Brian: “This has been a year of rejuvenation for SF’s leather, kink, gear and fetish community, especially following the LDG [Leathermen’s Discussion Group] panel discussion in July. That talk put Miracle-Gro on our up-and-coming community leaders.”

Folsom is what you make of it.

There are no excuses for not having a good time. Enjoy! The fair is this Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. See the leather calendar at ebar.com for highlights of this week’s events.▼

▼

Karrnal>>

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Fetish funhouse

by John F. Karr

T

he makers of macho porn used to time release of heavyduty fetish and leather movies to the Folsom Street Fair. Not this year. Raging Stallion rolls on with an attitude that’s at all times fetishminded; Hot House regularly does Club Inferno features, and LucasEntertainment does Raunch; Colt gets in there with good leather features. But it seems to me that this year only TitanMen has keyed a movie with the event that celebrates its depictions. As usual, Titan’s Bluray edition includes a second disc of standard DVD plus digital copy for computer download.

Full Fetish is securely directed by Brian Mills and Paul Wilde, and plays on a handsome, Spartan and suitably masculine set. It’s subtitled The Men of Recon. What’s Recon? It’s a website that bills itself as The World’s Largest Hook-up Site for Men into Fetish Gear. So the cast of all-stars in Full Fetish look hot and stylish in a super array of harness and halter, and especially peacocking in their jocks and codpieces of latex and rubber, and form-fitting, sensationally sexy wrestling singlets. As a firm believer in the genital jewelry of cockrings and ball-stretchers, I quivered to see the men plumped up in Cockslings, Nutslings, Ball Bolts and Bull Balls.

And don’t go thinking Full Fetish is simply a fashion show. The guys are fisting, pissing, sounding, CBT-ing, BDSM-ing, and anal distending with a onepiece cockring/dildo combo, as well as the expect-no-mercy Cisco silicone Tantus dildo, with its non-tapering 2¼ inch diameter.

Throw in some pretty far out hood and gas mask headgear, and you’ve got a movie that runs the fetish gamut in a pretty high power onslaught.

I sure felt delugedupon during the first half of the movie’s 2½ hour length. Perhaps it was the high-speed music. Though its insistence is at first butch, it goes a little ballistic with cold, percussive slashing that was just too assaultive for me, and I was glad when it slowed to a sexier pulse for the last scene, which I of course found the movie’s best. It’s got personalityrich, heavy-hung top David Anthony giving it to a set-upon but welcoming Shay Michaels. The gas mask and goggles he’s hidden in are a bit much, but they’re long gone by the time Anthony masterfully does the neat trick of fucking Shay and pissing on him in rapid alternation.

TitanMen

David Anthony’s gonna slick up the strangely hooded and masked Shay Michaels in TitanMen’s Full Fetish.

They end the scene in a mutual piss fest – but not before Shay’s suffered a sound sluiced up his piss-slit.

Wilfried Knight tops the uniquely appealing Aymeric DeVille, who is spread-eagled and helpless on a St.

Anthony’s cross, sporting a really wide cockring, and two or three inches of ball-stretcher on his nuts.

It’s hard to judge the width – I held my three-incher up to the screen, but the proportions were all off. Knight gnaws DeVille’s tightly bulging balls, and goes in for hearty cocksucking preparatory to pissing DeVille up and down dale. DeVille’s asscheeks tense and quiver during Knight’s unyielding application of that Cisco dildo.

Hearty kissing follows orgasms; this

is rough but not mean sex.

The opening scene, the movie’s longest, finds Spencer Reed at first a little distant. But Alessio Romero and Lance Navarro are so sensational you’ll hardly notice. Their latex s singlets make this a bulge bonanza, and their growling, punching, heedless sex assault a also pays off. Romero’s s such a galvanizing p power bottom that R Reed heats up and fucks R Romero with an expert b barrage of in-and-out c cocksmanship.

Navarro g a crack at that ass, too, gets b before getting Romero’s a up his own ass (you arm c can judge the depth c charge by tracking the tats o Romero’s forearm). on All this butch in one film made me ponder its r relevance to the Folsom S Street Fair. This year’s p poster makes the leather aand fetish event seem a SSeptember Halloween, w with its circus-themed b bearded lady, guy in a tutu, to top-hatted Ringmaster (a (and Mistress) and a bu butch dude de-butched b by riding, of all things, a tricycle! It’s a poster that seems to announce the Fair as a giddy costume event. Where are the motorcycles and Masters of yesteryear?▼ www.TitanMen.com

On the web This week, find a full calendar of leather & kink events, as well as a review of two new classical music recordings, online at ebar. com.www.ebar.com.

<< Books

▼ Serious business: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz & Desilu 28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 22-28, 2011

by Tavo Amador

S

he was 40, a successful film actress but not a top star, and tired of marital separations caused by conflicting careers. He was 34, had appeared on Broadway in Too Many Girls, met her in the 1940 movie, made a few forgettable pictures, and spent weeks on the road with his orchestra. Their marriage had been rocky from the beginning, but after 10 years and several miscarriages, they had a daughter. Television was new, and they took advantage of it. Lucille Ball (1911-89) and Desi Arnaz (1917-86) made history almost by accident. How it happened is described in an engrossing and

revised edition of Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert (IT Books, $16.99).

Ball was an accomplished, demanding comedienne. Arnaz, her perfect straight man, was the brains behind I Love Lucy (1951-57). Still, the authors dispute some assertions made about his contributions. For example, he’s typically credited with shooting the series with three cameras, using film, rather than kinescope. The show’s producer, Jess Oppenheimer, says that decision was reached by consensus to ensure the entire country would see the same movie-quality program. But both Ball and Arnaz were instrumental in persuading

Oscar-winning cinematographer Karl Freund to photograph the sets. He added special lights to the cameras which “burned” out lines from Ball’s neck and face. Arnaz insisted on shooting before a live audience; on their company, Desilu, retaining rerun rights; and, crucially, persuading CBS that Ball’s second pregnancy was an appropriate subject for comedy, thus keeping I Love Lucy running.

Sanders and Gilbert discuss many less-familiar aspects of the company, including the Desilu Workshop, in which Ball taught promising young talent, modeling it after the classes she took from Ginger Rogers’ mother Leila at RKO when she was a contract player. (Students included Carole Cook and Robert Osbourne.)

Privately, Ball was blunt, tactless, unpretentious, and serious.

She claimed to prefer domestic happiness over professional acclaim, yet repeatedly put her career first.

She was frugal, objected to the bigspending Arnaz’s ways, and fondly remembered when she only had two dresses, “both black.”

In 1957, Desilu purchased RKO Studios, greatly expanding Ball and Arnaz’s power. Desilu and CBS would launch other successful series, including December Bride, The Ann Sothern Show, and The Untouchables. But many of their proposed shows failed to find sponsors, or did poorly.

After having taken the stillpopular Love Lucy off the air in 1957, they continued playing the Ricardos in monthly Lucy-Desi Comedy Hours with guest stars like Sothern, Tallulah Bankhead, Milton Berle (in drag), Danny Thomas, Maurice Chevalier, Betty Grable and Harry James, Fred MacMurray, Robert Cummings, and Ernie Kovaks. Critics generally carped, but the public loved them.

In 1960, Ball divorced Arnaz because of his heavy drinking, gambling, and womanizing. They remained friendly, and he produced her Broadway musical Wildcat, which got tepid reviews, but played to SRO houses. Nonetheless, eight weekly performances exhausted her, and she withdrew. Backers approached Mitzi Gaynor, Ginger Rogers, and Gwen Verdon about replacing her, but all refused.

“Follow Lucy? Are you crazy?” was the typical response.

Eventually, Arnaz’s drinking forced Ball to buy his share of Desilu, making her the first woman to run a Hollywood studio. She was a competent President, relying on proven management but actively involved in operations while starring in a second hit series, The Lucy

Show (1962-68). She was a widow with two children, and I Love Lucy’s Vivian Vance played a divorcee with one. They shared a house. Sponsors insisted that a strong man be added to the cast, concerned that the public might think they were “dykes.” To Ball’s great disappointment, Vance withdrew midway through the run.

Always a perfectionist, she became even more difficult as she got older, clashing with guest stars, including her long time “best friend” Sothern, whom she called “the best comedienne in the business,” Elizabeth Taylor, Ethel Merman, Jack Benny, and driving Joan Crawford to complain, “And people call me a bitch!”

Under her leadership, Desilu produced Mission: Impossible, Star Trek and Mannix. Still, most of their pilots or proposals didn’t find sponsors. The authors don’t compare the company’s track record with other studios.

In 1967, Paramount bought Desilu from Ball for a then-staggering $17 million. Running the corporation and starring in a weekly show had become increasingly difficult, yet she was reluctant to sell because of her loyalty to all the employees, many of whom were family members. Only

when the new management promised to treat them fairly did she agree.

She had another successful series, Here’s Lucy (1968-74), which featured her children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz IV. Increasingly, her scripts and performances became more mechanical.

Arnaz produced a few more shows before dying. His charm and intelligence were legendary, and Ball at some level continued loving him.

She hated failure, and their divorce represented that. She did remarry, to comedian Gary Morton. She had another hit movie, Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), but Mame (74) earned terrible reviews, a vanity production for a star far too old for the part.

One more series, Life with Lucy (86), lasted only 18 episodes.

Nonetheless, Ball is the mostwatched performer in history, and Desilu’s influence is incalculable.

The authors’ research is impeccable, balancing conflicting accounts from multiple sources. Among those is Lucie Arnaz, who offers insightful, honest comments about her parents, their strengths and weaknesses.

Anyone interested in the history of television will find Sanders and Gilbert’s book difficult to put down.▼

▼ <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 22-28, 2011 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Gay in America

we share our stories, the more we understand what it means to be gay in America.

From page 17

lots of birds, too.

Who had the final say in the setting, what was worn, and what pets would be included?

I had the final say in terms of editing the pictures and narrowing it down to my favorites, then supplying the publishers with those options. The designer and I always were on the same page in terms of selecting the final image. I would try to do a couple of different locations in the person’s house so that we’d have options afterwards.

Usually I asked the guys beforehand to dress in their most comfortable clothes. In instances where I felt like it wasn’t the perfect choice, we would revisit some of their clothes. I would say 98% of the time what they wore ended up in the final shoot.

What came first in the process, the photos or the subjects’ stories?

I decided who to go photograph based on their story. They had to write the story to me, and have that leap of faith and honesty to share that. Their story had to ring true to me, and it became very clear right away who was right for the book and who wasn’t.

Of the 140 men, five are from Alaska, and seven from Georgia, but only one from Illinois. How did that kind of geography come to pass?

The stories dictated who I picked, so long as every state was represented at least once. You would think that some places, like

<<

Scott Pasfield

Chicago, would be very easy, but for some reason it wasn’t. People didn’t reach out to me in the same way.

Many times I thought, “Why is it so difficult to find someone in New Orleans?” I went to New Orleans three times looking for that perfect New Orleans person, and couldn’t find him. It was a very interesting process. I looked at it like, “Wow, so many guys from Alaska and Maine!”

I had no idea I would be blown away by the amazing gay men in Maine.

There were so many gay men in Maine that wrote me the most wonderful stories. I picked five, and I could have picked 20.

More than a few times in the book, there are men who say that they “happen to be gay.” What do you think that says about being gay in America?

So many people in society want gay men to distinguish themselves from the rest of society by that one sexual trait. Because I’m gay, therefore that defines me. Many

Daniel from San Francisco, CA, from Gay in America: Portraits by Scott Pasfield (Welcome Books).

gay men say, “I am so-and-so of a person. I have these interests, and I went through this and I overcame it, and I just happen to be gay. That’s not the whole reason why I went through all of these things.”

How different do you think this book would have been if you’d done it 10 or 20 years ago?

The Internet played a big part in how I found people. It would have been much more difficult to find them. The thing that surprised me the most is the regularness of all these guys. Ten, maybe 20 years ago, I’m not quite sure how I would have found the same men, because they’re not going to gay community centers. But I was really able to connect with a lot of gay men that are under the radar.

Did you learn things about gay men that you didn’t know before?

I talk a lot in the introduction about why I did the book, and the personal issues that I had to work out with my father, with his being born again and condemning my lifestyle.

Really, a lot of the reason for the book was to search out that wisdom from gay men in determining how to live a happy, fulfilled life, and not let other people’s views of homosexuality affect your being.

Having a disapproving parent or family really affects gay people.

And I was able to learn from them how not to let all that get to you. To understand that it’s just a part of who you are, and how you can be a happy, fulfilled person, provide in your community, give back, and still love yourself. So much of the pain that many gay people experience is from when the people we love tell you that it is wrong. It’s a very hard thing to overcome. The more

What can you tell me about your book tour?

Besides doing signings at bookstores, we also tried to book venues that would reach a larger audience. We just booked Rice University, and we’re trying to get into other gender studies programs, to show the normalness in these stories. Like Ken, for example, how not being in a relationship that would be accepted by others affected finding himself in the hospital and not being able to see his loved one.

Hospital rights and parenting issues, a lot of gay folks struggle with how to come out to their kids.

Have you begun to think about your next book project?

I’m torn between two things right now. I think it would be amazing to do the same thing in Europe for gay men, and travel to 52 countries in the European Union right now.

And I would also love to do the same thing in America for lesbians that I did for gay men. There’s even more stereotypes with lesbians from society’s viewpoint than with gay men. I think they need a book like this to show how so many lesbians are living under the radar. Some lesbians have already expressed their anger with me for not including them in the book, and I feel a certain responsibility to try to do the same thing with women now.▼ Scott Pasfield will be at a presentation and signing at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, on Sun., Oct. 2, at 7 p.m. Info: (415) 927-0960, www.gayinamerica.us

3 films

From page 17

Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper) regurgitate every cliché in the battle of the sexes that has informed their intellectual world since their first kiss, shortly after the fall of the Wall.

“Why should I die first?”

“Why me?”

“Statistics: you’re a man.”

“But you smoke.”

“Sometimes.”

“You drink.”

“Bullshit!”

“You’re dogmatic.”

“You’re dogmatic. I’m totalitarian.”

“Right.”

Sophie earns her living hosting a pretentious TV talk show. Simon presides over a low-profit co-op that hires itself out to help artists erect installation art. Hanna and Simon are bored, frazzled, infertile (or so they think) and desperately looking for a life-changing event to save them from 30 or so probably dull postmenopausal years. The event, which they experience separately and quite accidentally, is launching individual affairs with an attractive stem cell researcher, Adam (Devid Striesow).

Tom Tykwer, who first astonished us with the very kinetic Run Lola Run, here pulls off a grownup sex farce that is an invitation, as Adam says to Simon as they exchange numbers, to say “farewell to a deterministic understanding of biology.”

A lovely way to view cutting-edge Berlin architecture, the boy side of this bi rondo is set in a indoor pool, a swimming ship. San Francisco should get one of these floating exercise salons.

Not for all tastes, but for those up to the mental, emotional and sensory challenges, 3 is a comedy that will improve with age and subsequent viewings. Caution: you’ll see a very modern way to dispose of a dead mother.

The Black Power Mixtape 19671975 In Swedish filmmaker Goran Hugo Olsson’s powerful new doc, voices from a movement that roiled

Tom Goetz, Story AB

Angela Davis and Bo Holmstrom, San Rafael County Prison, 1972, in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.

the 60s are heard once again, in their original, unsettling context.

Our impressions of the movers and shakers of the black power movement – Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis – get a major makeover in these remarkable Swedish TV tapes, left to molder for years in a Stockholm basement. Trust Swedish journalists to capture the human, thoughtful side of American rebels consistently demonized on American TV. My souvenir FBI Wanted poster of an Afro-sporting Davis has never seemed so precious.

I recently sat down with a spokeswoman for the film, Erica Huggins, an out lesbian, African American college professor whose husband John was killed by the FBI, and whose own 14-year membership in the Black Panther Party has included running a radical alternative school, and jail time in New Haven, CT. On the Panthers and Gay Liberation: “In The Huey P. Newton Reader, Huey talks about the importance of supporting the Gay Liberation Movement and the Women’s Movement. It was 1970 when he wrote this article. We don’t think like that anymore, we’re all in our little cubbies and claiming that we’re going to transform.”

On attending the 1963 March on Washington: “I had never seen so many black people and people of color gathered together in one spot for something that was not social.

People came in old schoolbuses, flatbed trucks like the one my grandfather hauled tobacco with, some people came in hoopty cars that were choking and smoking.

“I saw Lena Horne, who I’d always respected, and she sang one word, ‘Freedom.’ It left her and settled like a beautiful ray of light, it settled on everybody, then it entered my ears and seemed to settle in my heart. I stood there at age 15 and said, ‘I’m going to serve people for the rest of my life.’”

Moneyball Two grown men, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and Ron Washington, come calling around Midnight on a third, Scott Hatteberg, a soon-to-be-former major league catcher. Hatteberg can no longer make the pivotal throw to second, the athletic equivalent of a former auto worker, useless in post-9/11 America.

Yet this is precisely the sort of player, with hidden skills no other baseball GM is likely to appreciate, that Beane desperately wants for his 2002 edition of the Oakland Athletics.

This jewel of a movie, with a signature Aaron Sorkin screenplay, based on a very wise nonfiction

Brad Pitt, in Moneyball, plays an alpha male who is acting out.

bestseller from Berkeley author Michael Lewis, grabs you in the first act with spot-on casting: an almost unrecognizable Philip Seymour Hoffman as Billy’s punching-bag, figurehead manager Art Howe; a sly, underplaying Jonah Hill (Michael Cera’s bro-mance teen buddy from Superbad) as Billy’s brainy assistant Peter, whose job is to spell out the story’s intellectual underpinnings: basically a new way of evaluating ballplayers, based on subversive theories developed by a former security guard at a Van Camp’s porkand-beans factory.

“There’s a championship team we could afford because everybody else undervalues them, like an island of misfit toys.”

In Moneyball’s screwball boys club, Peter becomes a male version of His Girl Friday’s put-upon Hildy Johnson to Pitt’s energetic bully’s Walter Burns.

In meetings with clueless, gnarled baseball scouts, Peter’s job is to speak when Billy points, and to do Billy’s dirty work, like telling fired players to vacate the clubhouse.

With Sorkin’s smart one-liners and workplace observations under the seamless direction of Bennett Miller (Capote), Moneyball is a smart almost-sequel to last year’s The Social Network. Where algorithms were used by Jesse Eisenberg’s social misfit to reconfigure an entire computer

universe, Pitt’s brazenly confident, fast-talking Billy Beane uses baseball stats theories to punish the baseball good ol’ boys who, he feels, helped derail his once-promising career as a superstar outfielder.

Pitt’s previously underappreciated comic skills are on glorious display here as Billy performs a dizzying variety of alpha-male acting out, from power phone deals to breaking things in order to intimidate other men. He’s able to be funny while never conceding his former jock, cock-of-the-walk privilege. He confronts, bluffs and shames a proud and equally cocky African American fading superstar, David Justice, while the ballplayer is draped only in a towel in what is supposed to be the sanctity of the clubhouse.

The film examines how the A’s got their mojo back following the death of their onetime Daddy Warbucks, the late Walter Haas, Jr., and the destruction wrought to their stadium by the Darth Vader of Bay Area sports, Al Davis. Old A’s fans, teary at the prospect of losing their darlings to San Jose, will love this sold gold album, including the raspy tones of their late radio play-by-play guy, Bill King, with his signature, “Holy Toledo!”▼ 3, The Black Power Mixtape 19671975 and Moneyball open Friday.

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