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Southern Passion Lounge By Chef Amadeus
Its Time To Let Go Of AIDS By Tyler Curry
Rise of Donald Trump By Andrew J. Bacevich
It’s Adults With The Issue By Beau Yarbrough
Pastor Protection Bill Passes By David Vandygriff
5 Gay Dating Tips By James Johnson
Publisher/Executive Editor: David Vandygriff dvandygriff@cityxtramagazine.com Editor In Chief: Harvey Carr editor@cityxtramagazine.com Creative Designer: Jason Smith designer@cityxtramagazine.com Sales Department: Adam Plante, Esq. aplante@cityxtramagazine.com cityXtra Magazine is published by cityXtra Inc . 2941 Plum Street Jacksonville, FL 32205 (904) 300-3320 www.cityxtramagazine.com Like us on Facebook/cityxtramag Twitter/cityxtra
Contributing Writers Laura Riggs, Dr. Harvey Carr, Attorney Gordon Nicol, Meredith O’Malley Johnson, Tina Vaughn, Jake Moore, Tyler Curry Editor HIV Equal Online, Sebastian Fortino, David Vandygriff, Joey Amato Publisher Unite Magazine
night life JACKSONVILLE Boot Rack: 4751 Lenox Blvd. (904) 384-7090 bootrack.com Bo’s Club: 201 5th Ave. N. (Jax Beach) (904) 246-9874 bosclub.com
ORLANDO Parliament House: 410 Orange Blossom Trail (407) 425-7571 parliamenthouse.com ST. PETERSBURG
Club Jax: 1939 Hendricks Ave. (904) 398-7451 clubjax.com
Flamingo Resort: 4601 34th St. S (727) 321-5000 flamingofla.com
Hamburger Mary’s: 3333-1 Beach Blvd. (904) 551-2048 hamburgermarys.com/jax
Sporters Bar: 187 Dr. MLK St. N (9th St.) (727) 821-1920
Incahoots: 711 Edison Ave. (904) 353-6316 Park Place: 931 King St. (904) 389-6616 Metro: 859 Willow Branch Ave. (904) 388-7192 metrojax.com Norm’s Alibi: 2952 Roosevelt (904) 384-0029
TAMPA (Ybor) Bradley’s on 7th: 1510 E 7th Ave (813) 241-2723 Liquid Tampa: 1502 E 7th (813) 248-6104 liquidtampa.com
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Southern Passion Lounge By Chef Amadeus
Welcome to another tasty edition of The Southern Passion Lounge with Chef Amadeus. This month let’s talk about local beer, bites and March Madness. We all know the month of March is about two things; St. Patrick’s Day and March Madness. Both offer an occasion for beer and good food. Jacksonville offers some great places If you are looking for a spot to catch March Madfor beer, bites and gathering for March Madness. ness and grab a cold beer Stop by Norm’s Alibi Here are a few… Lounge, 2952 Roosevelt Blvd 904-384-9929 where it’s happy hour from 10am to 7pm. I had a When we think about beer, most of us think about chance to stop in and chat with Kim; she gave me your grandfather’s favorite well known beer. Beer the rundown on the history of the place. Part of has evolved and the selections vary. I recently the tour, I had a chance to the checkout the back spoke with Kyle AKA “Airborne” at the Silver Cow. patio. Great place to hang out and enjoy the The beer connoisseur recommends that those summertime, and ice cold beer. I had a chance to looking to develop an appreciation for beer you try a cold Henry Hard Orange Soda and watch start off with mild ales then progress to pale ales some golf. The only thing that is missing is the and ultimately stouts. The mild ales go very well bites, but you can order something from 5 Star with seafood. For those that have been drinking Pizza. beer for some time the pale ales and stouts may be more to your liking. Stouts are dark beers tra- I would like to hear from you with any restaurants, ditionally referred to as the strongest or stoutest of chefs, events that you would like to read about. I porters. The pale ales and stouts pair well with can be reached at chefamadeus@gmail.com heavier dishes such as steak. Stop by the Silver Cow at 1506 King Street for an opportunity to This month you can catch me on March 5th at learn more about stouts, Scotch ales and imperial Northeast Florida Vegefest at Riverside Park 753 stouts. Park Street. I will be on at Noon. My dish is Sweet tea braised I had a chance to talk with Regina at the Silver collard greens with mofongo Cow about the menu and the rare beers. When asked about which of her beers she would March 19th I will be at 2nd Annual Gastrofest at recommend readers come by and try, without Heming Plaza. I will be cooking a few healthy missing a beat she says Vikings Blod dishes using the steaming method. (pronounced bluhd). This beer is sweet like honey and 19% proof. Because it is that strong, it is Till next month I will see you in The Southern served at 6 ounces at a time for $6.95. Her next Passion Lounge every Monday at Noon. choice was Ducheese De Altbier/Flanders Red www.blogtalkradio.com/chefamadeus Ale, is a sour beer, it’s like drinking balsamic vinegar in a glass. Its 6% proof served 8oz at a time $8.95. She also has Not Your Father’s Root beer on tap. While at The Silver Cow, the staff can help with paring their menu with their beer selection.
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It's Time to Let Go of AIDS By Tyler Curry
An HIV-positive person can be healthy and live without sacrificing anything because of his or her disease. A person who identifies as living with AIDS, however, is often not afforded the same luxury. AIDS, after all, isn’t a disease, but a diagnosis that is given when someone is truly “sick.” Many long-term survivors, however, hold onto the identity of someone who is living with AIDS as a badge of honor or right of passage even after their CD4 count rises above the level of diagnosis. While attending AIDS Watch 2016, the largest U.S. constituent based advocacy event held in Washington DC. As I listened to the very real problems that many of these long-term survivors were dealing with, I heard one man explained why he still used the term “living with AIDS” to describe himself even though he wasn’t experiencing any complications and his CD4 count was well about 500.
AIDS crisis by showing them how to live with HIV without letting it define who we are. AIDS is not a disease. It was a diagnosis created to designate that a person with HIV had reached the point of no return. That day is gone, but by holding to AIDS we place a barrier that keeps us from moving away from trauma. So long as AIDS is around, people living with HIV will never be seen as “healthy,” because of the confusion between the two.
It is true that many people are still suffering from HIV-related complications and that death can still occur as a result. But the advanced stages of HIV “Somewhere, on some piece of paper, the word is not the same thing as the finality that the term ‘AIDS’ is written next to my name,” he said. “I own “AIDS” can evoke. We can still fight HIV. We can it, it’s mine and just saying ‘HIV’ does not explain teach others that a person can be healthy with the journey I have gone through.” HIV. And we can let AIDS finally reside in the past and honor those who didn’t make it by moving on. It is true that a young person who is diagnosed Moving on. It’s a hard thing to say to someone with HIV today will never come close to who has lost so many of their friends and loved understanding the heartbreak and hardship that ones to HIV and who has suffered from so many faced during the height of the epidemic. unbearable hate and stigma. But to honor the Younger generations living with HIV should do darkness, we must look to the light. And for any and everything to connect long-term AIDS long-term AIDS survivors who can’t seem to see survivors and learn about the tragic journey that it, we must learn to show them the way gently, got the new generation to a-pill-a-day. But there’s respectfully, and with an empathetic heart. something else. You can never learn to be the person you were As a generation who has not suffered the crippling before AIDS, or even before HIV, but maybe you grief of the AIDS epidemic, we must do more than can find the person who you want to become after just try to understand what it must have felt like. it. We must help out those who lived through the
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Rise of Donald Trump By Andrew J. Bacevich
Whether or not Donald Trump ultimately succeeds in winning the White House, historians are likely to rank him as the most consequential presidential candidate of at least the past half-century. He has already transformed the tone and temper of American political life. If he becomes the Republican nominee, he will demolish its structural underpinnings as well. Should he prevail in November, his election will alter its very fabric in ways likely to prove irreversible. Whether Trump ever delivers on his promise to “Make America Great Again,” he is already transforming American democratic practice.
his position at the very center of the political circus. Wondering what he will do next, we can’t take our eyes off him. And to quote Marco Rubio in a different context, Trump “knows exactly what he is doing.”
Targeting Obama’s Presidency There is a form of genius at work here. To an extent unmatched by any other figure in American public life, Trump understands that previous distinctions between the ostensibly serious and the self-evidently frivolous have collapsed. Back in 1968, then running for president, Richard Nixon, of all people, got things rolling when he appeared on Laugh-In and uttered the immortal words, “Sock it to me?” But no one has come close to Trump in grasping the implications of all this: in contemporary America, celebrity confers authority. Mere credentials or qualifications have become an In contrast to the universally reviled Shkreli, afterthought. How else to explain the host of a however, Trump has cultivated a mass following “reality” TV show instantly qualifying as a serious that appears impervious to his missteps, miscues, contender for high office? and misstatements. What Trump actually believes — whether he believes in anything apart from big, For further evidence of Trump’s genius, consider splashy self-display — is largely unknown and the skill with which he plays the media, especially probably beside the point. Trumpism is not a celebrity journalists who themselves specialize in program or an ideology. It is an attitude or pose smirking cynicism. Rather than pretending to take that feeds off of, and then reinforces, widespread them seriously, he unmasks their preening anger and alienation. narcissism, which mirrors his own. He refuses to acknowledge their self-assigned role as The pose works because the anger — always gatekeepers empowered to police the boundaries present in certain quarters of the American of permissible discourse. As the embodiment of electorate but especially acute today — is “breaking news,” he continues to stretch those genuine. By acting the part of impish bad boy and boundaries beyond recognition. consciously trampling on the canons of political correctness, Trump validates that anger. The In that regard, the spectacle of televised “debates” more outrageous his behavior, the more secure has offered Trump an ideal platform for promoting Trump takes obvious delight in thumbing his nose at the political establishment and flouting its norms. Yet to classify him as an anti-establishment figure is to miss his true significance. He is to American politics what Martin Shkreli is to Big Pharma. Each represents in exaggerated form the distilled essence of a much larger and more disturbing reality. Each embodies the smirking cynicism that has become one of the defining characteristics of our age. Each in his own way is a sign of the times.
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Rise of Donald Trump Continued
his cult of personality. Once a solemn, almost soporific forum for civic education — remember Kennedy and Nixon in 1960? — presidential debates now provide occasions for trading insults, provoking gaffes, engaging in verbal food fights, and marketing magical solutions to problems ranging from war to border security that are immune to magic. For all of that we have Trump chiefly to thank. Trump’s success as a campaigner schools his opponents, of course. In a shrinking Republican field, survival requires mimicking his antics. In that regard, Ted Cruz rates as Trump’s star pupil. Cruz is to Trump what Lady Gaga was to Amy Winehouse — a less freewheeling, more scripted, and arguably more calculating version of the original. Yet if not a clone, Cruz taps into the same vein of pissed-off, give-me-my-country-back rage that Trump himself has so adeptly exploited. Like the master himself, Cruz has demonstrated a notable aptitude for expressing disagreement through denigration and for extravagant, crackpot promises. For his part, Marco Rubio, the only other Republican still seriously in the running, lags not far behind. When it comes to swagger and grandiosity, nothing beats a vow to create a “New American Century,” thereby resurrecting a mythic past when all was ostensibly right with the world. On two points alone do these several Republicans see eye-to-eye. The first relates to domestic policy, the second to America’s role in the world. On point one: with absolute unanimity, Trump, Cruz, and Rubio ascribe to Barack Obama any and all problems besetting the nation. To take their critique at face value, the country was doing swimmingly well back in 2009 when Obama took office. Today, it’s FUBAR, due entirely to Obama’s malign actions.
It’s Adults With The Issue By Beau Yarbrough
In interviews with gay teens, teenagers have repeatedly said it’s adults who pose the biggest obstacles, not their own peers. “When they legalized gay marriage, my mom had a big problem with it,” said Luisa Angulo, a sophomore at Fontana High School. “The people that matter don’t care, and the people who care don’t matter,” said Emily Allen, a recent graduate from Granite Hills High School in Apple Valley, “I haven’t really had any bad experiences, but I surround myself with positive people.” In Hesperia, about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the generational culture clash over homosexual students flared up last year after 2,100 students at Sultana High School voted in a lesbian as homecoming queen, and she was crowned while wearing a suit, rather than a gown. Members of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance club found themselves being repeatedly stymied by administrators, until the American Civil Liberties Union intervened in the spring, with a sternly written letter to Hesperia Unified and Sultana High School administrators demanding school officials stop censoring and discriminating against gay and gender nonconforming students and staff. The ACLU has since used the agreement with Hesperia Unified to inform other Southern California school districts about the laws concerning gay students.
and welcoming for LGBT students. The problems that we saw in Hesperia is the same thing we see in other districts.”
It should be a slam-dunk, she said: “California law could not be clearer.” Districts cannot have policies that favor heterosexual students over homosexual ones, much like they cannot have policies that favor one gender over another or favor various ethnic groups. Hesperia Unified ended up eliminating genderspecific dress codes and policies that benefited only heterosexual couples, like voting for “cutest couple” for yearbooks that specified couples must include one male and one female student. The district also updated its anti-bullying and antidiscrimination policies, and the district’s teachers will all have been trained on the new policies before the start of the 2014-15 school year. Still, Goodman said, her office hears complaints about school districts not taking complaints about bullying and harassment seriously and of school officials outing students to their parents. Several Southern California school districts contacted for this set of articles refused to allow journalists to interview even openly gay students over the age of 18, and Fontana Unified violated the district’s own media policy by insisting interviews with students not take place oncampus.
“What we see in school districts in Southern California is really a mix. Some school districts have a really great policy and have taken a proactive approach to making their schools safe and bias-free,” said Melissa Goodman, senior “We were very happy with what ended up happenstaff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, ing in Hesperia,” Goodman said. “When districts who took the lead in the Hesperia case. pay attention and they try, there’s really concrete “There are lots of other schools that have not things they can do, both in policy and practice, to been proactive on this issue, and as a result we make sure that LGBT students do feel accepted, continue to hear complaints from teachers, they do feel equal, and they are free to learn — students and GSAs that their schools are not safe which is the whole point.”
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Pastor Protections Bill Passes By David Vandygriff
Florida law will specifically say churches can’t be forced to marry same-sex couples if Gov. Rick Scott signs a bill now headed to his desk. The Senate passed the bill 23-15 on Thursday. Democrats argued the state and federal constitutions already protect churches and said the bill wasn’t necessary. Republican Sen. Aaron Bean said his bill is a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that said same-sex marriage is legal. He said the rule turned the world upside down among people who consider marriage to be a sacred institution between a man and a woman.
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He said he hopes the bill is never needed.
The House passed the bill (HB 43) on Wednesday. The law will take effect July 1 if Scott signs it. For more information visit EqualityFlorida.org
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5 Gay Dating Tips By James Johnson
To help everyone out, I have decided that I will share with you my “Top Five Gay Golden Rules of Dating” Rule 1. “Let Go Of the Past”: Every gay man has stories about “coming out”, childhood, family, fear and broken hearts. These are things that color our past but often get confused with what defines us today. It is important to take what has happened to us in the past and use it as knowledge and wisdom and not for something that completely defines who we are and what we are capable of. Starting today… let go and create a clean slate in your life. Rule 2. “Be A Gentleman”: There is nothing sexier to me than when a guy is well mannered. You can have all the money in the world or be extremely good looking- but if you are an asshole- that is all I will see. So try holding a door open, saying please or thank you- “be courteous”! The art of being a Gentleman is long forgotten art and if you can sprinkle it into your life, it will become one of the most attractive things about you.
we should put out on the first date- its best to slow things down or just be another statistic. Sure sexual attraction is often overwhelming. Half the time I have been on dates all I can think of is how I want to rip the guy’s clothes off. But this mindset is once again self-destructive behavior. I’m not saying you can’t make out or heck even do a little dry humping. But just don’t buy the car on our first test drive! If you want the relationship, hold off. It’s kind of sexy to build the tension anyway.
Rule 5. “Be Assertive”: Last but not least, be assertive. There is no bigger turn off than a man that cannot commit to a timely follow up. If you like the guy- tell him. Plan the next time you want to see them. In a world with technology that enables us to communicate in ten different ways- there is absolutely no excuse to tell you date you had a great time and that you want to see them again. If you continue to be the guy who waits till Rule 3. “Be Chivalrous”: They often say Wednesday for a Saturday plan- you’ll be the guy “Chivalry Is Dead” which I ninety percent agree alone till he is 80 years old. Incidentally, all these with. So this is your chance to (as Cher would same rules apply to when you are asking say) TURN BACK TIME! Be the guy who shows someone out (or being asked) on a first date up to a date dressed up and not in a t-shirt. Be the too- so don’t get it confused. Assertiveness should guy who opens the car door and surprises their rule all aspects of “committing” to your dating date with their favorite restaurant. All these little schedule. things matter, and they are important to having a healthy relationship. If you do not channel your Don’t be a flake! Okay folks, there it is- my Top inner Mr. Darcy, you will never win over the heart Five Gay Golden Rules of Dating. They are a of a good man. simple start to a long-term plan we have to bring happiness back into your life and weeding out all Rule 4. “Test Drive, Just Don’t Buy Car”: We the creeps that keep making their way into dating often talk about sex as gay men. How can us diet. not- we are men. It’s in our DNA to be aggressive, alpha and sexual. But when it comes to deciding if Have Fun!
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