GAY CITY NEWS, SEPT. 18, 2014 by Schneps Media

Meningitis Alert, Again 03

Ben Whishaw Talks Through Grief 27

A New York Film Festival Peek 28

FREE | VOLUME THIRTEEN, ISSUE NINETEEN | SEPTEMBER 18 - OCTOBER 01, 2014

‘80s black gay life: challenges and triumphs

In the Bronx, homophobia takes it on the chin

30-31

CRIME

POLITICS

Cuomo pressed at home on prisoner clemency

COME DECORATE YOUR LIFE

OVER 600 BOOTHS OF TREASURES

REAL ESTATE

IN THE STYLE OF PARIS AND LONDON FLEA MARKETS FURNITURE . FINE ART . JEWELRY . SILVER . PORCELAIN VINTAGE CLOTHING . COLLECTIBLES TRADITIONAL TO MID-CENTURY MODERN

SEPTEMBER 27TH - 28TH

Autumn heat in Manhattan, Brooklyn

Activists warn St. Pat’s Parade no done deal

SATURDAY 9 AM - 7 PM

THEATER

FILM

London drama to rival real-life Scottish play

Maggie’s strange bedfellows unite in “Pride”

SUNDAY 10 AM - 5 PM PIER 94, 711 12TH AVENUE 54th STREET + WEST STREET HIGHWAY $10 ADMISSION ON-SITE PARKING . DELIVERY SERVICE . SPECIALTY FOOD

Grey Lady

THEBIGFLEAMARKET.COM

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

HEALTH

Meningitis Strain from 2012, 2013 Reemerges among City Gay, Bi Men Health department again recommending vaccination for all who are sexually active BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

meningitis outbreak among New York City gay and bisexual men that was ostensibly ended in February of 2013 appears to have returned with the September 5 announcement by the city’s health department of related meningitis cases out of Brooklyn and Queens among three HIV-positive men who have sex with men. “In response to three new meningitis cases among men who have sex with men, the Health Department began an investigation to track the spread of the outbreak and determine who else may be at risk,” the department wrote in a September 15 statement. “We have determined that all of the recent cases share a common social network, and we are working with cases to identify unvaccinated people in that social network and offer them vaccine.” The department distributed “educational materials at events popular with gay men in Brooklyn on

September 7 and September 13,” and it launched an “online media campaign, using social media sites and popular ‘hook-up’ apps used by men who have sex with men, to promote vaccination among men who have sex with men in Brooklyn,” the statement said. The agency is recommending that all sexually active gay and bisexual men get vaccinated for the bacteria. This meningitis strain has been lingering in New York City since at least 2006, when it caused an outbreak among injecting drug users in Central Brooklyn infecting 23 people and killing seven of them. Between June 28 and September 30 of 2006, the health department vaccinated 2,763 people. An additional three cases were seen after the vaccination campaign ended. The same bug reappeared in mid2012 and ultimately infected 22 gay and bisexual, with a 23rd infection in an upstate man who spent significant time in the city. There were seven deaths in that outbreak. The last case was seen in February of 2013. The health department purchased near-

ly 12,000 vaccine doses to combat that outbreak and got a significant assist in delivering vaccinations from the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, a clinic that serves the LGBT community, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an AIDS group, which collectively vaccinated thousands of at risk men in 2012 and 2013. Meningitis appears to have established a foothold among gay and bisexual men. Los Angeles had a cluster of three related cases in December 2012 and January of 2013. The bacteria that caused those cases also caused the New York cases. In April of this year, the Los Angeles health department reported, “Four new cases of invasive meningococcal disease have occurred in men who have sex with men” since January 1. In August of 2013, the Salt Lake County Health Department in Utah reported a meningitis death in a 20-year-old gay man who undertook “recent cross country travel” and was infected with the bacteria that was the same as the one found in Los Angeles and New York. In a July 2013 issue, the jour-

nal Science reported on a five-case meningitis cluster among gay and bisexual men in Germany that year. France reported three cases among gay men, and Belgium reported one case. The same bug caused the US and European cases. That the bug is genetically the same is unremarkable as most meningitis infections, which typically occur one case at a time rather than in clusters, are caused by the same meningitis strain. What is notable are the epidemiological links among the cases and the implied linkage in outbreaks occurring among men who have sex with men on two continents. “The cases in Europe similarly do not have a direct link to NYC so we can’t say that they are part of that outbreak, but no, this is not really a coincidence and again indicates there is some unusual pattern of sustained transmission going on that we need to keep trying to sort out,” wrote Dr. Thomas Clark, a medical epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a 2013 email to Gay City News.

Gay Seniors Win Fight to Keep Room of their Own at Center

COMMUNITY

Future of SAGE clubhouse on West 13th Street resolved in wake of longtime members’ concerns

BY ANDY HUMM

or the second time in two years, older gay people who have had a kind of clubhouse for 30 years at the LGBT Community Center had to mount a campaign to retain their SAGE Room turf in Greenwich Village as the Center reconfigures and seeks greater control over its space following major renovations. After an outcry from the SAGE members, an agreement was reached between SAGE –– Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders –– and the Center on September 16 to extend a lease on a new room the group uses. Veteran gay activist Jerry Hoose –– a founder of the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, an organizer of the first Pride March in 1970, and a participant in the SAGE Room since the beginning –– led a Save Our Space campaign to retain a home at the Center, the group’s old first-floor room having been lost to an expanded lobby. They now meet in the Center’s renovated room 207, but issues of control of the space became contentious. | September 18 - October 01, 2014

“It is unconscionable that we have to fight to keep the SAGE Drop-In for Seniors at the LGBT Center,” the group said in a statement last week. “These are the very places that would not exist without early activists risking their lives, jobs, and family for LGBT rights.” Efforts to have SAGE share the room with other Center events was a key point of disagreement. Hoose said, “Our campaign is for SAGE to have the sole lease on the room. There was never a problem when the Center wanted to use it for other purposes. They went to Tom Weber [director of constituent services] at SAGE. If the Center owns half the room, it’s not the SAGE Room anymore.” Prior to the September 16 agreement, Rob Wheeler, the Center’s chief operating officer, said, “We want to change that dynamic so that the room is fully utilized. We really value them being there, but we would like to set a schedule.” Hoose countered, “We want sole owner ship. As it is, if we want to stay until 10 p.m. when the Center closes, we can. Sometimes

we decide to have a Christmas or New Year’s party the day before and we can.” While Wheeler said that in the past “the room sat empty a lot,” Hoose said that “there are so many empty rooms in the Center.” Michael Adams, executive director of SAGE, made it his first order of business back from his sabbatical on September 15 to meet with those who frequent the SAGE Room at the Center. “There are issues and details that have to be figured out,” he said that day, “but the Drop-In Center is not fighting for its life. There is no question that the space is going to continue.” A deal was worked out the following day when he and Center representatives met with the SAGE members. “SAGE will continue to have exclusive lease on the space, no rent increase, SAGE will make space available to the Center during evening hours when SAGE constituents aren’t using it,” Adams wrote in an email. He wrote that SAGE’s “constituents were happy with everything (per Jerry Hoose, the

SAGE, continued on p.9

POLITICS

Homophobia Takes It on the Chin in September 9 Bronx Senate Primary A week after Fernando Cabrera’s Uganda video surfaced, incumbent Gustavo Rivera the victor BY PAUL SCHINDLER

GAY CITY NEWS

hen State S e n a t o r G u s t a v o R i v e r a arrived at the Escape Restaurant & Lounge on Jerome Avenue in the Norwood section of the Bronx to greet happy supporters at about 11 on Primary Night, one of the first hugs he shared was with City Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito. The warmth between the two elected of ficials was especially significant given that Rivera’s primary challenger was one of Mark-Viverito’s colleagues, Councilmember Fernando Cabrera. “I’ve known Gustavo for many years,” the speaker told Gay City News. “He ran one of my campaigns. We’re good friends. And there’s his politics. He’s very progressive.” Then, too, “there were the recent comments made by my colleague, which I totally disagree with.” Those comments, contained in a YouTube video Cabrera produced on a visit to Uganda last winter that

State Senator Gustavo Rivera and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito chat at Rivera’s September 9 victory party.

only came to widespread attention the previous week (tinyurl.com/ qx73tj6), included lavish praise for that nation’s homophobic regime, whose leaders the councilmember described as “the righteous.” At a time when that government was trying to enact a harshly antigay law –– sidetracked at least for the moment by a court ruling –– that includes jail time even for

those who fail to report knowledge of homosexual conduct, Cabrera decried the rise of “cultural shifters going after our young.” Those “cultural shifters” –– which he compared to Communists, the Nazi regime, and the North Korean government –– were influential enough in the US, he asserted contrary to fact, that the American government is trying to punish Uganda for not

allowing gay marriage. “We are in the middle of a war,” Cabrera declared from Uganda. “A war for our children.” Always known for harshly conservative views on social issues –– he was active in the movement to block marriage equality in New York, has ties to the extremist Family Research Council, and is anti-choice –– Cabrera nonetheless sparked fresh outrage when the Uganda video emerged. The Empire State Pride Agenda, LGBT Democratic clubs, and the six gay and lesbian members of the Council urged his prominent supporters –– unsuccessfully in the case of Harlem Congressmember Charlie Rangel and Public Advocate Letitia James –– to withdraw their endorsements. On Primary Night, Rivera said the message from the voters was clear. “It doesn’t matter where it is –– Brooklyn Heights, the Upper East Side, or the northwest Bronx,” he told Gay City News. “If you

BRONX, continued on p.16

HEALTH

Federal Appeals Court Upholds New Jersey Conversion Therapy Ban Third Circuit rejects constitutional challenge to law forbidding SOCE efforts on youth BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

federal appeals court has decisively rejected a constitutional challenge to a New Jersey law prohibiting licensed therapists from performing “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE) –– sometimes called “conversion therapy” — on persons under 18. In a September 11 opinion from Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia found the law does not violate the freedom of speech and free exercise of religion rights of therapists. The measure, signed into law last year by Governor Chris Christie, bars any attempt, practiced on a minor, to “change a person’s sexual orientation, including, but not limited to, efforts

to change behaviors, gender identity, or gender expressions, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same gender.” It imposes no specific penalties, but may provide the basis for professional sanctions, loss of professional license, or financial liability toward people harmed by SOCE. The law places no restrictions on licensed counselors publically expressing their views about such therapy; they are only prohibited from providing the actual therapy to minor patients. One of several lawsuits regarding SOCE pending in New Jersey, this case was brought by therapists and organizations supporting their right to provide such treatment. Another case was brought by some patients and their parents, while a third, pending in state court, was brought by patients whose parents signed them up for SOCE and who are seeking damages from the therapists under New Jersey’s consumer

protection laws. In that case, the plaintiffs allege the practitioners fraudulently claimed to be able to change their sexual orientation and subjected them to therapy that caused mental and emotional harm. The New Jersey law was modeled on a California statute that had also been unsuccessfully challenged by therapists. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the California law does not violate therapists’ First Amendment rights. Following the reasoning in that case, District Judge Freda Wolfson ruled similarly regarding the New Jersey law. The appeals court agreed with Wolfson’s conclusion, but adopted a different First Amendment analysis. Like the Ninth Circuit, Wolfson concluded that the statute regulates conduct, not speech, and does not have enough of an “incidental effect” on

JERSEY, continued on p.16

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

OUR BRAND-NEW EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT IS NOW OPEN. AND WE HOPE YOU NEVER GET TO SEE IT. INTRODUCING THE RONALD O. PERELMAN CENTER FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES. 570 FIRST AVENUE AT 33RD STREET. We’ve completely rebuilt our emergency department since the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. State-of-the-art improvements have been made, and it’s now triple the size of the former ED, with treatment areas that have room for families at bedside. We provide experts in virtually every specialty to handle emergencies for both adults and children, and specialized teams on call for stroke and heart attack. But to truly appreciate our new emergency department at Tisch Hospital, you have to see it in person. And we hope you never get to do that. To learn more, visit nyulmc.org/emergency

| September 18 - October 01, 2014 NYU1470_ER_NYC_Community_8.75x11.5_release.indd 1

8/19/14 5:25 PM

MARRIAGE

Seventh Circuit Strikes Down Wisconsin, Indiana Marriage Bans Three-judge panel is unanimous in scathing, sarcastic rejection of states’ defenses BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

ust two weeks after coming down hard on attorneys for the States of Wisconsin and Indiana in a heated oral argument, a threejudge panel of the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision on September 4 striking down their bans on same-sex marriage. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of Ronald Reagan’s earliest judicial appointees in 1981, decisively rejected all the states’ arguments in support of their anti-marriage laws, stating that “the grounds advanced by Indiana and Wisconsin for their discriminatory policies are not only conjectural; they are totally implausible.” Throughout, Posner’s language was direct, dismissive, and even derisive in rejecting the defense mounted by Indiana and Wisconsin. His 40-page opinion was telegraphed by his questioning during the oral argument; the issues he raised and pressed repeatedly dominate his written analysis. His first questions to the attorney for Indiana concerned the welfare of children — those being raised by same-sex couples there. And his opinion starts in much the same way: “Formally these cases are about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, as we shall see, they are about the welfare of American children. The argument that the states press hardest in defense of their prohibition of same-sex marriage is that the only reason government encourages marriage is to induce heterosexuals to marry so that there will be fewer ‘accidental births,’ which when they occur outside of marriage often lead to abandonment of the child to the mother (unaided by the father) or to foster care. Overlooked by this argument is that many of those abandoned children are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive

parents were married.” During the oral argument, all three judges on the panel, also including Obama appointee David Hamilton and Clinton appointee Ann Claire Williams, were skeptical about treating this as a “fundamental right to marry” case –– expressing concern about how such a right could be characterized and delineated so as not to open up arguments about a constitutional right to polygamy or incest. Unlike the majorities in the Fourth and 10th Circuits, who based their rulings on the fundamental rights theory, the Seventh Circuit panel preferred to take the equal protection route. And their opinion on that ground was significant in two respects. First, the court concluded that Indiana and Wisconsin could not even meet the most deferential standard of judicial review –– that their marriage bans had some rational basis. But the panel also concluded –– as did the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit earlier this year –– that claims of sexual orientation discrimination merit heightened scrutiny by the court, under which the government must show not merely a rational basis for a policy but that it significantly advances an important government policy. Posner’s opinion also happens to be fun to read, with his plain-speaking, cut-through-thecant style of dealing with ridiculous arguments. He does not politely abstain from commenting;

he cuts to the chase and calls ‘em as he sees ‘em. “Our pair of cases is rich in detail but ultimately straight-forward to decide,” he wrote. “The challenged laws discriminate against a minority defined by an immutable characteristic, and the only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction — that same-sex couples and their children don’t need marriage because same-sex couples can’t produce children, intended or unintended — is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.” The panel’s opinion relied on sarcasm, as well, in demolishing Indiana’s argument that marriage was intended to channel heterosexual procreation into responsible family arrangements. “Indiana’s government thinks that straight couples tend to be sexually irresponsible, producing unwanted children by the carload, and so must be pressured (in the form of governmental encouragement of marriage through a combinations of sticks and carrots) to marry, but that gay couples, unable as they are to produced children unwanted or wanted, are model parents — model citizens really — so have no need for marriage,” Posner wrote. “Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.”

Posner also points out that if Indiana and Wisconsin are trying to reduce out-of-wedlock births by denying marriage to same-sex couples, their strategy is not working, citing statistics showing the rate of such births went up in each state after they adopted explicit bans on same-sex marriage. Gay couples are more likely to adopt children than straight couples, he notes, and many of those children will be the out-of-wedlock children surrendered for adoption. Posner found that Wisconsin provided no evidence to support its claim that “thousands of years of collective experience” prove different-sex marriage is “optimal for the family, society, and civilization.” And even it the state’s assertion were true, he wrote, “How does that bear on samesex marriage? Does Wisconsin want to push homosexuals to marry persons of the opposite sex because opposite-sex marriage is ‘optimal?’ Does it think that allowing same-sex marriage will cause heterosexuals to convert to homosexuality? Efforts to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality have been a bust; is the opposite conversion more feasible?” D i s m i s s i n g t h e a rg u m e n t s from both states that marriage amendments adopted by popular vote have a certain sanctity, Posner wrote, “Minorities trampled on by the democratic process have recourse to the courts; the recourse is called constitutional law.”

SUPREME COURT MAY DISCUSS FIVE MARRIAGE CASES AT SEPTEMBER 29 CONFERENCE The Supreme Court has indicated that at its first conference of the new term, on September 29, it may discuss the cases from all five of the states where appellate rulings have been made –– Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Though there is no certainty that day’s conference will actually get to these cases, if they do we may know very soon whether the high court will take up marriage equality in the term that runs through June 2015. With the appellate court count three for three in terms of marriage equality victories, there is –– theoretically, at least, and contrary to most speculation –– a possibility of achieving marriage equality nationwide without Supreme Court intervention should the court let petitions for appeal of favorable circuit court rulings

pile up and then –– if the board were swept clean –– deny them all in one fell swoop. One dissenting circuit, however, would essentially guarantee Supreme Court review. According to ABC News, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made precisely that point in comments this week in Minnesota. As long as the appeals courts are all lining up on the same side of the issue, there is “no need for us to rush.” Pointing to the pending ruling from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, where oral arguments suggested that an adverse ruling is a distinct possibility, Ginsburg said that if that is the outcome “there will be some urgency” for the high court to take up the issue. — Arthur S. Leonard

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

MARRIAGE

Marriage Ban Defender Dances Quickly, Appeals Panel Dubious Attorney arguing for Idaho, Nevada anti-gay policies faces tough Ninth Circuit questioning BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

ACSLAW.ORG

he San Franciscobased Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel that heard oral arguments on September 8 in several marriage equality cases appeared very dubious about the justifications presented in defense of the Nevada and Idaho bans on same-sex couples marrying. The outcome of these appeals seems almost pre-ordained at this point. Two of the panel’s judges –– Stephen Reinhardt and Marsha Berzon –– made up the majority of a circuit panel that ruled in January that sexual orientation discrimination claims merit heightened scrutiny. That standard of judicial review thrusts the burden on the state to show that a policy under challenge significantly advances an important governmental interest. Most observers agree that applying such a standard to marriage bans makes them unlikely to survive. Reinhardt also wrote the Ninth Circuit opinion that struck down California’s Proposition 8 in 2012. The panel’s third judge, Ronald Gould, was on a panel that issued a pro-gay ruling in a pre-repeal challenge to the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Berzon and Gould were appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton; Reinhardt by Jimmy Carter. The Idaho and Nevada bans were both defended by the same attorney, Monte Stewart, who founded the Marriage Law Foundation, which works to block marriage equality advances. Stewart’s argument was essentially the same for both cases, but the differences between the two required some fancy footwork. Stewart’s basic argument was that the definition of marriage plays an important function in “messaging” to society the state’s policy preferences and the conduct it wants to encourage. It is in the state’s interest, he argued, to promote understanding of how valuable it is to children born to heterosexual couples that their parents be married so they can be

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

It appeared the judges were most concerned with how they would shape their ruling for the plaintiffs rather then whether they would find for them.

raised in a stable household with both a mother and a father. Describing the consequence of a marriage equality policy as “genderless marriage,” Stewart argued that sends a message that gender doesn’t matter and that it is not important to children’s welfare that they bond with parents of both sexes. Effectively acknowledging his argument rested entirely on speculation, he referred to the state’s “crystal ball” in foreseeing harmful consequences for future generations if official policy endorsement of traditional marriage were abandoned. Stewart was confronted by Berzon, the panel’s most persistently engaged questioner, and then by Reinhardt to show how allowing or recognizing same-sex marriages would cause the increase in “fatherlessness” he insisted the states had a compelling inter est to prevent. He fell back on a federalism argument, though he didn’t use that word. He referred to the portion of Supreme Court

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in the 2013 Defense of Mar riage Act case in which he went on at length about the traditional role of the states in deciding who could marry. There are important differences between Nevada and Idaho. In Idaho, a broad constitutional amendment bans not only samesex marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships. By contrast, Nevada has a narrower marriage amendment as well as a broad domestic partnership law under which same-sex couples have virtually the same rights as different-sex couples concerning parenting and relationships with children. Stewart’s difficulty came in explaining how his “messaging” argument fares regarding a state that has undermined that message with a marriage-light approach, which confers the very rights Stewart said it is essential for marriage to deliver to different-sex couples exclusively. It’s hard to escape the suspicion

the panel will find the inconsistencies overwhelming. From their questions, it appeared the judges were most concerned with how they would shape their ruling for the plaintiffs rather then whether they would find for them. The other three circuits that have so far ruled reached the same results but followed different legal paths to get there. The Fourth Circuit ruling in the Virginia case and the 10th Cir cuit rulings on Utah and Oklahoma treated them as fundamental rights cases, finding the states failed to present a compelling argument for depriving same-sex couples of access to the fundamental right to marry. The recent Seventh Circuit rulings on Indiana and Wisconsin, by contrast (see page 6), followed the equal protection route, finding that neither state had provided any rational basis for a policy that discriminates against a group of people defined by an immutable characteristic –– sexual orientation –– and that has been the target of severe social and governmental hostility. Stewart attempted to maneuver around one big roadblock –– the Ninth Circuit’s precedent that anti-gay discrimination claims be subjected to heightened scrutiny, making it very difficult to defend a same-sex marriage ban –– by arguing it was not relevant to this case. Idaho and Nevada adopted their marriage bans, he asserted, not out of anti-gay bias or animus but because the states wanted to incentivize heterosexual couples to marry if they intended to raise children and feared that allowing same-sex marriage would send the “wrong” message to such couples. The marriage amendment campaigns of the past two decades, of course, exhibited considerable anti-gay motivation. But it is significant that –– with the exceptions of Judge Vaughn Walker’s district court ruling in the Proposition 8 case and Judge Richard Posner’s opinion for the Seventh Circuit –– the federal courts have generally been loath to attribute animus to voters who supported them.

CRIME

Cuomo Pressed at Home on Prisoner Clemency Criminal justice reformers, feminists, gays demand flexibility, especially with elderly inmates BY NATHAN RILEY

DONNA ACETO

candlelight protest outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s pastoral Westchester County home delivered a demand that he grant clemency to elderly prisoners with extensive records of good behavior. The coalition of prisoners’ rights activists, feminists, and gays, in a September 6 early evening vigil, charged the governor has granted no petitions for clemency to prisoners, while former New York Governor Hugh Carey, between 1975 and 1982, granted 155 and Ronald Reagan granted 575 while in the California State House from 1967 until 1975. A former chairman of the New York State Parole Board, Robert Dennison, called it “astonishing” that Cuomo could not find that “even one prisoner deserves clemency” and warned this failure will add to “rising” public concern about “abuses in the criminal justice system.” Harsh sentences are driving a sharp spike in the number of prisoners over 60 years old in New York State prisons. In 2000, that group accounted for 1.2 percent of the prison population. By 2007, it had increased to 2.5 percent, and in 2013 it was 4 percent, with no sign of the growth leveling off. Between 2007 and 2013, this population climbed from 1,574 to 2,104, a 34 percent increase. Even though these prisoners’ medical bills are expensive and they pose a small risk to the public, New York policy hasn’t softened. Prisoners’ rights groups have long been frustrated by the governor’s refusal to act. Attorney Sara Bennett said petitions she has filed on behalf of inmates don’t get denied, they simply go unanswered. She represents Judith Clark, a lesbian, who drove the getaway car in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car in which a Brinks guard and two police officers were killed. She has been in prison for 33 years and mentors young mothers serving short sentences who give birth in prison.

Former inmate Donna Hylton addresses the September 6 vigil.

A crowd of roughly 150 turned out for the “Candles For Clemency” vigil outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s home.

Prisoners’ rights groups argue that convicts’ lives are more than just the bad acts of their youth, that their good behavior and subsequent efforts to redeem themselves are real, and that should make for opportunities for release. A v e t e r a n g a y acti vi st a nd political organizer, Allen Roskoff, heard about Clark’s plight and proposed the groups form a coalition “Candles for Clemency” to conduct a vigil at the governor’s Mount Kisco home. Their goal, vigil leaders said, was to call attention to what they described as Cuomo’s “heartless” refusal to offer executive clemency. The idea quickly attracted an enthusiastic response. Roskoff, the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBT group, enlisted the help of Tony Hoffman, president of the Village Independent Democrats (VID), who organized a bus from Chelsea to Westchester. Kathryn Erbe, who starred in “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” co-emceed the vigil and organized participants from the entertainment industry. Catherine Curtin, an actor in the hit Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” –– in which an affluent white woman is incarcerated in a prison in which most of the inmates are poor women of color –– spoke at the vigil, emphasizing the possibility of rehabilitation. Women who are released, she said, have much to give back to their communities and praised Whole Foods for hiring and

promoting ex-offenders. In all, about 150 people showed up to make a respectful but adamant demand that the governor stop stonewalling when it comes to requests for mercy. In stirring remarks, Donna Hylton, who was released after 27 years in prison, recounted the silent scream she –– and other inmates –– felt when even after their best efforts, parole officials wouldn’t believe they had changed. “We know the depth of what we have done, but we are no longer what we were,” she said, her voice cracking. Another former inmate, Laura Whitehorn –– who is the partner of Gay City News columnist Susie Day –– decried “a system of permanent punishment” and urged a new focus on “what we are doing with our lives now.” On the bus ride up to Mount Kisco, one former inmate who asked that his name not be used said the government must reverse direction. “The United States is confronting a crisis of mass incarceration,” he said. “We should do all the methods to reduce” the prison population and to curtail policies that feed the prison system. Roskoff drew cheers by promising, “If clemencies are not issued before the holiday season, we will be back again.” Speaking to the energy shown by the diverse coalition of groups, groups, Bill Dobbs, a veteran gay

activist and civil liberties advocate, said the event signaled the gay movement was “starting to open our eyes to criminal justice issues.” The focus of community efforts, he said, has, to date, “been all about locking up” gay bashers, but “the larger justice issues” were missed. Among the concerns voiced by speakers at the vigil were the treatment of incarcerated LGBT youth, the spread of HIV in prisons, and that punishment is meted out in a discriminatory manner. People of color go to prison, speakers said, while white offenders doing the same thing go unpunished or receive light sentences –– a claim backed up by incarceration rates for drug offenses. Other public events are scheduled. Fr om September 11 to November 16, the Interference Archive, at 131 Eighth Street near Third Avenue in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, hosts “Self-Deter mination Inside/ Out,” an exhibition of materials created by inmates. The aim, the group says, is to show “incarcerated people not simply as objects of state repression or social justice activism, but as active initiators and leaders in the critique of criminal justice.” For Hoffman of VID, the cause is “honorable and important.” It offers help to “people who are suffering and they are not very popular.” Both VID and the Jim Owles Club endorsed Cuomo’s September 9 Democratic primary challenger, law professor Zephyr Teachout.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

SAGE, from p.3

COURTESY: JERRY HOOSE

agreement SAGE reached with the Center was 95 percent on target)” and that after the meeting “SAGE and the Center discussed further and have agreed that there will be a fridge in the room. So the remaining issue has been resolved.” Hoose did indeed say he was “95 percent pleased” and thought the deal “was the best we could do.” He said he remained concerned that they are not being allowed to bring their furniture into the new room, but was assured that “comfortable furniture” would be provided. In most meeting rooms in the Center, people sit on metal folding chairs, but the SAGE room already has cushioned chairs with arms. In the wake of the agreement, the Center’s Wheeler wrote in an email, “We love our long-standing partnership and mutually supporting relationship with SAGE — the community room connects the two organizations, and we really value it and the people who attend.” While Hoose expressed concern that the SAGE lease was “changing” from yearly to month-to-month, Wheeler said that has been the arrangement since 2012. Carol Demech, a SAGE member and chair of SAGE’s Advisory Council, emphasizing the importance of keeping the Center space, said it was vital for members “in their 80s and 90s from the Village who can’t get up to 305,” the address on Seventh Avenue at 28th Street where SAGE’s main offices and services are. SAGE had earlier funded someone to host the SAGE room, but that was stopped several months ago. Tracy Welsh, deputy director of

SAGE member and longtime activist Jerry Hoose.

SAGE, said that SAGE also “is trying to get programs going in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Harlem. Some of these boroughs never had LGBT elder services let alone welcoming space.” (SAGE’s plans for additional sites, funded by the City Council in the budget for the year that began July 1, will be profiled in the October 2 issue of Gay City News.) The Save our Space leaflet ends with, “If people think the activists in the 1960s and 1970s who fought for LGBT rights were fierce when they were young, they have no idea how fierce we can be as Seniors.” “I deeply respect their passion,” said Adams. “We want the Center to be an age-friendly place.” According to Wheeler, the Center partners with SAGE on intergenerational programming, including an arts program and another where young people provide technology and computer assistance to older people. “I hope we’re not going to have to continue to fight,” Hoose said. “If we hadn’t fought for the last month, we wouldn’t have gotten this deal.”

L’Shana Tova Good health, happiness and peace. Assemblymember

Providing comprehensive end-of-life care in the home, nursing home, and in-patient setting throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Nassau County. For referrals or information call or click:

718.472.1999 | www.hospiceny.com EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES BILINGUAL (ENGLISH/SPANISH) MEDICAL SOCIAL WORKERS TO JOIN OUR BRONX HOME CARE TEAM LMSW required, reliable automobile & valid driver’s license are preferred. Competitive compensation and beneﬁts package. Hospice of New York is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

FORWARD RESUME TO: JUDITH GAYLE judith.gayle@hospiceny.com or Fax: 718.784.1413

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

Come Make a Difference New training groups each month!

Patient Care Volunteers Support patients and their loved ones in your community Bereavement Volunteers Support families who have lost a loved one Administrative Voluteers Assist personnel in our Long Island City ofﬁce NASSAU & QUEENS Contact Angela Purpura angela.purpura@hospiceny.com or 516.222.1211

MANHATTAN, THE BRONX & BROOKLYN Contact Sandra Nielsen sandra.nielsen@hospiceny.com or 718.472.1999

Deborah J. Glick

BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT SERVICES

853 Broadway, Suite 1518, New York, NY 10003

Free bereavement support services for adults who have had a loss (Loved one is not required to have had hospice care)

Tel: 212-674-5153/Fax: 212-674-5530 glickd@assembly.state.ny.us

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

Contact our Bereavement Department at 347.226.4823

POLITICS

Activists Demand Full 2015 St. Pat’s Inclusion or Boycott Continues Irish Queers says NBC group’s “backroom deal” a sham, not a shamrock

DONNA ACETO

Activists on the steps of the Public Library on September 9 demanding full inclusion in next year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

h a rg i n g t h a t t h e agreement by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers to allow an LGBT employee gr oup fr om NBCUniversal to march in next year’s parade is little more than a sham and a “backroom deal,” a coalition of community activists and advocates are demanding that the 2015 event be opened up to other queer applicants. “OUT@NBC offered itself as a painless solution,” said Emmaia Gelman of Irish Queers, a group that has pressed for inclusion in the parade since 1996. “Gay corporate staff can march –– under a banner that doesn’t say the word ‘gay’ –– NBC saves face, and the parade keeps NBC sponsorship without doing a thing to end the exclusion of Irish LGBT groups.” The network’s New York station airs the parade live annually. In its announcement two weeks ago, the parade organizers, New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Inc., said that applications from other LGBT groups would be accepted beginning in 2016. But John Francis Mulligan of Irish Queers, at a September 9 press conference on the steps of the Public Library, said, “They said the same thing in 1990, that ‘We’ll take your application.’” It was that year that the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization, the original group to press

for LGBT inclusion in the parade, was first denied the right to march. Contacted about the Irish Queers demand, Bill O’Reilly, a spokesman for the organizers (but not the Fox TV host), said, “The parade is full for 2015. Out@NBCUniversal will be the LGBT group marching in it. Other groups are free to apply for 2016.” But activists charged that before formalizing a policy barring groups with banners identifying themselves as LGBT, organizers simply responded to applications by saying the parade did not have room. According to Irish Queers, they contacted parade officials after the previous week’s announcement but had not heard back. Some of those who spoke at the Public Library event faulted both the organizers and NBC. “I am appalled that parade organizers and NBC are trying to pull a fast one,” said Ann Northrop, a longtime activist, now affiliated with Queer Nation NY, who said she was “arrested multiple times” on Fifth Avenue protesting gay exclusion from the parade. The “fast one” she described involved putting “an ungay NBC gay group” into the March 17 parade to stem the growing withdrawal of its corporate sponsors. This past year, both Guinness and Heineken dropped their longtime support for the parade, and NBC had been facing mounting pressure from activists and others for its continued airing of the discriminatory parade.

Matthew McMorrow, the manager of government affairs at the Empire State Pride Agenda, also attributed the agreement on OUT@ NBCUniversal to fear “that one of their corporate media sponsors would back out.” The fact that the deal was struck “without ever meeting with the community,” McMorrow said, was “offensive.” Mulligan said that if the Irish Queers application as well as ones filed by Lavender & Green and the St. Pat’s For All Parade, an annual inclusive event held in Queens, are not accepted, “the boycott is on.” Over the past 20 years, most leading progressive Democratic politicians have declined to participate in the parade because of its exclusion of gay groups. This year, Mayor Bill de Blasio became the first mayor since David Dinkins to refuse to march. Asked about the OUT@NBCUniversal participation and the Irish Queers response, Wiley Norvell, a City Hall press spokesperson, in an email message, told Gay City News, “We haven’t yet met with parade organizers about these developments. We’ll have more to share on the administration’s approach thereafter.” Activists are pressing the NBC employee group to skip the event. “It would be a shame to have to picket an LGBT employee group that is essentially crossing a picket line,” Gelman said. In calling on OUT@NBCUniversal to stand with Irish Queers and

other groups, she pointed to the example of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, where MassEquality, the state LGBT advocacy group there, refused an offer this past March to participate, but only if it did not carry any banner identifying itself as an LGBT group. NBCUniversal also did not respond to a request for comment about the Irish Queers position. In the days after the agreement was announced, Andrew Brewer, an NBC employee, made several Facebook posts talking about his role over more than two years in getting agreement for the company’s LGBT employee group’s right to march. The company has not, however, responded to Gay City News’ request to make him available to speak to the newspaper about his efforts. In the wake of the OUT@NBCUniversal agreement, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was arrested in numerous protests in the 1990s and later, in office, tried in vain to forge a solution, termed the announcement “a huge, huge step” by parade organizers which they were “forced to take” by activists. Asked whether organizers might decline to broaden inclusion after the 2015 event, she said, “It’s impossible for them to go back. If they go back, they’re not just bigots, they’re deceiving, lying bigots.” Though Gelman clearly doesn’t share Quinn’s optimism, she did say that the one bit of “progress” in last week’s announcement is that it shows “that sponsors have to respond.” NBC, she said, is acting on the same pressures that convinced Guinness and Heineken to drop their sponsorship. Perhaps not surprisingly coming from the creator of the Rainbow Flag, it was left to Gilbert Baker to offer the most colorful observation at the Public Library on September 9. “This is a big con job by the archbishop so he can swish up Fifth Avenue in his big ermines and magenta silk and not have to face a protest,” he said, noting that Cardinal Timothy Dolan will be the grand marshal in 2015. “He wants to cast himself as the progressive guy who found the solution.”

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

REMEMBRANCE

No More Tawk

Enduring comic legend Joan Rivers, dead at 81 BY DAVID NOH

Elizabeth Taylor’s eating habits: She stands in front of the microwave, screaming “Hurry up!” Donatella Versace: “That skin! She looks like something you’d hang off your door in Africa.” Queen Elizabeth II: “Gowns by Helen Keller.” Rihanna: “She confessed to Oprah Winfrey that she still loves Chris Brown. Idiot! Now it’s MY turn to slap her.” Offensive to some, adored by many, there is no denying that she broke ground in the stand-up comedy field, traditionally a boys’ club, where her indefatigable drive, professionalism, and comic chops gained her the respect of everyone in the business. In later years, she was looked up to as a true pioneer by younger funny women including Rosie O’Donnell, Kathy Griffin, and Sarah Silverman. “Oh, grow up!” was another Rivers riposte. Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky to Russian immigrant parents in 1933, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard with an English degree. Originally aspiring to be an actress, she worked in

JOANRIVERS.COM

an we talk?” was the trademark mantra of Joan Rivers, who died at age 81 on September 4 of cardiac arrest in New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. She had days earlier lost consciousness during an operation on her vocal cords and was placed in a medically induced coma and then life support. Talk she did, during a 60-year career that spanned nightclubs, television, and film, first styling herself as a less than gorgeous Jewish girl from Brooklyn coping with career, disinterested men, and the rigors of marriage, and then, in the second half of her career, segueing into verbal attacks on celebrities that could be as vicious as they were funny. Here are some of her classic insults:

Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa.

retail and temp jobs and was briefly married to her co-worker at Bond’s clothing store, James Sanger. Stand-up comedy in small New York clubs was her way of financing her acting career and, eventually, she realized this was her true métier, changed her name to Rivers, and never looked back. Her aggressive style was a problem early on, as with an important appearance on the “Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, in which her ethnic jokes were deemed offensive. But, unstoppable, she joined Chicago’s Second City comedy group where she honed her improvisational skills and, by 1966, was a regular on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It was there, as a child in Hawaii, that this writer first became aware of her. Johnny Carson was an important fan of hers and, when he began hosting the “Tonight Show,” she was a frequent guest, even filling in for him on many, many occasions. The ratings for her appearances soared and, in 1986, she was paid $10 million by the Fox network to host her own rival talk show. It turned out to be a decidedly mixed blessing, as a deeply wounded Carson never spoke to her again, the show was cancelled and, in the sad aftermath of that, her second husband and manager, Edgar Rosenberg, with whom she had her only child, a daughter Melissa, committed suicide in 1987. A career slump followed, but she reinvented herself in a variety of ways. Having herself directed and written a cult movie, “Rabbit Test” (1978), with Billy Crystal as a pregnant man, she made a film with

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

Melissa, “Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story” (1994). She created a lucrative sideline for herself, selling jewelry and clothing on TV shopping networks. In the mid-1990s, she made the leap into reality television, manning the red carpet at glitzy events like the Oscars and Grammys, and pioneering the current obsession with step-and-repeat styles by demanding to know who the various stars were wearing. This she parlayed into her own reality show with her daughter, “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best” in 2011, as well as “Fashion Police” in which she led a coven of fashion “experts” in skewering the worstdressed and lauding the best-attired stars of the week. I enjoyed a very agr eeable acquaintanceship with Rivers, who was much warmer and more welcoming in person than her formidable, barb-tongue persona. Her penchant for plastic surgery was obvious, nay notorious, but up

close, I almost could discern the reason for it. This was one obsessed woman, whether it was over her career, about which she worried if she had too many free nights not performing somewhere, or her face, in which even the hint of a wrinkle could send her back for more cosmetic alteration. She wound up with a pristine look of sorts ––a blandly pretty, immobile wax doll, unrecognizable from the awkward, horsefaced comedienne on the Sullivan show, although that never stopped her from making herself the prime butt of her own jokes: “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.” For someone whose utterances could be so supremely vulgar, her personal taste was exquisite, whether it was her East Side triplex outfitted with the grandeur of Versailles or her own appearance, doused with Patou’s Joy and sporting couture that was inevitably as elegant as it was uniquely flamboyant. I once saw her in a beautiful Zandra Rhodes chiffon blouse that she had made even more beautiful by customizing it with beading. That was the night I found her sitting at a table at Joe Allen’s restaurant, surrounded by society swells like Reinaldo Herrera and Betsy Bloomingdale. When everyone left, she sat there alone, with a look of shock on her face. “Hi Joan,” I said, “What’s the matter?”

RIVERS, continued on p.38

TIME TO REVISIT YOUR WILL? Now that DOMA has been repealed, IT’S TIME TO REVISIT YOUR WILL.

ALL ASPECTS OF ESTATE PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION * Over 20 Years Of Experience * Reasonable Rates * Prompt Attention Given To Your File

MORDY MANDELL, ESQ.

340 Webster Ave., Suite #6J, Brooklyn, NY 11230

(718) 438-4219

FAMILY PRIDE

RiveR pARk nuRseRy scHOOl Living, Learning. Today & for Tomorrow.

Open HOuse DATes:

Tuesday, Oct.14,18, p.m. Tuesday Oct 20145-6 5-6pm Wednesday, Nov. 16, 5-6 p.m. Wednesday Nov 5, 2014 5-6pm Thursday, Jan. 12, 5-6 Thursday Jan 8, 2015 5-6 p.m. pm Thursday, Feb. p.m. Thursday Feb 12,16, 20155-6 5-6pm Wednesday March 1, 4, 2015 Thursday, March 5-6 5-6pm p.m. ThursdayApril April 16, 5-6pm Tuesday, 3, 2015 5-6 p.m. Thursday MayMay 14, 2015 Wednesday, 16,5-6pm 5-6 p.m.

at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Sundays Sunday School & Youth Group • 9:30 am Little Lambs Nursery • 9:30 & 11 am Positive Parents Group • 9:30 am

Teaching West Side kids for over 40 years 1/2 day & full-day program for ages 2.8-5 years • • • • •

Large classroom space Truly diverse student body Large outdoor play space Active parent cooperative All teachers have a minimum of 25 years teaching experience and a Masters in Early Childhood Education

Our program:

• emphasizes cooperative socialization • teaches love and respect for all people • balances academic and creative experiences • challenges young minds through investigative and open-ended activities

711 Amsterdam Ave. (corner 94th Street) (212) 663-1205 • www.riverparknurseryschool.com • riverparkns@verizon.net

CryoGam Colorado, LLC Serving the LGBT Community for over 20 years •Anonymous Donor Sperm •Directed Donor Services •Embryo,Oocyte & Sperm Storage Hours of Operation: Monday-Thursday 8-6pm Friday 8-3pm Licensed by CLIA, NY State DOH, State of California DPH, and Maryland DOH FDA# 3004092640

Quality specimens. Affordable prices. Exceptional service.

800-473-9601

www.cryogam.com

To Advertise, Contact Francesco Regini Francesco@GayCityNews.com 646-452-2496 12

Children’s Choir • 10:15 am Children’s Church • 11:15 am (Pre K to 3rd grade) Worship • 9:30 & 11 am

Year-round opportunities for families to grow in faith. Learn more at fapc.org/grow

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church 7 West 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan • fapc.org

Sally Bienemann Psychotherapist M.A.; C.S.W. Experienced | Low Fee No insurance necessary

sbyby10333@aol.com How a child learns to learn will impact his or her life forever. City and Country School Open House: Wednesday, November 19, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. Visit our website for information and application materials. 146 W. 13th St, NYC, NY 10011 212.242.7802 cityandcountry.org September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

FAMILY PRIDE

Trying to have a baby? We CAN He HHeLP! eLP! At GENESIS, our mission is to help patients realize the dream of parenthood regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. The countless notes from patients that decorate our halls are testimony to the quality of the GENESIS program.

Building Families for 25 Years! Brooklyn • Staten Island • Long Island

GENESIS

Fertility & Reproductive Medicine

Where Life Begins

(718) 283-8600 • www.genesisfertility.com

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

Trans-Ambivalence

PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

Jennifer@communitymediallc.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER TROY MASTERS

troy@gaycitynews.com EDITOR IN-CHIEF & CO-FOUNDER PAUL SCHINDLER

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Duncan Osborne

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Christopher Byrne (Theater), Susie Day (Perspective), Brian McCormick (Dance)

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Seth J. Bookey, Anthony M.Brown, Kelly Jean Cogswell, Andres Duque, Michael Ehrhardt, Steve Erickson, Andy Humm, Eli Jacobson, David Kennerley, Gary M. Kramer, Arthur S. Leonard, Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass, Winnie McCroy, Eileen McDermott, Mick Meenan, Tim Miller, Gregory Montreuil, Christopher Murray, David Noh, Nathan Riley, David Shengold, Yoav Sivan, Gus Solomons Jr., Tim Teeman, Kathleen Warnock, Benjamin Weinthal, Dean P. Wrzeszcz

ART DIRECTOR MICHAEL SHIREY

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS ANDREW GOOSS CHRIS ORTIZ

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT SALES/MARKETING AMANDA TARLEY

SENIOR VP OF ADVERTISING / MARKETING FRANCESCO REGINI

francesco@gaycitynews.com

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES JACK AGLIATA ALLISON GREAKER JENNIFER HOLLAND ANDREW MARK JULIO TUMBACO Please call (212) 229-1890 for advertising rates and availability.

NATIONAL DISPLAY ADVERTISING Rivendell Media / 212.242.6863

Gay City News, The Newspaper Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender NYC, is published by NYC Community Media, LLC. Send all inquiries to: Gay City News, 515 Canal Street, Unit 1C, NYC 10013 Phone: 212.229.1890 Written permission of the publisher must be obtained before any of the contents of this paper, in part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed. All contents (c) 2014 Gay City News. Gay City News is a registered trademark of NYC Community Media, LLC. Jennifer Goodstein, CEO Fax: 212.229.2790; E-mail: Jennifer@communitymediallc.com

FOUNDING MEMBER

BY ED SIKOV

he HighestPaid Female C E O i n America Used to Be a

Man.” That’s the arresting headline of New York magazine’s September 8 – 21 cover story on Martine Rothblatt, the founder and chief executive officer of the pharma company United Therapeutics and a co-founder of Sirius radio. Written by Lisa Miller, the piece inspires pure ambivalence in me. I honestly don’t know what I think about it. My problems begin with the headline. Is New York suggesting that Rothblatt is paid so much because she used to be a man or am I just being paranoid? Below the headline, in much smaller print, is this provocative statement: “And that’s hardly the most unusual thing about her.*” Is it fair to call transgender people “unusual?” Is that really the best word to use to describe this corporate titan? As I pondered these questions, my eyes spotted the asterisk at the end of the sentence, which led me to a paragraph in truly tiny type in the cover’s lower left-hand corner spelling out what New York means by the even more “unusual” aspects of Martine Rothblatt: “There is, for instance, the futurist religion she’s started. Her conviction that the dead will rise again through artificial intelligence. And the robot she’s already built to look exactly like her wife.” Okay, folks! Your decidedly unintrepid opinion monger hasn’t even gotten beyond the cover and finds the headline, subhead, and footnote so bizarre that he has no idea

even how to begin to form a judgment. And that’s scarcely the end of it. The cover features a full shot of Rothblatt wearing a classic dark blue corporate pinstripe suit and leaning back against the back of a chair with her left leg crooked and her right leg extending to the bottom of the cover and ending in a foot clad in what looks like a man’s black shoe. She’s sitting the way a 19-yearold boy sits –– with his legs wide open so nobody can avoid looking at his cock. And she’s got a sm i r k on her face. The smirk only invites more confusion. What’s she smirking about? Her vast income? The fact that she and her vast income have made the cover of a popular magazine? That she used to be a he is a screaming-headline-worthy cover story in 2014? That she knows she’s sitting like a 19-yearold boy displaying his package? And what’s with the stuf f in the minuscule type? She founded a new religion? She believes that technology will raise the dead? Her r obot looks “exactly” like her wife? Again, is it paranoid of me to question the need for New York to make this transwoman appear far, f a r, f a r b e y o n d w a c k o before anyone even opens the magazine? Or am I just plain missing the point, namely: this is just a great story? Is the headline exploitative? Or is it hip, snappy journalism? You tell me. Maybe I should follow the advice provided on the two-page opening spread that launches the story inside the magazine: “Just ask her wife. Then ask the robot version of her wife.” Good God, what if they disagree? Then what?

We turn the page and find on the left a portrait of “Rothblatt with her wife of 33 years, Bina,” and on the right a portrait of the robot. Apart from differing hairstyles and hair color, the robot Bina is a dead ringer for the real one. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the original real Bina. Who knows? At this point, another, more uncharitable question crossed my mind: is this investigative reporting or a freak show? All this, and I still hadn’t read a word of the article. Let’s skip the sections about how irrelevant Rothblatt thinks genitalia are and her grandchildren and her 83-year-old mother who sometimes calls her “he” and plunge forward into the crackpot raising-the-dead idea. Funny thing: the pot doesn’t seem so cracked when Rothblatt and Miller describe it. At first. “She believes in a foreseeable future in which the beloved dead will live again as digital beings, reanimated by sophisticated artificial intelligence programs that will be as cheap and accessible to every per son as iTunes. ‘I know this sounds messianic or even childlike,’ she wrote to me in one of many emails over the summer. ‘But I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable.’” Doesn’t sound so terribly strange, does it? Frankly, what I find most frightening about this passage is the idea that Apple may end up owning most of the world’s souls. Rothblatt makes more and more sense the fur ther into the article you go. For a little while. There’s the inevitable discussion of her transition from male to female, but Miller tells it with great intelligence and warmth. She interviewed one of Rothblatt’s kids ––

Gabriel, who is currently running for Congress in Florida. Gabriel Rothblatt gives a brilliant answer to the question –– if genitalia aren’t defining, as transfolks generally claim, “then why put yourself and the people you love through such a painful process?” (These are Miller’s words, not Gabriel’s.) “‘Sometimes it’s necessary to be a living example,’ Gabriel told me… Then he brings up what he calls the familiar joke about why the libertarian chicken crossed the road. ‘The libertarian chicken dreams of the day when no one asks them why they crossed the road. It’s your body. It’s your choice what you choose to do with it. It’s not even our place or our business to be judging them or asking them why.’” This makes perfect sense, and I found myself growing more and more comfortable with the article, with Rothblatt, and with her all-encompassing vision of trans-ness. I started to lose it, however, when Miller writes, “Martine rhapsodizes about the possibility of millions of nano-robots swimming through living human bodies, directed wirelessly, cleaning up impurities and attending to diseases at the cellular level… In [her new book] ‘Virtually Human,’ Martine depicts a world populated by humans and their ‘mindclones,’ sentient digital replicas of individuals’ minds, created by loading AI [artificial intelligence] video interviews, photographs, personality tests, and the entirety of their digital lives –– Facebook posts, tweets, Amazon orders. These mindclones would exist in parallel with their flesh-and-blood originals but act, judge, think, feel, remember, and learn on their own –– and because

MEDIA CIRCUS, continued on p.16

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: A Dyke Abroad

One of the Last Lesbians Standing… In Publishing BY KELLY COGSWELL

arly in July, I had a conversation with Sarah Schulman, writer, queer activist, historian, and co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers. We talked about what contributed to that group’s successful launch, including the vibrancy of the lesbian subculture in 1970s and ‘80s. We also discussed why it’s so hard for lesbian writers to break into the mainstream. Spoiler alert: homophobia and niche marketing. Here’s are some edited excerpts from the forthcoming podcast at GayCityNews.nyc. SARAH SCHULMAN: When I wrote “The Sophie Horowitz Story,” in 1984, it was the third lesbian detective novel on the face of the

earth. It was a brand new concept. And quickly became a reactionary idea. But for a very brief time, it was a progressive idea. Because the idea was that you could take a popular cultural form and put in lesbian content was something that hadn’t happened before. Because my generation was the first generation that was out in popular culture. Prior to us, there was only underground lesbian culture and then there was popular culture. So, the reason that “The Sophie Horowitz Story” was so successful, even if it was still underground or whatever, was because people were excited at being inserted into the world. KC: Who do you think is still trying to do that? Insert lesbians on their own terms? Into the world. Because it seems like that project has been abandoned.

SS: People are trying. I run writing groups in my apartment for women who have queer content. People are also constantly sending me their manuscripts. I see that there are books being written, but they never get out there. Or if they get out there and they’re buried. But like this year, I chaired the Lammys lesbian fiction panel. And we read 60 books. And it was hard to find 10 nominees. The best writers are abandoning the lesbian protagonist because they want to have real careers. And the ones who stick with it are either in the very early stages of their development and don’t have a lot of craft or can’t get published. KC: Do you think it’s harder now than it was? I noticed that “After Delores” was published on a mainstream press.

SS:: Yeah, but you have to understand how that happened. First of all, I only got paid $5,000 for that book. Just so you understand that. So, a lesbian of my generation –– that is to say someone who has always been out –– got a job at Dutton as an editor. Right out of Smith College. And she already knew my work because I was known, and especially “Girls, Visions and Everything” was known. And a friend of hers stopped me at the health food store and said that this woman Carol had gotten this job and that I should send her my next book. So I brought it over to the office. And then she called me a few days later and said she wanted to publish it. Now this was before niche marketing. Right? Niche marketing starts in 1992. This is before that. So, when that book was published. It got a mainstream review in the New York Times by a man. Today, it would be reviewed by a lesbian. Because of niche marketing.

DYKE ABROAD, continued on p.17

PERSPECTIVE: Snide Lines

Hot & Pulsating: Sex Toys Save the Earth

BY SUSIE DAY

just found out that the WANK-O Sex Toy Company (a subsidiary of Dow Corning) gives out grants to promising lesbian writers. It’s part of their corporate affirmative action campaign to take over the world. Of course, their rising sex-toy profit rate means they probably play an increasing role in the acceleration of climate change. So what? This opportunity came at just the right time. I am so sick of socially responsible worrying I could die. I tried to “fight the power,” only to end up with a massive persecution complex. Tried to “stop killer drones” — the only thing I ended up stopping was reading the paper. And now I’m supposed to say NO to climate change. When is it going to be my turn to say YES? Yes to fun! So I wrote WANK-O about a grant, and as part

Letters to Editor Web Exclusive: At GayCityNews.nyc/son-hillary, read Jon Winkleman’s takedown of editor Paul Schindler for his recent editorial, “Hillary’s Not Our Mom, and She’s Not Judy Garland.” Maybe Schindler will have a response. | September 18 - October 01, 2014

of the application process, they sent me this literary exercise. Finally, after years of looking, I have “found” myself! I am going to have fun! I am going to be the greatest lesbo porn writer ever! Regard: Essay Question: The first step in writing is to lose your inhibitions! Think of a character who is sexually uninhibited. Now, sit down and write for 20 minutes WITHOUT STOPPING about that person. Remember to write in a completely uncensored stream of consciousness. Don’t be afraid to “go wild”!

MY LESBO PORN ESSAY OK, clock is ticking. Cat is sleeping. Why did cat throw up on section of New York Times entitled, “Dining Out”? Can cat read? No matter, must dam up stream of consciousness; divert it to something sexy. Who do I know who is sexually uninhibited? Nobody. Will make something up. I’m not nervous. Just keep writing. Breathe. Just breathe. Now write! WRITE, DAMN YOU! Betty Lou lay supine on the red plush divan. She was sprawled like a hot, flattened toad smashed out there on Highway 95, her hand resting greedily on her hot, pulsating –– Her hot, pulsating thing-down-there. Keep writing, Susie, you are so much smarter than your competition, you fucking idiot.

It was 2:00 o’clock on a hot, pulsating afternoon in mid-April and Betty Lou had no clothes on, in fact this third-person narrator could see everything. Hubba hubba. Betty Lou began to think hotly of Bobby Jo. That feisty filly still brought up sexual connotations, even though the two ladies had been going together now for almost three weeks. “Too bad Bobby Jo is not here,” groaned Betty Lou to herself erotically. “I really feel hot and pulsating. I sure would like to be sexually uninhibited right now! I know! I’ll call on Ms. Dalloway!” So saying, she reached for her trusty, hot-dogshaped vibrator –– and subtle literary device. Thanks to the WANK-O Sex Toy Company’s installment plan, Betty Lou had only two more payments to go, and Ms. Dalloway would be hers, all hers. It made her feel downright non-monogamous! Hey, I’m getting kind of steamed up here, woo woo! Keep writing! Oh no! Unfortunately for Betty Lou, she had forgotten to buy AAA batteries! But wait! Ms. Dalloway could also be plugged in to a wall socket! (Kudos on your versatile design, WANK-O!) So Betty Lou slid Ms. Dalloway’s stiff prongs satisfyingly into the hot, pulsating power outlet. Moistly, she flicked her little switch –– the vibrator’s switch, not Betty Lou’s. “Purrrrrr,” went Ms. Dalloway in a hot and pulsating manner. Oh boy! Can’t wait! Keep writing! Then Betty Lou maneu-

SNIDE LINES, continued on p.35

BRONX, from p.4

espouse hate, it will be rejected by the voters.” Mark-Viverito echoed that sentiment, saying, “Voters are tired of that. Any type of politics that seeks to exclude is the wrong way to go.” In a written statement issued later that night, Rivera said, “Fundamentally, this race boiled down to a choice for our district between real progressive values that help Bronx families, and the divisive, counterproductive politics of the past.” In comments to Gay City News, Rivera, who captured roughly 60 percent of the vote, also talked about the “trust” he believes he’s restored to the district, after three successive state senators who found themselves in jail. In 2010, Rivera, running as a progressive and a reformer, defeated incumbent

Democrat Pedro Espada, Jr., who is now serving a federal prison sentence for the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a health care non-profit he controlled. Among those on hand at the Rivera victory party were a group from the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City –– which like the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club endorsed the incumbent senator –– that included Richard Allman, Robert Atterbury, Andy Praschak, and the club’s president, Eunic Ortiz. According to Ortiz, the Rivera race was one of about a half dozen contests “critical to changing the landscape” where the club focused particular effort in providing volunteer support. Of Rivera, she said he has “the potential to be the face of the future of the New York State Democratic Party.” Emblematic of

JERSEY, from p.4

speech to require the heightened judicial scrutiny appropriate in free speech cases. Wolfson looked to the government’s longstanding authority to regulate healthcare through professional licensing. She also rejected the therapists’ claim that the law violated their right to free exercise of religion, finding that it was a “neutral law” that never referred to religion or religious beliefs. Judge Smith rejected Wolfson’s conclusion that the law only regulates conduct, since all parties agreed that “modern-day SOCE therapy, and that practiced by Plaintiffs in this case, is ‘talk therapy’ that is administered wholly through verbal communication.” Wolfson asserted that SOCE practitioners now reject the “aversion treatments” previously used –– including induced nausea and vomiting or paralysis and electric shocks –– as “unethical,” even though a recent consumer protection case in New Jersey detailed allegations that at least some therapists continue to use non-talk approaches. Since the appeals panel concluded the law represents content-based regulation of speech, it applied a higher level of scrutiny in this case. Political speech enjoys the highest level of protection and cannot be restricted unless the government show a carefully-tailored rule designed to achieve a compelling interest –– usually involving national security or prevention of imminent

MEDIA CIRCUS, from p.14

they are, technically, nonhuman, they need not die.” Frankly, I find these concepts more than slightly upsetting –– the last thing I want from my Amazon

his leadership, Ortiz explained, is his work on pushing the New York State Dream Act, which would provide opportunities for financial assistance to undocumented immigrants pursuing college study. The bill was scuttled for this year when it failed to win a majority in the Senate against unanimous opposition from Republicans. Stonewall was less successful in two other Senate primaries where the club backed challengers to members of the Independent Democratic Conference who bolted their party to give Republicans control of the Senate, even though the GOP won only a minority of seats in the last election. Many LGBT advocates blamed the IDC for the Republican leaders’ refusal to bring a vote on the long-stalled Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA, or on a

criminal acts. Commercial speech, by contrast, can be restricted to advance important governmental interests, such as consumer protection or public health. “Professional speech” should be evaluated according to the same standard of “heightened scrutiny,” the panel found. Smith concluded that the Legislature’s findings, based on testimony and resolutions from reputable professional organizations, provided sufficient justification for the law to survive that standard. The court cited professional groups including the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Pan American Health Organization as among those who “have publicly condemned the practice of SOCE, expressing serious concerns about its potential to inflict harm… including depression, anxiety, self-destructive behavior, and suicidality. Many such organizations have also concluded that there is no credible evidence that SOCE counseling is effective.” Responding to the plaintiffs’ contention that there was not “conclusive empirical evidence regarding the effect of SOCE counseling on minors,” Smith found that the Legislature “is not constitutionally required to wait for conclusive scientific evidence before acting to protect its citizens from serious threats of harm.” And finding that minors are an “especially vulnerable population” who might feel pressured to consent to SOCE by their families “despite fear of

order history is to have it develop literally a life of its own –– but once Miller moved into the territory of Terasem, Martine’s “transreligion,” and Bina48, the robot wife, I had to call it quits. It became just too fuckin’ weird. The only way I could

measure to ban mental health professionals from conducting sexual orientation change efforts on patients who are minors. In Queens, the IDC’s Tony Avella edged out former City Comptroller John Liu by a 52-48 percent margin. In a district spanning portions of the Bronx and Westchester County, the IDC leader, Jeff Klein, trounced former City Councilmember Oliver Koppell, who also once served in the Assembly and briefly as the state’s appointed attorney general, by a two-to-one margin. As for Cabrera’s future, Mark-Viverito said a number of her members “have expressed themselves on his comments and I think they speak for themselves.” Given that he was just last year elected to his second four-year term, however, she added, “But we still have to work together.”

being harmed,” the court found the state could properly conclude that an “informed consent” approach to treating those under 18 was inadequate to avoid potential harm. Regarding the religious freedom claim by the plaintiffs, the appeals panel agreed with Judge Wolfson that the law is neutral on its face regarding religion. There was no “covert targeting” of religion here, Smith wrote, even if many of the SOCE practitioners are religiously motivated in providing the therapy. The plaintiffs’ appeal was argued by Matt Staver, dean of Liberty University Law School and a prominent anti-gay activist on behalf of Liberty Counsel. Susan M. Scott of the New Jersey attorney general’s office defended the statute, together with David S. Flugmann representing Garden State Equality in collaboration with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The plaintiffs have since indicated they will seek review by the Supreme Court. Given that the Third Circuit and the Ninth Circuit used different analyses to reach their free speech conclusions –– though both upheld state laws barring SOCE treatment of minors –– the high court might be persuaded that a national precedent would be appropriate. Smith was joined on the Third Circuit panel by Judges Thomas Vanaskie, appointed by Barack Obama, and Dolores Sloviter, a Jimmy Carter appointee .

calm myself down was by gently singing the words of two true originals who could never be duplicated: “And you knew who you were then, girls were girls and men were men; mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again...”

In a web exclusive at GayCityNews.nyc/ambivalences i m p l i f y i n g , re a d E d S i k o v ’ s deconstruction of the New York T imes obituary of Chick-fil-A founder S. T ruett Cathy. Follow @edsikov on Twitter.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

DYKE ABROAD, from p.15

Because of the containment. The containment was not in place yet. KC: Do you see any way out? Do you see any way to go outside niche marketing? SS: In one of my books, I can’t remember which, maybe as early as “My American History,” I wrote out like a whole plan. Of how to turn around the problem of lesbian fiction. I had proposed a subway ad campaign with the prominent straight writers of the day. Like Amy Tan and Terry McMillan, these people, saying, “We read lesbian books.” You just have to give people permission to read these books. But they don’t want to. Because the homophobia is stronger than the desire for money. It’s true. I mean, people are trying to exploit every single underground impulse that exists, any little fucking thing that a person does you see it in an ad the next day. My last book, or second to last, “Gentrification of the Mind,” has turned into some kind of cult classic. I get letters all the time, but the people

who are willing to exploit everything in the world, don’t want to exploit that. It is ideological. It’s a problem of ideology. The other thing is lesbians in publishing will not do anything. The last time I had a round of discussion with young lesbian editors, I found they had no sense that their ability to be out on their job is a product of anybody else’s labor. And they don’t feel like they owe you anything. I mean, in one of my books I say that there was a time when any gay girl could call any other gay girl in America and she would call her back. Right? But forget it now. Many of my peers have been driven out by this. There were maybe 15 or so people who were publishing lesbian fiction during the time I was at Dutton –– and none of those people are publishing adult fiction today. Except me. And those were all very interesting writers. Because it was a system of attrition. I just happened to be very, very, very — you know –– committed. I will spend a decade getting a book published. But other people are not willing to do that.

Trying to have a baby?

Driver’s Seat! YOU’RE IN THE

CADILLAC & CASH GIVEAWAY ®

Over $300,000 in Cash & Prizes! Begins Labor Day Weekend: August 29 - September 1 PLUS … Tuesdays, Thursdays & Fridays in September

Grand-Prize Drawing, September 28 Cadillac® CTSTM -OR- $50,000 in Cash

For complete rules and details see Genting Rewards or visit: rwnewyork.com/promotions. Vehicle courtesy of

CADILLAC ®

H We CAN HeLP!

Our mission is to help patients realize the dream of parenthood -– regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. GENESIS Fertility & Reproductive Medicine is a nationally recognized center of excellence for the treatment of infertility, long-recognized for our comprehensive fertility services, culturally-sensitive approach to patient care and excellent success rates. The countless notes from patients that decorate our halls are testimony to the quality of the GENESIS program. Brooklyn • Staten Island • Long Island

GENESIS

Fertility & Reproductive Medicine

Where Life Begins

(718) 283-8600 www.genesisfertility.com

Building Families Over 25 Years! | September 18 - October 01, 2014

110-00 Rockaway Blvd. Jamaica, NY 11420 rwnewyork.com • 1-888-888-8801 Locate Your Free Shuttle:RWRedExpress.com MUST BE 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER TO PLAY THE NEW YORK LOTTERY GAMES. PLEASE PLAY RESPONSIBLY. 24-hour Problem Gaming Hotline: 1-877-8-HOPENY (846-7369).

REAL ESTATE

Autumn in New York: Manhattan & Brooklyn A hot real estate market spreads ever wider across the city

nogym, a game room, and private storage. Exclusively marketed and sold through TOWN Residential, the Charles’ move-ins begin late this year. (charlesnyc.com)

BY LAUREN PRICE

TOWN RESIDENTIAL

anhattan real estate remains hot and is increasingly exclusive. That’s the message from Corcoran’s second quarter 2014 report. The average price for resale co-ops, resale condos, and new developments increased 20 percent over last year, up to $1.697 million. That number topped the first quarter and sets a new record high price. Median price, however, while increasing six percent to $920,000, has still not rebounded to the 2008 second quarter all-time high of $975,000. Price per square foot saw a large gain, up 15 percent to $1,286 market-wide, which is also a new record. Larger units are seeing higher price gains, with annual growth at two percent for studios, six percent for one-bedrooms, 11 percent for two bedrooms, and a whopping 23 per cent for three bedrooms. New development slowed in the second quarter, but not for lack of demand. Price increases reflect not only appreciation but also the high quality of new supply. The new development market increased 63 percent over last year and price per square foot increased 31 percent. Median price was up 16 percent, to $1.731 million. New developments skewed larger, with 27 percent three-plus bedrooms, compared to just 14 percent of existing stock. New development price growth was strongest in one and three bedroom units. The greatest number of new development closings took place on the Upper East Side. Douglas Elliman’s second quarter report found that consistent with a declining vacancy rate, Manhattan rents grew steadily over the past five months. Tight mortgage underwriting standards and an increase in city employment levels were key factors. Median rental levels increased 5.4 percent to $3,205 compared to second quarter 2013, the biggest increase for that quarter in six years. The number of new rentals increased modestly by 7.2 percent to 4,938.

The dining room of the penthouse duplex at 430 East 10th Street in the East Village.

In Brooklyn, Elliman found, the rental market is also hot, with prices up for the 14th consecutive months and smaller apartments bearing the bulk of the increases. Tenants showed a greater willing to seek affordability elsewhere rather than renew existing leases. Price gains were seen across the studio and one-bedroom markets, with more mixed results in the larger size categories. The median rent level in Brooklyn grew 6.6 percent from a year ago to $2,852, but the luxury market level increased only 1.8 percent to $4,500. The number of new rentals listed jumped 127 percent to 892 over the same period, reflecting strong tenant resistance to renewing leases at higher cost. For Manhattan buyers, new developments, particularly on the Upper East Side near the Second Avenue subway, provide great options. When Phase I of the new line opens in late 2016, it will carry 200,000 straphangers from 96th Street to connections at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

For views of the East River, the spanking new SixtyFour at 300 East 64th Street at Second Avenue was developed by architects Stonehilll & Taylor. A luxury condo conversion of a rental building, SixtyFour is exclusively sold through Douglas Elliman. Unit sizes runs from one to three bed-

rooms, including a penthouse, all with hardwood floors and oversized or floor-to-ceiling windows, and square footage ranges from about 725 to 1,431. Bathrooms have soaking tubs, Kohler Caxton sinks, and marble vanities. A communal open-air penthouse, furnished and with a barbeque grill and four exposures, offers spectacular views of the river and the Queensboro Bridge. The building also includes a screening room and a gym. Prices start at about $925,000. (sixtyfourcondo.com)

The Charles from Bluerock Real Estate was designed by Ismael Leyva, with interiors by David Collins Studio. A luxury condominium with private access full-floor residences –– including a duplex penthouse with two large terraces, each more than 3,000 square feet –– the Charles is at 1335 First Avenue near 72nd Street. Prices average $2,500 per square foot. Special touches include very high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and white oak Oyster Gloss wide-plank flooring that in the living rooms has radiant heat. Eat-in kitchens are outfitted with mirror -polished, high-gloss lacquer cabinetry and Corian countertops and backsplashes. Polished dolomite marble tile bathrooms with radiant heat floors feature Kohler tubs. Shar ed building amenities include a residents’ lounge, a Tech-

Another East Side option is the penthouse at 515 East 72nd Street, set high above the river. This full-floor, five-bedroom residence has 5,419 square feet with wideplank quarter sawn white oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. It also has two landscaped outdoor spaces totaling 3,461 square feet, one with a kitchen. The living room and family room share a Magny Le Louvre double-sided, wood-burning limestone fireplace. The eat-in kitchen with SieMatic cabinetry as well as a pantry opens into the family room. A sprawling custom master bathroom is done up in Nordic White onyx and travertine for the walls and ivory travertine for the floor. Also featured are a freestanding tub and a glass-enclosed shower with a floor-to-ceiling window looking out on the East River. Communal amenities include a private half-acre park, a fitness center, a heated indoor pool, and a Jodi’s Gym for kids. Marketed and sold through Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, the penthouse is priced at $17.5 million. (515e72.com) Corcoran Sunshine is also selling 15 light-filled, full-floor condominiums at 60 East 86th Street, just off Park Avenue. Designed by Thomas Juul-Hansen, the building offers three- to four-bedroom residences, including a triplex penthouse with four bedrooms and a private rooftop terrace that has an outdoor kitchen and dining area as well as a fireplace. There is also a triplex townhouse with a private garden and one duplex with two terraces. All units have direct elevator entry, oversized casement windows, and wide-plank rift and quartered white oak flooring, while a select group offer 20-foot ceilings, eat-in kitchens, wood-burning fireplaces with gas starters, and Juliette balconies. Kitchens are

REAL ESTATE, continued on p.24

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

The Homes for Veterans Program

$50 Million Commitment from SONYMA for Military Personnel and Veterans

The Homes for Veterans Mortgage Program from the State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA) is open to:

Program Features:

Funds are available until fully used!

www.sonyma.org (800) 382-HOME (4663) Andrew M. Cuomo Governor

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

Darryl C. Towns Commissioner/CEO

What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. It combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete singletablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?

• All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

• Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine, methylergonovine, cisapride, lovastatin, simvastatin, pimozide, sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), triazolam, oral midazolam, rifampin or the herb St. John’s wort. • For a list of brand names for these medicines, please see the Brief Summary on the following pages.

• If you take hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc).

• Take any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection, or the medicine adefovir (Hepsera®).

• If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD.

What are the other possible side effects of STRIBILD?

• If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD.

Do not take STRIBILD if you:

Serious side effects of STRIBILD may also include:

• Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency. Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual (not normal) muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold especially in your arms and legs, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do regular blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with STRIBILD. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD.

• You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time. In some cases, these serious conditions have led to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD?

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Do not start any new medicines while taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider.

Who should not take STRIBILD?

STRIBILD can cause serious side effects:

• Serious liver problems. The liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and fatty (steatosis). Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain.

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and stop taking STRIBILD, your hepatitis may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health. STRIBILD is not approved for the treatment of HBV.

• Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

• If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Also, some medicines in STRIBILD can pass into breast milk, and it is not known if this can harm the baby.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

• Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines. • Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking STRIBILD.

Please see Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include nausea and diarrhea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

I started my personal revolution Talk to your healthcare provider about starting treatment. STRIBILD is a complete HIV-1 treatment in 1 pill, once a day. Ask if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right for you.

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

Patient Information STRIBILD® (STRY-bild) (elvitegravir 150 mg/cobicistat 150 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg) tablets Brief summary of full Prescribing Information. For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information. What is STRIBILD? • STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD is a complete regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines. • STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. You must stay on continuous HIV-1 therapy to control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses. • Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. Do not share or reuse needles, injection equipment, or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them. Do not have sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood. What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects, including: 1. Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis can happen in some people who take STRIBILD or similar (nucleoside analogs) medicines. Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Lactic acidosis can be hard to identify early, because the symptoms could seem like symptoms of other health problems. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms which could be signs of lactic acidosis: • feel very weak or tired • have unusual (not normal) muscle pain • have trouble breathing • have stomach pain with nausea or vomiting • feel cold, especially in your arms and legs • feel dizzy or lightheaded • have a fast or irregular heartbeat 2. Severe liver problems. Severe liver problems can happen in people who take STRIBILD. In some cases, these liver problems can lead to death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in your liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: • your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice) • dark “tea-colored” urine • light-colored bowel movements (stools) • loss of appetite for several days or longer • nausea • stomach pain You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time. 3. Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. If you have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and take STRIBILD, your HBV may get worse (flare-up) if you stop taking STRIBILD. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before. • Do not run out of STRIBILD. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your STRIBILD is all gone

• Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider • If you stop taking STRIBILD, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your HBV infection. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or unusual symptoms you may have after you stop taking STRIBILD Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you also take a medicine that contains: • adefovir (Hepsera®) • alfuzosin hydrochloride (Uroxatral®) • cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®) • ergot-containing medicines, including: dihydroergotamine mesylate (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), and methylergonovine maleate (Ergotrate®, Methergine®) • lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®) • oral midazolam • pimozide (Orap®) • rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®) • sildenafil (Revatio®), when used for treating lung problems • simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®) • triazolam (Halcion®) • the herb St. John’s wort Do not take STRIBILD if you also take any other HIV-1 medicines, including: • Other medicines that contain tenofovir (Atripla®, Complera®, Viread®, Truvada®) • Other medicines that contain emtricitabine, lamivudine, or ritonavir (Atripla®, Combivir®, Complera®, Emtriva®, Epivir® or Epivir-HBV®, Epzicom®, Kaletra®, Norvir®, Trizivir®, Truvada®) STRIBILD is not for use in people who are less than 18 years old. What are the possible side effects of STRIBILD? STRIBILD may cause the following serious side effects: • See “What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?” • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before you start and while you are taking STRIBILD. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD if you develop new or worse kidney problems. • Bone problems can happen in some people who take STRIBILD. Bone problems include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bones. • Changes in body fat can happen in people who take HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the middle of your body (trunk). Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The exact cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known. • Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having any new symptoms after starting your HIV-1 medicine.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include: • Nausea • Diarrhea Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. • These are not all the possible side effects of STRIBILD. For more information, ask your healthcare provider. • Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including: • If you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis B infection • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. - There is a pregnancy registry for women who take antiviral medicines during pregnancy. The purpose of this registry is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. Talk with your healthcare provider about how you can take part in this registry. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take STRIBILD. - You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby. - Two of the medicines in STRIBILD can pass to your baby in your breast milk. It is not known if the other medicines in STRIBILD can pass into your breast milk. - Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements: • STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. • Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you take any of the following medicines: - Hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc) - Antacid medicines that contain aluminum, magnesium hydroxide, or calcium carbonate. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD - Medicines to treat depression, organ transplant rejection, or high blood pressure - amiodarone (Cordarone®, Pacerone®) - atorvastatin (Lipitor®, Caduet®) - bepridil hydrochloride (Vascor®, Bepadin®) - bosentan (Tracleer®) - buspirone - carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®) - clarithromycin (Biaxin®, Prevpac®) - clonazepam (Klonopin®) - clorazepate (Gen-xene®, Tranxene®) - colchicine (Colcrys®) - medicines that contain dexamethasone - diazepam (Valium®)

- digoxin (Lanoxin®) - disopyramide (Norpace®) - estazolam - ethosuximide (Zarontin®) - flecainide (Tambocor®) - flurazepam - fluticasone (Flovent®, Flonase®, Flovent® Diskus®, Flovent® HFA, Veramyst®) - itraconazole (Sporanox®) - ketoconazole (Nizoral®) - lidocaine (Xylocaine®) - mexiletine - oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®) - perphenazine - phenobarbital (Luminal®) - phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®) - propafenone (Rythmol®) - quinidine (Neudexta®) - rifabutin (Mycobutin®) - rifapentine (Priftin®) - risperidone (Risperdal®, Risperdal Consta®) - salmeterol (Serevent®) or salmeterol when taken in combination with fluticasone (Advair Diskus®, Advair HFA®) - sildenafil (Viagra®), tadalafil (Cialis®) or vardenafil (Levitra®, Staxyn®), for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). If you get dizzy or faint (low blood pressure), have vision changes or have an erection that last longer than 4 hours, call your healthcare provider or get medical help right away. - tadalafil (Adcirca®), for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension - telithromycin (Ketek®) - thioridazine - voriconazole (Vfend®) - warfarin (Coumadin®, Jantoven®) - zolpidem (Ambien®, Edlular®, Intermezzo®, Zolpimist®) Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. Do not start any new medicines while you are taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider. Keep STRIBILD and all medicines out of reach of children. This Brief Summary summarizes the most important information about STRIBILD. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can also ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about STRIBILD that is written for health professionals, or call 1-800-445-3235 or go to www.STRIBILD.com. Issued: October 2013

COMPLERA, EMTRIVA, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, GSI, HEPSERA, STRIBILD, the STRIBILD Logo, TRUVADA, and VIREAD are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. STBC0106 06/14

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

REAL ESTATE, from p.18

outfitted with Vals quartzite floors, custom lacquer cabinetry with white satin finishes, fluted glass doors, and marble tops. Appliances are by Gaggenau and fixtures are from Lefroy Brooks. Custom-built master bathrooms boast Lefroy Brooks fixtures, Driftwood marble floors and walls, rosewood cabinetry with carved Driftwood marble sinks, and fluted glass showers. The building includes a fitness center with a landscaped terrace and a playroom for kids. Prices starts at about $7.05 million for a three-bedroom home and up to about $20 million for the triplex penthouse. (60east86th.com)

If the High Line Park is your hot button, consider 505 West 19th Street. Off Tenth Avenue, the building was designed inside and out by Thomas Juul-Hansen and is made up of towers framing the park. With just 35 units ranging from one- to five bedrooms, including a penthouse, square footage ranges from 1,050 to more than 5,800. A number of units include

direct elevator entry and some have private outdoor space. Features include large windows positioned to enhance privacy for the lower floor units and with expanded views on the higher floors. Kitchens offer quarter-sawn white oak, and cerused, limed, and stained gray cabinetry trimmed with brass. Master baths with radiant heat floors offer honed Stellar White marble floors and shower walls and black lacquer vanities. All units feature Kohler cast-iron tubs and glass-enclosed showers. Community pleasures include a fitness center. Marketed and sold by Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, prices start at $2.54 million. (505W19.com)

Downtown, a duplex penthouse co-op with private outdoor space has just come on the market at 430 East 10th Street, between Avenues C and D. This loft-like, four-plus bedroom unit in a meticulously renovated building merges modern amenities with original details, including exposed brick walls, wood beam ceilings, and rustic wood columns throughout. Spanning more than 3,400

square feet with a private rooftop that practically matches the interior square footage, the apartment has new electricity and plumbing, central heating and cooling systems, double-paned windows, and white oak “floating” floors installed with professional-grade acoustic soundproofing. The living room/ dining room has six large windows. Highlighted by a skylight and a doublewide cement sink, the open kitchen has cabinetry created from the original 19th century flooring topped with Belgium bluestone. The corner master bedroom suite has a walkin closet and an en suite bath with a freestanding tub, a glass-enclosed shower, double vanities, and Lefroy Brooks fixtures. Listed with TOWN Residential, it’s priced at $3.998 million (townrealestate.com/sale/ id-303796/430-East-10th-Street4th-Floor-East-Village)

Other Lower Manhattan properties include the contemporary architectural statement Ismael Leyva created at the Tribeca Royale at 19 Park Place near Church Street. Developed by ABM Realty LLC, it’s made up of 24 half and full-floor

condominiums pre-wired for smarthome technology, each with floor-toceiling glass curtain walls with frameless glass balconies, wide-plank European oak floors from Mercier, and in-home washers and dryers by Miele. One- to three-bedroom units range from 716 to 1,336 square feet, and the mix includes a duplex and a penthouse that has a gas fireplace framed in Calacatta marble. Master baths with radiant heat floors and hydronic towel warmers are done up in polished onyx porcelain slab walls by Ariostea Ultra Onici and honed walnut brown marble floors. Fixtures include a Wetstyle oval-shaped freestanding tub and a glass-enclosed shower with a slatted teak floor. Communal amenities include a second-floor outdoor landscaped terrace, a play area for kids, and a fitness room. Priced from $1.120 million with an anticipated 421a tax abatement, this development is marketed and sold through Halstead Property Development Marketing. Occupancy is set for spring 2015. (‪19pptribeca.com‬)

REAL ESTATE, continued on p.25

New Homes Personalized Just For You Starting From $279,900

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

REAL ESTATE, from p.24

New developments are popping up across wide swaths of

Centrally located in Downtown Brooklyn and developed by the Stahl Organization, the SLCE-designed 388 Bridge Penthouse Collection is now on the market atop Brooklyn’s tallest condominium, located between Fulton and Willoughby Streets. On floors 45 through 53, there are 40 two- to four-bedroom penthouses, most of which are duplexes with private outdoor space for

Developed by Sterling Equities and designed by Gluck+ Architects, a new boutique development at 345 Carroll Street, between Hoyt and Bond Streets, begins selling units this month. The building includes 32 luxury residences, with 18 two- to four-bedroom

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

HALSTEAD PROPERTY

Brooklyn. According to a July report from the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, there are 7,800 housing units in the development pipeline, 2,000 of which will be market-rate condominiums. Streeteasy (streeteasy.com) recently reported that Brooklyn’s up-and-coming neighborhoods include those on the eastern edge of the borough, such as East New York and Carnarsie and neighborhoods near Prospect Park such as Kensington, Flatbush, and Sunset Park.

eyefuls of New York’s landmarks. Square footage ranges from 1,133 to 2,371. All feature wide-plank gray wash white oak floors, ceilings as high as 11 feet, and solar shades. Master bathrooms feature white quartz walls, limestone floors, walk-in showers, and custom designed white lacquer vanities. This full-service building with a 24-hour doorman includes a 46th-floor sky lounge with a fireplace, pool table, large screen TVs, a pantry, and a wet bar. The adjacent outdoor terrace features a playground, two barbeques, and a lounge area. Amenities also include a playroom, a pet spa, and a two-story Manhattan Athletic Club, to which membership can be purchased. Marketed by Halstead Property, prices begin at $1.742 million. (388bridge.com)

The view of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor from a penthouse living room at 388 Bridge Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

units with square footage ranging from 1,215 to 1,973. There are also eight four -bedroom penthouses, sized from 1,847 to 2,393 square feet, and and six one- to three-bedroom garden duplexes, with square footage ranging from 1,647 to 2,899. Master baths have custom herringbone Italian marble radiant heat floors, walnut vanities topped with marble, glass shower stalls, and tubs with marble decks. Amenities include a vegetable gar-

den and one that is landscaped, a rooftop deck, a kids’ playroom, a dog-washing area, and a bocce ball court. Lobby attendants are 24/ 7 and parking and storage areas are for sale. Marketed and sold through Stribling Marketing Associates, prices begin at $1.5 million with occupancy slated for fall 2015. (345carroll.com)

REAL ESTATE, continued on p.26

Accurate Building ® Inspectors Buying an apartment or house can be a scary process even for the knowledgeable and experienced buyer. First timers can feel completely overwhelmed. Our professional and patient inspectors will examine the property and explain all aspects of your new home. We will provide a fully written report. with photographs that will explain the property in question in common terms. We are not only inspectors, we are building and home educators. All Accurate Building Inspectors® are fully licensed and insure in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. We have over 100 years of combined Experience.

800-640-8285

1860 Bath Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11214 www.accuratebuilding.com roxy@accuratebuilding.com

REAL ESTATE, from p.25

O v e r o n Wi l l i a m s b u r g ’s south side, the Oosten at 429 Kent Avenue, near South Eighth Street, is now selling one- to three-bedroom units, including duplexes with double-height ceilings. Ther e ar e also four penthouses with five to six bedrooms and direct access to private garage spaces. The mix also includes 15 three- and four-bedroom townhouses with private garages. Square footage ranges from 801 to approximately 5,093 square feet for the penthouses. The townhouses average 4,075 square feet. The communal amenity list is long –– an indoor swimming pool, a fitness center, juice and coffee bars, a library, a landscaped courtyard, and a rooftop terrace with a reflecting pool. Occupancy is set for late 2015. Exclusively marketed by Halstead Property Group Development, prices begin in the high $600,000s. (theoosten.com)

Cliff Finn, executive vice president at Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, offered his take on Brooklyn’s rental market. “Many renters prefer the technology, design, and amenities of today’s new developments and they are usually willing to trade off a little space and often location to get it,” said Finn. “Brooklyn is no longer the big discount to Manhattan it once was. However, in most cases there is still a bit of a discount when compared to comparable buildings in Manhattan neighborhoods, which now may only be a 10 percent to 25 percent savings, sometimes higher or even lower depending on the location. Compared to some Upper East Side and Upper West Side locations, one will find parts of Brooklyn more expensive.” Finn offered a telling comparable. “An average sized one bedroom in our new boutique rental development, 267 Pacific in Boerum Hill, recently rented for $3,600. The same unit in the similarly sized new Hell’s Kitchen development would rent for $3,900, and in a new Greenwich Village rental, perhaps $5,000. The appeal, aside fr om new development housing stock, is the authenticity

of its neighborhoods. Renters and purchasers like the look and feel of the various intimate neighborhoods with their small neighborhood parks, mom-and-pop businesses, and the light and air one gets from having more low and mid-rise buildings.” The signature design feature at 267 Pacific at Smith Street is the 50-foot by 50-foot “Sign Language” mural from famed street artists Chris Stain and Billy Mode who collaborated with the Brooklyn youth arts group Cre8tive YouTH*ink. The mural, which covers the entire right side of the building, pays tribute to legendary photographer Mar tha Cooper. Marketed through Elliman, the GF55 Partners-designed project of fers 60 units with wide-plank solid white oak floors, ranging from studios to two-bedrooms, some with ter races, plus penthouses with private terraces and spectacular views. Bathrooms have CaesarStone-topped vanities. Communal amenities include a large bike garage and dedicated workshop and a large rooftop terrace with entertaining space, a sundeck, a misting shower, and barbeque grills. Almost ready for occupancy, monthly rents will start at $2,525. (267pacific.com)

In Bedford Stuyvesant, a five-bedroom, three-story prewar townhouse is now for rent at 22 Arlington Place, between Fulton and Halsey Streets. Extensively restored, the single family home’s original details remain intact –– including high ceilings with crown moldings, hardwood floors, a center staircase, stained glass windows, pocket doors, wainscoting, and decorative fireplace mantles. All the bedrooms are generously sized with ample closet space, and the master suite has access to a private terrace and garden. Other amenities include a formal dining room and a washer and dryer. Listed with TOWN Residential, the no-fee monthly rent is $11,995, but the owner is offering a free month based on a 12-month lease, bringing the monthly rent down to $10,995. (townrealestate.com/rental/id-914471/22arlington-place-th-bedfordstuyvesant)

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

FILM

Maggie’s Strange Bedfellows As AIDS descends on ‘80s Britain, gays rally to miners’ cause BY GARY M. KRAMER

PRIDE

Directed by Matthew Warchus CBS Films Opens Sep. 26 Chelsea Bow Tie Cinemas 260 W. 23rd St. bowtiecinemas.com AMC Lincoln Square 1998 Broadway at 68th St. amctheatres.com Regal Union Square Stadium 850 Broadway at 14th St. regmovies.com

CBS FILMS

feel-good film, “Pride” chronicles the efforts of an LBGT group to raise money to support striking Welsh miners in 1984. This rousing period drama, based on a true story, shows the power of activism and how the LGBT community found common cause with another marginalized group in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The film, directed by Matthew Warchus and written by Stephen Beresford, introduces its queer characters first. Joe (George MacKay) is a closeted 20-year-old student who lives at home. At a gay pride march that June, he is unexpectedly asked by Mike (Joseph Gilgun) to help hold a banner. He soon becomes part of a makeshift family that includes Mark (Ben Schnetzer) the group’s leader, and Steph (Faye Marsay), its lesbian member, as well as Jonathan (Dominic

Faye Marsay, George MacKay, Joseph Gilgun, and Paddy Considine with Ben Schnetzer (holding the megaphone) in “Pride,” directed by Matthew Warchus.

West) and his lover Gethin (out gay Andrew Scott), a Welsh man who owns the Gay’s the Word bookstore, where the group meets. On Mark’s direction, this ragtag group of queer activists creates Lesbians and Gays Support

the Miners (LGSM) and donates funds they raise to the Dulais Valley miners in South Wales. When Dai (Paddy Considine) pays the LGSM group a visit in a gay club, his thank you goes over well. However, when LGSM in turn travels

Talking Through Grief Ben Whishaw key to Hong Khaou’s story about bridging what’s been left unsaid

BY GARY M. KRAMER

ilting,” from out gay screenwriter and director Hong Khaou, is a subtle and moving chamber drama about the communication gap between Richard (Ben Whishaw) and Junn (Cheng Pei Pei). Both are mourning the loss of Kai (Andrew Leung), Junn’s son and — unbeknownst to his mother — Richard’s lover. Richard doesn’t speak Mandarin and Junn does not speak English, so Richard hires Vann (Naomi Christie) to help translate and bridge the gulf between them. Vann also assists Junn with communicating with a British man, Alan (Peter Bowles). Khaou’s film deftly addresses the loss both mother and lover suffer as they grieve. The performances by Whishaw and Cheng are very affecting, and the film builds to an emotionally powerful climax. Via Skype from London, where he lives, the Chinese-Cambodian Khaou spoke to Gay | September 18 - October 01, 2014

City News about how he came to create his lovely film. “When I wrote ‘Lilting,’ it was a play about a daughter and her husband,” he explained. “There were no gay characters. It never got staged, but I felt something was missing. So when the opportunity arose to turn it into the film, I changed it to a son who could not be openly gay to his mother.” Khaou continued, “That dynamic echoed onto the rest of the film and how communication and language is critical. My premise was that communication should bridge cultural differences and bring understanding. But it also has conflicts, like Junn’s relationship with Alan.” “Lilting” is not an autobiographical work, but it is a personal story. Khaou’s father passed away when he was very young, and writing about grief involved the filmmaker revisiting those feelings. Like Junn in the film, Khaou’s mother experienced difficulty assimilating in the UK, where Khaou and his family have lived for 30 years.

to the Dulais miners’ welfare club, Mark’s speech falls on deaf ears. Some members of the miners’ community, including Hefina (Imelda Staunton), Cliff (Bill Nighy), and Sian (Jessica Gunning) appreciate the LGSM’s efforts, but Maureen (Lisa Palfrey in a one-note role) is a union leader who strongly objects to the gay group’s support. A battle of wills quickly escalates. “Pride” shows, in slick, inspirational-movie fashion, how LGSM

PRIDE, continued on p.33

LILTING Directed by Hong Khaou Strand Releasing Opens Sep. 26 Angelika Film Center 18 W. Houston St. at Mercer St. angelikafilmcenter.com

“She still doesn’t speak English,” the filmmaker explained. “I took that as a premise, and I imagined how someone like that would cope if her lifeline to the outside world was taken away.” Though Kai doesn’t come out to Junn, Khaou had no problem doing so with his mother. “She was absolutely fine,” he said, before discussing the unique challenges coming out poses for gay people. “There’s an age-old fear of disappointing our parents and the shame that goes with it,” he said. “The act of doing it — it sounds like we’ve done something devious or deceitful. It’s harder in certain cultures, but I wouldn’t know if it’s become easier in Asian culture. I think coming out is hard in all cultures, even in the UK, where men in their 50s are coming out, or America, where there is the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign.” Despite the importance of sexual identity in “Lilting,” much of the film explores how Richard uses Vann to help Junn adjust to life with-

LILTING, continued on p.36

FILM

Mirroring, But Also Magnifying Among prestige films, directors little-known here, S&M drumsticks, the Troubles revisited & Godard lives

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

Jack O’Connell in Yann Demange’s “’71.”

BY STEVE ERICKSON

ow in its 52nd year, the New York Film Festival faces a delicate balancing act between its role as a source for premieres of Hollywood’s Oscar-bound prestige films –– this year, that includes David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” both respectable choices judging from their directors –– and as a showcase for filmmakers like Pedro Costa, Hong Sang-soo, and Lisandro Alonso, who’ve never found much of an audience in the US and have had trouble even getting distribution here. The main slate features 31 films, but the documentary and avant-garde sidebars double that. Perhaps wisely, “Projections,” formerly called “Views From the Avant-Garde,” has been halved; while it was great to see the festival devote so much space to non-narrative work, cramming 25 programs into a few days didn’t really work in practice. Titles of LGBT interest include Abel Ferrara’s “Pasolini” (Oct. 2, 6 p.m., Alice Tully Hall; Oct 3, 9 p.m., Howard Gilman Theater), Bertrand Bonello’s “Saint Laurent” (Sep. 30, 8:30 p.m., Alice Tully Hall; Oct. 2, 8:30 p.m., Walter Reade Theater), and out gay Argentine director Matias Piñeiro’s “The Princess of France” (Oct. 5, noon, Walter Reade Theater; Oct. 6, 6 p.m., Francesca Beale Theater). The festival closes with Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s “Birdman.” We shall see if it reverses the aesthetic death spiral in which the director has been struggling since his strong debut, “Amores Perros.”

52ND NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL Sep. 26-Oct. 12 Lincoln Center: various venues filmlinc.com

Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash” summons its inspiration for a dynamite finish, but it suffers from an overbearing sense of machismo that crosses over from character to film. Nineteen-year-old Andrew (Miles Teller) is an aspiring jazz drummer who studies at a New York music academy. One day, he gets the chance to work with the dictatorial Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons.) Their relationship quickly turns into emotional –– and, occasionally, borderline physical –– S&M. Chazelle’s sensibility draws on the profane, slur-laden dialogue of David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino. To say that Simmons’ performance is over-the-top would be putting it mildly; he evokes memories of his role as a neo-Nazi leader in the HBO prison drama “Oz.” While I doubt Chazelle approves of everything Fletcher says, the film is also extremely white and male. Andrew’s girlfriend barely appears as a presence in it before he dumps her –– though his treatment of her doesn’t exactly flatter him –– and the many African-American musicians in the cast get no lines to speak. Despite these flaws, the film eventually manages to present Andrew and Fletcher as equals in an odd sort of gameplay. In its perversely thrilling finale, they match musical wits –– the equivalent of a spaghetti Western gundown, played out with a drum kit rather than guns. (Sep. 28, 9 p.m. & Sep. 29, 6 p.m., Alice Tully Hall)

Yann Demange’s “‘71” is a flawed film that’s still powerful in unexpected ways. It puts its worst foot forward, opening in the middle of a boxing match depicted in vertigo-inducing shakycam and quick cutting. The film’s biggest weakness is the extent to which Demange’s direction borrows from Paul Greengrass, although “‘71” is generally more sedate than its first scene. Additionally, the plot is basically lifted from Carol Reed’s classic “Odd Man Out.” Sent to Belfast in 1971, a British soldier (Jack O’Connell) is injured and very quickly gets in over his head. A number of locals help him, but he’s carted from danger to danger. What’s novel about this film is its physicality. CGI has made cinematic bloodshed increasingly antiseptic, but Demange restores grit and dirt to it. The soldier becomes objectified –– not sexually, despite O’Connell’s youth and good looks –– and turned into a body leaking from numerous wounds, as well as a thing to be exchanged. The film also has a fine ear for sound design, from the deafening racket created by women banging garbage can lids on the ground to protest the soldiers’ presence to the murky drones that accompany the aftermath of a pub bombing. It may be set 43 years ago and inspired by an even earlier movie, but the depiction of imperial arrogance wandering into another culture’s sectarian warfare couldn’t be more current. (Sep. 27, 6 p.m., Alice Tully Hall; Sep. 28, 6 p.m., Walter Reade Theater) The importance of Swiss-French director Jean-Luc Godard’s work from 1959’s “Breathless” to 1967’s “Weekend” is rarely questioned by serious film critics and cinephiles, even if the films themselves aren’t to everyone’s taste. After “Weekend,” that consensus splinters. Films like “Goodbye To Language,” as good as they are, help explain why. It’s a nearly plotless collection of literary, philosophical, and cinematic references (“Frankenstein” looms large), political rumination, and abstract video experimentation, starring the director’s dog Roxy (as well as several human actors, who take their clothes off frequently). It will take more than one viewing to unpack its deeper meanings –– fortunately, it’s opening at the IFC Center and returning to Lincoln Center on October 29 –– but even at a first glance, it’s apparent how inventive Godard’s use of 3D and color are. Generally, 3D sci-fi and animation don’t push the boundaries of the medium, remaining tied to some kind of naturalist aesthetic. Godard went wild with the possibilities of 3D and video technology to distort nature, not to depict the world as it is. (The list of cameras he used is included in the end credits.) Even if it amounts to nothing more than a collection of cool image textures (and I think there’s a lot more going on), “Goodbye to Language” would still be one of the year’s best films.(Sep. 27 & Oct. 1, 9 p.m., Walter Reade Theater)

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

COMING SOON Vote for your favorite “Best Of Gay City” for a chance to win an iPad, iPad Mini, David Barton Gym Membership, Hornblower Cruises and more! VOTING CATEGORIES • Best Gay Bar • Best Lesbian Bar • Best Happy Hour • Best Cocktail • Best Coffee • Best Date Night Restaurant • Best Delivery • Best Cheap Eats

• Best Sweet Shop • Best Pet Care • Best Gym or Personal Trainer • Best Salon or Spa • Best Cosmetic Surgeon • Best App • Best Museum/ Gallery • Best Show

• Best Drag Performer • Best Home Design Store • Best Parenting Service • Best Gayborhood • Best Vacation Destination • Best Weekend Getaway • Best Travel Services • Biggest Celebrity Crush

Voting to commence on October 2

gaycitynews.nyc/bestofgaycity | September 18 - October 01, 2014

Raucous Realness

A patchy portrait of one boy’s struggle growing up black and gay BY DAVID KENNERLEY

BOOTYCANDY Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater 416 W. 42nd St. Through Oct. 12 Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Sat.-Sun. at 2:30 p.m.; Sun. at 7:30 p.m. $75-$95; ticketcentral.com Two hrs., with intermission

JOAN MARCUS

he boisterous and raunchy “Bootycandy,” Robert O’Hara’s latest work now at Playwrights Horizons, registers less as a fully formed play and more like a live sketch comedy show — think “In Living Color” (minus the Fly Girls) as presented by HBO. Even O’Hara admitted the satiric portrait of sexual awakening and growing up black and gay in America is based on a bunch of earlier one-acts, inspired by people in his own life, which he later expanded into a full-length piece. The result is vibrant and highly entertaining, albeit oddly disjointed. Absent a solid through-line, the comedic drama’s connective tissue is a character named Sutter (played by the marvelous Phillip James Brannon), a lanky, effeminate youth obsessed with Michael Jackson and Jackie Collins who appears in several scenes. “Bootycandy” is a pastiche of sketches that careen among Sutter’s boyhood home, church, seedy bars and motels, a bus stop, and a

nursing home, among others. Although you won’t find “bootycandy” in Webster’s Dictionary — or the Urban Dictionary, for that matter — the first sketch, introducing a young Sutter circa 1970, clad in patchwork bellbottoms, defines it for us. When the boy asks his mommy (Jessica Frances Dukes) about his “dick,” she says he should call it his “bootycandy.” Said “bootycandy” proves to be a source of both pleasure and pain later in the proceedings. The next skit spotlights Reverend Benson (Lance Coadie Williams) preaching a sermon, gleefully showing his congregation the glory of staying true to one’s nature by revealing a divine secret under his robe. There’s also a sketch where a sloshed, self-proclaimed “straight” dude (Jesse Pennington) hits on Sutter in a series of dive bars. Another sketch finds four gossips (Benja Kay Thomas and Dukes each hilariously playing dual roles) blabbing on the phone, skewering one woman who dared name her daughter Genitalia. Another details the wacky absurdities that ensue when a glowering, burnt-out lesbian couple (Thomas and Dukes) stage a

Phillip James Brannon and Jessica Frances Dukes in Robert O’Hara’s “Bootycandy.”

“non-commitment” ceremony. Not that the endeavor is all fun and punch lines. The gutsy O’Hara, who also directs, is bent on exposing grim truths about race, homophobia, loneliness, sexual longing, and retribution. A few scenes take sharply dark detours; dialogue is spiked with profanity and frank descriptions of shockingly twisted sexual situations. Plus there’s brief frontal nudity. “Bootycandy” is recommended for ages 17

and older — and with good reason. Although the skilled ensemble tackles multiple roles with gusto, unfortunately the ever-shifting tone is as out of whack as the narrative flow. What’s more, occasionally O’Hara breaks the fourth wall — and dramatic momentum — with touches of absurdist meta-theatrics (house lights are even turned up), which many will find more baffling than amusing. In a sketch featuring a group of African-American playwrights reluctantly taking part in a symposium about their craft, the authors assert that their goal is to make the audience choke on the dramatic material — it should not go down easy and the pain should linger. With the brash and provocative “Bootycandy,” surely O’Hara achieves that goal, for better or worse.

Art Isn’t Easy Two exceptional shows examine creators, creations, and survival BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

ou don’t have to be versed in the idiosyncratic and deconstructive whimsy that informed the early Off-Off Broadway movement to fall for “Red Eye of Love.” It can be enjoyed pretty much on its own as a satire on the level of “Dames at Sea” or “The Boyfriend.” The 1961 play by Arnold Weinstein was a trenchant political piece about art, commerce, and love that employed a superficial tone to deliver a more caustic message. It calls to mind the work of other playwrights of the period, notably Rob-

ert Patrick, Charles Dizenzo, and even early Terrence McNally and Edward Albee. Adapted as a musical with a book by Weinstein and John Wulp and music by Sam Davis, it is structured as a dichotomy between the economical and the oversized and absurdist. The plot’s central element concerns the conflict among the owner of a skyscraper-sized department store exclusively selling meat, a poor man who wants to live for art, and the woman for whose love they are competing. The opposition of art and commerce and of marriage for love and marriage for wealth might initially seem hackneyed, but that’s the point. “Red Eye of Love” is cleverly

self-consciousness in lampooning these theatrical tropes, suggesting that they may be as corrupt as the world the characters inhabit. The plot, which makes huge jumps in time over about 40 years, juxtaposes dark messages about a debased culture and self-serving people with gauzy musical pastiche. The result is chilling, fascinating, and delightful. Davis’ bright and tuneful score has many wonderful and appropriately disconcerting surprises. There are tap-dancing cows, a man who wants to create the perfect doll that can’t die and, of course, hymns to meat as both a commodity and a basis of wealth. The choreography by Lainie Sakakura and Alex San-

RED EYE OF LOVE Dicapo Opera Theatre 184 E. 76th St. Through Sep. 28 Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat.-Sun. at 3 p.m. $35-$75; smartix.com Or 212-868-4444 Two hrs.

chez is, like the score, a wonderful mash-up of styles, beautifully tailored to the stage and the company. Kevin Pariseau plays the meat mogul O. O. Martinas with a great sense of bombast. As his rival, the poet Wilmer Flange, Josh Grisetti is spectacular. He has a magnificent

RED EYE, continued on p.36

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

Disco Heat Spunky jukebox musical about Sylvester makes you wanna funk BY DAVID KENNERLEY

Theater at St. Clements 423 W. 46th St. Through Oct. 5 Tue.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sat. at 2 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. $25-$84.50; FabulousSylvester.com 90 min.

richness to the musical numbers. The five-piece band, prominently onstage throughout the proceedings, pumps out the beats with fervor and panache. The appropriately spare set design, by David Lander, is little more than a staircase, towers of colored floodlights, and a giant disco ball. Augmenting original hits like “Do Ya Wanna Funk,” “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” and “Dance (Disco Heat)” and popular covers like “Ooh Baby Baby” and “Cry Me a River” are lively pop tunes from big-name divas Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle. and Tina Turner, major influences on Sylvester’s work. But “Mighty Real” is not content being simply a boogie-down concert celebration. It traces Sylvester’s rise from gospel singer at his Los Angeles Pentecostal church (appallingly, he was molested by his choir director), to member of the San Francisco hippie drag troupe the Cockettes, to his collaboration with Two Tons O’ Fun, to his hit-and-miss solo career. And of course his addiction to boys and “shoppin’ in the name of Jesus.” At its core, “Mighty Real” is about self-acceptance, singing your own song even if it goes against the mainstream, and living your life to the fullest with no regrets. For his part, Wayne handles the tender moments, like succumbing to complications from AIDS in 1988, with heartfelt finesse. Defiantly gay throughout his career, Sylvester proved a fear less inspiration for the emerging LGBT community during a time of extreme racial bigotry and homophobia, when wearing one scrap of drag could land you in jail. He performed at the 1979 Gay

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

BILL COYLE

hen I first heard about “Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical,” the jukebox bio-musical debuting Off Broadway at the Theater at St. Clements, I wondered how the songs could possibly stand up to the original. Hailed as “The Queen of Disco” in the late 1970s, the gender -bending Sylvester br oke through with his singular blend of gospel, high-energy disco, and plaintive soul, electrified by heart-piercing, libido-tingling falsetto wails. Not to mention a flair for wearing lipstick, wigs, lavish furs, and oodles of jewels. John Waters once described an early act as “Billie Holiday and Diana Ross on LSD.” The flamboyant performer was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and while his music is legendary, especially among gay men of a certain age, there’s an entire generation clueless about his impact on dance culture. “Mighty Real” is bent on changing all that. Amazingly, Anthony Wayne, who also wrote the book and co-directed, ebulliently evokes Sylvester in all his glory. Never mind that he’s leaner and more angular than the original. His vocals are clear and pure, effortlessly gliding between middle and upper registers. His moves are even crisper and snappier than Sylvester’s. And the costumes by Kendrell Bowman, who also co-directed, are dazzlingly fabulous. I was convinced I was in the presence of inspired greatness for every second of the 90-minute show. The supporting cast members are so gifted they threaten to upstage the star. Anastacia McCleskey, who also choreographed, and Jacqueline B. Ar nold are mind-blowing as Two Tons o’ Fun (Martha Wash and Izora Armstead, later known as the Weather Girls). Singers Deanne Stewart and Rahmel McDade add a welcome

MIGHTY REAL: A FABULOUS SYLVESTER MUSICAL

Anthony Wayne in the title role of “Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical.”

brewed in NYC

EMPLOYEE OWNED

TIMES SQUARE

43rd St. & Broadway

SYLVESTER, continued on p.38

646-366-0235

MIDTOWN W.

EMPIRE STATE

UNION SQ. W

646-214-1000

212-563-3433

212-645-3400

8th Ave. & 41th St.

5th Ave. & 34th St.

at 17th St.

HB BURGER

43rd St. & Broadway

212-575-5848

THEATER

London Theater Shines in Houses Big and Wee Drama aplenty to rival even the real-life Scottish play BY ANDY HUMM

once they drop the silly stuff. The actors do well with the material, such as it is, notably Julian Ovenden (famous as one of Lady Mary’s suitors on “Downton Abbey”) as heartthrob John, oblivious to others’ desire for him and the damage his liaison with never-seen Reg could do to his friendship with Daniel.

he r eal drama in the now tenuously-United Kingdom in recent weeks has been the build-up to the momentous Scots’ vote on September 18 about whether to become an independent nation again. New polls say independence has a chance for the first time –– an outcome that would provoke a constitutional crisis. London theaters, however, continue to dramatize the personal and political conflicts that have driven apart all kinds of people for centuries. Whatever the outcome of the vote in Scotland, London will endure as the world capital of theater in playhouses from the big and venerable to the tiny and new.

JOHAN PERSSON

Euripides’ “Medea,” directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Helen McCrory in a new version by Ben Power set in the present day, is an extreme example of how conflict resolution (Medea-tion?) is not for everyone. It was a bit overwhelming to sit in the front row of the big Olivier house at the National Theatre, but I’d venture people in the rafters were also singed by McCrory’s intensity –– even though most of her unspeakable carnage is executed off stage. She is a walking wreck, unhinged by the rejection she suffers from her husband Jason (Danny Sapani) and by the order his new father-in-law, King Kreon (Martin Turner), issues that she get out of town. The nurse (Michaela Coel) who attends the ill-fated young spawn of Medea and Jason asks, “How can there be any ending but this?” In Greek tragedy, it is a rhetorical question. As we watch our own world accelerate into more and more savagery, I hope we can come up with some alternatives. The nurse says, “What a terrible god is love.” Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying that we need a little less love and a lot more common decency. “Medea,” just closed, will be transmitted to BAM on September 20 and on other dates around the country. Go toNTLive.com.

Shakespeare’s Globe has his multi-twinned farce “The Comedy of Errors” (to October 12).

Lewis Reeves and Julian Ovenden in “My Night With Reg.”

Based on his work at age 18 in a bread factory, “Toast” was the first professionally produced play by Richard Bean (“One Man, Two Guvnors” as well as “Great Britain,” about the recent tabloid scandals, now headed for the West End). Directed by Eleanor Rhode, “Toast” is set in a Beckettian antechamber to hell –– the lunchroom where overworked, flour -caked stiffs retreat from the ovens during the overnight shift limbo in which they toil. A nerdy college student (John Wark) appears for duty and when he gets alone with one of the other men (such as the sad old lifer Nellie, wonderfully captured by Matthew Kelly), the word “toast” seems as if it will take on another meaning, as in “you’re toast.” But in the end, it is a tale of workers’ solidarity in the face of indifferent management acted by a splendid ensemble that gives voice to those who make our daily bread. Cheers to the innovative Park Theatre for reviving it. (To September 21.)

“My Night with Reg” at the Donmar (to September 27) is a hit production of Kevin Elyot’s 1994 AIDSthemed play about a group of white, middle-class gay men who knew each other in college 15 years before. It has critics comparing the gay theater pioneer –– who worked with Gay Sweatshop in the 1970s and died in June at 62 –– to Chekhov. I was taken aback by how well the audience took to the first-act jokes that relied mostly on tired stereotypes about gay male sexuality. There are no women in the play, just men, some of whom give each other girlie names (something that went out in the ‘70s). And you know you’re in trouble when one of the most tiresome men, Daniel (Geoffrey Streatfeild), complains about the “boring” couple set to join them anon. “The Boys in the Band” did all this better 26 years earlier. Little is done to make us care about these self-absorbed characters whose circle is being devastated by AIDS, though the drama itself becomes somewhat more absorbing

Directed by Blanche McIntyre, this is Shakespeare at his Marxist best –– the Marx Brothers, not Karl. It is a crowd-pleasing, knockabout production built on the most extreme of coincidences. It could have been even funnier had they scaled back the mugging and winking. Farce works best when the characters, however ridiculous, are still plausible. The ensemble does a terrific job on the daunting task of delivering on the physical comedy. Forlorn patriarch Egeon (James Laurenson) seemed a bit shaky in the opening scene, but I would have been too had I ventured into Ephesus and been told I would be executed for being from Syracuse unless I came up with a ransom for myself within 24 hours.

“Bring up the Bodies” (Aldwych until October 4) from the Royal Shakespeare Co. is the second of two plays based on Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker-winning novels about the Tudor Court (the first was “Wolf Hall”), dramatized by Mike Poulton and centered on Thomas Cromwell (Ben Miles in his breakout role), Henry VIII’s number II. We are a long way from “A Man for All Seasons” here with this gritty, intelligent, and suspenseful drama about the realpolitik of a man trying to preserve his own power and that of his boss (Nathaniel Parker’s Henry) — and ultimately his country. It is especially compelling because no one knows the whole truth about what Anne Boleyn (Lydia Leonard) did or did not do sexually with other men –– or whether her only crime was not producing a male heir.

LONDON, continued on p.38

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

PRIDE, from p.27

bonded with a very different community of people and lent the miners and their wives knowledge of the law that helped get the strikers out of jail. Jonathan’s moves on the welfare club’s dance floor, meanwhile, prompt more than one straight miner to ask for a lesson. For their part, the queer contingent gains in their sense of selfworth –– Joe becoming emboldened as a gay man and Gethin moved to make amends with his mother, whom he has not seen in 16 years. Many of the film’s scenes play on stereotypes, but what is important in the story is the lesson –– heartfelt –– of different communities finding shared strength against a common enemy. When Mark’s passion inspires a woman at a meeting to perform a stirring rendition of “Bread and Roses,” the moment emphasizes how morale can be as important as money. Even if the scenes are preachy, they go down smoothly. “Pride” also includes some easy laughs, as when Hefina, staying at Gethin and Jonathan’s place, finds a dildo and dirty magazines, or when several elderly Welsh women visit a London S&M bar. Scenes that could be merely pandering work because we get to know characters who are accepting of and curious about each other and who want the same thing –– respect. All of them are tired of feeling shame and of facing betrayal in their own communi-

ties. The bond they find never feels false or forced. One of the most important parts of the story is when the LGSM crew catches flak from other gays for raising money to benefit a cause other than AIDS. Over the course of the story, we learn that more than one member of the group faces the consequences of the epidemic, and when Russell Tovey (“Looking”), in an uncredited cameo, turns up as an HIV-positive ex of one, the moment is profound. The emotion in “Pride” builds as the story moves toward a climactic gay pride parade, and viewers will likely find themselves fighting back tears –– when a Welsh man comes out to one of his colleagues (who suspected all along) or an LGSM member stands up to prejudice. Dramatic surprises, however, compete with the sentiment. Maureen isn’t above fighting unfairly to exclude LGSM and its supporters. And one character has to contend with a gay bashing. When a newspaper report, engineered by the homophobic Maureen, tags LGSM as “Pits and Perverts,” Mark grabs the epithet and owns it, using it to promote a fundraiser headlined by the queer band Bronski Beat that raises thousands. The film’s soundtrack, as one might expect, features a fabulous collection of ‘80s New Wave pop hits. Like the familiar messages of tolerance and dignity that “Pride” sounds, these oldies are ones it never hurts to hear.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL

“A WISE AND LOVELY FILM.” -A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“HITS YOU LIKE A SHOT IN THE HEART! A TRIUMPH FOR LITHGOW AND MOLINA. ACTING DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN THIS.” -Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

“GRADE A!

A WARM, HUMANE AND RESPLENDENT ROMANCE.” -Joe McGovern, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

LOVE IS STRANGE

JOHN LITHGOW ALFRED MOLINA

WRITTEN BY

MANHATTAN LINCOLN PLAZA CINEMAS

BROADWAY BET. 62ND & 63RD ST. FOR INFO & ADVANCE TICKETS, CALL 212-757-2280 OR VISIT WWW. LINCOLNPLAZACINEMA.COM

IRA SACHS & MAURICIO ZACHARIAS DIRECTED BY IRA SACHS

AMC THEATRES

EMPIRE 25

42ND ST. (BET. 7TH & 8TH AVE.) 888-AMC-4FUN

ANGELIKA FILM CENTER CORNER OF HOUSTON & MERCER ST. 1-800-FANDANGO #2707 WWW.ANGELIKA FILMCENTER.COM

BOW TIE CINEMAS

CHELSEA CINEMAS

23RD ST. BET. 7TH & 8TH AVE. 212-691-4744

AND

MARISA TOMEI

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

BROOKLYN BAM ROSE CINEMAS

30 LAFAYETTE AVE. DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN ADVANCE SALES: 718-636-4100

QUEENS BRIELLE CINEMAS

BRIELLE CINEMAS

596-9113

441-9835

COBBLE KEW GARDENS HILL CINEMAS CINEMAS

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.LOVEISSTRANGETHEMOVIE.COM

October

15 to 19

All venues in Midtown, Manhattan.

Come to any session and get a complimentary glass of Dark Horse wine*! *You must be 21 or older.

www.

nycindieff

.com

Gold Sponsors

www.gaycitynews.nyc | September 18 - October 01, 2014

PR Partner

Industry Partner

Silver Sponsors

Media Partners

Media Supporter

IN THE NOH

Return of the Native Hawaii encore, Tennessee celebration, Oomph! BY DAVID NOH

COLLECTION MATSON/ HONOLULUMUSEUM.ORG

am in back in my homeland , Ha w a ii, f or my annual sojourn and, as usual, reveling in the sun, sea, and succulents of all kinds to be found here. As a celebrity who shall remain nameless with whom I have a kind of “Same Time Next Year” relationship here said, “The ideal life would be six months here and six in New York City,” and I wholeheartedly agree. The beautiful Honolulu Museum of Art is hosting a marvelous exhibit, “Art Deco Hawai’i,” which focuses on the years between the two World Wars, in which artists glorified this place in romantic imagery that never fails to still stir the imagination not to mention a covetous lust to own such pieces. I saw the show on September 29, during the museum’s monthly “Art After Dark” fête, a great big mash-up of local personalities –– sadly divided between the coolest cultured people on Oahu, many decked out appropriately in Deco finery, and noxious 20-something and old-enough-toknow-better wannabes who’d never set foot in a museum were it not serving up booze and dance music in its courtyard. It was pretty fabulous people-watching –– a racial polyglot kind of beauty –– and the art was even better. I never watch the 1932 Kay Francis classic “One Way Passage” without dreaming of the fantastical, dreamlike Hawaii it presents so fulsomely, and the galleries were filled with contemporaneous, similarly themed objets. Some highlights included a masterful Malvina Hoffman 1928 bronze bust of legendary waterman Duke Kahanamoku, Esther Bruton’s gorgeous screen “The Three Graces,” Lloyd Sexton’s unbearably sexy 1937 portrait, “Nanea,” of a young man in a malo (loincloth), and Eugene Savage’s ebullient celebrations of ancient tropical life that graced the menus of the mighty cruise ships in their 1940s glory. The six canvases Savage did for the Matson line are here displayed together for the very first time. And then there was my favorite

Eugene Savage’s 1940 “Pomp and Circumstance,” created for the Matson cruise line.

piece, Isamu Noguchi’s 1940 wooden sculpture “Hawaiian Spear Fisherman.” One case was charmingly filled with vintage tourist souvenirs –– like those bobbing hula dancer figurines –– and others were awash with the advertising art from travel agencies and those aforementioned cruise ships that made people the world over yearn to experience the 50th state and create their own indelibly sweet memories. (Through January 11, honolulumuseum.org)

Culture of all kinds is ever more alive here, I am happy to say, a far cry from the dearth I knew when growing up. I had the delightful experience of giving a talk at the idyllic Hongwanji (Buddhist) Mission School about a life in the theater to students enrolled in the after-school Ohana Arts program, founded in 2010 by lesbian couple Laurie Rubin and Jennifer Taira. It was heartwarming to see these diverse kids, ranging in age from six to 13, so completely engaged with one another. The project they were rehearsing is a musical written by Rubin, “Peace on Your Wings,” inspired by the life of Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year-old girl who died of leukemia as a result of Hiroshima and became an emblem of that tragedy. The children sang excerpts from the show for me and I was struck by their talent and deep commitment, not to mention their enthusiasm for “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” and Liza Minnelli. Incidentally, Rubin is herself a blind opera singer who performed in New York for several years and wrote a book about her experiences, “Do You Dream in Color?”

In conjunction with John Lahr’s new and quite wonderful biography, “Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh,” Film Forum has organized a retrospective of Williams-based films, from September 26 through October 6. Despite its short run, the series is amazingly comprehensive, reason enough to hie yourself down to Houston Street and immerse yourself in this writer’s poetry, volcanic drama, luxuriant decadence, and ever-queer sensibility on the big screen. “A Streetcar Named Desire” is, naturally, on view (September 26-27), containing as it does, Vivien Leigh giving perhaps the greatest performance, period, in film, with Marlon Brando not far behind. Leigh also appears in the less-shown “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” (October 2) and is heart-breaking as an actress who falls under the thrall of a heartless, beautiful Italian hustler (Warren Beatty, perfectly cast). Leigh’s resolute, almost eerie refusal to indulge in self-pity of any kind makes her Karen Stone one particularly indelible, unique heroine. Brando gives one his best, leastknown performances in “The Fugitive Kind” (September 27), as a Southern Orpheus fallen to earth who tragically collides with the magnificent Anna Magnani playing an unhappily married storekeeper. Their off-screen animosity magically translated onscreen into one of the most intensely passionate histrionic duels between powerhouses ever lensed. Joanne Woodward is also deeply affecting and lyrical, as a “lewd vagrant” dressed in a rag-

gedy Fortuny gown. Indeed Williams’ material could often bring out the unexpected best in actors, as witness Katharine Hepburn’s mesmerizingly poisonous Violet Venable in “Suddenly Last Summer” (October 4-5), perhaps his gayest play. This was the one real villainess Hepburn ever essayed, and the boldness with which she throws herself into this domineering, ultimate fag hag of a mother is truly admirable and hints at possibilities she never again broached. Although Elizabeth Taylor was Oscar-nominated and acclaimed for this film, as well, I find her thin voice and characterization rather irritating (“They had EA-TEN Sebastian!”), and far prefer her in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (also October 4-5), one of her best adult performances. Here, her beauty, sensuality, and rarely seen comic talent all came together marvelously, making her a pretty definitive Maggie the Cat, if a bit surface-y. The one screening I am not missing for the world is “Boom!” (October 3), the Jospeh Losey adaptation of “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.” As the world’s richest woman, Flora Gofoth (no one came up with better names than Tennessee!), a role originated by no less than Tallulah Bankhead, Taylor, bedizened in hairdos of death by Alexandre of Paris, truly helps make this the camp classic that it is. (Her line “Everything is urgentissimo this summer” used to play on my answering machine.) Noel Coward playing the Witch of Capri merely adds to the hothouse fun. Luchino Visconti’s “Senso” (October 5), for which Williams wrote the screenplay, will positively ravish you with its operatic splendor and visual richness, while Geraldine Page’s immense Alexandra Del Lago in “Sweet Bird of Youth” (October 6) will have you irresistibly spouting her fabulous lines (“When monster meets monster one has to give way, and it will never be me!”; “Beauty! Say it! Say it! What you had was beauty! I had it! I say it with pride!”) (209 W. Houston St.; filmforum.org) Lahr appears in conversation about Williams and his biography of him with Tony Kushner at the 92nd Street Y on Lexington Avenue on September 29 at 8 p.m. ($43 at 92y.org).

IN THE NOH, continued on p.35

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

IN THE NOH, from p.34

Beginning October 1, the Museum of Modern Art is presenting “Acteurism: The Emergence of Ann Sheridan, 1937–1943,” curated by film critic Dave Kehr. In a recent conversation I had with perceptive performer Nellie McKay, she told me she had just watched “I Married a Male War Bride” and wondered why someone like Sheridan wasn’t as big a star and as glowingly remembered as some of her contemporaries. Perhaps this retrospective will attune more people to the effulgent charm, beauty, and sharp acting skills of this onetime Warner Bros. contract player. Sheridan (1915-1967) was born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas. She left the Univer sity of North Texas at 19 when a photograph of her submitted to Paramount Studios by her sister resulted in a contract as well as casting in “Search for Beauty.” The studio did little to promote her, so she left and signed with Warners in 1936, changing her name to Ann Sheridan.

SNIDE LINES, from p.15

vered Ms. Dalloway’s pulsating tip into her hot, hot OH BABY PLEASE BABY YES OVER THERE NO WAIT BABY NOT THERE OW! Suddenly there came a knock on the door! Betty Lou opened the door uninhibitedly. “What do you want?” she sneered moodily in her bathrobe. There stood two virile lesbians from the local Power and Light Company. “We have noticed that all the power lines in the area are hot and pulsating,” they remarked sternly. “You haven’t been using any small appliances recently, have you? Appliances that would contribute in some way to global warming?” All at once, the pulsatingly hot air that had lifted Betty Lou’s metaphorical hot-air sex balloon farted out. “I can’t have any fun!” she wailed, yanking Ms. Dalloway from the wall. Raising the vibrator above her head as she would a dagger, she lunged at the two bull-daggers as if to impale them. “Why don’t you politically correct jerks from my unconscious just go away and let me enjoy myself for a change!” screamed Betty Lou.

Her sultry face and body made her a cheesecake pin-up favorite and earned her the sobriquet of “Oomph Girl,” with men drawn to her on the screen. At her peak, she received 250 marriage proposals in one week, while appearing opposite such stars as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and George Raft in recognized classics like “Angels with Dirty Faces” (October 22-24), “Dodge City,” and “They Drive By Night.” Although McKay likes “Male War Bride,” I am not such a fan, finding it far too forced and definitely one of director Howard Hawks’ lesser efforts. My favorite Sheridan performance is in the delightful “Torrid Zone” (October 1-3), in which, given the benefit of a sharp, zinger-filled script by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald and tangy direction by William Keighley, she hilariously traded barbed wisecracks with her leading man, Cagney at his feistiest and most attractive, and her romantic rival for him, the ever toxically slinky Helen Vinson. Sheridan’s comic skills were never better displayed and the film has a choice ending line when Cagney nuzzles her, saying,

“You and your 24 carat oomph!” Sheridan was terrific in “They Drive By Night” (October 29-31), a lovely, welcoming foil to Ida Lupino’s psychotically hard-core villainess, and also shone comedically in “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” a film otherwise nigh-unwatchable because of Monty Woolley’s tiresomely hammy camping in the title role. Despite the presence of the queen of the Warners lot, Bette Davis, Sheridan steals the film outright, as the brazenly temperamental star Lorraine Sheldon, bullying her maid and everyone else around her with a deliciously flamboyant egomania. Sheridan’s greatest dramatic performance was in a true classic, Sam Wood’s 1941 “King’s Row,” that dark study of small town medical malpractice, which finds its respite in her radiantly healthy womanliness as she deals with husband Ronald Reagan’s leg amputation (for what it’s worth, his best performance, as well). They say that, in Hollywood, a woman is pretty much washed up by age 35 and, sadly, in Sheridan’s case, this was true, for, by the 1950s, despite her successes and

audience popularity, good opportunities dried up for her and she had trouble finding work. Her appearance at age 41 in “The Opposite Sex” is almost shocking. Just a few years before, she could easily have been cast in either of the leads, the true blue suffering wife heroine played by June Allyson or the husband-stealing minx played by Joan Collins, but, instead, a startlingly unvoluptuous and lean Sheridan appears as the sexless, spinster writer friend of Allyson’s, who describes herself as a “frozen asset.” She was married three times, always to actors, including Warners’ all-purpose and ever -dull leading man George Brent. Sheridan was on a career comeback with the TV series “Pistols and Petticoats” when she sadly died in 1967 of esophageal and liver cancer at age 51. I heartily applaud MoMA’s celebration of this wonderful star; everyone should spend the autumn getting to know and love her. Forget about that Civil War general whose statue graces Christopher Street, for me it will always be known as Ann Sheridan Square. (11 W. 53rd St., moma.org)

Suddenly, the three women froze. All eyes were fixed on Ms. Dalloway: Hot. Pulsating. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Betty Lou asked. Tittering wildly, the three lesbo lassies installed solar panels on Betty Lou’s roof to make Ms. Dalloway go green. Then they fitted Ms. Dalloway up with wings and made her into a tiny, hot and pulsating sex-toy drone. They directed Ms. Dalloway to make deft, surgical strikes on corporate CEOs, Congress members, lobbyists, global-warming deniers, and the entire Defense Department. After thousands of hot, pulsating precision strikes, Ms. Dalloway succeeded in pleasuring everyone so much that they forgot all about war and making profits off things that produce greenhouse gases –– even the Koch brothers. Then everybody showed up at the September 21 People’s Climate March in New York City and were hot and pulsating. But in a good way so that the Earth’s level of carbon dioxide went down to 350 parts per million. Time’s up. THE END. P.S. Reader, I got my grant.

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

LILTING, from p.27

RED EYE, from p.30

The human cost of the conflict between pure art and powerful capitalism is at the heart of another new play based on a true story — the quietly exciting “Bauer” now at 59E59 Theaters. Artist Rudolf

Ben Whishaw in Hong Khaou’s “Lilting.”

story, the filmmaker needed to hire actors who could embody the complex, interior emotions of the characters. Khaou specifically wanted Whishaw for Richard because he felt the out gay actor “carries a sense of truth” in him. “I needed an actor with vulnerability and strength,” Khaou said. “He carries so much pain. With-

Bauer was jailed by the Nazis for his “degenerate art,” and later, after he was rescued, Solomon Guggenheim designed his New York museum to showcase Bauer’s art. But when Bauer learned that in accepting the cash and accolades of Guggenheim he had signed away the rights to his work and all future “product,” he retreated to his home and refused to paint. The play begins as his former lover and agent Hilla von Rebay arrives to try to get him to paint again. Hilla and Bauer’s wife, Louise, initially clash, only to become allies in trying to get him to return to life. This deceptively simple story has been given vibrant life by playwright Lauren Gunderson. It is not so much the story of an artist but a psychological drama about ambition, survival, love, and sacrifice. The characters battle for power, and in a taut 90 minutes, the power and the alliances between the characters shift so often that the audience remains constantly on the edge of their seats. As much as the question of whether Bauer will ever pick up a brush again, the play is about how we all struggle, learn to deal with life’s reversals and our own bad choices, and find a way to go on.

out Ben, all of the nuance could get lost and the dialogue could feel very theatrical. He makes you hang on every word.” The filmmaker had similar praise for Cheng. “She doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, so she needed to be very expressive,” he said. “Pei Pei has been incredibly expressive, even in

BAUER 59E59 Theaters 59 E. 59th St. Through Oct. 12 Tue.-Thu. at 7 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $70; ticketcentral.com Or 212-279-4200 90 min.

CAROL ROSEGG

voice, terrific range, and is completely at home in the abstracted style. He looks like a kind of poetic everyman, and his resemblance to Harold Lloyd, the 1920s comedian from silent movies, can’t be accidental. Alli Mauzey is equally wonderful as Selma Chargesse, the indecisive woman at the heart of the story. Mauzey has a glorious soprano voice and a facility with the different styles of singing required of her. These three are supported by a small but sensational ensemble. Under the adroit direction of Ted Sperling, the styles and symbols are wonderfully balanced. It’s not easy to have frothy entertainment laid on a core of dark, borderline cynical social criticism, but whether appreciated on its own or in the context of an underappreciated period that used conventions to thwart convention, “The Red Eye of Love” is a clear-eyed hit.

STRAND RELEASING

out Kai. The film is often talky, with characters translating dialogue back and forth, but for Khaou that emphasizes the effort it took to exchange a thought and the frustration both Richard and Junn experienced. “I think that was always a concern that we were repeating the info in having the translator there, but Vann is an interesting device,” the filmmaker said. “She can comment on miscommunication, and the awkwardness of communicating, and how things are lost in translation. There was a concern she might slow the momentum down, but if the scene is engaging and has strong drama, it works.” “Lilting” includes what Khaou calls “silent spaces” between the conversations to balance out the drama and give audiences time to absorb all of the exchanges. Given this approach to the

the kung fu movies she’s been in.” It was also important for Khaou to have the two characters por tray grief in different ways. He deliberately eschewed following a conventional narrative formula and insisted on flashing back and forth in time to tell the story. “The narrative structure came through naturally,” the director said. “The repetition of the opening scene was to underscore not just the idea of memory, but memory dealing with grief. It’s odd the way one grieves. You get stuck on a memory and you keep returning to that memory. You know it’s unhealthy, but you keep clinging on to it. I wanted to convey the idea of grief permeating and the present and past existing on a continuous timeline.” “Lilting” envelops viewers in Junn and Richard’s grief, but this thoughtful, gentle film is never depressing. Khaou’s attention to detail makes possible its life-affirming strengths.

Sherman Howard and Stacy Ross in Lauren Gunderson’s “Bauer.”

Under Bill English’s direction, the finely etched characters are consistently compelling. Hilla is as desperate to save her own reputation as she is to get Bauer to paint. Louise is driven by her love for Bauer, going against her better judgment to force the issue. Bauer struggles to find himself again, to recapture what he gave away or lost. We understand from the start how much is at stake for each of these characters, and that’s what makes this particularly riveting theater. That… and the extraordinary cast, who offer some of the best acting to be seen in New York right

now. Sherman Howard is a strong and focused Bauer, trying to cope with the rage and disappointment that is killing him physically and spiritually. Susi Damilano inhabits Louise with a ferocity and love for Bauer that blazes through her performance. Funny, manipulative, and at the same time vulnerable, she is every bit a match for Hilla, even if Hilla underestimates her at first. As Hilla, Stacy Ross gives a performance that is both larger than life and richly nuanced. The struggle between her love for Bauer and her self-interest and ego makes her a fascinating character study, and Ross fills every moment. Creating art imposes order on an inherently disordered world. In “Bauer,” that process is a poignant metaphor, and how we do it — and whether we can — is an open question for each of us. Out of this tension and uncertainty we get truly exciting drama.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

OPERA

Glimmerglass Scores Solidly

Cooperstown’s summer opera season succeeds with “Ariadne,” “Butterfly”; “American Tragedy” lags BY DAVID SHENGOLD

KARLI CADEL/ GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

rtistic and general director Francesca Zambello and managing director Linda Jackson crafted a Glimmerglass season of operas unified by both thematic plot links — women abandoned by men — and a performance history trope of being revised versions of originals. Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” got played in their now-familiar iterations, the Puccini reverting, as often happens, to a seamless transition between second and third acts. Tobias Picker and Gene Scheer’s “An American Tragedy” marked the unveiling of a stripped-down version of a piece that Zambello directed expansively at its 2005 Met world premiere. Zambello’s “Ariadne” (August 23) emerged truly festival-quality, a novel take on an already extraordinarily proto-modernist work. Kathleen Kelly worked wonders in the pit. Zambello made this backstage comedy “local” by situating the action as a one-off upscale barn event. Troy Hourie’s neon–draped barn set situated “Naxos, NY” in the state’s “Classical Belt,” whose place names range from Troy to Syracuse. It later slimmed to reveal a silhouette smartly suggesting the theater we were in, and at the opera’s transfiguring conclusion it flew out altogether, leaving the magic of Mark McCullough’s lighting. Nowhere that I see opera is lighting so consistently brilliant as at Glimmerglass. After last year’s mauling of Verdi’s “Un giorno di regno” — Kelley Rourke’s translation aiming for and hitting the most groan-inducing sitcomspeak, destroying the work’s fragile charm entirely — I had misgivings about her doing the English adaptation of “Ariadne.” A few cheap shots aside, though, Rourke did very well this time, sometimes wandering from the words’ authentic meanings, but usually in productive directions. The Prologue worked best for those who already knew “Ariadne.” Contemporary gags increased its inherent busyness, as when domi-

Christine Goerke as Prima Donna in the Glimmerglass production of Strauss’ “Ariadne in Naxos.”

natrix Zerbinetta placed a sight gag State Trooper in cuffs. Such antics needed a lighter, less repetitive directorial touch. Actor Wynn Harmon, as the Master of the Estate, had the professional savvy to be more interactive and less monotonously imperious than the usual nasal, queeny Haushofmeister. The “trouser” soprano role of the Composer stayed in trousers but became a lesbian rather than a young man. Why not? Catherine Martin’s characterization of an endearing, neurotic perfectionist was treasurable, and her bright middle voice really grabs attention. However, as with many mezzo Composers, she just couldn’t produce high notes with sufficient ease, marring the climaxes. The four male apprentices courting Zerbinetta looked duly urban punk, moved supply, and had fun, but sounded like what they were — good apprentices, not quite up to Strauss’s sophisticated writing.. The second part –– the “opera” –– worked wonderfully. Here the “singers” switched to German while the commedia troupe held to Rourke’s English. Rachele Gilmore’s Zerbinetta did creditably by her long aria and ended the opera convincingly paired with Martin’s Composer. Zambello grasps that the commedia troupe actually learns something from Ariadne and the Prima Donna playing her; the two women mutually support

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

one another. Christine Goerke displayed fabulous comic timing and energy in the Prologue; her Ariadne was world-class, sweeping all in her full-throated yet constantly nuanced wake. Rarely do Ariadnes command such sumptuous lower registers or move so well onstage. Goerke started at Glimmerglass as an apprentice in 1993; this was a triumphant return. Corey Bix may not have the most mellifluous timbre but faced Bacchus’ severe challenges without flinching or tiring. He was worth saluting, as were Jacqueline Echols (Echo) and Beth Lytwynec (Dryad).

That night, Zambello’s other staging, “Madama Butterfly,” also succeeded, though she indulged in two petal drops. The main innovation — centering the drama on the American characters, often shown in the consulate, required some leaps of faith –– and selective translation. In this reading, Sharpless (an excellent, fully formed vocal and theatrical portrayal by Aleksey Bogdanov, after Goerke the summer’s breakaway star) confronts Eurasian babies 24/ 7; why is he so shattered by the revelation of Butterfly’s son? But, led with italianate fire by Joseph Colaneri, the show—again, beautifully lit (Robert Wierzel) and handsomely set (Michael Yeargan) with a post-1912 48-star flag —

made one think. It also set off a fine Butterfly by Yunah Lee. The Korean lyric soprano specializes in this role; her voice has hardened in tougher sections since I heard her in 2009 — the Entrance didn’t bode well –– but the portrayal is expert. Lee projects the text well. Cio-CioSan is full of Major Moments; Lee manages some with great skill, some at least acceptably. Dinyar Vania (Pinkerton) has pushed his voice into premature calcification, sounding like a generic provincial arena tenor and showing routine textual connection. Kristen Choi made a fine Suzuki, sonorous and moving. Sean Michael Plumb sang Yamadori well.

Peter Kazaras’ barebones “American Tragedy” staging (August 24) rarely took fire; George Manahan did not make the score impress except in its dependence on Prokofiev-like rhythm. No character has a distinct musical idiolect: Picker has everyone soar to unmotivated high notes that challenged some of the hardworking apprentice cast. Christian Bowers sang very solidly but, though “a nice-looking guy,” simply lacked the magnetism to incarnate Clyde, who must be irresistibly and enviably handsome for Dreiser’s plot to make sense. Cynthia Cook, a Marilyn lookalike as the rich temptress Sondra, was more apt physically and temperamentally for the role than its creator Susan Graham, but her singing was grainy and unmemorable. As Clyde’s poor victim Roberta, the sympathetic Vanessa Isiguen showed a nice lyric soprano but less command on top than the young Patricia Racette. Bogdanov again shone in a fully rounded study of Clyde’s uncle Samuel. The deleted opening scenes were actually missed, since here Clyde’s devout mother Elvira came out of nowhere. Still, Patricia Schuman’s enduring professionalism and musicality proved very impressive. David Shengold (shengold@ yahoo.com) writes about opera for many venues.

RIVERS, from p.11

“These people!” she spat. “I invited them to see my act tonight. They came and ate and drank their heads off. Afterwards I invited them for a drink here. They drank everything and ordered dinner again, and left me with the bill! Thank God we didn’t go to Elaine’s!” Her longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Edwards, was there, and just chuckled, “She

SYLVESTER, from p.31

Freedom Day Parade in the Castro and years later boldly appeared at another pride parade alongside the banner “People living with AIDS.” Truly awe-inspiring. My only quibble is that I wanted mor e. Like many jukebox musicals, the book, mostly con-

veyed by confessional patter between the musical numbers, is sketchy. What about the groundbreaking television appearances? I wanted the story of his 1987 stint on “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” where he blurted that he was “married” to Rick Cranmer and was horrified to realize he had just outed the man on national television.

LONDON, from p.32

Martin Freeman (Watson on TV’s “Sherlock Holmes,” Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit”) is

Will Eno’s “Oh, The Humanity and Other Good Intentions” at the Tabard (to September 20), a pub theater, is the maiden production from End of Moving Walkway and helmed by its artistic director Paul Lichtenstern, who wrote that he wants to produce shows that “combine ambition with clarity.” They are on track with this production. Eno, who shone on Broadway with “The Realistic Joneses” this past season, honed his off-kilter -style-that-makes-us-think in this 2007 work, as various characters take a turn in the spotlight for monologues –– from people articulating personal ads (“I don’t have to describe myself; this is what I look like,” a young man –– Joseph Stevenson –– says) to a

of celebrities for her to eviscerate. I am proud to say I had the honor of stumping her –– perhaps the only time? After dishing to filth the likes of Katharine Hepburn (‘That dyke!”) and other hapless supernovas, I shouted “Audrey Hepburn!” She stopped dead in her tracks and went into a semi-trance: “I saw her once at Maxim’s in Paris. She was wearing a Nile green gown. She was a vision. FLAWLESS!”

Joan’s reaction was priceless (at the 5:30 mark at youtube.com/ watch?v=Oigd_qs4rNY). I wanted more edgy context. Sylvester’s music was synonymous with dancing, drugs, poppers, and wild sex, yet there was scant mention of drugs (even in “A Night With Janis Joplin,” the singer took a swig from a whiskey bottle now and then). Perhaps a couple of euphoric go-go boys

or projected images of sweaty, shirtless clubgoers would help. I wasn’t the only one who missed the element of illicit behavior. During one of the final numbers, when the crowd was on its feet, a gyrating theatergoer in front of me, swept up in the frenzy, reached into his pocket, whipped out a key, and pantomimed snorting some bumps.

PR spokesperson for an airline that just experienced a crash. “Being human is not listed as a cause of death,” she says. It’s about how we might sound if we stripped ourselves of our myths. Really good stuff in a blessedly intimate space.

The Finborough, another pub theater, does new plays and old, but none that has been performed in London in the last 25 years. They’re good enough to send plays to the West End and New York. With the upcoming Scottish vote, they’re revived Robert McLellan’s 1948 “The Flouers o Edinburgh” (to September 27), set in mid-1700s Scotland in the wake of the Act of Union with England and Wales. Written in Scots, a language still spoken by 1.5 million there, I easily missed half the words but never the engaging comedic drama of mostly upper middle class Scots deciding whether to adopt standard English. It was a privilege to be in such a cozy room with a large and accomplished ensemble as they dealt with complex social issues in a highly entertaining fashion. Especially fine are Lewis Rae as servant Jock, Jenny Lee as the lady of the house, dry Kevin McMonagle as Sir Charles, Finlay Bain as his would-be-politician son, and Andrew Loudon in two key roles. Director Jennifer Bakst and her crew have brought an illuminating gem to life in a season where the debate over Scotland is at its peak. COMING UP: “King Charles III” by Mike Bartlett (“Cock”), a smash at the Almeida, is now in the West End at Wyndham’s (to November 29). The National Theatre has a trilogy of hit plays about Scottish King James I, II, and III by Rona Munro at the Olivier (to October 29). Enda Walsh’s new “Ballyturk” is at the National’s Lyttelton with Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea (to October 11). The National is kicking off its

MARC BRENNER

improbably but chillingly Richard III at the Trafalgar Studios (to September 27), in a modern dress version, directed by Jamie Lloyd, that gives new meaning to the term “office politics,” played as it is in its entirety in a government office. The bullied Richard bullies –– and kills –– his way to the top, so mean to those he encounters on the way up that it is inevitable how they will treat him on his way down. Freeman –– an actor who, as a self-conscious nerd in the British version of “The Office,” originated the role John Krasinski would later play as an everyman heartthrob in America –– slicks back his hair and bares his teeth here in an impressive display of bloody-mindedness. Set in another tumultuous time –– the 1980s of Margaret Thatcher, also a single-minded ruler –– this “Richard” confirms the play’s enduring relevance. Gina McKee is especially good as the terrorized Queen Elizabeth Woodville.

wants to hang out with high society, but I warned her!” Up until the end, Rivers performed at small clubs like the Laurie Beechman at the West Bank Café, where she’d try out dicey material like her notorious 9/ 11 shtick, which imagined freshly financed widows greeting their miraculously returning husbands with “Nooo!” A favorite part of the show was always the callout section, where people would yell the names

Martin Freeman as Richard III.

new Dorfman Theatre (the old Cottesloe) with the New York Public’s hit “Here Lies Love” (September 30 to January 8), David Hare’s new “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” set in Mumbai’s slums is at the Olivier (from November 10), and Byrony Lavery has a new adaptation of “Treasure Island” at the Olivier from December 3. From the National, Richard Bean’s “Great Britain,” about the Murdoch tabloid phone hacking scandals, plays the Haymarket from September 10. British indie movies (“Kinky Boots,” “Billy Elliot”) continue to be made into musicals, this time “Made in Dagenham,” about women striking at a UK Ford plant (at the Adelphi from October 9). Kander & Ebb’s “Scottsboro Boys” from the Young Vic is at the Garrick Theatre from October 4 with some original New York cast members, including Colman Domingo and Brandon Victor Dixon.

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

| September 18 - October 01, 2014

September 18 - October 01, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc