April 27, 2023 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

New Castro welcome center opens amid fanfare

by John Ferrannini

Agift shop and welcome center pop-up has opened in the Castro – a bright spot in the San Francisco LGBTQ neighborhood hurt by a spate of business closures.

Welcome Castro had a soft opening in the former Levi’s space at 525 Castro Street – which shuttered last year – on April 15. There will be a grand opening celebration featuring a ribbon-cutting April 27, from 4 to 7 p.m., according to a news release from the Castro Merchants Association.

“There will be refreshments, drag queens, and a few surprise guests,” Robert Emmons, the store’s proprietor, told the Bay Area Reporter. “I believe the mayor is coming. I haven’t actually confirmed though.”

The office of Mayor London Breed confirmed to the B.A.R. Monday that she’ll be attending.

Terry Beswick, a gay man on the board of the merchants’ association who fought for city funding to the association and for Welcome Castro at the group’s membership meeting, stated that among the guests will be DJ Nico and drag queens Persia, Christina Ashton, and Olivia Hart will be on hand.

“It’s been a trip working on this project, from applying for the city grant to opening the first shop,” Beswick stated to the B.A.R. “I’m excited to see what

Biden announces reelection bid

by Cynthia Laird

Rick Gerharter

A contingent marched in last year’s San Francisco Pride parade.

B.A.R. planning special issues for Pride Month

by John Ferrannini

The Bay Area Reporter will be publishing special reports throughout all five Thursdays of this year’s Pride Month – including in a mammoth-sized issue days before the parade and celebration marking the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

This year marks the 53rd San Francisco Pride parade, set for Sunday, June 25, on Market Street from the Embarcadero to Eighth Street near Civic Center, where the celebration will take place.

In addition to the Pride parade, drag artist Juanita MORE! and Alex U. Inn will host their fourth annual People’s March, which started in

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other shops we can help open, but for now the reward is in seeing the delighted customers coming into the very LGBTQ Welcome Castro. We’re helping to keep the Castro queer, and I think that’s good for everyone.”

Emmons, a gay man, is the owner of SF Mercantile in the Haight. Welcome Castro was kick-started by a $50,000 grant from the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development to Castro

Merchants, which has not responded to a request for comment as of press time.

Emmons had pledged up to 50% of his net proceeds to the merchants association for 10 months so that money can be used for “multiple additional pop-ups,” according to Beswick, It is hoped those ventures could become viable businesses in the neighborhood.

The total grant from the city was for $100,000

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Safety project along upper Market Street wraps up

by Matthew S. Bajko

A$10 million project aimed at improving pedestrian and bicycle safety along upper Market Street will be wrapping up in early May. It has also brought new lighting for the palm trees lining the roadway’s median.

Work on the Upper Market Safety Project began last summer and was to have been largely finished in early December ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. A ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor London Breed also had been planned that month.

But the event had to be scrapped due to issues with the control system for the tree lights and a series of storms that had battered the city delaying the roadway work. The unseasonably wet start to 2023 further interrupted the timeline for the project.

Now, nearly all the work has been completed and just a few minor components are left to do.

“We’re currently performing punch list work. That work should be complete within the next two weeks,” said Alex M. Murillo, the manager of public affairs and communications for construction at San Francisco Public Works.

As of now, there is no date for a rescheduled ribbon-cutting ceremony with the mayor, city officials, and community leaders.

“As far as a ribbon-cutting ceremony goes, we’ll circle back with invited speakers to determine availability and gauge interest. We’ll update everyone if a

new date is determined,” Murillo told the Bay Area Reporter earlier this month.

The changes for one of the main arterial roadways through the city’s LGBTQ Castro neighborhood are

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Coming four years to the day after he announced his 2020 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden on April 25 formally launched his 2024 reelection effort. The move had been widely anticipated by political observers, who have noted there is no other major Democrat seeking the party’s presidential nomination.

President Joe Biden formally announced his reelection campaign in a video address April 25.

In a video released early Tuesday morning, Biden said, “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, and stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights. This is ours. Let’s finish the job.”

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SF supes ground ‘no-fly’ states list

by Matthew S. Bajko

San Francisco’s ban on taxpayer funded travel to states with anti-LGBTQ laws and doing business with companies headquartered in them is coming to an end. It is sure to add momentum to the push by state lawmakers to also end California’s travel ban policy to such states.

As expected, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 at its meeting Tuesday to repeal the policy known as 12X. First enacted in 2016 to cover states that enacted laws curtailing LGBTQ rights, it was expanded to also apply to states with restrictions on abortion access and voting.

It led to the 12X policy covering 30 states, nearly two-thirds of the country. It also sparked a growing backlash to it, as detractors argued it wasn’t effective at promoting the city’s liberal values in other states.

Instead, they argued 12X merely resulted in city contracts becoming more expensive due to fewer companies being able to bid on them. Mayor London Breed in late March signed into law a change to the policy that allowed for construction firms in the 30 states to once again bid on public contracts in the city.

The supervisors had voted 7-4 for the change, signaling there was also support to scrap the entirety of 12X. Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman authored the ordinance to do just that, with Supervisors Ahsha Safaí of District 11,

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LED lights installed at the base of palm trees along upper Market Street are part of a safety project that is nearing completion.

Matthew S. Bajko

Robert Emmons of Welcome Castro explains the significance of an aerial map of upper Market Street. Welcome Castro is having a grand opening celebration April 27.

John Ferrannini

Courtesy the campaign

Abortion access suits have implications for LGBTQs

analysis by Lisa Keen

The escalating clash over the availability of a federal Food and Drug Administration-approved medication to terminate an early-stage pregnancy has significant implications for many LGBTQ people. Over the years, various entities have tried to block the use of hormones for gender transition and medications for HIV prevention. Now, the court battles raging over the abortion drug mifepristone (RU-486) could determine whether any federal judge has the power to pull any controversial medication off the market.

So, there was guarded appreciation April 21 when the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would grant a stay against a lower court decision in Texas that sought to pull mifepristone off the market. (Two justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – dissented from the stay.)

“While today’s ruling to keep this safe, effective drug available for the time being is a sense of relief,” stated lesbian U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), “our fight to preserve a woman’s right to control when and if to have a family continues.”

The Supreme Court’s procedural action came in a consolidation of two appeals: Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration and Danco Pharmaceuticals v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Both appeals asked the Supreme Court to stay an order issued by a U.S. district court judge in Texas until the merits of the case could be appealed. The alliance is a conservative group.

Alliance v. FDA began when an antiabortion coalition asked Texas federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to strike down the FDA’s longstanding approval of mifepristone. The judge did so (https://www.cnn.

com/2023/04/07/politics/read-texasabortion-pill-mifepristone-ruling/ index.html) on April 7. That same day, another federal judge, Thomas Rice (appointed by then-President Barack Obama), in Spokane, Washington, issued a ruling to ensure that mifepristone would remain available in 18 states that joined a lawsuit by Danco, the company that distributes mifepristone.

The Texas decision moved quickly to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued a stay against only part of the district court’s ruling taking effect until the appeals court could rule on the merits of the decision. The FDA quickly appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and, on April 21, the Supreme Court stayed the district court’s entire order.

“LGBT people should care about this case,” said Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. In fact, she said, LGBTQ people should be “profoundly alarmed” by Kacsmaryk’s “utterly lawless ruling” and “only slightly less” alarmed by the 5th Circuit’s willingness to let part of the judge’s ruling take effect.

“First, many LBTQ people need ready access to emergency contraception for a range of medical reasons, including the decision not to continue a pregnancy for one’s own reasons,” explained Pizer. “…The trial court’s approach just as easily (or perhaps more easily) could be aimed at HIV-related medications and puberty blockers and hormone treatments, as well as medications for many other health conditions that are specially relevant for our communities.”

Lambda Legal and other LGBTQ groups have long warned that any damage done to the right to choose an abortion could have deep implications for the right to have intimate relations, including marriage, for LGBTQ people. Abortion, said Pizer, “is an LGBTQ+ issue for personal medical reasons, liberty, and autonomy doctrinal reasons,

and [for] broad, movement partnership reasons.”

Last year, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion, throwing the issue to the states.

Briefs urge access

Lambda Legal and San Franciscobased National Center for Lesbian Rights were among the more than 200 civil rights, health, and justice organizations that submitted a brief to urge the Supreme Court to block the Texas judge’s ban from going into effect. Twelve out of 13 of Congress’ openly LGBTQ members signed onto a similar brief from 253 members of Congress.

The congressional brief against allowing Kacsmaryk’s ruling to take effect said the ruling and the 5th Circuit’s upholding of part of it had “perilous consequences (that) reach far beyond mifepristone.”

“Providers and patients rely on the availability of thousands of FDA-approved drugs to treat or manage a range of medical conditions, including asth-

Courtesy ABC News

ma, HIV, infertility, heart disease, diabetes, and more,” said the brief. “Moreover, the prospect of courts second-guessing FDA’s rigorous drug safety and effectiveness determinations will disrupt industry expectations and could chill pharmaceutical research and development.”

The District of Columbia and 23 states also submitted a brief to the Supreme Court, asking it to stop Kacsmaryk’s ruling from going into effect. Those states, including California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon, said that taking mifepristone off the market would increase the need for surgical abortions, thus increasing the stress on many clinical facilities and causing delays that affect all patients.

“Delays resulting from increased demand for [surgical] abortion procedures will obstruct access to other forms of care at those facilities, inevitably resulting in higher rates of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, barriers to early detection and treatment for breast, ovarian, and testicular cancers, and worsened health outcomes for patients’ overall sexual and

reproductive health and beyond,” said the states’ brief. “Those harms will disproportionately impact groups already underserved by the health care system, including women of color, low-income women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ individuals.”

The Texas case will now go back to the federal appeals court to rule on the merits of the litigation and then, almost certainly, will be appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“If the [5th Circuit] appeals courts were to accept the trial court’s brazen disregard of the decades of evidence that mifepristone is safe, that pregnancy and childbirth are riskier, and that many, many other medications are far riskier,” said Pizer, “we all will be living in a much more dangerous society.”

Democratic governors in three states also took action. Just three days after the Texas judge issued his decision, Massachusetts’ recently inaugurated lesbian governor, Maura Healey, directed her state to stockpile mifepristone to ensure that women who need the drug can get it.

“Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” said Healey.

California Governor Gavin Newsom made a similar announcement the same day (April 10). Oregon’s new lesbian governor, Tina Kotek, announced April 20 that her state would stockpile mifepristone, saying the Texas judge’s decision “set an alarming precedent of putting politics above established science, medical evidence, and a patient’s health, life, and well-being – with potential implications beyond this one medication.”

Kotek said the Alliance’s lawsuit is “part of a larger campaign to ban abortion in every state, including those with legal protections for abortion access.”t

India court begins hearing on same-sex marriage case

by Heather Cassell

India’s Supreme Court has started hearing oral arguments on a landmark same-sex marriage case, but the proceeding was postponed after one of the judges became sick with COVID.

Hearings scheduled before the fivejudge Constitution Bench April 23 were canceled, the India Times reported. Another judge hearing the case had a minor fall but is recovering, the paper reported.

India’s government had called for the

court to dismiss the same-sex marriage case ahead of the hearing that started April 18.

The Bay Area Reporter reported last month the Supreme Court sent the consolidated same-sex marriage case to a five-judge Constitution Bench. Four couples are serving as the main plaintiffs in the case, representing 18 couples, three of which have children together, reported the BBC

The plaintiffs claim discrimination and are insisting on having the same

rights as straight married couples, such as sharing a bank account, inheritance, property, making medical decisions for their partners, adoption rights, and parental rights, among other rights.

Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yashwant Chandrachud is heading the five-judge bench. Chandrachud was sworn in as the court’s 50th chief justice November 9, 2022. He was also one of the justices that repealed Section 377, the British colonial-era law that was used to criminalize homosexuality. While delivering his judgment for 377 in 2018, Chandrachud said that the case was much more than decriminalizing a provision.

The same-sex marriage hearings are expected to go for at least two weeks, reported The Guardian.

On April 17, the day before the hearings opened, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, filed a 102-page affidavit in which it stated that the petitions “merely reflect urban elitist views” and called for the case to be “dismissed,” in support of “traditional” marriage between a man and a woman, reported The Guardian and Reuters .

“The petitions, which merely reflect urban elitist views, cannot be compared with the appropriate legislature which reflects the views and voices of [a] far wider spectrum and expands across the country,” the government stated in a filing to the Supreme Court that was seen by Reuters.

The government went on to claim that “such a decision should be made by parliament not the courts,” reported The Guardian.

India’s religious communities – Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, and Christian – also

joined forces in a rare alliance opposing same-sex marriage, reported the BBC.

In an open letter last month, 21 retired high court judges also opposed same-sex marriage, stating it would have a “devastating impact” on children, families, and society.

In contrast, India’s 7,000-member mental health professional organization, the Indian Psychiatric Society, came out in support of the LGBTQ community in an April 9 statement.

“Homosexuality is not a disease,” the IPS stated, adding that discrimination against LGBTQ+ people could “lead to mental health issues in them.”

The case is being argued by a who’s who of India’s queer and ally lawyers, such as queer legal eagle Menaka Guruswamy, one of the lawyers who was also at the forefront of the decriminalization of homosexuality case in 2018; and gay lawyer Saurabh Kirpal. The lawyers are targeting India’s Special Marriage Act of 1954, one of India’s five separate marriage laws governing Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Muslims (which is largely

not codified), and the aforementioned secular code, the Special Marriage Act. The Special Marriage Act allows marriages between people of different castes and religions.

“It’s about fundamental rights of citizens,” Rohin Bhatt, a lawyer fighting the case who identifies as queer, told The Guardian. “What we are asking for as queer people in this country is merely that the rights which exist for heterosexual couples be extended to us; nothing more and nothing less.”

If the Supreme Court grants marriage equality it will make India the largest democracy in the world and the second country in Asia, after Taiwan, to legalize same-sex marriage. It will also make India the 35th country in the world to legally recognize same-sex couples’ marriages, according to the Human Rights Campaign

It is unclear how the judges will rule or when the decision will come. t

Got international LGBTQ news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp/Signal: 415517-7239, or oitwnews@gmail.com

The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed a Texas federal judge’s decision to strike down the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of abortion drug mifepristone.

A five-judge Constitution Bench in India has started hearing a landmark same-sex marriage case.

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SF trans district chief stepping down

by Heather Cassell

The second official head of the Transgender District in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood has announced that she will be stepping down this fall.

Aria Sa’id, a Black trans woman and co-founder of the district, wrote on social media April 20 that she will be leaving the post.

In the LinkedIn post, Sa’id, 33, wrote that after six years she would no longer be the Transgender District’s president and chief strategist.

“I am honored to have been able to serve my community as best as I possibly could,” she wrote. “All that magic has to come from somewhere, and truthfully – having to lead the organization during a global pandemic and now again in a recession – I am exhausted and have been hanging on by a thread since 2020.”

Sa’id will depart from the Transgender District in six months. Her last day is October 30.

The post generated much buzz on social media, prompting questions if the Transgender District was going to close and if Sa’id was leaving San Francisco.

Sa’id was clear that the Transgender District was not closing. She is also not leaving the city.

“I still live in the Tenderloin,” she said, responding to confusion about her comments about working with transgender communities in the South. “I don’t have any plans to move.”

“I’m very privileged to have been able to lead the Transgender District, but it’s not a miss to me that the concept of the Transgender District could only sort of exist and thrive in a San Francisco setting the way that it has,” Sa’id stated. “It’s because of our values as a community in the city.

“That is unfortunately not the same reality for trans people in Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama,” she continued, stating that transgender people in the South are being arrested for fraud for changing their gender markers on their driver’s licenses, seeing health care banned for transgender adults and youth, and not able to use the bathroom according to their gender. “Trans people are being heavily criminalized for the virtue of being trans.”

For the next six months, Sa’id said she will prepare her six-member team for the transition and continue the work that still needs to be done to improve the lives of the Tenderloin’s transgender residents. The Transgender District’s new board of directors and her team are looking at its options after her departure and the Transgender District’s future under a new leader.

The Bay Area Reporter talked with

Sa’id during a phone interview April 21, the day after her announcement and just before she left for Dallas to work with more than 400 transgender leaders from across the country to strategize combatting the tsunami of anti-LGBTQ bills. Sa’id talked about her accomplishments with the Transgender District, the challenges and work that remains to be done, the opportunities the role gave to her, and her plans for the future.

The Transgender District

Sa’id co-founded the Transgender District, the first legally recognized transgender district of its kind in the world, in 2017 with fellow Black transgender activists Honey Mahogany and Janetta Johnson. Since then, she’s led the organization through COVID-19 and San Francisco’s struggle as the city continues to find its footing to rebound after the pandemic. (Mahogany served as the district’s first executive director and stepped down in 2019, when Sa’id was hired.)

Mahogany currently serves as chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, and is the new district director for state Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), for whom she used to work when he was the District 6 supervisor. (Mahogany ran unsuccessfully for D6 supervisor last year.) Johnson is currently the executive director of the TGI Justice Project.

Sa’id, Mahogany, and Johnson’s goal was to push back against the wave of gentrification coming to the Tenderloin, according to KGO-TV’s special report, “50 Blocks: Stories from the Tenderloin.” They wanted to create a safety net, support, and opportunities for the largest population of transgender people in San Francisco, and celebrate the community through art and culture. For more than a century, transgender San Franciscans

have called the six blocks that encompass the southeast part of the neighborhood, and two blocks of the South of Market District home. Many are still living in dire poverty despite progress in recent years.

“While we have hundreds of trans people in this neighborhood, over 70% of them are living in abject poverty,” Sa’id told the B.A.R., explaining that the majority of trans community members are living in shelters or single-room-occupancy hotels. “The work of the Trans District was also designed to address real-time social issues that impact our community.”

Mahogany and Johnson did not respond to the B.A.R.’s multiple requests for comment. San Francisco District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, an ally, also did not respond to the B.A.R.’s multiple requests for comment. The Tenderloin was added to his district last year during redistricting.

Sa’id is proudest of creating the Transgender District, its diverse staff, and the innovative programs she and her team developed.

“I think I’m most proud of the fact that the [Transgender] District was actualized and to what it is today. You know you are in the [Transgender] District from the signs to the trans flag painted on the [light] polls,” said Sa’id. “My work at the Trans District has been quite radical – even sometimes for San Francisco.”

“We have, I think, amazing programs that no one else has been doing in the country and we’ve helped other organizations replicate,” she said, noting the mutual aid and guaranteed income programs.

While she got into trouble from a city official she would not name at the beginning of the pandemic for distributing cash grants to the neediest transgender residents in the Transgender District, she later got an apology from

other San Francisco officials. That single act recognizing their privilege and the need for transgender residents of the Tenderloin opened the door to creating the Transgender District’s Mutual Aid Program and partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, she recalled.

“We were able to provide up to $1,000 in cash grants per person for over 2,000 trans people across the United States who needed it,” Sa’id said. “At the same time, we worked with 32 other nonprofits across the United States and replicated mutual aid.”

The success of scaling that program, which had never been done before, inspired the guaranteed income for transgender people and the entrepreneurship accelerator programs, she explained.

Sa’id got the idea for the guaranteed income for transgender people from former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who now is an economic adviser to California Governor Gavin Newsom and launched the nonprofit organization, End Poverty in California. With San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Pau Crego, executive director at the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives (https://sf.gov/departments/ city-administrator/office-transgenderinitiatives), and Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, the Transgender District was able to pilot the guaranteed income program. Currently, 55 transgender people – many who are only Spanish-speaking, survival sex workers, or formerly incarcerated – are receiving $1,200 guaranteed income a month for 18 months, she said.

“It’s been a blessing to be able to put that program forward,” she said.

Nearly 40 participants have graduated from the Transgender District’s entrepreneurial program, Sa’id said. She is most proud of Melanie Ampon, owner of Hearten Electrolysis, and Fluid Cooperative Cafe. Ampon was profiled in the B.A.R. last fall and Fluid Cafe was covered in 2021. Sa’id was upbeat about these two success stories. She said Ampon was able to open her own hair removal clinic in the Tenderloin. The clinic has been so successful that she is not only on her way to opening another location, but she has employed other transgender people and provided vocational training scholarships in electrolysis for other transgender people.

Fluid Cooperative Cafe is now searching for its first storefront after successfully operating out of San Franciscobased nonprofit kitchen incubator La Cocina, Sa’id continued.

Ampon and Fluid Cooperative Cafe owners Shannon Amitin, Santana Tapia, and JoJo Ty did not respond to the B.A.R.’s

request for comment by press time.

The successes are only the Transgender District’s beginning.

“I have to often fight and yell [and] kick and scream at City Hall to get people to understand what the trans community is often having to navigate in the city just to survive,” Sa’id said. “Even in a space where people love trans people and queer people there’s still a lot of public education that has to happen on nuance and disparity.”

Sa’id explained that thousands of trans people are in need of housing and programs have long waitlists. There is an ongoing need for employment training and opportunities because transgender people still aren’t being hired, she said. There is also a need for free community spaces for transgender people to gather safely.

“That work still has to continue,” she said.

Breed praised Sa’id and the work she has done at the Transgender District.

“Undoubtedly, she has helped secure San Francisco’s place globally as a city that not only welcomes and accepts every person, but a city that stands up for fundamental human rights and freedoms,” Breed stated to the B.A.R. “Not to mention her sense of style that is unparalleled by almost any fashionista in San Francisco.

“The critical work the Transgender District does to foster culture, champion economic advancements and leadership development within our trans community, is a direct result of Aria’s leadership and we will always be indebted to her for this work,” she continued.

Crego, a trans and nonbinary person, wrote in a statement to the B.A.R. that he was “truly saddened” by Sa’id’s pending resignation.

“Sa’id is a fierce, brilliant, and caring leader, who has dedicated herself and her career to social justice,” he wrote, stating that she made “significant contributions to trans communities locally and nationally,” citing the mutual aid and entrepreneurship programs and his work with her on various projects for a decade.

“I will miss working with her in this role, but I look forward to seeing what she does next,” he wrote.

The toll

The Transgender District and Sa’id’s work took her to places she never imagined being, but it also took a toll on her mental and physical well-being from death threats to her workaholic tendencies.

The job catapulted Sa’id, her staff, and the Transgender District into the global spotlight, something she never expected, but appreciated. She was able to meet and work with royalty, celeb-

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OKELL’S FIREPLACE

Valor LX2 3-sided gas fireplace shown here with Murano glass, and reflective glass liner

Aria Sa’id, co-founder, president, and chief strategist of the Transgender District, will step down in October.

Karen Santos Photography

SF supe committee delays vote on Castro Theatre

by John Ferrannini

The fate of interior landmarking at the Castro Theatre won’t be decided by the full Board of Supervisors just yet, after the Land Use and Transportation Committee voted 3-0 to wait two more weeks before giving its final stamp of approval to amend the interior landmarking ordinance.

The matter will be taken up again by the committee Monday, May 8.

The vote by the supervisors’ land use and transportation committee was the second on the topic in as many weeks. Before the panel was the question of whether to confirm its 2-1 vote April 24 recommending fixed seating in the orchestra because the amendment requiring the fixed orchestra seating was a substantive one, as determined by the city attorney’s office.

But the panel deferred that vote.

Stephen Torres, a queer man who is executive co-chair of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, asked that consideration of this second vote be delayed two weeks as the two sides battling for the theater’s future work on reaching a compromise.

“With all the moving pieces in play, I think all parties would benefit from the additional breathing room that affords,” Torres said.

At least two callers criticized committee member and board President Aaron Peskin’s decision to wait until after public comment was finished April 17 to drop the bombshell that Castro Theatre operator Another Planet Entertainment has not finished renovations to the cityowned Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, which it also manages, 13 years after it promised to do so.

Peskin did not say anything after public comment.

APE has subsequently stated that it has spent over $10 million on the civic auditorium and recently secured the permit to begin renovations on Polk Hall, a smaller venue inside the auditorium, as the B.A.R. reported.

The amendment the supervisors’ committee needs to vote on a second

It’s APE’s way or no way

time was offered during its April 17 meeting by District 5 Supervisor and committee vice chair Dean Preston, a straight ally, as the B.A.R. noted last week.

Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman spoke at that meeting against making the amendment, saying, “I do not believe this board should second guess or alter the work of planning staff” while bemoaning that “both sides in my view have done things and taken positions that ensure there would not be” an agreement.

“Ultimately even if made, it is not clear the amendment would prevent the city approving or APE not moving forward with their plans for the theater,” Mandelman said, adding that the amendment would be a “symbolic” gesture.

Nonetheless, Preston pushed forward. Committee Chair District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, a straight ally, voted against the amendment, saying that “we need to be as flexible as possible so a business enterprise can continue on that commercial corridor. It is time right now to be supporting ways to provide the most flexibility and the widest array of programming.”

The amendment – which replaces the term “presence of seating” in the original resolution approved by the historic preservation commission with “fixed theatrical seating configured in movie palace style” – is largely what opponents of Another Planet have wanted.

Mandelman was not present at the committee’s April 24 meeting, and pub-

I agree with the Bay Area Reporter that Another Planet entertainment only has itself to blame [“APE has only itself to blame,” Editorial, April 20]. (https://www.ebar.com/story.php?

ch=Opinion&sc=Editorial&id=324658 ) I attempted to have a meaningful conversation with a spin doctor who was promoting the APE Castro takeover at the Fox Theatre’s Grace Jones concert last year (another APE venue). I left the encounter feeling it was all smoke and mirrors and spin. Wizard of Oz word smithery. A lot of talking at me – no genuine interest in my questions and concerns.

The Castro is much more than a movie palace – it’s an LGBTQ+ epicenter with vital community roots. If APE was genuine about preserving all that’s magical about the Castro Theatre, it could have already been walking the talk by hosting regular movie nights and queer-centric events. I believe its decision to keep the theater largely shuttered during this period, as the venue and surrounding area deteriorate further, is a form of stonewalling and intimidation – it’s either APE’s way or no way.

As a side note, I am troubled by Frameline’s decision to endorse APE, given APE’s failure to genuinely engage with community stakeholders. I perceive the issues of multi-use functionality and seating are distractions from what’s really at risk – the heart and soul of the Castro. The Castro Theatre has already been a multi-use venue for some time. Personally, I don’t want to see the venue become a nightclub that has a dance floor, serves alcohol, and features programming that no longer imbues the queer-essential lifeblood of the community. Moreover, if APE has indeed failed to fulfill renovation commitments to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that is probably all the data the city needs.

From my vantage, if APE had engaged differently with the community, the issue of renovations would likely already have been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of community stakeholders and APE. Instead, APE has consistently approached community concerns with hubris and disingenuity.

Lisa Cohn San Francisco

lic comments were limited to one minute. Far fewer people spoke than during previous hearings on the movie palace.

Of those who appeared in person Monday, two spoke in favor of the amendment, two were against, and one spoke about his concerns over the committee’s conduct.

Ralph Hibbs, a gay man who lives in the Castro and is on the Castro Community Benefit District’s retail committee, spoke against the amendment, saying “all buildings must change over time.”

“It [the amendment] puts a burden on the theater by preventing anyone from adding HVAC in the future,” Hibbs said. “Without healthy air in the theater the seats are worthless. Nobody can sit in a theater that has health risks.”

Of those who spoke via telephone, three spoke in favor of the amendment, two against the amendment, and one spoke of his concerns about Peskin’s Bill Graham auditorium reveal.

Preston said after the public comment period ended that “I do think – I hope – everyone can agree that hopefully a negotiated solution of some kind would be best to bring the community together. I would like to suggest, and to move, that we continue this item for two weeks.”

All three members of the panel, including Melgar, voted for the continuance. Torres told the B.A.R. after the meeting that “we are asking for the continuance because we are having ongoing discussions we think will be fruitful and Supervisor Mandelman has indicated

LGBTQ+ youth and tobacco

Here is an update on Matthew S. Bajko’s excellent article [“Political Notebook: Gay Vallejo councilman aims to address teen smoking,” February 15] profiling gay Vallejo City Councilmember Peter Bregenzer and his efforts to protect LGBTQ+ and other youth from Big Tobacco’s manipulative pricing strategies.

On April 11 the Vallejo City Council voted unanimously to receive a 30-minute presentation from our project, LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, and our community partners, Bay Area Community Resources and Vibe Solano. The April 25 presentation addressed, among other things, the high rate of smoking and vaping among local queer teens due to the stress caused by homophobia, transphobia and biphobia.

As we all know, LGBTQ+ youth, and trans youth especially, are facing renewed discriminatory attacks all over the country, and while we don’t see these kinds of open political assaults in the Bay Area, there is no doubt that local queer teens know what is happening and are feeling stressed.

As a community we need to fight these attacks on our identities, while also making it harder for stressed youth to turn to highly addictive deadly products like tobacco for relief.

The tobacco industry wants just the opposite. Big Tobacco is one of the largest contributors to rightwing politicians and they are only too happy to provide their product, which kills 480,000 people a year in the U.S., to help stressed youth cope.

One of the methods they use to make tobacco more accessible to youth is to artificially decrease the price of their products through billions of dollars of price lowering strategies. Did you know that some tobacco products can be purchased for as little as 99 cents? And yes, teens can get these products at local stores. In 2020, 30% of tobacco stores visited in Vallejo sold to an underage decoy. In 2018, it was even worse – 45.5%!

LGBTQ Minus Tobacco is working to inform community members and leaders in other Bay Area cities as well, doing similar work in Concord as we are in Vallejo, and working for smoke-free bar patios in San Francisco and Oakland to protect bar workers and patrons from secondhand smoke in the safe spaces that are so important to our LGBTQ+ communities. To find out more, visit our website at www.lgbtqminustobacco.org.

he wants to meet with our coalition leadership and we think that’s important in these two weeks.”

“It felt like the right thing to ask for to ensure there was adequate breathing room for all parties concerned,” he continued.

“We remain hopeful APE will see that there is a way of running this theater in a benefit to both them and the community while retaining these important features, and we feel people like former Supervisors Alioto-Pier and Ammiano have also supported this in terms of basic accessibility.”

Torres was referring to a guest opinion that ran on the B.A.R.’s website Monday by former supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, a disability advocate, and gay former supervisor and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano that argued the fight over the theater is “about access for disabled people, generational access, family access, access for people with lower incomes, and beyond.”

One caller to Monday’s meeting, who did not identify themself, brought up the opinion piece.

Mandelman, the Castro Theatre Conservancy and the CBD (which circulated a petition among merchants in favor of APE) did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

APE and the Castro Merchants Association declined a request for comment when asked.

The imbroglio over the theater began in January 2022, when APE – which runs the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium near San Francisco’s Civic Center, and the Fox Theatre in Oakland – was announced as the new operator of

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People wore T-shirts that spelled out “Save the Seats” at an August 2022 town hall at the Castro Theatre.

Screengrab via SFGovTV

Gay man recovering after SF shooting, robbery

by John Ferrannini

Agay man who was shot and robbed near his San Francisco apartment is out of the hospital and doing better.

“Right now, I’m doing OK,” Patrick “Patch” Perez, 41, told the Bay Area Reporter. “I’m overwhelmed in a myriad of ways – in good ways and ways I have no control over. It’s been amazing having so much support and love from everyone around and helping me with processing stuff.”

The attack happened when Perez was walking early April 8 in the Union Square neighborhood.

“I was walking around town early morning, around 4:30. It doesn’t bother me walking through San Francisco – I’ve never felt unsafe. The population that is homeless has never been a threat to me; it’s never bothered me. I understand they are trying to survive,” said Perez.

But that night, near the Hilton Union Square, Perez began to “hear some people talk loudly – they were aggressive and it felt like the conversation was louder than it needed to be.”

“I’m walking up, past the parking garage, and I can still hear them and I had a feeling ‘something’s not right,’” Perez said. “I look over my left shoulder and there’s two guys with hoodies. One is in all black, one had a beige hoodie with

black pants. One says, ‘What’s up’ and I thought, ‘Oh God, I know something is wrong.’ The pace gets faster, and that’s when one of them ran around in front of me to punch me.”

Perez said he figured he was being robbed.

“He demanded: ‘Give me your wallet and keys,’” Perez said of one of the men.

“I obliged.”

The pair searched Perez’s pockets and also took his cellphone. Nonetheless, however, “after that the guy with the gun went clockwise and I heard a pop. I didn’t know he’d shot me. It’s not like in the movies.”

Perez realized he’d been shot when his left arm collapsed. Falling on the ground, he yelled “Help me – I’ve been shot. Call 911” four to five times, he said, before “shock hit in” and he began to “see starry skies.”

“Me being stubborn I was like ‘nope,’” Perez said. “I don’t like losing control of my body. I felt the shock, got myself back up and went toward the building.”

It was then that a good Samaritan –whose identity is a mystery – came upon Perez and called 911.

“Once I heard the sirens I felt better,” Perez said. “At least I’m not alone.”

Niccole Pacchetti of the San Francisco Police Department told the B.A.R. that police arrived first and called the ambulance to the scene.

“On 4/8/23 at approximately 4:56 a.m. officers responded to the 500 block of Mason St. regarding a shooting that just occurred,” Pacchetti stated. “Officers arrived on scene and located an adult male suffering from injuries caused by a gunshot. Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene who transported the victim to the hospital for life-threatening injuries.”

Pacchetti added, “The preliminary investigation determined that the victim was approached by unknown males and robbed the victim at gunpoint. During the robbery the victim was shot and the suspects fled the scene.”

Perez’s gunshot wound was in his shoulder, and he’d lost five liters of blood, he said.

Because he’d sustained extensive nerve damage, a vein graft from his inner thigh was required.

“They took a foot of veins to help with the damage,” he said.

It took almost a day for Perez’s friends and family to find out what had happened because his phone was stolen, along with his wallet and keys.

One of those friends was Xander Salvador, who is also gay. Salvador lives

in New York City, but when he heard what’d happened “there was no question” what he’d do next.

“I put my job on hold,” Salvador told the B.A.R. “I got on a flight the day after to San Francisco because I couldn’t rest until I saw he is OK and what I knew of his support system was limited. I just have trust issues and I didn’t trust anyone to take care of him.”

Salvador met Perez over 15 years ago when they went to Fullerton Junior College together and became roommates.

“We were roommates in the truest sense – two beds in one room,” Perez said. “Two broke college students.” Salvador said, “I couldn’t be OK until I knew he was well,” and helped Perez deal with some of those things he had no control over, since his wallet and other items were taken.

Another friend who helped out is Jeffrey Huang, a gay man who set up a GoFundMe that raised $19,740 out of a $10,000 goal. (The San Francisco Standard also reported on the incident.

“We started the GoFundMe a few days after Patrick’s incident. The initial goal, $10,000, seemed like a high amount, but when we added how much it’d cost to replace the things stolen from him and insurance, transportation toand-from, medical expenses, he doesn’t feel safe at his current place, the deposit and moving expenses to a new place, it’s impossible to quantify the impact a violent crime has on someone, so it was hard to quantify how much money to ask,” Huang said.

“Within a day or two, we had surpassed the goal, which I think is a testament to the kind of relationships and friends Patrick has, and now we’re basically at $20,000,” Huang added. “… Even when people saw the amount was more than the initial goal they kept on donating, which is a testament to people’s willingness to lend a hand.”

Perez praised the SFPD’s response, particularly that of Sergeant Kevin Cuadro. (The B.A.R. asked the SFPD if Cuadro could provide comment but received no response to the request.)

“Cuadro’s team has been completely amazing,” Perez said. “There’s surveillance, because it’s Union Square there’s cameras everywhere, and they have pictures of the perps before and after.”

See page 13 >>

Obituaries >>

Roy Haynes Carr

April 26, 1938 – April 17, 2023

Roy Haynes Carr, 84, of San Francisco passed away on April 17, 2023 from natural causes. He was predeceased by his brother David Timothy Carr, and sister Buena Carr, and he left behind brother Terri Carr and wife, Paulette; sisters Ann C. Toowey, Shirly C. Towne, and Merry Cook. He also leaves behind an extended chosen family in San Francisco.

Roy was married to James E. Meko; they shared a wonderful 30-plus-year union. They created and ran a successful printing and design company in the neighborhood, The Best Impression, they adored in the South of Market area. As a local print shop, they were able to run flyers for the Ambush and the Arena without it catching the public eye. Their support of the leather community can be seen on Ringold Ally as a memorial of Meko’s boot print. Meko died in 2015. (https://www.ebar.com/story. php?245535)

Both men have been and will continue to be pillars in the SOMA leather community.

Roy enjoyed Budweiser and San Francisco afternoons. You would often find him holding court at one of the many establishments that made up the leather scene.

A service will be held Sunday, April 30, at 3 p.m. at the Powerhouse bar, 1347 Folsom Street in San Francisco.

Patrick Perez, right, who was shot April 8 in the Union Square area, was visited in the hospital by his friend Jeffrey Huang.

Courtesy Patrick Perez.

LGBTQ legal professionals mobilize to ‘Legalize Drag’

compiled by Cynthia Laird

Legal professionals in the LGBTQI+ community will take the stage at Oasis Saturday, April 29, for “Legalize Drag,” a fundraiser for grassroots organizations in Tennessee. The state recently passed a law banning adultoriented performances that are harmful to minors from taking place on public property and in the presence of those under 18 years of age.

The law also deems “male and female impersonators” adult cabaret performers. The law was supposed to go into effect April 1 but a federal judge has temporarily blocked it, saying it was likely “vague and overly broad” in its restrictions of speech, as Reuters reported.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) also signed legislation banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, as the B.A.R. previously reported.

Given those developments, as well as the over 400 other anti-LGBTQ bills facing legislative action across the country, local drag performers and legal professionals Michael Trung Nguyen and Ari Jones decided to organize and host the fundraiser, a news release stated.

Jones, who identifies as nonbinary, performs in drag as Pop Rox. The release stated that they saw the need to raise funds and showcase legal professionals that also perform in drag as a way to fight back against the legislation. Jones is a director at Berkeleybased Oasis Legal Services, which works with queer asylees and other immigrant survivors of trauma, the release stated.

“The criminalization of drag presents a unique hardship for queer legal professionals and others who have to pass background checks and prove a certain moral standard in order to be licensed,” Jones stated. “The idea that I

could lose my law license if I lived in another state simply because I dress a certain way or lip synch to a song is a clear violation of the First Amendment to our Constitution.”

The show will also be livestreamed and is believed to be the first of its kind in the country, the release stated.

Nguyen, a patent attorney at Patent Law Works who performs in drag as Juicy Liu, is one of the people helping select San Francisco’s first drag laureate and is an appointed member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s LGBTQI+ Advisory Committee. Mayor London Breed is expected to announce the city’s inaugural drag laureate soon.

“Legal professionals that perform in drag have a unique vantage point on this centuries-old art form” Nguyen stated. “We also have a special responsibility to advocate for and advance the values of drag by using levity and parody to add our unique commentary on the state of American society.”

Performers will include DJ Another Bard, Justin Back, Anna Turney, Dextra Denovo, Mx. Toffuti, 69 Degrees, and Bobbee Trans Mooremon. The release stated that attendees and viewers will hear from San Francisco State University associate professor Clare Sears, Ph.D., who teaches sociology and sexuality studies; queer Oakland City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, and gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). Local pageant winners Miss San Francisco Monroe Lace and Miss Oakland Rhiannon Jones, who both identify as LGBTQ, will also be on hand.

Legalize Drag takes place from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Oasis, 298 11th Street in San Francisco. Folks in drag get in free, but organizers request a minimum $20 donation for all attendees. Trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming community members will not be

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turned away for inability to pay. For more information and to register, go to tinyurl.com/legalizedrag.

Funds are being raised for Inclusion

Tennessee, the Tennessee Equality Project, and Protect Trans Health TN.

Holi Color Fest returns to SF

Local South Asian community organizations and other nonprofits will come together for the San Francisco Holi Color Fest Saturday, April 29, from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Crossing at East Cut, 250 Main Street, near Salesforce Tower. The event includes color powders, food trucks, full bar, LED dancers, and much more.

A news release noted that Holi color festivals mark the arrival of spring and the triumph of good over evil.

IDEATE SF, the East Cut Community Benefit District, and Together SF are the nonprofit organizers of the festival. They are joined by Asha SF, the Bhartiya Mandal Foundation, the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California, and Parivar Bay Area, a trans-led LGBTQIA organization.

Last year’s inaugural event was a big success, organizers stated. “We anticipate even more participants and even more energy this year,” stated Andrew Robinson, executive director of the East Cut CBD.

General admission tickets are $16.50 for adults; and $9.50 for kids 13 and under. For tickets and more information, go to https://bit.ly/40pbrUh.

Longtime ALRP director

Hirsh to depart

Bill Hirsh, a gay man who’s the longtime executive director at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, announced last week that he would be stepping down at the end of the year.

“I have been incredibly privileged to have served the community in this role for almost 24 years and I could not be prouder of the work our organization has done to improve the health of people living with HIV/ AIDS by addressing their legal issues,” Hirsh wrote in an email announcement April 19.

ALRP has utilized staff attorneys and lawyers who donate their time

(called panel attorneys) to represent people living with HIV/AIDS as they’ve dealt with discrimination, eviction, loss of benefits, and other issues. It was founded in 1983, and has handled over 85,000 legal matters for its clients over the last 40 years, its website stated.

Hirsh said that he is confident the agency will “thrive under new leadership and renewed energy.”

“The organization is in a solid financial position with talented staff and volunteers, and an engaged board of directors,” he stated. “I look forward to working with our board to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.”

For more information about ALRP, go to alrp.org.

Leather district marks 5 years

The San Francisco Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District will celebrate its fifth anniversary Saturday, May 6, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Folsom Street Foundry, 1425 Folsom Street.

See page 12 >>

Drag artists Juicy Liu, left, and Pop Rox will host the “Legalize Drag” fundraiser at Oasis.

Courtesy Liu, Rox Bill Hirsh will step down from the AIDS Legal Referral Panel at the end of 2023.

Courtesy ALRP

Volume 53, Number 17

April 27-May 3, 2023

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David-Elijah Nahmod • Paul Parish • Tim Pfaff

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ART DIRECTION

Max Leger

PRODUCTION/DESIGN

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PHOTOGRAPHERS

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Republicans behaving badly

Last week’s House passage of an anti-trans sports bill is an example of how Congress has changed since Republicans took control in January. Thankfully, the bill, which would bar trans women and girls from playing sports on female teams at schools that receive federal funding, has no chance of passing in the Democratic-held Senate or being signed by President Joe Biden.

Still, it’s a reminder that congressional Republicans are mimicking efforts by their state legislative colleagues to promote fear of trans people and inciting bullying and intimidation, both online and in real life.

The White House issued a statement April 17 that the administration “strongly opposes” House Resolution 734, the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023.”

“At a time when transgender youth already face a nationwide mental health crisis, with half of transgender youth in a recent survey saying they have seriously considered suicide, a national law that further stigmatizes these children is completely unnecessary, hurts families and students, and would only put students at greater risk,” read the statement. “Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools or on our playing fields.”

Additionally, the administration has already proposed a Title IX rule change that would disallow blanket bans on trans students playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, although it would allow restrictions on trans students’ participation on team sports but those must be supported by evidence and minimize harm to trans students.

The 219-203 vote on HR 734 was along party lines but it underscores the real risk ahead of the 2024 presidential election that could see the Republicans gain more House seats and take control of the Senate, which the Democrats control by a single seat. On Tuesday, Biden formally announced his reelection bid in a campaign video, (see related story (https://www.ebar. com/story.php?ch=Politics&sc=&id=324829))

reiterating statements he’s made that “the battle

continues in the face of extreme MAGA Republicans who are focused on taking away Americans’ rights and dividing the country.”

One only has to look at former President Donald Trump’s rants on trans issues to know it would be a frightening time to be LGBTQ in this country if he becomes the GOP nominee and wins. Back in February, he unleashed a tirade in a video, promising a sweeping rollback of trans rights if he retakes the White House, including a ban on gender-affirming care.

Of course, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential GOP nominee, has, for the last year, declared war on LGBTQ people and drag artists in the Sunshine State, as the Bay Area Reporter has extensively reported. His administration recently expanded the “Don’t Say Gay’’ law to now prohibit discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades up through high school, and he continues to try and intimidate venues that have hosted or provided services for drag shows by going after their liquor licenses. The rest of the field of potential and actual Republican presidential candidates is no better.

AP

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) was one of 219 Republicans who voted for a bill to bar trans women and girls from female sports teams.

who can purchase guns; many of them don’t even bother with the useless “thoughts and prayers” statements anymore because mass shootings have become routine.

Biden is right when he says there is a threat to democracy now. Look no further than Tennessee, where two elected Black state representatives were expelled because they spoke out on gun violence in a state that has done little to address it. Both Representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were quickly sent back to the Statehouse by county commissions that reinstated them. (A third state lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, who is white and who joined Pearson and Jones in denouncing gun violence, survived expulsion by one vote.)

Bay area reporter

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Conservative politicians’ efforts to demonize trans people, drag artists, and others in the LGBTQ community just pander to their base – Trump’s base, if we’re being specific – and do nothing to advance the country or help anyone. In much of the U.S., particularly in red states, the LGBTQ community is tormented and discriminated against, which can lead to anxiety, depression, and attempts at suicide.

The Republican Party used to stand for small government; now it wants to go big – control reproductive rights of people, how people choose to identify, and what they can do in both public and private places. It’s too bad that these same conservatives don’t work more on controlling

And now there is a situation in Montana, where state Republican lawmakers have persisted in forbidding Democratic transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from participating in debate for a second week. They just cut her microphone, as the Associated Press reported this week. Her offense was that she told Republican lawmakers that they would have “blood on their hands” if they banned gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. In fact, she’s right. Some trans kids in the state are terrified to come out, as they told Zephyr during a news conference she had outside on the Capitol steps, according to the AP story. She’s facing expulsion or censure, according to reports.

These unprecedented attacks on duly elected state lawmakers by their own colleagues are unacceptable. But equally repugnant are all of these anti-LGBTQ bills that seek to strip dignity and identity from queer people. That anti-trans House bill may not have a chance of actually becoming law, but the mere fact that congressional Republicans put it forward just to score cheap political points with their homophobic and transphobic supporters is an example of the threat to democracy that we’re now living with. t

The Castro Theatre belongs to the community

by Tom Ammiano and Michela Alioto-Pier

For over 100 years, the Castro Theatre has been an architectural and cultural jewel in our city’s crown and has evolved as an icon of the LGBTQ community and culture. It is an anchor for small business growth and hub for tourism, the film industry, and local residents and families seeking fun and affordable entertainment.

Yet, since Berkeley-based entertainment conglomerate Another Planet Entertainment took over management just over a year ago, in January 2022, the theater has mostly sat dark. In contrast to its prepandemic vibrancy, the theater has had only sporadic events with one in January – a packed house for Elliott Gould’s “The Long Goodbye.” The theater announced its reopening April 18 with a showing “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” as part of the San Francisco Film Festival. Two more events are planned for late April.

Despite this, metal barricades block the box office and entrance when it’s dark. For small businesses still recovering from the pandemic, the loss of foot traffic is devastating.

We both come from long San Francisco legacies with deep community connections. We have worked in the mold of visionary leaders like the late gay leader Harvey Milk and disability rights advocate Judy Heumann, who passed away in March. The LGBTQ and disabled communities have long been in solidarity, including through the peak of the AIDS crisis. Given those histories, we see the dispute over the Castro Theatre as a fight for who will have access to this cultural mainstay into the future.

In 2008, we worked together as members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to keep St. Luke’s Hospital open amid Sutter Health’s threats to close it down. As one of only two city hospitals located in the South of Market area, the Board of Supervisors fought to save St. Luke’s because the community made clear that this hospital must remain open and accessible. The CPMC Mission Bernal Campus (formerly St. Luke’s) is there now because the city compelled Sutter Health to prioritize those community needs.

We see the Castro Theatre as a similar fight. As with St. Luke’s, the disagreement over the Castro Theatre is about access – access for the Castro’s many community institutions that have long depended on the theater as a neighborhood anchor. It’s about access for disabled people, generational access, family access, access for people with lower incomes, and beyond. What do we mean by “access?” On the one hand, access is an architectural and physical concept. We don’t deny the need for maintenance and improved disability access, and have partnered before to improve disability access at City Hall. Removing the theater’s current seating configuration and replacing it with tiered platforms, as APE wants to do, will create new challenges for people with disabilities.

Access is also about what kind of events the theater will host and who will feel welcomed to attend them. APE’s business is to produce live music events. But studies show that attendees will skew both younger and wealthier than audiences who have historically enjoyed the theater. Until APE’s takeover, the theater’s famed movie sing-a-longs were extremely popular among families and elders. Regular film screenings made the theater the backbone of the Bay Area film community. Productions by drag artist Peaches Christ and gay impresario Marc Huestis brought the city’s

queer community to the theater.

We’re also concerned by reports that APE’s plans would leave the theater dark about 180 days per year. APE has said it will offer the space for private rentals, at a hefty price tag out of reach for nonprofit and community-centered use. We understand the need for creative booking to keep audiences coming. But corporate rentals are not the same as accessible community programming.

The Castro Theatre should reflect San Francisco’s diverse communities. Absent a clear plan for the theater’s operation, those communities are left guessing. APE must honor the theater’s historic interior, which includes fixed theater seating, while improving access and programming events that are inclusive of a broader audience.

We want the Castro Theatre to succeed as much as anyone. But APE can’t succeed without support from the Castro’s rich community fabric. If APE is going to earn that support, that will require inviting the community in, not picking it apart. t

Tom Ammiano, a gay man, is a former state Assemblymember, San Francisco supervisor, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, and SFUSD special education teacher. Michela Alioto-Pier is a former San Francisco supervisor and lifelong disability advocate.

The Castro Theatre has been mostly dark in recent months. Scott Wazlowski

Queer union leader seeks East Bay state Senate seat

by Matthew S. Bajko

Growing up, queer East Bay state Senate candidate Kathryn Lybarger lived an itinerant life. Born in Lahore, Pakistan to American parents working there for the Presbyterian Church, she moved at the age of 5 with her family to Cleveland, Ohio.

When she was a teenager, her family relocated to Trenton, New Jersey where Lybarger finished high school. She returned to the Midwest to attend Earlham College, a Quaker liberal arts school in Richmond, Indiana.

Upon graduating Lybarger headed back east and spent a year working at a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C. Friends convinced her to relocate to Amherst, Massachusetts with her thengirlfriend, where Lybarger spent five years working various jobs while also focused on her artwork and activism, such as with the AIDS protest group ACT UP.

“Art then won out when I applied to the master’s program at the San Francisco Art Institute,” recalled Lybarger, 56, who uprooted herself in August 1994 to enroll in the West Coast school, which closed its doors last year.

A year later Lybarger would break up with the girlfriend she had moved to California with after driving her to Chicago. The day she returned to the Bay Area Lybarger met up with her art school friend Nina Ackerberg, whom she would end up marrying.

“This was August and by December we were going out. She managed to woo me successfully,” recalled Lybarger.

The couple had a private commitment ceremony in 1999 and the following year moved to Berkeley. They became co-owners of a Victorian split into three units with two gay male couples they were friends with and continue to share the home with to this day.

With one of the couples the women had two children, with Ackerberg giving birth to their son Jacques, 21, and Lybarger their daughter Rocio, 20, who are now both in college. The family recently took advantage of changes in California custody laws that take into consideration the makeup of LGBTQ-led families so that all four of the parents now have a legal connection to their children.

“A couple years ago we managed to go down to the Alameda County courthouse to change our kids’ birth certificates. Now, all of us have a legal relationship with our kids,” said Lybarger. “They legally have four parents.”

Lybarger and her wife had married during the Winter of Love in 2004 but, like the other same-sex couples who had raced to San Francisco City Hall to wed, they saw their marriage be annulled by the state’s supreme court that summer. Four years later they again rushed to marry in October 2008 before voters that November passed Proposition 8, which overturned the court’s ruling that spring that legalized same-sex marriage in California.

The marriage equality fight left a lasting impression on Lybarger.

“I was always a politicized person and an activist. But having the state recognize our relationship, I fully understood how much we had been deprived of rights up to then,” recalled Lybarger about saying “I do” to Ackerberg on Presidents Day in 2004. “Emotionally, it was incredible. I remember feeling we were never going to go backwards. Then, of course, it was annulled.”

Sensing Prop 8 would pass due to the “terribly run campaign” LGBTQ groups and their allies had waged against it was why Lybarger and Ackerberg made sure to exchange vows again on October 10, 2008. Yet seeing the homophobic ballot measure become law made Lybarger angrier than she had expected.

“I couldn’t believe all these people voted in support of Prop 8. I felt so betrayed; I didn’t expect that,” said Lybarger, who recalled being arrested at a protest in San Francisco that shut down Van Ness Av-

enue near City Hall during the legal fight to have the state courts invalidate the ballot measure.

Now Lybarger is supportive of seeing state legislators put before voters in November 2024 a ballot measure that would excise Prop 8’s definition of marriage as being between a man and woman for good from the state’s constitution. LGBTQ leaders argue it is needed should the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court decide to overturn previous rulings that made same-sex marriage a federal right.

“I am feeling hopeful,” said Lybarger about the expected ballot fight over Prop 8 next year being successful.

She is also feeling positive about her chances to be elected in 2024 to the East Bay’s open 7th District Senate seat that spans western Contra Costa and Alameda counties from Rodeo south to the San Leandro border. Lybarger is one of five Democrats seeking to succeed termed out Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley).

The seat largely mirrors Skinner’s current 9th Senate District but was renumbered during the 2020 redistricting process. Also seeking it are Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb, former Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, and lesbian AC Transit board member Jovanka Beckles, a former Richmond city councilmember. The top two votegetters in next March’s primary race will face off on the November 2024 ballot for the legislative seat.

In 2018, Beckles fell short in her bid for an Assembly seat but went on to win election to her Ward 1 seat on the regional transit board two years later. She is once again vying to become the first LGBTQ member of the state Legislature from the East Bay and the first out Black female state legislator. Beckles, who is also Latina, could potentially triple LGBTQ Black representation in Sacramento were she to win the Senate seat. Gay Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D- Moreno Valley) became the first out Black member of the Legislature last year with his election to his 60th Assembly District seat. Jackson will be seeking reelection next year, while Darryn Harris is aiming to become the first gay Black male senator serving in the Statehouse. Formerly chief of staff to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass when she served in the U.S. House, and now a special adviser to Congressmember Sydney KamlagerDove (D-Los Angeles), Harris is running for the open 35th Senate District seat in Los Angeles.

“In the Senate, I plan to build on the successes of our incumbent Senator Steven Bradford and continue enacting forwardthinking policies that lift up the people of our community across every corner of the 35th District,” stated Harris in announcing his candidacy in early April.

As for Lybarger, she would be the first member of the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus who identifies as queer, though she said she does refer to herself as a “gay

woman sometimes” depending on the audience she is addressing. She also uses they pronouns because, as she explained in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter, she also identifies as androgynous.

“From early on gender was just a weird thing to me. I have always identified as a girl and a woman, but I never met the gender standards for being a girl or a woman. I have always been a tomboy or too butch,” said Lybarger.

A gardener at UC Berkeley since 2001, Lybarger has also served as president of the UC system’s largest employee union, AFSCME Local 3299, since 2011 and is president of the California Labor Federation. Believed to be the first out person to hold both posts, Lybarger told the B.A.R. that serving in them has led numerous people over the years to suggest she seek elected office.

She didn’t start to seriously consider doing so until last summer. Now running in a field of previously elected candidates, Lybarger doesn’t view this being her first bid for an elected position a drawback.

“I don’t think it is a bad thing not to have run for office. I come with a lot of experience, having really fought hard in the Legislature for issues that really matter for working people,” said Lybarger, referring to her lobbying on behalf of various bills over the years. “I am deep in a movement that is really serious about the need to have strong voices for working people in Sacramento.”

Those labor connections are already providing dividends for Lybarger’s campaign, as she’s already secured a host of endorsements from different unions and is expected to report raising a significant amount of money for her campaign when the legislative candidates report their first fundraising hauls in July.

“I think labor, we can be a really strong electoral force. I am proud of that and I am rooted in that,” said Lybarger, having worked to elect a number of current members of the Legislature. “When we really set our minds and resources to it, I think that is going to be a strength in my campaign. I think I also don’t have to be an elected leader here to be connected to this community and connected to the issues people in the East Bay care about.”

On loan from her day job while leading the unions, Lybarger no longer tends to the gardening needs of the university. She was first hired professionally as a gardener by a local company after graduating art school and then was hired by SF State University. Less than three years later she had joined the gardening staff at UC Berkeley.

“I like physical jobs. I have always done blue collar work and worked with my hands,” said Lybarger, noting her being a union gardener provides some protection as she ages out of the physically demanding job. “I became the union president when I was 45 or 46 and beginning to feel some strain on my shoulder. I don’t think I had one co-worker over the age of 50 who hadn’t had shoulder or knee surgery.”

While she misses tending to the university’s grounds – her favorites spots on campus are the Faculty Glade and other areas along Strawberry Creek – Lybarger told the B.A.R. she is enjoying being a candidate.

“Honestly, I like talking about issues. I like getting to know people,” she said. “This campaign is not just about me talking about myself. It is about you, frankly, and that is pretty interesting.” t

To learn more about her candidacy, visit www.kathrynlybargerforstatesenate2024.com/

For the full column, visit www.ebar.com.

Planning Ahead is Simple

Planning Ahead is Simple

The benefits are immense.

Planning Ahead is Simple

The benefits are immense.

The benefits are immense.

financial burden, allowing them to focus on what will matter most at that time—you.

When you plan your life celebration and lasting remembrance in advance, you can design every detail of your own unique memorial and provide your loved ones with true peace of mind. Planning ahead protects your loved ones from unnecessary stress and financial burden, allowing them to focus on what will matter most at that time—you.

When you plan your life celebration and lasting remembrance in advance, you can design every detail of your own unique memorial and provide your loved ones with true peace of mind. Planning ahead protects your loved ones from unnecessary stress and financial burden, allowing them to focus on what will matter most at that time—you.

East Bay state Senate candidate Kathryn Lybarger

Courtesy the candidate

Hillary Ronen of District 9, Catherine Stefani of District 2, and Board President Aaron Peskin of District 3 signing on as co-sponsors.

Safaí had authored the ordinance that ended the prohibition related to construction contracts. Gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey also signed on as a co-sponsor to Mandelman’s ordinance.

Supplying the seventh vote to pass it at the board’s April 25 meeting was gay District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who also came on board as a co-sponsor. The board must adopt it a second time at its May 2 meeting before sending it to Breed, who is set to sign the 12X repeal into law shortly thereafter.

When it came up before the supervisors’ Rules Committee last week, Mandelman noted, “Some feel it’s waving a white flag – I don’t.”

This week Mandelman again stressed

B.A.R. Pride

From page 1

2020 during the COVID pandemic when the in-person Pride parade was canceled. The People’s March will start at 11 a.m. Sunday, June 25, at Polk and Washington streets.

While the anticipated 80-page B.A.R. issue is coming out June 22 – the paper’s largest of the year – there’s more to the

Steven Underhill

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to end the city’s publicly-funded travel ban to states with anti-LGBTQ laws.

that 12X is “not achieving the goal” it was meant to achieve and instead is “making our government less efficient.”

But District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton reiterated his concerns about doing away with the policy without having more study and analysis on how it will impact the local LGBTQ community and small business owners in the city.

paper’s coverage of the month’s festivities than that one issue.

“Everything doesn’t happen on parade weekend,” said Michael Yamashita, a gay man who’s been the B.A.R.’s publisher for 10 years and was the paper’s longtime general manager before that.

“Every organization has Pride-related events throughout the month.”

Yamashita said the B.A.R. has an indispensable role in the San Francisco

“This really could backfire on our small businesses,” said Walton. Supervisors Myrna Melgar of District 7, Dean Preston of District 5 and Connie Chan of District 1 concurred with Walton and voted to keep the 12X policy in place. Chan said she is looking to see how to “accomplish the intent” of the travel and contracting bans once they are repealed. It does come as lawmakers in other states continue to pass anti-LGBTQ laws this year. A major LGBTQ rights group in Florida has even issued a travel warning for the Sunshine State due to lawmakers there repealing the rights of LGBTQ people. Nonetheless, a bill to end California’s travel ban policy to such states is making its way through the Legislature. Lesbian state Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) introduced Senate Bill 447 to repeal it and replace it with a marketing effort in support of LGBTQ rights in conservative states. How much money would be allocated for it, or where the funding would come from,

Bay Area’s LGBTQ community. Though mainstream media outlets have covered LGBTQ issues more often in recent years, the B.A.R. consistently does so with the community’s voice.

“We’re the only publication that’s singularly focused on our community,” Yamashita said. “We are LGBTQ people providing our own focus on the news for our own community. … Nobody can cover our community better than

has yet to be determined.

While it is expected to pass out of the state Senate, it may face opposition in the Assembly due to the author of the law, gay Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Cupertino), expressing misgivings about repealing it. Also yet to commit to supporting SB 447 is Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco).

“I haven’t reviewed the bill yet. This is the first time I have heard of it,” Haney told the Bay Area Reporter during a phone interview April 21.

The former San Francisco supervisor had joined the board after the city’s “nofly list” to anti-LGBTQ states had already been put into place. But he did vote on expanding its scope to cover states that moved to block abortion access in 2019 and restrict voting rights in 2021.

“I think it was well intentioned,” Haney said of the city’s 12X policy. “But I think it absolutely makes sense for the board to evaluate the policy and to make appropriate changes to ensure we can

members of the community who are active participants.”

Among the events to be featured are the Frameline47 film festival June 14-24, which will be featured in two parts, starting June 8 and concluding in the June 15 issue, as the paper’s arts staff has done for decades. The film festival will be held at the Castro Theatre, which itself has been at the center of much controversy in the last year and a half, of which the B.A.R.

Help Build Meaningful, Compassionate Connections in Your Community

keep contract costs down and if it is also having a real impact on reactionary policies across the country.”

A spokesperson for Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who has served in Sacramento since 2012, did not respond to the B.A.R.’s inquiry on if he supports Atkins’ legislation known as the BRIDGE Project, an acronym for Building and Reinforcing Inclusive, Diverse, Gender-Supportive Equality.

The city’s third representative in the Legislature, gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), had authored the city’s 12X policy when he served on the Board of Supervisors. He came out in support of rescinding it in its entirety in February and is also supporting SB 447. “As attacks on LGBTQ people rise to their most extreme level in generations, it’s imperative that California fight back. This bill provides a powerful opportunity to do so,” stated Wiener earlier this month after it passed out of its first Senate committee. t

has provided extensive coverage. (See this week’s story .

Other special reports in the paper’s arts and nightlife section will include an exploration of “Virtue,” a filmed musical by Camera Obscura; stories on the main stage performers; an advance on the new musical adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz;” reviews of “Let The Right One In” at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Magnolia Pictures’ new film “Blue Jean;” an interview with Sandra Bernhard in advance of her return to Feinstein’s at the Nikko; an advance on the popular Out in the Vineyard annual Sonoma wine tasting and cuisine weekend; and an advance on the new touring production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Into the Woods” at Union Square’s Curran Theater.

“We’ll also include a BARchive history feature by Michael Flanagan about the Eureka Mall (Patio Cafe, Paperback Traffic) and the locals and celebrities (Lily Tomlin, Divine) who created and visited events there in the 1970s and 1980s,” noted gay arts and nightlife editor Jim Provenzano.

(The Eureka Mall was a term for a now-defunct corridor of small businesses on Castro Street.)

In the news section, the monthly Business Briefing column that normally runs the second Thursday of the month will run a week later in the June 15 issue. It will include an update on a lesbianowned business in the Castro LGBTQ district as well as feature a new venture from several entrepreneurs based in California.

There will also be news aplenty on the queer community’s newsmakers, the parade and festival, plus the trans and dyke marches that take place on the Friday and Saturday of Pride weekend, respectively.

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“A lot of times news events happen suddenly, and we will be prepared to cover Pride and other news just as we have for many years,” lesbian news editor Cynthia Laird stated in the release. “Already, the paper reported earlier this month that the San Francisco Pride board will keep its same policy with regard to law enforcement marching in the parade. Like last year, command staff will be allowed to march in uniform, while other officers and deputies will be wearing shirts with their department’s logo.”

First published in 1971 the B.A.R. is the oldest continuously-published LGBTQ newspaper in the United States. It was first distributed at San Francisco’s gay bars south of Market, on Polk Street and in the Castro (hence the abbreviation). It comes out with a new issue each Thursday but content is produced throughout the week and available at ebar.com .

Yamashita said that each week 20,000 issues are printed. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve only been on the news racks in San Francisco.

Post-Pride, readers can expect news and coverage of this year’s celebration in the June 29 issue. t

For advertising opportunities, contact Scott Wazlowski, vice president of advertising, at s.wazlowski@ebar.com.

and the other half is going to related costs such as marketing and administration, Beswick added.

Applications will be released at the event and “grants between $5,000 and $25,000 are expected to be awarded in the coming months,” according to the release.

When asked where this money will come from, Warner Johnston, who does communications for the merchant association, told the B.A.R. that “We’re giving $50K to Welcome Castro and spending the rest on related programming, marketing, and admin costs. Welcome Castro is granting back to Castro Merchants $5K/mo. over 10 months for a total of $50K. Castro Merchants will issue $50K in additional grants to small businesses and entrepreneurs to activate vacant storefronts.”

When asked if the grants opening up Thursday will be coming from Emmons’ proceeds or the other $50,000, Johnston replied “It’s all in the same pot. It’s coming from Castro Merchants.”

Terrance Alan, president of the merchants’ group, heralded the opening of Welcome Castro as a win for neighborhood businesses.

“Filling vacant storefronts and supporting all of our member businesses have always been the top priorities for the Castro Merchants,” Alan stated to the B.A.R. “Our partnership with Welcome Castro helps with both. Leveraging city funding, we were able to attract a business to fill a prime vacancy with a queerfocused retail experience that will also serve as a visitor center, directing tourists to other businesses and landmarks. And we’re giving out more grants to activate more vacant storefronts. I hope

From page 1

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are,” Biden said in the video. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer.

“I know what I want the answer to be,” he added. “This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection. I know America and I know we are good and decent people. I know we are still a country that believes in honesty and respect, and treating each other with dignity. We’re a nation where we give hate no safe harbor. We believe that everyone is equal, and that everyone should be given a fair shot to succeed in this country.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, an Oakland native and former U.S. senator from California, appeared with Biden in the video. She tweeted, referring to Biden, “@POTUS and I are delivering for working families. Record job growth. Greatest two years of small business creation on record. Largest investment in climate action in history. Manufacturing growing faster than it has in decades. And we’re just getting started.”

Harris, who also served as San Francisco’s district attorney and state attorney general, stated in the email announcement, “This is a pivotal moment in our history. For two years we have made transformational investments to build a nation in which everyone can be safe and healthy, find a good job, and retire with dignity.”

Harris also pointed to reproductive rights as a major issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade

<< News Briefs

From page 7

According to the district’s newsletter Audacious Anniversary 5 will feature entertainment, food, demos, and fun. Emcees will be Lance Holman and Alotta Boutté. There will be performances by Boutté, Ryan Patrick Walsh, John Weber with Kippy Marks, and Om Nom Nom Nonbinary Bur-

this serves as a model for other neighborhoods.”

Not everyone was so sanguine when the proposal for grant money for Welcome Castro was first awarded.

As the B.A.R. reported in February, Jenn Meyer, a straight ally who is the owner of Local Take on 18th Street and president of the Castro Street Fair board of directors, said she was “fully supportive of the idea of a welcome center” but that Emmons’ Welcome Haight location didn’t seem like a welcome center.

“It looks like a gift store. How do we make it not just a place to buy gifts? I think with $100,000 we have a big opportunity to reactivate vacant storefronts for more than one businessperson,” she continued. (At the time the entire grant was proposed to go to Emmons.)

The proposal to provide the grant funds to Emmons’ project came in the context of the closure of Harvey’s bar and restaurant just across the street af-

ter decades in business, a closure that –along with the ongoing controversy over the Castro Theatre, and the silence from powerful landlord Les Natali over the future of the Badlands space, among his other properties – fueled anxiety over the queerville’s future (https://www.ebar. com/story.php?323292).

Meyer wanted to serve on an ad hoc committee to decide the fate of the grant, but the merchants’ leadership announced a resolution to her concern the following day, though Meyer said she was not consulted first, as the B.A.R. reported.

Meyer did not respond to a request for comment for this report as of press time.

Sneak peek

During an advance tour, Emmons told the B.A.R. last week that there will be features in the store to differentiate it from a gift shop, including the presence of community ambassadors from

the Castro Community Benefit District, a project that the CBD recently relaunched (https://www.ebar.com/story. php?301776).

“The Castro CBD is relaunching our popular Castro Ambassador program after it was put on hold during the pandemic. We’ve been working with Welcome Castro and the Castro Merchants on this project,” Andrea Aiello, a lesbian who is the executive director of the CBD, told the B.A.R. “The Castro Ambassadors will be working out of Welcome Castro. Castro Ambassadors are volunteers who welcome visitors to the neighborhood, providing them with walking maps and information about the Castro.”

The volunteer ambassadors commit to four hours a month, and people who want to learn more or become an ambassador can apply on the CBD’s website .

“I am an ambassador because I truly enjoy being of service, and I love to meet new people,” Misha Langley, a gay man on the CBD board who is also an ambassador, stated to the B.A.R. “It gives me a great reason to bask in the beauty that is our world famous ‘gay mecca,’ the Castro. But even better – I get to help people who may be coming from places intolerant of any kind of ‘otherness’ find their way, or simply to enjoy themselves in this fantastic City by the Bay.”

Emmons also told the B.A.R. that a table at the entrance to Welcome Castro will have copies of a forthcoming up-todate guide to neighboring businesses. It currently has copies of a guide printed by the CBD.

Emmons’ plan was to set up shop this month and he kept to that schedule despite an emergency hip replacement after a hit-and-run that followed a road rage incident.

riages nationwide but also mandates states must recognize such unions performed in other states. The act includes protections for religious liberty.

During his State of the Union address in February, Biden noted his support for trans youth, even as many states are discussing or passing laws to ban gender-affirming care and prevent them from playing sports on teams that match their gender identity.

On Monday, during a White House ceremony honoring teachers, Biden criticized elected Republican officials for the increasingly widespread practice of banning books from America’s schools and libraries, as the Washington Blade reported. (https://www. washingtonblade.com/2023/04/24/ biden-criticizes-gop-led-efforts-toban-books)

“It was crazy,” Emmons said about setting up in the aftermath of his surgery. “But within two days I was ready to work.”

Emmons thanked his employees –over 20, also including his Haight location – for their dedication.

“In one form or another, everyone on staff has helped make the store happen,” Emmons said.

Amirah Taouil is a lesbian who’s the manager of the Castro store.

“We really wanted to create a retail space that could be welcoming for all people in the community,” Taouil stated to the B.A.R. “Seeing locals of all backgrounds and identities coming in, enjoying it, finding themselves interacting with the products, and laughing has been incredibly rewarding. It’s retail entertainment! It has meant so much to me as a queer woman not only to help support this community but to finally be a part of it in a way I never imagined before.”

Emmons said he didn’t “want to overlap with what [Meyer] is doing” at Local Take, which is on 18th Street between Castro and Collingwood streets, and so he was “careful not to carry who she’s carrying” in terms of local and queer artisans and designers.

Nonetheless, over 50 LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs are represented at the site, Emmons said. Many have a “Meet the Maker” explainer adjacent to their work.

One of those is Dimas Jose Arellano, a gay man who is the creator of Castro Boy, who was recently profiled by the B.A.R.

“Thank you Welcome Castro for giving me my biggest break as an artist,” Arellano told the B.A.R. “Nothing can stop Castro Boy now!”t

cords in connection with the case and has pleaded not guilty.

Despite the indictment, Trump is ahead in polls surveying declared and likely GOP candidates. One of his potential challengers, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has seen his standing decrease in recent weeks, according to surveys.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, the subject of much speculation as to his own presidential candidacy, sent out an email in support of Biden and soliciting donations for the president’s campaign. Newsom has spent time over the last year visiting red states and escalating his war of words with DeSantis and Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

last year, thrusting the abortion issue to the states. She has made the issue a signature one, holding events with prochoice leaders around the country.

“In response, extremists have intensified attacks on basic, foundational freedoms and rights,” Harris stated.

“For example, they want to take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. They attack the sacred right to vote and attempt to silence the voice of the people. And they try to block common sense reforms to save lives and keep Americans safe from gun violence. The Republicans running for president want to take our country backwards. We will not let that happen.

Just like we did in 2020, we must come together to fight for our democracy, continue to make progress, and make sure all Americans can get ahead and thrive. Joe and I look forward to finishing the job, winning this battle for the soul of the nation, and serving the

lesque. There will be ambient suspension bondage by Twister Windows.

Attendees will be able to “strut their smut” (aka hottest fetish gear) in the second annual Brazen Runway.

Demonstrations will be performed by The Exiles, House of Kush, Service Pups of San Francisco, and BLUF SF.

Tasty treats will be provided by Mama Bear’s Kitchen.

The event is free. For more informa-

American people for four more years in the White House.”

LGBTQ rights

Biden has stood up for LGBTQ rights since taking office. Last December, he signed the Respect for Marriage Act, marking the first significant piece of LGBTQ rights legislation to become law in a decade.

The signing ceremony, held on the South Lawn of the White House, included Harris, other elected officials, and some 5,000 LGBTQ advocates and community leaders. Specifically, the Respect for Marriage Act repealed the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act that was passed in 1996 but had key provisions struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 (Section 3, U.S. v. Windsor) and 2015 (Section 2, Obergefell v. Hodges).

Not only does it require federal recognition of same-sex and interracial mar-

tion, go to sfleatherdistrict.org.

Pets Lifeline to hold benefit

Pets Lifeline, a nonprofit that works to improve the lives of cats and dogs in need throughout the Sonoma Valley, will hold its “Tailwags and Handbags” luncheon fundraiser Friday, May 5, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Buena Vista Winery, 18000 Old Winery Road, in Sonoma.

“Empty shelves don’t help kids learn very much,” Biden said, adding, “I’ve never met a parent who wants a politician dictating what their kid can learn, and what they can think, or who they can be.”

Books with LGBTQ themes, as well as those dealing with racial justice, have been the subject of various bans in several states.

Rematch possible

It’s looking increasingly likely that Biden will face Republican former President Donald Trump next year. Trump, who announced his third bid for the White House shortly after the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats did much better than expected, now leads the pack of announced and potential GOP nominees. The former president was indicted last month in New York City on charges of covering up payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star. He faces more than twodozen charges of falsifying business re-

According to a news release, the outdoor gourmet lunch will feature Buena Vista wines and catering by The Girl & The Fig Restaurant. A silent auction will offer designer, vintage, unique, and one-of-a-kind handbags and a limited supply of fashion-forward jewelry, with all proceeds going to Pets Lifeline.

Pets Lifeline offers shelter and medical care for stray and abandoned

Newsom invoked the words of former President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby Kennedy. “Bobby Kennedy said that JFK would have never been able to accomplish any of what he did without the support of all of you –the Democratic Party,” Newsom wrote.

Left unsaid is the fact that one of Bobby Kennedy’s children, environmentalist anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced April 19 that he is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. Most political observers said Kennedy’s effort is a longshot bid and members of his family have distanced themselves from his campaign.

U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California), who replaced Harris in the Senate after she was sworn in as vice president, sent out an email soon after the announcement noting his full support for the president. “I’m proud to support President Biden, and I will do everything I can to help him defeat the GOP and continue making progress for working families in California and across the country,” Padilla stated. t

dogs and cats, finds forever homes for homeless pets, and reunites owners with lost pets. It also offers low-cost spay and neuter and animal wellness services.

Tickets start at $95. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://bit.ly/3mSnoE4 t

Tom of Finland shirts, right, and a “micro penis mug” are among those products being sold at Welcome Castro.

John Ferrannini

Vice President Kamala Harris, left, appeared in the reelection video with President Joe Biden.

Courtesy the campaign

From page 1

part of the Vision Zero plan to end pedestrian and bicyclist deaths. Collisions along upper Market Street have been a serious problem for years. Public Works coordinated with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency on the project.

As the B.A.R. first reported in October, the project added new bulb-outs meant to slow down vehicular traffic and make it safer for pedestrians crossing at several intersections along Market Street between Castro Street and Octavia Boulevard. According to the SFMTA, new sidewalk extensions and/ or ramps have been constructed at 17 street corners, while the traffic signals have been either fully rebuilt and/or modified at the intersections of 16th and Noe streets, 15th and Sanchez streets,

<< Castro Theatre

From page 5

the 101-year-old Castro Theatre.

APE wants to make significant

<< Shooting

From page 6

Perez said the SFPD’s response made a positive impression on his sister, Pam Lemos, who “has her own feelings about my coming here and wants me back home and doesn’t have a lot of faith in the city,” he said. She lives in San Bernardino

Trans district chief

From

rities, diplomats, and politicians, and transgender community leaders across the United States and around the world. She was part of a select group of local LGBTQ nonprofit leaders who had a one-on-one chat with Queen Máxima of the Netherlands during the royal’s tour of the city’s LGBTQ Castro district last fall, as the B.A.R. reported. (https:// www.ebar.com/story.php?318890)

The recognition also made Sa’id and the Transgender District a target for the right-wing. That brought death threats, false claims being made about the Transgender District in conservative documentaries, like Candice Owens’ “The

Legals>>

to TANIE WANARSA CHANTARA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 30th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23-557828

In the matter of the application of PERNALEY NAVA CRUZ JR, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner PERNALEY NAVA CRUZ JR is requesting that the name PERNALEY NAVA CRUZ JR be changed to PJ NAVA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 30th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23-557825

In the matter of the application of ALLISON MICHELLE FINK, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner ALLISON MICHELLE FINK, is requesting that the name ALLISON MICHELLE FINK, be changed to ALLISON MIMIETTA GANS. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 4th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23-557840

In the matter of the application of MADELINE BETH BOURGEOIS, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner MADELINE BETH BOURGEOIS is requesting that the name MADELINE BETH BOURGEOIS be changed to MADELINE BOURGEOIS BRESSLER. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 9th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

Matthew S. Bajko

Safety guardrails contained quotes from the late San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, like these at a boarding platform near Guerrero and Market streets.

and at Hermann, Laguna, and Guerrero streets.

New decorative crosswalks in a brick pattern also aimed at slowing down drivers were added to two intersections. One is now found at Laguna and Market

changes to the theater’s interior, including replacing the current fixed orchestra seating with a motorized floor that’d make both raked seating and tiered standing arrangements possible.

County and declined to give her age.

“They were pleased with the support and about how SFPD dealt with it,” Perez said.

Added his sister, “We’re completely grateful for SFPD being on the scene to save his life. I hope and pray the DA won’t do anything to reduce the charges.”

The B.A.R. asked Randy Quezada, the communications director for San Francisco District Attorney Brooke

Greatest Lie Ever Sold,” she said.

“The Transgender District and its founding made me more visible than I ever anticipated,” Sa’id said. “I think a consequence of that visibility is I am forever critiqued [and] I’ve had my information leaked, so I’ve had to move.

“We’ve received death threats for the past few years,” she continued, especially with the launch of guaranteed income that has gone “viral because of rightwing extremist influencers” to the point that the Transgender District has “had to hire security.”

Then with budget cuts, she and her staff took significant salary cuts, up to $40,000 each, to keep everyone at the Transgender District employed. The district operates on a $1.1 million budget, Sa’id said. The Transgender District is

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23-557834

In the matter of the application of RUSSELL WAYNE NAGASUGI, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner RUSSELL WAYNE NAGASUGI, is requesting that the name RUSSELL WAYNE NAGASUGI, be changed to RUSSELL WAYNE OBANA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 9th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399835

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ANASTASIA SAUVAGE COACHING, 140 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANASTASIA MICHELLE WILLIAMS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/15/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/16/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399766

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MARWAY MEDIA, 1296 HAIGHT ST #21, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LEANNE MARIE FRANCIS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/09/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399886

The following person(s) is/are doing business CEDAR MAINTENANCE & MORE, 885 SAN ALESO AVE #1, SUNNYVALE, CA 94085. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEVEN KHENAISSER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399903

The following person(s) is/are doing business as GOLDEN COAST PROPERTIES, 3119 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAELIN WANG. The registrant(s) commenced to

streets near the campus of Openhouse, the nonprofit provider of services and affordable housing for LGBTQ seniors, while the other is at Sanchez and 15th streets on the north side in front of the Chase bank.

The project also included the installation at the Muni boarding platforms on upper Market Street of orange-colored safety railings honoring the late gay supervisor Harvey Milk, who lived in the Castro and represented it at City Hall. According to the SFMTA, it also led last year to more than a dozen Rainbow Honor Walk bronze plaques memorializing deceased LGBTQ luminaries being embedded in the sidewalk along Market Street.

Tree lights

There are also now 88 LED lights installed near the base of the palm trees in the commercial corridor. For most of

Some Castro neighborhood, LGBTQ, and film groups – such as the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and the Castro Theatre Conservancy – formed the Friends of the Castro Theatre Co-

Jenkins, if she would be doing anything to reduce the charges once an arrest is made. Quezada said the office doesn’t have comment at this time on the case and cited the fact that no arrest has been made.

Perez’s other sister, Michelle Perez, 51, of Jacksonville, Florida, works in law enforcement herself as a Clay County detention deputy.

fiscally sponsored by St. James Infirmary and it is funded by the City and County of San Francisco; corporate, community, and foundation grants; and individual donors, Sa’id said.

“I woke up one morning and I was like, at this juncture in my life, I can’t keep working 60 hours a week,” she said, stating she needed to step down to take time to focus on her health and envision her future. “My doctors are telling me I need to slow down and that I need to work less, but when it comes to the [Transgender] District, I’ve never had a good work-life balance.”

Sa’id noted that she’s been working for transgender social justice at a breakneck speed since she was 17 years old as selfpreservation for herself and her community, but it wasn’t what she originally

transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/1979. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/27/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399904

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PROJECT SOLUTIONS, 3119 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed X ALBERT WANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/02/2007. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/27/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399911

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ANGIES JEWELRY, 2386 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAMON G. GONZALEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/1999. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/27/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399881

The following person(s) is/are doing business as GALLARDO’S PRINTING & ENGRAVING, 2081 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SERGIO D. GALLARDO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/10/2010. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399893

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS, 275 6TH AVE #102, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed VALERIE LUU & ERIC LAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023 FICTITIOUS

person(s) is/are doing business

320 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corpo-

the year they will be white, as they are currently, but can be switched to different colors throughout the year, like the green and red colors that had bathed the trees in December.

“Crews can connect remotely to change between programs – for example, rainbow colors for Pride, red, white and blue for Independence Day, orange and black for a Giants victory – that we have pre-loaded. However, larger-scale changes, such as creating new programs or new lighting schedules, need to be programmed on a computer and then manually uploaded to on-site control boxes,” Murillo explained.

A weak Wi-Fi signal had initially impeded the technology that automatically turns the uplighting on and off, as the B.A.R. had reported in December. But the issue was resolved that month, said Murillo. The duration of the overnight lighting will depend on the seasons.

alition in opposition to the proposed changes, which would allow the theater to sometimes operate as a concert venue.

Other groups have voiced support for APE’s plans, such as the city’s LGBTQ film

“I was trying to get there [to San Francisco] as soon as possible because I know how sometimes they aren’t able to get the leads they need to to make a proper arrest,” Michelle Perez said. “We’d go to San Francisco, pass by it, we love San Francisco, it’s a beautiful town and sometimes things like this, they happen everywhere now. It’s sad, truly sad.”

Michelle Perez is “thankful for the

aspired to do with her life.

“I think people forget that it just so happened that I came into leadership,” she said. “I didn’t aspire to be an activist. I wanted to work in fashion. That was my dream. That’s what I went to school for. It just happened that I was also a Black trans woman at a time that I had to fight for my own rights and then my community’s rights at the same time, because I didn’t want to be mistreated, and that evolved to me working in social change.

“The visibility has been very difficult for me to navigate in my own personal life,” said Sa’id, explaining that she never signed up to be so publicly visible like celebrities, politicians, and other public figures, but that’s what happened. It has had a negative effect on her outgoing personality.

ration, and is signed CHAAT CORNER SAN FRANCISCO INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/16/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399650

The following person(s) is/are doing business as RED WRENCH PLUMBING, 624 PRECITA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed RED WRENCH PLUMBING INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/07/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/01/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399859

The following person(s) is/are doing business as KEYAPP REAL ESTATE, 3595 BALBOA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SEQUOIA REAL ESTATE-CITY PROPERTIES, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/2023.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE

A-0399853

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE GOOD SIP. 691 14TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LAY BROTHERS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0399879

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CULTURE WINE COMPANY, 1694 PAGE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CULTURE WINE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/24/2023. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/2023. MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2023

AMENDED

COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23-557436

“The start and end time will vary throughout the year depending on daylight saving and when it starts getting dark. However, in the winter, the earliest they’d go on is around 5 p.m. and they’d turn off around 7:30 a.m.” he explained in an emailed reply to the B.A.R.

The Castro Community Benefit District agreed to pay the electricity bill for the lighting. SFMTA estimated the yearly cost at $2,500.

The CBD has an ongoing fundraising campaign with a goal of at least $12,500 in donations to pay for five years worth of the new uplighting. To make a donation toward its Light Up The Night campaign, visit https://castrocbd.org/ donate/market-street-palm-trees/

To learn more about the street safety project, visit Public Works’ website for it at https://sfpublicworks.org/uppermarket or SFMTA’s dedicated website for it at https://shorturl.at/sBNS7 t

festival Frameline, which will screen 50 films at the Castro Theatre this June. More than 100 businesses have also signed a petition in support of APE’s proposal. t

people who came to help my brother.”

“They tried to kill my brother for nothing – nothing really at all – just a cellphone, a wallet, and keys,” she said.

The SFPD has not yet made any arrests. Anyone with information is asked to contact the SFPD at 415-575-4444 or Text a Tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD. t

“The unfortunate reality is that you get isolated when you are visible and in leadership somewhere in San Francisco,” she continued. “I often don’t feel safe, even in LGBT spaces, and I tend to be isolated and a hermit. When I’m not working, I’m at home. As extroverted as I am, that has had negative consequences on my mental health.”

The future

Sa’id doesn’t have immediate plans for her future after she leaves the Transgender District.

“It is quite scary,” she said. “I honestly don’t know yet. I don’t have another job lined up. Everyone thinks I’m crazy.” “I love working in social change. I’ll jump back in for sure. I just need some time,” she said.t

In the matter of the amended application of ALFRED SHAW, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner ALFRED SHAW is requesting that the name ALFRED SHAW be changed to KHADER SALEH EL SHAWA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 11th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23557844

In the matter of the application of STEPHANIE DENISE HARRIS AKA STEPHANIE DENISE HARRISMICHAELS, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner STEPHANIE DENISE HARRIS AKA STEPHANIE DENISE HARRIS-MICHAELS is requesting that the name STEPHANIE DENISE HARRIS be changed to STEPHANIE DENISE HARRIS-MICHAELS. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 11th of MAY 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF

NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23557848

In the matter of the application of TESSA ALVAREZ, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner TESSA ALVAREZ is requesting that the name TESSA ALVAREZ be changed to TIARA LIN JACOBS. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 29th of JUNE 2023 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2023

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF

NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-23557852

In the matter of the application of LE’SHAWN DEMETRIUS COLEMAN-WRIGHT, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner LE’SHAWN DEMETRIUS COLEMAN-WRIGHT is requesting that the name LE’SHAWN DEMETRIUS COLEMAN-WRIGHT AKA LECHAN DEMETRIUS COLEMAN-WRIGHT AKA LESHAWN COLEMAN be changed to LE’SHAWN DEMETRIUS COLEMAN-

by Heather Cassell

The longest-running LGBTQ bar in the United States is under new queer ownership.

Patty Nishimura Dingle took over Oakland’s The White Horse Bar from longtime gay owner, Chuck Davis, who owned the bar for more than 20 years, on July 4, 2022. Dingle, a 50-year-old “futch Blasian” lesbian, didn’t announce the change in ownership until March 30 in a news release.

Futch is a term blending femme and butch. Blasian is a term blending Black and Asian, referencing Dingles Japanese and Black heritage.

“The previous owner was retiring, and I wanted to be very, very respectful of that,” Dingle told the Bay Area Reporter, chatting at a table while sipping cocktails and beer at the opening of The White Horse Bar’s first T-dance of the spring season April 1.

Dingle talked about her being a part of the wave of queer women of color opening lesbian bars after the pandemic, fulfilling her longtime dream of owning a queer bar, and her vision for The White Horse Bar’s future.

Oakland’s longstanding queer bar through the pandemic and recovery, the Bench and Bar and Club 21 closed in 2019 just before the pandemic. Dingle has taken a slow approach to her ownership of the 90-year-old gay bar demarked by a rainbow crosswalk on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood.

Opened in 1933 right after Prohibition ended, the LGBTQ bar still stands nine decades later. It survived the Depression, World War II, gay bar raids (somehow the bar was never raided), the HIV/AIDS crisis, the pandemic, and multiple economic downturns.

The White Horse Bar’s gay 90th, and a new owner

The bar’s history isn’t lost on Dingle. She is working to preserve as many of the stories as possible and unravel some mysteries, such as how it’s possible the bar never got raided by police when being gay was illegal and only had one protest, its hidden safe, and the red light over the bathroom. A 99-year-old patron told her was used to signal when the bathroom was in use or ready for a friendly encounter.

“There are all these little nooks and crannies that are so interesting,” Dingle said. Dingle said she came across some history that suggested the bar was patronized by members of the police force, which could explain why the bar escaped being raided.

Her wife of 14 years, Robin Rico, a 56-year-old Latinx queer woman, provides supportive help by handling the bar’s marketing and can be found mingling with guests while Dingle works to keep

the bar operating smoothly. She wants to create a timeline for the White Horse, Dingle said. Rico isn’t officially a co-owner of the bar.

A dream come true

Dingle was born and raised in Seaside, California in Monterey County, the youngest of four brothers and one sister, but she’s called the San Francisco Bay Area home for more than 30 years. Rico, a San Jose native, and she have lived in Oakland since 2006.

Dingle landed in San Francisco in the 1990s for college at San Francisco State University and hit the gay mecca’s thriving club scene. She worked at some of the city’s most popular queer bars and nightclubs, including, Club Universe, Pleasuredome, The End Up, Mezzanine, and Page Hodel’s popular lesbian clubs – The Box and Club Q –where she danced and bartended. Dingle fell in

love with the gay nightlife and started dreaming of owning her own queer bar someday, she said.

“This was a dream of mine to own a bar,” Dingle said. But it couldn’t be just any bar. It had to be the right one.

It just so happened that when she was ready and looking, her real estate agent, who shared an office with Davis’s agent, mentioned that The White Horse was going on the market.

“I got an email from him that literally just said, ‘Oh my god, call me,’” Dingle said. She called him immediately. “I was like, ‘Yes! Let’s do it.’”

The Bay Area’s LGBTQ nightlife has come out to support Dingle in her new venture, she said while getting a bit emotional as she pointed out improvements that have been made and changes she plans to make.

See page 16 >>

by Jim Provenzano

Spring Open Studios finds opportunities for artists, fans and potential collectors to meet, greet and enjoy in-person experiences. Hunters Point Shipyard hosts the studios of dozens of artists in a variety of genres, with Open Studios on April 29 and 30.

One artist in particular, Michael Kruzich, works in the rarified genre of natural stone and Venetian glass called “smalti” mosaics in murals, landscapes and portraits. A former professional ballet dancer, Kruzich shared how his performing arts background led to his current successful career as a mosaic artist, or mosaicist, who combines classic styles with both contemporary and

timeless mythological imagery.

Born in California and raised in rural Iowa, Kruzich studied film animation at Columbia College in Chicago.

“I was a big ‘Star Wars’ fan, and my big dream was to become a special effects animator work for George Lucas,” he said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “Then I studied for a little while in Chicago at Columbia College for animation. While I was there, I took a dance class and it made me want to explore that direction before committing to animation. I went back to Iowa and enrolled at University of Iowa as an open major with my eye on performance and theater. I happened to take a ballet class that was for men only. My teacher was Francoise Martinet, one of the original Joffrey Ballet members. After about a year and a half of study-

ing, I was hooked aand decided that this was fulfilling, and the way I wanted to go.”

After almost three years of training, he landed an apprenticeship with the Boston Ballet.

“After that year, I got into the company and stayed there for about six years.” From there he went on to dance with Ballet West-Salt Lake City and Washington Ballet-DC. After freelancing in New York City, he eventually moved to San Francisco, where he danced with Smuin Contemporary Ballet and in San Francisco Opera productions.

Asked if he was out as gay during those years, Kruzich said he gradually realized and came out while dancing in Boston.

“I was lucky that, in the environment of a ballet company, I was possibly spared some of the rejections and abuse that other environments could

bring at that time. There were plenty of other gay men in the ballet world, and no one cared one way or another or treated you differently.”

Life transition

Asked how he made the transition to working in mosaic and visual art, Kruzich said, “I always had some kind of creative art on the side. I don’t have a lot of formal art training. It all came together through theater. I did some costume work, creating with fabric, and all forms of stagecraft.”

By the time he reached his mid-forties, Kruzich, now 46, said, “I was reaching the end of my dance career, and I was really nervous about what to do next. I was choreographing a little bit.”

A group of friends enjoying a warm spring day at The White Horse Bar’s T-dance in Oakland in early April.

Heather Cassell

Mosaic moments with the local artist

picture

See page 17 >>

<< White Horse 90th

From page 15

“I am calling it lucky. I’m gonna call it fate,” Dingle said. “If you’re a good person, you just you get that. I pride myself on the way my parents raised me.”

Dingle is taking over The White Horse Bar at a significant period. Prior to the pandemic, lesbian bars were closing left and right. The Lesbian Bar Project documented that there were 21 lesbian bars across the U.S., down from more than 200 at its peak, when COVID-19 shut the world down. After the pandemic, lesbian and lesbianowned bars have gotten a bump up due to people craving community.

There are now nearly 30 lesbian and lesbian-owned bars in the U.S., with six bars that have opened in the past few years. Many of the bars that have opened are owned by queer women of color.

“The White Horse has always been something that has been there. There’s always been a consistently stable queer space on the border of Oakland and Berkeley,” sais DJ Olga T, a trans masculine lesbian. “What’s nice about Patty owning it is that I feel like there is absolute intention around in-

clusion in a way that did not feel like before she owned it.

“The minute you walk in, it feels warm,” said Olga. “People are nice. There are all kinds of different people and women younger, older, and that’s what I like.”

Asked about the significance of The White Horse and other queer bars being opened by lesbian women of color in the Bay Area and across the country, Dingle responded, “It’s important because I think people like me who are not as seasoned as I am need to see this, to see that they’re part of this community. I think women of color, particularly Black women, have faced so much inequity in the world,” she said. “The way the world was designed was to not create equity for Black people. I think that acceptance of women of color, frankly, is doing better. If you’re just a kind nice person, it goes a long freakin’ way.”

Everybody, everybody Dingle’s goal is to break down the ways the Bay Area’s LGBTQ community segregates itself. Everyone is welcome at The White Horse Bar, which is why she doesn’t want to call the bar a “lesbian bar.”

“If you come here on any given night – and this is a lot about Oakland – you will see folks who are a little bit older. We have straight people that come in here because they love the music. We have trans kids, trans women of color; everybody is here,” she said, even the kink community. “What’s the common denominator? I feel like it’s about just feeling safe.”

Dingle, who is the global head of

diversity and inclusion at Riot Games, a video game developer, isn’t giving up her day job. The White Horse Bar is also not a side hustle for her either.

“I just feel so strongly about that and then my staff is super diverse,” she said, noting that the bar is all about community and hiring people who take ownership to create community. That is her business model.

Patrons old and new are noticing a bigger dance and performance space and a better sound system.

Dingle recognizes that Temescal has become Oakland’s epicenter of foodie culture. Her 15-member staff, including longtime bartender, Catherine “Captain” Ficcardi, are serving up high-quality cocktails, mocktails, beer and wine to enjoy with Temescal’s culinary offerings. Patrons can bring food in from neighboring restaurants or the food truck parked in front of the bar next to its parklet.

The bar and nightclub will feature drag and karaoke nights and some of the community’s longtime favorite DJs Lady Ryan, Olga T, and Page Hodel spinning the hits on the dance floor on designated nights.

Dingle is proud to bring back Hodel with a new dance party, JOYride, starting May 20. Hodel spent the pandemic in Sebastopol working on and teaching carpentry at Page’s Carpentry School. Patrons can see Hodel’s

work as they walk into The White Horse when they pay for their cover at the stand, Dingle patted proudly, cheerfully saying it was built by Hodel.

DJ Lady Ryan’s dance party, LVR Girl, is every second Friday of the month. DJ Olga T’s parties Good Times are every Thursday and Tribe every third Sunday.

“I think the community’s gonna be really excited, said Hodel. “They’re already excited. They’re ready for it.” Hodel described the crowd as having “really good energy. She’s bringing in boys, girls, everybody.”

Hodel is ready to return to the DJ booth, especially for her longtime friend at the historic White Horse Bar.

“It feels so good, and the time is so right for so many reasons,” she said about returning to DJing after three years focused on her carpentry business and school in Sebastopol. “I’m absolutely ready.”

“I think like there’s something so special about The White Horse that people come,” Dingle said, recognizing that the bar is a destination club located off the beaten path.t

The White Horse Bar is open Tuesday through Friday, 5 p.m. to midnight, and Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m. to midnight. 6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. facebook.com/whitehorsebar instagram.com/whitehorsebar

Left: The White Horse Bar’s new owner, Patty Nishimura Dingle, left, and longtime bartender, Catherine “Captain” Ficcardi, right, behind the bar during its first T-dance of the season in April. Middle: White Horse Bar’s stained glass window

Right: The White Horse Bar’s new owner, Patty Nishimura Dingle, standing outside the historic East Bay LGBTQ bar.

Heather Cassell

Left: Friends at the White Horse Bar in 2022 Right: A game of pool at the White Horse Bar in 2022

Both photos: Instagram

On the dance floor at the White Horse Bar. Instagram

Heather Cassell Instagram

experiential dance extravaganza t Dance

by Jim Gladstone

[Tothe tune of “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island”]

Just jump right in and enjoy the tale

The tale of a freaky ship

That capsizes on Folsom Street

And then begins to trip.

A shipwrecked gang of capsized queens

Washes up on Oasis’ shore

Then you arrive and join this crew

On a site-specific tour, a sitespecific tour.

Its burlesque and drag and modern dance

Immersive theater-ish

A courageous act of artistic risk

Sure to scratch your avant-itch, sure to scratch your avant-itch.

Hybrid creativity

“I started doing drag about eight years ago,” said Eric Garcia, the director of “We Build Houses Here,” the ambitiously multivalent castaway extravaganza that premieres at Oasis on Thursday, May 4.

In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Garcia explained that after years working with dance companies including Fresh Meat Productions, where he serves as managing director, and Detour, the QPOC-focused company he co-founded with Kat Gorospe Cole, he realized that the energy and

engagement between drag performers and audience members gave him a thrill he wasn’t getting from the shows he’d been involved with.

“In dance, I’d become really accustomed to creating proscenium-style shows,” Garcia recalled. “My drag was much more interactive, but I’d been compartmentalizing it. It was something I did at clubs, very separate from my primary work.”

With “We Build Houses Here,” Garcia said, “I’m really excited about bringing drag aesthetics and collaborators from that world together with contemporary dance.”

As if that particular combo plate wasn’t challenging enough, the production also integrates Detour’s com-

mitment to devised theater (in which the work is collaboratively developed by writers, performers, directors, cast members and other creators over lengthy rehearsal periods) and Garcia’s growing fascination with audience-immersive works such as New York’s “Sleep No More” and San Francisco’s sensational (now closed) “The Speakeasy.”

Since last August, Garcia along with contributing directors Cornelius (aka VivvyAnne ForeverMORE), writer Brian Thorstenson (Z Space), and a formidable cast of 12 including drag impresario Lisa Frankenstein (“Princess”) and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (who recently co-directed Shotgun Players’ “The Great Comet of 1812”)

have been building their complex, walk-through production, in which overlapping scenes take place in every room of Oasis.

The right stage

While glittery, glammy and wildly entertaining, “We Build Houses Here” has a resonant theme at its center.

“We’re looking at the idea of sanctuary,” explained Garcia, “how in the face of disaster, queer and BIPOC people have worked with our communities to build safe spaces. All of the performances and scenarios that audience members will experience are connected to the idea of surviving and getting through a disaster together. That’s why I’m so excited to

remarkable as well. “Since some commissioned works are set outdoors, they have to be weatherproof,” Kruzich said. “Depending on where the mosaic will be set – indoors or outdoors – different modern lightweight substrates are used for the appropriate location.”

What are his favorite subjects?

“What I like the most are subjects that have a lot of movement of drama in them,” he said. “I also really like doing subject matter that has to do with the LGBTQ community. I’d like more commissions in that theme.”

be doing this work at Oasis, which is itself that kind of safe space for gathering with my people. It ties to the themes of the work in a way that feels really beautiful.”

Amidst all its glitter, gags and grand guignol, Garcia hopes that “We Build Houses Here” underscores the kind of hope and solidarity that can emerge in the aftermath of a metaphorical shipwreck, be it a pandemic, a mass shooting or a political attack on community values.

At each presentation, 75 audience members will be broken into smaller groups and guided by cast members through a selection of a dozen-plus distinct participatory and performance experiences.

Some scenes will be played to one person at a time; all of the scenes will never be seen by a single person over the course of a single night’s show.

“I hope everyone leaves feeling a little bit of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), wondering what someone else got to see that they didn’t,” said Garcia, who uses spreadsheets to keep track of attendees’ potential routes through the action. “The timing and cues and movement of subsets of the audience is incredibly nuanced. Elements of the show involve improvisation, but at a higher level, every little detail of the performance has been thought through.” t

‘We Build Houses Here,’ May 4-20. $30-$65. Oasis, 298 11th St. (415) 795-3180. www.detourdance.com www.sfoasis.com

and commissioned works vary greatly, including one that took him to Hawaii for four months last year.

“It’s a very versatile medium,” he said. “For instance, I’m doing a couple of small pieces for a Catholic church. I’d like to be doing works with a bunch of dancers or naked guys swimming in the water. But right now, it’s clouds and lambs and crosses. It’s what is paying the rent right now. But even in subject matter I don’t see myself in, I try to put something of my own character in there.”t

From page 15

Encouraged by his friend, fellow dance and mosaicist Gregory Dawson, Kruzich visited his studio for a while before trying to make his own works.

“I tried a little bit of mosaics and kind of got hooked,” he said. “Then I decided to go to Ravenna, Italy and train more seriously. I trained in the Italian traditional mosaic method. Now, I mostly make my living at it. I still occasionally do theater design as a sort of fallback job. But I haven’t done that work for a couple of years now. I’ve had either commission work or teaching.”

Kruzich’s subjects range from tra-

ditional works that resemble museum pieces to contemporary portraits of notables like Sister Roma, the late Garza, and singer Sylvester, part of a dozen in a series of drag portraits.

“The traditional techniques transfer to other subjects as well,” he said.

“Most of my work is figurative or symbolic. I do some abstract work, too. The principles also apply to abstract contemporary work as well.”

Asked how he works with the materials, Kruzich explained, “Most of the stone that I use is cut in strips from what you would think of as just a regular 12-by-12 tile. The ‘smalti’ is a special opaque glass produced for mosaics for hundreds of years in Venice. I then cut them down to smaller pieces. I use the

traditional tools of hammer and hardie; the same as the ancients used to cut each tesserae to shape by hand.”

The sheer durability of his work is

While we compared art forms, Kusich shared his thoughts on his career transition. Like dance, he said, mosaic work “still requires all of the discipline, all of the patience, all of the repetition, to get good things. You have to do it over and over.”

The subject matter for his personal

Hunter’s Point Shipyard Open Studios, April 29 and 30, 11am-6pm. 451 Galvez St. Also at Islais Creek, 1 Rankin St. Visit Michael Kruzich’s studio, usually weekdays, or by appointment. www.mkmosaics. com www.shipyardartists.com www.instagram.com/kruzline

Brian Savard

Cheetah Biscotti, Mudd and Saharia Vetsch in Detour Dance’s ‘We Build Houses Here’

Robbie Sweeny Detour Dance co-artistic directors Eric Garcia and Kat Gorospe Cole

Three of Michael Kruzich’s drag portraits; Sister Roma, Sylvester and Garza

Artist Michael Kruzich with ‘Still Beating,’ his 2015 ‘Hearts in San Francisco’ commission

Migguel Anggelo brings “LatinXoxo” to Stanford t

One reason your shows are so powerful is because you are full of love and authenticity. Many of the gay South American artists I’ve met are also full of positivity and love. Why do you think that is? Is that love rooted in spirituality? What is your spirituality?

Thank you for your feedback. If my shows are powerful, I guess it’s because honesty is powerful. That’s so important in any kind of art making, and something I and my team strive for.

I have always been super spiritual, but I don’t believe in religion. I pray to angels and to a God and a Virgin that make me strong. That comes from heritage, but it’s more about summoning strength for me than it is about religion. If I was pushed to name my spirituality, though, it would definitely be called love. A little more love would go a long way in this world. That’s what I believe in.

by Laura Moreno

The Public Theater’s highly acclaimed Under the Radar features multi-talented singer, actor, author, painter, costume designer and allaround Renaissance man Migguel Anggelo. The larger than life Venezuelan-born creative genius has put together a show called “LatinXoxo” that is an “outrageously queer concert experience.”

Performed in English and Spanish, the show explores the intersections of his queer, Latino and immigrant identities through original and reinterpreted music, dance, and theater. Anggelo will perform May 5 and 6 at Stanford Live @ The Studio.

A highlight for audiences is Migguel Anggelo’s incredibly good voice. The traditional Spanish apparel he dons, both men’s and women’s, is another highlight. The clothes are perfectly, beautifully gay with ruffles, tight matador pants and sexy bullfighter’s shoes (like ballet shoes, often with bright pink stockings). The symbolism is rich.

Spanish boleros, comedy, and pop songs to subvert Latin-lover tropes and his own father’s machismo,” is how the The New Yorker describes it.

The show touches on every human emotion, including a very serious scene that actually happened, against

all odds, in real life to his father right in front of his eyes.

Next, Anggelo is developing “English with an Accent,” a hybrid dancetheater work of original music. With echoes of Federico Garcia Lorca, it explores self-realization through the eyes of an anthropomorphized, immigrant caterpillar.

So, why are there extra Gs in his name? He says it’s because the “G” stands for gay and he’s double gay! Anggelo shared more in his interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

Laura Moreno: I was so thrilled to discover your music, which includes oldies like the 1928 son song, “Lagrimas Negras.” How do you describe your music?

Migguel Anggelo: My music is a mix of different rhythms and genres; music of the world that include pop and opera as well as the Spanish boleros that my father sang to my mother when I was growing up. I am equally in love with Bjork, Bizet, and Simón Diaz, and these kinds of varied influences get mashed together to create an unexpected fusion on the stage.

One unusual thing I love about LatinX young people is that they truly adore and continue to play the music of previous generations. Why do you think that is?

The music I grew up listening to in Venezuela is so full of poetry and the tunes are so, so good. This is real music, and I believe that LatinX young people feel the history or our heritage in this poetry. How could they not be moved by it?

Did you experience bullying when you were younger? What advice do you have for young people who are going through problems like that?

Of course. I was bullied a lot because of my sexuality. I was a feminine child and used to be made fun of all the time. I was never afraid to confront these people, though. In fact,

one neighbor used to taunt me all the time, calling me “little faggot” on a daily basis. It was really upsetting, but I did stand up to him. When his mother marched him to our door after our “fight,” I thought I would be in big trouble (for what I did to stand up to him), but to my surprise, he apologized. We remain friendly to this day, despite getting off to a wrong start. My advice: Look deep within and know you have value. Summon that inner strength and talk to someone about what you are going through, even if it’s embarrassing. Your parents, your best friend, your teachers; someone will listen and give you the strength to stand up and say, “Enough.”

Who would you most like to collaborate with? Do you think you can maybe bring LGBTQ band Mecano from Spain out of retirement? I love them too!

Mecano is the main reason I became a songwriter. Specifically, the lyrics from Jose Maria Cano are incredible. It would be a dream if they would go back on tour after so many years. I would love to do a collaboration with Jose Maria Cano, of course, Franco de Vita, Rosalia, Lady Gaga, and The Weeknd. Let’s do it!t

Migguel Anggelo at Stanford Live @ The Studio, May 5 & 6, $15-$50. 327 Lasuen Street, Stanford. www.migguelanggelo.com

We love the nightlife

Photos by Steven Underhill

Despite a few recent closures (We miss you, Harvey’s), local bars and nightclubs are thriving, as seen here at Twin Peaks, The Edge, Lookout, Oasis and the Powerhouse. Each week, scroll through our bar, nightclub and arts listings on www.ebar.com. We guarantee you’ll find something to suit your desires, from a wild club night to a meditative museum exhibit.

Migguel Anggelo at a recent Joe’s Pub concert in New York City

Both Photos: David Andrako

‘The Doom Generation’ 2.0

by Brian Bromberger

Whenthe restored 4K version of Gregg Araki’s independent cult classic “The Doom Generation,” got rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in February and played at sold-out theaters in New York, Araki hadn’t the foggiest notion why critical reception and audience appreciation was much more positive now than it was in 1995.

In an email interview with the Bay Area Reporter, writer/director Araki, 63, wrote, “Your guess is as good as mine! The film may be 28 years old but it still feels fresh and unique. There’s truly nothing out there like it. And given the weird state of cinema these days – movies like “Parasite” and “Everything Everywhere” winning Best Picture – maybe audiences are more adventurous and looking for movies outside the box these days.”

“Doom” has been called the alienated teen pic to end all alienated teen pics, “a zany, violent, and erotically charged depiction of Gen-X malaise.” Headed home after a wild night at a LA club, teen lovers Jordan White (James Duval) and acid-tongue Amy Blue (Rose McGowan) pick up a handsome drifter named Xavier (“X”) Red (Johnathon Schaech).

When Xavier inadvertently kills a convenience store clerk, they are forced to go on the run and hide in a motel to avoid arrest, leading to an explosive sexual tension among the trio and a brutal encounter with neo-Nazi thugs, culminating in an ambiguous ending. Xavier seduces the couple to his own subversive sexual perspective, blurring boundary lines so inhibitions dissolve and relationships change, but all are confronted by a society intolerant of “different” behavior.

Nowhere fast

In the press notes, Araki sees “three teenagers going nowhere very fast, natural-born byproducts of decaying America, teenaged slackers raised in the glow of music videos, whose veins pump nihilism, as they careen through a nocturnal wasteland of mini-marts, motels, and open highways.”

The violence in the film starts al-

most cartoonish, in the tradition of outlaw couples on the run (i.e. “Bonnie & Clyde’), but winds up having a real, ominous, chilling quality.

“While Doom is my funniest film,” said Araki, “it’s also the darkest and most pessimistic, but I think all my films end on a note of uncertainty.”

Araki wanted to restore some footage censored out of the original cut.

“There are so many crappy versions floating around, especially the despised, not-Director-approved, mutilated-to-hell-Blockbuster version,”

Araki explained. “I wanted to create a definitive version for this and future generations. This was a great opportunity to recalibrate the colors and visuals, and remix the sound in rockin’ 5.1, so you can actually hear the amazing soundtrack.”

Araki added, “What I love most about the 4K remaster is the chance for people to see it on the big screen. It’s all about the churchlike experience of cinema for me, to take you to another world, not watched on some laptop or device. From here on, this new version is the only version of the movie as far as I’m concerned. All the other copies should be burned.”

Araki was depicted in the 1990s as the poster child of the New Queer Cinema, as defined by lesbian critic B. Ruby Rich. These independently made movies featured fluid, often rebellious and aggressive forms of sexual identi-

ties. They also resisted promoting only “positive” images of gay men and lesbians, with characters who were outsiders, renegades, or fugitives.

Araki compared this movement similar to the French New Wave of the 1950s and ’60s.

“It made a big impact on cinema at the time, then later became part of the culture at large,” he said. “I think the amount of LGBTI/queer visibility today is awesome, though there’s obviously still progress to be made, even in 2023.”

Araki believes the blend of genres in “Doom” makes it unique.

“Dark comedy, satire, euro-style sex adventure, action/road movie, postpunk music video, definitely makes it not your typical teen movie. I’ve always called ‘Doom’ my ‘Nine Inch Nails’ movie. It’s my angriest film and most wild/punk rock/energetic. I think it’s from spending too much of the early’ 90s in underground postpunk industrial club mosh pits!”

Punks, weirdos & queers

Araki conjectured why the film has resonated with contemporary audiences may be that his movies have always been for and about outsiders –punks, weirdos, queers – “people who feel like they don’t fit into the mainstream and march to their own drummer. I hope this remaster will reach a whole new generation, especially those young people stuck in some

The art of ‘Showing Up’

by Gregg Shapiro

Who would have imagined that not one, but two movies about art would be opening in theaters at the

same time? If you’re not in the mood for Brit McAdams wacky “Paint,” starring Owen Wilson, and want something more serious, albeit more low key, on your canvas, consider Kelly

POWERFUL HAUNTING COURAGEOUS

Reichardt’s “Showing Up” (A24), her fourth collaboration with Michelle Williams.

Lizzy (Williams) is a Portlandbased artist who supports herself by working at a local art school. It’s unclear if she got the job because she’s a visual artist or because her mother Jean (Maryann Plunkett), is a kind of muckety-muck on the campus.

Regardless, Lizzy is not a happy camper. The apartment she rents from fellow artist/neighbor Jo (Hong Chau) hasn’t had hot water for a long period of time. Lizzy, in desperate need of a shower, relentlessly hounds the indifferent Jo.

A less than subtle competition exists between Lizzy and Jo as well. Lizzy is in the process of putting together a solo gallery show of her ceramic figurine sculptures, while Jo is prepping for two shows of her artwork running concurrently.

When Lizzy is awoken one night to the sound of her bad cat Ricky torturing a pigeon, she carefully takes the injured bird outside where it is discovered by Jo the next morning. Suddenly thrust into the shared roles of nursemaids, Lizzy and Jo look after nursing the bird back to health, beginning with Jo wrapping it in an Ace bandage.

In addition to her day job and preparing for her gallery show, the put-upon Lizzy adds caretaker to her daily routine. Furthermore, her separated (and sniping) parents, potter Bill (Judd Hirsch) and administrator Jean,

horrible red state and give them a ray of hope there’s a better, cooler world out there.”

Araki also said he enjoys making movies about teenagers.

“There’s something monumental and heightened about their hormonemad lives-like they get a zit and the world ends. They live and die ten times a day. They’re interesting subjects and express how I feel about the world.”

“Doom” is the second installment in the director’s trilogy known as the Teenage Apocalypse series preceded by “Totally Fucked Up” (1993) and followed by “Nowhere” (1997).

Araki noted, “The Heterosexual Movie subtitle was a bit of an inside

joke because I’d been approached by a producer who said he could get me a ‘real’ movie budget if I made a ‘hetero’ movie.” (Both “The Living End” and “TFU” were tiny DIY 16MM features). “So I said okay and purposefully set out to make the queerest, most hilariously homoerotic hetero movie ever made, yet still explore sexuality with the same unflinching honesty. But yeah, the fluidity of sexual identity in both ‘Doom’ and ‘Nowhere’ was definitely looking forward to the current generation where it seems nearly everyone’s pansexual.”

While Araki says he will always feel like an outsider, he’s definitely in a better headspace today than in the ’90s. “I really appreciate how special this moment is,” he said. “I’m grateful for the outpouring of love and support and the passion of the fans who’ve kept the film alive all these years. I’ve had so many people tell me how much ‘Doom’ means to them. Honestly, as an artist, there’s no higher accolade I could ever receive. It’s truly been humbling and amazing.”t

‘The Doom Generation’ screens at Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco on April 28 and 29, with a live Q&A with director Gregg Araki and actor James Duval at the April 29 6:30pm screening. $17.75. 2550 Mission St. www.drafthouse.com/sf www.strandreleasing.com

don’t make her life any easier. Lizzy is worried that Bill’s endless stream of houseguests, including Dorothy (Amanda Plummer) and Lee (Matt Malloy) are taking advantage of him.

Jean, meanwhile, is more comfortable heaping praise on others, such as Jo, than she is on her own daughter.

As if that wasn’t enough, Lizzy is concerned that her brother Sean (John Magaro) is headed for another in a series of psychotic breaks.

The movie’s title has a sort of double meaning. It not only applies to the one-upmanship occurring between Lizzy and Jo, but to quote Woody Allen, “Showing up is 80 percent of life,”

meaning that even though she’s uncomfortable in social situations, Lizzy must be present.

To loosely paraphrase another great writer, Anton Chekhov, if there’s a pigeon with a broken wing in the first act, it better take flight in the second act. Which it does, in what is easily the movie’s most lighthearted moment.

“Showing Up” also has an interesting supporting cast, featuring André Benjamin, James Le Gros, and Heather Lawless, but they’re not really given much to do, other than just showing up when needed. Rating: Bt a24films.com/films/showing-up

Gregg Araki’s indie cult classic restored

Michelle Williams in ‘Showing Up’

Left: Johnathon Schaech and James Duval in ‘The Doom Generation’

Right: Johnathon Schaech, Rose McGowan and James Duval in ‘The Doom Generation’

Both photos: Strand Releasing

Director Gregg Araki

Alison Riley’s ‘Recipe for Disaster’ t

by Gregg Shapiro

Even the best cooks and bakers among us know that not every attempt at food preparation turns out to be the way it was intended. Part essay collection/part cookbook, writer and creative-director Alison Riley’s “Recipe for Disaster: 40 Superstar Stories of Sustenance and Survival” (Chronicle Books, 2023) folds in humorous and heartfelt tales to satisfy almost every appetite.

A culinary combination of firsthand experiences and interviews, “Recipe For Disaster” features contributions from Riley’s musician wife Meshell Ndegeocello, as well as Samantha Irby, Bowen Yang, Simon Doonan, Michael W. Twitty, Sarah Silverman, Alice Waters, and Chelsea Peretti, to name a few. Riley recently made time to answer a few questions about the book.

Gregg Shapiro: What can you tell readers about the genesis of “Recipe for Disaster: 40 Superstar Stories of Sustenance and Survival”?

Alison Riley: I was mulling over the phrase “Recipe for Disaster” for a while before I was approached about collaborating with Chronicle Books. I knew it was something; it’s a good fit within my general sensibility around making the most, and the best, of the worst, but I wasn’t sure what until then. Once I started talking with the editor there, the shape of the book came together pretty quickly, though I had no idea how diverse the responses would, or could, be. It really shaped itself once the contributors started contributing.

What was involved in the process of soliciting contributors for “Recipe for Disaster”?

Many, many, many emails and phone calls, a lot of rejection, some plain silence, significant ego-checking on my part, and so much patience and gratitude.

Was everyone you solicited able to contribute an essay or interview?

Absolutely not! I probably asked over 100 people, if not many more, and these 40 are those who agreed.

“Recipe for Disaster” features many LGBTQ contributors –Meshell Ndegeocello, Bowen Yang, Samantha Irby, Michael W. Twitty, Jacqueline Woodson, Simon Doonan, Becca Blackwell, and Kyle Abraham. As a member of the community yourself, please say something about the importance of having those voices represented.

Well, honestly, I didn’t have to think very hard about it. I would personally not be interested in something with a multitude of voices that didn’t include a myriad of perspectives. And all those people that you’ve named, as well as Gabrielle Hamilton and Fran Tirado, are all totally different from one another. I hadn’t tallied the queers myself, but now considering that list, it is nice to see that even among “the community” there is such a diversity of people there and they share a wide range of stories, from the AIDS crisis to family rejection to the universal tale of not being nice enough to your mother.

I recently interviewed Samantha Irby about her new book “Quietly Hostlile,” which also features essays about food. Her essay “Rejection Chicken” is a perfect way to open the book, with its combination of humor and food. What does it mean to you to have an essay by Samantha leading off your book?

Thank you for asking that, because it means so much to me, actually. I admire Sam’s humor and style very much and her willingness to be part of the book was a personal victory and a huge compliment. Seeing the beauty, the humor, or the value in something sad and terrible, especially while it’s happening, is something I treasure in a person whether I know them or not.

Your wife Meshell’s essay is heartbreaking, but the conclusion in which she writes about clarifying her priorities – “friendship, musical integrity, people and partners that made me better, clean food and decent coffee” –ends on a hopeful note.

Q-Music: say gay playlist

Meshell is my hero in that very sense. She has consistently made the choice to follow her own musical voice and not to capitulate to industry expectation or to the narrowness of genre, and she is one of the most authentic musical thinkers I know. I was grateful for her sharing a glimpse of how difficult it has been to stay true to herself and describe how little respect the music industry had (and certainly still has in plenty of ways) for an out, queer, Black woman before there were very many in the public eye.

There are a series of essays near the center of the book that take a serious turn, touching on 9/11, the bombing of Belgrade, and the pandemic. Please say something about the inclusion of those types of pieces.

I didn’t prescribe tone or topic for anyone I asked to contribute to the book (though I didn’t want it to become dominated by COVID) and those responses were honest and immediate responses to my prompt. Disasters, like everything, span a con-

tinuum and I was glad to have stories along all points.

Have you tried any or all the foods and recipes mentioned?

I am far more fluent in low points than I am in food so, in all truthfulness, I don’t cook much. That said, I have tried many, some just to be sure the recipes made sense. Having a recipe for Alice Waters’ vinaigrette was worth doing the whole project.

Could there be a “Recipe for Disaster 2” in the works?

We’ll see! I had a great time putting this book together, it was more fun and more work than I could have imagined and would love to do it again.

I’d like to end with a quote from the Justin Vivian Bond essay: “If I feel like I need to cheer myself up, or if I want to show somebody I love them, I say, ‘How about if I just fry us up some potatoes?’” Would you agree that food preparation is one of the ultimate expressions of love?

Of course, it is! I don’t show my own love that way, and no one wants me to because of my sorry culinary skills, but it certainly is a tried-and-true way to care for another person. One of my favorite parts of this book is how many of these recipes are about feeding oneself and the importance of caring for yourself when disaster strikes. We often forget to do that, and if this book does anything besides make people a little less afraid and a little more prepared to take care of themselves and each other, I’m satisfied.t

www.chroniclebooks.com

by Gregg Shapiro

ness, Mexican-American and Chicanx identity, family, intimacy, yearning, loneliness.” This is a tall order for any artist, but Ramos is more than up to the task, singing in Spanish and English.

La Bamba’s “Lucha” is a product of the pandemic, and as such feels both raw and healing, as you can hear on “Hues” (featuring Devendra Banhart), “Collapse,” “Nunca,” “Mas Manos,” “Walk Along,” and an especially haunting cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Y La Bamba performs on April 30, 8pm ($20) at The Chapel, 777 Valencia St. thechapelsf.com

Anyone who has been following queer singer/songwriter Caroline Rose since her independently released 2010 debut album “I Will Not Be Afraid” through her latest, 2023’s “The Art of Forgetting” (New West) knows that she’s comfortable slipping in and out of genres. From alternative country (on “…Afraid”) to modern rock with a healthy dose of humor on 2018’s brilliant “Loner,” from concept pop (2020’s “Superstar”) to musical experimentation, with a heavy helping of heartache on the break-up album

“The Art of Forgetting.”

While the sonic shift might be unsettling to some Rose fans, it’s fair to say she’s a natural (like Taylor Swift) at getting her pointed point across, especially on “Miami,” “Rebirth,” “Everywhere I Go I Bring The Rain,” “Tell Me What You Want,” “Jill Says,” and

“Where Do I Go From Here?” The musical equivalent of misery loves company.

Caroline Rose performs on May 3, 8pm ($27.50) at The Fillmore, 1805 Geary Blvd. www.carolinerosemusic.com

For the longest time, the jazz genre had a reputation for being unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ folks. However, in recent years, out jazz artists including Allison Miller, Fred Hersch, Terri Lyne Carrington, Patricia Barber, Andy Bey, Gary Burton, Lea DeLaria, and Dave Koz, have been making a difference by being their true selves.

We can now add newly out jazz pianist Eric Reed to the growing list. His new album, “Black, Brown, and Blue” (Smoke Sessions), featuring the original title track composition, as well as interpretations of songs by Thelonious Monk (“Ugly Beauty”), Wayne Shorter (“Infant Eyes”), Duke Ellington (“I Got it Bad”), Bill Withers (“Lean on Me”), Stevie Wonder (“Pastime Paradise”), Horace Silver (“Peace”), and McCoy Tyner (“Search For Peace”) is said to be a kind of narrative of his coming out.

Portland-based Black Belt Eagle Scout (aka Katherine Paul), who describes herself as a “radical indigenous

queer feminist,” has only released three full-length studio albums, but she sounds so accomplished, you’d think she’d had a much longer recording career under her, well, black belt.

The title of her new album, “The Land, The Water, The Sky” (Saddle Creek), refers to her returning to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (on Washington’s Puget Sound) of her ancestors during the pandemic. Opening with the kind of guitar gut punch that feels very Pacific Northwest, she sings “I know it’s hard to be here” on “My Blood Runs Through This Land,” indicating to listeners that this won’t be an easy experience. And yet, a kind of détente is achieved over the course of the 12 songs, the best of which include “Fancy Dance,” “Nobody,” “Blue,” “Treeline,” and “Don’t Give Up.”

Black Belt Eagle Scout performs on May 6 ($20) at Rickshaw Shop, 155 Fell St. rickshawstop.com

For his aptly titled new album “Anything Goes” (604/Warner), Vancouver-based, Juno-nominated queer performer Mathew V is the latest gay male artist to try his hand at flipping the heteronormative switch by sing-

According to Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos, the lead vocalist of Y La Bamba, the songs on “Lucha” (Tender Loving Empire) explore “love, queer-

Author Alison Riley

Left to Right: Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos of Y La Bamba, Caroline Rose, Eric Reed, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Mathew V, Pigeon Pit

Spring Books roundup, part 1

by Jim Piechota

Book lovers have many reasons to be excited, as it’s already promising to be another stellar year for queer books. Presented here, in a series of installments, are just a few examples of the amazing literary delights at – or coming soon to – a bookstore near you this spring. Get reading!

FICTION

‘Monstrilio’ by Gerardo

Samano Cordova, $27 (Zando)

Mexico City author Cordova’s uniquely strange, inspired, and addictive debut chronicles a couple’s grief after the death of their child and the desperate measures they take to resurrect his presence. When their son dies young, Magos and her husband Joseph fall into the depths of mourning and Magos goes to desperate measures to revive him, with disastrous results.

Years later, when Joseph begins a romantic relationship with a man, he must contend with the new beautiful yet deadly mini-monster his ex-wife has conjured. Touching on themes of queer identity, grief, sexual desire, and magic, this folktale is like nothing else out there right now, so put this on your must-read list. Samano Cordova is a brilliant writer and this is a wild ride into new horror fiction.

‘The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants’ by Orlando Ortega-Medina (Amble Press) April 18

In Ortega-Medina’s superb multifaceted 1990s-set thriller, a successful gay attorney and his loving boyfriend find themselves drowning in personal troubles with the worst coming in the form of an edgy stranger with nefarious intentions.

On the surface, Marc and Isaac seem content and happy, but Marc struggles with sobriety, family issues, and his partner’s undocumented immigration status. Enter swarthy, smolderingly handsome Alejandro, who has a rap sheet and a flirtatious sexy swagger that lures Marc into treacherous waters. Stuffed with romantic melodrama, sex, seduction, and the serpentine politics of immigration, this novel is a tantalizing morsel.

‘Dykette’ by Jenny Fran Davis

$26.99 (Henry Holt) May 16

Davis’s provocative YA title “Everything Must Go” was a hit, and here in her adult fiction debut, she presents the lives of three New York lesbian couples who commingle for ten days in a cabin over a Christmas holiday.

Readers will revel in all the expect-

ant high drama and Davis scores big points for corralling it all into a cohesive tale of short tempers, jealousy, and the allure of dominant narrator Sasha. Sasha’s ultimate challenge is to not overreact to her partner (and their third lover’s) livestreamed sexual performance art, which excludes her. Be prepared for a very busy, characterdriven sapphic delicacy.

‘The Lost Americans’ by Christopher Bollen, $30 (HarperCollins) Bollen’s latest literary thriller follows an American family attempting to piece together the mystery of whether a man named Eric accidentally fell from his hotel balcony in Cairo, if he jumped, or if he was pushed to his death. International intrigue simmers as the plot expands to include Cate, Eric’s sister, who refuses to accept any explanation for his demise, particularly that of her brother’s sleazy employer, Polestar.

She travels to Egypt where she works with gay citizen Omar and together they dig (too) deeply into Polestar’s creepy omnipresence in Eric’s life. Gritty international policy and politics are braided together with the determination of a sister trying to solve her brother’s death in this twisty, well-crafted tale of suspense, intrigue, and corporate crime.

SHORT STORIES

‘The People Who Report More Stress’ by Alejandro Varela, $26

(Astra House)

Fresh off the success of his National Book Award finalist debut novel, “The Town of Babylon,” queer New York author Varela delivers this sparkling collection of short stories interconnected by their unique voices and themes of racism, stress, daily anxiety, sexuality, the price of success, and life lived among marginalized communities.

The transracial gay couple at the core of the stories is Eduardo, a Salvadorian and Columbian public health worker, and his white techie partner, Gus. The stories examine discrimination and homophobia at its worst and as the couple navigate their way through situations through a variety of angles, the result is an enchantingly humanistic volume of tales with social justice underpinnings.

MEMOIR

‘I Felt the End Before it Came: Memoirs of an Ex-Jehovah’s Witness’ by Daniel Allen Cox, $24.95 (Viking) May 9

Novelist Daniel Allen Cox opens his heart and his history being brought

up in a Jehovah’s Witness family in this searingly candid memoir. After growing up in a doomsday culture that stifled creative and intellectual energies via The Watch Tower Society’s controlling dynamics, the author began honing his writing skills and decided to disassociate himself from the group entirely by letter.

He also decided to come out as well in just one of several impassioned essays about growing into his identity, embracing his queerness, and living a life that he dictated on his own terms. Most intriguing is an essay about his move to Manhattan in 1998 at the tender age of 22 where he befriended photographer David LaChappelle and became involved in sex work. Throughout the book, Cox remains an emotional resonant presence, never apologizing for his choices and always adept at discovering new and beautiful facets of himself.

BoySlut’ by Zachary Zane

$26 (Abrams Image) May 9

As a sex columnist for Men’s Health magazine, Zane has seen and heard situations from every corner of the bedroom. Now he shares his own story in this provocative confessional that lays bare his history and his life as an unapologetic slut and a “fraysexual,” which is someone who enjoys sex without a deep connection and who loses that attraction once a person becomes familiar. Among the over 2000 encounters he boasts of, Zane shares just a sampling of his “sexually shameless” exploits all intensively described and zesty enough to carry the memoir through its frequent moments of soul-searching, lesson learning, and ultimate personal liberation.

NON-FICTION

‘Quietly Hostile’ by Samantha Irby, $17 (Vintage Books) May 16

Queer comic and essayist Irby displays a seasoned knack for self-deprecating humor and wit in these hilari-

ous and contemporarily recognizable slices of life. There are 17 sequences in all and most are standout successes. Whether addressing behavior patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic, or her problematic chronic health concerns, Irby is candid, searingly honest, and always on-point. Her love of Justin Bieber annoys folks, but she doesn’t care; neither does she mind what people think about her

fondness for Dave Matthews, strip malls, and “Sex and the City,” which she feels would’ve benefited from several of her own provocative plot twists. It’s not all fun and games, thankfully, as Irby does take time to dig deep and reflect on reuniting with her estranged half brother upon the death of their father. This has a little bit of everything and fans of Irby will find her in top form here.t

<< Q Music

From page 22

ing songs originally sung by women to men.

He opens the record with a stunning rendition of “Moon River” that would surely make Audrey Hepburn, Henry Mancini, and Johnny Mercer smile “wider than a mile.” “Big Spender” succeeds by being both campy and respectful, and he sounds like he was born to sing Gershwin’s “The Man I Love.” Mathew’s take on “Don’t Rain On My Parade” takes on extra meaning with Pride celebrations

around the world under threat from conservatives, and his original composition “My Boy” fits perfectly with these Great American Songbook standards.

www.mathewvofficial.com

Since the 1990s, Olympia, Washington has been the source of some of the most groundbreaking queer music in history made by bands including Bikini Kill, Team Dresch, Sleater-Kinney, Tracy + the Plastics, and others. If you haven’t yet had the chance to experience Olympia’s queercore folk-punk outfit Pigeon Pit, led by trans vocalist

Professional

StevenUnderhill

415 370 7152 • StevenUnderhill.com

Lomes Oleander, now is your chance. “Tree House” (Ernest Jennings), Pigeon Pit’s 2017 six-song acoustic EP has just been reissued on vinyl.

Pigeon Pit’s new ten-song album “Feather River Canyon Blues” (Ernest Jennings), on pink and white vinyl, is a more fully realized band album.

Opening with the Ezra Furmanesque “Love Letters,” the album alternates between a kind of Furman fury (“Milk Crates,” “Empties”), glorious queer folk (“River Song,” “Fire Escape,” “Sunbleached”) and twinkling twang (“Clawfoot,” “Soup For My Family”). instagram.com/pigeon.pit/t