by Matthew S. Bajko
The GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance is bringing back its major fundraising event in-person for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Known as GAPA Runway, the 34-yearold pageant in the past has crowned genderbased winners whose duties include helping to promote the organization and raise funds for it over the coming year.
See page 10 >>
After a two-year hiatus thanks to COVID-19, Up Your Alley, aka Dore Alley, is returning. While excitement around the popular street fair’s return is palpable, so too is the reality that, in addi-
tion to COVID, there is yet another disease outbreak to factor in. While there’s every reason to expect that, for the thousands of folks who descend on the intersection of Folsom and Dore streets this Sunday, July 31, the fair is going to be as sexy and fun as it always has been – public
flogging demos are coming back! – there’s also the new reality of monkeypox to deal with. Since rearing its ugly head at two major European LGBTQ events earlier this summer, monkeypox has been making its way through the LGBTQ community, particularly among men who have sex with men.
See page 8 >>
by Matthew S. Bajko
LGBTQ advocates say it is time for San Francisco leaders to revisit and update the citywide LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy. It has been four years since the groundbreaking report was first released in draft form, offering more than 50 suggestions for how the city could preserve and protect the local queer community and its culture.
But following more than two years of the COVID pandemic, and now with a monkeypox outbreak impacting mostly gay and bi men, those who worked on developing the cultural strategy contend it is time to review it in order to ensure it is still meeting the needs of the city’s LGBTQ residents. Such was their message during the first-ever hearing about the 56-page document before members of the Board of Supervisors.
“This is just a start. We need your help and the city’s help figuring out where we go from here,” said Shayne Watson, a lesbian who works as an architectural historian and preservationist, during the July 25 meeting of the supervisor’s land use and transportation committee.
Watson co-wrote an LGBTQ citywide context statement for San Francisco’s planning department that was released in 2016. The following year she served as co-chair of the culture committee for the cultural strategy working group that was created by the supervisors and convened by the planning department.
One of its ideas was for there to be an LGBTQ community advocacy group for cultural preservation that could advise the planning department and the city’s Historic Preservation Commission on historic LGBTQ properties and sites in the city to landmark, or to weigh in on development proposals that might negatively impact such locations. Yet no such oversight body has been formalized by the city agency.
“It would enable people like me who are passionate about this to maintain involvement with the city,” said Watson. “It would
be great to have a group of people who can weigh in and advise the HPC and planning department which sites we feel are most important and should rise to the top.”
Terry Beswick, a gay man who is executive director of the Golden Gate Business Association, the city’s LGBTQ chamber of commerce, also helped to compile the cultural strategy. At the time, he was serving as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society.
Speaking during this week’s hearing, Beswick praised gay former District 8 supervi -
sor Scott Wiener, now a state senator, for pushing to create the cultural strategy, which he said was “significant.” But Beswick noted Wiener did so back in 2016, and it is time for the supervisors “to take the next steps” to ensure the document and its myriad suggestions are enacted.
“We need a resolution or ordinance to ensure we implement and track this list of ideas from our little think tank,” said Beswick.
In addition to seeing that “individual line items have been addressed,” Beswick said what is also needed is a policy proposal from the supervisors “to empower a city agency to track, monitor, and follow up on this report.”
Trey Allen, a gay man who also helped draft the cultural strategy, said it is meant to be “a living document” that does get updated on an ongoing basis to meet various needs and challenges the local LGBTQ community is facing.
“It really needs a refresh. We should go back to the community to tell us again, after COVID, now what do we think about mental health in a new way and what do you need,” said Allen.
The city needs to put in place a process for reexamining what the needs are but also reports out metrics on what in the cultural strategy is being accomplished and implemented on an annual basis, argued Allen.
See page 8 >>
Thank you for taking time to complete this survey by the Bay Area Reporter. Your opinion and answers are important to us. For this year’s readers’ poll we’re including nominees for each category, along with a write-in designation if you think another business or individual should be nominated. This year’s nominees are a mix of previous winners and new entries.
The survey should only take 10-15 minutes of your time. Your identity and answers are completely confidential and will be used only to contact winners of a random drawing for several valuable prizes. You must complete at least 75 percent of the survey to qualify for the prize drawings. One survey per person/email allowed and must be submitted by midnight (Pacific Time) August 25. Survey results will be published in the September 29 issue of the B.A.R.
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Best Drag Queen
Coco Buttah
D'Arcy Drollinger
Donna Sachet
Emma Howell
Frida
Heklina
Honey Mahogany
Juanita MORE!
Honey Mahogany
Katya Smirnoff-Skye
Lulu
Mercedes Munro
Nicki Jizz
Peaches Christ
Viva Commotion
✎
Best Nightlife Photographer
Dirk Wyse
Marquez Daniels
Steven Underhill
Gooch
Sloane Kantor
✎
Best Overall Restaurant Canela House of Prime Rib
Best LGBT Sports League
Golden Gate Wrestling Club
SF Fog Rugby Club
SF FrontRunners
SF Gay Basketball Association
SF Gay Softball League
SF Pool Association
SF Tsunami Water Polo
SF Tsunami Aquatics
✎
Best Drag King
Fudgie Frottage
Leigh Crow
Madd Dog
Mitch Loveless
✎
Best DJ
Bus Station John
David Helton
DJ Jaffeth
Jon Gosselin
Phil B
Best Happy Hour
440
620 Jones
The Eagle
Que Rico
The Lobby
Toad Hall
✎
Sir Ellis
Taj
✎
Best Wine Bar
Blush
Scope Divino
Swirl
✎
Best Local Leather/ Kink Event
Folsom Street Fair
Lick It
Powerhouse
Up Your Alley Fair
✎
Best Comic
Jackie Beat
Lisa Geduldig
Marilyn Pittman
Pippi Lovestocking
Ron Vigh
Samsung
Shea Suga
Stroy Moyd
✎
Best Sex Club
Eros
Steamworks
✎
Best Bartender (specify bar)
✎
Best Sex Shop
Does Your Mother Know?
Feelmore
Mister S
Rock Hard ✎
La Frontera Martuni’s
Poesia
Vico Cavone ✎
Best Brunch
620 Jones
Boogaloos
Cafe Mystique Lookout
Plow
Last Call Que Rico Starbelly
Best Coffee Shop
Castro Country Club
Church Street Cafe Linea
Peet’s
Wicked Grounds
✎
Best Castro Restaurant
Butcher’s Block
Anew book, “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” is an exhaustive recounting of homosexuality in the federal government, organized by presidencies starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and extending through Bill Clinton. It shows how gay men primarily served in public positions of power but, privately, had to hide their true selves.
There was no more dangerous or threatening secret to a political career in the 20th century than being gay. The book, by James Kirchick, is the story of how the closet impacted the lives of those who worked inside the system (as opposed to out activists who protested these homophobic social norms in the streets), especially Republicans who had to balance their sexuality with their conservatism. It’s less about revolution than assimilation as gays and lesbians slowly made homosexuality more visible and, hence, tolerable.
The book, published by Henry Holt and Co., aims to integrate gay history with American history into a coherent whole, showing how gay people have shaped the country at every level, whether they be clerks or high officials, to break open their closet doors and reveal finally the impact they had and could have had, before they were exposed or fired. “Secret City” ends with Clinton, who lifted Dwight Eisenhower’s ban on government security clearances for LGBTQ people.
Kirchick, a gay Washingtonian, is a conservative journalist, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a columnist at Tablet magazine. Kirchick, 39, spoke to the Bay Area Reporter in a recent phone interview. The book uses thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over 100 people, and unearthed material from presidential libraries and other archives.
“Washington has the highest per capita of LGBTQ people, according to the most recent census, but there’s also this paradox in that it was also the most anti-gay city in America because the federal government didn’t allow gay people to work in these jobs officially,” Kirchick said. “And so you have lots of gay people hiding. They’re forced to construct these closets that they have to live in. And it sets a very high amount of tension for them working there.”
According to Kirchick, the fight for gay acceptance has always been a struggle against silence. “If something is kept secret and you can’t talk about it, conspiratorial views can develop and it can breed hatred,” he said.
The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives, as the book details.
“What happens around World War
II is that homosexuality goes from being just a sin or a medical condition/mental disorder to becoming a national security threat,” Kirchick said. “At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government, in what was later termed the ‘Lavender Scare.’”
Kirchick writes, “Even at the height of the Cold War, it was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual. A Communist could break with the party. A homosexual was forever tainted. ... Still both groups were heavily surveilled, vilified by society, subject to arrest, and threatened with confinement in mental institutions.”
Kirchick asserts, “Across the broad sweep of American history, no minority group has witnessed a more rapid transformation in its status, in the eyes of their fellow citizens, than gay people in the second half of the twentieth century.”
The book is filled with fascinating and often unknown stories of people long forgotten. Pierre L’Enfant, who designed the streets, squares, and parks in which generations of gay Washingtonians would meet each other, was a lifelong bachelor “sensitive in style and dress,” possessing an “artistic and fragile temperament.”
Sumner Welles (whom Winston Churchill credited with coining the phrase “No comment” in the 1940s), the brilliant diplomatic adviser and under-secretary of state and friend of FDR, was forced to resign for trying when drunk to buy oral sex from two male Pullman train porters. His rivals obtained this incriminating information and used it successfully to get him out of government. Roosevelt tried to protect Welles but feared a scandal.
However, Roosevelt was willing to conduct a homophobic smear campaign against David Walsh, a gay senator from Massachusetts who was also a New Deal adversary. “Progressive liberals, considered the enlightened-
80% of LGBTQ+ adults report that “companies that support LGBTQ+ equality will get more of my business this year.”
73% of LGBTQ+ adults report they have made a conscious decision to make a purchase in the last 12 months at least in part due to a company’s visible support of the LGBTQ+ community.
REACH THE BAY AREA’S LARGEST LGBTQ AUDIENCE.
The most educated and affluent LGBTQ consumers in the San Francisco Bay Area read America’s longest-published LGBTQ newspaper.
minded people of the time, were more than happy to use gay baiting and smear tactics against their political enemies. Joe Welch, the man who destroyed Joseph McCarthy, also called lawyer Roy Cohn a fairy on national TV,” Kirchick said.
There is playwright Tennessee Williams’ remark to writer Gore Vidal, “Look at that ass,” referring to John F. Kennedy and Vidal jokingly replying, “You can’t cruise our next president.” Kennedy took the comment as a compliment. He was remarkably relaxed and comfortable with gay men and didn’t feel threatened by them. “JFK had his own sexual secrets, his own sex life, which would have shocked Americans at that time if they had known about them, so maybe that made him sensitive to the plights of other men who had sexual secrets,” said Kirchick.
Oliver Sipple, a former U.S. Marine, saved President Gerald Ford’s life by grabbing the gun of radical Sara Jane Moore as she attempted to shoot him in San Francisco on September 22, 1975. Gay politico Harvey Milk outed Sipple to the news media, saying he should be viewed as a hero, but the closeted Sipple became emotionally distraught and depressed when his parents disowned him. He was found dead in a Tenderloin apartment February 2, 1989.
Midge Costanza, one of President Jimmy Carter’s White House aides, was a lesbian though not public about it. She invited LGBTQ leaders from across the nation to the White House to provide the administration with a
briefing on gay issues. The March 26, 1977 meeting was the first time LGBTQ rights advocates had been invited for an official meeting at the White House.
Kirchick interviewed Bob Bauman, a Republican congressmember from Maryland, who lost his seat in 1981 when his homosexuality became public.
Kirchick also talked with a guy who had gay sex on the USS Sequoia, the presidential yacht, as well as longtime D.C. socialite and hostess Sally Quinn, who told him her late husband and Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s older brother was gay, which made him open to their civil rights.
Then there’s tales about the “Fruit Loop” of the Dupont Circle pickup scene in the 1960s, the “gay corner” of the Congressional Cemetery, and the establishment of the first gay bookstore, Lambda Rising. Sadly, the book also mentions the first and only suicide by a member of Congress, Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming, who killed himself after the 1953 arrest of his 25-year-old son for soliciting an undercover vice cop.
Waldron case
Kirchick was most fascinated by the Robert Waldron case. Waldron was a close aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson and was almost considered a son, as Johnson had no male chil dren. He accompanied Johnson all over the world and was very friendly with Lady Bird and their daughters. When Waldron had a background check to join the White House staff, a friend told them he was gay, which destroyed his career and life in politics. Waldron wrote a very poignant forgiving letter to his betrayer that is printed in the book. This was a story even the thorough Johnson biographer Robert Caro missed.
For Kirchick, the hero of his book is Frank Kameny (1925-2011), the Harvard-trained astronomer who was fired in 1957 from the U.S. Army Map Service for being gay. He spent decades trying to get this job back. Kirchick calls him “the first citizen to challenge the federal government over its discrimination against homosexuals by actually attaching his name to the case rather than to post it pseudonymously.”
In 1961, Kameny founded the Mattachine Society and in its statement of purpose wrote, “to secure for homosexuals the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, as proclaimed for all men by the Declaration of Independence and to secure for homosexuals the basic rights and liberties established by the word and the spirit of the Constitution.” This was the first organized political meeting of gay people and occurred eight years before the Stonewall riots in New York City.
“Frank Kameny is the first openly gay person in America. In 1957, he’s saying, ‘Yeah, I’m gay. I’m a homosexual, and you have to treat me like an equal,’ which took guts,” Kirchick said. “There was this whole notion of gay government employees being a threat to national security because they’re blackmailable. But once you’re out of the closet, then you can’t be blackmailed.”
Kirchick cites a study commissioned by the State Department in the early 1990s before the gays in the military debate, which found that in over 100 cases of Americans who had committed espionage, not a single one of them did it because they were being blackmailed for their homosexuality. That myth however, gained currency.
“In the late 1940s and early 1950s, homosexuality was considered the worst possible character trait and logically it would seem that homosexuals would do anything to protect this secret, including giving sensitive confidential information to a foreign power,” Kirchick said. “It’s not true, but goes back to a point made by Kameny: I’m not ashamed of being gay. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s wrong to fire me, and if the federal government would stop firing anyone who’s gay, you would remove the incentive of foreign powers to blackmail gay people.”
The year before Kameny died, he attended a White House ceremony with President Barack Obama in which John Berry, the gay director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a formal apology to Kameny, who “cheerfully accepted it,” Kirchick said.
Another exemplar for Kirchick was the gay African American Bayard Rustin. “It was very difficult for a gay person to come out for their own civil rights, like Kameny, as most gays didn’t have that sort of courage to risk everything,” Kirchick said. “Instead, they could channel that energy into the African American civil rights struggle and learn lessons they would later apply to gay liberation.
See page 10 >>
compiled by Cynthia Laird
The San Francisco Public Library will screen “AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman” Saturday, July 30, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Koret Auditorium at the main branch, 100 Larkin Street.
The 2021 film tells the story of Norman, the self-appointed “AIDS diva” and spokesperson for ACT UP/ Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A news release from the library noted that Norman described herself as an “ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex-IV drug user, ex-high-risk youth, and current post-operative transsexual woman who is HIV-positive,” and simply, “a human being seeking my humanity.” Norman died in 1996.
The 60-minute film is by Dante Alencastre, a gay man and an awardwinning documentarian and LGBTQ community activist based in West Hollywood. He was in San Francisco last month for the display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and told the Bay Area Reporter that Norman had worked at the old Trocadero Transfer in San Francisco before moving to Southern California in the late 1980s. Alencastre and his co-producer, John Johnston, also a gay man, were in town as “AIDS Diva” was screened as part of the National Queer Arts Festival.
Following the screening at the Koret Auditorium, Alencastre will be on a panel discussion moderated by Gerard Koskovich, a queer historian. Other panelists will be Ms. Billie Cooper, a Black trans woman who is the founder of TransLife at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and a candidate for District 6 supervisor; and Garza, who uses one name and she/her pronouns and is a classically trained ballet dancer, drag performer, and rehabilitation dance instructor for people with Parkinson’s disease. Originally from Peru, she is also a recruiter for studies at the San Francisco Public Health Department’s Bridge HIV program.
The program is sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Admission is free and seating is first-come, first-served.
Obituaries >>
Gerry Kirby
January 18, 1951 –
July 14, 2022
Gerry Kirby died July 14, 2022, in San Francisco of natural causes. Gerry was born on January 18, 1951 and was raised in Portland, Oregon, the oldest of six children. Gerry is survived by one sister, Upendora, who resides in Dallas, as well as by many extended family members, especially in the San Francisco area where Gerry had made his home since the early 1970s.
Arriving in New York City at 18 years old, Gerry’s creativity in music and theater landed him a gig performing with Pearl Bailey’s all-black Broadway production of “Hello Dolly.” Next, he performed with an ensemble called Together, accompanied by Barry Manilow and opening for Bette Midler at the Continental Baths. He also toured Europe with Donna Summer and eventually became a regular backup singer with Sylvester. Finally, he toured internationally with his own funk, Latin, and soul band Messiah in collaboration with songwriter/singer LZ Love, et al.
There will be a private homegoing event for family and close friends in September.
Gerry had recently completed a four-part interview for Bob Ostertag’s online podcast series called “You Make Me Real,” which can be heard at https://bit.ly/3zrvA1D
For more on the film, check out its website at https://www.aidsdivaconnie.com/.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is urging individuals who boat, fish, or swim in the Russian River to exercise caution because potentially toxic algal mats recently were found in the water.
A news release noted that children and dogs are particularly susceptible to serious health impacts and should avoid touching and suspicious-looking algal mats in the water or along river banks. Testing confirmed that potentially toxic algal mats are growing on the bottom of the Russian River, the release stated. While the harmful blooms are caused by algal or cyanobacteria that grow floating in the water, some algae or cyanobacteria grow on the bottom of waterways and can form colorful algal mats that range from bright to dull green, orange, brown, and maroon.
These mats also may detach and become stranded on banks.
If algal mats are observed, children, dogs, and adults are advised to avoid touching or inadvertently ingesting the material. Dogs that have been exposed to the toxic material should be washed immediately, the release stated.
Sonoma County has posted “Toxic Algae Alert” signage at recreational areas. For more on the issue, go to https://bit.ly/2J2PqXL.
The Spahr Center, the LGBTQ+ community center serving Marin County, has a new look with a new logo. A news release stated the new logo features Mt. Tamalpais with silhouettes of redwood trees in front. Notably, the rainbow Mt. Tam includes black and brown stripes signifying the Spahr Center’s commitment to racial justice.
“The Spahr Center has a storied 40-year history providing programs and services for Marin’s LGBTQ+ and HIV communities,” stated Adrian Shanker, a gay man who took over in April as executive director. “We imagine vibrant and thriving LGBTQ+ and HIV com-
munities in Marin, supported and celebrated by our robust variety of programs and services. This logo not only better reflects who we are today but also our aspirations for who we plan to be in the future.”
The logo was designed, pro bono, by East Bay designer Jennifer Bellingham of Black Lamb Media.
“It was our pleasure to support the Spahr Center with the branding and design of their new logo,” Bellingham stated. “As an LGBTQ+owned business, we are honored to lend a hand to an organization that supports and unites our community.” t
Volume 52, Number 30
July 28-August 3, 2022
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Ann Hsu is facing calls to resign after she made racist comments in a candidate questionnaire from the SF Parent Action group. In it, she cited “unstable family environments” and “lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning” as the biggest challenges in educating Black and Brown students. While Hsu has apologized for the statements, that has done little to quell the chorus of those who want her to resign and not seek election in November. Hsu was one of three women tapped by Mayor London Breed to replace the three commissioners ousted in the school board recall in February. Many will remember that former commissioner Alison Collins was recalled due, in part, to racist tweets she posted before being elected to the school board. In that case, Collins, who is Black, attacked Asian Americans. So here we are again with a school board member who just doesn’t get it and feels comfortable employing broad and false racial tropes against students, thus calling into question her ability to conduct her work fairly and without bias.
The Harvey Milk and Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic clubs have called on Hsu to step down, as have gay BART board member and former supervisor Bevan Dufty, Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton of District 10, and United Educators of San Francisco’s executive board. The local chapter of the NAACP stated July 25 that Hsu should resign. The San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club tweeted that Hsu didn’t even bother to reach out to members after her racist comments became public. “Hsu herself said she is ‘committed to listening, learning and growing as a person,’” the club tweeted. “Then why did she ignore the Latino community on outreach?” Breed has stood by her pick, but it’s unclear how long she will be able to do that, given the mounting pressure for Hsu to step aside.
We, too, think Hsu should resign. Her comments are inexcusable for a public official. That they came as the school board is working to get past all its previous controversies and concentrate on student progress is even worse. The school board just held a workshop July 17 at which the commissioners and new superintendent Matt Wayne said that the district would be focusing on its vision, values, goals, and guardrails, as well as a community engagement plan. It would seem that Hsu’s comments are a distraction that the San Francisco Unified School District doesn’t need. The school district’s working vision state-
ment, which was developed at the workshop and is supposed to be long-term and aspirational, is “All SFUSD students will graduate as independent thinkers with a sense of agency who have mastered academic and creative skills to lead productive lives and contribute to our community.” The values student-centered, collective, integrity, and equity rose to the top, stated an announcement on the workshop from Wayne and school board President Jenny Lam. Guardrails are needed, the two stated, to ensure the community’s values aren’t violated while goals are pursued. They prevent the superintendent from violating the community’s values to achieve a goal, the announcement stated. In the Hsu matter, one needs to ask whether her statements on the candidate questionnaire go against the vision and values that the board itself developed at this workshop. We think they do. They also are in conflict with the board’s own commitment to improve governance practices, as outlined in a June 30 news release (before Hsu’s comments became public). We don’t see how Hsu can be an effective member of the school board. When the Collins flap occurred, she was removed from all committees. We would call for that in this case but the current school board in June decided to pause its committees as part of improving its governance. Those matters will now be considered by the board as a whole, resulting in increased transparency, the release stated.
If Hsu won’t resign, we urge the two other appointees, Lainie Motamedi and Lisa WeissmanWard, to distance themselves from her as they campaign ahead of the November election. They need to publicly disavow Hsu’s comments and explain why they deserve to continue serving on the school board. We also think Breed needs to more forcefully condemn Hsu’s comments beyond just stating they were “wrong and hurtful.”
Breed must know that an achievement gap exists in the city’s public schools and that Black and Brown students have lower outcomes than white and Asian students. It’s not acceptable that someone who has espoused racist stereotypes like Hsu has should remain on the board.
Hate in the Sunset
The Hsu matter isn’t the only incident of racism that has recently occurred in San Francisco. Last week, District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar was the target of racist and homophobic slurs on flyers posted in the Sunset district. “Some of the flyers read ‘communist pedophile,’ while others appeared to present a distorted mock agenda for the supervisor intended to denigrate him, saying he supported ‘more drugs, more homelessness, grooming children,’ and ‘free money to crackheads,’ along with ‘kick out the Chinese, bring in gangs.’ Mar is Chinese American,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Mar, who is a straight ally, wrote on Twitter: “These flyers bear a striking resemblance to the ‘No Slums in the Sunset’ flyers that also used red scare rhetoric to attack me for daring to support affordable housing for working families. But these go a step further, calling me a ‘pedophile,’ & a ‘groomer.’ This is a disturbing, dangerous smear that’s emerged from the fringes of the right-wing, used to attack the LGBTQ community and their allies. It’s a tired trope, but it does real damage.”
He’s right about that. Mar pointed out that while he’s used to attacks as a public official, queer kids, especially trans youth and young Black, Indigenous, and people of color may be adversely affected by this hate speech. Queer youth – and adults, for that matter – are welcome in San Francisco. t
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Up Your Alley fair, aka Dore Alley, is back in its full-strength version this weekend! After the pandemic hiatus and last year’s scaled-back return, the leather, kink, and queer communities look forward to being back on the streets, to celebrate being in gear, in little at all, and, most importantly, in person. Our community thrives on our public celebrations, the sharing of ideas and the opportunity to gather in a safe, public space.
The Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District was just getting started the last time there was a full-on Up Your Alley, way back in 2019. The return of the fair is a symbol of vibrant and enduring resilience of the leather, kink and queer community in the city’s South of Market neighborhood, which first located here in the mid-1960’s.
The cultural district formed to help foster that resilience in the face of gentrification and neighborhood changes that have been on a slow roll through western SOMA in recent decades. The cultural district must retain its industrial look, and feel like an iden tifiable place for leather, kinky and queer folk year round, not just on our wonderful street fair days.
The Eagle Plaza and the Ringold Leather History Walk comprise two centerpieces of the cultural district. The Eagle Plaza flies what we believe to be the world’s largest pole mounted leather pride flag. The importance of seeing that flag from the freeway as one enters the city from our airports and surrounding cities cannot be over-
looked. It’s a reminder that we’re here to stay. The Ringold Leather History Walk, on Ringold Alley, across the street from Mr. S Leather is another marker that we’re here. The alley has commemorative boot print sidewalk plaques and standing stones from 8th to 9th streets to commemorate the iconic institutions and people that made SOMA a world-wide kink destination. With funding from the SOMA West Community Benefit District, the cultural district just coordinated refurbishing the alley’s leather pride flag sidewalks and boot prints, so this is a great time to go check it out.
The Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District, in conjunction with the nightclub Oasis and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, recently unveiled a large mural on Oasis’s facade at 11th and Folsom streets that brought the art of five community artists to the public eye. We have more plans to establish our visible foothold in the area.
We can celebrate recent legislation that will once again permit bathhouses in SOMA, helping to remove the stigma that came from their closure during the rise of the HIV crisis in the ‘80’s. Yet, despite that success, once again we find ourselves dealing with health crises; this time it’s COVID, a meningitis outbreak, and monkeypox.
Currently, monkeypox affects the LGBTQ community more than others, and we will likely have to fight against stigma once again. Yet, our community is working to protect each other and ourselves. When I got the shot the other day, the waiting area was filled with familiar faces from SOMA. I urge everyone to get the vaccine; check https:// sf.gov/information/monkeypox-vaccine for the latest info.
Up Your Alley fair is a time for celebration and, this year, a time for caution as well. There are no perfect answers to protect you from COVID or monkeypox. COVID vaccines will protect you from getting really sick but offer limited protection against getting COVID. The monkeypox vaccine offers good protection, but even the first shot can take time to kick in, and it requires two shots at least a month apart to reach full effectiveness.
Society at large has decided to take more risks with COVID than during the peak of isolation. Masks and distancing are less common now, so there’s certain to be some increased COVID spread at the many events this weekend. The fair being outside is a bit safer for COVID, though skin-to-skin contact whether indoors or out is a risk for monkeypox.
One of the biggest challenges
Kate Stoia faces as she runs for San Francisco’s District 8 supervisor seat this fall is explaining why someone who is not LGBTQ themselves should be elected to it. The straight, married mother is seeking what many consider to be the “gay” seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors.
Back in the 1970s Harvey Milk became the first gay man to serve in it, when it was known as the District 5 seat and covered more of the city’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood in addition to the LGBTQ Castro district and Noe Valley, where Stoia lives with her family. After Milk’s assassination in 1978 Harry Britt, who was also gay, became his appointed successor and went on to be elected as supervisor in his own right in the 1980s.
When the city returned to electing supervisors by district in the early 2000s, the Castro and Noe Valley became part of District 8 along with Mission Dolores, Duboce Triangle, Diamond Heights, and parts of Twin Peaks. A succession of gay men have been elected to the seat, with the incumbent, Rafael Mandelman, now seeking a second and final four-year term as the District 8 supervisor.
This spring many District 8 residents, as well as LGBTQ leaders from across the city, fought to ensure its boundaries would retain as much of its LGBTQ residents as possible under the decennial redistricting process so that it would continue to favor out supervisor candidates. While it has lost much of the Mission Dolores neighborhood to District 9, it gained Cole Valley and parts of Ashbury Heights from District 5, which continues to include the Haight.
Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter, Stoia said she is fully aware of the historical and political ties between the city’s LGBTQ community and the District 8 seat. She acknowledged her own sexual orientation is likely to be why certain voters won’t want to elect her.
“I think it is a really fair question. I understand identity politics,” said Stoia, who turns 55 this Sunday, July 31. “I think people should evaluate the candidates in any way that feels comfortable to them. If the most important thing is having a gay, lesbian, or transgender person in that seat then that is absolutely not me.”
Nonetheless, Stoia’s connections to the LGBTQ community run deep. As she notes in her biography on her campaign website, after moving to the Bay Area in 1989 her first job was
with the Stop AIDS Project founded by the late Ken Jones, a gay Black activist who became a close friend of hers. A UC Berkeley law school graduate, Stoia was part of the legal team that successfully sued the city in federal court in 1999 on behalf of Victoria Schneider, a transgender woman and sex worker who had been misgendered by San Francisco police and unlawfully strip searched by San Francisco sheriffs deputies.
“They strip-searched her to check her gender,” recalled Stoia. “We won $750,000 from the city. It was such a triumph for her; she got to tell her story on the stand.”
Not mentioned in her bio is that her late father, Alexander Stoia, was gay, and after di vorcing Kate Stoia’s mother in the 1970s, he ended up moving to the Bay Area and served as the director of the Oakland Museum Association. He also met and fell in love with Tony Arn then relocated to Southern California in the early 1980s when he was hired to lead the Palm Springs Desert Museum. Arn moved to West Hollywood, while Alexander Stoia lived in a Palm Springs home owned by the museum; the couple would regularly visit each other.
“I grew up around a lot of gay culture and people,” said Stoia, who was born in New York and later moved with her mom to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
After Alexander Stoia died in 1985, Arn maintained his relationship with Kate Stoia and has been a grandfather to her now 21-yearold son, Matan, and 19-year-old daughter Ella, whom she had with her husband Ronen Maoz, a developer who rehabs dilapidated houses in the city, as well as to the couple’s teenage foster son.
“My dad had been long dead by the time my kids were born,” said Stoia. “My kids consider his partner a grandfather.”
Reached in London, where he is currently living, Arn told the B.A.R. in a phone interview that he had urged Stoia to consider running for elected office several years ago in order to address the various issues she has felt city leaders are failing to address, from homelessness and housing costs to support for locallyowned businesses.
“First of all, I have encouraged Kate for a long time to stop complaining and do something,” said Arn, 72, who is now retired and, even while overseas, volunteers to
help elect Democrats to office across the U.S. “I don’t mean to say she didn’t do anything, as she has been very active in the community, but I mean to start running for things.”
Having seen coverage about the redistricting of the supervisor seat, Arn said he was a bit surprised to learn Stoia had decided to challenge Mandelman to represent District 8.
“My guess is she would not have run against a gay man in that area if she thought he were doing a good job,” said Arn. “It is a whole dicey issue: what is the gay seat?
What is the female seat?”
As he doesn’t live in San Francisco, Arn told the B.A.R. he couldn’t speak to Mandelman’s effectiveness as a supervisor. But he said he could speak to Stoia’s determination when she sets a goal for herself.
“My guess is she is running because she is convinced she would do a better job. Knowing Kate, she will,” said Arn, who is relocating to Pennsylvania to help elect Democrats there this November. “I have known her since she was 11 years old. I have seen her accomplish all of her goals.”
HIV positive since 1989 and a longtime member of ACT UP, Arn pointed to Stoia’s going to work for an AIDS agency as one example of how she has always had strong ties to the LGBTQ community.
“She could have gotten a better paying job, but she wanted to be doing something in the community.
She felt a tie to the gay male community in particular,” said Arn, adding that he has always seen himself as her stepparent. “Her father, as it turned out, was gay. When he was living in New York, she knew all his gay friends. She was raised in situation where she had both a familiarity and empathy for the gay community. That is something that has continued. She has always treated me like a family member.”
Rodney Earl Jackson Jr., one of two queer men of color who founded SFBATCO, the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company, has known Stoia for roughly a decade. She helped fundraise for the arts organization and joined its board of directors.
Now, having moved into District 8’s Duboce Triangle neighborhood two years ago, Jackson told the B.A.R. he plans to vote for her to be his next supervisor.
The benefits are immense.
The benefits are immense.
The benefits are immense.
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
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.
Proudly
Irecently had a momentous birthday, reaching 20 years past the age I expected myself to be dead.
You see, more years ago than I care to admit, I came to a personal realization that I didn’t expect to live past around age 30 or 35. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my trans nature specifically, but I just didn’t see myself as someone who was on a trajectory for longevity.
In some ways, it baffles me that I’ve made it to this age. In some ways, it was easier to assume that I was a brief candle than expecting to exist on this Earth quite so long. Yet, here I am, all these years later.
As I said, that age I expected to pass by was not necessarily because I was trans. At the time, the life expectancy of a trans woman was not exactly known. Indeed, there really was a remarkable dearth of information to be found.
I had an inkling that I didn’t quite fit within the gender norms expected for me by age 3, when I expected shoes like the other girls in my neighborhood. By age 8, I had the good fortune of first hearing about transgender people and had a sense that I might be one. I also felt that I could not share that information with my parents or anyone else.
At age 12, I first experienced sui-
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A member of the orthopoxvirus genus which includes now-eradicated smallpox, monkeypox is generally regarded as significantly less serious than smallpox but, for some, it can still be potentially deadly and, for many, an outbreak can be quite serious nonetheless. In San Francisco, as of July 26, there have been 222 documented cases.
According to information from the City of San Francisco’s website, “Most people get well from monkeypox without pills or treatment of any kind. But for some people monkeypox can be serious.”
Race Bannon, a gay man and long a leader in the city’s LGBTQ kink and leather scene, said there are simple strategies for navigating this latest health issue at the fair. Bannon, 68, noted that although casual contact is not a high risk activity, he suggested guys think
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“It was a massive effort,” he said. “The work that went into this I want to see move forward.”
Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who had called for the hearing on the cultural strategy, warned his board colleagues that, “because this is a sprawling document, many departments have a role to play in its implementation.” Numerous city agencies gave presentations on the work they have been doing in recent years that ties into the cultural strategy.
Agencies ranged from the arts commission and planning department to the human services agency and the mayoral offices on workforce development and transgender initiatives.
“It is rather unmanageable, even for a hearing,” noted Mandelman, who said his office had endeavored to come up with a “manageable framework” to review the various policy proposals within the cultural strategy.
As the Bay Area Reporter has previously reported, in addition to suggestions for preserving LGBTQ culture, the cultural strategy also included ideas for ensuring the LGBTQ community’s well-being and
cidal ideation, and planned to try and take my life courtesy of the nearby freeway.
While I became familiar with all sorts of words found near Transalpine Gaul and Transvaal in the local library’s card catalog, it would still be more than a decade later that I would start to actively seek out and read books about transsexuality and such. At that time, most of them were pretty dry texts, though you could find the occasional trans autobiography by Caroline Cossey, Renée Richards, or Christine Jorgensen if you looked hard enough.
I didn’t start the coming out process until I was 25, and transition started in earnest just a couple of years shy of 30. It took that long just to reach a point where I could start to actually live it.
There’s this belief in non-trans circles that we transition very quick-
ly, and that we seemingly go from “showing no signs” to starting transition in a very short period of time. It makes those who do not experience being trans feel that our transition is merely some sort of phase or trend, with some assuming that we must have been recruited into transition by some sinister sorts.
This is especially common to hear from some of the more vocal antitrans bigots, who want to attribute the rise in transgender identities among younger people to some sort of social contagion, at best. Yet this all ignores that many of us spend years, even decades of our lives, trying to understand ourselves. For many of us – includ ing yours truly – we may fight every day against such feelings, trying to present and act as we think we’re expected to. We may feel perfectly trapped, stuck within a gender that fits as well as a five-dollar, knock-off concert T-shirt.
Then, once we find the information we need, and sympathetic ears that may not be present among family and our other friends, we finally get the courage to reveal our true selves to the world.
It may be rapid for them, but for us
it’s taken ages longer than it should.
I mentioned earlier, too, about trawling through card catalogs. I was trying to find information in a time before computers became commonplace in the home, when I could only find trans stories at the local library if I was lucky, though my scant knowledge typically was located in the pages of my father’s “girlie” magazines or mom’s tabloids. Neither of those made me feel any better about myself.
I can also count the times I heard anything else on televisions, as either sitcom fodder or news show scandals.
Today, we have a big beautiful internet full of information. We do see trans faces on our televisions and in movies. We surely exist outside of the back pages, and are more than the butts of jokes. It is truly a world apart from my own youth, and I wonder if the resources of today would have allowed me to come out that much sooner then.
That comes with a caveat, however. This side of the so-called transgender tipping point – the infamous tagline from a Time magazine cover that was already eight years ago – we’re seeing a backlash to trans rights. Across the country, we are seeing sports bans,
should be taken into account, as well, particularly in as sexually a charged atmosphere as the fair.
“I think men should reconsider any anonymous sex connections for now,” said Bannon. ”That includes at sex venues, and sex with men they do not know ahead of time. I think it is the time, right now, if you ‘re gonna play, play with men you know. Even if you do play with men you know, ask, so people can assess the risk assessment.”
laws against trans care, laws against even talking about transgender people. More, and worse, bills are still being introduced across the country.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing the farright actively pushing false narratives about trans lives, slandering us as “groomers” and predators, with no regard for the truth. These smears, too, are giving rise to violence, as we once again see a sharp uptick in anti-trans killings continuing past the Trump administration, but no doubt fueled in part by those who belong to the Republican Party that the former president has remade.
I don’t feel under any threat of Godwin’s Law – which maintains that if any online discussion continues long enough, someone will almost certainly compare someone else to Hitler – when I see the echoes of where the transgender community was in Weimar Germany before the rise of the National Socialist party.
Still, I hope for a time when many others will be able to celebrate a great many birthdays ahead, and see the level of progress that I have witnessed over my lifetime to date.
Here’s to many more, for us all. t Gwen Smith hopes you’ll make a trans person’s life better today. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith. com
you sunburned and blistered? I wish I could say yes or no. What I really can say is it’s a varying spectrum. It’s less likely for brief quick moments of passing somebody, but you can’t rule that out completely.”
Plenty of folks will be attending play parties over the weekend, as well. The fair is about sex, after all. Strona suggested attendees apply the standards learned from COVID to their sexual encounters.
about leaving their shirts on through the fair since monkeypox can be spread through skin-to-skin contact.
“A little restraint, pardon the pun,
providing it with economic opportunities and affordable housing. The cost to implement the document’s multitude of ideas had been pegged at between $10.2 and $15.7 million.
The strategy has helped guide various efforts launched and funded in recent years by Mayor London Breed and city departments, as well as steer budget allocations by the supervisors. Among them have been resources to build the first large-scale, freestanding LGBTQ history museum in the country and to end transgender homelessness in the city by 2027.
“This is an example and model other cities are looking at and for other communities in San Francisco to look at,” said Beswick. “This is a great opportunity to use this to build something better.”
Planning staffer Frances McMillan, who worked with the cultural strategy working group, agreed with Allen that the strategy is “considered a living document and intended to be updated as needs change.”
Pau Crego, who is trans and nonbinary, serves as executive director for the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives. Their office works on numerous city initiatives and programs that not only benefit trans and gender-nonconforming residents but the LGBTQ community at-large. However, with a limited
is probably warranted right now,” said Bannon, the Bay Area Reporter’s former leather columnist. But, he added, more serious considerations
staff, Crego noted at the hearing that the office is limited in what it can do in terms of tracking the full implementation of the cultural strategy.
It is also hampered by “the lack of data on LGBTQ residents in San Francisco and the inequities we face,” said Crego.
Tina Aguirre, director of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, told the supervisors committee that all three of the city’s LGBTQ cultural districts need more financial support in order to assist in the implementation of the cultural strategy. The document called for such assistance for the trio of districts, with one in the Tenderloin focused on the transgender community and one South of Market aimed primarily at the preservation of the leather and kink communities.
“I look forward to the next iteration of this draft,” said Aguirre. “I hope the LGBTQ cultural districts can play a pivotal role in the next steps of this work.”
Ben Demers, the government affairs coordinator for the leather district, said it would like to be involved in future conversations on the cultural strategy since much of the outreach with the community for it occurred prior to the leather district being formally recognized by the city in 2018.
Another leader in the city’s kink scene, Frank Strona, a gay man and incident management team lead for monkeypox with the San Francisco Department of Health, agrees. But Strona added that a casual brush between two shirtless individuals isn’t likely to spread the virus, though nothing is 100% certain. There are considerations - rashes and sores on folks’ skin are something to take into account, he said.
“It depends on how developed their rash is,” Strona told the B.A.R. “If you have open sores on your skin, are
“We need more support for nightlife,” said Demers, adding he looked forward “to making it a bigger part of the conversation again.”
When Wiener initially proposed the cultural strategy, it was primarily with a focus on preserving LGBTQ nightlife and entertainment venues in San Francisco. The city had seen a number of LGBTQ bars and other cultural organizations shutter due to various factors, from gentrification increasing demand to turn their locations into housing to higher housing costs pushing their patrons and staff out of the city.
Yet when the working group came together in 2017, it quickly realized it needed to go beyond a sole focus on nightlife. As its members explained at the hearing, what good is preserving LGBTQ cultural offerings if the people working at them and patronizing them no longer can afford to live in San Francisco.
“You can’t have cultural preservation without having the culture there in the first place, and cultural preservation is preserving the people,” said Amanda Hamilton, a gay woman and attorney who cochaired the community services and education committee for the cultural strategy. “If everyone is leaving the city, how can we preserve them being here too?”
“Well, I think they need to really be communicating with the hosts,” he said. “What are the host’s cleaning procedures? Now, remember they do not need to use super strength cleaning, but they do want to be thinking about routine cleaning. If I were going to attend a play party this weekend, I would bring my own towels. I would bring my own play sheet so that I know everything’s been laundered, and it’s the only thing that’s coming into contact with mine and my partner’s body.
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At the end of the hearing Mandelman indicated he did plan to follow up on various aspects of the document.
“I think there are a number of elements of the strategy I am interested in following up on,” he said, adding that he “look(s) forward to advancing the recommendations and priorities identified and finding new needs to fill.”
In a texted reply to the B.A.R., Mandelman said there are several next steps he plans to take in regard to updating the cultural strategy.
“I think there are lots of valuable ideas in the Strategy that will require follow-up to bring to fruition. I’m especially interested in trying to make the Queer History Museum actually happen and supporting the historic preservation work,” wrote Mandelman. “I also think we need to circle back and re-focus some attention on the queer entertainment and nightlife that were really the focus of Senator Wiener’s original legislation.”
To learn more about the city’s LGBT cultural strategy, and download a copy of the document, visit its website at https://sfplanning. org/project/lgbtq-cultural-heritage-strategy. t
Prominent Italian gay activist Franco Grillini called for LGBTQ activists to build international alliances in order to learn from each other and defend the rights of LGBTQ people across the globe during a recent visit to San Francisco.
Italy’s “Harvey Milk,” Grillini is a former member of the Italian parliament. He spoke exclusively with the Bay Area Reporter earlier this summer, joined by his lifelong friend and filmmaker Filippo Vendemmiati, as well as openly gay Italian General Consul Sergio Strozzi.
Annamaria DiGiorgio, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, provided translation during the interview.
Grillini expressed gratitude and respect for American LGBTQ rights activists.
“Respect go towards your country,” he said, stating that LGBTQ American activists set “an example” for queer Italian activists, especially during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “It’s very high and it’s a debt of gratitude.”
Grillini, 67, and Vendemmiati, 64, were in San Francisco as guests of Strozzi, 49, for a special screening of their award-winning documentary, “Let’s Kiss: Franco Grillini, Story of a Gentle Revolution” (“Let’s Kiss, Storia di una rivoluzione gentile”).
The 85-minute Italian documentary with English subtitles follows Grillini as he tells the story of his life from his humble beginnings on a farm in Pianoro outside of Bologna, the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy; his life as a politician; and his 40 years as a leading LGBTQ advocate in Italy. The documentary was released in 2021.
The Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco co-sponsored the free, pub-
lic screening attended by 70 guests on June 19 during Pride Month.
Strozzi said he was “super excited” for the Italian consulate to host Grillini and introduce him to LGBTQ leaders and allies in the Bay Area. Beyond Italian food and fashion, Strozzi said Grillini’s visit “shows another aspect of Italy and our culture and our society, which is very much in favor of human rights [and] civil rights.”
Grillini is considered the father of Italy’s LGBTQ movement. He served as a member of the Italian Parliament from 2001-2007. During his tenure in office, he pushed to pass protections such as anti-discrimination protections, civil unions, and other rights for LGBTQ Italians. The laws failed in the legislature as Italy’s government fell apart, a common occurrence, he said. Each time the Italian government crumbled, he had to start over by building alliances and introducing the legislation again.
Since his time in office ended, Italy passed a civil unions bill to legally recognize same-sex relationships in 2016, but the European country has yet to pass anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, women, and people with disabilities.
An anti-discrimination bill did make it through its first hurdle in parliament when the lower house passed the bill in 2020. The bill backed by Italy’s center-left Democratic Party would amend Italy’s anti-discrimination law to include protecting sexual orientation and gender identity if it became law. Openly gay MP Alessandro Zan introduced the bill in response to a spat of anti-LGBTQ attacks in Italy in 2018.
The Vatican openly opposed the bill.
The Senate killed the bill with a 154-131 vote in October 2021 despite public support.
At the time, discussions about the bill would not be able to be reopened in parliament for six months, reported Reuters. Lawmakers believed approving the bill before the legislature expired in early 2023 would be impossible.
Nearly a year later, discussions remain dead in Italy’s legislature but not with the European Union.
Zan, who is also a prominent leader in Associazione LGBTI italiana, or Arcigay, met with the E.U. Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli in Brussels in June, reported Euractiv. She liked his proposal for a comprehensive hate crime and hate speech law with harsher penalties for perpetrators who discriminate against LGBTQ people, women, and people with disabilities, tweeting on June 28 that it was “in line with the EU LGBTIQ Equality Strategy.”
The E.U. LGBTIQ Equality Strategy is the E.U.’s first five-year strategic plan to promote LGBTQ equality and defeat hate in member countries launched in 2020.
The International Lesbian and Gay Association ranks Italy last for recognizing and respecting LGBTQ rights in Western Europe.
In the weeks leading up to parliament’s vote on the bill, LGBTQ Italians and their supporters, as well as opponents, took to Italy’s streets in large demonstrations.
Grillini said Italians have wanted protections for LGBTQ people, women, and laws addressing other controversial issues, such as end-of-life, for about 40 years.
“People in Italy agree with … these reforms,” he said.
The government’s regular falling apart and rebuilding itself along with its failure to modernize laws in line with what Italian citizens want “is a problem,” Grillini said.
Parliament has never caught onto legislating change from the people, he continued.
“This is a problem that not only concerns citizens,” Grillini said about the Italian government’s failure to recognize and legislate on issues everyday Italians face. “This is a problem that concerns human rights.”
However, Grillini was taunted by his peers who called him “the American” and “the Italian Harvey Milk,” he said about importing American LGBTQ activists’ strategies to Italy, such as setting up LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS organizations and supporting pride festivals.
It was American LGBTQ activists blazing a path an ocean away in New
The leadership of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District receives $230,000 annually in city funds, and the community deserves substantive explanations about the following matters.
Last year it spent money on a survey that began as solely related to what to display on the municipal flagpole at Harvey Milk Plaza, but soon expanded to ask respondents about their experiences in the Castro. The results were never released.
Connected to the survey was a promise to hold a town hall about the flagpole issues and it didn’t happen. Community time and public funds went for what benefit exactly?
Also in 2021, the district made a lot of noise about taking over maintenance of the memorial corner of Bank of America at 18th and Castro streets. It unanimously passed a resolution detailing responsibilities it would deliver keeping the memorial space orderly and free of trash, by hiring a part-time worker. No one was hired and the district has done nothing to revitalize the corner.
The district last year wanted to spend up to $10,000 for a street celebration honoring Stonewall Rebellion trans pioneer Marsha P. Johnson, canceling those plans in order to operate a COVID testing and vaccine site, promising a party for her this summer. Hasn’t happened.
Relatedly, in the spring of 2021 the district issued a call for artists to create a Black Lives Matter mural in the gayborhood and the project was shelved.
In December, it attempted to delay a desperately needed housing project on Church Street near Market, because it wanted the developer to include an undefined community space in the building. The delay was thankfully rejected.
This year, the district created a front group called Friends of the Castro Theatre that meets every Friday afternoon but is not open to the public and whether wearing district or Friends hats, the leaders have not been transparent and accountable back to the film-loving and neighborhood communities.
The district’s social media is inconsequential and frequently promotes events outside of the Castro or with no obvious connection. No effort is made to invite the public to participate in their weekly virtual meetings. It is rare for any minutes of the meetings to include public comments, usually when I’ve dialed in to be the lone member of the public participating. Recently, it allocated $20,000 for unspecified internal investigation and hasn’t said what the reason is for it.
York and San Francisco where Grillini saw inspiration and got support to be able to do the same in Italy.
This is why queer activists need to build better alliances internationally, he said, talking about LGBTQ people around the world living in countries where they continue to face the death penalty, criminalization, and discrimination.
“That’s why I would like to further our relationships and these alliances,”he said, hoping that his own story will help others. “It has been very important.” t Got international LGBTQ news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp/Signal: 415517-7239, or oitwnews@gmail.com.
The Bay Area Reporter can help members of the community reach more than 120,000 LGBT area residents each week with their display of Obituary* & In Memoriam messages.
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Please Join Us
To Celebrate the Life of Our Beloved PETER
Please Join Us
To Celebrate the Life of Our Beloved PETER F. GETTNER
In the 1970s Peter found community in San Francisco and worked as a waiter and bartender at Café San Marcos (now The Café on Market Street) and enjoyed a successful 30 year career in commercial real estate. He was a proud benefactor to many LGBTQ causes. He will be fondly missed and remembered.
In the 1970s Peter found community in San Francisco and worked as a waiter & bar Café San Marcos (now The Café on Market St) and enjoyed a successful 30 year ca commercial real estate He was a proud benefactor to many LGBTQ causes He will missed and remembered
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Sunday, August 14, 2022
2 pm - 6 pm
Finally, there is no culture created exclusively by the district at Jane Warner Plaza. Its recent vigil there for the victims of the Pulse gun massacre had very low attendance and it was a one-time event.
Is this the best they can do with almost a quarter million dollars in city money developing and sustaining culture in our gayborhood?
Michael Petrelis San Francisco2 pm - 6 pm
~~~
Marin Art and Garden Center 50 Sir Francis Drake Ross, California
Marin Art and Garden Center 50 Sir Francis Drake Ross, California
For information: 415-XXX-XXX
But beginning a new tradition with this year’s competition, GAPA is retiring the “Mister” and “Miss” GAPA categories. All 10 contestants will instead compete in a single category to be one of the two with the highest scores.
The winning pair will be referred to by the gender-inclusive title “GAPA Royalty.” Yet, the traditional titles are not being axed entirely. Each winner will choose their own honorific, thus it is conceivable a new Mr. GAPA and Ms. GAPA could be crowned next month.
Or, for the first time ever in the history of the pageant, there could be two Mr. GAPAs or two Ms. GAPAs crowned. There may also be the firstever Mx. GAPA to emerge victorious, or an entirely different way to refer to the titleholders depending on how the winners wish to be addressed during their reign.
“We don’t know what is going to happen,” reigning Mr. GAPA SNJV (Sanjeev) told the Bay Area Reporter. “We are truly going to experience that night a new dawning, and a brand new era of GAPA, of Runway, of the community, and API heritage.”
SNJV, who had identified as gay in their youth, now eschews sexual orientation and gender identity terminology. Crowned Mr. GAPA in 2019, SNJV is the first Punjabi, Indo-Fijian Runway titleholder, while Ms. GAPA 2019 Mocha Fapalatte, a drag queen who is Filipino American, became the first nonbinary winner in her category.
“I am Mr. GAPA forever. It feels great and it feels right. I enjoy that title,” said SNJV, who also takes pride in the fact that part of their and Fapalatte’s
From page 4
“Rustin was the organizer for the 1963 March on Washington, the most important event in the history of the civil rights movement,” he said. “The racist Senator Strom Thurmond (RSouth Carolina) wanted to derail the march and denounced Rustin on the Senate floor as a gay sexual pervert because he had been arrested in Pasadena on a morals charge a decade earlier. That arrest record was almost certainly given to Thurmond by the FBI. However, Martin Luther King stood by Rustin and didn’t fire him. In fact, he even spoke at the rally. Rustin became the first gay person to survive an outing. He went on to a successful career as a human rights activist.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom posthumously pardoned Rustin in February 2020, as the B.A.R. previously reported.
World War II
Kirchick considers World War II a seminal event in gay history. “The historian John D’Emilio calls it a national coming out for gay people because of the mass mobilization due to the war effort,” he said. “You had gay people coming into contact with one another in numbers never seen before. America was much more a rural country then, so many gay people felt isolated and alone, like they were the only gay person in the nation. The war brought them all together, the start of an evolving gay consciousness. After the war many gay veterans moved to cities, in a mass urbanization which led to the beginnings of a gay subculture.”
Gay men seemed to pop up in Foreign Service, State Department, and CIA positions. Kirchick explained
From page 6
People you know and trust to be upfront about their vaccinations, and who are willing to contact you if they have an outbreak, present less risk than anonymous hookups who you might not hear from or be able to contact in
Runway legacy is that it marked the end of the “dynasty of binary titles.”
Their time as the reigning royals is also now the longest ever in the history of Runway, as the competition had to be scrapped two years ago due to the COVID pandemic. Instead, GAPA held a virtual event that featured a documentary look back at the history of Runway that included interviews with past winners.
Plans were underway to hold the contest in-person in 2021 but were shelved due to the surge in COVID cases caused by the Delta variant. The decision had already been made last year to drop the gender-specific contestant categories and crown two GAPA Royalty winners.
A more inviting competition
The change was implemented with an aim of making the competition more inviting for transgender, intersex, and nonbinary Asian and Pacific
what made them good spies. “They cultivated useful skills that would be useful in espionage, such as pretending to lie, the use of coded language, and to detect codes in other people, as well as the need for discretion, the ability to notice subtleties, the ability to be diplomatic and work your way around delicate situations, and to speak other languages,” he said. “The founding members of the modern State Department and the CIA were all upper-class men, who possessed these skills.”
The biggest surprise Kirchick discovered were the gay rumors surrounding Ronald Reagan. “There was this fear around the Reagan people of Reagan himself, his wife Nancy, his top advisers of being seen as gay. Because he came from Hollywood, an actor with an actor’s background, others might perceive him as gay. There’s a line from one of his top aides, Lyn Nofziger, who in his memoir said that when Reagan was running for governor of California in 1966, because of his Hollywood association, others might see him as gay,” he said.
In Reagan’s own 1965 memoir, he related an incident while he was making the film “Dark Victory” with actress Bette Davis. He’s basically playing her gay best friend, but they couldn’t be explicit about this. But the director Edmund Goulding told Reagan to play “the role as if he was the sort of fellow who could sit in the girl’s dressing room and dish with the ladies while they were getting dressed. Which is a very long, sort of euphemistic way of describing a gay man. And he’s very offended by this and upset to having to play a role this way, uncomfortable portraying a gay character,” Kirchick said.
the event either of you have a positive test for monkeypox or COVID. We must all make individual choices about what level of risk we are comfortable with. These choices are best made in advance rather than in the heat of the hot human that just walked up.
The people I’ve talked to have a range of opinions from avoid every-
Islanders. It followed GAPA last year expanding the “G” in its name from meaning solely gay in order to reflect its being open to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
The organization has made a concerted effort to shed its image as being solely a club for gay and bisexual API men. It now has women and trans individuals on its board and is working to increase their membership in the group. GAPA’s first-ever trans board member, Emmett Chen-Ran, happens to also be its production chair overseeing the Runway event.
“I had moved to the Bay Area in 2020 and was looking to get connected with the local queer API community,” recalled Chen-Ran, a queer man who moved to California after graduating from Yale University. “I reached out to GAPA and they had an opening on the board as the Runway producer. Since I have theater experience as an undergraduate, I said, let me do that.”
“During his first year as governor, he’s rocked by a gay scandal, where a newspaper columnist alleged that there was a ring of gay men working in his Sacramento office and they had had an orgy at a timeshare house in Lake Tahoe. This was published in newspapers across the country, which infuriated Reagan,” he said.
“Then in 1980, when he’s running for president, a group of moderate Republicans brought a new accusation of gay advisers surrounding Reagan to the Washington Post. They alleged there’s a ‘clandestine right-wing homosexual cabal’ with almost a religious zeal against communism controlling Reagan as if he were a Manchurian candidate. They brought it to Ben Bradlee and he got his best team of reporters to investigate this and found no basis for it,” said Kirchick.
“Of course, Reagan and his wife Nancy had many gay friends, with Nancy having many gay courtiers, hairdressers, and fashion designers surrounding her,” he added. “So there was this hesitancy and fear of being seen too close to anything gay, which might explain why their administration distanced themselves from the AIDS crisis.” Kirchick includes a draft of Reagan’s statement when his friend actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, in which the word “profoundly” is crossed out before “saddened,” along with the line, “we will miss him greatly.”
Kirchick also references the hypocrisy of Terry Dolan, co-founder and chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, who was a proponent of family values and opposed gay rights. He was a closeted homosexual who frequented leather bars and died of AIDS in 1986. He advised Reagan and his brother, Anthony, was Reagan’s chief political speechwriter.
thing to some moderate caution. I fall somewhere in between. I can say I look forward to seeing everyone at the fair.
I urge everyone to test for COVID before the events and after. Get phone numbers of your “encounters” and let people know if you get a positive test for COVID or monkeypox. It’s important that we protect not only ourselves but also each other.
Making the change in how the competition is conducted came after GAPA leaders, members, and past contestants had numerous conversations about doing so, recalled ChenRan in a joint phone interview with SNJV. Adding a third category that was not gender-specific was ruled out partly due to logistical reasons, as recruiting and vetting contestants is a lengthy process to begin with, said Chen-Ran.
“We didn’t think we would have enough people to fill a whole third category,” he said.
In addition, some nonbinary individuals expressed concerns about creating a third category, said ChenRan, because they don’t consider it a third gender. They don’t subscribe “to the gender binary at all,” he noted, and raised questions about the need for keeping the gender-specific titles.
On the other side of the argument were individuals who had strongly argued for keeping the gender titles and categories, said Chen-Ran, particularly to empower queer Asian men.
“Asian men are typically emasculated in Western society,” noted ChenRan, who added that, “it was definitely not an easy decision.”
But once it had been made, it didn’t spark any backlash, Chen-Ran told the B.A.R., since GAPA had taken such a thorough approach at vetting it. Not being able to hold Runway last year provided additional time to spread the word about the contest’s new format, the benefit of which Chen-Ran believes can be seen in this year’s lineup of entrants. He said nearly all of them identify in some way as genderqueer, trans, or nonbinary.
“We have people who have entered as their drag personas and others per-
With people like Terry Dolan populating the government, Kirchick ranks Reagan’s as “the gayest of any presidential administration yet.”
After writing the book, Kirchick said it’s influenced the way he views politics today.
“We’re going through a moral panic right now with this ‘grooming’ discourse and this ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law in Florida,” he said. “And often when you have moral panics, sexual minorities get targeted. So in the 1950s, there was a moral panic around homosexuality stemming from the Red Scare. Then in the 1980s was the child sex-abuse moral panic, with all those stories about satanic rituals and children being raped in daycare centers. And now QAnon is a kind of social hysteria that has a sexual component to it.
“So you often find recurring cycles of moral panics using accusations of sexual degeneracy against your political adversaries,” he added. “We should be very skeptical about claims of conspiracies and sexual deviation – they’re almost always false. In the book I show that all these claims that were made about gay people were wrong, especially about being blackmailed. It’s definitely made me skeptical of whatever the hysteria-du-jour is.”
Kirchick believes that for LGBTQ people the struggle for gay rights is over.
“The movement has achieved nearly everything it needs for gay people in terms of equal rights and legal rights and protections, we are equal citizens, full stop,” he said. “Instead of fighting this pointless war over wedding cakes, it should declare unilateral victory. That doesn’t mean there’s not homophobia, which we see clearly. The debates have now shifted to gender identity and transgenderism.”
Most importantly, go celebrate to the fullest within the bounds that you are comfortable with. Whether that’s a drive by the Leather Pride flag at the Eagle Plaza, a stroll down the Ringold Leather History Walk, or a full dive into the fair and all the weekend has to offer.
The website https://andymatic.
forming as themselves and people who use a variety of pronouns,” said ChenRan. “I am excited to see what people come up with for their honorifics.”
The reigning Ms. GAPA will be unable to attend this year’s pageant, so SNJV will be helping to crown both new GAPA royals this year. Attendees can expect some surprises and gags, promised SNJV.
“I hope people come, as it is going to be a glamorous, fun night,” said SNJV. “It is going to be fabulous.”
This year’s Runway theme “Harmonic Convergence” refers to the various self-care and mental health issues brought on by the COVID pandemic during their reign, explained SNJV. With APIs stereotyped as suppressing their emotions, the theme is meant to promote people embracing all aspects of their emotional selves whether it is negative or positive, SNJV added.
“It gives us space for a celestial reckoning of sorts,” said SNJV. “We are all stars so why do we continue to dim each other’s light when we are all stardust? We need to honor and make love to all parts of ourselves.”
GAPA Runway 2022 Harmonic Convergence will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday, August 13, at Herbst Theatre. Attendees need to show they are fully vaccinated and are “highly recommended” to wear masks as organizers are expecting upward of 400 people.
If purchased by July 31, individual tickets cost $30 to $50, with VIP seats priced at $135. As of August 1 the prices will increase, with the cheapest costing $35 and VIP $150.
A separate ticketed after-party will be held at Oasis nightclub. To purchase tickets to either event online, visit https://www.gapa.org/runway t
For Kirchick the next frontline of fighting homophobia is overseas. “I think that’s where we should be directing our attention, the real medieval treatment of gay people in places like Iran, Uganda, China, or Russia,” he said. “Basically, countries that are not democracies are really suffering.”
Kirchick sees several lessons readers can take away after finishing his book.
“I think it’s important to learn about the patriotism of these people who wanted to work for a government that didn’t want them,” he said. “It reminds me of Black soldiers in World War II fighting in a segregated unit. They genuinely believed in what they were doing, but they were still being discriminated against.
“Secondly, the perseverance of these people who served their country when their country didn’t want them is important to acknowledge,” he added. “Our country was denied a massive amount of talent, and it was a massive waste of energy and resources to investigate patriotic citizens because of who they loved. So much money and effort was wasted hunting down gay people and kicking them out, or keeping them out of politics in the first place. How many patriotic, talented people were there whose talents we didn’t benefit from?
“Overall, I think it’s an incredible journey,” Kirchick said. “To assess the full scale of the damage that the fear of homosexuality wrought on the American political landscape, one must take into account not only the careers ruined and the lives cut short, but also the possibilities thwarted. I feel enormous gratitude for the people who came before. For the people who went through this suffering so I wouldn’t have to.” t
com/dore has a good round up of the weekend’s events, plus a couple links about our history. t
Bob Goldfarb is the executive director of the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District. For more information about the district and its programs, visit its website at www.sflcd.org
I would bring my own rubber gloves and I would probably bring my own cleaning wipes just so that I can make sure any equipment that I touch, that I want to play with, I’ve wiped down before. And as a courtesy, I would often wipe it down myself.”
If you’re not feeling well, “take the higher road,” he said, “and maybe not attend every event or really honestly self-assess.”
Of course, it isn’t all sex at Dore. There’s the business of sex, too. There will be plenty of businesses and organizations there to sate fairgoers’ desires. According to Folsom Street Event’s list of exhibitors, visitors can expect to see booths from groups as diverse as Bitches Love Leather and PantherProwls, makers of all manner of leather gear and whips and floggers, to the Bare Chest Calendar
guys and Bear Thug, designers and manufacturers of sexy underwear for hirsute gay, bi, and trans men. There will also be plenty of groups to help people navigate their kinky life while maintaining their health: San Francisco Department of Public Health, Mission Neighborhood Health Center, UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention, and others will have booths at the fair.
AGAPE VALDEZ AKA RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ V, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ AKA RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ V is requesting that the name RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ AKA RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ V be changed to RAYNALDO AGAPE VALDEZ V. 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 6th of SEPTEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557245
In the matter of the application of KENNY MOY, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner KENNY MOY is requesting that the name KENNY MOY be changed to KENNETH K. MOY. 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 16th of AUGUST 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557250
In the matter of the application of OLGA LUCIA MUNOZ, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner OLGA LUCIA MUNOZ is requesting that the names OLGA LUCIA MUNOZ AKA OLGA MUNOZ AKA OLGA L. MUNOZ AKA OLGA LUCIA
MUNOZ-STRAUB be changed to OLGA LUCIA MUNOZ. 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 16th of AUGUST 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557249
In the matter of the application of YINJIE XIA, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner YINJIE XIA is requesting that the name YINJIE XIA be changed to JAMES YINJIE XIA DEA. 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 16th of AUGUST 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397546
The following person(s) is/are doing business as UNITED LIQUOR MARKET, 5298 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NADER MASSIS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/12/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397556
The following person(s) is/are doing business as SAFE LIMO, 1388 CALIFORNIA ST #403A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRAHIM J. ALAOUI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/99. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397564
The following person(s) is/are doing business as A&E ELECTRIC, 139 LEE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AMORSOLO ASUNCION. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/05/87. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397607
The following person(s) is/are doing business
For many, though, the event is just about getting out and seeing people.
AJ Huff, a queer man and local rubber enthusiast, and one of the organizers of the monthly pansexual event Rubber Ducky, said Dore is a chance to see folks and wear his gear out in public.
“Getting a chance to get out and see people I haven’t seen in a while, and just socialize,” he said. “Be in gear and meet some people.”
From page 7
“I support Kate Stoia because Kate Stoia supports artists and people like me,” said Jackson, who was born and raised in San Francisco. “She is a person who didn’t have the easiest life growing up. She used her skills to help others.”
He recalled how much of a “huge advocate” she was for SFBATCO and helped raise funds for it to thrive.
“Kate is one of the most strongwilled people I know. She doesn’t take no as an answer,” said Jackson.
He acknowledged the complexity she now faces as a candidate running for a seat long held by LGBTQ community leaders. Having out representation on the board is something Jackson said he, too, values.
“Being a queer man, I love that Rafael is also queer. Having that diversity is important for us,” said Jackson, while at the same time he noted that, “Kate has been such an ally to our community. He isn’t a bad person, nor is Kate. Both are wonderful people. They will duke it out.”
As for what he would you tell voters who may not think Stoia would be an effective representative for the LGBTQ community at City Hall, Arn told the B.A.R. that she knows what the issues are that are impacting LGBTQ people in
THADDEUS FORD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/16/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/30/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397559
The following person(s) is/are doing business as SIGMA ENGINEERING LABORATORIES, 1180 4TH ST #590, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BELKACEM SAOUD. 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 06/28/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397629
The following person(s) is/are doing business as SUPERNOVA COFFEEBEAN INFUSED SKINCARE, 834 CENTRAL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANTRINA CRAWFORD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397609
The following person(s) is/are doing business as MY-LINH MAKES, 548 MARKET ST #57106, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MY-LINH LE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/29/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/30/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397640
The following person(s) is/are doing business as ONEPLUS1; OP1 SOLUTIONS; OP1 RIDESHARE LTD; OP1 KENOBI RENTALS; 548 MARKET ST #80401, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARC HUNTE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/22. JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
Bob Goldfarb, a gay man and executive director of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District in which the annual fair takes place, said he’s looking forward to seeing friends and meeting people, but the fair also presents an opportunity to promote the work of the leather district. The district will have a booth at the event.
“We want to get the word out about the district,” he said, “provide education, and give people the opportunity to join and participate in whatever way they would like.”
For those looking for particularly iconic San Francisco souvenirs, the leather district will be selling district branded pins as well as hankies in black, red, yellow, teal, navy blue, and gray, Goldfarb said.
While they won’t have an official presence at the fair, the men of Onyx, a national organization for men of color who love leather, will be hanging out on Dore Alley
San Francisco and would be an “effective fighter” for them.
“In a way, it is the Harvey Milk seat, and I recognize that,” he said. “I also recognize the significance and symbolic importance of it nationally. I would say I think she has a long history with lesbian and gay people, and with people with AIDS, frankly. She knows what the issues are.”
On that point, Stoia said her pitch to District 8 voters is if they are happy with the status quo then reelect Mandelman. But if they aren’t pleased with how the city is being managed and feel the issues they care about aren’t being adequately addressed, then she hopes they vote for her. (William Jackson, a Republican who also qualified for the race, is no longer actively seeking the supervisor seat.)
“I feel there is so much more this city could be doing for the citizens here and just everyday life here in ways huge and teeny,” said Stoia, who currently isn’t working so as to be focused fully on her campaign in addition to her philanthropic commitments.
Mandelman, with broad support from elected leaders and various organizations, is seen as the clear frontrunner in the race. He points to the myriad policies and proposals he has fought for as the District 8 supervisor over the last four years as why he deserves a second term.
itself, just outside the Powerhouse Bar, said San Francisco chapter president, Graylin Thornton. That’s where he intends to be, smoking a cigar, he added.
Onyx members will hold their monthly bar night the Saturday night before, also at the Powerhouse, from 6 to 9 p.m. The San Francisco chapter threw its first play party back in May, selling 167 tickets, and has another planned for September, Thornton said. t
Up Your Alley runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, July 31. For more information, visit the event organizer’s website at https:// www.folsomstreet.org/
For information and resources about monkeypox, check out https://sf.gov/information/monkeypox or https://www.mpox.tips/ practical-advice
“As a district supervisor, it has been my great honor to work with neighborhood groups and community organizations to improve the areas that I represent and to work to address some of the larger citywide challenges confronting San Francisco,” Mandelman noted in his questionnaire for the San Francisco Democratic Party, which is voting Wednesday night on an endorsement in the race. t
To learn more about Stoia and her platform, visit her campaign site at https://www.katestoia.com/
Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on an Oakland resolution in support of repealing Prop 8.
Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.
Got a tip on LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT
FILE A-0397581
The following person(s) is/are doing business as SHINE LITTLE DIAMOND, 3216 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDWIN JESUS AYALA GARCIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT
FILE A-0397637
The following person(s) is/are doing business as INDIJEANE, 137 PRECITA AVE #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SASHA ALEXANDER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/28/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT
FILE A-0397642
The following person(s) is/are doing business as DONAIRO’S PIZZA, 6905 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MOHAMAD ELKADRI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/05/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/05/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT
FILE A-0397613
The following person(s) is/are doing business as I.E., 901 STANYAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDMOND LAWRENCE BOWEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT
FILE A-0397298
The following person(s) is/are doing business as GOLD MINE GROUP; CHARDONNAY ESCROW A NON-INDEPENDENT BROKER ESCROW; 2292 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed EXCLUSIVE LIFESTYLES, 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 06/07/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397449
The following person(s) is/are doing business as KMOSAIC; ALENAH BRUNSWICK; 328 SCHWERIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BLEATH LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/21/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397534
The following person(s) is/are doing business as MISSION FUEL AND FOOD, 4298 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed GAWFCO ENTERPRISES INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/23/19. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/27/22.
JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2022
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0397634
The following person(s) is/are doing business as IGNITE YOUR LIFE PATH, 418 FAIR OAKS ST #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed 418 FAIR OAKS ST #A (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/08/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of
“A little restraint, pardon the pun, is probably warranted right now.”
–Race Bannon, former B.A.R. leather columnistby Jim Gladstone
Seeing “Follies” is like spotting the Bigfoot of Broadway history: It’s the stuff of legend, even when it lumbers a bit. The current San Francisco Playhouse production more than does justice to this rarely revived classic of the Sondheim canon.
Playhouse artistic director Bill English is at the helm of the Bay Area’s first-ever professional staging of this 1971 backstage psychodrama about a late middle-age reunion of Ziegfieldstyle showgirls decades after their days in the kick line. And he’s got his work cut out for him. “Follies” has a multigenerational cast of 21,
some of Sondheim’s most labyrinthine lyrics and one of the more unorthodox (and, yes, ungainly) narrative structures in Broadway musical history. The show is eye-popping, heart-wrenching and fully engaging.
At its opening, “Follies” seems to be offering a “Big Chill”-like group portrait of five female characters. But after three of them get a single character song (One of which, “I’m Still Here”—performed by Cindy Goldfield as jaded starlet Carlotta—is an early high point of the show), they’re elbowed to the margins as the focus zooms in on the remaining two former chorines, Sally (Natascia Diaz) and Phyllis (Maureen McVerry), whose tumultuous relationships with their husbands Buddy (Anthony Rollins-Mul-
by Gregg Shapiro
The aptly named “Home Video” (Matador), the third album by queer singer/songwriter
Lucy Dacus, is as personal as the title suggests. Frank and forthcoming, Dacus comes fully into focus, beginning with “Hot & Heavy,” and continuing with the raw honesty of “Christine.”
The modern-rocking “First Time” kicks it up a notch, while the difficult “VBS,” brings to mind the work of Becca Mancari, whose similar stifling religious upbringing, is yet another strong argument for atheism.
Dacus strikes a balance between gorgeous musical arrangements (“Thumbs,” “Going Going Gone,” “Please Stay,” “Cartwheel”) which softens the blow of some of the subject matter, and thrilling rhythmic tunes including “Brando,” “Triple Dog Dare,” and “Partner In Crime.” Highly recommended!
Lucy Dacus performs Nov. 17 at the Fox Theatre, Oakland. www.lucydacus.com
Easily one of the most unforgettable debut albums in recent memory, “Bones” (Mack Avenue/ Artistry Music) by queer vocalist/instrumentalist/songwriter Michael Mayo is an exceptional achievement. Reminiscent of serpentwith-
feet’s equally incredible 2021 album “Deacon,” “Bones” introduces us to another out and proud Black artist and his prodigious talents.
As experimental as they are accessible, Mayo’s compositions flirt with jazz, modern soul and pop, and never fail to keep us mesmerized. Outstanding numbers include “Stolen Moments,” “You and You,” “Silver and Gold,” “20/20,” “Hold On,” and “What’s My Name.” www.michaelmayomusic.com
At the end of her incredible life, cut short at 49 in 1997, Laura Nyro’s fans got a couple of surprises. The first was that she had ovarian cancer, which was the cause of her sudden passing. The other was that she was bisexual and had been in a relationship with a woman for several years. It’s possible that her queer fans could sense that, which would go a long way in explaining her sizable following in the community.
Like lesbian singer/songwriter Janis Ian, Nyro recorded her first album when she was still in her teens. Also like Ian, she was signed to Columbia Records for a number of years. Unlike her previous albums, the rare and reissued “Trees of the Ages: Laura Nyro Live in Japan” (Omnivore) was initially only released in Japan. The first 16 tracks were recorded in 1994 in Osaka at Kintetsu Hall, while the remaining five songs were recorded live
lens) and Ben (Chris Vettel) become the anginal heart of the show.
A musical theater counterpart to the quarrelsome quartet of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” these couples are brilliantly played, but often tough to take. Sondheim and book writer Goldman were decades ahead of their time in probing the complex psychology of long-term marriages with the kind of detail that today tends to be played out more slowly over prestige cable and streaming series. Compacted into two-anda-half dizzying hours that also packed with song and dance, this palpably neurotic foursome’s unpredictable swings between comic and creepy extremes comes close to overwhelming.
That said, the performances are extraordinary. McVerry provides a running subtext to her lines with deftly-timed wrist flips and eyebrow arches. Rollins-Mullins undergirds unfaithful Buddy with an empathic humanity that shines through even his nastiest outbursts. Diaz gives Sally an on-the-brink-of-breaking emotional fragility; a spooky mash-up of Laura Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” and Karen Black in, well, in general. And Vettel makes Ben the hollowest of hollow men, a sort of slap-happy Jay Leno-Mike Pence hybrid.
A younger actor shadows each of the central foursome, playing earlier more idealistic versions
ment), the new album by gay smooth jazz sax player Dave Koz, is also a collaboration. Koz teamed up with guitarist/bass and keyboard player Cory Wong for the 11 tracks, co-written by Koz and Wong. Koz has come to be known as an excellent collaborator (see his annual Summer Horns and Christmas concert tours as prime examples).
“The Golden Hour” radiates with exciting musical experiences, including the funky and rocking “Getaway Car” and “Junkyard Dunebuggy,” the warm title cut, the slinky “Little Rascals,” the hot “Engine 71,” and the emotion-laden “Gratitude.”
www.davekoz.com
at On Air West in Shibuya, also in the same year.
The songs are a mix of covers (“Walk on By,” “Let It Be Me”), her classics (“Save The Country,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “And When I Die”), as well as later songs (such as “Louise’s Church,” which includes a mention of Sappho!). www.omnivorerecordings.com
Another music legend from the past, Marianne Faithfull, wrote openly about her bisexuality in her 1994 memoir “Faithfull.” The singer, best known for hits including “As Tears Go By” and “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” continues making music to the present day, and recovered from Coronavirus after almost a month in the hospital in 2020.
“She Walks in Beauty” (Panta Rei/BMG), Faithfull’s new album, is considerably different from her others. First, it’s a collaboration with Australian musician Warren Ellis, known for his work with Nick Cave and the Bad Seed and other bands. The other thing that separates this project from earlier Faithfull releases is that she doesn’t sing on the album, but rather recites poems by John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, among others. www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk
“The Golden Hour” (Just Koz Entertain-
Beginning with “No Man,” which can best be described as a 21st-century, queer, feminist rewrite of the Beatles’ “Come Together,” complete with a “disease” and “please” rhyme, Emily Wolfe makes an impression as lasting as the tattoo ink on her arms. Everything that follows on her blistering second album “Outlier” (Crows Feet) lives up to the promise of the opening track, particularly “LA/NY,” “Damage Control,” “Vermillion Park,” “My Lungs Give Out,” and lush album closer “Heavenly Hell.”
www.emilywolfemusic.com
From its title, “Bristol County Tides” and its country-blues opener “Third Street,” you might think queer singer/songwriter Annie Keating is from somewhere in the heart of the south. The truth is that Bristol County, where Keating and her family sought shelter during the pandemic, is in Southeastern Massachusetts.
For Brooklyn-based Keating, geographic rules don’t really apply. When it comes to the 15 songs on her album, one thing’s for sure, Keating owes a debt to Mary Gauthier, another musician with a connection to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This rings true on several of the songs, including “Blue Moon Tide,” “Marigold,” “Hank’s Saloon,” “Kindness,” “Bittersweet” and “Goodbye.”
www.anniekeating.comt
“Shameis a really tricky beast,” said gay San Francisco-based playwright and actor Kevin Rolston, “(shame) hides things from you and whispers in your ear that you’re not good enough.”
Rolston’s new solo play, “Deal With The Dragon,” running through August 14 at the Magic Theatre, was inspired by the Alan Downs’ book “The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World” and Rolston’s own suburban Pennsylvania upbringing.
“I grew up in literally the sociology textbook example of suburbia,” said Rolston of Levittown, Pennsylvania, “they just pumped out ticky, tacky houses, little copies of each other.” Rolston said that underneath the tidiness of his suburban upbring there was a dark side, “I grew up in a very blue collar, working class, homophobic, and racist environment.”
Rolston recalls the first time he thought he might be gay.
“I was like 10 and he was prob-
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ably 11,” Rolston said of one of his childhood friends. “We started playing behind my house and sort of just started bumping each other nakedly.” Rolston wouldn’t come out until college, but that moment awakened something in Rolston who said, “How exciting it was, this moment of like, oh, this is an option!”
Rolston is a lifelong lover of reading, the more advanced the literature the better. The category he loved most in high school was forensics. Not forensics like in “C.S.I.”, but speech-based literature and its presentation. Categories like speech, debate, storytelling, and theater.
“I was just devouring pretty intense plays like “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf” at the age of 14 or 15. But,” Rolston said, “I didn’t really have access to see them financially, so my first relationship with theater was on the page.”
Rolston eventually found a creative outlet in standup comedy.
“I didn’t know anyone, no one knew me. I didn’t have any connections, so I just did open mic nights.”
Rolston said those nights in front of unpredictable crowds gave him a fearlessness that he traces directly to that experience. That fearlessness has been on display for much of Rolston’s theatrical career, at least the part that is made up of original works.
“I did flounder for a number of years, trying to be a theater artist for hire,” said Rolston, “And it was just making me wildly unhappy.”
Crystal Christian
Remember Ted Haggard –the Colorado Springs megachurch pastor with a history of homophobic politics and rhetoric– who had a very famous fall-from-grace in 2006? That story inspired Rolston to finally write an idea he had been mulling over for years. That idea became Rolston’s first play, “Crystal Christian.”
“‘Crystal Christian’ was in response to homophobic evangelical preachers who get caught with a gay sex worker doing crystal meth,” said Rolston bluntly, “That archetype, that just doesn’t seem to stop, it just keeps coming.”
After staging a summer workshop production at the Magic Theatre, Rolston was never able to completely return to being an actor for hire.
“The passion had gone out of it, and I realized I needed to tell these stories.” Rolston said. These stories, specifically, are gay stories, something Rolston said is lacking in modern theater.
“Theater is glacially slow when it comes to queer representation, I think,” said Rolston.
But slow is not a pace theater can maintain if it wishes to survive in an on-demand world with so many entertainment options. How can theater get better?
“For me, it always comes back to the playwright,” Rolston said without irony. “Find a potential voice that’s not common and invest in that voice. And support theaters.”
In “Deal with the Dragon,” which Rolston wrote and stars in, he plays all three characters in the show. The first is an artist struggling to land a gallery show at a respected museum, the second a patron with a dark side who looks out for the artist, and finally a flamboyant rival to spice things up.
The production that just opened at the Magic Theatre is a retooled version of the original which was selected as one of the top 20 theater shows to see at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe by The List, out of more than 900 entrants.
“Ultimately ‘Deal with the Dragon’ is about shame,” said Rolston. “In this case from growing up queer and the rage that can grow out of that.”
In this production we see that shame take different forms throughout the life of the protagonist through flashbacks. “Deal with the Dragon” is well-staged, the perfect length at just over an hour, and is acted masterfully.
On opening night, Rolston channeled the late actor Robin Williams, effortlessly changing accents and body language to shift between various characters in conversation with one another. His mastery of each role’s nuances and quirks kept the interweaving stories easy to follow.
One particularly honest moment at a recovery meeting seemed ripped directly from the soul of Rolston, who has been sober for a decade. He wept through the entire scene. t
Kevin Rolston’s ‘Deal With The Dragon,’ 8pm Thursday-Saturday, and 3pm Sundays through August 13 at the Magic Theatre. Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd. $20-70. www.magictheatre.org
Like any good show queen, Seth Rudetsky was a fanboy first. Now a veteran of Broadway (in both the orchestra pit and on stage), a satellite radio host hailed for his encyclopedic knowledge of theater music, and a multi-platform impresario (books, concerts, cruises, Zoom!), Rudetsky returns to Feinstein’s at the Nikko on August 4 and 5 with “Seth’s Big Fat 70s Variety Show” an evening that takes him back to some of his deepest roots.
Before he had access to all the opening nights and backstage gossip on the Great White Way, the budding young Rudetsky, a middle school proto-gay in North Woodmere, New York, got his fix of allsinging, all-dancing, all-pratfalling spectacle over the airwaves. Nursed on the boob tube (ironically, a source of formula), Rudetsky ingested endless hours of awards programs and variety shows that he now celebrates and eviscerates.
24 Hours Saturday Open 24 Hours
Sunday 7am (last seating 9:45pm)
The 90-minute collection of pithy quips, video clips and an audienceparticipation production number (a completely different show than Rudetsky’s Broadway-based evening, which sold out Feinstein’s in May) plays homage to –and makes carnage of– a once giant genre now largely relegated to nostalgia.
“Donny and Marie,” “Dolly,” “Dinah!,” “Don Knotts” and “Don Ho” are all fair game as Rudetsky dives to the depths of questionable taste and acknowledges the occasional glorious moments of the hour-long celebrity-hosted revues that were
a staple of primetime TV between Nixon and Reagan.
Readers under the age of 40 may be entirely oblivious to this onetime cornucopia (accent on corn) of network programming, in which everyone from Richard Pryor to Jim Nabors had a run at playing gladhanding host to radio hit-makers, fellow television series stars and ubiquitous fey demi-celebs like game show staples Paul Lynde and Rip Taylor.
Taylor, a close friend and sartorial soulmate of Liberace, was a regular on one of the programs that Rudetsky will offer strong –if not quite fond– memories of in his presentation: “The Brady Bunch Hour.”
Brace for Bradys
“I’ll definitely be diving into the Bradys variety show,” Rudetsky remarked from Madrid in a recent email exchange with The Bay Area Reporter (He was braving the evershifting tides of COVID, performing on a cruise). “It’s crazy, because it wasn’t Florence Henderson and the rest of the cast going on a variety show as themselves. The premise was that the Bradys got their own
variety show. I can’t think of any other variety show that had a plot line running through it.”
[Note to young readers: ‘The Brady Bunch’ was a television sitcom (1969-1974) in which Carol (Florence Henderson), widowed blonde mother of three blonde girls, married Mike (Robert Reed), brunette father of three brunette boys, who also had a deceased spouse, as little to no divorce was allowed on early 1970s television. Hijinks ensued. Nose was broken.]
Elaborating on the Brady variety show’s peculiarity, Rudetsky went on, “So Mike was still an architect. And bizarrely, Alice was still their maid, even though they were all singing and dancing on television. They bedazzled her maid uniform, though.”
Despite “The Brady Bunch” sitcom’s having been cancelled due to poor ratings in 1974, Rudetsky marveled, the clan was resuscitated by the brother-producer team of Sid and Marty Kroftt (best known for Saturday morning children’s shops including Muppety acid trip “H.R. Pufnstuf” and crypto-lesbian super hero mentorship program “Electra Woman and Dyna Girl”)
“I guess,” mused Rudetsky, “that they thought it would satisfy people who’d loved ‘The Brady Bunch’ and wished there were more episodes while also bringing in people who wanted to see singing and dancing to medleys of public domain songs like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and suburban families funking out to “Car Wash.”
See page 15 >>
by Victoria A. Brownworth
N
ow that the season finale of the January 6th Committee has left us in a cliffhanger, we turn to other thrillers and dramas. Here are some shows we highly recommend.
Flowers in the Attic: The Origin
Based on V.C. Andrews’ provocative novels that we all read so avidly as queer teens, “Flowers in the Attic: The Origin” is a limited series and a prequel to “Flowers in the Attic” based on Andrews’ novel “Garden of Shadows.”
The series revolves around Olivia Winfield Foxworth (Jemima Rooper), the grandmother of the Dollanganger children, and how her marriage to Malcolm Foxworth (Max Irons) became the driving force in her life.
The Lifetime series tells the origin story of how the dark Foxworth family secrets shaped the family from the very beginning. Lifetime has kindly added a hot gay storyline that isn’t in the books.
Lifetime has done several “Flowers in the Attic” movies in the past year and all are very, very good, but this series is the best.
“Flowers in the Attic: The Origin” has everything: secrets, most of them shocking; incest; patri cide; infanticide; murder. It’s a period piece set in 1920s and 1930s Virginia, so every scene is “Downton Abbey” gorgeous.
Joel and Harry are the sweetest, hottest outlaw interracial gay couple and we get to see them together in bed, which is also very hot. Joel Foxworth (out gay British actor Luke Fetherston) is Malcolm’s youngest son. Harry (British actor Jordan Peters) is a Foxworth employee. The chemistry is undeniable and so they don’t deny it.
But since this is “Flowers in the Attic,” there is a scary element and Joel is forced to undergo conversion therapy when his father discovers him kissing Harry. It’s gruesome. And all doesn’t go well for Harry, either.
In an interview with the British magazine Attitude, Fetherston spoke about how hard it still is to be an out actor and the impact of his role in the series and all it depicts. Fetherston said he was “very
From page 14
Infrequent splendors, repeat offenders
Rudetsky’s less ironically adored favorites include “The Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show,” “The Captain and Tenille,” and of course, the serial variety endeavors of a certain Cherilyn Sarkisian.
At Feinstein’s, Rudestky will share Cher’s multi-costumed, green-screen-assisted medley of tunes from “West Side Story.” While this number actually appeared on “Cher…Special”, a onenight event in 1978, the diva had already helmed three variety series, “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” (1971-1974), her post-divorce “Cher” (1975) and their stilldivorced (but amicable) reunion, “The Sonny and Cher Show” (1976-1977).
Additional hosts with multiple variety incarnations included a post-hat-toss Mary Tyler Moore (“Mary” in 1978; and “The Mary Tyler Moore Hour” in 1979); a prepants-drop Bill Cosby (The New
recently” told to hide his sexuality.
“I didn’t know about what people were put through, and what people still are being put through,” Fetherston told Attitude. “I did as much research as I could. And I wanted to give that moment in the series as much weight as I believe that it deserves.”
Fetherston said, “His secret is that he’s discovering that he’s a gay man, and he falls in love with one of the housekeepers, Harry. His journey is trying to keep that secret from his brother and sister who he absolutely adores. So that relationship between the siblings is really beautiful.”
Fetherston continued, “But then his parents find out. So then he has to suffer the consequences of what that meant in the 1920s and 30s: ‘conversion therapy.’ This isn’t a spoiler by any means. The trailer shows Luke’s character undergoing some extreme ‘treatment.’”
The acting in “Flowers in the Attic: The Origin” is oh-so-good, the scares are real, the heartbreak is just as we remember it from “Flowers in the Attic,” the dramatic tension is trip-wire tight and the plot twists unnerving.
The cast includes heavyweights Kelsey Grammer, Harry Hamlin, Kate Mulgrew as well as Callum Kerr, Hannah Dodd, Paul Wesley and Alana Boden.
Grantchester, Season 7
We can’t get enough of British period pieces. We love PBS’s Grantchester, which spans the 1950s and 1960s in the semi-rural English Cambridgeshire village.
Bill Cosby Show” in 1973-1974; “Cos” in 1976); and the eternally inexplicable Tony Orlando and Dawn (“Tony Orlando and Dawn” in 1974-1976; “The Tony Orlando and Dawn Rainbow Hour” in 1976-1977).
Nuanced titles were not among the genre’s strong suits. But, short of Cher, what were the strong suits?
“Ummmm….”, Rudetsky mused, at least they were a bit of a different animal than “The Lawrence Welk Show” or “Hee Haw.”
“OMG. Those shows that only lasted on my TV set for ten minutes. I was able to watch an entire variety show in the ’70s and find moments I loved!”
Asked what he felt was the closest thing in today’s television programming to the variety shows of yesteryear, Rudetsky had an easy answer: “The January 6th hearings. So depressing, yet so riveting!” t
‘Seth’s Big Fat 70s Variety Show,’ Thu. and Fri. Aug 4-5. Feinstein’s at the Nikko. 222 Mason St. $75. (866) 633-1063. www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com
The British ITV detective drama focuses on Anglican vicar William Davenport (Tom Brittney), who is also a part-time detective with Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green). As we devotees of British mysteries know, these small towns are virtual killing fields. A lot of terrible things happen in these claustrophobic settings where it’s difficult to fully hide one’s secrets, when everyone knows everyone else.
Will is a young, good-looking, single vicar who loves women. His assistant, curate Leonard Finch (Al Weaver), is gay and deeply involved with photojournalist Daniel Marlowe (Oliver Dimsdale).
An ongoing sub-plot deals with Leonard’s being gay before decriminalization of homosexual behavior in England and Wales in 1967. In a shocking series of events, season 6 had Leonard sent to prison after he was blackmailed and lost his position in the Church. It was a provocative
and deeply moving season and Weaver was stellar in portraying the torture Leonard experiences as his life implodes simply for holding hands with Daniel. As season 7 premieres, Leonard is once again a free man and has replaced his clerical collar with a black Beat-poet turtleneck. He’s opened a poetry café called The Cherry Orchard, which he has decorated with photos of literary heavyweights like Chekov.
Meanwhile Will enters into an illicit love affair of his own and Mrs. C (Tessa Peake-Jones), the vicarage’s devoutly religious housekeeper who views Leonard like a son, is thought by her husband Jack to be having an affair herself, but it’s actually something far more sinister.
“Grantchester” airs Sundays on PBS, followed by season 2 of the stellar dystopian British thriller “COBRA,” which is so hyper-realistic, it can be hard to watch. But it’s superb. “COBRA,” which we wrote about here when season one debuted in October 2020, is a fastpaced political juggernaut set in the not-so-distant future. The series focuses on global crises besetting the U.K. government, most notably the prime minister and his chief of staff as they cope with intense political and personal onslaughts. Season two takes the pandemic and climate crisis and melds them for a provocative take on what viruses can do. t
Read coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, and more GOP heinous statements, on www.ebar.com.
COBRA
by Laura Moreno
Great books spur readers to grow and discover truths for themselves. Each of Ana Castillo’s books delivers just that. In fact, Ana Castillo has been instrumental in the fight for LGBTQ acceptance, particularly within the Hispanic community (which is slightly more accepting than the general population).
With a well-earned reputation as a fearless, sensitive, extremely intelligent, intuitive writer. It’s a combination of traits that allows her to instinctively ask the right questions to get to the core truth. So much so that the Tucson United Schools banned two of Castillo’s books (“So Far From God” and “Loverboys”) along with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
Recently inducted in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, Castillo is an award-winning author who has been called an “American treasure” (she’s of mixed European and Native American ancestry), “fashionista” and newly minted fashion designer, and (although atypical of literary figures) drag queens in Mexico dress up like her. She’s also the inspiration for the new Desert Mirage IPA by Shiner.
Her unexpectedly influential book “Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma” was met with ex citement by the academic community. Xicanisma is the term Castillo invented for Chicana feminism. Through interviews and ethnographic research, she documents the labor struggles, spirituality, and sexuality of Chicanas in the 20th century. The 2014 anniversary edition includes an essay, “The Real and True Meaning of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” that won the Gloria Anzaldúa Prize for Independent Scholarship. In it, Castillo uses astronomy (as her Native American ancestors did) to research the cryptic origins of the goddess of the Americas.
Her brilliantly titled “My Book of the Dead” (UNMP; NM, 2021), is an elegy for the people in her life who have died, but also for the countless people who’ve died due to gun violence and systematic racism. Notably, it is a return to poetry for her, and includes lighter poems and her own intricate drawings.
The backgrounds of the drawings seem matrix-like, representing the energetic vibrations of the universe
that we each draw from and contribute to, according to Native American lore. The drawing of a young woman, strikingly, has a large snake coiled around her. It is a symbol of creativity/sexuality and healing and represents her own power and fearlessness in the face of challenges.
This is a book for the ages. Surely future generations will look back in disbelief that the United States of America, known for successfully eradicating infectious disease everywhere, suddenly approached the coronavirus from a vantage point of helplessness. It’s the way we seem to approach everything now from world events to the weather, apparently having forgotten that we have nothing to fear, as FDR said, ‘Aren’t we a superpower?’ The pandemic wreaked grief on all of us who lost loved ones, lost valuable time, and lost earnings. Native American communities in the Southwest were devastated and Hispanics disproportionately lost our lives.
This book is a clarion call to look beneath the surface and at last take care of one another as we know we should.
“Black Dove: Mama, Mi’jo, and Me,” recipient for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction, is a memoir. It delves into her hardscrabble upbringing, traumas, her bisexuality, a near-death experience, battling cancer, the incarceration of her own son, and the largely ignored prison-for-profit racket.
Castillo came out in a time before the LGBTQ community was united and bisexuality was criticized as a “betrayal” of gays. The mind always wants to judge, rather than simply
behold what is. The hardest thing for a human to do, still, is to simply be. We always want to create categories and labels, as if they are real when reality is actually far more complex and varied.
Mothers, rivals
The chapter “On Mothers, Lovers, and Other Rivals” gets real about the great love of her life, a well-known, unnamed woman author. “So far in life, I’ve been truly in love only once with a woman. How it came to be was like a personalized meteorite had plunged from the sky faster than the speed of sound and left a radiating crater in my chest.”
Although her son’s incarceration was perhaps the most painful experience of her life, the chapter “Mi’jo’s Canon in D Major” is must-reading for anyone in a similar situation
From page 13
of the same characters, frequently on stage alongside their elder selves. It’s a tricky conceit, but director English not only keeps things clear, but along with choreographer Nicole Helfer, leverages these duos to create some of the evening’s most moving moments.
When Buddy and his younger self (Chachi Delgado) dance with imaginary partners while singing “The Right Girl,” the self-realizing romance between man and boy across time feels more honest and rewarding than either’s fantasy of married coupledom.
More time-warped mirror images are on tap when Sally, Phyllis and the other former showgirls perform with their own younger selves in the Busby Berkeley-style showstopper, “Who’s That Woman”; the younger actresses wearing costume designer Abra Berman’s spectacular white-feathered headdresses and sparkling bodysuits.
With the central quartet, their youthful doppelgangers, and plenty of secondary characters, the Playhouse stage can start to feel crowded. In ad-
seeking solace and understanding. The chapter gives us a glimpse into the unconditional love that was fostered by the experience. Full of soul searching, she recalls that her son was always a good kid who had only recently become distant and depressed. As she searches for answers, she must ask herself: was she too blame? “Had I held my head too high and gained God’s disapproval for the sin of pride?” Or not high enough?
“When I Died in Oaxaca” is a near-disaster story told with humor rather than poignancy.
“It was as if I had found myself in the embrace of God. If you can imagine what it would be like to be cradled and welcomed and loved by a divine presence, this is where I was.”
Misdiagnosed by two doctors, certain that at 47 she was not having a heart attack (she was!), a friend became alarmed after the doctors left her for dead. So she performed a Native American medicinal maneuver that seeks to put the soul back into the body. Castillo writes, “I felt her hands go under each of my armpits and, with the instinct of a curandera, which we had both inherited from our abuelas ... she yanked my body up from the pillows...I didn’t want to come back.”
A comedy of errors, but all’s well that ends well. Castillo answered a few questions in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter.
LauraMoreno: Any hints about the identity of the famous author you were in a relationship with?
Ana Castillo: You’re referring to a personal essay included in my collection, “Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me” (Feminist Press; NY 2016). I think people know.
Regarding your near-death experience, did you see/sense God or heaven?
I didn’t see God or reach heaven as I chose to return once I was aware that I was transitioning. It was a beautiful experience and I agree with others who’ve had near-death experiences, you don’t really want to return to this life. Afterwards, you may even feel depressed. [The full account of Ana Castillo’s death and resurrection is in “Black Dove.”]
What are you working on now?
I just finished a new collection of stories, “Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home” (HarperVia NY, 2023). And the next book, “ISABEL 2121,” my first dystopian novel, will follow in the near future.
I also actively draw and am planning a small showing of my drawings this August in San Miguel de Allende. I’m currently working on trying to maintain an inner calm as the U.S. resumes an atmosphere of gun violence, open racism and diminishing Women’s Rights including abortion.
What advice do you wish someone had given you when you started your literary career?
When I decided to make writing, specifically poetry, my life’s work, Chicanas weren’t published. It was critical personally and politically to create that path. I’d advise anyone taking an untracked but necessary path, always love yourself, work on that first. That will lead you and carry you through to meet your goals.
www.anacastillo.net t
Read the full interview on www.ebar.com.
dition to the trio of igneous Rockettes there’s the one-time impresario who mounted their revues, the emcee who warmed up their way-back-when audiences, and a couple of sexy male dancers. But English and Helfer make the most of that circumstance, turning what could have been traffic jams of blocking and choreography into Felliniesque dream tableaux.
Lopsided highlights
A final coup of narrative strangeness occurs late in the evening when forward motion is set aside for an unexpected burlesque MRI of the leading characters brains: Four terrifically executed, though almost entirely redundant, novelty numbers sum up their states-of-mind (Or, in the case of Sally, her state of “Losing My Mind”).
These are among the best set pieces in the show, with McVerry tearing up the floor in a Latin-inflected dance with her own inner devils and RollinsMullens delivering the night’s highest high with “Buddy’s Folly” (aka “The God Why Don’t You Love Me Blues”) but while they slightly deepen already familiar personality traits, they also lengthen the show with even more in-
formation about characters we know well, they further squeeze the rest of the ensemble off to the edges.
This is a book problem long noted by critics, and a lesson that seems well-learned by the creators of the more tidily democratic “A Chorus Line” which debuted just a few years after “Follies.”
San Francisco Playhouse’s “Follies” is not a reimagining of this gargantuan, seldom seen work. It’s a faithful, frequently thrilling revival that unapologetically puts a shine on every wart and carbuncle. While certainly a must-see for aficionados of Broadway musical history, it also offers a trenchant exploration of marriage that feels surprisingly undated even after 51 years, the most intellectually acute choreography of the season, and a heaping reminder of Stephen Sondheim’s always ambitious artistic genius. To miss it would be your folly. t
‘Follies’ through September 10. San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St. $30-$100. (415) 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org
“Howbad could a waterboarding really be if you could get up and walk away afterward?” So posits the spicy protagonist of multi-talented author Davey Davis’ kinky dystopian new novel “X”. It’s true, sometimes opening chapters tell us all we need to know about the pages to follow and this one will seduce you inside, strap you down, and force submission even if you resist the temptation.
The action begins in the deep dark recesses of a Brooklyn warehouse where a dungeon party is in full swing and where Lee, the nonbinary narrator who has “paid good, nonrefundable money to have (my own body) chopped up and rearranged”, preps themselves to play the role of a tortured, demeaned political prisoner at the mercy of “a femme who had me over a barrel”.
Lee is in fireplace poker-hot pursuit of a dominatrix cryptically named “X” but first they have to endure the sadistic dark gratifications of Dom-femme Venus first in order to pry out any information she might share.
Certainly, things could be better; Lee’s life has hit a low point. They just ended a rather rickety relationship with the masochistic Petra (whom they’ve imagined styling her funeral) and are bored working for a huge corporation where, to kill time, they take
hourly bathroom trips and chitchat with a coworker who keeps her dog in her lap. They spend days and nights searching for some semblance of human connection while trying to tread water in an America that has succumbed to the kind of dreary hellscape dystopia we fear most. It’s a place where a fascist government “exports” citizens out of the country deemed to be socially and politically undesirable whether it be people of color, social justice activists, general detractors, or “sex changers” (an action now considered a felony in this universe), all in a grand effort to shorten “the timeline between now and mass extinction.”
As the narrative tension ratchets up, so does the backstories that give vivid form and shape to who Lee really is, how they feel, and why finding X has become such a life-or-death pursuit. As the chase escalates, so does Lee’s desperation as they lament that “I’m still handsome, but I also look like shit. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of my face, but I’d take a cheese grater to it if I thought it would help me find X.”
instantly knew something important about her, which was that I had never seen anyone like her before.”
Davis’s 2017 debut, “the earthquake room,” was a quiet success about a couple navigating life together in the Bay Area as climate and political disasters have made life unbearably nightmarish, including a disease making the rounds of the population.
Here, in a dictatorship-ruled Manhattan, pleasure and escape come at a high premium and is sought like rare diamonds.
But Lee is also a sadist and has yet to experience any BDSM scene like the one shared with “X,” so finding them has become an obsession. Their intense bonding, across a leather bench befitted with straps and stirrups, was lifealtering and unforgettable and Lee is on a mission to recreate that session and maybe become one of X’s properties.
One of Davey’s enormous talents is worldbuilding through tightly wound, imaginative descriptions of characters, moods, and places. After the opening bondage scene, a dominatrix’s boots are artfully featured as “a bird’s nest of black vinyl next to the toilet.”
Lee’s first sensations with X are blissfully dark, thorny, and gothic, and prime fodder for the ultimate descriptive passage: “There was something about her that was familiar, the way she held and moved her body, a visual aroma twisting against itself, a dynamic tension, as if the Helmut Newton photos of Grace Jones and Sigourney Weaver had locked eyes in the midst of an orgy, recognizing each other from a previous life. I didn’t know her, but I
first weekend events, which will essentially be intimate watch parties with in-person group discussions. Cast members in the first readings of Elana Dykewoman’s “How To Let Your Lover Die” and
by Jim GladstoneHow can a local theater festival amplify its pursuit of national and international exposure for up-and-coming playwrights? As it turns out, the pandemic offered some valuable lessons.
“We’re actually keeping aspects the online approach we did last year and combining it with our pre-pandemic in-person approach,” said Jessica Bird Beza, Executive Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, which presents its 45th showcase this weekend and next.
The stellar roster of playwrights whose work has been showcased at BAPF in previous years includes Sam Shepard, Anna Deveare Smith, David Henry Hwang, Lauren Yee and Rajiv Joseph.
Three of the five scripts being presented this year feature queer content.
“Some people still have immunity concerns related to COVID,” Beza said, “So having online access is valuable for that reason; but going online during the pandemic also helped us realize that we can be seen by more people who can be exposed to these works, both potential producers and funders, and engaged audience members. We’ve had one playwright’s grandma see their work for the first time because of it.
“All of the scripts with be pre -
sented on both weekends,” explained Bird, “For its first reading, each play will have only in-person audiences. On the second weekend, they’ll also be live-streamed online, which allows members of the theater community all over the world to watch and participate in the discussion.”
The in-person readings will all take place at the Potrero Stage, and for local theater artists, aspiring playwrights and theater lovers intrigued by the creative process, they offer a rare opportunity to experience new plays and engage with emerging playwrights early in their development.”
“One of the most important things about our festival,” said Beza, “is that these are works in development. After each reading, the playwright asks the audience questions: ‘What’s working well? Are there elements that are harder to understand?’”
Using feedback following the first weekend’s readings, Beza explained that the writers are likely to make changes and adjustments that get implemented in the second readings. Hybrid passes will allow attendees of in-person readings to revisit any or all of the plays online the following weekend.
Online technology will even have a role in two of this year’s
If the premise sounds eerily familiar and a bit too relevant, it certainly is, and readers will want to start their Davey Davis journey with that first book. “X” surpasses that first effort, but both are terrific books. Delectably provocative, adventurous, urgent, dizzying, mouthwateringly kinky, queer, and not for the faint of heart, Davis has conjured an ashen gray world where the end is near, but sex remains hot and ready on the tongues of the surviving outcasts.
But whether in the form of a bloody BDSM release while tied to a St. Andrew’s Cross or a sex date at the novel’s underground Fist club, hope beckons and snaps right around the corner like the quick of a whip. t
‘X’ by Davey Davis; Catapult Books, $16.95 www.books.catapult.co
Sharifa Yasmin’s “Close to Home” will be performing remotely. In the case of “Close To Home,” this allowed the role of a trans female with Arabic heritage to be cast with an actor who aligned with the
playwright’s vision of the character but happens to live in England.
Selected from 240 applicants, this years showcase plays are:
See page 18 >>
PUBLICATION DATE: September 1
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Call 415 829 8937 or email advertising@ebar.com
If nothing else, actor-director Billy Porter’s new film, “Anything’s Possible,” screening on Amazon Prime, confirms its title in that it has rendered Pittsburgh at inviting, attractive and dare we say, romantic.
The best way to approach this movie is to view it as a fantasy, of what it should be like for young Black trans women rather than the often realistic trauma scenario. Intrinsic to this fairy tale, the main characters are upper middle-class seniors attending a tony private school with professional, accomplished parents.
The film opens with cheery YouTube videos created by confident, funny, and ambitious 17-year-old trans high school senior Kelsa (Eva Reign) on her secret subscriber channel. She talks about her favorite super cool exotic animals as well as commentary on the transgender experience.
Life seems perfect, aided by a stylish eye-popping wardrobe (courtesy of “Pose’s” costume designer Analucia McGorty) and her two BFF’s Em (Courtnee Carter) and Chris (Kelly Lamor Wilson), not to mention her totally supportive divorced single doctor mother (Renee Elise Goldsberry, “Hamilton”).
Kelsa’s primary objective is getting out of Pittsburgh to attend a university in Los Angeles or New York to
pigeonholed because of her gender, but regarded as a unique individual, to be loved for who she is, even if she’s still processing what that identity might be.
The problem is that Porter and trans screenplay writer Ximena Garcia Lecuona have crammed too much material into a 90-minute film, covering the full gamut of trans issues and their cultural ramifications, a tutorial on how to be a proper ally.
“Anything’s Possible” works less on character development, especially the supporting cast, most of whom resemble one-line stereotypes with little personality or depth.
Undermined exuberance
a teenager, like Ben Platt in last year’s dismal “Dear Evan Hansen.”
Her world-wiseness and controlling demeanor is contrary to Kelsa’s trying to figure life out attitude and lacks credibility. Ali at 31 faces even more daunting challenges, especially in close-ups. These age discrepancies, no longer viable on streaming channels, create an artificiality and disconnect that subtly sabotages the material.
pursue a zoology degree and become a nature photographer.
But life is always throwing curve balls, which for Kelsa comes via fellow student, timid, kind, and handsome Khal (Abubakr Ali), whom she meets on the first day of art class where they partner up to paint each other’s portrait. Sparks fly in a mutual crush, but Khal, though fine with Kelsa being trans, doesn’t know how to proceed, worrying about being seen as a fake racking up ‘woke points.’ He consults Reddit chat room friends for advice.
Taking the relationship plunge, complications arise from Em, who also likes Khal, and Khal’s best friend
Otis, who’s border-line okay with Khal being potentially bisexual, but can’t accept him dating a trans girl.
The movie charts the two teens navigating their romance, deciding whether to announce their courtship publicly on social media, worrying their dating may lead to drama. When Khal later releases Kelsa’s YouTube video to the metaverse, she’s furious and it leads to trouble.
The plot has all the makings of an afterschool television special on transgender’s coming-of-age, complete with embarrassing sophomoric jokes. Only Kelsa doesn’t want to be defined solely on being trans, nor
The release of Yannick Nezet-Seguin’s “Beethoven Symphonies” –all nine of them, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) –just now means that I need only add that things get even better; this set is not just mandatory listening but augurs to become the preferred choice.
I’ve always been willing to concede that Nezet-Seguin is hard to beat as an opera conductor. But my experiences of him on the concert platform, with a huge array of orchestras (he’s a busy boy), have been more uneven. An eagerly anticipated live Brahms “German Requiem” with the Vienna Philharmonic turned into a trial that I feared only he or I, but not both of us, would outlive.
Last fall’s messy performance of the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth at the Ukraine Benefit Concert at the Metropolitan Opera, where he is music director, demonstrated more than anything else his sheer bravery. It was exactly the right piece for such a concert, and if it showed once again that this is not a work you can pull out of a hat, all the hearts and some of the horns on the Metropolitan stage were in the right place.
To be sure, there will be debates about such things as Beethoven’s metronome markings and whether they’re applied. But even a Beethoven fan with firm opinions about each of the symphonies will thrill at these hyper-alert, bracing new performances.
What’s new?
The aural difference from previous editions is striking only in the Ninth, where the changes are not just noticeable but arresting. Elsewhere, tempos are generally brisk to break-neck, but clarity of texture is
From page 17
“A Jumping-Off Point” by Inda Craig-Galvan; a sharp comedy about race, plagiarism and privilege in Hollywood.
never sacrificed and some of the real breath-catching moments are unusually slow –no more so than in the spellbinding pair of Adagios in the Fourth Symphony. Beethoven broke the mold of established symphony form with at least three of the nine, and he swung the cat by its tail in the others. With an astonishing lack of self-regard, Nezet-Seguin mines each one for its unique essence and consistently comes up gold. Making my way through the set, presented in numerical order –though I have no idea what order they were recorded in– what became increasingly clear to me was that without sacrifice of fidelity to period style, Nezet-Seguin tells us in sound how Beethoven’s work adumbrated the music of his successors. His wide, rich experience of the music of the Romantics and beyond, on and off the opera stage, colors these staples of the symphonic repertoire.
“How To Let Your Lover Die” by Elana Dykewomon; a poetic, sometimes harrowing story of caregiving and community in a community of lesbians.
“An Arab Spring” by Denmo Ibrahim; a fractured family re -
The one exception is the outstanding Goldsberry, June Cleaver on the surface but whose inner Rottweiler is unleashed when she finds out about Kelsa’s vlogs, demanding she remove them, fearing reprisals from Internet trolls. But helicopter mom emerges as she confronts another parent’s aggressiveness against her daughter.
The best scenes are the candid banter between mother and daughter with Kelsa unafraid to call out Goldsberry on exploiting her transness for a college admission application.
The social media influencer/television actress Reign’s exuberance and spunkiness are definite assets, but are somewhat undermined because at age 26 she’s too old to be playing
Porter seems determined to portray a thriving rather than a surviving Kelsa. As Kelsa (her name means brave) states, “It’s not that brave if you’re just being who you are.” But Kelsa, unlike most young Black trans women, has the luxury and support system to live out that truth.
It is refreshing to see a trans person not defined by their hardships or victimhood. With all the antitransgender legislation sweeping the nation, it’s not a small gesture that Amazon Prime has produced one of the very few movies depicting a trans romance.
“Anything’s Possible’s” merits of inducing hope and joy at a time of transphobia, covers this topical but shallow film’s multitude of sins. t www.amazon.com/
Anythings-Possible-Eva-Reign/ Read the full review on www.ebar.com.
Take the Sixth, the audiencefriendly “Pastoral,” whose challenge to conductors is to get the outright nature mysticism right without lapsing into country bumpkinhood. In lesser hands the “nature music,” the famous storm in particular, seem mere sound effects. But playing of the caliber here forecasts the kinds of nature depiction we find in Mahler, in music as eager to break formal grounds as Mahler’s would become.
Beethoven’s avid rejection of the ordinary in his First Symphony has a corollary in Mahler’s First, but what stands out in Nezet-Seguin’s reading is the music’s tireless invention and individuality. The Second is a whirlwind calculated to keep you off balance, making the conductor’s negotiation of the break-neck internal tempo changes all the more impressive.
connects after the death of an estranged patriarch.
“Saturday Mourning Cartoons” by Iraisa Ann Reilly; millennial siblings mourn the death of a brother while considering whether to put their abuela in a nursing home.
For once the Third, the “Eroica,” is not so much argued as simply played as the red-blooded hymn to freedom from tyranny that it is. The famous opening of the Fifth becomes, here, a blazing tattoo of sound that both organizes and reverberates throughout the work. The Seventh is as thrilling, and cogent, as I’ve even heard it, with touches of Shostakovich in its slashing repeated gestures.
If, like me, you reserve a special love for the Eighth, the “bad news” is that, in Nezet-Seguin’s masterful reading, there’s much you haven’t heard before. Sorry, but no matter how many sets of these symphonies you already have, you know what you’ve got to do.
In the same way that this new Beethoven set opens not with a
“Close to Home” by Sharifa Yasmin; a trans teen, a good old boy and a protective Muslim immigrant cross paths in the American South in this comedydrama. t
breath but a blast of fresh air, it ends on a Ninth that feels both naked and yet achieved by everyone involved. Its fundamentals, particularly the famous setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” are met and then excelled, met and excelled again.
This is, along with much else, a nimble Ninth, insisting that its every note be heard, and heard new. Much of the music is articulated march-like, but a clear sense of destination informs the course. You’re constantly reminded about how necessary this music is. t
Beethoven Symphonies, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, conductor, DG, 5-CD; 2 digital downloads, $49.50 www.deutschegrammophon.com
Bay Area Playwrights Festival, July 29-Aug. 7. In-person at Potrero Stage. 1695 18th St., SF. Also online. Tickets and packages, $5-$200, sliding scale. www. playwrightsfoundation.org
Aspecial pro wrestling event hosted by the Underground Wrestling Alliance (known around the San Francisco Bay Area as UGWA) was held Sunday, July 17 at Emporium Arcade Bar (616 Divisadero). The event had an LGBTQ focus, with a rainbow belt up for grabs, and included the debut of Effy as he took on Sandra Moone. MC Pollo Del Mar, Dark Sheik and Jai Vidal and a Death Match with Tony Vargas, Juicy Finau and Funny Bone, who were among the hilariously feisty performers. www.emporiumarcadebar.com/locations/san-francisco www.facebook.com/HAILUGWA
Enjoy more nightlife albums at www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife.
And see more of Steven’s work at www.stevenunderhill.com.
