Queer

Grade A

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

It was a gathering of tribes with more tattoos and partially shaved heads per square foot than anywhere else in San Francisco. The sartorial imagination at times rivaled the one on stage. In other words, it was the eighth Fresh Meat Festival, celebrating transgender and queer performance, and Project Artaud Theater packed them in.

Announced as the largest festival of its kind in the country, Fresh Meat is the brain- (and heart-) child of Sean Dorsey. A smart organizer and good artist, he programmed a lineup that showcased not only gender but ethnic diversity: a Latino singer, an African American rapper, and a Sri Lankan theater artist, among others. Differences extended to quality; not all the performers were equal in either craft or talent. But this was a theatrically pungent evening whose concurrent themes couldn’t be missed. Joyful affirmation of self and the pain of not fitting in went hand in hand.

The evening opened on a note of female assertiveness. Taiko Ren’s exuberant women embraced those huge drums — for centuries restricted to the male of the species — as their birthright. Planting their hips and focusing their energy into the hard-hitting batons, they set the air humming with overlapping and shimmering resonances. Hip-hop closed the two-and-a-half-hour show. Allan Frias’ high-camp and razor-sharp Mind over Matter Dance Company’s Bring it to Runway exploded the fashion world’s dehumanized body as a clothes-hanger. Seen as manipulated mannequins, the dancers revolted into a brigade of hard-hitting, furiously stepping males and females whose individuality was as strong as their sense of common purpose.

Coming fresh from the Ethnic Dance Festival, the Barbary Coast Cloggers’ footwork and the body slaps in Hambone didn’t sound as finely synchronized as they have in the past. However, the marvelous Wind It Up, to Gwen Stefani’s yodel-infected song, highlighted the sly note of urbanity that’s always present in these dancers’ take on rural traditions. Another reminder that common dance traditions often exclude non-heterosexuals came from North American same-sex ballroom champions Zoe Balfour and Citabria Phillips. Their spacious Ballroom Blitz, a suave and light-as-air foxtrot, went by too fast. I would love to see what else they do.

Most of the solo performers came from Los Angeles. Ryka Aoki de la Cruz’ Alternator Domme was a little heavy-handed in its use of metaphor, but she is witty writer and quick-change artist who times her material — paying for car repairs with a gig in a dungeon — well. In the hilarious excerpt from Ramble-Ations: A One D’Lo Show, D’Lo transitions from a traditional Sri Lankan mother into an Angelino "tomboy". The work dove deeply into the poignancy of not wanting to be put into a gender — or any other kind of — box. Rapper Deadlee’s in-your-face "We Serve it Up Nasty" — with audience participation — was a rebellious rant against homophobia in hip-hop. Yet I wondered whether its transgressive tone didn’t strike a note of simple-mindedness with this audience. StormMiguel Florez has a beautifully flexible voice, yet his family-inspired songs sounded bland. SF’s own Shawna Virago — edgy, elegant, elegiac — premiered a lovely new work dedicated to Sean Dorsey.

Dorsey’s substantial Lou is his finest work yet, and the festival’s highlight. The excerpt (performed beautifully by Dorsey, Juan de la Rosa, Brian Fisher, and Nol Simonse) stood well on its own. Some of the verbal links between memory and history probably could be tightened, but the simple yet eloquent choreography opens up Dorsey’s language and Lou’s life remains simultaneously tender and powerful. As for the next Fresh Meat Festival: less between-the-acts talk and tighter tech, please.

Shake, shimmy, subvert

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molly@sfbg.com

The tradition of burlesque has always been about subverting the norm and challenging the privileged class. So it should be no surprise that queer performers make up a significant percentage of the new burlesque movement. Or, as Amelia Mae Paradise, cofounder of the queer femme burlesque troupe Diamond Daggers, puts it: "The burlesque world has always had room for freaks and queers and fat ladies."

A quick look at the current Bay Area burlesque scene confirms Paradise’s theory. The cabaret outfit Hubba Hubba Revue regularly features queer and straight performers. Though burlesque dancer Dottie Lux identifies as queer, both her Red Hots Burlesque showcase (www.myspace.com/redhotsburlesque) and the classes she teaches are geared for mixed audiences. And queer performers — from soloists like Kentucky Fried Woman and Alotta Boutte to groups like Twilight Vixens and sfBoylesque — find themselves performing for straight audiences nearly as often as queer ones. In the burlesque world, queer and straight performers bump up against each other so often (pun intended), it might seem arbitrary to distinguish them at all.

But most queer performers agree that there is a difference — however subtle. Queer performers tend to mix their burlesque with spoken word, lip syncing, or drag, and also tend to be more subversive and political than their straight counterparts. Some attribute this to the fact that many queer performers are already schooled in other kinds of politically-based performance art.

"There’s a strong component of the queer performance community who are extremely politically conscious and recognize the power they have when they’re on stage," said Kentucky Fried Woman, a.k.a. KFW (www.myspace.com/kentuckyfriedwoman), who founded the Queen Bees in Seattle before becoming a major force in the SF burlesque community. "You have this whole room of people looking at you, so you can make them focus on any issue you want."

Queer burlesque performers also seem more comfortable with comedy, farce, and a diversity of body types, ages, and races on stage. "I think queers are better at burlesque than non-queers," said Maximus Barnaby, founder of sfBoylesque (www.sfboylesque.com). "They’re not afraid to be outsiders."

And all agreed that it’s different performing for a queer audience than a straight one — even if it only comes down to how many people get your jokes. "Queer audiences already arrive loose and ready to have a good time," says KFW, a phenomenon she hasn’t always witnessed with straight audiences.

KFW also pointed out that there are places where the distinction between queer and straight audiences is even more pronounced — and where having queer-friendly events like Debauchery (www.myspace.com/debaucherydivine), a strip club night for queers of all genders, is even more important.

While some performers might be considered queer exclusively because of their sexual preferences, others — like Twilight Vixens (www.twilightvixen.com) and Diamond Daggers (www.diamonddaggers.com) — employ the title as a part of their subversion of the norm.

Indeed, when Paradise cofounded the Daggers with Cherry Lix (who later went on to found Twilight Vixens) and Fannie Fuller in 2003, the idea was to create empowering, queer performance as femme dykes. "We’re so invisible so much of the time, people assume that we’re straight," Paradise said.

Melding elements of musical theater, Hollywood glamour, and showgirl choreography, the Daggers created a campy cabaret troupe whose purpose was femme visibility.

In 2005, the Daggers birthed the Twilight Vixens. While the Daggers headed toward comedy, gender-pushing, and narrative performances — featuring the bearded Paradise and her six-foot-tall bearded butch wife Sir Loin Strip — Cherry Lix took the Vixens even further towards vintage Vegas showgirl glam. "In San Francisco, you have a lot of men imitating women being showgirls," said Lix. "This was: let’s be women being women who like women being showgirls."

Interestingly, Paradise says the lesbian audience hasn’t always been the easiest for femme troupes like the Daggers and Vixens. "It’s confusing," she said. "They ask, ‘Is it feminist? Not feminist? It’s hot, titilutf8g, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.’"

On the other hand, gay men have always loved them, especially in the beginning, because those groups and gay men tend to speak the same language of camp.

Gay men are also the primary audience for sfBoylesque, the all-male dance revue founded nearly three years ago. But they weren’t an automatically easy audience either. "People have different expectations of men in burlesque," said Barnaby. "The point of reference is Chippendale’s … this perfect, chiseled body. We are absolutely not Chippendale’s."

Whereas burlesque has traditionally been a place that empowers women of all body types, Barnaby said his troupe has had to create an audience to expect and accept the same from men. As for the troupe identifying as queer? Barnaby says that’s mostly because he likes the inclusiveness of the term.

When it really comes down to it, though, performers like Simone de la Getto, cofounder of all-black burlesque review Harlem Shake and the queer event Cabaret de Nude, thinks the titles are stupid — but necessary. "I guess I’m a queer black burlesque performer who’s a single mom," she said. "Once we get past all the labels, life will be easier."

Plus, the lines between queer and straight burlesque are becoming ever more blurred, as Getto — who joined the burlesque scene as a straight woman and then came out — should know.

"People like to see people taking their clothes off. It doesn’t matter who you’re sleeping with," she said. "That pretty much seals the deal for everyone."

Fierce! Forbes!

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TV EYED Did I ever tell you you’re my hero, Michelle Forbes? Like, you’re the wind beneath my wings, standing out from the sidelines of TV series like Lost, Prison Break, and 24, pulling off the most ingenious little saves by just popping up, feline eyes a-glow, in the strangest, smallest cameo. Her latest appearance: Maryann — the power-hungry priestess/consort/groupie of Dionysus in True Blood, which just started its second shadowy season.

Sure, the pulpy, soapy, Southern goth series overflows — like so much hallucinatory V (a.k.a., the better-than-ecstasy vampire blood) — with acting talent. Start with Anna Paquin as nubile hot-pants psychic Sookie Stackhouse, and Ryan Kwanten as her perpetually puzzled-looking bad-boy bro, Jason, and continue to Stephen Moyer as Sookie’s increasingly cadaverous-looking vampire beau, Bill, and Rutina Wesley as the hardcore baby beeyatch with a heart of gold, Tara, and end with the stellar Nelsan Ellis as the trash-talkin’ queer V dealer, Lafayette. This season has almost everyone in good-times Bon Temps brooding in their whiskey glasses — prisoners in the literal or metaphorical darkness — and pondering who might have ripped the heart of the town’s voodoo exorcist.

But while the other True Blood-ies break down and climb in their bottles in confusion, Forbes shivers me timbers with her vibratory vixenish certainty. She’s the natural center of the storm that’s brewing in Bon Temps — convincing because the actress specializes in scarily strong women, bordering on the carnivorous and castrating. I was never a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I never fell for her Ensign Ro Laren. But we’ve all noticed that even the briefest appearance by the actress gives the most implausible plot turn a heft and force only the formidable Forbes can deliver. So why hasn’t the lady made the break to the big screen? She made a memorable mark on Brad Pitt’s serial killer in Kalifornia (1993). Maybe it’s because she gets so much work on TV as a kind of Lucy Lawless, sans the throaty Down Under accent. My fave Forbes moments so far:

MARYANN IN TRUE BLOOD


When will her maenad begin to tear apart the Bon Temps citizenry out of sheer bacchanalian exuberance? Her Pan groupie, with mysterious designs on Tara and doggy shape shifter Sam, threatens to steal the sinister thunder from the vampire population.

KATE IN IN TREATMENT


As the straying ex-spouse of Gabriel Bryne’s psychotherapist Paul, Forbes applied naturalistic shading and warmth to her character. She understandably got her rage on as Paul swooned for his patient Laura, but you can also understand why the beleaguered shrink later yearned for his ex to take him back.

ADMIRAL HELENA CAIN IN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA


She was the hawk to the more dove-ish Admiral Adama. Too bad the humans didn’t have to deal with her ferocious warlady from the planet Sappho beyond season two.

www.hbo.com/trueblood/season2

The price of normal

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news@sfbg.com

With a 2010 state proposition on gay marriage in the works and a national gay rally on the Washington Mall being planned for October 10-11 of that year, it’s obvious that more and more of the LGBT community’s resources are being funneled into the battle for marriage equality, while other causes go begging.

Already gay marriage has become a black hole that is sucking untold amounts of money, time, and energy out of our community. In the 2008 election alone, gay marriage supporters raised $43.3 million to defeat Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that California voters passed by 52 percent. It may be the biggest chunk of change the community has ever spent for a single fight.

A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES


I’m not against gay marriage. If queer couples want to be as miserable as straight ones, that’s their choice. Marriage is a failed institution. With a 54.8 percent divorce rate nationally and a 60 percent rate here in California, there’s no doubt in my mind that heterosexual "wedded bliss" is more of an oxymoron than a reality.

What’s troubling to me as a queer activist of almost 40 years (much of that time spent on economic justice work) is that, with the tremendous amount of homelessness, poverty, and unemployment in our community, we are spending so much dough on the fight to give a minority of folks — those who opt for tying the knot — rights and privileges that straight married folks have.

Sure, it’s unfair that married straights get tax breaks, not to mention the status of next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions when one partner is ill, and queers don’t. Altogether, married couples have 1,400 benefits, both state and federal, that domestic partners and single people don’t enjoy. It’s a matter of simple justice that the playing field be leveled. Only a right-wing idiot could disagree with that. Now, if only we could fight to give everyone (including singles) those 1,400 benefits.

For me it’s a question of priorities. We are living in scary times. Unemployment is sky-high; millions are without healthcare, including children; foreclosures are robbing homeowners and tenants alike of their housing; and business collapses are leaving a lot of people out in the cold and unable to pay the rent or the mortgage.

DINKS NO MORE


The queer community is no better off.

It’s a popular misconception that queers have a lot of disposable income. The "double income, no kids" (DINK) myth was promoted in the 1980s by gay publishers who wanted to expand their advertising base and their profits. These days, to read many gay publications, you’d think that all queers are going on fabulous vacations and buying expensive clothes, jewelry, and electronic gizmos.

That myth was easily dispelled by a recent study, "Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community," published this March by the Williams Institute at UCLA. Like "Income Inflation: the myth of affluence among gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans," the groundbreaking 1998 study by M.V. Lee Badgett of the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Williams report found that many members of our community aren’t shopping ’til they drop. They can barely afford to put food on the table.

Nationally, 24 percent of lesbians and bisexual women are poor compared to 19 percent of heterosexual women; 15 percent of gay and bisexual men are poor compared to 13 percent of heterosexual men.

Queers aren’t just low on cash — we’re homeless, too. A 2006 report, "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness" from the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force and the National Coalition on Homelessness, showed that 20 percent to 40 percent of the 1.6 million homeless youth in America identify as LGBT. In San Francisco, the number of queers in the homeless youth population (estimated at 4,000 by the Mayor’s Office) is "roughly 44 percent," according to Dr. Mike Toohey of the Homeless Youth Alliance in the Haight.

Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance says that 40 percent of people with HIV/AIDS, in the city once acclaimed for its care of those with the disease, are either "unstably housed or are homeless." In the Castro, Basinger said, there are only "12 dedicated HOPWA beds" for people with the disease. HOPWA (Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS) is a federal voucher program for low-income people with AIDS that is similar to federal housing assistance program Section 8.

Certain members of our community don’t fare much better in the area of employment. A 2006 survey by the Guardian and the Transgender Law Center reported that 75 percent of transgender people are not employed full-time, and 59 percent make less than $15,299 a year. A mere 4 percent of respondents earned more than $61,200, the then-median income average for San Francisco.

Fifty-seven percent of trangendered people said they suffered employment discrimination, demonstrating the need for the inclusion of "gender identity" in the federal Employment Non-discrimination Act. Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, and out Congress member Barney Frank (D-Mass.) cut transgenders out of that legislation the last time it was up before Congress.

It could all get a whole lot worse.

AXING THE FUTURE


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to lop at least $81 million from California’s AIDS budget, including money for AIDS drugs, leaving low-income people stranded without their medication. Senior services are also on his cutting block, including $230.8 million from in-home services and $117 million from adult health-care programs. (As we go to press, the state Legislature is working to restore the AIDS money to the budget.)

Mayor Gavin Newsom, in his proposed city budget cuts, is axing $128.4 million from public health and $15.9 million from human services. There’s no doubt these cuts in health and human services will severely affect people with AIDS, seniors, youth, the homeless, and others in our community who can least afford to pay for the city’s budget shortfall.

The millions spent on gay marriage in the past few years could have gone a long way in these lean times. It could have helped make the proposed queer senior housing project, Open House, a reality. With 88 units in the works at 55 Laguna St., the site of the old UC extension, it will be the only such housing for LGBT seniors in San Francisco.

The money also could have funded housing in the Castro for homeless queer youth or people with AIDS. It could have been used as seed money for a much-needed war against poverty in the LGBT community.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIBERATION


The queer movement hasn’t always been this obsessed about getting hitched. Forty years ago this week, drag queens and others fought back against the cops who were raiding a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s West Village. Three days of protests led to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a revolutionary group dedicated to the sexual liberation of all people. GLFers weren’t looking to walk down the aisle or form binary couples. In a desire to "abolish existing social institutions," as the NYC branch of GLF said in its statement of purpose, some GLFers explored polyamory (more than one relationship at a time).

That’s why I edited Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, just published by City Lights Books, a collection of writings by former GLF members and other gay liberationists. I wanted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall and the birth of GLF with a reminder of who we were and what we did. After all these years, I still don’t want to head to the chapel to get married.

When it really comes down to it, gay marriage is a conservative issue. It’s about wanting to fit in, to be like everyone else. Beyond the important issues of tax breaks and next-of-kin status — and the fact that if any institution exists, it shouldn’t discriminate against queers — marriage is ultimately a means of normalizing binary queer relationships, especially for gay men who have always enjoyed the freedom to be promiscuous. It’s a way to try and rein in our libidos, though the prevalence of extramarital sex among straight couples — 50 percent for women, 60 percent for men, according to a recent issue of Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy — shows that marriage doesn’t come with a chastity belt.

It also doesn’t come with any guarantees, as researchers discovered in Sweden, where queers were able to contract for same-sex partnerships from 1995 until recently, when full same-sex marriage was instituted. According to a study by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Swedish queers have been divorcing in high numbers, like their straight counterparts, who have a divorce rate that’s just a little higher than the United States.

For queers in Sweden, that’s the price of being normal.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who has been a queer activist since he was involved with the Gay Liberation Front at Temple University in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights Books).

Busting bars

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news@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s legendary nightlife venues are being threatened by a state agency that over the last two years has adopted a more aggressive policy of enforcing its arcane rules, in the process jeopardizing both needed tax revenue and a vibrant, tolerant culture that these bureaucrats don’t seem to understand.

At issue is an arbitrary policy of the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control. For the past two years, ABC has been on a campaign against a growing list of well-established clubs, bars, and entertainment venues in the city, an effort driven by vague rules and stretched authority. The community has rallied behind the bars and local politicians have spoken against ABC’s crusade, but the agency isn’t showing any signs of stopping.

Most recently, Revolution Café in the Mission District had to stop selling beer and wine for 20 days after ABC cited them for patrons drinking on the sidewalk adjacent to its front patio. Inner Richmond’s Buckshot’s liquor license was pulled because of technical violations of alcohol and food regulations, forcing owners to close their doors for a few weeks. Both bars stand to lose a substantial portion of their profits before returning to normal business operation.

DNA Lounge’s license is currently being held over its head because ABC saw operators as "running a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals" after sending undercover agents in during queer events. State Sen. Mark Leno responded by telling the Guardian, "The ABC should enforce the law, not make statements relative to morals."

Café du Nord, Slim’s, Swedish Music Hall, Great American Music Hall, Rickshaw Stop, Bottom of the Hill, and a list of more than 10 others are also fighting long, expensive battles to stay open — but not because of underage drinking or drinking-related violence. In fact, most of these venues never had a run-in with ABC until two years ago. These bars’ livelihoods are being threatened because of an arbitrary technicality on their alcohol and food license.

ABC was established in 1957 with the mission to be "responsible for the licensing and regulation of the manufacture, sale, purchase, possession, and transportation of alcoholic beverages." ABC is funded through alcohol license fees, and has been run by governor-appointed director Steve Hardy since 2007, about the same time the crackdown started.

According to ABC spokesperson John Carr, the problem is that these clubs are deviating from their original business plans. The venues are "operating more like clubs, with only incidental food service." ABC didn’t notice any changes in these businesses until two years ago. In some cases, it took ABC 20 years to notice a change.

For example, when Café du Nord owners filled out the forms to get their business license, they were asked to predict the percentage of alcohol sales to food sales. Predictions didn’t pan out exactly, and ABC started an audit two years ago. The only recourse to an audit is to adhere to a random rule that requires these all-ages venues to serve 50 percent food and 50 percent alcohol. This rule is not a law, and ABC isn’t required to enforce it.

Slim’s has been cited on the same food/alcohol grounds. Its sister club, the Great American Music Hall, as well as Bottom of the Hill and most recently Buckshot all have similar 50/50 stories. All are fighting financially drowning battles with ABC. At some point in the court process, these bars must appear in ABC courts with judges hired by Steve Hardy.

Carr claims that only one venue, which he declined to identify, is being cited with the arbitrary 50/50 rule. All the other venues must adhere to their own specific ratio of food to alcohol, written in their original business plans. Regardless of the specific numbers, all are being threatened on the grounds that "they altered the character of their businesses […] which is different from the business plan they submitted to ABC when they were originally pursuing their ABC license."

Many of the bars in question have been around and thriving for decades with the same focus on business, music, and culture. Slim’s, for example, has been in San Francisco for 22 years, going the first 20 without a citation. But in the past two years, it has had four citations between it and the Great American Music Hall.

There is much speculation from all sides of this war about its causes, but no one seems to know why ABC, seemingly out of nowhere, started its crusade against music venues and clubs in San Francisco. Even the ABC is vague and unresponsive about this, broadly claiming it is acting on complaints and just doing its job.

Since the inception of the crackdown is a mystery, it seems fitting to focus on finding a resolution. The last thing anyone in this city wants is to see the clubs and venues shut down, something club operators say hurts the city’s culture. "Kids growing up with live music can only be good," said Dawn Holiday of Slim’s.

Beyond the culture and rich nightlife in question, bars and clubs bring in a significant amount of money to the state. Some of the bars alone can bring the state more than $5,000 each month in sales tax. In the current economic crunch, shutting down reliable sources of revenue doesn’t seem wise.

After two years of battles, ABC has taken some of the bigger hearings off the calendar in an attempt to come to a peaceful resolution. After talks with Hardy, Leno is hopeful for a positive end to the battles. Leno does not want to see any business closed and believes the best way to ensure a thriving nightlife is to establish a special license for the venues. If the only problem with our beloved venues is technicalities with the license, let’s change the license, not the venues.

In the meantime, the community is rallying around the bars and entertainment venues, showing its support. DNA Lounge started asking for donations for its legal proceedings. Visit its Web site for the full story and ways to contribute. When Buckshot reopens July 4, show up and support them. Maybe the best way to fight back is to go out and have a drink, listen to music, dance with queers, and over-indulge in unadulterated San Francisco culture.

Editor’s Notes

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marke@sfbg.com

So, OK, I just got engaged. Gay engaged. Engayged.

So weird.

First, this may be the worst time ever to plan on jumping the lavender chuppah knot or whatever. As far as legality goes, California’s up in the air until maybe the November 2010 elections and perhaps for a long time after that. Then there’s the whole federal kerfuffle to go through. And Iowa might be tempting right now — but gurl, I don’t have enough something blues for three ceremonies. Iowa, then Cali, and then federal — sheesh! Two is enough! At least when we were illegal, we only had to plan for one polka band. Miss you, "commitment ceremony."

Then there are the political equivocations. Plus or minus a few episodes of America’s Next Top Model, I’ve considered myself near the front lines of radical queer resistance ever since my friends started dying of AIDS when I was 17. I’m all for ethical non-monogamy, get queasy at the thought of official state-sanctioned relationships, and definitely believe that marriage, with all its financial benefits, discriminates against people who haven’t fallen in love. Or turns them into liars for money. Or makes them scream a lot during Sex and the City reruns.

Hunky Beau and I aren’t really after the cash and perks, anyway. Hospital visitation rights and insurance discounts would be cool (and are available locally already), and who knows if we’ll have kids who’ll require federal protection. But I’m pretty sure we’ll never need the legal right to “enlarge accommodation estimates for foreign dignitary missions” only available to married couples now. And as far as political statements go, there are a lot more things in my personal life that I’d like to see being used to help change the world for the better. Housing homeless queer kids and seniors and restoring the recent awful AIDS services cuts seems much more necessary right now as well. But this is the fight our community’s in — and whether it’s because I was raised that way by two incredibly supportive parents, or because I get a real rash when my government says I can’t do something other people can, or because within every loud-mouthed queen lives a hopelessly traditional romantic, I’ve got a dog in it. Not a chihuahua, mind you. More like golden retriever. Totally butch.

As some of our writers eloquently point out in this issue, same-sex marriage may be a boondoggle, sapping our community’s strength to confront real issues of poverty and inequality. It’s certainly not for everyone. But in a truly dark time in my life, when I thought the whole world was falling apart, I suddenly fell in deeply in love with someone almost annoyingly perfect for me in every way. To my continued astonishment, he seems to feel that way about me as well. We’ve been together a long time now and marriage seems, to us, the logical next step for whatever reason. It just feels right. Love is a crazy, crazy thing, full of diversity, surprise, and wonder. Isn’t that what Pride’s all about?

Mr. Prez — just don’t fuck things up worse

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By Tim Redmond

I heard a lot of discussion on KQED’s Forum this morning about President Obama and his affronts to the queer community, and several callers — all folks who claimed to be “supportive of the the LGBT community” — suggested that the president is doing the right thing by taking it slow. First, he has to fix the economic mess, restore the banking system, put about 10 million people back to work, close the Guantanamo Bay torture chamber and create a national health-care system. Then, after he takes a little nap and has a nice healthy snack, he can get to work on human rights and equality.

Bill Clinton, one caller said, screwed everything up by moving too fast; his health-insurance reform collapsed, Congress wouldn’t go along with allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, and before long, the Republicans were kicking his ass all over Washington.

I know the song: A president only has a certain amount of political capital, and he can’t just go flinging it all around at once. And he needs Congress for his health plan, and overturning the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell could alienate those same moderates who might be the swing votes on health reform. He also has to deal with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district may include the single largest concentration of active queer people in the United States, but who long gave up representing San Francisco. She’s more worried about electing Democrats in conservative districts to keep her majority and her power — and if that means lesbian and gay people have to go the back of the bus for a while, oh well. That’s politics.

But there are so many things Obama could do, right now, without Congress (and without making a big fuss) that would make a huge difference to the queer community. He can’t get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — but as commander in chief, he can simply order the office of the Judge Advocate General of each of the services to suspend indefinately all prosecutions seeking to discharge service members for homosexuality. The military doesn’t do everything right, but the one thing the leaders of that august institution understand is taking orders. Just tell them to stop kicking gay people out — and not to make a big deal of it. Then the problem will at least be something we can ignore while Obama is taking his sweet time and collecting political chits to deal with it properly.

Same thing with DOMA. I don’t know who exactly approved the legal brief defending that law — and I suspect somehow that Obama himself never read it — but that shit has to go. Just withdraw that brief, submit another one that doesn’t compare homosexuality to incest (and that’s kind of badly written and not particularly persuasive), and hope to god the government loses.

Yeah, the president ought to stand up publicly for equality — and unlike Willie Brown, who thinks that’s never going to happen, I suspect it will. By the end of his first term, he’ll come around. But in the meantime, Mr. President, remember the Hippocratic Oath of politics: First, don’t fuck things up worse.

Hello sailor

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By Matt Sussman


a&eletters@sfbg.com

Revolution seems to be on the minds and in the hearts of many in LGBT folk these days. The desire for change is palpable at the marriage equality marches that have now become regular occurrences, even if one isn’t marching under the banner of marriage equality. Indeed, the large and sustained outpouring of grassroots activism that has sprung up since Proposition 8 "passed" last November has been hailed, however ill-fitting the comparison, as "Stonewall 2.0."

Stonewall is undoubtedly a milestone — and its resonance with our current historical moment is underscored by the fact that Frameline 33’s closing night happens to fall on the 40th anniversary of the New York City riots. But Stonewall is not our only example of queers taking power into their own hands (San Francisco’s own Compton Cafeteria Riots of 1966, in which transgender people fought for their right to occupy public space, immediately comes to mind.) Nor are the social justice movements and underground film culture of the Stonewall era — both subjects touched on in a swathe of ’60s and ’70s-related films at this year’s festival — our only historical models for envisioning and enacting change. There are other histories, other battles, and other scenes to explore.

Local filmmaker Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men — a stunning black and white historical fantasia on the possibilities, pleasures, and perils of revolution — proposes such another scene. Set in a mythologized postrevolutionary Russia but based on actual historical events, Maggots marshals early Soviet cinema, the gutter erotics of Jean Genet, and what at times seems like a transgender cast of thousands to build its case for the necessity of queer utopias. "I made a school boy movie, Phineas Slipped [under the name Kerioakie, in Frameline 26], so the next logical step was to make a sailor movie," says Cronenwett, explaining the germ for his film over the phone. "I wanted to make a film that created another world."

Maggots dramatizes the events of 1921, when the sailors of the seaport town of Kronstadt (whose failed 1905 revolution would be immortalized by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925’s Battleship Potemkin) drafted a resolution that supported the factory workers on strike in St. Petersburg. Deeming the sailors’ declaration of solidarity and demands for food and greater autonomy as "counter-revolutionary," the Bolshevik government launched a propaganda campaign against them, eventually sending the Red Army to take their island stronghold by force. The Bolsheviks eventually won the two-week long battle, in which both sides suffered heavy losses, killing or exiling the remaining sailors.

Told through the fictionalized letters of sailor Stepan Petrichenko (played by dreamboat Stormy Henry Knight, aptly described by Cronenwett as "the transgender Matt Dillon") to his sister and the performances of agitprop theater group Blue Blouse, Maggots repurposes the aesthetics of socialist realism to both pay tribute to the Kronstadt sailors’ quashed communal experiment and to use that same history as a means to engage with contemporary transgender lives and radical politics. "I’m wrapping together my different fantasies," explains Cronenwett. "There’s the sexual, kinda homoerotic utopia and then there’s this sort of communal utopia, where you have a society based on mutual respect."

If Maggots were a poem, it would undoubtedly take the form of an idyll. The sailors engage in a bucolic routine of communal farming and exercise, angelically sleeping in hammocks, carousing with the local ladies, and occasionally engaging in some alcohol-fueled sex with their fellow mates. Flo McGarrell’s gorgeous production design and composer Jascha Ephraim’s accordion-rich original score certainly contribute to the film’s reverie-like passages, but much of what is beautiful about the film is due in no small part to the handsome chiaroscuro visages of the film’s primarily trans-masculine actors. Cronenwett is as quick to cite Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950) and James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus (1968) as he is Eisenstein, as influences — and it shows.

But Cronenwett has other things, aside from "dirty sailor beefcake," on the brain. As he points out in a follow-up e-mail to our conversation, the trans actors in Maggots don’t just rewire the long history of the sailor as subject of homoerotic image-making in terms of gender, but also reframe the homosocial world of Krondstadt in terms of anarchist politics. "It’s not just cute butts that turn me on — it’s also ideas, and people’s politics. Not politics, like chatting about Obama or whatever, but people that are into creative ways of living and aren’t into non-consensual domination."

These politics were put into practice, as much by necessity as design, over the course of the four years it took to make the film. Shooting sporadically in rural Vermont (a frozen Lake Champlain uncannily summons the wintertime Baltic captured in photos of the Red Army’s 1921 advance); San Francisco backyards and gallery spaces; and Battery Boutelle in the Presidio and Battery Mendell in Marin, Cronenwett describes making Maggots as a "highly collaborative" process that involved the talents of friends, DIY artists, political organizers, nonprofessional actors, and anyone else who could be tapped via word-of-mouth (the film also received financial support from the Frameline Film and Video Completion Fund). At times, the filming even started to take on the communal can-do atmosphere of Kronstadt itself. "People slept on the floor and took cooking shifts, and helped make costumes," remembers Cronenwett of the Vermont shoot.

As much as Maggots is a homoerotic pastoral, the film doesn’t shy away from exploring the difficult, sometimes painful, realities attendant to any act of self-determination. As its very title — itself a reference to the rotting meat that sparks the sailors’ mutiny in the first act of Potemkim — suggests, the consequences of our actions can fester within us. "The sailors are still lugging around the violence from the revolution with them," writes Cronenewett. "Even in the salad days the violence is there just under the surface."

This violence takes on a different cast in the context of transitioning genders, something which the actors’ own mixed gender expressions continually underscore. "Transitioning is, hopefully, a liberating, positive experience. But it can also have some elements of violence associated with it. That can be a literal kind of violence — like chopping off body parts — or can be something more ethereal, like squashing aspects of ourselves to fit into either gender category."

The film is careful, though, not to hold up the sailors’ bloody defeat as a cautionary example of revolutionary hubris, just as it stylistically evokes Russian cinema of the ’20s and ’30s while avoiding that period’s penchant for egregious hero worship (flirting with martyrdom can be a slippery slope when engaging with the Soviet realism). In a sense, Maggots‘ restaging of history captures the full allegorical meaning of "utopia" — a social ideal that doesn’t exist and yet, nonetheless, remains an ideal. But, as Maggots also proves, film gives us the means to envision such ideals. At a time when our "revolutionary" moment seems blinded by tunnel vision — and has largely become defined by terms we never dictated — Maggots‘ kino eye reminds us that our past and our present are full of radical possibilities. *

MAGGOTS AND MEN

Sun/21, 1:30 p.m., Castro


The 33rd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs June 18–28 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. Tickets (most shows $8–$10) are available at www.frameline.org.

Quickies

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FRI/19


The Lollipop Generation (G.B. Jones, Canada, 2008) To truly appreciate G.B. Jones’ decades-in-the-making solo follow-up to her 1991 queer punk classic collaboration with Bruce LaBruce No Skin Off My Ass, you probably have to be a fan of Doris Wishman. Jones is on record as a major admirer of the woman behind Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) and the Chesty Morgan vehicle Double Agent 73 (1974), whose singular directorial style had no need for dramatic momentum, synced-up dialogue, or sensible camera angles. (In a scene with dialogue, Wishman was more likely to lavish close-ups on nearby furniture than on the humans involved.) Lollipop Generation skewers the lust for youth at the rotten core of pop culture through its look at a loose gang of candy-licking teen and preteen trick-turners and the suckers who would like to prey on them. The cast includes writer Mark Ewert and Calvin Johnson, but Vaginal Davis steals a sizeable portion of the movie by throwing her all into a molester role in a sequence that shifts back and forth between Super 8 and video. My favorite aspect of Lollipop Generation is Jones’ eye for funny or dirty signs or landmarks, from giant smiling balls on the sides of freeways to sites with double entendres for names. By placing what story there is within this framework, she creates her own world with no need for special effects. (Johnny Ray Huston) 10:45 p.m., Roxie.


Making the Boys (Crayton Robey, USA, 2008) Whether you adore it as a nostalgic, pre-HIV throwback or despise it for its self-loathing and slew of gay stereotypes, The Boys in the Band was revolutionary for its time as the first play to revolve around a homosexual circle of friends and to present an honest examination of the gay community. In director Crayton Robey’s compelling and insightful new documentary, Mart Crowley, the playwright of Boys, recounts his days rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood elite as a burgeoning screenwriter only to be cast aside after a failed Bette Davis pilot and a film deal fell through. New York theater proved to be his salvation as he struggled with perceived personal and professional failure as well as alcoholism. With nothing to lose, he bravely penned Boys, secured the producer from Edward Albee’s equally controversial Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and released it off-Broadway on April 14, 1968 to commercial acclaim. Robey interviews both Broadway and Hollywood mainstays such as Albee, Terrence McNally, Robert Wagner, and Dominick Dunne, who reflect on the impact of Boys, for better and for worse, and its role in challenging mainstream opinions of homosexuality as a mental illness and in jumpstarting the gay rights movement. In the middle of the film, I started wishing Robey had interviewed more of the cast of Boys. After all, they were the ones who experienced the highs of being in an exciting and subversive new play as well as the lows of later being essentially blacklisted from Hollywood. Then it dawned on me that five of the nine original cast members of Boys have since died from AIDS. Ultimately though, their cause to validate the gay community’s presence in society is forever immortalized with the legacy of Boys, the play that Vincent Canby hailed "a landslide of truths." (Laura Swanbeck) 7 p.m., Victoria. Also Mon/22, 1 p.m., Castro.

SAT/20


Greek Pete (Andrew Haigh, U.K., 2009) A deadpan serving of real-life drama, this night-and-day portrait is a 21st-century update of Andy Warhol’s Flesh, the 1968 movie that made Joe Dallesandro a star. In Flesh, Dallesandro is a hustler named Joe in New York. Here, Peter Pittaros is an escort named Pete in London. In Flesh, we see Joe school comparatively naïve and weak street corner boys on the tricks of rough trade. Here, Pete is a responsible breadwinner in comparison to his drug-spun chicken boyfriend. Both Flesh‘s Joe and the title character of Greek Pete hang with trannies, though Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis are more camera-ready than Pete’s goth gal pals. But whereas a strange optimism radiates from Flesh, which is understandably too smitten with its charismatic star to knock the hustle, Greek Pete has a strong undertow of melancholy. Its sadness doesn’t stem from a moral tut-tut stance about whoring but from a sense of modern emptiness that haunts Pete whether he’s with friends, alone in his apartment, or watching footage of himself winning a competition that’s the male escort equivalent of Miss America. Well-shot and anchored by a performance that’s just deep and ordinary enough to remain compelling, Greek Pete isn’t just easy meat. (Huston) 10 p.m., Victoria. Also Tues/23, 2:30 p.m., Castro.

SUN/21


Training Rules (Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker, USA, 2009) Homophobia in sports is, depressingly, still an enormous issue. But compared to the macho world of the NBA, you’d think that women’s college basketball would be a comparatively safe realm for queer players. In the case of Penn State, you’d be dead wrong. For 27 years, coach Rene Portland intimidated and harassed players who were lesbians — and those she thought might be lesbians, or who had lesbian friends. As players from past teams recall (often through tears), Portland was an outspoken homophobe who revoked scholarships as she pleased and made basketball a joyless pursuit for those she targeted. In 2006, former player Jennifer Harris, a star athlete and standout student, sued the school for discrimination. Though Harris can’t speak at length due to the terms of her settlement (and of course Portland, who resigned in 2007, did not agree to an interview), Training Rules is an eye-opening document, exposing not just the ugly truth about one coach, but a systemwide crisis that those in power (athletic directors, the NCAA) have been painfully slow to address. (Cheryl Eddy) 3:30 p.m., Castro

TUES/23


City of Borders (Yun Suh, USA, 2009) Forty-five minutes away from Middle Eastern "gay mecca" Tel Aviv lies Jerusalem, ancient religious center and, unfortunately, bastion of equally time-tested attitudes toward homosexuality. Many Tel Aviv gays don’t even see the point of living, let alone fighting for rights, in Jerusalem. Yet Jerusalem’s sole gay bar, Shushan, was one place where Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, mingled as equals. Yun Suh’s documentary focuses on a few diverse patrons, plus Shushan’s owner Sa’ar Netanel, who became Jerusalem’s first openly gay elected official (as a city councilman) on the same day it elected its first ultraright Orthodox mayor. He endures routine death threats, Gay Pride parades attract violent protest, and the other principals here have their problems and flaws too: lesbian couple Samira and Ravit try to stay together despite major cultural differences; Palestinian youth Boddy fears he’ll eventually have to leave for his own safety; Adam, an Israeli activist since being queer-bashed, doesn’t see any ethnical conflict in building a house on occupied territory with his boyfriend. Borders is a vivid snapshot of a gay rights struggle that is still very much an uphill slog. (Dennis Harvey) 7 p.m., Roxie

Patrick, Age 1.5 (Ella Lemhagen, Sweden, 2008) Freshly settled in suburbia, gay couple Goran (Gustaf Skarsgard) and Sven (Torkel Petersson) are eager to adopt a child — or at least Goran is, with Sven reluctantly caving in. But when against the odds they’re informed a native-born boy is available, a misplaced bit of bureaucratic punctuation means they get not the 18-month-old toddler expected but 15-year-old Patrik (Tom Ljungman). He’s a foul-tempered foster home veteran who makes it clear he’s no happier cohabiting with two "homos" than they are with him. Nevertheless, they’re stuck with each other at least through the weekend, allowing a predictable mutual warming trend to course through Ella Lemhagen’s agreeable seriocomedy. While formulaic in concept, the film’s low-key charm and conviction earn emotions that might easily have felt sitcomishly pre-programmed. (Harvey) 7 p.m., Castro

JUNE 24


Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed, USA, 2008) When Kimberly Reed (who studied film at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University) set out to make Prodigal Sons, she was probably pretty certain the doc would be deliberately self-focused. The film’s first act takes place in Helena, Mont., at Reed’s 20-year high school reunion — amid former classmates who remember Kimberly Reed as Paul McKerrow, a football star who was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" (and, indeed, a success she has been; though she alludes to a difficult period during her transition, she’s clearly arrived at a happy and confident place in life). But Prodigal Sons is plural for a reason, and not because of brother Todd (who happens to be gay). Instead, it’s adopted brother Marc — who is given to terrifying rages as a result of a personality-altering brain injury; remains eternally resentful of Kimberly’s high school-era smarts and popularity; and (as is shockingly discovered) the grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth — who becomes Prodigal Sons’ focus. He is the most heartbreaking figure in an intimately personal (sometimes uncomfortably so) film that’s ultimately about identities lost and found. (Eddy) 7:30 p.m., Castro

JUNE 27


Off and Running (Nicole Opper, USA, 2009) Teenager Avery, an African American, was adopted as an infant by a single white mom, who soon afterward meets another single white mom who had recently adopted an African American baby boy. Before long, a family (nicknamed "the United Nations," especially after a Korean child joins the mix) was formed. A track star who dreams of running in college, Avery loves her moms, but she’s curious about her biological parents. She knows she’s from Texas and was originally called Mycole Antwonisha, facts that hint at a cultural experience far removed from her upbringing as a Brooklyn Jew. After a few letters are exchanged with her birth mother, Avery is crushed when the woman mysteriously ends communication. A profound identity crisis ensues. "It’s like something really traumatic happened to her, and nothing did," Avery’s caring if clueless adoptive mother says. But Off and Running suggests otherwise. The doc may not speak for every adopted child’s experience, but it’s eye-opening nonetheless, and is blessed with a subject who is sensitive and articulate even in her darkest moments. (Eddy) 2:15 p.m., Roxie

Pop Star on Ice (David Barba and James Pellerito, USA, 2009) Yay, Johnny Weir! If you don’t share my sentiments about the sassy, sparkly, outspoken (but not on-the-record out) figure skater, then you might want to skip this documentary, which was filmed over a two-year period and offers an up-close-and-personal (like, you see him in a tanning bed) look at the three-time national champ. Or maybe not, actually — haters might come around after realizing how hard he’s worked to achieve his ice-rink dreams, born after watching Oksana Baiul win Olympic gold on TV and learning to skate (at the ancient age of 12) on the frozen-over cornfield in his Pennsylvania backyard. Competition footage backs up claims by longtime coach Priscilla Hill (with whom he breaks up over the course of the film) and others of Weir’s extraordinary talents; backstage clips and off-the-cuff interviews establish the fact that he’s one of the sport’s most fun personalities, probably ever. Weir pouts, jokes, struts in a fashion show, speaks in a Russian accent, discusses his collection of furs, and lands quadruple jumps with ease. Gay or (ahem) nay, he’s clearly 100 percent comfortable with who he is. (Eddy) 11 a.m., Castro

Juicy gotcha krazy

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO Oh, who the hell cares what I think this week? It’s summer and our party hormones — partymones — are totally going apeshit. Before I get into the upcoming party musts, though, I will leave you with one quasi-abstract musing. The thing I’ll miss most about analog TV, besides the term "vertical hold," is the sound of someone frantically banging the top of the box to stabilize the picture. If anyone’s thinking of sampling that in a killer track, now’s the time. Slap that bitch!

NINJA TUNE


It’s been a coon’s age since the forward-thinking label threw one of its freaky bashes here in San Francisco, and despite some questionable recent signings (Thunderheist? Er, pass), it’s pulling out its new big guns with this one. Before he brought down the house on the Brainfeeder tour last year, I couldn’t look at foppish L.A. synth-master Daedelus without flashing back to my more ill-starred ’80s sartorial choices. But he proved himself up to the minute with edgy future bassism and over-the-top Beethoven-like symphonic flourishes. New New Romantic? Sure. Montreal dancehall warper Ghislain Poirier is back as well, and will benefit from Mighty’s mighty bass boost. Opening up is Daly City’s underground patron saint, Mochipet.

Thu/18, 9 p.m., $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

"THE CREATIVES"


There’s nothing more terrifying to me than a drag queen out of drag. Here I’ll be all gossiping tipsily with someone and say something like, "Oh gurl, that Ambrosia Salad mess truly sucked a big one with her number last Friday." And then he’ll say in a deep voice, "I’m Ambrosia Salad, asshole" — and I’ll have to backtrack faster than Scooby and Shaggy from Bluebeard’s tacky ectoplasm. Luckily, hottie photographer Molly Decoudreaux provides a key with her new exhibition, "The Creatives: Daytime Portraits from a Queer Nightlife," in which she ingeniously snaps notorious movers and shakers in their casual home habitats. Who knew these queens had homes? The opening party should be darling.

Sat/20, 7 p.m.–10 p.m., continues through July 10, free. A.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama, SF. www.yourmusegallery.com

SUREFIRE


That lively Bay nexus for all things dubstep, Surefire Sound, has gone monthly at Triple Crown (yay) and has a stellar June lineup planned. Distance, a hurricane force from the U.K. whose "Night Vision" track on Planet Mu pummels the darkness into submission, brings his streetwise wobble to the tables. Toronto’s XI gets gnarly, his ragamuffin moments reflective of Canada’s simmering melting pot. And much-admired local DJ Antiserum possesses the just-right combination of longtime jungle and breaks experience and wild viral style to crank the party up madly.

Sat/20, 10 p.m., $10. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

GREEN VELVET


True eccentricity is still a rarity on the techno scene, which tends to forego stand-out personalities in favor of mix-friendly assimilation. This can be a good thing: we don’t need another Prodigy, surely. But Green Velvet, the wacky track producer also known as house pioneer Cajmere, gets the balance between dance floor motion and the conceptually bizarre perfectly. The influence of his earworm cuts like "The Stalker," "Flash," and the oddly Eminem-summoning "La La Land" is strongly felt on recent underground Berlin styles and throughout the goofy Dirty Bird label technoverse. He’ll be in town with bonkers duo Designer Drugs, who manage to make electro-sleaze still relevant-sounding, to help celebrate the birthday of one of my favorite SF DJs, Richie Panic.

Sat/20, 9 p.m., $15 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

DJ SAID


A decade ago, when the Internet was still booming, Said Adelekan brought some serious dance floor spirit to that oft-soulless go-go period with his local Afro-House movement, his Fatsouls label, and his lovely Atmosphere parties. I’m absolutely delighted that he and Fatsouls have resurfaced — goddess knows we could use a little more Afro-injection — to release a new full-length Fatsouls joint, Sun of Gao. Joining Said (and many familiar friendly faces from those days, I hope) will be the luminous DJ Dedan of the great Brothers and Sisters party in Oakland. Expect everything deeply felt, from Afrobeat to minimal techno — oh, and Nigerian legend Rasaki Aladokun on the talking drum.

Friday, June 26, 10 p.m., free. Otis, 25 Maiden Lane, SF. www.otissf.com

Super Ego: Wallpaper is at Taco Bell/Pizza Hut

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By Marke B.

Hey bay-bay, besides the wall-bouncing antics of DJ Stacey Pullen and The Martinez Brothers that I mentioned in this week’s Super Ego clubs column, here’s another party glamour to get your feet up off the floor. Also, for all you hip queer kids — it’s second Saturday, and that means another Cockblock vs. Cockfight showdown! As always, I recommend hitting up both. Because I care. Because I can.

Wallpaper at Blow Up

I can’t get the stylishly jazzy electro-rap-lounge Oakland trio’s latest treatment of Das Racist’s “Combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut” out of my freakin’ noggin — even though it makes my stomach a tad queasy — but it’s the lovely afrobeat-y remix of Passion Pit’s “the Reeling” on their MySpace that really follows me around. They’ll be at the ever-bonkers Blow Up at Rickshaw Stop on Friday, hopefully with live drums in tow …. be there, and if you’re over 30 try not to try too hard to look cool, k?

Blow Up w/ Wallpaper
Fri/12, 10 p.m., $10,
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF.
www.blowupsf.com

PS — oh god, Perez Hilton posted about Wallpaper on the same day as me? Really? ugh.

Recession, renewal

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johnny@sfbg.com

REVIEW When it comes to the negative impact that economic recession has upon the art world, there are as many problems as missing dollars. Yet among contemporary artists, such times tend to skew various views back toward those whose work isn’t epically expensive to begin with, a development that can be welcome. Moreover, careful budgeting can inspire reflection rather than a mad dash to acquire the newest, most expensive, and trendiest work.

At least two significant survey shows in 2009 follow this impulse in search of revelation. Next month, SFMOMA is opening "Not New Work," for which artist-curator Vincent Fecteau has selected art owned but rarely-to-never shown by the museum. Currently, Berkeley Art Museum executive director Lawrence Rinder taps into his curatorial insight with "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible in the Night Sky," a multifloor epic exhibition that reveals the breadth of that institution’s art collection, and allows elements of it to ricochet off of each other in provocative ways.

Rinder is no stranger to such huge undertakings, having curated an installment of the Whitney Biennial and also co-conceived the landmark 1995 queer art survey "In a Different Light," one of the Berkeley Art Museum’s largest undertakings and banner shows of the previous decade. With "Galaxy," Rinder’s playful and subtly lively sensibility might even use a recent contemporary BAM exhibition as a trampoline of sorts. Last year, the site played host to Trevor Paglen’s "The Other Night Sky," a present-day photographic installation that provocatively muses on literal presences up above. With "Galaxy," Paglen’s literal stars and spy satellites are traded for the metaphorical celestial brilliance of artwork by Rembrandt, Rousseau, Dürer, Klee, and Rubens. One of the exhibition’s strongest facets is its tremendous array of remarkable etchings and engravings. Blake’s 1825 With Dreams upon My Bed and Behold Now Behemoth Which I Made with Thee are pettily awesome — worth an afternoon worth’s of scrutiny on their own.

While this excavation of canonical treasures tiny and large might be a new endeavor for Rinder, whose focus has primarily been on contemporary art, his selections and their arrangement are designed to trigger unpredictable associations and make a case for some comparatively-undiscovered contemporary local artists, such as Todd Bura. Thus a 2008 ink-on paper piece by Ajit Chauhan — who recently had a terrific show in a small side gallery at the de Young — holds its own and takes on added resonance next to works by Bruce Conner and Barry McGee, who might or might not count as Chauhan’s kin. In Chauhan’s A Mid Summer Night’s Cream … and McGee’s Untitled (2008), patterns of lettering and faces metamorphose into one another. Conner is one of a handful of recurrent artistic presences within "Galaxy" — his reappearance a testimony to his strong but varying presence and his influence upon Bay Area art.

Louise Bourgeois is another signature personality within "Galaxy," an impish creative force that darts in and out of different eras, styles and materials without ever seeming out of place. Rinder’s curatorial freedom allows for elliptical echoes that span centuries and floors of the museum. Bullfighting stampedes into the show in two different galleries, via an 1815-16 etching by Goya and a 1986 geutf8 silver print by Zoe Leonard. Etchings of village life congregate on one wall, landscapes and seascapes occupy a different area, experiments with color join up in groups of three and four. There are wave-like rhythmic patterns to the shifts between large-scale and miniature pieces.

A great sense of detail or flair has been given to the matter of framing many of these works, and Rinder’s use of framing extends to the show itself, which begins and ends with metallic or kinetic sculptural works that evoke Peter Selz’s 1966 Berkeley Art Museum exhibition "Directions in Kinetic Sculpture," while making a case for the tactile today. "Galaxy" begins with spinning metal discs and white button of Harry Kramer’s 1966 Jorg’s Chair, and closes with Edward Krasinski’s well-titled 1964 Perpindiculars in Space and Vassilakis Takis’ 1962-63 Tableau magnetique. In between these, there is a sense of queer flirtation and enjoyable perversity, thanks to the Caravaggio-esque crotch-pointing of Guiovanni Caracciolo’s 1610 oil-on-canvas The Young Saint John in the Wilderness, the eerie singed fringes of David Dashiell’s Dionysian 1992 Study for Queer Mysterties, the deathly delicacy of D-L Alvarez’s 1992 "In a Different Light" contribution Shawl (a net made of hair that likely degrades or is at least altered each time it is shown or moved), and a 1947 foam breast by Marcel Duchamp which asks to be touched.

Associations aside, "Galaxy" also is remarkable simply for exposing works so powerful that they stand alone. Such is the case with a 1955 untitled painting by Clyfford Still that takes the visceral and mortal concerns of the show into its deepest sense of experience. Gazing at this work is like passing through a threshold of elemental muck. In Still’s colors, beauty and horror entwine.

GALAXY: A HUNDRED OR SO STARS VISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE

Through Aug. 30

Berkeley Art Museum

2625 Durant, Berk

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Hot sex events this week

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

spreadmag_0609.jpg
Explore the origins of the magazine made for sexworkers during Saturday’s film festival at the Roxie.

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>> In Our Own Image
Representatives from the Sex Workers Empowerment Project (SWEP) $pread Magazine will be on hand (ha ha) at the screening of this documentary on sex worker-made media and $pread itself — all as part of the final days of the 6th Annual Sex Worker Film, Art, and Music Festival. (Other films also run all day, from noon past midnight.)

Sat/6. 2pm. $8 per show, $30 day pass.
Roxie
3117 16th St., SF
www.sexworkerfest.com

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>> “Identity”
In honor of the National Queer Arts Festival, Femina Potens presents an exhibit dedicated to exploring constructions of gender identity. Celebrate opening night with artists Jess T. Dugan, Melvyn Herrick, Julie Sutherland, and Fakir Musafar, along with more queer comrades.

Sat/6. 7-10pm.
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
(415) 864-1558
www.feminapotens.org

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>> San Francisco is Burning
Cheer on Michelle Tea’s House of RADAR in this competitive fashion show featuring writers and performers from the RADAR series, where all proceeds benefit Queer Cultural Center.

Sat/7. 7pm. $20-$50.
SOMArts
934 Brannan, SF
www.queerculturalcenter.org

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>> Different Strokes
Think hand jobs are simple? Think again. Learn the secrets of making basic handwork into a gourmet treat, from warm-up to happy ending and bringing prostate and anal play into the mix.

Mon/8. 8pm, $25-$30.
Good Vibrations
2504 San Pablo Ave, Berk
(510) 841-8987
www.goodvibes.com

“in/divisible” dances past Prop 8 and beyond

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By Rita Felciano

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The fact that the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 probably was no surprise to Dance Ceres choreographer-dancer Brittany Brown Ceres, since the aftershock of the proposition’s passage coincided with her residency at CounterPULSE. But it probably did strengthen her faith in dance’s ability to suggest and strengthen concepts of community, self, and instigating and supporting change. The upcoming in/divisible, presented as part of this year’s National Queer Arts Festival, may also serve as an affirmation for those engaged in the ongoing struggle for equality. Though there is nothing overtly political about Brown Ceres’ choreography, her dances are forceful and affirming of female identity. At their best, they draw you in because of the complexity of the impulses that generate and control them. Still, if you look closely, you can see how they undermine conventional mores and ingrained patterns of thought. But they mostly convince because they are so beautifully and emotionally logical in the way they communicate. For in/divisible, Brown Ceres is collaborating with two soul mates. Aerial artist Sonya Smith complements her own (physically) more gravity-bound choreography. Joining them from San Diego is Sadie Weinberg with American Torch Songs, a set of short dances that look back at one of the universal high school experiences: getting dumped.

IN/DIVISIBLE Thurs/4–Sat/6, 8 p.m., $15. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF. 1-800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com

in/divisible

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PREVIEW The fact that the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 probably was no surprise to Dance Ceres choreographer-dancer Brittany Brown Ceres, since the aftershock of the proposition’s passage coincided with her residency at CounterPULSE. But it probably did strengthen her faith in dance’s ability to suggest and strengthen concepts of community, self, and instigating and supporting change. The upcoming in/divisible, presented as part of this year’s National Queer Arts Festival, may also serve as an affirmation for those engaged in the ongoing struggle for equality. Though there is nothing overtly political about Brown Ceres’ choreography, her dances are forceful and affirming of female identity. At their best, they draw you in because of the complexity of the impulses that generate and control them. Still, if you look closely, you can see how they undermine conventional mores and ingrained patterns of thought. But they mostly convince because they are so beautifully and emotionally logical in the way they communicate. For in/divisible, Brown Ceres is collaborating with two soul mates. Aerial artist Sonya Smith complements her own (physically) more gravity-bound choreography. Joining them from San Diego is Sadie Weinberg with American Torch Songs, a set of short dances that look back at one of the universal high school experiences: getting dumped.

IN/DIVISIBLE Thurs/4–Sat/6, 8 p.m., $15. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF. 1-800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com

How to repeal Prop. 8

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EDITORIAL When the late Sup. Harvey Milk was fighting to defeat the Briggs Initiative, a statewide ballot measure that would have barred gay people from teaching in public schools, he repeatedly made the point that the more Californians met and interacted with openly gay and lesbian people, the less likely the voters would be to sanction discrimination. Mayor Gavin Newsom made the same basic point in his statement following the horrifying Supreme Court decision that legalized discrimination in this state.

"I know many of my fellow Californians may initially agree with this ruling," he said, "but I ask them to reserve final judgment until they have discussed this decision with someone who will be affected by it.

"Please talk to a lesbian or gay family member, neighbor, or coworker and ask them why equality in the eyes of the law is important to every Californian."

That ought to be the theme of the November 2010 ballot measure that seeks to overturn Proposition 8.

It’s going to be a tough, uphill battle — after all, the voters just passed Prop. 8 last fall. But the campaign against it was, almost everyone now agrees, fatally flawed — the TV ads spoke in platitudes, there was almost no use of the words "gay" or "lesbian," and, perhaps most important, no coherent, grassroots effort to convince swing voters by making connections between them and the queer community. And there was far too little outreach to black and Latino voters.

And the tide of national sentiment is turning, far faster than anyone expected. Maine and Iowa recently legalized same-sex marriage. The New York Assembly has passed a marriage equality bill and, if it clears the state Senate, the governor has promised to sign it. By the time the 2010 election rolls around, gay marriage will be sweeping the country, and California will be way behind. And, of course, every year a new group of 18-year-olds gets the right to vote — and that demographic is heavily in favor of marriage equality.

So there’s no question that Prop. 8 can be overturned — and placing the issue on the same ballot as the governor’s race will sharpen the issue, force the candidates to take a stand, and generate additional voter turnout.

This time, though, the campaign has to be much more inclusive. The soft-pedal-homosexuality-and-pretend-queers-don’t-exist approach didn’t work. The write-off-the-black-community-and-religious-voters gambit backfired. Harvey Milk was right: Gay people and their allies need to be everywhere in this next fight, and need to take the message directly to those moderate voters who are going to think differently about someone they have met and talked to than about some image the right-wing nuts have conjured up.

Straight supporters of same-sex marriage need to be deployed properly. Newsom spent much of his time during the No on 8 campaign appearing before adoring crowds in places like the Castro District, which was a waste of time; he needs to be in Walnut Creek. African American ministers like the Rev. Amos Brown ought to be visiting churches in conservative areas and trying to make inroads. Art Torres, the former chair of the state Democratic Party, came out this spring and is popular among Latino voters.

We agree with Newsom. It’s time to start this campaign, now. But this time, let’s get it right. *

June: Sexiest sexy festival month ever

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By Juliette Tang

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Queer Arts Fest

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The Sex Worker Fest

This is definitely a good month for worthwhile local festivals. The 6th San Francisco Sex Worker Film, Art, & Music Festival officially kicked off this past weekend and promises to be a thrill for both the intellect and the libido. Smart, kinky, and fun, the Sex Worker Fest is a positive and educational week-long extravaganza that occurs in tandem with the ongoing 12th Annual Queer Arts Festival, a whopping month-long festival featuring over 400 artists in over 100 performances taking place in 18 venues all over San Francisco. The only question at this point is how you’re possibly going to fit everything into your schedule.


Michelle Tea

On Saturday, the Sex Worker Fest launched with a benefit at a. Muse Gallery (614 Alabama St) to support Radar Lab, a free queer writers retreat looking to accommodate 12 outstanding queer artists by this summer. Hosted by Ali Liebegott, whose IHOP Papers performs the feat of being at once witty and charming and a poignant lesbian coming-of-age novel, and Michelle Tea, prolific author and Guardian contributor whose novel Valencia joins rank with Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero in being good books named after famous San Francisco streets, the benefit featured appearances by literary luminaries Dorothy Allison, ZZ Packer, and Eileen Myles.

Call it Afro-Surreal

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I’m not a surrealist. I just paint what I see. — Frida Kahlo

THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE


In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was "far more disjointed than [it] sounds … such was the inner-outer subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart."

Ellison’s allusion is to his book’s most perplexing character, Rinehart the Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona of Rinehart so that "I may not see myself as others see me not." Wearing a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man known as the fellow with the gun, "Listen Jack, don’t let nobody make you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart, and be ready to do anything."

And Ellison’s lead man enters a world of prostitutes, hopheads, cops on the take, and masochistic parishioners. He says of Rinehart, "He was years ahead of me, and I was a fool. The world in which we live is fluidity, and Rine the Rascal was at home." The marquee of Rinehart’s store-front church declares:

Behold the Invisible!

Thy will be done O Lord!

I See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all.

You shall see the unknown wonders.

Ellison and Rinehart had seen it, but had no name for it.

In an introduction to prophet Henry Dumas’ 1974 book Ark Of Bones and Other Stories, Amiri Baraka puts forth a term for what he describes as Dumas’ "skill at creating an entirely different world organically connected to this one … the Black aesthetic in its actual contemporary and lived life." The term he puts forth is Afro-Surreal Expressionism.

Dumas had seen it. Baraka had named it.

This is Afro-Surreal!

THIS IS NOT AFRO-SURREAL


A) Surrealism:

Leopold Senghor, poet, first president of Senegal, and African Surrealist, made this distinction: "European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism is mystical and metaphorical." Jean-Paul Sartre said that the art of Senghor and the African Surrealist (or Negritude) movement "is revolutionary because it is surrealist, but itself is surrealist because it is black." Afro-Surrealism sees that all "others" who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist, per Frida Kahlo. The root for "Afro-" can be found in "Afro-Asiatic", meaning a shared language between black, brown and Asian peoples of the world. What was once called the "third world," until the other two collapsed.

B) Afro-Futurism:

Afro-Futurism is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science, technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in the future. Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has been around so long it is now the past.

Afro-Surrealists expose this from a "future-past" called RIGHT NOW.

RIGHT NOW, Barack Hussein Obama is America’s first black president.

RIGHT NOW, Afro-Surreal is the best description to the reactions, the genuflections, the twists, and the unexpected turns this "browning" of White-Straight-Male-Western-Civilization has produced.

THE PRESENT, OR RIGHT NOW


San Francisco, the most liberal and artistic city in the nation, has one of the nation’s most rapidly declining black urban populations. This is a sign of a greater illness that is chasing out all artists, renegades, daredevils, and outcasts. No black people means no black artists, and all you yet-untouched freaks are next. Only freaky black art — Afro-Surreal art — in the museums, galleries, concert venues, and streets of this (slightly) fair city can save us!

San Francisco, the land of Afro-Surreal poet laureate Bob Kaufman, can be at the forefront in creating an emerging aesthetic. In this land of buzzwords and catch phrases, Afro-Surreal is necessary to transform how we see things now, how we look at what happened then, and what we can expect to see in the future.

It’s no more coincidence that Kool Keith (as Dr. Octagon) recorded the 1996 Afro-Surreal anthem "Blue Flowers" on Hyde Street, or that Samuel R. Delany based much of his 1974 Afro-Surreal urtext Dhalgren on experiences in San Francisco.

An Afro-Surreal aesthetic addresses these lost legacies and reclaims the souls of our cities, from Kehinde Wiley painting the invisible men (and their invisible motives) in NYC to Yinka Shonibare beheading 17th (and 21st) century sexual tourists of Europe. From Nick Cave’s soundsuits at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the words you are reading right now, the message is clear: San Francisco, the world is ready for an Afro-Surreal art movement.

Afro-Surrealism is drifting into contemporary culture on a rowboat with no oars, entering the city to hunt down clues for the cure to this ancient, incurable disease called "western civilization." Or, as Ishmael Reed states, "We are mystical detectives about to make an arrest."

A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-SURREAL


Behold the invisible! You shall see unknown wonders!

1. We have seen these unknown worlds emerging in the works of Wifredo Lam, whose Afro-Cuban origins inspire works that speak of old gods with new faces, and in the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who gives us new gods with old faces. We have heard this world in the ebo-horn of Roscoe Mitchell and the lyrics of DOOM. We’ve read it through the words of Henry Dumas, Victor Lavalle, and Darius James. This emerging mosaic of radical influence ranges from Frantz Fanon to Jean Genet. Supernatural undertones of Reed and Zora Neale Hurston mix with the hardscrabble stylings of Chester Himes and William S. Burroughs.

2. Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afro-Surrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce.

3. Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past. We revisit old ways with new eyes. We appropriate 19th century slavery symbols like Kara Walker, and 18th century colonial ones like Yinka Shonibare. We re-introduce "madness" as visitations from the gods, and acknowledge the possibility of magic. We take up the obsessions of the ancients and kindle the dis-ease, clearing the murk of the collective unconsciousness as it manifests in these dreams called culture.

4. Afro-Surrealists use excess as the only legitimate means of subversion, and hybridization as a form of disobedience. The collages of Romare Bearden and Wangechi Mutu, the prose of Reed, and the music of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Antipop Consortium express this overflow.

Afro-Surrealists distort reality for emotional impact. 50 Cent and his cold monotone and Walter Benjamin and his chilly shock tactics can kiss our ass. Enough! We want to feel something! We want to weep on record.

5. Afro-Surrealists strive for rococo: the beautiful, the sensuous, and the whimsical. We turn to Sun Ra, Toni Morrison, and Ghostface Killa. We look to Kehinde Wiley, whose observation about the black male body applies to all art and culture: "There is no objective image. And there is no way to objectively view the image itself."

6. The Afro-Surrealist life is fluid, filled with aliases and census- defying classifications. It has no address or phone number, no single discipline or calling. Afro-Surrealists are highly-paid short-term commodities (as opposed to poorly-paid long term ones, a.k.a. slaves).

Afro-Surrealists are ambiguous. "Am I black or white? Am I straight, or gay? Controversy!"

Afro-Surrealism rejects the quiet servitude that characterizes existing roles for African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, women and queer folk. Only through the mixing, melding, and cross-conversion of these supposed classifications can there be hope for liberation. Afro-Surrealism is intersexed, Afro-Asiatic, Afro-Cuban, mystic, silly, and profound.

7. The Afro-Surrealist wears a mask while reading Leopold Senghor.

8. Ambiguous as Prince, black as Fanon, literary as Reed, dandy as André Leon Tally, the Afro-Surrealist seeks definition in the absurdity of a "post-racial" world.

9. In fashion (John Galliano; Yohji Yamamoto) and the theater (Suzan Lori-Parks), Afro-Surreal excavates the remnants of this post-apocalypse with dandified flair, a smooth tongue and a heartless heart.

10. Afro-Surrealists create sensuous gods to hunt down beautiful collapsed icons.

AFRO-SURREALISM IN ACTION


San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the African Diaspora present the works of Mutu, William Pope L., Trenton Doyle Hancock, Glenn Ligon, Wiley, Shonibare, and Walker en masse, with Lam’s Jungle as a center piece. Lorraine Hansbury Theater stages Genet’s The Blacks and Baraka’s The Dutchman, while San Francisco Opera adapts Aimé Césaire’s Caliban and the Fillmore has an Afro-punk retrospective. Afro-Surreal adaptations of Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Hurston’s Tell My Horse (1937), and Marvel’s Black Panther will grace the silver-screen.

These are the first steps in an illustrious and fantastic journey. When we finally reach those unknown shores, we will say, with blood beneath our nails and mud on our boots:

This is Afro-Surreal!

Sour grapes

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Wish I could take the two parties I went to on Saturday and superimpose them onto each other, so that the Rockridge moms and dads could mix with the young trans men, drag kings, and queer burlesque performers.

When I mentioned this seemingly surreal idea to Alice Shaw after our soccer game Sunday, she said, simply, "Do it. You can!" And she teaches photography, so I decided to believe her.

Not only that, but since my own training is technically as a fiction writer, I think I’ll bring my buddy Earl Butter with me to both parties, even though in real life I only ate lunch with him and then dropped him off at his house.

Earl Butter deserves a bigger piece of pie. Don’t you think?

"My whole life has been a series of disappointments," Earl Butter really did say, at lunch. "One after the other after the other, and eventually you reach the point where one more thing … well, it might just be the one that breaks you."

We were both looking at his piece of pie, and it was, in fact, astonishingly small. Small enough to put inside a teacup. Small enough to break anyone’s spirit.

I gave him half my piece. To be honest, I didn’t miss it. If I go back to Mission Pie, it will be for a cup of coffee.

Now, to show you what a great friend and altruistic farmer I really really am, after lunch I took Earl Butter with me to this Kentucky Derby party in Oakland. Of course you heard that a 50:1 long-shot won, by a mile, and that gives me more hope than Susan Boyle gave everyone else.

But I already had more hope than is good for me, anyway.

Anyway, so I met this big fat queer stripper chick stage-named Kentucky Fried Woman at a burlesque show. "I’ve heard all about you," I said, because I had. I’d heard that she has a Derby party every year and makes buttloads of the Best Fried Chicken Ever.

Praise the Lard … it’s true!

And there were biscuits, and corn bread, and mac ‘n’ cheese, and every possible shade of white and yellow things to eat, but I have a confession to make: I went to two shows in one week and didn’t get the burlesque thing. I mean, song and dance and comedy I understand, but the part that ends in swirling pasties? … Nothing. I’m sorry.

This probably seems like sour grapes coming from an uncurvaceous woman with sour grape-sized tits, so it probably is sour grapes. And/or to me, life itself is almost unbearably sexy as it is, with it’s fried chicken and red umbrellas, its beautiful people, licking their lips.

A friend had to explain it to me. But I still didn’t get it. Maybe the striptease, like fried chicken itself, is simply not for everyone. That was how I decided to leave it.

Then I went to this party. Then, later that night, I went to this other party. I was on the dance floor talking to my two new favorite people: the woman whose children I watch, and the mom next door, our hostess, who was wearing a wig, false eyelashes, it being her birthday.

Perhaps giddy at having found sitters, one or two other people were wearing wigs. That was it. Oh, and one guy was wearing a cowboy hat. I was wearing what I always wear: a skirt, a shirt, and a little mascara.

"I’ve been watching you," Cowboy Hat blurted, as soon as we’d been introduced. He seemed unable to contain himself. "And I have to say," he spilled, "that you have really impressed me with your outfit!" I think he was a doctor. He had to notice the life leaving me as he went on and on, congratuutf8g me on my get-up, my costume, how well I’d done!

Worst of all, he meant all this as a kindness, so vodka and tonic in his face was not an option.

The only way to shut him up, which didn’t hit me soon enough, sadly, was to unbutton my shirt, swing it over my head, and let it fly. I undid my bra, my skirt, the music erasing the rest as I danced down to my exact body, the song, finally getting it. *

MISSION PIE

Mon.-Thu., 7 a.m.-9 p.m.;

Fri., 7 a.m.-10 p.m.;

Sat., 8 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.-9 p.m.

2901 Mission, SF

(415) 282-1500

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Hot sex events this week: May 13-19

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

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Learn to lap dance like Natalie Portman in Closer (without the lying, cheating, and heartbreak, of course) at Wednesday’s class with Catherine Rose.

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>> Sizzling Couples Lapdance Class
Catherine Rose of Slinky Productions presents a rare opportunity to learn the art of sensual teasing and erotic fun with a partner or friend of any sex. In just over two hours, you’ll learn about setting the right dynamic, giving a cleavage show, classic cuddle massage gyration, and more. Chocolate and bubbly will be served.

Wed/13, 7:30-9:45pm. $99/couple (10 percent off if it’s your first class).
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.slinkyproductions.com

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>> Art House Screening
Walk the red carpet at this Warhol-themed premiere party for Femina Potens curator and suspension goddess Madison Young’s newest film release, a work of queer porn inspired by The Factory.

Thurs/14, 7pm. $10-15.
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
(415) 864-1558
www.feminapotens.org

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>> Quodoushka Preview
Enjoy a fun, educational, inspirational introduction to this shamanic approach to spiritual sexuality, with Mukee Okan.

Thurs/14, 7:30-10pm. Free.
Call (510) 482-4239 for info and location.

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>> Monogamy? Non Monogamy? What’s For You?
UCSF’s AIDS Health Project presents this workshop for gay and bisexual men regardless of HIV status, during which you’ll explore the joys and challenges of both types of relationships.

Fri/15, 6-9:30pm. Free. Pre-registration required.
AHP Services Center
1930 Market, SF
(415) 476-6448
www.ucsf-ahp.org

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>> Electrify and Deepen Your Sexual Connection for Couples
Ignite the fire of passion, deepen your intimacy, and experience the heights of desire that a deep sexual connection can bring during this seminar with Danielle Harel and Celeste Hirschman.

Tue/19, 8-10pm. $45/pair if pre-registered.
Good Vibrations
1620 Polk, SF
(415) 345-0400
www.goodvibes.com

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Shades of time: Q&A with Matt Keegan

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Barack Obama boarding an Air Force One plane for the first time. Gay calendars from the 1960s. A New York Times article on the death of a major urban newspaper. Sundays at the Alemany Flea Market. These are some of the temporal markers at play in Matt Keegan‘s exhibition “Postcards & Calendars.” The show (reviewed in the current Guardian) could be Keegan’s postcard to New York about time spent in San Francisco. It’s also an exploration of the ways in which calendars and other time keepers can be used subversively to convey forms of experience or forge communities. Keegan is no stranger to the such endeavors: his 2008 book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, $35) gathers interviews, old People magazines, memorabilia connected to the “Hands Across America” project, artifacts from his small-scale update of that endeavor, and unorthodox archival material into a journal that doubles as a portrait of the Reagan era. The artist and I recently sat at a petite lemon yellow table with pretty lemon yellow flowers in Altman Siegel Gallery to discuss his current exhibition.

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View of Matt Keegan’s “Postcards & Calendars.” All images from “Postcards & Calendars” courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

SFBG Many shows repeat the same execution of a single theme, over and over. In contrast, “Postcards & Calendars” has many forms and facets.
Matt Keegan The thematic of this show is definitely influenced by my time in in San Francisco, but not relegated to being here. Lots of things at play are continuations of my preexisting engagement with photography.
In terms of local influences, the calendars from the GLBT Historical Society had a tremendous impact on this show. Before I met with Rebekah Kim, the Historical Society’s archivist, I was trying to figure out how to map the ways time is not only recorded but visually structured — to think about such rudimentary things as a planner, or a calendar, or a newspaper, in terms of how days and months can be iterated.
When I saw their collection of calendars, part of the power of those objects comes from the way they integrate a social history into an innocuous form. Also, some of the calendars that have a clear porn element, also have a social element. For example, Fizeek from the mid-‘60s — the back of that calendar has notations about who shot which photo and where the photographers are based, which provides it with this added level of social exchange.

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Matt Keegan

SFBG In the past year I’ve amassed a stack of the 1970s SF gay magazine Vector, so it was serendipity to come across a calendar from Vector on the wall in your show. More than with microfiche of local newspapers, I get a sense of what was going on in San Francisco at the time from a publication such as that magazine, simply through the addresses in advertisements.
MK Material that might be considered insubstantial or peripheral in terms of formal archiving and recording has a historical implication. Close to the time when I met with Rebekah, I met with Gerard Koskovich, one of the founding members of the GLBT Historical Society. He told this amazing anecdote about Bois Burke placing an ad in The Hobby Directory that is significant in helping to understand a 1940s and ’50s queer history of correspondence. Within this guide, people would reach out about hobbies such as nude sunbathing and physique photography. I am very interested in the various ways that such print-based and distributed publications were activated to serve unintended purposes. And, I love the way that the calendars, specifically, embed such a social history so that it becomes part of daily and monthly activities.

Barack Obama, 31 shades of white, newspapers as endangered species, the archivist’s life, the art of interviewing, and more, after the jump

Hot sex events this week: May 6-12

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

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Femina Potens curator, international award winning Bondage Model and Feminist Porn Star Madison Young hosts this month’s “Sizzle.”

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>> Sizzle
Femina Potens celebrates Masturbation Month with an auto-erotica reading and open mic extravaganza, featuring writer and sexologist Carol Queen, porn performer and BDSM professionalDusty Horn, queer porn producer and bondage model Madison Young, and Xicana burlesque mistress Chica Boom. (Also check out the benefit for Femina Potens at The Lex on Saturday.)

Fri/8, 8pm. $10-15.
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
www.feminapotens.org

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>> School of Shimmy
Learn to shake it on the stage or in the bedroom with Dottie Lux and guest teachers in this two-hour workshop. Includes history of burlesque, how to create a character, and basic choreography. All ages, genders, and experience levels welcome.

Thurs/7, 7:30pm. $30.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

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>> Sex Work on Wheels Tour
The Bike Coalition combines two of our favorite things – bikes and sex – with this two-wheeled tour of San Francisco’s sexy side, including stops by streets named for Gold Rush-era madams, sites of 19th century parlor houses, and discussion of labor struggles in the sex industry..

Sat/9, 11am-2pm, free.
Main Library at Fulton Street steps, SF
www.sfbike.org

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>> Girl Girl Tricks for Men, Part 2
Ever suspect lesbians have secrets about sex with women that would make you a better lover? Dig deeper into the world of lesbian sex with this sexy and intellectual romp through lesbian bedsheets with bisexual dyke and sex educator Kristy Lin Billuni. Men only.

Tues/12, 8pm. $25-30.
Good Vibrations
1620 Polk, SF
www.goodvibes.com

Time passages

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johnny@sfbg.com

The past is vanishing, more than ever before. Or so it seems, as so many temporal placeholders — including the newspaper you might be holding in your hands right now — give way to digital facsimiles. This quandary is a morphing source of inspiration for "Postcards & Calendars," a solo show by the New York artist and temporary San Francisco resident Matt Keegan, who is about to complete a teaching stint at California College of the Arts.

While Keegan engages a consistently time-based theme throughout "Postcards and Calendars," he does so via refreshingly varied forms and motifs. He’s dedicatedly studious enough to turn a trip to the GLBT Historical Society into an semi-installation, yet easygoing enough to use sexually-charged archival pieces as material, spontaneous enough to try out something different with each piece in his overall show, subversive (or formally perverse) enough to digitally photograph newspapers, and irreverent enough to break his own rules regarding what constitutes a record of daily life.

Keegan first stung my eyes and queer spirit with a piece from the Altman Siegel Gallery’s inaugural group show. It visually manifested the infinite recess of a ex-romantic relationship in a manner that interspersed teasing hints of still-extant attraction with a palpable sense of emotional loss. All of these aspects brought the "memory drawings" of San Francisco artists Colter Jacobsen to mind, so it’s only fitting that Jacobsen contributes a booklet to "Postcards & Calendars" that plays off of Keegan’s theme. In fact, one can draw further connections between Keegan, Jacobsen, and the NYC filmmaker Matt Wolf — three artists of roughly the same generation who share similar queer historical imperatives while allowing humor, traces of casual lust or longing and even some lovelorn aspects into their art. Keegan’s book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, 2008), an exploration of national identity through the Reagan era’s "Hands Across America" phenomenon, possesses enjoyable parallels to Wolf’s films about the late David Wojnarowicz and Arthur Russell, and Jacobsen’s arrangements of trinkets and trash into expressions that find meaning or power in degradeability.

"Postcards & Calendars" is a direct array of works, often candid, and at times (in the case of the gay calendars from the ‘1970s) full-frontal. But the show’s lingering strength comes from more elliptical gestures, such as a wall of personal imagery that Keegan has rendered more enigmatic and evocative through an unconventional series of drawing and photo processes. In fact, to tap into the depth of what Keegan does here, you need to look closely at the walls themselves, where you might discover 31 passages of time.


MATT KEEGAN: POSTCARDS & CALENDARS

Through May 23

Altman Siegel Gallery

49 Geary, fourth floor, SF

(415) 576-9300

www.altmansiegel.com

Peepshow: Art House Sluts

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Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

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Who: Madison Young is a local porn star who also directs films, makes art, teaches sex classes, and co-owns the coolest “feminist, tranny, queer” art gallery/performance space thing in the whole entire world. It’s called Femina Potens Art Gallery and it’s the best place to visit in SF if you’re looking to balance out your interest in smut with your love of paintings and sculptures and stuff. If you read SEX SF regularly, you probably already know about Femina Potens and you probably go there at least twice a week. But if you’ve somehow missed the boat, go right now. Girls who are boys who want boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys flock to FP daily and nightly to stare at sexy paintings, watch dirty movies, and talk about art.

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