Queer Archives — Page 47 of 53 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Editor’s Notes

April 29, 2008

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I have something to say to Mark Leno, and I hope he’s paying attention.

Listen:

Our endorsement in the state Senate race, which you can read on page 13, was painful. We made the right call, and I stand behind it — but it wasn’t easy.

I still remember the year 2000, when San Francisco politics changed forever, when district elections turned the Board of Supervisors from a collection of political hacks — wholly owned by downtown and utterly loyal to a corrupt mayor — into one of the most progressive policy-making bodies in any city in America. That was the year Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, Matt Gonzales, Jake McGoldrick, and Gerardo Sandoval joined Tom Ammiano and, in one great political day, doomed the Willie Brown machine to political obscurity and paved the way for a living wage law, universal health care, community choice aggregation, real budget oversight, and a city where the grassroots actually mattered.

And you, Mark, were on the wrong side of history. You went along with Willie Brown. You endorsed Lawrence Wong against Peskin. You endorsed Michael Yaki against McGoldrick. You were behind not only the sleazy Brown machine but a couple of truly lame candidates; those endorsements should embarrass you until the end of time. (Be serious — looking back at all that Peskin has done for San Francisco, can you actually say Lawrence Wong, who couldn’t even handle a job overseeing the Community College District, was the better choice? Mark, you are many things, but you are not a fool.)

If you win this election — and I think you will — you have some serious work to do bringing the queer community and the left back together. A lot of people are mad at their friends, and a lot of good allies are fighting. We’re losing sight of the prize, here. And while you had every right to challenge Carole Migden, and I’m glad you did, you also created this situation and you need to help fix it.

How do you do that? For starters, don’t attack Migden. She’s done enough damage to herself. And she’s done a lot for this community. Your campaign consultants will want to send out nasty hit pieces (they’re probably already printed), but you have to stop them. And if you don’t get that, if you think winning is more important than anything, then you’re as bad as Bill and Hillary Clinton, who seem to believe it would be better to elect a Republican than concede defeat to another Democrat. Don’t go there. The collateral damage would be immense. It’s not worth it.

And show a little independence. This November don’t let yourself side with another group of worthless supervisorial candidates who are simply Gavin Newsom clones.

When you refused to criticize Mayor Newsom’s bloody budget, you blamed the governor and told us you didn’t want to see "the good guys fighting." I have news for you: When it comes to the city budget, Gavin Newsom is not one of the good guys. He is our own Arnold Schwarzenegger, refusing to raise taxes and instead cutting programs.

And his allies, the downtown forces furious about the progressive board, will want to put another group of regressive sycophants in office this fall. You have no business being a part of that.

Mark, I like you, but this endorsement was a great leap of faith for me. Show me I wasn’t wrong.

Hot like Neu Wave Feminism

April 18, 2008

At the Femina Potens gallery, oil painter Alicia DeBrincat, photographer Rocksusto, and paper cut artist Lex McQuilkin take a fresh look at gender, sexuality, societal expectations and ethics in Neu Wave Feminism, a group show that opened April 5.

DeBrincat’s “Cultural Corset” series examines how women’s identities and societal expectations play out on the terrain of the body. She is interested in how American culture is simultaneously obsessed with the female body and repulsed by its natural form.

Her huge oil paintings portray female nudes with a stunning realism – breasts small and large, thighs puckered with cellulite, rounded bellies.

“The paint is applied with an attention to anatomical detail that both celebrates women’s bodies and references the leering voyeurism and minutely critical gaze that the female body encounters,” she writes in her artist statement.

Photographer Rocksuto has also taken a thematic approach to her work. In 2007, she embarked on A Photo a Day project, which explored a range of themes, such as population, foreclosures, sexual ethics, trust fund nihilism, and chickens.

This year, she’s embarked on A Photo a Month project, where she’s limited her thematic exploration to gender roles, sexual ethics, and religion.

Lex McQuilkin’s swirling, delicate paper cuts explore gender and masculinity from queer perspective. Her latest series, Good Old Boys, explores the precariousness of masculinity and its portrayal.

Gender and sexuality — not tired!

Neu Wave Feminism
April 5 – 27, 2008
Gallery hours: Thurs-Sun, 12-6 p.m.
Femina Potens Gallery
2199 Market, SF
415-864-1558

Queer Prom, darlings

April 17, 2008

Who needs “Carrie” when you’ve got Mary? Those fabulously scandalous Sisters of Perpetual indulgence are at it again, hosting a Queer Prom this Sat/19 to raise funds to combat the proposed LBAM aerial spraying. Theme: Leather and Lace. Location: San Francisco’s wackiest techno leather “ball” room (get it?), the Powerhouse. Chaperones: Porn stars. Dress code: No one will remain clothed for long, sweetie, it’s a Queer Prom duh.

Hell yes the punch will be spiked

Queer Prom: Leather and Lace
Sat/19, 9pm-Midnite, $5-15 sliding scale
The Powerhouse
1347 Folsom
www.powerhouse-sf.com

Sheik it

April 15, 2008

How much hot queer Arab on the dance floor can you handle? If you’re dating me, it better be a lot.

Others can test their capacity for swivel-hipped, uluutf8g cuties this Saturday at what more sensationalist club critics might dub a "Battle of the Belly Dancers." Two gay-oriented Middle Eastern–themed parties, Bibi and Club La Zeez, butt bejeweled foreheads in different venues — on the first night of Passover, no less. But that’s a different geopolitical kettle of couscous.

Hitting up both events would be ideal, since each is put on by folks of SWANA (Southwest Asian–Northern African) descent; pumps out zills-tinkling contemporary and traditional Persian, Arabic, Latin, and South Asian floor bangers; and serves an underrepresented audience hungry for connection in these unfashionably volatile times. If you are forced to choose, I recommend Bibi. La Zeez, a monthly launched in March at Club Eight by Los Angeles playwright Saleem, is good fun but gives off a touristy vibe — "Magic Carpet" lounge, really? It also caters to a mostly mainstream gay male crowd and uses the word exotic in its press materials. Tacky.

Bibi, on the other many-ringed hand, is a quarterly charitable grassroots affair that has delighted queers of all genders for a year now and is hosted by local playboys Rostam and J. Maximilian. This time around, the party’s at Six and called Bibi Chic, so dress yourself fancy and free. Proceeds go to six queer Middle Eastern foundations, including Iraqi LGBT; IRQO in Iran; and Beirut’s fabulous new LGBT center, Helem. DJs Emancipacion, Masood, and Josh Cheon will throw down beats and performance artist Cherry Gallete and belly dancer Amira will dazzle the crowd.

And what about us queer Arab Americans who’ll be sitting down to Passover seder that evening with our gorgeous Jewish boyfriends? "Both of you come afterward! Bring cookies!" Rostam entreated me over the phone. "There’s room on our dance floor for everyone."

BIBI CHIC

Sat/19, 10 p.m., $15.

Six

60 Sixth St., SF

(415) 863-1221

www.clubsix1.com, www.myspace.com/bibisf

CLUB LA ZEEZ

Sat/19, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $12–$15

Club Eight

1151 Folsom, SF

(415) 431-1151

www.eightsf.com

Editor’s Notes

April 15, 2008

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The pope isn’t coming to San Francisco. Too bad; a few of us have a few things to say.

When the last pope, John Paul II, came here in 1987, it felt kind of like a circus. The dude loved theater, and there was plenty of it to go around — he made a point, for example, of meeting with Clint Eastwood, who was then the mayor of Carmel, which gave my friend Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven the chance to make up "Monterey Pope Festival" T-shirts. A few enterprising sorts made photos of Eastwood with a gun in his hand telling the Holy Father: "Go ahead, bless my day."

When JPII showed up at the Mission Dolores, some jokers who lived across the street hung a huge banner that read: "The pope is a wanker."

I, of course, didn’t want to miss the show.

It turned out that getting a press pass for the pope’s visit was a little tricky, especially for a reporter for an alternative newsweekly who made no secret of his disdain for the local Catholic hierarchy. But I went to Catholic school and have a good old Irish name, and I wasn’t going to let this one get away.

So I filed my application with the locals, and had it rejected. The day before the pope was due to arrive, I called the archdiocese headquarters to ask who was really in charge of papal press. After a bunch of squirming, they admitted there was a special monsignor in a downtown hotel who made the final decisions. I got his name; I called the hotel and got the suite, where his secretary told me he was seeing nobody, that the deadline had passed, and that, in the vernacular, I was SOL.

But my father taught me well: priests drink bourbon, monsignors drink Scotch. So I picked up a nice single-malt and made my way to the holy press room. I pitched a fit of sadness to the secretary (my poor sainted mother, who was praying for me even now, would be in tears if she thought I’d missed the chance to see His Holiness) and that got me through the door.

The monsignor looked up and told me there was no way anyone was getting credentials the day before the visit and he’d never heard of my newspaper anyway. I pulled out the bottle, and he smiled.

"Bless you, my son," he said. "I think we can do business."

So I got the special Pope press pass, and saw the Popemobile, and saw the big wanker banner, and had a grand old time — and other than the fact that the city tore up all the bushes along the papal route so nobody would plant bombs, the city was pretty quiet.

That would not be the case today.

The new pope isn’t just a wanker — he’s pissing off all sorts of people, including his own believers. Queer groups, women, people who believe in stem cell research, people who believe in sex education for kids, people who think that wiping out family planning and prenatal programs for third-world women to avoid even the slightest mention of abortion … they got a beef with this guy. And they’re more active than ever.

So Benedict, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, won’t make it to SF. Damn. Despite Mayor Newsom’s embarrassing hide-the-ball game, we did a pretty good job on the Olympic torch. And the pope would be too big to hide.

Clubs: Anavan sans Ativan

April 7, 2008

Holy Spazmosis!. Jumpy young rockers Anavan drove up from Salt Lake City to play the queer (and friends!) punk monthly Trans Am at Club Eight for a rapturous beer-spurtin’ crowd last Saturday.

Anavan, “You’re Taking Me Out”

The frantic foursome greeted us with mucho fog machine, trademark hockey helmets, drum, bass, and a wall of synths. And then everything got crazy in a voices-in-your-head way (mostly thanks to the skittering, hyperactive vocals mixed waaaay back in the echo-delay mix.)

Courtesy of the muthafuckin’ LA Times

In the case of the hockey helmets, visual connections to those masked masters Daft Punk, MSTRKRFT, and occasionally (if primly painted-on facial scruff counts — yes, I’m calling those skinny French boys out) Justice might be made. And sonically they can sometimes resemble those glam-tech outfits a teeny-tad, mostly in their boppy keyboard riffs. But Anavan adds its own cymbal-crashing, wildly energetic No-Wave twist, sure to please the art school crowd (Richard Hell is all the rage again, haven’t you heard?) and dance floor maniacs as well as indie kids. I expect you’ll hear them burning down discos near you soon.

(Next month a Trans Am, Sat May 3, features SF native cuties Ex-Boyfriends — should be rocking’.)

Outlaw representation

April 2, 2008

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

I love Dick and I cannot lie. I am of course referring to my Chocolate City homeboy Richard Bruce Nugent — who was never called "Dick," but was outfitted with "Paul Arbian" and other choice names by his friend, rival, and fellow Harlem/Negro Renaissance leader Wallace Thurman. Nugent, who died impoverished but grand in 1987, has been one of my abiding heroes since childhood. But with the rediscovery and publication of Gentleman Jigger (Da Capo Press, 332 pages, $18), in which Nugent names and reclaims his uptown good and hard times from speakeasies to sidewalks, the youngest Harlem Renaissance genius truly ceases to be a cipher.

I first read about Nugent at age 10, in David Levering Lewis’s epic study When Harlem Was in Vogue (Penguin, 1989). A provocative iconoclast and bon vivant, Nugent — who’d had the nerve to live past 27 and even be a vital raconteur during his sunset-and-threadbare years — enjoyed a meteoric ascent into the flux of my prepubescent consciousness. My Nuge was clearly brilliant, and a proto–rock star due to the mere rumor of his gay lit landmark from 1926, the short story "Smoke, Lilies and Jade." Though raised sheltered in Washington, DC’s Adams-Morgan black bohemia of the 1980s, I inchoately got that the Harlem Renaissance was the official coming out of black queer radical subculture — a coming out linked to Nugent’s historic meet-cute with Langston Hughes at one of DC salon hostess Georgia Douglas Johnson’s "Saturday nighters."

Having followed a trajectory similar to Nugent’s leap from DC to NYC, I still find him inspiring. His Gentleman Jigger reads eerily, stunningly, as if it were written about a black blogospheric bohemia that continues to wrestle with the ish Hughes laid out in his famed 1926 essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." Although Nugent appears to have been scooped (possibly ripped off) in defining le tout fashionable Harlem by his prematurely dead and duskier podnuh Thurman, he almost lived to witness the emergence of such latter-day inheritors of his vision as poet Essex Hemphill and cultural critic Ernest Hardy.

Editor Thomas Wirth, who maintains a Nugent Web site and worked on Duke University Press’s 2002 Nugent collection Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance, has done us all a great service by unearthing and recolutf8g Nugent’s masterful roman á clef. It’s an intriguing, nudge-winky funhouse that holds a mirror to the New Negritude milieu circa 1927 while presenting a flipside to the Niggerati Manor events captured in Thurman’s 1932 Infants of the Spring (Northeastern). With its wit, passion, racial skullduggery, fearless self-analysis, and an arch framing of uptown/downtown creative types fit to rival Ann Douglass’s nonfiction ’20s Manhattan history Terrible Honesty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Gentleman Jigger pulls off the shroud of dilettante-ism that obscured Nugent for decades. Twentieth-century sexual revolt was not always about a Revue Négre pickaninny and her bananas — or a notorious Englishman’s liver lips. It was also the province of dangerous minds with a will to political or social activism.

In Gentleman Jigger, at a soiree held by Serge Von Vertner, Nugent’s alter-ego Stuart Brennen holds forth: "Oh, I always sprawl," he declaims. "Sprawling is a Negro art. Else you might never know I was one. Appearances are so deceitful, and that would never do. So I merely flaunt a trademark."

If that ain’t a postmortem fit for the post-Basquiat, post-Gnarls, Black Renaissance 3.0 era, then I don’t know what is.

Superlists 2008

March 26, 2008

What’s with the obsession to possess every Daniel Johnston cassette, need to surf every beach, or desire to watch a game at every baseball stadium in America, as Stanford grads Brad Null and Dave Kaval did in 1998? Why don’t just a few do? It must have something to do with our human urge to make things complete. Isn’t that why people spend their free time updating wikis instead of, say, taking a nap?

Here at the Guardian, we have something similar: an impassioned group of listmakers bringing you this one-of-a-kind Superlist issue. Our Superlist 2008 doesn’t just give you a smattering of things to do or a hint of places to go in a category, it gives you every single screaming last one of them — the better to assist you in crossing your own personal finish line. We bring you every restaurant in the city that serves oysters for a buck during happy hour, each bar that has a karaoke night, all the marching bands looking for new members that you can shake a slogan at, barbers who will help remove your face animal, and so on. If we screwed up, write us at superlists@sfbg.com and set us straight. (Deborah Giattina)

>>Superlist No. 832: Dive karaoke bars
Increase the fame, reduce the shame

>>Superlist No. 833: One buck shucks
Dollar oyster happy hours

>>Superlist No. 834: Cultural center dining
Home cooking without the family

>>Superlist No. 835: Youth record labels
Where local kids make beats and rhymes

>>Superlist No. 836: Hot shaves
Barber shops that give a close one

>>Superlist No. 837: Step up!
Ditch your tired Chucks for new soles

>>Superlist No. 838: Queer partner dancing
Lead, follow … your choice

>>Superlist No. 839: Make some noise
Street bands you can join

>>Minilist: Organic U-pick farms
Harvest your own yummies

Superlist: Queer partner dancing

March 26, 2008

Just ’cause we’re queer doesn’t mean we can’t tango, swing, and salsa with our partners. Sure, there are great places to shimmy and shake while trying not to spill our mojitos. But for those of us who wish we could work the graceful angle a little more, well, there’s hope for us yet. Parties abound where knowledgeable teachers provide a preparty lesson, then let us float (or flop) our way around the dance floor. If we’re lucky, we’ll have so much fun we won’t even remember the awkward trauma inflicted by our high school prom. No experience or partners needed for any of the parties below — just flash a smile, make a friend, and get your ass on the dance floor.

Every fourth Saturday, the Metronome Dance Center becomes Baila Conmigo (1830 17th, SF; 415-252-9000, www.metronomedancecenter.com), a Latin dance party for all. Lessons are from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., with dancing until around 11:30 p.m. Pay $15 for the lesson and party or $8 for the party only.

On the last Saturday of the month, the monthly women’s Latin dance party, Mango (El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; 415-282-3325, www.elriosf.com), boasts great food to go with your salsa. Show up at 3:30 p.m. for a salsa lesson, pay your $8 at the door, and let the DJ move you.

The Queer Jitterbugs (Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; 415-581-1605, www.queerballroom.com) present a free dance party the third Saturday of each month at the Castro’s healthy-living hang out. A lesson on the basics begins at 7 p.m. and lasts for an hour, with social dancing from 8 to 9:30 p.m.

Boot, scoot, and boogie, people. Country-and-western dancing is what Sundance Saloon (Space 550, 550 Barneveld, SF; 415-820-1403, www.sundancesaloon.org) is all about every Sunday (5–10 p.m., $5) and Thursday (6:30–10:30 p.m., $5). So practice your "yee-haw!" and shine your belt buckle. Lessons start when doors open on Sunday and shortly thereafter on Thursdays and Fridays. Everyone welcome, but be over 21.

At Trip the Light Fantastic Friday Night Women’s Dance (Lake Merritt Dance Center, 200 Grand, Oakl.; 510-763-1343, www.tripthelightfantastic.org), gay games silver medalist Zoe Balfour will lead you through a different dance style at 7:30 p.m. each Friday — salsa, country, West Coast swing, waltzes, nightclub two-step, ballroom, and line dances. The party, which costs $10–$20 on a sliding scale, starts after the lesson is over and lasts until 11 p.m. Don’t be afraid, no experience is necessary. Just be brave.

Or maybe just, No Joe Nation

March 24, 2008

Well, my blog item on some supporters of Ross Mirkarimi suggesting he run as a green for state Senate attracted calls almost the moment I posted it. And the callers have a point:

This isn’t just a San Francisco seat. Right now it’s a queer seat. And it’s possible that even the talk of Mirkarimi running could siphon away some of the energy that progressives say is needed to defeat Joe Nation.

For the record, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea for Mirkarimi to run for state Senate; as I wrote, I think he would do better to stay in San Francisco. But I think the fact that this is even being talked about (and not by Ross, who I’m sure is flattered by it but who really isn’t pushing the issue) is evidence that there’s a concern out there about what would happen if neither Carole Migden nor Mark Leno wins the June primary.

Here’s the other option: Progressive supporters of both Leno and Migden could do something entirely radical, and come together to campaign to keep this a queer SF seat — which means running a campaign that says hey: Vote Leno. Or vote Migden. But don’t vote for Nation.

That might mean Migden and Leno deciding not to attack each other as Election Day approaches, and to save their negative campaigning for the candidate from Up North.

Gee, could they actually do that?

Mirkarimi for state Senate?

March 24, 2008

I just heard a fascinating little rumor that says something about the state Senate race between Carole Migden, Mark Leno and Joe Nation.

Nation’s from Marin and is the more moderate candidate, and some San Franciscans fear that the two more progressive queer legislators could split the SF vote and leave the door open for Nation to win – and for San Francisco to lose a state Senate seat. So a few supporters of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi are saying that he ought to enter the race, as a write-in for the June Green Party primary.

Under the theory here, Mirkarimi would get the Green nomination. If Migden or Leno is the Democrat in the race, he’d drop out. If it’s Nation, he might want to decide to stay in.

Of course, that could mean giving up his board seat, since he’s up for re-election in November, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Perhaps better to have Mirkarimi in San Francisco than Sacramento.

But it shows how concerned people are about the prospect of SF losing this seat.

Mirkarimi was a little startled when he first heard of the plan, which was hatched by supporters who never actually talked to him about it. “I was taken by surprise at how well thought out this became, completely independent of me,” he said. He said he’s running for re-election to the Board of Supervisors, and that’s his priority. But he’s not against the concept of joining the Green Party primary, and if the Democrat were Joe Nation “then I would have to make a decision.”

Newsom’s commission games

March 18, 2008

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom didn’t want Debra Walker, an artist and activist, running the Building Inspection Commission. He doesn’t want Theresa Sparks, a transgender woman and community leader, running the Police Commission. And now, we’ve learned, he doesn’t want Robert Haaland, a labor activist and one of the city’s most visible transgender leaders, to serve as vice president of the Board of Appeals.

But of course, the mayor thinks it’s perfectly fine to put two employees of Pacific Gas and Electric Company — an outfit that is suing the city, breaking the law, trying to subvert public power and cheating the public out of hundreds of millions of dollars a year — on city commissions.

This is what the second term of Mayor Newsom, who is now openly running for governor, looks like. It’s not pretty.

We knew the mayor had his sights on higher office, but now that it’s out in the open, almost everything he does at City Hall seems to be aimed not at improving San Francisco but at increasing his odds of moving up in the political world. Why, for example, would Newsom appoint Mary Jung, a PG&E customer services manager, to the Civil Service Commission, and Darlene Chiu, a PG&E City Hall flak, to the Small Business Commission? What possible qualifications could someone whose job involves promoting the interests of a giant corporation that routinely screws small business people have as an advocate for the city’s local merchants? Why would the Civil Service Commission, which deals with city employee issues, need the expertise of someone whose employer wants to prevent the city from creating more public jobs?

Why would Newsom be doing this — if he didn’t need the support of PG&E and its allies for his next political step?

Why would he be directing his appointees to keep out of leadership posts anyone with strong progressive credentials if he weren’t trying to build new bridges to the developers, the big employers, the police unions, and the more conservative interest groups he’ll need for a statewide campaign?

The bottom line is, Newsom needs to stop thinking about running his next campaign and start running the city — because this sort of commission funny business, this practice of treating important agencies that manage key city departments as nothing more than political patronage posts for rewarding allies and punishing enemies, is terrible for San Francisco.

It’s too late to do anything about Mary Jung, but the supervisors can, and should, overturn the Chiu appointment — and let the mayor know that putting PG&E executives on city commissions is unacceptable under any circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Board of Appeals votes for new officers March 19. By tradition, the top posts on the five-member panel rotate based on seniority, with an appointee of the mayor holding one job, and a board appointee the other. But Newsom’s three members have indicated that they won’t allow Haaland — a conscientious commissioner with an excellent record — to serve as vice president. That’s a slap in the face to labor, the queer community, and the supervisors. Newsom ought to show some political integrity and tell his appointees not to suddenly change the rules.

Diamonds are harder than gym bodies

March 11, 2008

Black Lizard made me gay. Or, at the very least, Kenji Fukasaku’s 1968 jewel-toned mod noir opened my quasicloseted 16-year-old eyes to a certain queer aesthetic — one which foregrounds its own artifice by using Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salome as wallpaper; one which dresses deviance in a gown with a 25-foot-long feathered train; and one which knows that the flipside of fabulousness is utter ridiculousness. It certainly wasn’t something I was seeing in the twink-filled issues of XY foisted upon me by my Pride ring–wearing, secret community college beau, but something closer to what I later found in John Waters’s films with Divine, James Bidgood’s diaphanous beefcake photography, and Ronald Firbank’s deeply purple prose.

However, unlike the above artists, Fukasaku was heterosexual, and Black Lizard represents an anomaly within a career that included much macho studio boilerplate. Even at his finest, Fukasaku had a flair for rough stuff: he directed some of the best yakuza films ever made (Battles Without Honor and Humanity [1973–74]) and ended his career with 2000’s controversial adolescent bloodbath and political fable Battle Royale. Yet, as with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s practically flaming 1959 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, there was just the right combination of elements (and most importantly, the right combination of peacocks involved) to make Black Lizard one of queer cinema’s unsung gems. Which is precisely why freelance curator T. Crandall chose the film to kick off his rep series, "The Revival House: Classic Queer Cinema," at Artists’ Television Access.

As clichéd as such a phrase may be, Black Lizard is awash in precious stones and glittering surfaces — but none shine with as much brilliance as the transvestite Akihiro Miwa (credited as Maruyama), who plays the titular jewel connoisseur and criminal mastermind that kidnaps specimens of human beauty to freeze them in eternal tableaux vivant on her island lair. The film is completely Akihiro’s: her entrances stop time, her song is a siren call which causes men to become her slaves, her lavish outfits become more so with each new scene. "The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event," quipped Roland Barthes (referring to Audrey, not Kate). Miwa’s face, whose mouth morphs rubber band–like from a sour moue into the devouring O of a deep cackle unleashed, is a gloss on Barthesian idealness.

Prior to Fukasaku’s film, Miwa had appeared in the same role in Yukio Mishima’s long-running stage adaptation of pre-World War II mystery and suspense novelist Edogawa Rampo’s 1934 short story "Black Lizard." Rampo’s tale was one of many starring his Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant detective Gogoro Akechi, who in Mishima and Fukaaku’s retelling falls heart-first into a dangerous pas de deux with his androgynous quarry. Miwa was a successful nightclub entertainer active in avant-garde theater (and she still is: last year, she starred in a Tokyo production of Jean Genet’s The Eagle Has Two Heads) when she met Mishima — our second of the aforementioned peacocks — who was haunting Tokyo gay bars to "research" his 1953 novel Forbidden Colors.

It’s not hard to see why Rampo’s story of a moribund ice queen obsessed with changeless beauty appealed to Mishima. By 1968, Mishima was that queen, fully immersed in his own homoerotic brand of aestheticized Emperor worship, which would reach its grisly apogee in his ritual suicide four years later. Prior to Black Lizard, his muscular body had already been given the coffee table book treatment in Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses (Aperture, 1971), where Hosoe Eiko’s photographs present the author posed as a martyred St. Sebastian or as a snowbound samurai. Appropriately, he makes his cameo in Fukasaku’s film as one of Black Lizard’s frozen exemplars of aesthetic perfection— a brawny sailor, no less.

In the end, though, diamonds are harder than gym-wrought muscle, and it was Miwa’s flash, not Mishima’s flesh, that held my attention — at least consciously — upon my first adolescent exposure to Black Lizard. Many viewings later, Mishima seems pathetically unaware of the self-parody he’s partaking in. But Miwa’s exquisite luminescence remains untarnished.

THE REVIVAL HOUSE: BLACK LIZARD

March 19, 8 p.m.; $6

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.myspace.com/therevivalhouse

World of echo

March 5, 2008

It’s been 20 years since My Bloody Valentine released their breakthrough album, Isn’t Anything (Creation) — long enough for it to be wound up in a younger generation’s musical DNA. For how frequently the band is referenced by both musicians and critics, the rich double-sidedness of MBV’s peculiar attack often gets simplified as "swooning" and "ethereal." Erstwhile Deerhunter vocalist Bradford Cox is one of the few shoegaze suitors who seems clued in to the searing — and often distressing — tensions that distinguish My Bloody Valentine from followers like Slowdive and Ride. In Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky), his first official release as Atlas Sound, Cox has worked out an exquisite combination of shoegaze and laptop pop, a fucked-up beauty waiting to be adored.

A self-described "queer art punk," the young Atlantan first turned heads for his Internet indiscretions and outré performances with Deerhunter. The words Cox used to describe author Dennis Cooper in ANP Quarterly may as well be his own propulsive mantra: "The only thing he does to infuriate so many people is to write honestly, expressing things that most people would prefer to stay far under the surface."

While Cox’s transgressions have previously edged up to mawkishness, Let the Blind channels his confessional tendencies into a newly retrospective shape. Atlas Sound’s source material, aesthetic means, and subject are inextricable from one another in the same manner as Jonathan Caouette’s first-person film, Tarnation (2003). Much glitchier than Deerhunter’s Cryptograms (Kranky, 2007), the Atlas Sound home recordings are almost exclusively about the soul-baring, delicious isolation of being alone in your adolescence. Cox has described "Quarantined" as being about children with AIDS, though the main refrain, "I am waiting to be changed," resonates with Morrissey-like wistfulness.

The music on Let the Blind drifts uneasily between bliss and terror, the heavily doctored mélange of glockenspiels and guitars conjuring a narcoleptic glow. Drone pieces like "Small Horror" and "On Guard" concentrate on specific intense emotions, while fuller arrangements like "River Card" and "Bite Marks" entangle youthful romantic obsession in soft-hewn bass melodies and howling vocals. The shoegaze textures may be Cox’s equivalent of Proust’s madeleine, but it’s in the treated, divested vocal tracking that Let the Blind achieves its deepest immersions.

On "Winter Vacation," the chords seem to be pulling each other apart, reaching for different resolutions — so too with the rest of the album’s balancing act of sensuousness and numbness — though never so far apart as we think. Cox has written extensively about aiming for catharsis on his heavily trafficked blog, but Let the Blind comes off more as a prismatic refracting of past intensity and indolence. It’s teenage confusion done in Technicolor, and that ought to be enough to change more than a few kids’ lives.

ATLAS SOUND

With White Rainbow and Valet

Sat/8, 10 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com, deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com

SFIAAFF: Manila: the drama

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March 5, 2008
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› johnny@sfbg.com

Over roughly the past year, Brillante Mendoza has brought a pair of films to festivals that pack a particular one-two punch when they are programmed to play at the same event. Foster Child first bears witness to the final day that caretaker Thelma Maglangqui (superb veteran actress Cherry Pie Picache) mothers three-or-four-year-old mestizo John-John (Kier Segundo), and as sunlight gives way to night, it follows her from a Manila slum into the ostentatious hotel where she passes him over to wealthy white foster parents from San Francisco. Slingshot also uses a real-time conceit, but in an entirely different manner — locked within the mazelike alleys and shanties of Manila’s Mandaluyong City, it foregoes long takes and methodical passages to careen as if the camera were a baton passed from one preoccupied, panicky person to another. Or perhaps more aptly, as if the point of view was a valuable that one character fleeces from another’s pocket.

As a melodrama, Foster Child fits into the dominant genre of Filipino feature films that screen at international festivals — a genre that certain North American critics might enjoy more than writers such as Richard Bolisay and Alexis Tioseco, whose critical conversations are as vital to thriving "CineManila" activity as any current filmmaker. In a piece on one of Tioseco’s excellent Web sites, Criticine, Noel Vera recalls a Rotterdam screening where fellow film scholar and Chicago-based critic Jonathan Rosenbaum compared Mike De Leon’s Kisapmata (1981) to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Martha (1974). Perhaps in that spirit, Rosenbaum’s contemporary, the critic and influential programmer Tony Rayns, has likened Foster Child to Fassbinder as well.

I’d add another comparison that, however Eurocentric, is meant as a great compliment: Foster Child shares a number of similarities with Douglas Sirk’s mother of all melodramas, Imitation of Life (1959), such as a harshly ironic perspective on maternal bonds in a racist, capitalist world. When Mendoza’s film reaches its final wrenching moments — and Thelma seems stripped, at least temporarily, of life (even the future repetition of her foster maternal duties is harrowing) — a lesser director would have simply milked the pathos. Instead, Mendoza allows no mercy to invade his sympathy, presenting a sequence that calls to mind a scenario depicting Lana Turner’s selfish protests by the bedside of her dying maid Annie (Juanita Moore) in 1959’s Imitation of Life, a sight that is extra bitter because Annie’s lost daughter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) can be seen smiling in a nearby framed picture within the shot. Foster Child‘s climactic heartbreak is set against a backdrop of vulgar department store displays that privilege white glamour and which celebrate a false vision of familiar perfection. "The house that love built," proclaims one callow ad, depicting a mother and child. The cruel gods of capitalist marketing provide perfectly horrible set design.

Those last glances, leading to a weary climb up a concrete public transit stairwell, also ricochet off Foster Child‘s sustained (and indeed Fassbinder-like) first shot: a silent, postcard-perfect view of Manila’s high-rise cityscape that gives way to a noisier look at the ramshackle slums at the feet of those skyscrapers. A more subtle echo occurs between two scenes that take place nearer to the narrative’s center: an idyllic, sunlit view of Thelma bathing John-John outside her home, and a later moment when she has to wash him in a hotel’s many-mirrored, intimidating bathroom.

Engaged Web sites such as Bolisay’s Lilok Pelikula (Sculpting Cinema) have greeted this neorealist symbolism, and Foster Child‘s standing ovation at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, with some wariness. Indeed, it is frustrating if international audiences take Mendoza’s movies for the whole of Filipino independent film today, when thanks to the punk-fueled Khavn de la Cruz, the monumental Lav Diaz, the prodigiously visionary Raya Martin, and the autobiographical John Torres, CineManila is frankly more inspired than almost all of the indie film — and much of the experimental work — currently coming from the United States. Mendoza’s talent equals or bests anyone who has passed through the Sundance factory in the past decade, but he and his more formally radical contemporaries have to vie for the same too-few spaces allocated to feature films from the Philippines at most festivals.

By working within relatively linear narrative structures and feature-length frameworks, Mendoza veers toward the mainstream currents of vital Filipino independent cinema. But he’s demonstrating great versatility. Slingshot‘s burnt-brown palette, verging on black-and-white in nighttime scenes, contrasts greatly with the more colorful, sun-dappled view of slum life in Foster Child, which is so pleasant that soap bubbles blown by children float through one shot. But it would be a mistake to see Foster Child‘s view of cramped city blocks as purely idealized, simply because a fresh array of mothers with newborn babies can be found on every corner — a scene in which foster system overseer Bianca (comedienne Eugene Domingo) greets these women and knowingly checks in on their offspring has a sinister underpinning.

Its title translated from a term (tirador) denoting a street hustler, Slingshot is harder and faster — money or valuables are frequently handed from one character to another on the sly as people move in an out of a shot that is itself moving forward. A viewer had best be on the top of his or her game while watching, because everyone in the film is on the make. But the gay Mendoza brings a subversive eye to the masculine genre of action: he knows that harder and faster might seem tougher, but it doesn’t necessarily mean one is savvier. Interestingly, while Slingshot‘s critical reception in CineManila realms seems warmer than that given to Foster Child, the film has had its share of semiblind assessments in English-language publications. More than one critic has complained that the film wears a viewer out with its frantic pace before it abruptly ends. The reviews fail to note that Mendoza frames his many-stranded story line and slum-stranded characters amid a broader view of societal and political corruption. He kicks the story off with cops raiding blocks of Mandaluyong City to round up and arrest people who are then bailed out by politicians in exchange for votes. He fades out with a glimpse of a pickpocket at work during a quasireligious campaign rally dominated by empty, clichéd speeches.

Between those crowd scenes, Slingshot joins a wide variety of characters for intimate treks through semi-anonymous acts, only to abandon them — just as fate might and a politician’s promises are certain to. Tess (Angela Ruiz) steals video equipment to pay for a pair of dentures. Her illicit lover Rex (Kristofer King) neglects fatherhood in favor of druggy reverie. In an example of tail-biting irony, the impulsive Caloy (Coco Martin, whose open-faced melancholy carries over from Mendoza’s debut feature The Masseur [2005]) needs to scrape together cash to keep the pedicab that he’s using to earn money. Meanwhile, Leo (Nathan Ruiz, the gamine title character of Aureaus Solito’s 2005 The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, now adolescent and pimply) begins what will eventually become one of the worst days of his life by accidentally getting his dick caught in his pants zipper. The two-dimensional faces of political candidates — including actor Richard Gomez, then running in real life for a Senate position — look on from the campaign billboards and posters that dominate public spaces.

In the eyes of the official system, Lopez’s Leo is the thief character of Slingshot‘s Tagalog title, but in the real world he’s just one of many everyday bandits, who are doing whatever they can to survive while a faceless upper class profits from their votes. There’s a potent undercurrent to Lopez’s performance perhaps being the titular one, though, since it’s much harsher than the similar turn he delivered as Maximo in Solito’s comparatively romantic film festival favorite. The differences in pace and look between Foster Child and Slingshot demonstrate that Mendoza is capable of sculpting widely contrasting true visions of Manila’s streets, which in turn shows that the exact same setting can take on widely varying characteristics based on one’s perspective at any given moment.

Part of Mendoza’s versatility might be grounded in his background as a production designer under the name Dante Mendoza. It also might reflect a developing, nuanced queer sensibility, one that has forsaken forebear Mel Chiongo’s eye for international markets to also produce a feature, 2007’s Pantasya, that possibly plays off of Slingshot‘s view of corrupt police forces and probably adds a critical dimension to the age-old "I love a man in an uniform" motif of gay porn. After half a dozen features as a director, Mendoza has ranged from melodrama to action, from a pentet of gay sex fantasies to a story about education amid the Aeta tribe (2006’s Manoro). His next step will probably be hard to predict, and it’ll definitely be worth watching.

FOSTER CHILD

March 14, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki

March 16, noon, Kabuki

SLINGSHOT

March 15, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive

March 18, 7 p.m., Kabuki

>> Complete Asian American Film Fest coverage

Amscray

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February 27, 2008
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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Sorry to sound so breathless this time around, nightlifers, but I’ve got a couple of hot caballeros waiting on me in a beat-up Camry outside, and, you know — meter’s running. I swear I’ll sprinkle some cybernetic glitters on your Facebook if I get back — poke me — or scam us up some apologetic kumquat caipirissimas from the Americano. If you’re lucky, I may even stop spewing hot chunks of drama long enough to let you get a word in edgewise. Reach for rainbow dreamz!

Better yet, let’s just rendezvous at the following interesting parties and laugh at one another’s shoes. Yours have feathers, and they’re glowing. Mine are Payless Elite.

Party Animals Oh, the zoomanity. I vowed on my personal assistant’s fake lesbian wedding ring that I’d stop writing so much about queer clubs. But the gay are always so creative! It’s like a virus. Plus, this party, like all great parties, transcends that whole gay-straight divide — it’s more about letting feathers fly than finding out what’s beneath the fur.

Beast, a freaky one-off at the Transfer, is a zoological affair, with attendees urged to show off their inner varmints in flamboyant critter costumery. Host Mica Phelan, the alluring creature behind local fashion powerhouse Horseface, has put out a call to all unicorns, tigers, ponies, sloths, rats, etc. — we’re way beyond bears and otters in the alter-ego animal spectrum, folks — to shake some tail and prance about in honor of leap year. Hop to it! The Ice Cream Socialites, a superhot live queer hip-hop duo straight outta North Beach, drops some feral science. DJ Rapid Fire, from one of my favorite new Monday weeklies, Sucker Punch (also at the Transfer), joins DJ Rchrd Oh?! to spin some hard electro and hip-hop. Le Dinosaur of roving club craziness Gemini Disco gets the go-go going. And the hardest working lady in nightlife, Miss Juanita More, performs — maybe even with a chicken on her head.

Sweat to give Don’t you love it when parties are also benefits? It’s like you’re drinking yourself into a blackout for a cause, rather than because of your secret insecurities. You’re giving back.

That’s the case at the swank Levende Lounge for Reflections, a party benefiting NextAid, an organization that helps children orphaned by AIDS. Reflections is actually the name of the most horrifying Midwestern gay bar you or I can imagine. But making up for that brief patch of queasiness, the party includes a gaggle of pleasantly edgy DJs I love, like Seven from NK7, Amber from Sister, Forward’s Adnan Sharif, and housey-techno hero Fil Latorre from Staple. The delightful Marissa Guzman of SoulStar and Juicy Lucy provides some soothing live vocals, and according to the press release, AphrodesiaMP3 is presenting something called Brendon, but I don’t know what the hell that is. Brendon! Grab your beaded clutch, and give, give, give.

Argentronix For years I labored under the mistaken assumption that boys from Buenos Aires were kind of icky: too many ponytails, pointy snakeskin boots, splashes of cheap cologne, and awkward dancing to horrible sped-up Europop. Then the Argentine economy collapsed, and the veil was somehow lifted from my jaded, yet perfectly outlined, eyes. Buenos Aires boys are delicioso. And just as lovely, they’re putting on some of the best parties on earth.

Case in point: Zizek, a Buenos Airean weekly that’s often been compared to Hollertronix, the mega-influential Philadelphia joint put on by DJs Diplo and Low Budget that broke the whole "global hip-hop meets techno meets rock mashup" thing. Needless to say, MIA is a fan. Zizek’s focus is on electrocumbia and zapped-up dancehall with a trippy glimmer of metal and ragga riffs — and now the party’s on tour, pairing up with local neo-cumbionics party Tormenta Tropical to drench Mezzanine in South American underground vibes. Zizek producers and performers King Coya and El Trip Selector, Axel K Soundsystem, Tremor, Frikstailers, and El Remolón throw down some rad, unheard-in-this-hemisphere tracks, joined by New York breaks-dubber DJ/Rupture and Tormenta’s oro11 and Disco Shawn on the decks. This one oughta be a real mind-blow.

BEAST: A PARTY FOR ANIMALS Fri/29, 10 p.m.–2 a.m., $3. Transfer, 198 Church, SF. (415) 861-7499

REFLECTIONS BENEFIT FOR NEXTAID March 5, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $10. Levende Lounge, 1710 Mission, SF. (415) 834-5585, www.levendesf.com, www.nextaid.org

ZIZEK with DJ/Rupture and Tormenta Tropical March 8, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com, www.myspace.com/bersadiscos

Queer that WonderCon

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February 20, 2008
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Gird your loins, beautiful nerds like me. It’s time again for comic cornucopia WonderCon, at the Moscone Center this weekend — and Glamazonia, our favorite Uncanny Tranny superhero, is bustin’ loose!

Who could doubt her power, her glamour, her sheer … syntheticism? This Saturday, Feb 23, 7-10pm, for FREE at the Three Dollar Bill Cafe in the LGBT Center on Market, you can meet the boy-man behind Glammy, Justin Hall of All Thumbs Press, and a gaggle of other really wonderfully gay cartoonists (Brian Andersen, Paige Braddock, MariNaomi, Tommy Roddy, Andy Hartzell, reading and signing their work in conjunction with the giant fest. It’s an extravaganza.

But wait — there’s more!

Milked

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February 19, 2008
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OPINION It seems that everyone, from current politicians to former friends and lovers of Harvey Milk, is scrambling to serve as a spokesperson for the new Hollywood movie about the life of Milk, the first openly gay elected official in a major United States city.

Milk joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, only to be assassinated (along with then-mayor George Moscone) one year later by Dan White, another member of the board.

Cleve Jones, who worked as a student intern in Milk’s City Hall office (and later started the AIDS Memorial Quilt), is now serving as a consultant for the Gus Van Sant film. At the Castro Theatre on Feb. 4 he encouraged a crowd of extras gathered to re-create the candlelight march that took place after Milk’s murder by saying, "We made history on these streets, and we’re gonna do it again tonight."

But remaking historical moments from the pain and glory days of the past is hardly the same thing as making history in the present. In the 1970s queers fled abusive and stifling families and places of origin to move to San Francisco by the thousands and join dissident subcultures of splendor and defiance. Of course, queers still flee similar conditions; it’s just that the hypergentrified San Francisco of 2008 barely offers the space to breathe, let alone dream.

The excitement around reenactment obscures the reality that some of the same smiling gay men who came to San Francisco in the 1970s have consistently fought misogynist, racist, classist, ageist battles — from carding policies to policing practices to zoning and real estate wars — to ensure that their neighborhood (Milk’s Castro) remains a home only for the rich, white, and male (or at least those who assimilate to white middle-class norms).

Check out a quote from Dan Jinks, one of the producers of the movie, in the Dec. 27, 2007, Bay Area Reporter: "Our great hope is this will revitalize this district and make it a major tourist destination."

Revitalize the Castro, where you’re lucky if you can rent a flat for less than $4,000 or buy property for less than $1 million? Everyone who’s ever set foot in the Castro knows it’s filled with tourists from around the world!

Oh, I know what Jinks means: straight tourists. Some gay people are so anxious to participate in their own cultural erasure.

After White’s 1979 trial, at which he was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder and given a lenient sentence, rioting queers torched police cars and smashed the windows and doors of City Hall. Later that night vengeful cops went to the Castro and destroyed the windows of the Elephant Walk (now Harvey’s), entered the bar to beat up patrons and trash the place, and swung their batons into anyone they encountered.

I’m wondering if the new Van Sant film will end at the candlelight march, thus avoiding talk about such market-unfriendly issues as systemic police violence and property destruction as a political act.

Unfortunately, San Francisco is now more of a playground for the wealthy than a space for the delirious potential of dissidence. But there are still plenty of reasons to protest. Got housing? Got health care? Got citizenship? Nope, we’re just getting milked.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is the editor, most recently, of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal Press, 2006) and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (out in June from Soft Skull Press).

Clubs: Asses of Evil!

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February 7, 2008
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Calling all queer Arabs, Middle Easterners, and North Africans (and lusty friends) — time for another wild, dancefloor-packing Bibi party, habibis!

Yep, it’s gonna be packed — featuring DJs Emancipacion, Bahman, and Honey Soundsystem’s own Josh Cheon. PLUS: a burlesque extravaganza with Dirty Phoenix’s “Asses of Evil”, Happy Hyder as “Saida,” belly dancing, and so many hot folks you never knew were Arabs that you’ll plotz. Here’s a little taste of what you’ll hear as you jingle your jangles:

This is a benefit for LGBTI Middle-Eastern, South West Asian & North African (SWANA) community (and is hosted by cutie man-on-the-SWANA-scene Rostam), so Bibi there!

Bibi
Sat/9, 9pm-2am, $15
Eight
1151 Folsom
www.myspace/com/bibisf

G-Spot: Nookie by the numbers

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February 5, 2008
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› culture@sfbg.com

We asked and you answered — oh, how you answered. More than 200 of you responded to our questions about what goes on between your sheets, or at least between your legs. And although there are lots of you happily living your vanilla-and-roses love lives (straight! Missionary style! Share my partner? Never!), there are plenty more proving our city’s reputation for alternative gender and orientation identities, kinky sex, and free love is well deserved. Check out our poll results, as of Jan. 31, below. (Numbers are percentages.)

1. How do you identify, in terms of your sexual orientation?

Straight 59

Gay 12

Queer 10

Bi 9

Depends on how much I’ve had to drink 5

Alternative answers include four kinds of bisexual with caveats such as "bi-affectional" or "bi for political reasons," one transsexual, and one person who identifies simply as "feral." Meow.

2. How often do you have sex?

Once a day 11

Once a week 37

Once a month 10

Once upon a time 2

Alternate answers give even more specific frequencies, most often three to four times per week, as well as the fabulously Victorian answer "fortnightly." Several people said it depends on relationship status (though there was no mention of whether frequency increases or decreases with commitment). The one we identify with most? "As much as possible. Every day if you count with myself."

3. What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve done or would do?

Sex before marriage 15

Spanking 24

Suspension 16

"Two Girls, One Cup" 11

Alternative answers include bondage, multiple partners at one time ("ye olde three-way"), role play, sex in public places (bookstore? Hot), snowballing, sex with someone else’s date, anonymous encounters, homosexual dalliances, and the winner for Most Likely to Have Come from Lolita: "I got my chewing gum caught in a guy’s pubic hair once."

4. Where’s the craziest place you’ve ever had sex in San Francisco?

Mission Bar 8

16th and Mission Bart stop 4

My bed (missionary position, of course) 26

We’ve clearly been shopping in the wrong places. You people are having sex in Noe Valley storefronts, butcher shops, the dressing rooms of upscale retailers (Saks, JCrew, Banana Republic), and phone booths and against a wall in the Haight. How’d we miss this? Perhaps we were too busy with the rest of you in parks (Golden Gate, Balboa, Dolores), parking lots, school yards, and hot tubs. Some of our awards? Most original goes to "bowling alley in the back with the pins." Most ambitious? "Nothin’ crazy yet, but it’s only 9am. Give me a chance to wake up."

5. How polyamorous are you (or were you in your last committed relationship)?

Love is limitless and meant to be shared (my partner and I have other partners) 8

Love has limits, but sex is meant to be shared (my partner and I have other bed buddies) 13

Love and sex have limits, but some fantasies are meant to be shared (my partner and I occasionally invite others into bed with us) 12

Love, sex, and fantasies have limits, but dinner is meant to be shared (my partner and I have friends) 58

Most of you don’t want to share your partners — "I’m a jealous bitch," one person responded — though at least one of you wishes you could. But a good amount of you are open to all kinds of couplings, including the most open-minded of all: "AMA — all mammals allowed."

6. What gets you in the mood?

Gary Danko — foie gras and a 1985 Angelos Gaja 6

Amber — Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of well whiskey 15

The Stud — tequila and Trannyshack 8

What doesn’t? 54

For some of you, all you need to do is see your beau or betty and you’re ready for love. Others need drugs (weed and coke are favorites) and porn. And congrats to those of you who know exactly, specifically, without a doubt what you need: Morrissey and a Georges Bataille novel, horny thoughts and Spanish-language TV channel Azteca America, molasses coffee with grits, Madagascar chocolate from Recchiuti Confections, or rain. We love the answer "long tones." (Let’s talk about sax, baby.) And we’re not sure how to feel about the person who needs "a pint of Malibu and a good swift kick in the jewels."

G-Spot: Valentine’s Day events

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February 5, 2008
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PARTIES, EVENTS, AND BENEFITS

Amor del Mar Aquarium of the Bay, Pier 39, Embarcadero at Bay; 623-5326, www.aquariumofthebay.com. Feb 14, 6pm, $100. Celebrate San Francisco’s love affair with the bay and support the nonprofit Aquarium of the Bay Foundation at this gala celebration featuring global cuisine, decadent drinks, live music, and exhibitions.

Erotic Playground One Taste, 1074 Folsom; www.tantriccircus.com. Sat/9, 8pm; $30 single women, $50 single men, $60 couples. The Tantric Circus presents a sexy evening of burlesque, striptease, male lap dance, fruit feeding, DJs, and more.

Eternal Spring SomArts Bay Gallery, 934 Brannan; 1-888-989-8748, eternalspring08.com. Sat/9, 2-10pm, $7. Celebrate life, love, arts, and creativity at this all-day event including a fashion show, performances, free classes (hoop, poi, yoga, and more!), DJs, and shopping.

Heroes and Hearts Luncheon Union Square; 206-4478, www.sfghf.net. Feb 14, 11:30am, $300. Celebrate those who have helped the community and support the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation by attending this luncheon and auction of artist-created tabletop heart sculptures.

My Sucky Valentine XIII ARTworkSF Gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080, www.artworksf.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $15-25. Listen to tales of tainted love and bad sex by good writers including Thomas Roche, Carol Queen, Michelle Tea, and mi blue, all to benefit the Women’s Community Clinic and the St. James Infirmary.

One Night Stand X ARTworkSF Gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080, www.artworksf.com. Sat/9, 6-11pm, $15-25. Support the Center for Sex and Culture and the SF Artists Resource Center at this sexy multimedia event including live nude models, paint wrestling, erotic food feeding, and performances.

PINK’s 2nd Annual Valentine’s Day Party Look Out Bar, 3600 16th St; 703-9751, www.mypartner.com. Sat/9, 8pm-2am, $25. MyPartner.com cohosts this year’s party and benefit for the GLBT Historical Society. About 300 single gay guys are expected to enjoy an open Svedka vodka bar and hobnobbing with guests like Assemblymember Mark Leno and Sup. Bevan Dufty.

Poetry Battle of (All) the Sexes Beat Museum, 540 Broadway; 863-6306, www.poormagazine.org. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $20 to fight, $15 to watch. Challenge your partner (or future partner) to a battle of spoken word, hip-hop, poetry, or flowetry in the ring at this benefit for Poor magazine.

Prom Pete’s Tavern, 128 King; 817-5040, www.petestavernsf. Feb 14, 9pm, $10. What’s more romantic than prom? Prom in the ’80s! Enjoy music, decorations, mock gambling, and dancing, all to benefit Voices, a nonprofit that works with emancipated foster youths. Admission includes one drink, gambling chips, and a photo.

Queen of Arts: A Profane Valentine Coronation Sssshh…!, 535 Florida; www.anonsalon.com/feb08. Feb 15, 10pm, $10-20. The production team that brought us Sea of Dreams presents a sexy night of DJs, dancing, art, and performance, including Kitty-D from Glitch Mob, Mancub from SpaceCowboys, Fou Fou Ha!, and Merkley.

Queen of Hearts Ball Mighty, 119 Utah; 974-8985, www.goodvibes.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $25. Good Vibrations and Dr. Carol Queen host this decadent fairy-tale-themed costume party featuring MC Peaches Christ, circus performances by Vau de Vire Society, a fetish fashion show, and dancers from the Lusty Lady.

Romancing the Reptiles: Wild Love! Tree Frog Treks, 2112 Hayes; 876-3764, www.treefrogtreks.com. Sat/9, noon-2pm; $40 adults, $25 kids. Join animal care director Ross Beswick as you learn about how animals pick their mates and where baby animals come from.

Sensualité 111 Minna, 111 Minna; www.celesteanddanielle.com/party.html. Feb 15, 9pm; $15 advance, $20 at the door. Wear something sexy to this multimedia Valentine’s Day event featuring aphrodisiac appetizers, exotic rhythms, tarot readings, performances, a raffle, and a no-host bar.

Sweet Valentine’s Cruise Pier 431/2; 673-2900, www.redandwhite.com. Feb 14, 5pm; $48 adult, $34 youth. Join the Red and White Fleet for a romantic, fun, two-hour cruise of the San Francisco Bay, including a lavish appetizer buffet by Boudin and a complimentary beverage.

Transported SF Valentine’s Singles Party Pickup at Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom; transportedsf.com. Feb 14, 7:30pm, $21.49. Join DJs Ana Sia and Felina aboard the biodiesel Transported SF bus for sultry sounds, schmoozing with other singles, and stops at gorgeous outdoor dancing locales.

Woo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo; Sloat at 47th St; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Sat/9, Feb 13-15, 6pm; Sun/10, Feb 17, noon; $75. This multimedia event, conducted by Jane Tollini of the now-defunct Sex Tours, explores the sexual and mating behaviors of animals. Also featuring champagne and romantic refreshments.

BAY AREA

Flamenco, Candlelight and Roses Café de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 287-8700, www.cafedelapaz.net. Feb 14, 5:30, 6, 8, and 8:30pm; Feb 15-16, 6:30pm; $75-115. The nuevo Latino café celebrates the sweet side of love with three days of dinner plus a show, featuring the acclaimed Caminos Flamencos dance company.

Nest Firecracker Valentine Event Nest, 1019 Atlas Peak, Napa; (707) 255-7484. Sat/9-Sun/10, 10am-6pm, $5. Celebrate Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day together while shopping for unique gifts and making art projects with scrapbook artist Janine Beard, all to benefit the "Nest Egg" fund through the Arts Council of Napa.

Sweetheart Tea Yerba Buena Nursery, 19500 Skyline, Woodside; (650) 851-1668, www.yerbabuenanursery.com. Sat/9, noon, $25. Enjoy a traditional tea service with a special Valentine’s Day menu, followed by a stroll through the nursery’s gorgeous gardens.

Week of Valentines at Habitot Children’s Museum Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk; (510) 647-1111, www.habitot.org. Fri/8-Sat/9, 9:30am-4:30pm; Feb 12-14, 9:30am-1pm; $6 per child, $5 for accompanying adult. Contribute to a large heart sculpture and create handmade cards from recycled materials. Bring valentine-making supplies to receive a free adult admission pass.

FILM, MUSIC, AND PERFORMANCE

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave; 1-866-912-6326, www.legionofhonor.org. Feb 14, 5:30pm, $10-20. The Cinema Supper Club at the Legion of Honor presents this film as part of "The Real Drama Queens" series, including a special exhibition opening at 5:30pm, dinner seating at 6pm (reservations made separately; call 750-7633), and film screening at 8pm.

BATS Improv Valentine’s Day Show Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, bldg B, Marina at Laguna; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Feb 14, 8pm; $10 advance, $15 at the door. Whether you’re flying solo, with friends, or on a date, this audience-participation show is the perfect place to enjoy the funny side of romance.

The Best American Erotica Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia; 282-9246, www.moderntimesbookstore.com. Feb 13, 7:30pm, free. Celebrate the 15th anniversary of the series with this showcase of standout stories, including a hot and edgy piece from Susie Bright.

Boston Marriage Theatre Rhinoceros, 2926 16th St; 861-5079, www.therhino.org. Feb 7-March 2, call or see Web site for schedule, $15-35. Join Anna and Claire and their crazy maid for Theatre Rhinoceros’s version of David Mamet’s same-sex romp.

Brainpeople Zeum, 221 Fourth St; 749-2228, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 16. $20. American Conservatory Theater presents the world-premiere production of this newest work by José Rivera, screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries, about two women who reckon with their pasts in an apocalyptic future.

The Eyes of Love Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post; 393-0100, www.milibrary.com. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $15 members, $25 public. Back by popular demand, chanteuse Helene Attia will select from her vast repertoire of love songs, classic and contemporary. Admission includes hors d’oeuvres, libations, and dessert.

Hope Briggs and Friends: A Musical Valentine Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Feb 17, 3pm, $25-50. Celebrated soprano Hope Briggs shares favorite opera arias alongside 15-year-old singing sensation Holly Stell and virtuoso violinist Dawn Harms.

How We First Met Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400, www.howwefirstmet.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $22-35. Real audience stories are spun into a comedy masterpiece in this one-of-a-kind hit show.

In Search of the Heart of Chocolate Delancey Street Foundation, 600 Embarcadero; 310-0290, www.chocumentary.com. Tues/12, 6:30 and 7:30pm, $10. Bay Area filmmaker Sarah Feinbloom screens her new chocumentary, about Noe Valley’s Chocolate Covered and its customers. Screenings followed by a chocolate reception featuring art and live music.

I Used to Be So Hot Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. Feb 14, 7 and 9pm; Feb 15-16, 8pm; $20. InnerRising Productions presents comedian Mimi Gonzalez, a Detroit native who’ll take you on a journey through sexual politics and queer discovery.

Lovers and Other Monsters Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; 377-4202, thrillpeddlers.com. Feb 12-16, 8pm; Feb 17, 7pm; $20-34.50. With a diabolical nod to Valentine’s (and Presidents’) Day, Thrillpeddlers presents a weeklong rotating lineup of live music, exquisite torture, and expert testimony, including Jill Tracy, Jello Biafra, and Creepshow Camp horror theater.

Miss Ann Peterson’s Broken Heart Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom; 1-800-838-3006, www.tangolamelodia.com. Feb 13-16, 8pm, $15. See the premiere of Tango la Melodia’s new multimedia production, a three-night concert featuring original music, poetry, and performance set in the romantic, sexy Roaring ’20s.

Mortified: Doomed Valentine’s Show Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St; www.makeoutroom.com, www.getmortified.com. Fri/8, Mon/11, 8pm; $12 advance, $15 at the door. Share the pain, awkwardness, and bad poetry associated with love as performers read from their teen-angst artifacts. The creator of the nationwide and NPR phenomenon, David Nadleberg, will be in attendance in celebration of the release of Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield (Simon Spotlight).

Not Exactly Valentine’s Show Purple Onion, 140 Columbus; 567-7488, www.talkshowsf.com. Mon/11, 7pm, $18-20. Presented by Talk Show Live, Beth Lisick talks about her latest work and performs from her slam repertoire, chocolatier Chuck Siegel of Charles Chocolates gives an interview and tasting, Vicki Burns performs a program of "sort-of romantic standards," and Kurt Bodden reads a short story by James Thurber.

Philosophy/Art Salon: What is Erotic? Femina Potens Art Gallery, 2199 Market; 217-9340, www.feminapotens.com. Feb 16, 6:30-8:30pm, $10-25. Philosopher Rita Alfonso joins erotica writer Jennifer Cross and artist Dorian Katz for a brief show-and-tell followed by a Socratic dialogue on the question "What makes for erotic art?"

Romeo and Juliet: Gala 40th Anniversary Screening Castro Theatre, 429 Castro; 863-0611, www.thecastrotheatre.com. Feb 14, 7pm; $25 adult, $12.50 youth. Marc Huestis and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura present a 40th-anniversary screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s romantic classic, with star Olivia Hussey in attendance and a live musical performance.

Valentine’s Day Film Program: Labor of Love Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, McBean Theater; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/10, 2pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, the Exploratorium presents a program of short, expressive films about people who love what they do.

BAY AREA

The Gin Game Pacheco Playhouse, 484 Ignacio Blvd, Novato; 883-4498, www.pachecoplayhouse.org. Feb 14, 8pm, $10 special Valentine’s Day price. Bay Area theater vets Norman A. Hall and Shirley Nilsen Hall star in D.L. Coburn’s production of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning play in which two residents of an "aged home" find comfort and competition in the constant shuffling of cards and eventually unravel bits of their past they may rather fold than show.

Giselle Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Lower Sproul Plaza (near Bancroft at Telegraph), Berk; (510) 642-9988. Feb 14-16, 8pm; Feb 17, 3pm; $34-90. Cal Performances presents Nina Ananiashvili and the State Ballet of Georgia performing the beloved ballet, accompanied by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.

Love Fest La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, www.lapena.org. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $12 advance, $14 at the door. HBO Def Poet Aya de Leon hosts this alt-V Day evening of spoken word and music that focuses on love of self, spirit, community, family, peace, and democracy, including readings from her collection of "Grown-Ass-Woman" poems.

Songs of Love Two Bird Cafe, 625 Geronimo Valley, San Geronimo; 488-0105, mikelipskinjazz.com. Feb 14, 7-9pm, free. Jazz vocalist duo Mike and Dinah Lee present a Valentine’s Day concert at Two Bird, which will feature a special menu.

Viva la Musica! St. Mark’s Catholic Church, 325 Marine View, Belmont; (650) 281-9663, www.vivalamusica.org. Feb 14, 8-10pm, $15. Share a romantic musical evening with heart-melting chamber music, intimate solos, sassy choral numbers, and gifts of chocolate for audience members.

ART SHOWS

Flowers from a Nuclear Winter: A Live Art Installation by Rod Pujante Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, Phyllis Wattis Webcast Studio; 561-0363, www.exploratorium.edu. Feb 16, 11am-4pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). Cosponsored by the Black Rock Arts Foundation and the Exploratorium, Burning Man artist Rod Pujante performs a live demonstration of transparent-flower making, converting waste into a dreamscape.

Modern Love Lost Art Salon, 245 S Van Ness; 861-1530, www.lostartsalon.com. Feb 14, 5:30-8:30pm, free. Celebrate Valentine’s Day at an opening reception for this show of work selected from Lost Art’s library of more than 3,000 pieces from the mid-20th century.

BAY AREA

Red Cake Gallery: February Open House Call for directions to private home; (510) 759-4516, www.redcakegallery.com. Feb 23, 6-10pm; Feb 24, March 1, 1-4pm; Feb 25-29, 6-8pm; free. Have your cake and eat it too at this post-Valentine showcase of work by Red Cake artists, to be held in a private San Francisco home.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Aphrodisiac Cooking Class Sur la Table, 77 Maiden; 732-7900, www.surlatable.com. Feb 15, 6:30pm, $170 per couple. Learn to make a delicious, sensual meal at this couples’ class hosted by chef Diane Brown, author of The Seduction Cookbook (Innova, 2005).

Chocolate, Strawberries and Lapdancing Center for Healing and Expression, 1749 O’Farrell; (510) 291-9779, www.slinkyproductions.com. Tues/12, 8pm; $110 per couple, $160 per threeple. Be the best seat in the house at the Slinky Productions lap dance class for couples, which includes chocolate, strawberries, and champagne.

Letterpress Valentines San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro; 565-0545, sfcb.org. Fri/8, 2-5pm, $65 (including materials). Experienced and novice printmakers alike can enjoy an afternoon making letterpress cards with Megan Adie.

Valentine Special: Xara Flower-Making Workshop Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, Skylight Area. Feb 14 and 16, noon-2pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). Attorney and Burning Man artist Mark Hinkley teaches attendees how to make fake flowers from recycled bottles. All materials provided; ages 6 and up.

BAY AREA

Celebrating the Masculine and Feminine Odd Fellows Hall, 839 Main, Redwood City; (650) 780-0769. Feb 16, 10am-6pm, $150-175. Join Valerie Sher, Jackie Long, and Jim Benson on a journey toward wholeness as we explore who we are as men and women.

A Night of Bond, James Bond Bay Club of Marin, 330 Corte Madera, Corte Madera; 945-3000. Feb 14, 7pm, $35-45 (includes drinks and appetizers). Skip the prix fixe dinner and join certified matchmaker Joy Nordenstrom for a Bond-themed workshop about cultivating passionate relationships, including a contest for best male and female Bond-inspired costumes.

Showdown at 55 Laguna

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January 16, 2008
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› sarah@sfbg.com

Time is running out on attempts by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, State Sen. Carole Migden, and Assemblymember Mark Leno to secure greater affordable-housing levels from the University of California, which wants to build private residential units on its UC Berkeley Extension campus at 55 Laguna in San Francisco.

Since the school site closed more than three years ago, critics have questioned how the UC’s plan for the campus, which served a public use for more than 150 years, will benefit the community, while preservationists succeeded in getting the campus awarded historic landmark status.

But with the UC claiming "unrestricted power to take and hold real and personal property for the benefit of the university" in a public statement, the city’s regulatory power is limited. The San Francisco Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the project Jan. 17, including the demolition of Middle Hall Gymnasium, the oldest building on the campus, and Richardson Hall Annex. But local and state legislative officials are focused on trying to get more affordable housing at the site.

Although negotiations were still ongoing at Guardian press time, the UC’s plan was to demolish the two historically landmarked buildings on the 5.8-acre Hayes Valley campus and build 450 new housing units, 16 percent of them to be offered below market rates, about the minimum number under the city’s inclusionary-housing law.

"But we’re pushing hard at the bottom line," said Mirkarimi, who, along with Migden, Leno, the city’s Planning Department, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and affordable-housing activists, has been meeting with developer A.F. Evans and Openhouse, a local nonprofit that intends to build an 80-unit, market-rate, LGBT-friendly, senior residential community on the site.

"And we are trying at a separate venue to appeal to the UC Regents to be more sensitive and cooperative in what their bottom line profitability level is," Mirkarimi, whose District 5 includes Hayes Valley, told the Guardian.

Mirkarimi said he’s in favor of preserving all five buildings at the site but that both the Planning Commission’s Landmark Advisory Committee and the Board of Supervisors have voted to preserve only three. "We are trying to be pragmatic yet clear as to what our objectives are in trying to make a complex deal that’s triangulated by UC Berkeley, A.F. Evans, and Openhouse, with UC as the big daddy in the room.

"UC can do almost what UC wants. But the city’s leverage comes from UC asking for housing to be built and requesting a zoning change at a site that has become a magnet for grime and crime," Mirkarimi said. "It would also be negligent for UC to let this site remain in its current condition.

Under state law, the UC is exempt from city and county zoning and building codes if it builds educational facilities or projects that are deemed to be in the public interest. But according to officials with the City Attorney’s Office, the UC is not exempt from such codes if it turns over its land for private development.

And then there’s the city’s claim that it never conveyed the title to Waller Street, which lies between Buchanan and Laguna streets and is essential to the project, giving opponents some leverage. The UC disputes the city’s claim, but Mirkarimi maintains that the Board of Supervisors’ control of the street "provides a contingency plan if we are not making progress. And either way, UC is going to have to pay for the right to Waller."

The UC’s 55 Laguna project manager Kevin Hufferd confirmed that he is having "ongoing discussions with state and city officials" but declined to comment further.

"Frustrating" is how queer affordable-housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca described the last-minute discussions about the 55 Laguna development plan. "A.F. Evans claims it won’t be making any money and that they can’t do any more," Mecca told the Guardian. He attended a Jan. 11 meeting with the company at which, he claims, the developers offered to increase affordability levels to 19.5 percent but Mirkarimi pushed for more.

"To his credit, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi keeps saying this is unacceptable," Avicolli Mecca said, also lauding the Mayor’s Office of Housing for trying to make Openhouse’s project "100 percent affordable."

Currently, Openhouse’s development includes no below-market-rate units, a situation Avicolli Mecca claims the MOH hopes to change "through bringing in subsidies."

"Obviously, we are not against queer senior housing," Avicolli Mecca said. "The issue is that this is a lousy deal. What are we getting? Nothing, but UC gains a lot of money. There’s a crazy need for affordable housing and no way to justify this plan."

Filmmaker Eliza Hemingway, whose documentary Uncommon Knowledge records how the UC shuttered 55 Laguna with no input from — and little concern for — staff, students, and the surrounding community, believes that people have lost sight of the public use issue.

"They are worn down by the struggle, by trying to find a compromise because the space is empty, but the question remains: why is a public campus being privately developed?" Hemingway told us. She mourns the loss of educational programs and spaces that benefited the community and the lack of transparency that has marred the UC’s plans.

"For there to have been such huge barriers to the public process over what is a huge amount of public land is unfortunate," Hemingway said.

Cynthia Servetnick of the Save the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus told us her group is prepared to file a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act if the project as currently proposed is approved.

"We’d rather see a project that has 40 percent affordable housing at 50 percent [area median income] than a lawsuit, but $38,000 a year [which would be the annual income requirement for seniors, the disabled, and people with AIDS to be able to afford one of Openhouse’s units] is too high," she said, noting that the proposed units are small but could go for $4,000 a month, rising to $7,000 monthly for those who need more services and staff.

Claiming that recognition of the campus as a historic landmark assists project sponsors in accessing preservation incentives, including federal tax credits, Servetnick said, "A.F. Evans has its [environmental impact report] complete and is clearing the way for 450 units, but they could do that and save all the historic buildings, thus having the same profitability but more affordability. It’s now or never. This is a new term for the mayor, we have a new city planning director, John Rahaim, and officials open to negotiating a win-win."

Migden was even more blunt. "Poor old queers need a place to retire too," she said. "Either Evans and the UC up the affordability level to 40 or 50 percent and guarantee that some of the senior LGBT units are subsidized, or the project dies."

As of press time, A.F. Evans, Openhouse, the SF Planning Department, and UC representatives had not returned the Guardian‘s calls.

Deferring to Mirkarimi to make an official announcement, Leno said, "I know that the meetings have been ongoing and that the issue of affordability is a priority, and I’m hopeful that we will have an agreement among all stakeholders shortly."

Some progress on UC extension

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January 16, 2008
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EDITORIAL There’s progress to report on the development deal for the old University of California Extension campus. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, whose district borders the project, has been holding meetings with all of the players, State Sen. Carole Migden has been putting pressure on the UC and the developer, and as of press time, it appears that the level of affordable housing could be increased from 16 percent to more than 30 percent.

The project still isn’t perfect, and there are still plenty of details to work out. (Among other things, it appears that the developer may not get permission to demolish two historic buildings — some recent court decisions suggest that historic structures can be torn down only if there’s no other alternative, and city documents show that a preservation alternative is feasible.) And as of press time, the developer, A.F. Evans, and Openhouse, the nonprofit that wants to dedicate part of the project to housing for queer seniors, were still at odds over some issues.

But by far the biggest problem with this 420-unit project was the lack of affordable housing — it was mostly rental units for rich people and retirement units for rich retirees — and that seems to be shifting. The Mayor’s Office of Housing has agreed to take over the 80 Openhouse units and make 100 percent of them affordable. (The definition will, of course, need to be negotiated — there are plenty of queer seniors, particular those on disability, who won’t be able to pay what the city often considers "affordable," and it’s important that some units be set aside for very-low-income people.)

But overall, a project that was utterly unacceptable is now looking a whole lot better. There’s a lesson here, of course: Before Mirkarimi and Migden got involved, the developer and the UC (which owns the land) were insisting that they couldn’t budge an inch on the level of affordable housing. But when it became clear that the project might not go forward, they came to the table. We have to wonder how many other projects that the city has approved could have been far better if city planners were willing to take a tougher line from the start.

This could still explode at any moment, but for now it’s moving in the right direction.

Whatever!?

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January 2, 2008
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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Does post-postirony still really translate as … irony? Or does any freaking thing matter at all, because the smirking, snarky ’80s are so very back that we’re backpedaling madly in our kooky plastic-and-who-really-cares-about-that-legendary-flotilla-of-plastic-in-the-Pacific-Ocean kiddie pool with what-the-hell carelessness, basking in apathy and gloss? Does that mean we’re ready to embrace our inner bigot? The jerkiest, knee-jerk reactionary responses from back in Grandpappy’s day, namely the Ronald Reagan era? Can our dingiest backward notions give us edge cred, convince us that we’re getting down as hard as those bad boys and girls of Vice et al., and provide fodder for schoolyard taunts, barroom brawls, dirty limericks, and — sweet — even songs? Aw, you’re so cute when you’re smug as a bug.

It’s hard to know what to think or feel or which cheek to plunge one’s tongue into while listening to Katy Perry’s "UR So Gay," off her self-titled digital EP and 12-inch (Capitol). Amazement or repulsion? Gay bashing in song can get as overt and stomach turning as Jamaica’s so-called murder music: see Buju Banton’s entreaties, on "Boom Bye Bye," to shoot gay men in the head and burn them alive. But it’s hard to parse the goofy novelty of "UR So Gay": it rides the new wave deca-dance rail between mild offense — for metrosexuals, gay straight men, gay men who want to own the word gay, and folks in favor of good music — and milky outrage. Has there been such a borderline-bashing Cali pop case since Josie Cotton’s 1980 "Johnny Are You Queer"? The Rizzo look-alike spun ’50s girl group tearjerker motifs — from the True Romance–style single cover art to her nyah-nyah-wah-wah plaintive bad-girl character’s delivery. "Why are you so weird, boy? / Johnny, are you queer boy? / When I make a play / You’re pushing me away," Cotton pouts. Oh, the perils of falling for someone who doesn’t flog for you — and never will. The conflicted "Johnny" hinged on tweaking the highly codified conventions of ’60s pop and doing the dirty by speaking the unspoken, even as an undercurrent of rage from a straight woman scorned surged beneath the number’s carefree contours.

In contrast, the blogged ‘n’ buzzed "UR So Gay" — riding on word of mouth for the woman who told me, "My mouth never shuts up, unfortunately" — references pop history, filtered somewhat through the ’80s, in Perry’s Cyndi Lauper–esque prom-queen styling. Apart from displaying a thick vein of social conservatism that disapproves of a metrosexual muddying of waters, songwriter Perry purveys all-’90s pop, swamped with an over-the-top arrangement, as the track’s heroine slags her ex: "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf / While jacking off listening to Mozart / You bitch and moan about LA / Wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway / You don’t eat meat / And drive electric cars / You’re so indie rock it’s almost an art / You need SPF 45 just to stay alive. You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys…. I can’t believe I fell in love with someone that wears more makeup than …"

Perry’s litany of insults, backed by a loping, going-nowhere beat, isn’t stereotypically gay — doit, what self-respecting stylish homosexual swain would get stuck on Mozart, Hemingway, and H&M? If anything, the list reveals the general throwaway nature of the tune and the cluelessness of the singer. Nonetheless, the "you’re so gay" chorus rankles, ever so softly, ever so wispily homophobically, in the way it detaches gayness from sexuality and attaches it firmly to notions of pretension, aloofness, and inaccessibility — under the guise of harmless good fun and quasi truth telling. It’s dumb and juvenile, and it makes straight women who watch their homophobia emerge when they lash out at men look bad. And much like Howard Stern and his ilk’s supposedly playful trash talking, that doesn’t mean it’s not hateful.

Of course, that’s not how Perry, a 23-year-old Santa Barbara native and star of Gym Class Heroes’ "Cupid’s Chokehold" video, whose music has appeared on MTV’s The Hills and Oxygen’s Fight Girls, sees it. The song, she said in a phone interview, is "provocative, and my mouth is a loose cannon. I speak my mind. I get into trouble." She sees herself in line with Lauper, Joan Jett, and "girls who aren’t afraid to take chances" — though you can’t ever imagine Lauper or Jett warbling "UR So Gay"<0x2009>‘s lines.

Perry wrote the song, she said, after "I was finally dumped by my ex shortly after a breakup that lasted twice as long as the relationship — you know how that goes." Stymied for a chorus, she said, she just blurted in frustration, "Oh, he’s so gay!" and at the urging of her roommate she made that the hook. "If you listen to the song, it’s not associated with sexuality," Perry said. "It’s about guys who use flatirons and gayliner. The general feeling when I play that song is that everyone’s laughing and singing along, and I’ve had girls come up to me and say, ‘I’ve had that boyfriend — thank you, homegirl, for writing that song!’ The positivity of the song means it’s not a negative thing."

It’s all positivity when you’re not gay, of course, and Perry isn’t suffering negatively on any level: this spring the song will usher in a full-length, which the songwriter worked on with Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette, No Doubt), Dave Stewart (the Eurythmics), and Dr. Luke (Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne), among others. "Having a record release is a phenomenon these days because the music industry is a crumbling Babylon," Perry explained. Whatever it takes to rise above The Hills.

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