Queer

Stormy leather

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Cruising for a Bruising By Jason Shamai

FILM William Friedkin, like it or not, has contributed so much to mainstream queer cinema that it’s remarkable his name primarily calls up images of projectile vomiting and Gene Hackman running a lot. The Boys in the Band (1970) and the more high-profile Cruising (1980) are bookends to a decade of comparatively unencumbered gay sex that is legendary to gay men of my generation (I was alive for a gloriously unencumbered two months of it), yet there was almost no mainstream representation of gay men in pop culture between the two films that didn’t involve guest spots on Match Game or The Hollywood Squares.

Last year’s excellent Friedkin offering, Bug, spent its first 15 minutes or so, gratuitously but innocuously, within a lesbian community. And let’s not forget Father Dyer’s gayer-than-gay proclamation in The Exorcist (1973) that “My idea of heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they love me.” Friedkin’s representations of queer people are hardly consistent in their degrees of sophistication, but the venom he’s inspired in so many activists is certainly excessive and arguably not worth the energy. If he can be accused of exploitation, what he’s exploiting is of no mere passing fascination to him. For some reason the man, whether or not he’s welcome, has clearly thrown in his lot with the queers.

Cruising — let’s just get it out of the way — is a pretty terrible movie in most of the major categories: dialogue, acting, and plot all add up to a big fat blecch, and the restored version playing at the Castro Theatre beginning Sept. 7 in anticipation of the DVD release does nothing to remedy the narrative inertia. The murder mystery it purports to be — regarding an undercover cop’s pursuit of a serial killer in the West Village’s leather-clad S-M scene — is a murky and parenthetical excuse for a series of Boschian tableaux of boot licking, fist fucking, and ass ramming. But beyond a frustrating mess of implications about the scene’s negative influence on Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino), Friedkin isn’t guilty of much beyond overexuberance.

The initial vitriolic reaction to Cruising, it seems, had more to do with its depiction, embellished a touch, of a significant chunk of the gay world with its legs up in the air. The flatteringly concentrated sexual activity in the bar scenes may be less of an issue nowadays because of the growing number of politically engaged queer people, unconcerned with assimilation and happy to sign off on anything that makes jittery straight people uncomfortable. But does this say enough about the movie’s sexual proclivities? There isn’t much talk about Cruising as a pageant of eroticized violence or as a film eager in its bloodiness for the titillated approval of its viewers. Were Friedkin’s murder scenes — overt visual associations of anal and violent penetration, blood sprayed across the screen in a porn booth — intended as an extension of his conception of S-M play? Would it be wrong for him to do so, or for the audience to be duly turned on?

I’ve always taken for granted that Cruising‘s two major scenes of police harassment were your garden-variety (though highly effective) critiques of injustice, a risk-minimizing way of approaching an unfamiliar culture. But now I’m wondering if these scenes were intended as an indictment of the police at all (was the unnecessarily long, squirm-inducing raid on an all-black bar in The French Connection intended as an indictment?) or if they were simply elaborate fetish scenarios, artistic expansions of the imagery and dynamics already well integrated into the S-M scene? Mr. Friedkin, are you trying to get us off? ——————- ——————-

Stormy Leather by Matt Sussman

When Cruising (1980) finally arrived in Bay Area theaters Feb. 15, 1980, San Francisco’s gay community had long been up in arms. The 1978 murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone were still fresh in many people’s minds. Gay bashing was still a regular occurrence. Word had spread through the gay press about efforts to disrupt the movie’s filming in New York, and the verdict was clear: Hollywood was profiting from gay murder.

In a December 1979 Oakland Tribune article, Konstantin Berlandt, a member of the group Stop the Movie Cruising and perhaps the film’s most vociferous adversary in local gay rags, called Cruising “a genocidal attack on gay people.” Two months later, the STMC helped organize a demonstration at the Transamerica Pyramid, protesting one of Transamerica’s subsidiaries — the film’s distributor, United Artists. On opening day hundreds of protesters picketed the St. Francis Theatre.

“I don’t remember what I thought of the whole thing other than it was kind of stupid and annoying,” recalls Marc Huestis, one of the cofounders of the city’s Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (now the SF International LGBT Film Festival). “As long as I’ve been here, there has always been the battle between the respectable gays and the fringe gays,” Huestis continues. “The respectable gays — many of whom I will say probably went to the leather bars to cruise after their protests — were all into showing a positive face.”

The issue of positive representation — and whether or not Cruising‘s problematic yoking of gay sadomasochism and serial murder warranted merely protest or outright censorship — was at the core of much of the debate. One reader wrote to San Francisco’s Sentinel, “It is ironic that we who have long been victims of prejudice and censorship should attempt to use these weapons of oppression against the movie.” In a February 1980 cover story, “The Men of Cruising,” in Mandate (the gay “international magazine of entertainment and Eros”), Rod Morgan, one of the gay extras in the film’s bar scenes, commented, “If the protesters want progay propaganda, let them get the money together and make their own movie.”

“The stakes of gay representation were very different at the time,” reflects Michael Lumpkin, artistic director of LGBT media nonprofit Frameline. “They were much higher because it was, like, ‘Hollywood hasn’t given us anything, and then they give us this?’ ” However, critic Scottie Ferguson, writing in the Advocate in April 1980, found a thrilling frisson in Cruising‘s portrayal of gay men and asked readers, “What Hollywood film has made the sexual electricity of the gay male seem so vibrant and visceral and unnerving?”

By 1995, when the Roxie Film Center revived Cruising, Ferguson’s observations had been somewhat vindicated. Mainstream LGBT film was taking off, and thanks to the risky work of directors like Gregg Araki and Tom Kalin, new queer cinema had confronted audiences with visceral and unnerving representations of violence-prone gay men.

In contrast to the largely positive reevaluations in the local press, David Ehrenstein implied in the Bay Area Reporter that the Roxie’s revival was tantamount to screening the notorious anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew (1940). Representatives from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation showed up to hand out protest literature. “It was hilarious,” former Roxie programmer Elliot Lavine recalls. “There was a line around the block, and 90 percent of those waiting were in the leather crowd, and these GLAAD folks are trying to persuade them not to see the movie.”

Cruising has, to some extent, been defanged by the passage of time, its campier moments and macho signifiers embraced by a younger generation of queers. Clearly, though, the film still touches nerves: flame wars are being ignited as fast as they are being put out on Craigslist.com. And even for this gay fan of slasher movies, the film’s murder scenes are incomparably unsettling.

After a recent local media screening of the restored movie’s DVD release — at which director William Friedkin was present — DJ Bus Station John, whose clubs Tubesteak Connection and the Rod evoke the milieu of gay nightlife at the time Cruising was made, commented in an e-mail that “Friedkin’s present claim that contemporary audiences are more ‘sophisticated’ and therefore more receptive to Cruising, if not more friendly [to the film], doesn’t mitigate the damage done to our community at the time [of its release].”

CRUISING

Sept. 7–13, $6–$9

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

For Johnny Ray Huston’s interview with Cruising director William Friedkin, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

 

Ammiano to gay Republicans…

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Gay Republicans repeat after me. I’m here. I’m queer. I’m sorry.

(Today’s Ammianoliner: on the voicemail of Sup. Tom Ammiano’s home telephone.) B3

The death of Polk Street

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› news@sfbg.com

Click here to read about the Polk’s long, queer history

Kelly Michaels was following the San Francisco dream when she escaped her small Alabama hometown at 17 and hitchhiked westward. It was 1989.

"I had stars in my eyes," Michaels told the Guardian, sitting on the floor of her friend’s small single-room occupancy Tenderloin apartment, hints of a Southern drawl now paired with Tammy Faye mascara and bleached-blonde hair. "When you’re 16 or 17 and have dreams of being famous, you come to California — and you probably end up on Polk Street in drag."

Michaels arrived on Polk with little more than blue jeans, a bra, and rubber falsies to her name, making ends meet as a street sex worker. It wasn’t what she was looking for; the Polk was plagued with drugs and violence. But her dad was embarrassed by his transgendered daughter and didn’t her want her back. The neighborhood was a home.

She found a community at fierce Polk Gulch trans and boy-hustler bars like Q.T. and Reflections, where clientele included one "big, tall, black Egyptian transsexual hell-raiser" known to draw a gun. Scores of boy hustlers "coming in daily from the Greyhound station" danced naked on the bars. At the end of the night, Michaels’s new family members would pool their money and rent a hotel room for $30.

"The bars were the churches, the sanctuaries," Michaels’s friend Terri, an African American man in his 50s, told us. "You weren’t really going to be hassled there."

Not any more. "Polk Street is dead," Michaels told us. "Dead as fuck now."

THE NEW POLK STREET


The new kids on the block are calling it "revitalization."

After the three-decades-old gay bar Kimo’s is transferred to a new owner at the end of September, there will be only two queer bars left on a street that was San Francisco’s gay male center in the 1960s and a gritty, affordable home for low-income queers, trans women, and male sex workers in the following decades. Where scores of hustlers lined up against seedy sex shops and gay bars just a few years ago, crowds of twentysomething Marina look-alikes now clog the sidewalks in front of upscale clubs.

Polk’s queer residents and patrons are now being priced and policed out of their neighborhood — and their city — as business and tourism interests continue to eat away at the city’s center. Lower Polk Gulch, just blocks north of City Hall and one block east of Van Ness, has in the past few years succumbed to multimillion-dollar businesses, upscale lofts, increased rents at SRO hotels and apartments, and a new million-dollar city streetscape beautification plan. The related increase in policing and new efforts to clean up the street is making the area an unwelcoming place for the marginal queers who for so long called it home.

It has been the most down-and-out segments of the queer population — male sex workers, trannies, young people, poor people of color, and immigrants — who have often been the queer population’s boldest and most innovative actors, pushing the movement forward in new ways. What does queer San Francisco lose when our most marginalized members are pushed, policed, and priced out of the city?

HEART OF A COMMUNITY


Michaels stood under a neon purple Divas sign, advertising the three-story transgender club that has stood in Polk Gulch for more than three decades. Divas manager Alexis Miranda, a friend, stepped outside to chat, and a dozen characters from the neighborhood stopped by to shoot the shit. One man rubbed Miranda’s belly through her leopard bodysuit. "This is my baby," he told us jokingly.

Divas is as much a community center as it is a club. Girls from out of town and out of the country know to come to Divas when they step off the boat, plane, or bus. Many trans immigrants make a living as prostitutes, and while Miranda insists that she does not allow them to work inside the club, the close vicinity of San Francisco’s tranny prostitute district has meant tension for Divas.

Miranda told us the police have been targeting the club because of complaints from new merchants. "Some of the people who have new businesses don’t want the people who live here to stay. They want to close us down," she said. "They’re trying to gentrify the neighborhood."

Neville Gittens, a police spokesperson, told us that the San Francisco Police Department performs "regular enforcement in that area" but said any targeted operations cannot be discussed.

Theresa Sparks, a trans woman who chairs the Police Commission, said Miranda made the same claim at the commission meeting Aug. 15. "I don’t know if that’s true or not," Sparks told us. "My intent is to find out what is going on."

Sparks agreed that gentrification is driving trans people out of the Polk Gulch neighborhood: "It is very, very difficult for a transgendered person to survive in this city."

Miranda pointed to a bar across the street. Until 2000, the Lush Lounge was the cruisy trans and hustler bar Polk Gulch Saloon. Now, under a new owner, white twentysomething heterosexuals sip apple pie martinis.

Sonia Khanna, a 28-year-old trans woman with long, curly brown hair and mocha skin told us she doesn’t feel welcome there. "If you’re a tranny, they think you’re a whore," she said.

Miranda said the owner, Steve Black, ejected her when she went to welcome him to the neighborhood. Miranda, a former empress in San Francisco’s Imperial Court System, reported him to the Human Rights Commission. The inquiry was closed when the owner informed the commission that he allows transgendered people into the bar. He didn’t deny tossing out Miranda; he said he just disliked her personally.

The bigger problem may be the neighborhood’s increased property values. Divas owner and Polk Gulch resident Steve Berkey told us that rents have pushed out other established queer businesses on Polk. The only reason Divas stays open is that he owns the building. "It used to be that so many girls lived in the neighborhood," he said. "They packed the place. But now rents have driven them off."

CENTER OF THE STORM


The reasons behind the death of the queer Polk are complex, likely including the ascendance of the Internet as a social networking tool, rising property costs, and the aging of the bars’ core clientele and owners. But most of the community’s rancor has focused on the most visible manifestation of change: neighborhood associations representing new, upscale businesses working with police and the city to clean up the streets.

At the center of the storm is a glass-walled architecture studio at the bottom of Polk Gulch, around the corner from Divas. Two freshly planted palm trees in front of the studio are conspicuous on a site next door to a bleak, institutional homeless shelter outfitted with security cameras and across the street from a porn shop promising "Hot Bareback Action!"

Case+Abst Architects has been the workplace and home of husband and wife Carolyn Abst and Ron Case since they were lured by the area’s low cost in 1999. The trees were the first of 40 planted in a campaign they initiated last year as cofounders of Lower Polk Neighbors. Abst told the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2005 that she "wants a fruit stand [on Polk Street], and we’ll take a Starbucks too."

The group has had an impact: District Attorney Kamala Harris said at a recent community meeting organized by the LPN that she has responded to association agitation by having representatives of the District Attorney’s Office walk the neighborhood with police and installing high-tech surveillance equipment to gain more criminal convictions. Sup. Aaron Peskin has asked the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to include the Lower Polk in its Neighborhood Marketplace Initiative, a program designed to revitalize neighborhood business districts. As part of this program, a part-time staff person now acts as a liaison between Lower Polk merchants and police. Another city program is scheduled to spend $1 million on installing new lights and planting trees later this year.

Activists say the LPN focus is not on outreach, therapy, or support for the Polk’s marginalized residents but on pushing undesirables out of the neighborhood and ejecting outreach programs like a local needle exchange.

Last year Abst was the subject of a "wanted" poster put up on Polk by the group Gay Shame. The group calls the LPN a "progentrification attack squad" whose goal is to "remove outsider queers and social deviants from our neighborhood in order to accelerate property development and real estate profiteering."

The hustler bar Club RendezVous lost its lease in 2005 after the property was bought and razed. Its co-owner, David Kapp, didn’t return our phone calls seeking comment, but he told the Central City Extra in February 2006 that a "smear campaign" by the LPN stopped him from relocating down the street. A First Congregational Church is now being constructed where RendezVous once stood. The church was designed by Case+Abst.

Case told us that the Planning Department wanted to see neighborhood support for the RendezVous move. The LPN asked that RendezVous provide security, but the bar’s owners refused. "They always had younger, underage boys hanging out," Case said. "There are a lot of families in this neighborhood. We wished them well, but it’s also a community." He told us he wants not to gentrify the neighborhood but to make it clean and safe.

But safe for whom?

Chris Roebuck, a medical anthropologist at UC Berkeley, told us that the increased policing has also meant increased harassment of trans women. Sex workers, many of them immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, and Thailand, are "increasingly being pushed into the alleyways, into unsafe spaces," he said. He’s also noticed a criminalization of what he called "walking while trans" in the six years he has spent interviewing trans women on Polk Street.

At a community meeting with the district attorney earlier this month, two trans women said the police, despite sensitivity trainings, do not take them seriously when they report a crime.

"Getting rid of the public space for trans women and drug users is not safe for them," Polk resident Matt Bernstein Sycamore (a.k.a. Mattilda) told us. "Deportation [of immigrant sex workers] is not a safe space. The needle exchange actually does make people safer. Getting rid of it does not make people safer."

Sycamore, editor of the book Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients, is concerned with what he calls a "cultural erasure" in the area. "Polk Street has been the last remaining place where marginalized queers can come to figure out how to cope, meet one another, and form social networks," he told us. "That sort of outsider culture has been so dependent on having a public space to figure out ways to survive. That is the dream of San Francisco — that you can get away from where you came from and cope, and create something dangerous and desperate and explosive."

POLK VILLAGE?


When Kimo’s changes hands at the end of September, San Francisco will lose one of the last vestiges of a hustler culture housed on Polk Street since at least the early 1960s.

On a recent night, six gray-haired men sat chatting or reading the paper, relics of Polk Street’s heyday. A young man with a shaved head and black hoodie stood outside the front door and gave a suspicious look to a young blonde woman in bikini straps who breezed in with two friends, laughing, oblivious to him. A sign in front read "No Loitering In Front of These Premises."

The state’s Department of Alcohol Beverage Control mandated the warning, Kimo’s bartender John David told us. He said he thinks that was the result of pressure from the LPN. "Kimo’s is the new whipping boy," he told us. "RendezVous is out, and now it’s our fault that people are on the streets."

Case denies that his group had anything to do with the crackdown on Kimo’s.

A tall man with shaggy brown hair standing on the sidewalk near Kimo’s, who asked to be identified by his porn-actor name, Eric Manchester, complained that a way of life is coming to an end. Manchester said he started hustling on Polk at age 17 after leaving the "redneck, racist town" of Martinsville, Ind., in 10th grade and being stationed in San Diego by the Navy.

"It wasn’t just money for me," Manchester told us. "This was a good place to come and get advice, comfort, support. There are people that need people, and they’re going to take that all away. San Francisco is going down the tubes. All the heterosexual people are moving in. They like the police-state mentality."

Among the new arrivals is the owner of the $6.5 million O’Reilly’s Holy Grail Restaurant that stands just a few doors down Polk Street from Kimo’s. On a recent evening, a musician played soft jazz on a black grand piano, while men in starched pastel button-down shirts stood around on the hickory pecan floor.

Myles O’Reilly opened the restaurant two years ago, when he also transformed a low-rent residential hotel above the space into 14 European-style hotel suites. Neighbors point to the property as a tipping point in Polk’s transformation. But O’Reilly sounded almost defeated when he talked about his "multimillion-dollar jewel in the middle of the desert."

"We are only a couple blocks from City Hall and Union Square," he told us. "But tourism doesn’t come this way."

With the goal of transforming the area, he teamed up with John Malloy, the head of the recently founded Polk Corridor Business Association, who has also chaired the LPN.

One of their projects is on view outside the restaurant and along the street. Colorful banners read: "Welcome to Polk Village … working together to build a cleaner, safer, more beautiful community." The PCBA plans to circulate a petition to officially change the name of Polk Gulch to Polk Village in a few years, but O’Reilly isn’t waiting. He defiantly lists the restaurant’s address as 1233 Polk Village on his building.

That "village" will house a small army if these merchants have their way. "We need foot patrols up and down Polk Street," Malloy, who lives in the neighborhood, told us. "We’re going to get more police even if we have to go out there and hire them ourselves."

O’Reilly took out his cell phone and started showing me photos. "This is defecation on the sidewalk outside," he said, pointing to a smudgy image. "This is condoms on the sidewalk. You see this lovely photograph? That’s a condom in the flowerbed. That’s what my son had to see this morning. And nobody helps."

"There are 1,000 condos being built here," O’Reilly said. "Something has to be done to restrict the number of street people."

VANISHING NEIGHBORHOODS


The Tenderloin, and to a lesser extent Polk Gulch, risked being swallowed by the expanding downtown financial district and tourist industries in the late 1970s. But in the 1980s, community activism secured a moratorium on the conversion of residential hotel units, required luxury hoteliers to contribute millions of dollars in community mitigations, downzoned dozens of blocks of prime downtown property, and created a nonprofit housing boom.

It is these achievements that new merchants and residents point to when distancing themselves from the word gentrification. LPN cofounder Case told us that because apartments in the area are rent controlled, gentrification is "not possible."

Not so, said Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee. "Look at the Castro," he told us. "It’s full of rent-controlled buildings. All you have to do is evoke the Ellis Act, or you buy out the tenants."

Or look next to the Congregational Church construction on Polk. There stands an almost-completed four-story building whose 32 units are being sold for up to $630,000. A large glossy poster in its window advertises the units’ "open living and dining areas," along with "stainless steel appliances, custom cabinets, [and] granite counters."

Brian Bassinger, cofounder of the AIDS Housing Alliance, told us that in one of the buildings where his organization houses people a few blocks south of Polk Gulch, rent is now $1,700 a month, up from $1,325 just a few years ago.

Gayle Rubin, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and a historian of South of Market leather cultures, told us that gay neighborhoods are disappearing across the country as the core of major cities are transformed into high-value areas. This puts pressure on the economic viability of queer neighborhoods, most of which — despite the stereotype of the wealthy gay — have taken root in marginalized, poor neighborhoods.

"Polk Street is just one little battle in the war," Mecca told us. "The Mission was a working-class lesbian area. That whole lesbian culture got lost overnight. The bustling culture of queer artists in the Castro — all gone. The South of Market leather scene — gone. Parts of our culture, the very thing we came to San Francisco for, keep getting wiped out."

Kelly Michaels did develop a certain amount of celebrity as a performer at the famed club Finocchio’s and as a porn star; fans still post photos and gush over her online. And she remains drawn to the Polk, even if her relationship with the neighborhood is deeply ambivalent.

"It’s so evil, so dark, full of drugs and despair," she told us outside Divas. "But this is my home and my family."

"The people left here are going to fight for their home," she said. "Some people have been here forever. Their whole life is here. It’s impossible to get an apartment in other places of this city."

"This is a sanctuary," she said. "They’re taking the sparkle out of San Francisco."

The original queer district

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The Tenderloin and its more settled fringe, Polk Gulch, have a long history in queer San Francisco.

The city’s street prostitutes were pushed into the Tenderloin after the 1914 Red-Light Abatement Law led to a crackdown on the Barbary Coast. Police crackdowns on gay bars in North Beach in the early 1960s led to the ascendance of Polk Gulch as the city’s gay center.

In the 1960s, a vibrant queer culture consisting of young butch hustlers, drag queens, transgendered sex workers, and older men spanned lower Polk and the adjacent Tenderloin. By 1966, the area supported more than two dozen gay bars and baths, sex shops, restaurants, men’s clothing stores, gay theaters, and gay hotels, according to GLBT Historical Society records. The Gay Freedom Day Parade passed through Polk Gulch in the early 1970s. Before Halloween in the Castro, Halloween was in the Polk.

A 1966 police riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-night hangout for hustlers and street queens just a few blocks from Polk Gulch, predates New York’s famous Stonewall riot by three years.

Many gay men from Polk Gulch migrated to the Castro in the mid-1970s, and their businesses left with them. But Polk Street remained a vital center for poor queers of color, hustlers, runaway youths, trannies, and drug users who were generally not welcome in the Castro. The AIDS epidemic hit the Polk hard in the 1980s, which also saw a rise in crime and drugs in the area.

The dot-com boom of 1999–2001 hastened this collapse, accelerating gentrification in the area. A series of fires at SROs, including one in 1998 at the Polk Street Leland Hotel, displaced low-income tenants, while condos began to be constructed in their place. Increased policing, tied in with new upscale businesses and tenants, the aging of the bars’ owners and core clientele, and competition from the new technology of the Internet, also changed the neighborhood’s character.

In the past few years especially, businesses began buying up limping gay bars, transforming them into hip, heterosexual meeting places. RendezVous was razed. The Polk Gulch Saloon became the Lush Lounge. Reflections, a male hustler bar, became the Vertigo Lounge. The Giraffe, a gay bar since 1979, became the Hemlock Tavern. The dive bar Katie’s became Blur. (Plaster)

Divatrocious

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO OK, I figure I’ve got fewer than five readers this week because of, oh yeah, fucking Burning Man, so let’s drop all the usual hyperintellectual lip gloss and get intimate. It’s just you and me and the scent of a Mariah Carey M eau de parfum sample strip from a ripped-off copy of Glamour in the air between us. First, this just in: there’s actually a Cuban drag queen in Miami named Fidela Castrato. Topical! Second, screw the burners — for a couple of glorious weeks, the Bay is ours. Let’s get go-go-toasted. Let’s get ho-ho-noxious. Let’s get divatrocious. Below are some delish party picks for the fortnight ahead to keep us busy while others pluck playa dust from their sun-baked cracks. Take back the night! And check out the Noise Blog at www.sfbg.com, where I’ll be posting more Labor Day weekend and beyond kookiness. Just for us.

DMX KREW AT EGGS


Years ago I got my first glimmer of the juggernaut that the whole blank-parody white-kid electro-hop scene would become when I scored a CD from the Guardian‘s Johnny Ray Huston sometime in the late ’90s, put out by an awesome kid named Ed DMX, who vocoder-rapped over analog beats about rainbows and Adidases and probably unicorns — but who the hell knows, I just needed the CD cover to cut up … er, my nails. Anyway, it was awesome, and DMX is still alive! He’ll be stepping lively with his Krew at one of the most raucous parties in sodomyville, Eggs, with PJ Pooterhoots and Safety Scissors.

Thu/30 10 p.m.–2 a.m., $8

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.might119.com

www.eggseggs.com

AMANDA LEPORE AT THE CRIB


The world’s most phenomenal piece of transgendered flesh-sculpture talks! Will we ever understand? Do we want to? The legendary inflatable club goddess is interviewed onstage by inflatable Asian tranny whore Monistat, at the hippest nightspot for underage East Bay queer kids of color into Bryan Adams techno remixes and Rihanna mash-ups (and who can cough up $15). Fearfully intriguing.

Thu/30, 9:30 p.m.–2 a.m., $15

715 Harrison, SF

18 and older

www.thecribsf.com

www.amandaleporeonline.com

JEFRODESIAC’S FOURTH ANNUAL FUCK YOU BURNING MAN


It’s on. DJs Jefrodesiac (Frisco Disco, Blow Up) and Funk (Dancemania) hit the decks with some fine, fine chaos, and Hot Tub, that crazy, bubbly girl electro-rappin’ trio from Oakland, perform live at this must-do event for non-naked-yoga-for-Gaia people.

Sun/2, 9 p.m.–2 a.m.

Free with RSVP at going.com/djfunk

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

MOTOR CITY MADNESS


What?! A Detroit-themed night at a queer club? Hells yeah. DJ Chicken hatches his latest feather-brained scheme at Truck, playing every genre of music that launched from tha D, which is, like, everything. (Hey, I’m from there — work it out.) Motown, techno, Iggy, Eminem, White Stripes, MC5 … need I go on? Also featuring — and if you’re not a Michigander, you won’t get it — Faygo cocktails! What, no Vernors? Chicken also tells me that Truck’s kitchen may also include a chili dog minus the dog (Coney Special), a burger smothered in ketchup (Murder Burger), or an onion ring on a hamburger bun (Spare Tire). Rawk.

Sept. 5, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., free

1900 Folsom, SF

(415) 252-0306

www.trucksf.com

LUCKY PIERRE HAIR PARTY


Gays in frilly panties! Strip poker! Mayhem! DJ Mickey Moniker from Vancouver (Uncanny, Pumpjack) joins DJ Donimo and DJ6 for a night of electro madness at Lucky Pierre — the steamy monthly at the Stud for three-way lovers and their lovers’ lovers. Plus, this month’s theme is "hair" (as in fluff it up, show it out, shave it off — not the musical, I dearly hope), so grab your giant novelty comb and hop to. Coco Canal hosts, Artemis Chase deals, and the toilets overflow. With love!

Sept. 7, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $7

399 Ninth St., SF

(415) 252-STUD

myspace.com/clubluckypierre

Class of 2007: Carletta Sue Kay

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CLUBS Future Farmers of America, Baby-Mama Drama Club, Toilet Scouts

QUOTE "Obviously, I’m trying to escape myself."

"It’s so fucking weird," says Randy Walker, a.k.a. Carletta Sue Kay, singer and songwriter for his eponymous chamber rock quartet. "I’m a total fagatron, but I write sad, heartfelt love songs addressed to imaginary women. Then I throw on a big ugly dress and a bad wig and sing them on stage to an audience of mostly gay men. I guess that makes it queer."

Probably. Either that or Psycho. Walker’s made a career of inhabiting various musical personae ever since he scored a Screen Actors Guild card for a production of Peter Pan when he was 10. After moving to San Francisco 12 years ago, he made a splash in queer indie-rock circles as Emile, the oft-bruised lead shouter of thrash-dance foursome Mon Cousin Belge. The sound of MCB edged outright metal terror with a glimmer of glam, splashing enough contempo-emo sincerity onto the band’s hilariously over-the-top antics to light a fire in many a queer boy’s heart. (Now recording a CSK album, Walker promises that MCB, which disbanded in May, will return later this year in a sleeker version.)

"I love Emile," Walker says. "I’ve been being Emile for years, but I’m constantly writing songs — I’m sitting on about 300 — and most of them are just waiting for me to find the right personality inside me to perform them." Thus, in the way of Sybil, Carletta Sue Kay was birthed, to give voice to Walker’s more lilting, Emmylou Harris–meets–Magnetic Fields tunes. Backed by Metal Bob on guitar and Danyol and Mark Mekaru on piano, cello, rhythm guitar, and accordion, Carletta croons her way through an lovely echo chamber of gender-benders, including "Joy Division," about a girl who loses her boyfriend to the titular band. "Carletta Sue Kay was named after my actual cousin, who’s serving time in Iowa for trying to blow up her boyfriend’s house. She was charged with possession of terrorist materials," Walker explains. "Isn’t that fabulously trashy?" (Marke B.)

www.myspace.com/carlettasuekay

Fall Arts: Fall on high

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Forget that catchy monster musical Avenue Q anthem "Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist" (isn’t there a dance remix yet?) — here’s something really tickly-tacky. Last month my inverse fabuloid, anti–drag queen amigo Downy (think hairy white Whitney with nylons over her head) threw a huge party in Manhattan called "9/11 in July." Business-suited patrons were doused with baby powder on entry, to the strains of Enrique Iglesias’s "Hero" and the post-tragedy oeuvre of Mr. Bruce Springsteen. Flyer tagline: "Too early?" It was packed.

Here in the Bay, our benchmark of club-style civic self-critique is still the slew of "Fuck Burning Man" parties that spring up right about now. (What, no Muni-meltdown tunnel takeovers? And how ’bout all those unguarded downtown construction-boom sites? IMHO, jes’ sayin’.) Still, autumn is smokin’ for clubbers, with enough sassy subversion and genre-bending events to make nighttime terrors of us all. Fall’s buzz: neon laces, wine cocktails, big scarves, duck rock, blinking LEDs, and cutoffs with fishnets. Party!

Start big — and in the daylight, when both the out-rave-ous San Francisco Love Fest (Sept. 29, www.sflovefest.org) and the fetish-fantastic Folsom Street Fair (Sept. 30, www.folsomstreetfair.com) converge on San Francisco in an — eek! — angel-winged orgy of fun fur and leather. This year the intertwined events have pulled a surprise musical switcheroo. The usually local-oriented and charmingly low-tech Love Fest goes steroidal, with a lineup of international ’90s kinda supastar dance acts: Chemical Brothers, the Crystal Method, Paul van Dyk, and almost a hundred more. Then Folsom — renowned for its circuit techno overkill — injects itself with some indie dance-pop cache, with live performances by Imperial Teen, Cazwell, and the Ladytron DJ Tour. The other giant, hideously glamorous switcheroo of the season, of course, will be the Miss Trannyshack Pageant, where fun fur and leather get drenched in competitive drag queen guts. But you’ll have to watch the Trannyshack Web site (www.trannyshack.com) for the date and location; it’s like a virtual game of hide the salami!

The clubs keep pumpin’ it out too. The promoters of the huge, fabled, much-delayed Temple Nightclub (www.templesf.com), with its three dance floors, six bars, and attached restaurant, assure me it’ll be ready for its Sept. 7 grand opening party — it’s already hosted a Hilary Duff meet and greet! Prepare for an onslaught of ginormous parties to fill the cavernous space. In the meantime, you can check out the club-oriented big time of Mezzanine (www.mezzaninesf.com), with night owls screeching for dyke punk-funk-crunk rappers Yo Majesty (Sept. 12), DJ Jefrodesiac and friends’ Robot Rock party featuring Kentucky’s (only?) house rockers VHS or Beta (Sept. 14), "Do the Bartman" remixer Diplo (Sept. 22), and Christ-obsessed French techers Justice (Oct. 10). And the powerhouse musicologists of Blasthaus (www.blasthaus.com) present, at various locales, the ambient mindfunk of Bonobo (Sept. 9), Argentina–via–Los Angeles global groove heartthrob Federico Aubele (Sept. 21), and post-punk techno god Superpitcher (Oct. 19).

Too big for you? Head down any night this fall to 222 Club (www.222club.net), which just revamped its system to become the hottest little tech-dance venue in the city. Also hottt, but newer: too-fab hotel haunt Bar Drake (www.bardrake.com), awesome Latino-tinged hang Cantina (www.cantinasf.com), and drunken queer craziness at Truck (www.trucksf.com). What to drink at all of these places? Hit up Camper English’s new, comprehensively tipsy Alcademics blog (www.alcademics.com). He says tequila bottle signings are in. That’s important.

Fall Arts: I screen, you screen

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› johnny@sfbg.com

"Switching Schools Sucks" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks serves up a triple dose of teen alienation: Pump Up the Volume, Footloose, and the Andrew Stevens–starring, Heathers-influenced Massacre at Central High.

Aug. 31. Castro Theatre (info below)

"Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany" Perhaps the most expansive retrospective of East German film in the United States, spanning from the early 1960s to 1990.

Sept. 1–Oct. 27. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

"Look Back at England: The British New Wave" Does kitchen-sink cinema deserve classic status? It would be great to witness Manny Farber (who wrote scathingly about Rita Tushingham and Tony Richardson) duke it out with Morrissey on the subject.

Sept. 2–Oct. 26. Pacific Film Archive (info below)

"Devotional Cinema: Films by Dorsky and Ozu" Nathaniel Dorsky shows two of his films and also talks about Late Spring, one of the Yasujiro Ozu films discussed in his insightful book that shares this program’s title.

Sept. 4. Pacific Film Archive

"Send Granny Back to Russia" The 1929 film My Grandmother is screened with Beth Custer’s score to raise funds for an upcoming trip on which Custer’s ensemble will perform the score in Russia and elsewhere.

Sept. 4. Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut, Berk. Also Sept. 5. Dolby Laboratories, 100 Potrero, SF. www.bethcuster.com

William Friedkin Series Someone I know who knows all the great actresses calls Ashley Judd’s performance in Bug a "tour de force." That film and others set the stage for more Friedkin freak-outs.

Sept. 4–6. Castro Theatre

"Helmut Käutner: Film Retrospective Part 2" The series continues with the post–World War II period of Käutner’s career, including a 1947 feature shot in Germany’s ruins and a 1954 film featuring a young Klaus Kinski (yes, he was young once).

Sept. 4–Oct. 9. Goethe-Institut, 530 Bush, SF. (415) 263-8760, www.goethe-sf.org

"Fearless Females: Three Films by Shyam Benegal" The director appears at screenings that highlight the feminist currents of his contributions to the Indian new wave of the ’70s.

Sept. 5–7. Pacific Film Archive

Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana Lars Laumann’s 16-minute video screens in a loop as part of the "There Is Always a Machine Between Us" exhibition.

Sept. 6–22. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

The Darwin Awards A new comedy by Finn Taylor focuses on death by stupidity.

Sept. 7. Roxie Film Center (info below)

"TILT" The Film Arts Foundation presents an evening of films from its media-education program, which works with schools.

Sept. 7. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (info below)

Cruising The digital restoration of William Friedkin’s most controversial film finally hits the Castro Theatre, years after being revived from infamy at the Roxie Film Center.

Sept. 7–13. Castro Theatre

Imp of Satan Local queer horror midnight movie screens along with a live comedy drag show.

Sept. 8. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.synchromiumfims.com

"Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genre Master" An extensive series devoted to the undersung Japanese director, whose movies spanned five decades and even more genres, including comedies, samurai films, theatrical adaptations, and police flicks.

Sept. 8–29. Pacific Film Archive

9/11 Truth Film Festival Two days of films and discussions.

Sept. 10–11. Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand, Oakl. (510) 452-3556, www.renaissancerialto.com

Madcat Women’s International Film Festival Turning 11 this year, Ariella Ben-Dov’s festival includes a tribute to the life and work of Helen Hill and culls 98 films — 76 of them premieres — into 11 programs.

Sept. 11–26. Various venues, SF. (415) 436-9523, www.madcatfilmfestival.org

Super Sleazy ’70s Go-go Grindhouse Show Will "the Thrill" Viharo brings together Pam Grier in Black Mama, White Mama and live dancing by the Twilight Vixen Revue.

Sept. 13. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

Honor of the Knights Along with recent works by José Luis Guerín, this idiosyncratic take on Don Quixote by Albert Serra is being heralded as a new highlight of Spanish cinema.

Sept. 13–16. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Role Reversal" Midnites for Maniacs strikes again, with The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Yentl, and a film that can never be screened enough, The Legend of Billie Jean.

Sept. 14. Castro Theatre

The Warriors Walter Hill’s gang classic comes out to play.

Sept. 14–15. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Film Night in the Park: Rebel Without a Cause Sal Mineo makes eyes at James Dean, and Natalie Wood weeps about her dad rubbing off her lips.

Sept. 15. Union Square, SF. (415) 453-4333, www.filmnight.org

Xperimental Eros PornOrchestra accompanies stag movies in a celebration for OCD’s latest DVD release.

Sept. 15. Other Cinema (info below)

Eros and Massacre Film on Film Foundation presents Yoshishige Yoshida’s 1970 film about anarchist Sakae Osugi.

Sept. 16. Pacific Film Archive

"It’s a Funny, Mad, Sad World: The Movies of George Kuchar" The man appears in person for a screening of five Kuchar classics spanning 15 years, selected by Edith Kramer.

Sept. 18. Pacific Film Archive

Orphans of Delirium What is paratheatre? Antero Alli and a 2004 video provide the answer.

Sept. 18. Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-3890, www.atasite.org

Midnites for Maniacs in 70mm All hail Jesse Hawthorne Ficks for bringing Tobe Hooper’s bodacious nude space vampire classic Lifeforce — one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s favorite movies — back to the big screen. Even Planet of Blood‘s Florence Marly may have nothing on Mathilda May.

Sept. 21. Castro Theatre

Strange Culture The story of Steve Kurtz is discussed and reenacted in San Francisco filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s latest feature.

Sept. 21. Roxie Film Center

"Girls Will Be Boys" This series, curated by Kathy Geritz, includes Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich trouser classics, as well as Katherine Hepburn under the eye of Dorothy Arzner in Sylvia Scarlett.

Sept. 21–30. Pacific Film Archive

Amando a Maradona Soccer icon Diego Maradona gets the feature treatment.

Sept. 26. La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. (510)849-2568. www.utf8ofilmfestival.org

In Search of Mozart Phil Grabsky’s digiportrait of the composer works to counter the distortions of Amadeus and the elitism that sometimes hovers around Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s legacy.

Sept. 28–30. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Legendary Composer: Jerry Goldsmith" The salt and pepper to John Williams’s Hollywood sucrose gets a cinematic tribute, with screenings of classics such as Seconds, Poltergeist, and the film with perhaps his best scoring work, Chinatown.

Sept. 28–Oct. 4. Castro Theatre

DocFest It turns five this year, offering more than 20 films and videos, including the Nick Drake profile A Skin Too Few.

Sept. 28–Oct. 10. Roxie Film Center

Film Night in the Fog The increasingly popular Creature from the Black Lagoon makes an appearance, this time at the Presidio.

Sept. 29. Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-5500, www.sffs.org

"Red State Cinema" Joel Shepard curates a series devoted to rural visionaries, including Phil Chambliss and his folk-art videos set at a gravel pit and Spencer Williams and his 1941 Southern Baptist feature The Blood of Jesus.

October. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Olivier Assayas in Residence: Cahiers du Cinema Week" The Pacific Film Archive has screened early Assayas movies that didn’t get distribution, such as the Virginie Ledoyen showcase Cold Water. Now the director visits to show Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore (think of Assayas’s Irma Vep, also screening) and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (think of his Demonlover), along with Assayas’s latest movie, Boarding Gate.

Oct. 4–11, Pacific Film Archive

Mill Valley Film Festival The biggest Bay Area film fest of the fall turns 30 this year, presenting more than 200 movies from more than 50 countries.

Oct. 4–14. Various venues. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.org

Helvetica The typeface gets its very own movie.

Oct. 5–7. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Shock It to Me: Classic Horror Film Festival" Joe Dante will appear at this fest, which promises a dozen pre-Halloween shockers.

Oct. 5–7, Castro Theatre

"Zombie-rama" Thrillville unleashes Creature with the Atom Brain and Zombies of Mora Tau.

Oct. 11. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400. www.thrillville.net

"Joseph Cornell: Films" Without a doubt, this multiprogram series — in conjunction with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Cornell exhibition — is one of the most important Bay Area film events of the year.

Oct. 12–Dec. 14. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Wattis Theater, 151 Third St, SF. (415) 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

"Expanded Cinema" Craig Baldwin, Kerry Laitala, Katherin McInnis, Stephen Parr, and Melinda Stone blast retinas with double-projector performance pieces.

Oct. 13. Other Cinema

"Celebrating Canyon: New Films" Under the SF Cimematheque rubric, Canyon Cinema’s Michelle Silva and Dominic Angerame put together a program of recent additions to the Canyon catalogue.

Oct. 14. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Films by Bruce Conner" The long-awaited new Soul Stirrers short His Eye Is on the Sparrow kicks off an hour of Conner magic.

Oct. 16. Pacific Film Archive

Arab Film Festival The festival’s 11th year will bring 11 days and nights of movies, including a Tunisian doc about the making of Tarzan of the Arabs.

Oct. 18–28. Various venues, SF. (415) 564-1100, www.aff.org

"I Am Not a War Photographer" Brooklyn-based Lynn Sachs presents a night of short movies and spoken word.

Oct. 20. Other Cinema

"Experiments in High Definition" Voom HD works, including one by Jennifer Reeves, get an SF Cinematheque program.

Oct. 21. SF Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

"Walls of Sound: Projector Performances by Bruce McClure" Brooklyn artist McClure explores projection as performance in this kickoff event in SF Cinematheque’s "Live Cinema" series.

Oct. 24–25. Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

Smalltown Boys Arthur Russell documentarian Matt Wolf’s semifictive historical look at David Wojnarowicz loops as part of the "There Is Always a Machine Between Us" series.

Oct. 30–Nov. 17. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

The Last Man on Earth Vincent Price fights zombies in this oft-pillaged 1964 US-Italian horror classic, soon to be re-created with Will Smith.

Oct. 31. Pacific Film Archive

"Día de los Muertos: Honorar las Almas de Cineastas de Avant-Garde Vanguarda" Canyon Cinema and SF Cinematheque founder Bruce Baillie shares some favorites from the Canyon vaults.

Nov. 1. Roxie Film Center. Also Nov. 2. Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 Ninth St., SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

International Latino Film Festival One of three fests to turn 11 this fall.

Nov. 2–18. Various venues, SF. (415) 513-5308, www.utf8ofilmfestival.org.

"Science Is Fiction" Nope, not Jean Painléve — the histories of the Tesla coil, the blimp, and other phenomena hit the screen, thanks to cinematographer Lance Acord and others.

Nov. 3. Other Cinema

Shatfest Get your mind out of the toilet — it’s another Thrillville tribute to William Shatner, including a screening of Incubus.

Nov. 8. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

Strain Andromeda The and Cinepolis, the Film Capitol Anne McGuire’s reedit of The Andromeda Strain isn’t exactly backward, but — thanks to Ed Halter’s "Crazy Rays: Science Fiction and the Avant-Garde" series for SF Cinematheque — it is back. The series continues to beam as Ximena Cuevas’s metamontage attack on Hollywood shares a bill with Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99.

Nov. 8. Roxie Film Center

San Francisco International Animation Showcase A big premiere, some music vids, and a link to the famed Annecy animation fest are possibilities as the SF Film Society event turns two.

Nov. 8–11. Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center (promenade), SF. (415) 561-5500. www.sffs.org

"Celebrating Canyon: Pioneers of Bay Area Filmmaking" Bruce Baillie unpacks some Bay Area experimental cinema treasures from the ’40s and ’50s.

Nov. 11. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

My Favorite Things At last! Negativland premiere their first CD-DVD release.

Dec. 1. Other Cinema

"James Fotopoulos/Leah Gilliam" and "Victor Faccinto/James June Schneider" Fotopoulos has had some Bay Area attention before, but Gilliam’s Apeshit — a look at racial politics in Planet of the Apes — might be the highlight in this last evening of Ed Halter’s "Crazy Rays" series.

Dec. 13. Roxie Film Center *

CASTRO THEATRE

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

OTHER CINEMA

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

ROXIE FILM CENTER

3317 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

701 Mission, screening room, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

She’s a rebel

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

"See the way he walks down the street / Watch the way he shuffles his feet / My, he holds his head up high / When he goes walking by / He’s my kind of guy-ai-ai-ai." The agony and the ecstasy of the Crystals echo through the humid second-floor rehearsal space at Intersection for the Arts, bouncing off the pine floors, streaming out the open window, and pinging off the scaffolding propped on Valencia, above the construction bustle and everyday hustle of the Mission District. The Gene Pitney song originally soared, with so much heart-pinching, giggle- and tear-inducing bittersweetness, from the diamond pipes of Darlene Love, at the time the chosen femme surrogate of Wall of Sound architect Phil Spector. But today that sugar-high, lonesome-in-the-crowd sound is emanating from choreographer Erika Shuch, our Fall Arts Preview cover star, who’s leading her dance company through an a cappella rendition to close out the afternoon’s rehearsal. As Tommy Shepherd holds up one wall of the studio, beatboxing out the rhythm, the rest of the Erika Shuch Performance Project — Dwayne Calizo, Jennifer Chien, and Danny Wolohan — fall in line, their righteous harmonies echoing through the space like those of a juvy hall teen-angst gospel choir.

"When he holds my hand I’m so proud / ‘Cause he’s not just one of the crowd / My baby, oh, he’s the one / To try the things they’ve never done / Just because of what they say …"

And then they drop into a shambling routine echoing those executed by the sharp-dressed singers on The T.A.M.I. Show or Ready Steady Go! Intersection staffers enter and immediately exit their impromptu stage, sidling through a nearby door like silent visitors from a forgotten slapstick who lost the joke but can’t quite cease their loop through the space. But nothing breaks the group’s concentration as Shepherd strolls over to the rest of the ESP and Shuch continues to wail, "He’s a rebel, and he’ll never be any good / He’s a rebel, and he’ll never ever be understood …" The entire company breaks into an improvised dance, grinning and whirling off into gentle mashed potatoes or frugs of their own.

Comfortingly familiar yet terribly resonant enough to bring tears to one’s eyes, "He’s a Rebel" isn’t the obvious song choice for 51802, a dance theater meditation on the impact of incarceration on those left behind on the outside. Somehow, in Shuch’s poetic framework, it slides in among the original blues-imbued songs perfectly, like leather clinging to flesh.

"I’m just … way into kitsch!" Shuch says with a girlish laugh after the rehearsal. Pale streaks shoot through her dark pigtails, and freckles race across her cheeks. "This piece has such a potential to be dark and self-important, and I feel like if I have a really hard day, I really like to listen to loud pop music in my car and, like, sing it dramatically. So I think it’s a very natural, very real way of dealing with difficult situations, to sing these cheesy pop songs. That’s a very real kind of relief that people seek and find."

With "He’s a Rebel" and another song from 51802, Little Anthony and the Imperials’ "I’m on the Outside (Looking In)," "you just have permission to be dramatic. You just have such permission to be such drama queens!" Shuch exclaims. "And I just love that. I don’t want it to be like …" Suddenly she breaks into a deathly dull, pretentious robot voice, " ‘Oh, subtly expressing my feelings abstractly …’ I just want it to be so dramatic and so devastating and so the end-of-the-world kind of feeling."

It might have seemed like the end of the world when Shuch watched a loved one enter the California prison system three and a half years ago, the same year she won a Goldie for dance from the Guardian. Since then, the 33-year-old San Jose native has been running the Experimental Performance Institute she cofounded at New College to focus on activist, queer, and experimental performance and has choreographed or directed plays by Charles Mee at the Magic Theatre, Philip Kan Gotanda and Octavio Solís at Intersection, and Daniel Handler for Word for Word Theater. Unlike other productions, 51802 — which is being staged as part of the Prison Project, a yearlong interdisciplinary examination of the state’s prison system at Intersection — cuts to the bone for the choreographer.

"It’s something that I feel I’ve been doing for a while in abstract ways," Shuch says, discussing her 2004 work All You Need and her 2005 piece One Window. The latter concerned "physical and emotional confinement," while the former revolved around a German case of allegedly consensual cannibalism — "this situation of having a desire that kind of has no place in this world and being punished because you want something that doesn’t fit and having the world look at these desires through a moral lens. Who has the authority or the power to say what is right or what is wrong when two people find something that they both want?"

"So I’ve been kind of …," she says, laughing nervously, "floating around this theme for some years. This is the first time I’m coming out and saying this is actually what I’m making a piece about. It is something very specific, and we’re using these abstract symbolic tales to speak to the feelings of what it’s like to be on the outside, though the text that I speak is very straightforward."

Shuch recites an excerpt from her text, an explanation of 51802‘s title, which was inspired by the five-digit number given to each prisoner that takes the place of their name: "I had to write a little poem to remember his number. It went something like this: five is for your fingers, one is for the star, eight is for the years you’re locked up, zero is for your heart, and then there’s a two. But the two is easy to remember. It’s always about two — one on the inside, one on the outside, and zero for the heart."

Powerful words from someone acclaimed (Shuch recently won the prestigious Emerging Choreographers Award from the Gerbode Foundation) for the use of movement as her central mode of expression. But the text also bears the imprint of a creator who has long toiled as a resident at Intersection through the Hybrid Project, which builds bridges between artists working in different mediums.

Shuch directed Domino by Sean San Jose, Intersection’s program director of theater, when it premiered with Campo Santo at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2005, and he was impressed by her ability to get people to "that trusting place" necessary to make great work. "Everything is very present to her, and everything is very real for her. She knows no bounds when she’s onstage — there’s no dance artifice. It’s whatever the feeling is, and that sounds, wow, very heavy, but what I’m impressed with is how much life and air she lets in, and the way that she incorporates as many elements as possible is very exciting to watch and very inspirational."

51802 exemplifies Shuch’s interdisciplinary megamix, melding movement, puppets, doo-wop, and two tales centered on one person stuck at the bottom of the well and another who yearns to be haunted by a ghost. During her Headlands Center for the Arts and Djerassi Institute residencies in the past year, Shuch mapped out the bones of the play before she began actualizing the piece with the ESP, beginning in mid-June.

At this point, a month from opening, the mood is frenetic, but the approach, Shuch says, is "the only way I know."

During the choreographer’s writing process, she talked to other people who had loved ones on the inside and fictionalized or "translated" some of her own experience. "People are always going, ‘Is it true or not true?’ And I’m, like, ‘Does it matter?’ I just want to present it as a story of somebody that’s on the outside. I mean, it’s all true, and none of it is true, so it’s riding that line between fiction and truth."

While collaborating with the rest of the ESP, Shuch might ask the players to spend 10 minutes writing, say, a rant to deliver to a mouse at the bottom of the well, or come up with a movement. She’ll then edit it, and they’ll piece it together, or they’ll integrate the movement into the work, with cochoreographer Melanie Elms lending an outside eye to Shuch’s moves.

"They’re all incredible movers," Shuch says of the ESP while munching a sliver of watermelon. "We all don’t have the same dance training. Two nights ago we had this rehearsal with Melanie where we realized there’s a section that actually should not be choreographed, that we should actually let them craft it for themselves because we don’t want everybody to be clones of each other all of the time. I mean, I want to build movement vocabularies, and it’s been really great also to have them amplify rather than just curb their instincts."

Instinct is a primary driver for Shuch, a one-of-a-kind choreographer, far from yet very much a part of the Spector girl groups, specters, lonely cons, and rumbling streets below us. The daughter of a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence investigator father and a Korean mother whose family was killed in the Korean War, she is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a contradiction — a little bit inside and outside, unable to talk openly about her felon and, despite his request, unable to stop herself from following the creative urge that is drawing her toward that unmentionable story. She’s gathering increasing attention here, yet she’s also eager to travel to South Korea to learn traditional dance and reenvision her mother’s folk tales. And she’s a choreographer who confesses, howling with laughter, that she would rather sit in a dark movie theater or go camping than see more dance. "I talk to so many dancers who are, like, ‘I never go see dance! I don’t like dance!’ " she says, chuckling, before realizing, "I’m going to get in trouble, like, get fired for saying that." But somehow the form continues to move her, "just because we can say things that we can’t say in any other way." 2

51802

Sept. 13–29

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $8–$25 (Thurs., pay what you can)

Intersection for the Arts

446 Valencia, SF

(415) 626-3311

www.theintersection.org

Freekend alert! Glitterbox, Chrome, Dirtybird, more

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It’s gonna be one of those crazy too much weekends on the club-freak circuit again. Luckily, I’ll be chasing drag queen Jackie Beat’s voluminous tinfoil skirts and jamming to Morris Day and the Time at fab street fest Sunset Junction in LA — somebody bring me a mirror! — so I don’t have to choose. But for those not hoofin’ it to Silver Lake, here’s a few picks — a l’il rundown on the run-up, as it were. Run around! Got a party I missed? Give it up. I’ll add more as the weekend approaches if poss. I’ve got a lot of makeup to do.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen Avenue Q yet, get yer ass down to the Orpheum Theatre, quick. As America’s premiere queer Arab American leather disco hip-hop muppet whore, I highly recommend the work of my fellow monsters (especially the Bad Idea Bears ! My people!).

baddiebears.jpg
Bad Idea Bears rule

I also wanna plug one of my fave haunts – Club 222, which has far too much good stuff going on all for me to remember. Stop by for a drink, dance all evening, wonder where the hell you are in the morning. Then tell me when you find out.

Now, on to the klubz:

Access of Evil: Tweaker’s Choice!

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How ’bout this for a shot of homegrown comedy — and lord knows I need some after the homegrown shot of comedy that was my night at the sex club. Gurl, remind me NOT to wear my night goggles up in there. I saw too much! Too much!

The kids from the new queer comedy public access show “Access of Evil” just popped me a couple new rough vids of their sketches, and they’re pretty bombatastic. You can catch the first “Access of Evil” installment on August 19 at 1am on Channel 29 — and then every third Sunday of the month at 1am thereafter.

Hit up Trax Bar at 1437 Haight on Saturday the 18th around 11pm for a cute viewing party of the first episode. Check it out!

Secret Prison Torture Playset
with the adorable Syphilis Schlaftly

Tweaker’s Choice

“Don’t text your dealer!”

Upcoming eps include, apparently:

– Carol Channing in “Goodbye Faggot”
– Homeless Crack-whore Julie Andrews
– Zombie Judy Garland
– Goth Richard Simmons

How can they miss? Oh, and for more info or if you want to get in on the act, contact them at accessofevil@yahoo.com

Award tour

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO I’m not one to get jealous when people I know get famous. Never. As Shakespeare once wrote, "You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying … in sweat." Alas, I’m flat broke — and haven’t perspired a drop since I gave up Dexatrim in ’03. But my pores are flawless, like tiny alien baby mouths. So I can only grin demurely while my Page Six homeys flash their hairless beavers from rehab. Shakespeare again: "If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."

Hooray, especially, for Kiki and Herb, the blowsy, boozy, tune-slinging duo who exploded into Broadway history last year with their Tony-nominated extravaganza Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway. (They narrowly lost in the Best Theatrical Event category to a multipuppet tearjerker about a ventriloquist.) Tipsy yet full-throated chanteuse Kiki (Justin Bond) and her nimble-fingered pianist Herb (Kenny Mellman) are local club kids made good, proving that a lot of talent and a steady Scotch diet can launch a drag queen and her "gay Jew ‘tard" accompanist into the big leagues. Lemme tell ya, you haven’t heard the Wu-Tang Clan or the Cure until you’ve heard these two dust ’em up onstage.

Now, as part of their Year of Magical Drinking Tour, Kiki and Herb are bringing their big show to the American Conservatory Theater. Posh! I leaped on the opportunity to dish with them long-distance from their New York City home base.

SFBG I can barely recall, back in the blurred mid-’90s, both of you appearing at the legendary Josie’s Juice Joint and Cabaret in the Castro. But I was on a lot of crystal then and probably shouldn’t have been in the light booth …

HERB We were recently watching old videos of us and stumbled upon one of a show we did at Josie’s called Not Without My Napalm. This was pre–Kiki and Herb — Justin led me in on a leash, and I was wearing lederhosen! Jesus, we were young. Gay Pride of that year, we were booked at Cafe du Nord and knew we were going to be exhausted. Justin had been doing Kiki at parties, so we decided we’d just perform our material as Kiki and Herb. We got a standing ovation. We began performing every weekend at Eichelberger’s, across from Theater Artaud, and it all developed there.

KIKI The funny thing about us performing at the gorgeous ACT is that when I lived in San Francisco I never got to go there. For one, I couldn’t afford it, and then the ’89 earthquake knocked the whole thing down! So our show will be the first one I’ve ever seen there.

SFBG And now you’re Broadway luminaries. What are some of the things you miss about San Francisco and the life you led before the slavering tumult of paparazzi overtook you?

HERB San Francisco burritos. And Cafe Flore. And the Hole in the Wall. I remember spending a Thanksgiving there, and they had a suckling pig on the pool table. At some point an older leather daddy ripped the ear off and just started gnawing on it. That’s what I miss.

KIKI I miss my friends there terribly — the creative excitement and community. I can’t wait to get back, and I hope all you queens can forgive a drunk who can’t remember anyone’s name.

SFBG I wept when the dummy won the Tony. Yet both of you seemed so gracious when the camera zoomed in on you immediately after the award was announced. What were your thoughts at that moment?

KIKI I told myself beforehand, "Whatever happens, just look happy to be there." So my thought right then was "Hold face." But being there was so amazing, I just left my body through the whole thing.

HERB My thoughts were that we really needed to get out of there and get a drink! Which we did!

SFBG What’s next?

KIKI After this tour, we’re off to perform at the Sydney Opera House for three weeks. Then a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall, and then we’ll be putting on a show in Shepherd’s Bush, London, called — this is so stupid, but it makes me hysterical — Kiki and Herb Put the Yule Log in Shepherd’s Bush. Next year I’m doing a Carpenters tribute — but without any anorexia jokes.

HERB My other show, At Least It’s Pink, which I wrote the music and lyrics to, will be getting an off-Broadway run this fall. Also, my friend Neal Medlyn and I are going to resurrect our show Kenny Mellman Plus Neal Medlyn Equals R. Kelly. Busy, busy …

BONUS KIKI Join immortal club kids Javier Natureboy and DJ Junkyard and the gang from ’90s rock ‘n’ roll queer club Litterbox for a special Kiki and Herb look-alike contest, judged by Justin Bond himself, at the fab new monthly Glitterbox on July 20. It’s a reunion, baby! Go to www.myspace.com/glitterboxtheparty for the low lowdown. *

KIKI AND HERB: ALIVE FROM BROADWAY

July 18–29 (previews Fri/13–Tues/17), $20–$60

See Web site for times

American Conservatory Theater

415 Geary, SF

(415) 749-2ACT

www.act-sf.org

www.kikiandherb.com

The Chronicle’s looney

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By Tim Redmond

The San Francisco Chronicle apparently thinks a retired Wall Street Journal reporter who now lives in Berkeley and who wrote a remarkably homophobic piece on San Francisco politics way back in 1995 is the perfect persion to comment on the current Board of Supervisors. His piece, on SFGate, has the headline “Clown Show: The Board of Supervisors SF deserves? His point, it appears, is that the large queer community in San Francisco and the looney liberals here have elected a bunch of crazies to the board.

I would ignore this shit, except that it comes in the wake of all the Chris Daly bashing (much of which is factually inaccurate — Daly never accused the mayor of doing cocaine) and will, no doubt, fuel a new attack on district elections.

So let’s be real here: This district-elected board is hardly a crew of wackos. The board has done exceptional work over the past few years, passing landmark legislation that has put San Francisco in the forefront of American cities on progressive policy.

The Queer Issue: Flaming creators

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By Johnny Ray Huston

They’ve got passion to burn, whether there’s 100 percent pride or a potent dose or two of critical shame in their game. They’re the dozen-plus-one LGBT artists who constitute this year’s lineup of flaming creators — individuals and groups adding radical perversity, butch dyke glitter, b-boy funk, punkified monkey love, dandified bear flair, and more to the Bay Area. It seems apt to pun off the title of Jack Smith’s still-revelatory 1963 film Flaming Creatures in uniting this wildly varied group: all of them ignore or defy the conformist strains of mainstream gay culture to blaze new trails of truth and fantasy. As part of our Queer Issue, we pay tribute to them.

KeithAguiar.jpg

NAME Keith Aguiar

WHAT I DO Currently, I am photographing a community of queer artists who continue to resist assimilation and express themselves freely without compromise to both hetero and homo normative values that have imprisoned so many of our generation. I want the viewer to enter my world of rich color, texture, and chaos to find the intricate beauty that comes from reconnecting with more primitive forms of expression. More recently my work has been progressing to include portraits, erotic photography, and even a few landscapes. I’m currently seeking funds for my next show and have started to do commissioned work on the side.

MOTTO Create your own reality. Live your own myth. Be your own God.

MORE KeithAguiarPhotography@gmail.com
www.flickr.com/photos/untamedvessels

Dreamboat.jpg

NAME Dreamboat, Where Are You? (Carrie Baum and Jessica Fudim)

WHAT WE DO We’re a punk pop duo with choreographed vaudevillian antics and a penchant for monkeys, monsters, and Yiddish innuendos. We’ve been described as "the Buzzcocks meet the Muppets." We’ll be leading a Dancers’ Group Rock Theater workshop July 21, and we also have our own projects: Carrie’s Exit Sign: A Rock Opera and Jessica’s dance show Please Feed My Animal will both be previewing at CounterPULSE’s "Rock 4 Art" benefit Aug. 4. (Carrie also runs Big Star Printing; Jessica is a certified Pilates trainer.)

MOTTO Be sure to share your cookies.

MORE www.myspace.com/dreamboatwhereareyou

The Queer Issue

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Click below for Pride goodies:

Our complete Pride event listings

Flaming creators: Emerging queer artists who rock our world

Flipping for Pride: Cheerleeding is so gay

Commitment slut: To bed or to wed? A bi girl explores her options

Rainbow retirement: LGBT seniors face the challenge of aging gracefully

Back to the future? Doing the queer time warp

“Out Ranks”: LGBT Historical Society explores queer life during wartime

Are you ready? Can you handle it? The cheers for the dancing Brazilian drag queens, the jeers from the God Hates Fags contingent, the tears welling up in your eyes when the PFLAG contingent marches by? Of course you are. It’s Pride time, and you really have no choice in the matter, do you? For one brief period of time, any objections anyone has about your fabulous queer life are swallowed by the all-engulfing throat of gay love. Gulp.

And what comes out the other end? Questions. What do you have in common with all these people — the leathermen, the trannies, the engaged, the homeless, the activists, the Wiccans, the dykes on bikes, the acrobatic Sunset Scavengers? What basic experience could you possibly share with (you know he wouldn’t miss it) Gavin Newsom?

The marvel of it all, for one. The world’s in a dark, dark place right now, and, as usual, it’s up to us — those hilarious, endlessly creative gays — to come to the rescue, to create a sequined supernova in the black hole of current events and show, yet again, that love unites the world and conquers all. Sigh. Well, if someone has to do it, it might as well be us — it sure as hell ain’t gonna be the politicians or the religious, right?

I’m telling you, we should unionize. Aside from all the overtime, the least the straights could do is give us dental.

Release the rainbow doves! (Marke B.)

A real dialogue on trans issues

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OPINION What I love about the queers in this town is just how messy and offensive we allow one another to be in our unified goal of relentlessly trying to strengthen our community. In some circles, the evolution of dyke space into a multigender population of transsexuals, genderqueers, femmes, tg-butches, bisexuals, lesbians, and men of all birth sexes has led to tension about queer visibility and discussions about misogyny, privilege, and appropriation. I am frequently pissed but never lacking for a group of people who will continue to engage the issues and attempt imperfect solutions no matter how hurt they have become in the process.

And yet, during Pride season there will be countless potentially offensive voices we will not hear. The ex-gay and right-wing Christian movements — arguably homosexual communities in their own right — will not be given unchallenged space at our events, and there won’t be an uproar that these views should be included for the purpose of "fostering dialogue." As many journalists and artists can attest, ensuring the free exchange of ideas often means knowing what to leave out.

Still, it was predictable that supporters of lesbian director Catherine Crouch’s film The Gendercator would claim censorship and blame transgender community allies for "silencing dialogue" when the Frameline International LGBT Film Festival decided last month to pull this film from its June schedule. It was a setup; victims could either remain silent during an attack or speak up and "prove" that they have malicious intentions to take over the world.

For those unfamiliar with The Gendercator, a quick look at Crouch’s film summary and deliberately defamatory director’s note says it all: Trans people are the product of "distorted cultural norms" who uphold antigay values and change their sex "instead of working to change the world." Male-identified trans people are altered lesbians, despite the fact that many have never held that identity. And not even the femme dykes are safe, considering Crouch’s tomboy-or-else definition of acceptable queerdom.

Crouch says the film comes from her anxiety about what she perceives as the loss of gender-variant women and the rise of binary gender norms. But the film itself strikes a different note, depicting trans bodies as sci-fi horrors and trans characters as coercive perpetrators of nonconsensual body invasions — all the familiar rhetoric used to justify antitrans violence and deny basic civil rights.

If there’s a dialogue to be had about our community’s valid anxieties surrounding the spike in sexual reassignment surgeries, it certainly wasn’t raised in Crouch’s The Gendercator. Unlike the creators of other films that have been controversial in the trans community, Crouch is disinterested in the lives of the people she portrays in this work. Imagine making a film alleging an inherent pedophilia in gay people to "spark dialogue" about gay culture’s obsession with eternal youth. As Rae Greiner, a queer woman who launched the Frameline letter-writing campaign, points out, "You can’t foster genuine discussion when you demonize your subjects or when you intentionally forego nuance in favor of stereotypes, false accusations, and outdated perceptions."

In fact, The Gendercator provoked very little dialogue at all until San Francisco activists protested it. Far from trying to silence it, they aimed to call attention to the film and create an actual conversation. They distributed flyers with Crouch’s position and responded with the truth about trans people’s lives: trans people are often queer social-justice activists with a nuanced and feminist view of identity.

The reason nontrans gay people have not seen blatantly antigay or antilesbian films yanked from their festivals is that such movies don’t make it past the selection committee. To decry the ban on The Gendercator is thus disingenuous, particularly when many of the "anticensorship" and "nonbinary" voices support events that ban trans people from attending based on the presence or absence of a penis.

Yet there are some important messages about this film that should not be lost.

First, if our community artists are going to claim dialogue as justification for blatant attacks, then they should expect to have that dialogue. Some of the questions the queer community has posed in its discussion of the film are: Why does Crouch think her views are nonbinary? How do femmes, bisexuals, butches of color, nonop male-identified trans people, and dykes who choose breast cancer reconstruction fit into her limited view of sex and gender? How does the glorification of masculinity in lesbian circles and the sexism in butch and genderqueer communities contribute to this perceived pressure to transition to male?

Most important, if gays and lesbians feel that the growing transgender population means they are under attack, how can we come together to make sure this concern is heard and validated without demonizing one another? Several events exist in San Francisco to deal with such tensions, but perhaps they aren’t reaching the smart and articulate people whose need for real dialogue has been reduced to lamenting the loss of a 15-minute monster movie.

Opposing the inclusion of a deliberately divisive and dialogue-stopping film in an event designed to build community was something we did not do because we don’t want to have a community conversation, but because we do. *

Zak Szymanski

Zak Szymanski is the producer and editor of the short film The Wait.

Flaming creators

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› johnny@sfbg.com

They’ve got passion to burn, whether there’s 100 percent pride or a potent dose or two of critical shame in their game. They’re the dozen-plus-one LGBT artists who constitute this year’s lineup of flaming creators — individuals and groups adding radical perversity, butch dyke glitter, b-boy funk, punkified monkey love, dandified bear flair, and more to the Bay Area. It seems apt to pun off the title of Jack Smith’s still-revelatory 1963 film Flaming Creatures in uniting this wildly varied group: all of them ignore or defy the conformist strains of mainstream gay culture to blaze new trails of truth and fantasy.

NAME Keith Aguiar

WHAT I DO Currently, I am photographing a community of queer artists who continue to resist assimilation and express themselves freely without compromise to both hetero and homo normative values that have imprisoned so many of our generation. I want the viewer to enter my world of rich color, texture, and chaos to find the intricate beauty that comes from reconnecting with more primitive forms of expression. More recently my work has been progressing to include portraits, erotic photography, and even a few landscapes. I’m currently seeking funds for my next show and have started to do commissioned work on the side.

MOTTO Create your own reality. Live your own myth. Be your own God.

MORE KeithAguiarPhotography@gmail.com; www.flickr.com/photos/untamedvessels

NAME Emerson Aquino

WHAT I DO I’m cofounder and executive artistic director of the nonprofit professional dance company Funkanometry San Francisco. In 2005, I helped establish the Funksters Youth Dance Company through summer camps and dance-intensive programs. I’ve trained and danced with groups such as 220, Anarchy, Culture Shock Oakland, and SWC and showcased my choreography with Funkanometry SF in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, and Bogotá, Colombia. My most recent project is an all-male performing group called Project EM, featuring 12 principal dancers.

MOTTO Life’s not about how much money you make; it’s about the number of people you inspire.

MORE emerson@funkanometrysf.com; www.funkanometrysf.com; www.myspace.com/project_em

NAME Dreamboat, Where Are You? (Carrie Baum and Jessica Fudim)

WHAT WE DO We’re a punk pop duo with choreographed vaudevillian antics and a penchant for monkeys, monsters, and Yiddish innuendos. We’ve been described as "the Buzzcocks meet the Muppets." We’ll be leading a Dancers’ Group Rock Theater workshop July 21, and we also have our own projects: Carrie’s Exit Sign: A Rock Opera and Jessica’s dance show Please Feed My Animal will both be previewing at CounterPULSE’s "Rock 4 Art" benefit Aug. 4. (Carrie also runs Big Star Printing; Jessica is a certified Pilates trainer.)

MOTTO Be sure to share your cookies.

MORE www.myspace.com/dreamboatwhereareyou

NAME Edie Fake

WHAT I DO Food fetish zines (Foie Gras), dirty comics (Gaylord Phoenix, Anal Sex for Perverts, Rico McTaco), apprentice tattoos, perv-formance art, rare appearances, desert adventures, and general feminism.

WORDS OF WISDOM Someone was yelling on the bus the other day that anal sex produces no children.

But that is false!

Anal sex produces

ILLEGITIMATE GOLDEN CHILDREN

and they grow up to become

THE PERVERT SAINTS OF THE CATACOMBS.

MORE www.ediefake.com

NAME James Gobel

WHAT I DO Paint, serve as a member of the California College of the Arts faculty, chub 4 chub.

WORDS OF WISDOM I hope my paintings make people want to be big, bearded, and queer. I could be wrong, but I think it was fellow whiskered gay chubby chaser and one-time San Franciscan Alice B. Toklas who said, "I loves ’em tubby, and so should you!"

MORE www.heathermarxgallery.com; jamesgobel@hotmail.com

NAME David King

WHAT I DO I make collages, which often syncretize the camp and the spiritual. Some of my work can be seen at Ritual on Valencia during June.

WORDS OF WISDOM I don’t have words of wisdom. I have dissertations of wisdom, to which I subject only my most tolerant friends, who have other reasons to love me.

MORE www.davidkingcollage.com

NAME Torsten Kretchzmar

WHAT I DO Present good old electropop music with a German twist.

MOTTO My motto is "I know what girls like." I really do! With the hip music of the Men of Sport, I present this old Waitresses song in my three new video clips. The DVD release party will be Aug. 5 at Club Six, and I expect a lot of guys to show up to find out about my secret.

MORE www.kretchzmar.com

NAME Dolissa Medina

WHAT I DO Experimental films mostly, but I plan to move into more multimedia and installation work at UC San Diego, where I’ll be starting an MFA program this fall. I’m interested in San Francisco history, Latino and queer experiences, and mapping urban space through mythologized storytelling. Last year I produced Cartography of Ashes for the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake; we projected the film onto the side of a fire station in the Mission District. My film 19: Victoria, Texas will also be on display at Galería de la Raza this August and September.

MOTTO Viva la caca colectiva!

MORE mercurious3@yahoo.com

NAME Lacey Jane Roberts

WHAT I DO I make large-scale, site-specific knitted installations that often involve guerrilla action. My work, which is knitted by hand and on children’s toy knitting machines, aims to traverse boundaries of art and craft, the handmade and the manufactured, as well as categories of gender and class, through fusing seemingly contradictory materials, methods, and contexts. Additionally, my work seeks to illuminate the connections between craft and queerness and shift this position into one of agency and empowerment.

MOTTO I don’t really have a motto, but I would like to thank my friends for always showing up and helping me install, especially in places where I am not supposed to.

MORE www.laceyjaneroberts.com

NAME Erik Scollon

WHAT I DO I try to queer up our ideas about what art can do by remaking and repurposing functional objects. At the same time, I’m trying to retell new histories in old languages. I want to make objects that exist in between the sculptural and the functional in an effort to insert art back into everyday life.

WORDS OF WISDOM Art objects are useless; craft objects are utilitarian.

MORE www.erikscollon.net

NAME Jonathan Solo

WHAT I DO Draw, eat, sleep, sex, draw, dance, laugh, cry, scream … not in that particular order. I roam the city and its late-night haunts with my beautiful, crazy, talented friends, protected by a black rose on my chest and my custom Jobmaster 14-hole oxbloods. I have a piece in a current group show at Catharine Clark Gallery and a solo show there next year. I also have contributed to the Besser collection at the de Young, opening this October.

WORDS OF WISDOM I observe the beauty and decay of humanity. Aren’t the strange the most interesting, powerful, and telling of who we are? I’m fascinated by the amount of energy we use to oppress our true selves. I say fuck ’em! Own who you are and walk forward boldly — it’s made me a more sensitive artist, lover, friend, son, and brother.

MORE www.cclarkgallery.com; (415) 531-3376

NAME Matt Sussman

WHAT I DO I am a freelance film writer, and I DJ under the moniker Missy Hot Pants. My friends and I run a party in Oakland called Dry Hump. Our sets include everything from Gui Boratto to Baltimore club remixes to Ethel Merman doing disco. We’re playing Juanita More’s Playboy party at the Stud on June 30, so come work off your post-Pride hangovers.

MOTTO "Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen." Robert Bresson.

MORE www.myspace.com/thedryhump

NAME Jamie Vasta

WHAT I DO Working with glitter and glue on stained wood panels, I create "paintings" of figures exploring dark, dazzling landscapes. I am interested in predatory beauty and the balance (or imbalance) between nature and culture. My work is currently on view in the group show "Stop Pause Forward" at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery. I’ll be having a solo show there in mid-October.

WORDS OF WISDOM Glitter connotes an image of cheapness made glamorous — the superficial, the frivolous. But to dazzle is to have power — this is something drag queens have known all along.

MORE www.jamievasta.com; www.patriciasweetowgallery.com *

Editor’s Notes

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It’s Pride, and I’m going to shamelessly plug something. ‘Tis the season for shameless plugging! Whatever your orientation, take a break from strutting your sizzling stuff soon and visit the GLBT Historical Society on Mission Street (www.glbthistory.org). The archives are a treasure trove, and "Out Ranks," the current exhibition displaying the effects of queer soldiers from World War II through Iraq, is a must-see.

To my mind, the only place gays in the military belong is on a porn DVD — definitely not on an aircraft carrier deployed to Kuwait. But there are incredible personal stories in "Out Ranks," scattered among the crisp dress uniforms and bright blue dishonorable discharge papers, many faded to a trendy shade of robin’s egg.

Stories like that of Sylvia Rivera, a transgender woman drafted in 1967 who fought police at Stonewall. Or Helen Harder, a Women’s Army Air Corps member who signed up during WWII with her girlfriend (how hot is that?). The show also contains relics of queer antiwar protests, including a poster of a hunky, half-naked Jesus screaming, "Thou Shalt Not Kill!" Yummy.

Recently, board member Gerard Koskovich gave me a tour of the society’s archives, the largest collection of queer historiana in existence. He showed me underground newsletters for queeny World War I GIs and photo albums of ’70s lesbian weddings. There were boxes of flyers for ancient gay bars like the Anxious Asp and Fickle Pickle, Super 8 reels of street riots and disco dance floors — and a container holding Harvey Milk’s bullet-riddled clothing.

"Here’s a gown the first Gay Empress, José Sarria, wore," Gerard said, unfurling a brittle re-creation of Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot ensemble from My Fair Lady. Tears sprang to my eyes. "And that," he said, pointing to a nondescript sewing machine, "is what Gilbert Baker sewed the first Pride flag on."

I lost it. All that fabulousness up close was just too much. I bent down quickly, pretending to tie my shoelaces to hide my exploding sobs.

It was then that I realized I was wearing pumps.

Sequined pumps. Purple sequined pumps. I stared down in astonishment. A pair of leopard-print hose raced up my legs, blooming at my upper thighs into a dazzling Lycra minidress. Enormous pads sprouted from my shoulders, and my hair kinked out into a frizzy bleached mullet. Good lord, I was becoming Sylvester. I was riding a giant mirror ball through space. "Yooou make me feel!<\!s>/ Mii-ighty real!"

It was all a hallucination, of course. Family can make you do that, hallucinate. Love is a drug indeed. And the glittery fabric of history, despite its many bullet holes, still connects us all.*

Suburban stasis

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Colma is not Daly City. Apparently I’m the only San Franciscan who’s failed to comprehend the pronounced distinctions between these neighboring municipalities, outside the selection of merch at their respective Target stores. Daly City has Serramonte Center and the rows of houses made famous by Malvina Reynolds’s anthem to architectural sameness, "Little Boxes" (the song that opens Showtime’s fabulous stoned-in-suburbia sitcom, Weeds). Colma’s got car lots and a few square blocks of single-family dwellings, enough for the approximately 2,000 residents who live surrounded by a whopping 17 graveyards, most catering to specific ethnicities, if not deceased pets. According to the Colma civic Web site, the price of an average home here is a grounding $280,000. Necropolis is too harsh a word — there’s something truly adorable about a town whose official motto is "It’s great to be alive in Colma."

I learned this on a drive through the town with Richard Wong, the director of the wonderfully assured Colma: The Musical, a film that uses this unlikely and oddly ordinary community as a font of artistic inspiration. For Wong, who grew up in San Francisco, the burg recalls childhood trips to Toys "R" Us after visiting family tombstones at the Chinese cemetery. He brings me to the surprisingly expansive Colma Historical Association, a museum charting the town’s lore with binders on each of the memorial parks. Then we coast through the self-contained pocket of homes and the location where Rodel, one of the three restless, fresh high school grad protagonists of the film, fictionally resided. Wong notices a bit of improvement to the place — new brick-patterned siding spruces up the garage — and a couple of houses under construction at the end of the block. Other than that, nothing’s changed, he says.

"One of the inspirations for the film came from the idea of a small town — one that doesn’t really change much — next to one of the most progressive cities in the world," Wong remarks. "Colma is almost exactly the same as it was when the houses were first built."

Colma is a character in the movie — a collaboration with Wong’s college pal H.P. Mendoza, who wrote the script and songs and capably plays Rodel — whose opening musical number, "Colma Stays," is a peppy celebration of suburban stasis. It takes Wong’s expert use of split screen to enliven the carless boulevards and the encroaching sense of teenage ennui. (Befitting its location, Colma: The Musical does wonders with its garage-sale budget and rumpus-room laptop audio- and video-editing marathons.) Billy, another of the main characters, points to a rare new feature on the landscape: a just-built police station. It’s difficult to imagine the crimes the cops must contend with.

The film, however, vividly illustrates how three Colma youths occupy themselves: crashing generic college parties, working at the mall, and hitting the bars with fake IDs. (Wong had to excise a drug-use reference — another stereotypical suburban teen activity — in order to gain permission to shoot a moody musical number in the Italian cemetery.) The fog that envelopes Colma serves as an almost too-perfect metaphor for the insularity of dead-end streets, which engender the claustrophobia of neighborhood inertia in the characters. "There’s no conflict in their lives, and that’s the problem," Wong explains. "They just don’t have that much going on." With nothing to do, people can get bitter — or they get out. The two guys manage that — Rodel, shunned by his family because he’s queer, heads to New York to pursue his dream of being in the musical theater, while Billy, an aspiring actor, packs his car to move to San Francisco. Their female cohort Maribel, the tart character who holds them together, plans to stay — though her motivations are self-deprecatingly ambiguous.

There is a genre of suburban films that usually involves teen suicide, superdepressed moms, or scary skeletons in the linen closet. If this were a Larry Clark film, the kids would be shooting up or shooting themselves. If it were a John Hughes picture, there’d be prom-related antics in the McMansion. In Colma, they sing their suburban sorrows. Wong suggests his film might be a regional music-theater production of a suburban drama, and it’s a wacky idea that’s far more satisfying than you might expect.

Mendoza, in a phone conversation, admits that he prefers films that have some empathy for tract-house dwellers. He feels that Napoleon Dynamite sneers at its characters. "I did not want that for this. I find Colma endearing," he says. "This is not an indictment — it is a locale. We’re just portraying these kids saying it’s boring." Mendoza lived in Colma during his high school years, moving there after growing up in the Mission. "At that time, all the Filipino families moved to Daly City so their kids could go to Westmoor High."

While it finds comedy in the notion of living in a generically small locale, the film exudes an affably focused sense of place. Mendoza tells me that his best friend in high school cited a particular Colma cul-de-sac as his favorite place because it had a great view of the mall. He reveals his own beloved spot, an underpass at the intersection of an up-and-coming Filipino street and a dicey neighborhood. On the sloped, stagelike hill, Mendoza and his pals would have water-balloon fights and — "This is so gay," he warns — reenact scenes from Little Shop of Horrors. Given his movie, that makes wonderful sense.

The image also fits the satisfying, hometown-boys-make-good narrative of the film’s critical success. Since Colma: The Musical scored on the festival circuit, Wong has hooked up with the more seasoned director Wayne Wang, with whom he’s currently working. Future collaborations with Mendoza are imminent, including a Colma sequel: Serramonte: The Musical. That narrative will follow, in song, Maribel’s future in retail. As a career path, that may seem like a dead end, but for Wong and Mendoza, creating a movie about it affirms that their little town of graveyards is ripe with artistic joie de vivre.

Flipping for Pride

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It isn’t easy being a male cheerleader. Never mind that any cheerleading above the junior high school level requires not only coordination, commitment, skill, and athleticism but also just plain balls. Cheerleading carries a stigma of being fluffy, froofy, and effeminate: if sports were food, many people would consider cheerleading cotton candy. And that’s just for women. God forbid you should have a Y chromosome and think it might be fun to do back tucks, throw people into the air, or dance in sync with 20 other people. If you’re a spirit-squad hetero, you probably spend all your time proving it. And if you’re gay? Better bone up on those self-defense classes — and then get ready for your career as a wisecracking, flamboyant sitcom roommate.

That is, unless you’re a member of CHEER SF, the world’s first and longest-running LGBT-identified cheerleading squad. Yes, you’ve seen them at practically every major queer-oriented event, but what do you really know about them? Though the all-volunteer squad is officially coed, its makeup of more than 30 members now tends to be 75 percent male, and most of them are gay — CHEER SF started in 1980, in fact, as an all-gay male squad of five members. Even more important, they’re serious cheerleaders, performing gravity-defying stunts, remarkably syncopated dance moves, awe-inspiring gymnastics, and all. Volunteers are asked to make a one-year commitment, show up for three-hour rehearsals every Tuesday, and promise to perform 10 times a year (with another 20 events optional). Not to mention the financial investment: polyester performance uniforms, plus T-shirts, shorts, and shoes, which can add up to $400 before cheer camp and travel costs.

No, this is no swishy, ironic version of Will Ferrell’s famous SNL skits. This is the kind of squad that, if you saw them compete on CNN, would make you go, "Holy crap, they’re amazing."

I BELIEVE I CAN FLY


Look closely and you’ll see something else that sets CHEER SF apart, aside from its dude-to-dudette ratio: inclusiveness of ethnicities, sizes, ages, and gender identifications. And if you have any familiarity with cheerleading, you’d notice something else unusual: men in the air.

In traditional cheerleading, men and women have traditional roles. Men are bases and tumblers, valued for strength and stability. Women are fliers and dancers, valued for lightness and cuteness in a short skirt. Not so with CHEER SF, which has been sending men into the air for 20 years. The result is not only revolutionary — something that, like sideways haircuts and oversize sunglasses, the mainstream has finally picked up on way after the gay community discovered it — but also spectacular.

"Guys that fly, they’re awesome," said main choreographer and creative director Morgan Craig, a former dancer and gymnast who joined the squad after he was handed a flyer in the Castro 16 years ago. "Right now, one of our male fliers does a double full basket."

I’m not touching that comment with a 10-inch pole.

Of course, not all guys can, or want to, fly. That’s why women were invited to join the squad eight years ago: there just weren’t enough small men who wanted to be thrown into the air to execute collegiate-level stunts. Now, with a coed squad, CHEER SF gets the best of both worlds: female fliers with their natural lightness, as well as male fliers, who tend to be stronger and also carry their weight in different places — making for different and often more daring stunts.

WE’RE HERE, WE CHEER


So who are these people? Former cheerleaders, dancers, and athletes. Those with experience and those with the desire to get some. People who make cheer their life, like Craig, who coaches high school and all-star teams, teaches tumbling for cheerleaders, and mixes cheer music (!) for a living. And people who hold down noncheer day jobs, like 49-year-old Steve Burke, who works as a vocational rehabilitation counselor.

"My life is doing good things and getting paid for it and doing good things and not getting paid for it," he said.

Oh yeah. Did I mention one tiny detail? CHEER SF saves lives. Its mission is to raise money to help those with HIV, AIDS, cancer, and other life-challenging diseases. Some proceeds come from performance fees (CHEER SF has performed everywhere from Singapore to San Diego), but most are donations dropped in the "spirit bucket" passed around at every performance. In its 27-year history, the group has raised nearly $100,000, Burke said, "mostly one dollar at a time." This year, it expects to make its largest donation ever — more than $30,000.

Burke said the do-gooding is the primary reason CHEER SF is just as fun, if not more, as the cheering he did at Sacramento State in 1980. Back then "you were out there supporting your teams and your school, and that was really rewarding," he said. "But with CHEER SF, everybody’s our team."

SPIRIT FINGERS!


As for the current state of men in cheerleading, Burke and Craig say it isn’t as bad as it used to be, thanks in large part to Bring It On (a.k.a. the Best Movie Ever) and regular CNN coverage of cheerleading competitions, which bring to light just how cool — and difficult and dangerous — cheerleading can be.

But with charity cheer squads modeled off CHEER SF popping up all over the country, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say our local LGBT-identified team has had something to do with heating up the cheerleading climate too.

As Burke said, "Cheerleading can change the world."<\!s>*

www.cheersf.org

www.myspace.com/CHEERSF

The Queer Issue: Pride event listings

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PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS

WEDNESDAY 20

“Out with ACT” American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.or. 8pm, $17.50-$73.50. ACT presents this new series for gay and lesbian theater lovers, including a performance of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid and a reception with complimentary wine and a meet and greet with the actors. Mention “Out with ACT” when purchasing your tickets.

“Queer Wedding Sweet” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California; 438-9933, www.jccsf.org/arts. 8pm, $36. The JCCSF presents the West Coast premiere of Queer Wedding Sweet, an “exploration of queer weddings and commitment ceremonies through stories, song, juggling, and comedy.” Featured performers include Adrienne Cooper, Sara Felder, Marilyn Lerner, Frank London, and Lorin Sklamberg.

BAY AREA

“Queer Cabaret” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. 8pm, $15-20. Big City Improv, Jessica Fisher, and burlesque dancers Shaunna Bella and Claire Elizabeth team up for an evening of queer performance celebrating Pride. Proceeds will go to the Shotgun Players’ Solar Campaign.

“Tea N’ Crisp” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. 8pm, $25. Richard Louis James stars as gay icon Quentin Crisp in the Shotgun Players’ production of this Pride Week tribute.

THURSDAY 21

“Here’s Where I Stand” First Unitarian Church and Center, 1187 Franklin, SF; (415) 865-2787, www.sfgmc.org. 8pm, $15-45. The world’s first openly LGBT music ensemble will be kicking off Pride Week with a range of music from Broadway to light classical. Includes performances by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band. Concert also takes place same time on Sat/22.

“Thursday Night Live” Eagle, 398 12th St, SF; (415) 625-0880, www.sfeagle.com. 1pm, $10. Support Dykes on Bikes at their 30th anniversary Beer/Soda Bust and catch these glitzy vixens as they share the stage with Slapback.

Veronica Klaus and Her All-Star Band Jazz at Pearl’s, 256 Columbus, SF; (415) 291-8255, www.jazzatpearls.com. 8 and 10pm, $15. The all-star lineup features Daniel Fabricant, Tom Greisser, Tammy L. Hall, and Randy Odell.

FRIDAY 22

“Glam Gender” Michael Finn Gallery, 814 Grove; 573-7328. 7-10pm. This collaboration between photographer Marianne Larochelle and art director Jose Guzman-Colon, a.k.a. Putanesca, kicks off Pride Weekend by celebrating San Francisco’s queer art underground.

Pride Concert Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission. SF; 7 and 9pm, Copresented by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco and the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, this 29th annual Pride concert promises to be a gay time for all.

San Francisco Trans March Dolores Park, 18th St and Dolores; 447-2774, www.transmarch.org. 3pm stage, 7pm march; free. Join the transgender community of San Francisco and beyond for a day of live performances, speeches, and not-so-military marching.

BAY AREA

Queer Stuff Pride Talent Showcase Home of Truth Spiritual Center, 1300 Grand, Alameda; 1-888-569-2064, www.queerstuffenterprises.com. 7:30pm, $8. This showcase features the music of Judea Eden and Friends, Amy Meyers, and True Magrit, plus the comedy of Karen Ripley.

SATURDAY 23

Dykes on Bikes Fundraiser Eagle, 398 12th St, SF; (510) 712-7739, www.twilightvixen.com. 1pm. Twilight Vixen Revue will perform at the beer bust at the Eagle. Stop by before heading to the march.

LGBT Pride Celebration Civic Center, Carlton B. Goodlett Place and McCallister, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. Noon-6pm, free. Celebrate LGBT pride at this free outdoor event featuring DJs, speakers, and live music. This is the first half of the weekend-long celebration sponsored by SF Pride. Also Sun/24.

Mission Walk 18th St and Dolores, SF; (503) 758-9313, www.ebissuassociates.com. 11am, free. Join in on this queer women’s five-mile walk through the Mission.

Pink Triangle Installation Twin Peaks Vista, Twin Peaks Blvd parking area, SF; (415) 247-1100, ext 142, www.thepinktriangle.com. 7-11am, free. Bring a hammer and your work boots and help install the giant pink triangle atop Twin Peaks for everyone to see this Pride Weekend. Stay for the commemoration ceremony at 10:30am.

“Remembering Lou Sullivan: Celebrating 20 Years of FTM Voices” San Francisco LGBT Center, Ceremonial Room, 1800 Market, SF; (415) 865-5555, www.sfcenter.org. 6-8pm, free. This presentation celebrates the life of Louis Graydon Sullivan, founder of FTM International and an early leader in the transgender community.

“Qcomedy Showcase” Jon Sims Center, 1519 Mission, SF; (415) 541-5610, www.qcomedy.com. 8pm, $8-15. A stellar cast of San Francisco’s funniest queer and queer-friendly comedians performs.

San Francisco Dyke March Dolores Park, Dolores at 18th St, SF; www.dykemarch.org. 7pm, free. Featuring Music from Binky, Nedra Johnson, Las Krudas, and more, plus a whole lot of wacky sapphic high jinks.

SUNDAY 24

LGBT Pride Celebration Civic Center, Carlton B. Goodlett Place and McCallister, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. Noon-7pm, free. The celebration hits full stride, with musical performances and more.

LGBT Pride Parade Market at Davis to Market at Eighth St, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. 10:30am-noon, free. With 200-plus dykes on bikes in the lead, this 36th annual parade, with an expected draw of 500,000, is the highlight of the Pride Weekend in the city that defines LGBT culture.

CLUBS AND PARTIES

WEDNESDAY 20

“Gay Pride in the Mix” Eureka Lounge, 4063 18th St, SF; (415) 431-6000, e.stanfordalumni.org/clubs/stanfordpride/events.asp. 7-9pm, no cover. An intercollegiate LGBT mixer in an upscale environment, with drink and appetizer specials available. Alumni from Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools, Stanford, MIT, and UC Berkeley welcome.

Hellraiser Happy Hour: “Pullin’ Pork for Pride” Pilsner Inn, 225 Church, SF; (415) 621-7058. 5:30-8pm, free. The Guardian‘s own Marke B. will be pullin’ pork and sticking it between hot buns with the help of the crew from Funk N Chunk. You might win tickets to the National Queer Arts Festival, but really, isn’t having your pork pulled prize enough?

THURSDAY 21

“A Celebration of Diversity” Box, 628 Divisadero, SF. 9pm-2am, $20. Join Page Hodel for the return of San Francisco’s legendary Thursday night dance club the Box for one night only, sucka!

Crack-a-Lackin’ Gay Pride Mega Party Crib, 715 Harrison, SF; (415) 749-2228. 9:30pm-3am, $10. Features live stage performances and, according to the press release, “tons of surprises.” I’m not sure how much a surprise weighs, so I don’t know how many surprises it takes to add up to a ton. It’s one of those “how many angels fit on the head of a pin?” things.

“Gay Disco Fever” Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. 9pm-2am. I can’t figure out who does what at this event. Courtney Trouble and Jenna Riot are listed as hosts, and Campbell and Chelsea Starr are the DJs, which I guess makes drag king Rusty Hips “Mr. Disco” and Claire and Shaunna the “Disco Queens.” It takes a village to raise a nightclub. That’s a whole lotta fabulousness under one roof.

“Girlezque SF” Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; www.myspace.com/girlezquesf. 9pm, $10-15. This supposedly sophisticated burlesque party for women features the erotic stylings of AfroDisiac, Sparkly Devil, Rose Pistola, and Alma, with after-party grooves by DJ Staxx. Hopefully, it’s not too sophisticated &ldots;

Pride Party Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. 9pm-2am, free. Make this no-cover throwdown your first stop as you keep the march going between the numerous after-parties.

FRIDAY 22

Bustin’ Out II Trans March Afterparty El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 510-677-5500. 9pm-2am, $5-50, sliding scale. Strut your stuff at the Transgender Pride March’s official after-party, featuring sets from DJs Durt, Lil Manila, and Mel Campagna and giveaways from Good Vibes, AK Press, and more. Proceeds benefit the Trans/Gender Variant in Prison Committee.

Cockblock SF Pride Party Fat City, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 568-8811. 9pm, $6. DJs Nuxx and Zax spin homolicious tunes and put the haters on notice: no cock-blockin’ at this sweaty soiree.

“GIRLPRIDE” Sound Factory, 525 Harrison, SF; (415) 647-8258. 9pm-4am, $20. About 2,500 women are expected to join host Page Hodel to celebrate this year’s Pride Weekend, and that’s a whole lotta love.

Mr. Muscle Bear Cub Contest and Website Launch Party Lone Star Saloon, 1354 Harrison, SF; (415) 978-9986. 11pm, $19.95. Join contestants vying for the title of spokesmodel of Muscle Bear Cub. The winner receives $500 cash and a lifetime supply of Bic razors. Don’t shave, Bear Cub! Don’t you ever shave!

Uniform and Leather Ball SF Veterans War Memorial, 401 Van Ness, Green Room, SF; www.sfphx.org. 8pm-midnight, $60-70. The men’s men of the Phoenix Uniform Club want you to dress to the fetish nines for this 16th annual huge gathering, featuring Joyce Grant and the City Swing Band and more shiny boots than you can lick all year. Yes, sirs!

SATURDAY 23

“Old School Dance” Cafè Flore, 2298 Market at Noe, SF; (415) 867-8579. 8pm-2am, free. Get down old-school style at the Castro’s annual Pink Saturday street party, with sets from DJs Ken Vulsion and Strano, plus singer Moon Trent headlining with a midnight CD release party for Quilt (Timmi-Kat Records).

Pride Brunch Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (415) 777-0333, www.positiveresource.org. 11am-2pm, $75-100. Honor this year’s Pride Parade grand marshals: four hunky cast members from the TV series Noah’s Arc; Marine staff sergeant Eric Alva, the first American wounded in Iraq; and Jan Wahl, Emmy winner and owner of many funky hats.

“Puttin’ on the Ritz” San Francisco Design Center Galleria, 101 Henry Adams, SF; (650) 343-0543, www.puttinontheritzsf.com. 8pm-2am, $85. Bump your moneymaker at this all-lady event. Incidentally, the performer who brought “Puttin’ on the Ritz” back to popularity on early ’80s MTV was none other than Taco.

“Queen” Pier 27, SF; www.energy927fm.com. 9pm, $45. Energy 92.7 brings back the dynamism of the old-school San Francisco clubs for this Pride dance-off. Peaches and Princess Superstar headline. Wear your best tear-away sweats and get ready to get down, Party Boy style.

“Rebel Girl” Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; wwww.rebelgirlsf.com. 9pm-2am, $10. Rebel Girl brings the noise for this one, with go-go dancers, Vixen Creations giveaways, drink specials, and, you know, rebel girls.

“Sweat Special Pride Edition” Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-205, www.lexingtonclub.com. 9pm-2am, free. DJ Rapid Fire spins you right round round with a sweaty night of dancing and grinding.

SUNDAY 24

Dykes on Bikes Afterparty Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. Noon, free. How do they find time to ride with all these parties?

“Gay Pride” Bambuddha Lounge, 601 Eddy, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.juanitamore.com. 3pm, $25. Juanita More! hosts this benefit for the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial, with a DJs Derek B, James Glass, and fancy-pants New York City import Kim Ann Foxman. It also includes an appearance from silicone wonder Miss Gina LaDivina. Fill ‘er up, baby!

“Pleasuredome Returns” Porn Palace, 942 Mission, SF; (415) 820-1616, www.pleasuredomesf.com. 9pm, $20. You have to get tickets in advance for the onetime reopening of the dome in the Porn Palace’s main dungeon room. When you’re done dancing, visit the jail, bondage, or barn fantasy rooms and make that special someone scream “Sooo-eeeee!”

The Queer Issue: Back to the future?

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I’m supposed to meet my editor, Marke B., to talk about this piece at noon at some cheap Mission restaurant that won’t bankrupt my lousy checking account. I arrive 15 minutes late; he’s running at least 30 behind. As I sit and wait for him, I can’t help but laugh — queers are always late. As a queer with a drag-queen alter ego, Felicia Fellatio, I know this is especially true — that hoary old chestnut about "running on drag time" has the ring of solid validity. Trannies are like Muni: we’re never on time.

But a growing body of scholarly queer literature suggests that the underlying cause of our tardiness may be more than simply wanting to be fashionably late. In fact, our predictable lack of punctuality might be a symptom of what many psychologists see as the gay community’s prolonged adolescence; there may be a sense of time unique to homos that exists outside heterosexual norms.

WIND IT UP


Put simply, queer temporality theory says that because our lives can’t be completely legally or socially mapped out according to the heterosexual model (getting married, having kids, sharing retirement benefits, expecting inheritance), we feel less pressure to conform to other aspirations (completing a degree, saving for a house, planning retirement) in the stereotypical Game of Hetero Life. Basically, tardiness is a form of subconscious queer rebellion. This can manifest itself as a rejection of all schedules, however quotidian. It can also lead to a profoundly different view of what the future means to queer people, especially in terms of freedom of choice. Well-known queer theorist Judith Halberstam elaborates on this theory, from a transgender point of view, in her book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York University Press, 2005).

Some studies also posit that, because many of us grappled with the whole coming-out thing at the same time we were going through puberty, our adolescent maturation period was extended, thus stretching out our psychological development — and effectively slowing down our mental clocks. We just need more time to process things and act on them. Other queer temporality theories focus on the psychological effects of AIDS, which instilled in our community a sense of imminent mortality that negated the future and focused our attention on the present. Rather than making decisions based on what may be, we began to concentrate on what is, creating art and culture that offered immediate transcendence through humor and rage, rather than any abstract hope for the future. "AIDS quickens that sense of needing to and actually being able to draw forth from one’s spirit that work which will have resonance for other people," the late, great filmmaker Marlon Riggs said, and the recent work of performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz tries to show how queers have incorporated that sense of "quickening" into their lives and actions.

SPRUNG FORWARD


Of course, we may just run late for things because we’re busy, either at work (most of us rely only on ourselves for financial stability) or at play (our culture is still pretty party-centric, so we have a lot of hangovers to deal with). Plus, putting on all that makeup is practically a full-time job for us queens. Cut us a little slack so we can look fabulous. And all of the theories above seem awfully generalized — some may bristle at the suggestion that we be cast as supposed victims of a pathology that prolongs our adolescences and screws with our mental clocks. It’s not as if there aren’t queer people living as much as they can according to the hetero model, especially now that legal restrictions against same-sex marriage and adoption are relaxing in some areas.

In fact, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way in terms of the queer rebellion against the straight timeline. As noted by broadcast journalist Tovia Smith last month on National Public Radio, in her piece "Marriage Causes Shift in Gay Culture," it seems that queers have gone "from a radical movement bent on challenging societal norms to a community now eagerly embracing those conventions as their own."

Smith drew her conclusion based on an interview with an upper-middle-class white gay couple from Cambridge, Mass. — the type of control group against which queers have traditionally defined themselves. Whatever negative connotations the phrase "prolonged adolescence" may conjure up, a case could be made that this is precisely what allows queer culture to thrive. Adolescence is when a personality is at its most fluid, and queer identity is the essence of fluidity. Halberstam sees queer temporality as a positive, radical reaction to heterosexual society’s mores, pitting it against the "time of inheritance," whose purpose is merely to shore up "the historical past of the nation" and protect "national stability." In the ’90s, a vibrant queer culture of artistic expression, political activism, and social and sexual interaction embraced the notion of prolonged adolescence.

FALLING BACK


Queercore bands like Pansy Division and Tribe 8 co-opted the in-your-face, live-fast-die-young aesthetic of punk, inviting listeners to throw off the shackles of heterosexual society’s expectations and, in the words of Pansy Division, "join the cocksuckers club." Homocore fanzines reveled in childlike graphics and gleefully reinterpreted teen fan magazines like Tiger Beat, giving them a decidedly homosexual spin. The hallmarks of puberty — geeky awkwardness, swoony crushiness, questionable outfits, wanton partying, sexual exploration — became queer fashion statements. Prolonged adolescence was also a means of connection in a time of grief and frustration, a flashpoint where queer history met the present. The AIDS Quilt used a common symbol of childhood comfort to unite and console mourners, and activist organizations like ACT UP and Queer Nation energized their members with the élan of belonging to a rebel schoolyard gang.

But that was the past, and there’s no denying that, with more access to the heterosexual lifestyle opening up for queers, the future is upon us. HIV is no longer a death sentence (for people who can afford the meds), and any evidence of necessary rebellion is awfully hard to find in young gay people these days, at least on the face of it. Prada and Beyoncé have replaced vintage clothing and queercore as coins of the young gay realm, and the psychological and social effects of the current lust for consumerism and mainstream pop culture on queers today will be for future theorists to puzzle out. To me, it represents a sad trend that aspires more toward societal acceptance than political subversion, an adjustment of our internal clocks to tick to the tired straight beat. Call me nostalgic, call me behind the times — just don’t call me late for cocktails.

The Queer Issue: Commitment slut

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I’m going to miss Pride this year. I’ll be on the East Coast at a wedding while queer sex parties and dungeons throw open their incredibly inviting doors to a host of the proud play-minded. Outlaws versus in-laws, polyamorous queers versus monogamous marrieds. Does it all come down to such fixed oppositions? For me, a bi girl with a boyfriend (who for the purposes of this article has asked to be identified by the curvaceous and inviting letter O), this question had reached the pitch of a psychic emergency.

It might seem obvious to you, dear reader, that like all nasty dichotomies this one was bound to wobble, to yield, to come undone. But some days it felt as though a bright line was running down my center and I had to choose a side. As Pride Month approached, I decided to resist and reinvent these oppositions with a little research of my own. What I found were queer activists fighting for same-sex-marriage equality while swinger parties thrived for horny partnered types of every ilk.

CRUISING THE GAME


And there I was in the middle: happy with O, really love-struck, but wondering where to go with my queer desires and identity. Crushes flickered. Girls floated around in my dreams like alluring phantoms. I vented, haltingly, to O. It’s the price a guy pays for dating a bi dyke. He was a sympathetic listener. And it wasn’t just a one-way conversation: O is erotically adventurous in his own right, and he’d revealed hints of unplumbed inclinations in the areas of pain play and submission. We’re pretty good at working through hard stuff with a minimal amount of drama, so it seemed both safe and exciting to experiment.

The quest for random sex presents a logistical conundrum for a shy person such as myself: I have a tendency to run in the opposite direction from anyone I find attractive, whether that obscure object of desire is a girl, a boy, or someone in between. And now that I’m done with my days of ecstasy and blackout drinking, I knew I’d have to be forthright in my quest for a bawdy experience.

My first stop was Fantasy Makers, a house of bondage and fetish nestled in an East Bay suburb. Lorrett, the house coordinator, gave me a tour of the facilities one late-spring afternoon. "This culture penalizes alternative sexualities," she said, her bright blue eyes flashing with intelligence and curiosity. "Normal!" She shuddered. "I hate that word."

Fantasy Makers offers toy shows, BDSM, and more (no actual sex between workers and clients, though — it’s illegal). Its hourly rate is the same for singles and couples, in order to encourage shared kinky experiences. Lorrett showed me the well-outfitted dungeon, replete with custom-built throne; the medical room, which featured a beautiful antique examination table and a complete array of surgical instruments; and the all-purpose room, which could be quickly cleared for any kind of wrestling one desired.

"Now I’ll turn you over to the girls," Lorrett promised, leading me down to the kitchen–<\d>employee lounge, where she introduced me to a swirl of workers. It was a hot day, and Mistress Tatiana looked up from her laptop wearing nothing but panties and an appraising grin. Priscilla and Elizabeth lounged on a long black couch and waited for calls to come in while watching a movie about strippers unionizing.

I was filled with hope on learning that one is not born a pro dom but rather becomes one: the Fantasy Maker folks filled me in on play parties and classes that are open to newbies and lifestylers alike. This crew favored the DIY style of Screw Up, a monthly BDSM instructional organized via Tribe.net by and for "freaky queers who don’t identify as male or female," as Priscilla put it. Topics range from flogging to mummification.

Tatiana talked about classes she teaches at Quality S-M, then neatly turned the tables to ask, "What about you?"

"Big dykey streak, boyfriend, open to playing with others together," I replied. That was the setup O and I had agreed on, and I discovered an abundance of creative commitment styles among the Fantasy Makers crew. One of the women was in a long-term open relationship and had just registered as a domestic partner with her genderqueer lover. Another had a primary submissive male friend and a panoply of mostly female playmates. And Lorrett had not one but two husbands.

TAKING IT OUTSIDE


I left Fantasy Makers feeling inspired and a tad electrified. It was time to move theory into practice. O and I did our makeup, squeezed hands, and set out for the queer-friendly Club Kiss, a monthly Mission District play party, along with our adventurous companion X. I would like to report that the stiletto-shaped love seat, the stripper pole, and the back room with its tiki theme and lurid row of mattresses all enabled me to happily re-create the careless, drunken foursomes of my college years, but in truth, I freaked out. I found myself on the sidewalk, orally fixating on cigarettes while hot jealousy spurted through my veins. O coaxed me back inside, where he soothed my wakened jealousy demon in the manner of a horse whisperer braving flying hooves. X, meanwhile, worked the room happily, as if arriving at a long-awaited home.

Finally, X, O, and I reunited, and as my head cooled, I tasted a little morsel of what these parties promise besides the obvious — the opportunity to witness a side of your partner you may never have seen before. For example, I learned that O likes to be tied up and spanked until he sees a white light while assembled parties look on in shock and pleasure. Who knew? I felt proud of O: raw, turned on, weird, excited, wounded, and open to a world of possibility.

That world of possibility is infinitely expanding, especially here in the Bay Area. There is, for example, the Queer Playground, a play party held on Pride Weekend at the bastion of worldly sex play in the Bay, the Citadel. The infamous Kinky Salon is also hosting something giant for its members of all genders. And Pride private play parties are multiplying by the dozen.

But I’ll miss it all, because of a wedding.

BI IN THE MIDDLE


It’s a weird thing, marriage. It makes me bitter that through the contingencies of gender, chance, and choice, I can chose whether or not to gain legal rights and social legitimacy with my current honey but couldn’t do so with past partners.

It wasn’t that I’d yearned for nuptials in my past decade of dating girls; in no way did I dream of the ostentatious engagements and rehashed nuclear-family model. I balked at those things, and if I ever thought of myself as married to my ex, I had married her in subtle and various ways that seemed more meaningful to me than public social contracts ever did — in road trips and alter egos, in getting to know each other’s families and then running away from holiday gatherings to smoke pot together in my little sister’s car. It seemed that our vows were forged of a shared, unspoken resistance to such conventions and institutions as marriage, and I took a roguish pride in sticking it out longer than the friends’ marriages that had come into being and died while she and I stayed together.

And now, happy as I am to destabilize gender binaries, to watch Bend Over, Boyfriend on repeat, to hold on to my queer family, to try sex parties on for size, I can simply marry O if I want to. Legally, civilly, so that we receive the roughly 1,000 rights granted by the federal government and the additional 500 given by the state. And on some days marriage seems like an adventure, a love riot, something we can define ourselves without accepting grody ceremonials or monogamy mandates. We can elope! Our honeymoon can be a class on flogging!

But here it is: straight privilege — mine. Bam. And bitterness doesn’t do much in the way of gaining those rights for my dyke-partnered buddies or my genderqueer friends whose identities don’t match up with the "man" and "woman" boxes on the marriage forms. So I checked in with Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, to find out more about the fight for same-sex marriage equality.

Minter is the lead counsel in the marriage cases that are currently being tried before the Supreme Court of California. The lawsuits argue that California’s statutory definition of marriage violates equal-protection clauses in the state constitution by sanctioning discrimination on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation. Minter expects the cases to be settled within the year. While the outcome looks hopeful, the issue still needs plenty of support from queers and straight allies. According to Minter, four ballot initiatives seeking to amend the state constitution to define marriage as heterosexual have been submitted with the attorney general. "It’s pretty likely that Californians will be voting on this in 2008," he informed me.

Which gave me an idea for a present for the happy couple whose wedding will keep me from getting my queer on: a donation on behalf of the bride and groom to Equality California, an organization dedicated to outreach, education, and coalition building for same-sex-marriage equality. It ain’t no toaster, but the historical impact may be a lot greater.<\!s>*

www.fantasymakers.com

screwup.tribe.net

www.clubkiss.us

www.sfcitadel.org

www.kinkysalon.com

www.nclrights.org

www.eqca.org

The Queer Issue: Rainbow retirement

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› culture@sfbg.com

Lionel Mayrand spent more than a decade working with the elderly. He helped train staff for the National Meals for the Elderly Project and wrote the first grant application for Elderhostel, an international senior travel network. Along the way, Mayrand found and lost one of the great loves of his life. "I am an AIDS widower," he says. "My financial life was wiped out by the illness of my partner in life and business. I lost so many friends to AIDS, I’m starting to forget their names." Recently, the sixtysomething tax specialist noticed the Senior Services meal program located near his house and suddenly found himself wrestling with the idea of attending. It was not so much a matter of pride or of realizing his age, but of community. With his unique life experiences, would he feel welcome?

QUEER PIONEERS


Getting older is a challenge for many people. But retired LGBTs often face unique difficulties. They feel a sense of isolation and discrimination — more hurdles for a group that weathered straight hatred and the AIDS pandemic. There’s also a lack of established infrastructure particular to their needs: many LGBT people of the baby boom generation, which is just now hitting retirement age, had to leave their families behind in order to live openly, so they may not have an inheritance or traditional family support to turn to. And because AIDS left so few survivors of earlier queer generations, the health care system is woefully unprepared to meet current senior queer physical and psychological needs. In a way, today’s senior queers are pioneers.

"Queer seniors often lack the family support systems that older straights take for granted," says Michael Adams, executive director of New York–<\d>based Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, or SAGE. Now 29 years old, SAGE is the oldest and largest organization in the country focusing on the needs of LGBT seniors. "Many queers may have been disconnected from their birth families for many years, and they’re less likely to have had children of their own. Older queers are also likelier to live alone and less likely to be in relationships," Adams says.

Meanwhile, older queers also face more discrimination from senior organizations, nursing homes, and health care providers, he adds. Some groups, such as the Red Cross, are committed to discrimination for religious or philosophical reasons. In other organizations, individual staffers may just have an issue. Worst of all, "a lack of support in the LGBT community itself" exacerbates this problem, Adams says. "There’s ageism in every community, but when you’re talking about a population of seniors that faces such difficulty in the senior world," the indifference of the LGBT community compounds the problem.

Local organizations, however, are stepping up to provide the kind of help non-LGBT seniors might not get from their nuclear families or the gay community at large. The queer-oriented New Leaf Outreach to Elders in San Francisco offers 24 senior activities and 50 meetings per week at different sites around the city, as well as health and counseling services at its clinic on Hayes Street. And New Leaf isn’t afraid to use the past to help the future.

"The way in which the gay and lesbian communities mobilized to take care of the HIV pandemic has become a model for organizations taking care of straight people," says Bill Kirkpatrick, a New Leaf social services worker. Even mainstream organizations taking care of the elderly are learning from the queer response to HIV, he says. "As the epidemic created models for us to take care of ourselves, the same thing is happening in the aging community."

TAKING IT STRAIGHT


Accommodating the needs of queer seniors doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel, Kirkpatrick adds. A big part of his work at New Leaf involves helping LGBT people connect with traditionally straight, more established programs. "We want to make sure these services have been culturally trained," Kirkpatrick says. New Leaf takes LGBT seniors to staff meetings at organizations like Meals on Wheels and other home health care agencies so the seniors can tell their stories and educate workers.

But what about the seniors themselves? Kirkpatrick says a big part of his job is working to gain the trust of "someone who has survived by hiding from the mainstream services and is distrustful." New Leaf organizes volunteers to visit the homes of isolated seniors and check on them. The organization takes great care to avoid pathologizing problems like depression, isolation, and low self-esteem as if they’re strictly mental health issues, Kirkpatrick says.

SAGE provides many of the same services as New Leaf, but it also lobbies for public policies that are designed to advance the rights of LGBT seniors. "Too often, LGBT seniors have not been on the radar screen when it comes to the policies and programs that get developed for seniors at the state and national level," Adams says. In 2005, SAGE sent the first openly gay delegate to the White House Conference on Aging, an event that happens once every 10 years. "Those are the kinds of places where policy gets made, [and] funding streams and priorities get influenced."

SAGE also provides counseling on sexuality. The rate of HIV infection among older people is increasing, according to the National Institutes of Health. And recent studies have shown that HIV and other STDs are more likely to go undiagnosed in seniors because doctors assume older people don’t have sex or engage in other risky behavior.

Some seniors with HIV have been living with it for years, but others have acquired it recently. Many are taking advantage of the increased opportunities for sex thanks to Viagra — often without protection, Adams says.

A HOME OF THEIR OWN?


Another challenge facing LGBT seniors: when a same-sex partner dies, the surviving partner may not be able to inherit a pension or Social Security benefits. Transferring the title on a house can be more difficult for couples who aren’t legally married, notes Moli Steinert, executive director of Open House, a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to building LGBT senior residences. Steinert is trying to get approval from the city for Open House’s first housing project, at 55 Laguna Street, part of a larger redevelopment project on that site. She says Open House is also in the process of identifying a low-income housing site. "Our mandate is really to develop mixed-income housing. You just can’t get housing all in one location for all populations, so we’re working on trying to find land that will lend itself to filling out the spectrum of needs in our community," she says.

Open House educates health service organizations about LGBT senior issues and reaches out to isolated queer seniors, similar to what New Leaf is doing. And Open House advocates for LGBT seniors at the citywide level, trying to make sure housing and other services are open to queers.

What exactly makes housing LGBT-friendly? According to Steinert, it’s a matter of making sure queer culture is represented and the staff is trained to recognize the needs of the population. For example, a transgender resident of a nursing home may need help with bathing and wouldn’t want an attendant who’s insensitive or transphobic.

"It would not be easy for an LGBT senior to feel at home in a traditional senior housing facility," Steinert says. "They would basically need to go back in the closet. They would not feel able to disclose their partner or their history and feel like it would be accepted." Even if you succeeded in training the staff to be sensitive, you might not change the culture among the people who’ve been living in the facility for years, she points out.

The first LGBT-focused housing facility for seniors in the Bay Area will probably be the Barbary Lane Senior Communities at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Preleasing began March 1, and people will start moving in this fall. The Barbary Lane team is transforming the classic art deco Lake Merritt Hotel into a safe space for seniors, doing everything from doubling the size of the elevators to using universal design to get rid of knobs and handles. The kitchens and bathrooms in the apartment units are designed to be easy to use for disabled people and people with arthritis or other mobility issues.

With the Parlor Suite starting at $3,295 and the Merritt Grand at $4,295, you couldn’t accuse Barbary Lane of being low-income housing. But these prices are typical for retirement communities, and they include meals and other amenities seniors would otherwise have to pay for separately, says David Latina, Barbary Lane’s president. "A schoolteacher could afford to live here," he adds. Hard-up residents could share a studio apartment, he suggests. Programming and activities will be queer focused, and Barbary Lane will try to involve the local queer community as much as possible, opening its lavish dining area to outside events such as queer weddings and fundraisers.

Barbary Lane will only house people who are mostly able to take care of themselves. Once they need more than an assisted-living level of care, they’ll have to move to a nursing facility or nursing home. When that happens, Barbary Lane will make sure they go to facilities that are LGBT-friendly and have well-trained staff, according to Latina.

Latina says his organization aims to open five more facilities in California and is partnering with another organization to open a facility in New York. There are 17,000 queer seniors in the Bay Area alone, Latina claims, and even if only a quarter of them are looking to move into retirement homes, that could mean more than 4,000 residents for places like Barbary Lane. Rainbow flags flying over retirement communities could become a common sight in the near future.<\!s>*

www.sageusa.org

www.newleafservices.org

www.openhouse-sf.com

www.barbarylanesenior.com

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