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AIDS Legal Referral Panel
Celebrates 21 Years
by Reid Dennis
The AIDS
Legal Referral Panel [ALRP] had some good news and
bad news at their 21st annual reception held in
the War Memorial Veterans Building Green Room on
October 6th. Bill Hirsh, ALRP Executive Director,
lamented that, like so many other AIDS service organizations
over the past year, funds were drastically cut when
they lost the Ryan White Care Act grant. |
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Blowing
the Whistle on Violence
by Benji Holmann
Beautiful Lips On Whistles
(BLOW) is spreading ideas of caution this election
season since homophobia and violence are both
on the rise. Connie Champagne from Community United
Against Violence has often been quoted, “With
increased visibility there is an increase in violence.”
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Cruisin’ The
Castro…with Trevor Hailey
by Jeanine K. Reisbig
Hurrying along Castro Street
you may hear a velour and sandpaper, honeyed Southern
contralto that splits to a higher octave in the
excitement of storytelling. |
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Coming Home Hospice
by Ken Ludden
Coming Home Hospice opened
its doors in 1987, with 15 beds for terminally
ill patients. With 10 beds dedicated specifically
to AIDS patients, it was the major San Francisco
hospice for AIDS. But as more sophisticated drug
treatments became available and people began to
live longer with AIDS, the number of beds providing
hospice care for AIDS dwindled. |
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Dine Around Castro,
SoMa, and the Mission
by Reid Dennis
Last November AIDS Emergency
Fund and Breast Cancer Emergency Fund created
an extremely successful restaurant-based fundraising
event in the Castro and Noe Valley areas known
as Dine Around: 94114. Thirty participating restaurants
donated 25% of the total proceeds from the day
of November 12 to AEF and BCEF. |
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Every Penny Counts
by Ken Ludden
At Christmas time in 1987, Fred Skau started putting
jars in the bars to collect pennies to help people
with AIDS. We’ve all been told over and over
that pennies make dollars, in fact, our teachers
have told us that for years. And Fred Skau’s
idea, which started in the bars, is now a lesson
for school children of all ages throughout the entire
Bay Area. The idea has stayed alive ever since.
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San Francisco:
Home of the Gay Dollar
by Helga Glen
The Gay Dollar
is the cornerstone of GayDollarSF, an innovative
new independent marketing campaign to both attract
the LGBT visitor to the Bay Area, and also to raise
awareness for those in the local community how to
spend their money within the gay and gay-friendly
business community's retail, hospitality, non-profit,
service and entertainment sectors. |
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Golden Gate Business
Turns Thirty
by Reid Dennis
Celebrating
thirty years representing the Bay Area’s gay
and lesbian businesses and supportive businesses,
the Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA) held
a festive fundraiser and awards dinner, "Beyond
the Dream," in the Regency Center Grand Ballroom
on Oct. 21 with guest of honor, novelist Armistead
Maupin |
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A Grass Roots Effort
by Internet Industry Altruists
by Nancy Norstad
Hillgirlz.com
is a casual, creative website for women that includes
a Women At Work section with a broad variety of
categories of skill and talent, were one to feel
more comfortable hiring a woman plumber or attorney. |
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Historic Times: The
Leno Era
by Ken Ludden
Since cameras moved into the
halls of Congress, our leaders have learned some
odd, and vapid, lessons. Kennedy won the first
televised presidential debate; Nixon looked tired
and refused makeup. |
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Dufty Approaches City
with Library / Gay History Partnership
by Nancy Norstad
It was a red-letter day for San Francisco's GLBT
Historical Society when 8th District Supervisor
Bevan Dufty locked onto the idea of rebuilding the
Eureka Valley Branch Library at 16th and Noe at
Market Street with plans to include a section of
the new structure to house the GLBT Museum and Archives. |
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Midlife Gay Men Announce
Calendar
by Dan Miller
Midlife Gay Men is an organization for all gay &
bisexual midlife men, both HIV negative & positive.
They are a group of midlife gay/bisexual men, mutually
empowered to collaboratively share and create an
authentic, healthy new community. |
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Harvey Milk Bust Fundraiser
by Dan Miller
The Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee wants
to put Harvey back in City Hall, in the form of
a bust or statue or some kind of remembrance of
the slain Supervisor, who was the first openly gay
elected officeholder in the nation. So the Committee
held a festive fundraising event towards that end
at the LGBT Community Center with food, drink, and
entertainment. |
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Kirk Mills –
A Rising Star
by Dear Diva
The room darkens, orders for the two drink minimum
are taken, an unassuming guy with a guitar takes
a seat and plucks simple strings. It is an unusual
start for an evening at the world-renowned Empire
Plush Room at the York Hotel on Sutter Street. But
this is not going to be a usual evening. |
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Linda Carlson –
New ED: Openhouse
by Ken Ludden
LGBT people have led the way toward nearly every
social advancement in the history of mankind, and
now the subject of LGBT seniors is about to get
a camp facelift. The plan for a mixed-income residential
village for LGBT seniors and friends took a giant
step forward with the installation of Linda Carlson
as the new Executive Director of openhouse. |
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Paradise Found 2004
by Jacques Michaels
On Oct
21st, Positive Resource Center (PRC) held its 7th
annual gala at the beautiful Hotel Monaco in Union
Square. The weather outside may have been overcast,
but the mood inside was warm and inviting. The two
rooms were filled with large, bright, paper flowers,
potted palms, and even a stuffed parrot! |
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Queer Beats: Sex
Poets from the 50’s
by Benji Holmann
Queer beats:
How the Beats Turned America On to Sex - selected
writings from 1950’s Beat poets edited by
Regina Marler is a deep-end dive into the mind set
and work of the Beat generation poets that transcended
the conformist constructs of the 1950’s including
the hostility against same-sex eroticism. In fact,
the beats seemed to swim in the pool of sexuality
with explorations into all things counter-culture
and queer. |
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Queer Encyclopedia
of Visual Arts
by Benji Holmann
I remember coming out and searching for any material
that validated what I knew to my core – that
I didn’t fit in and I was not into the opposite
sex and didn’t get the whole 2.5 kids and
white picket fence. When in college I was able to
more independently explore any notion of being a
gay man, a rite of passage was the adult bookstore
but not the best place to get a sense of history
unless your looking for a very short and orgasmic
one. |
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Rebecca Prozan’s
Back in City Hall
by Ken Ludden
When Rebecca
Prozan worked as the LGBT Liaison for Mayor Willie
Brown, it seemed like there wasn’t anything
she couldn’t accomplish for a queer constituent.
But more remarkable was her perpetual good humor.
Certainly any fly on the wall of a city government
office will tell you that many days are far from
calm, cool and collected. But somehow, Prozan kept
her cool. |
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Interim Executive
Director Picked for the Russian River Chamber
by Nancy Norstad
Ernie Carpenter, split-time resident of Santa Rosa
and Occidental, a four-term veteran of the Sonoma
County Board of Supervisors, and an avid advocate
of recycling and waste management, comes to the
aid of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce on
the suggestion old friend, 5th District Supervisor
Mike Reilly. Ernie has volunteered to act as interim
Executive Director, following Steve Fogle, until
the chamber finds a permanent replacement. |
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Remembering Steve Fogle
for the Man that He Was
by Nancy Norstad
On October 6th, following the launch of a county
investigation into Russian River Chamber Finances...Executive
Director Steve Fogle went on to a Chamber General
Meeting. The next morning, he did not come in to
work...it wasn't until that evening when he didn't
return home that Chamber President Verna Preaseau
alerted the local authorities that she felt uneasy. |
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Shanti Celebrates 30th
Anniversary
by Reid Dennis
For thirty years Shanti has been a lifeline for
people living with serious illnesses. A pioneering
nonprofit, Shanti specializes in providing expert
assistance to individuals living with HIV/AIDS,
breast cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses
through direct services, training, and peer support
volunteers. |
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LGBT Tobacco Education
Partnership
by Ken Ludden
The LGBT Community
has faced many foes along the road to equality,
and though many queers are health conscious, more
of us die from tobacco related disease than the
mainstream public. In fact, tobacco causes more
deaths in the LGBT community than HIV/AIDS, drug
use, alcohol and other factors. In 1991 the quest
to educate began with the formation of CLASH (the
Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health). |
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SPELLing It Out!
By Benji Holmann
An enchanting
evening will be yours for the wishing at SPELL:
13 Invocations for World Peace at SomArts in San
Francisco. Leading us out of what Tina Fey (Saturday
Night Live) calls our K-Hole of a Presidency, the
collective artists of Spell have captured the energy
and enchantment of post-modern activist performance
and woven a new path for our collective future with
aerial dance, drumming, installation arts and post-modern
witchcraft. |
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$10 Million Mark Met:
Under One Roof Celebrates
by Ken Ludden
Under One Roof
is one of those places where everything is like
it should be. It is a good idea that caught on,
it brings businesses together in ways that help
them while also helping AIDS service organizations
(ASOs), the people who work there like working there,
hundreds of volunteers are reliable and happy to
be there, and it is making money. This all seems
too good to be true. But that isn’t all! In
their 14-year history they have just reached the
$10 million mark in net profit. |
