Castro District, Castro San Francisco guide and voice of the gay and lesbian community!

Posted on www.SFgate.com
February 27, 2012
By Rachel Gordon, Stephanie M. Lee, John Wildermuth

The Muni operator who faces a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge for running over a 23-year-old woman with his bus in a Castro district crosswalk last summer made a brief court appearance Thursday on a procedural matter, and in a hallway interview afterward his attorney said that his client shouldn't be blamed.

Defense attorney Stuart Hanlon said the real culprit was inadequate supervision at Muni that allowed his client, Wallace Loggins, to drive a 40-foot bus along unfamiliar streets.

"He was doing everything right, but he was lost," Hanlon said. "Central Control sent him on a street he didn't know. I just think it's an awful accident."

Loggins was sent to a new assignment without proper direction from Central Control, Hanlon said. Loggins, who had been driving with Muni for eight months, was taken off his regular route and told to take his bus to the Castro to drive a special bus shuttle to augment the overcrowded F-line rail route on Aug. 18.

He ended up making a left turn from 18th Street onto Hartford Street, a narrow residential street without regular bus service. It was during that turn that he struck and killed Emily Dunn.

She was walking in the crosswalk at the time and had the right-of-way, but she was looking down and texting right before she reached the curb and never saw the bus coming, Hanlon said. Loggins reportedly was glancing in his side-view mirror when he hit Dunn.

Surveillance cameras on the bus recorded the incident.

The district attorney's office said the driver was negligent for not seeing the pedestrian. If convicted, Loggins faces up to a year in County Jail. A trial date has not been set. Loggins has pleaded not guilty.

- Rachel Gordon

Posted on www.SFgate.com
February 27, 2012
By C.W Nevius

The rainbow flag at the intersection of Market and Castro streets seems like an affirming and positive local icon. But this is San Francisco, where even toys from Happy Meals can seem sinister.

Inevitably, controversy has sprung up around the flagpole. That's a shame because, as Cleve Jones, longtime gay activist, says, the solution is simple: "It should fly at full-staff, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

In the past 10 years, exceptions have been made by merchants who pay for and maintain the flag and plaza; the most recent example was flying a "Bear" flag last weekend.

That has spurred Michael Petrelis, a self-described "brash hothead," to challenge the merchants, insisting that since they've lowered the flag to half-staff at times and substituted other flags, he should be allowed to come up with his own tributes.

This is the perfect time for the merchants to rethink their policy.

"There's one person who says there is a controversy," said Steve Adams, president of Merchants of Upper Market and Castro. "He wants to control the flag."

Not at all, insists Petrelis. He says Gilbert Baker is trying to control things. Baker created the flag to honor the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, but it wasn't dedicated at the Castro and Market intersection until 1997. Baker has since moved to New York.

"When did we decide that a guy living in New York can tell us what to do with our public space?" Petrelis said. "We could use that plaza to educate young people and turn it into a living classroom."

Flag honors Harvey Milk

Nonsense, said Baker. He handed over all flag and plaza responsibilities to the merchants, though he admits he wants to keep the flag and the plaza for its intended purpose, to honor Milk.

"This Petrelis fellow is a bully - and please quote me saying that," said Baker. "This whole campaign has been invented by one clown."

OK, but here's the problem. Over the years the rainbow flag has become the symbol of the Castro. Visitors come from all over the world to have their photo taken with it. But then someone had the idea of flying a leather flag during the leather and bondage week known as Folsom Street Fair.

"Regardless of what people think about the fair, it's a draw," Adams said. "It drives thousands of people to the Castro."

As a marketing idea, that makes sense. And so did the idea of putting up a bear flag to celebrate Bear Week, when thousands of muscular, often hirsute, men roll into town. But there was a problem.

"Both Gilbert and I warned the merchants at the time," said Jones. "It opened the door."

Once the flag was replaced for one event, it brought other possibilities into play. Petrelis is no stranger to the media. In 2001, after a series of articles about unsafe sex practices among gay men ran in The Chronicle, Petrelis was arrested for threatening Chronicle staffers and city health officials. The flag is his latest challenge.

He proposed raising a New York State flag when the state legalized same-sex marriages. He campaigned to have the flag lowered to half-staff when Elizabeth Taylor died. Both ideas were rejected by the merchants.

'A little game'

"I can't believe these guys are gay," Petrelis joked. "What gay man doesn't want to lower a flag for Elizabeth Taylor?"

You see the problem.

"If they put the flag to half-mast every time there is a request," said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the district, "it would be down more than up. This has become a little game. Petrelis makes demands and then throws a fit when they don't do what he says."

While Petrelis hasn't paid for a flag, maintained the plaza, or done anything but complain about the way things are being run, the merchants only hurt the cause when they decided to make exceptions.

Now they are in a position of trying to justify every decision and face rants from someone like Petrelis when they aren't granted.

That's why Jones has the best idea, fly the flag all day, every day.

"People should just leave the damn flag alone," he said.

Posted on www.edgesanfrancisco.com
February 27, 2012
By Matthew S. Bajko

Rules governing two outdoor plazas in the Castro inched closer to passage this week after a Board of Supervisors’ committee endorsed the proposed regulations.

Under the new guidelines for both Jane Warner and Harvey Milk plazas at the corner of Market and Castro streets, camping and sleeping would be banned at all hours in the public parklets. Cigarette smoking would also be prohibited in the two areas, while signage would make clear that removable chairs and tables would be stored between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. each day.

The plazas would remain open 24 hours and people would be allowed to sit either on the ground or on benches in the plazas, insists District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener. The openly gay lawmaker, who lives near the area, introduced the measure at the behest of the Castro Community Benefit District.

"This legislation is not draconian. It does not restrict anyone from the plazas," said Wiener, later adding, "This is basic, common sense legislation."

The board’s land use committee voted 2-1 to support the rules, which now go before the full board for passage Tuesday, January 31. District 4 Supervisor Carmen Chu voted with Wiener in favor of the regulations.

"I appreciate the passion. But I don’t believe it comes from a place of hate or discrimination," said Chu after hearing more than two hours of testimony during the Monday, January 23 hearing.

District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar, the committee’s chair, voted to oppose the measure although he does believe smoking should be banned in the plazas. Having toured the parklets with those opposed to the rules, Mar said he is concerned the regulations would hinder people’s civil rights.

"My hope is you can really work with everyone to address the human and civil rights issues," said Mar.

The proposal has sparked months of controversy with critics complaining the rules were crafted without community input and needlessly target the homeless and queer youth. The issue has pitted anti-smoking activists and Castro residents against homeless advocates and a neighborhood nonprofit that offers services to LGBT youth.

"San Francisco doesn’t need more cynical laws. There is a need to protect open spaces for all people," said Laura Slattery, the executive director of the Gubbio Project, a daytime program for homeless people at Saint Boniface class=st> Church in the Tenderloin.

Also speaking out against the proposed rules was Jodi Schwartz, executive director of the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, better known as LYRIC. The program for LGBT youth is located on Collingwood Street in the Castro.

"We are opposed to this and are troubled by the privatization of public space," said Schwartz. "It really says that people with money set the rules."

Residents who live nearby the plazas and local merchants, however, say the rules are needed to address unsafe behaviors, such as public urination and drug use, that particularly occur at Harvey Milk Plaza above the Castro Muni station.

of the neighborhood, said she routinely encounters people smoking crack or injecting drugs at the benches below the flagpole in Milk plaza.

"It is a safety issue and a public health issue," she said.

Those working to reduce tobacco use among LGBT people hailed the rule banning smoking at the plazas. A number of people spoke about the dangers of smoking, including second-hand smoke, and how they are unable to use the plazas unless they are smoke free.

"Cigarette smoke makes it hard for me to breath," said Brian Davis, the project director for Freedom from Tobacco, a program of the LGBT Community Center.

But medical marijuana advocates argued their needs to be a clear distinction that the use of doctor-prescribed cannabis is allowed in the outdoor areas.

"There are precious few places where medical cannabis users can medicate," said David Goldman, a gay man who owns a home nearby the plazas and is a longtime patient advocate who served on the San Francisco Medical Cannabis Task Force. "Pot smoke is not like cigarette smoke."

One anti-smoking advocate said he had no objections to people using medical cannabis there.

"Personally, I support an exemption for medical cannabis," said Naphtali Offen, who co-founded the Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health.

Wiener said he did look into whether other city ordinances governing public spaces had carved out exemptions for medical cannabis use but found no such examples.

"It is consistent with what this legislation says," said Wiener, noting the ordinance as written speaks only to cigarette smoke and says nothing about the use of vaporizers, a device some people use to inhale medical marijuana in a smokeless form.

Wiener needs six votes from his fellow supervisors next week to approve the regulations. Those opposed to the rules are targeting Board President David Chiu as the swing vote on the 11-member board and have been urging him to vote against the proposal.

Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter following the land use hearing, Wiener expressed optimism of seeing the measure be adopted.

"I don’t want to speculate, but I think we have a good chance of getting this passed," he said.

Posted on www.SFgate.com
February 27, 2012
By Carolyn Zinko

Petaluma hairstylist Nicole Sessi was in the Castro on Sunday, looking for her uncle, who died of AIDS in 1990 when she was in the fourth grade.

Sessi's mother, who spent the past 21 years sewing a fabric tribute to her only brother, was there, too. She had sent off the panel she created for inclusion in the AIDS Memorial Quilt only three months ago, it was so difficult to part with.

But Sunday, when 40 sections of the quilt, which moved from San Francisco to Atlanta with the Names Project Foundation in 1999, made a trip back for its largest homecoming display since, neither Sessi nor her mother could find the panel.

"We were hoping to see it, but it wasn't here," said a teary-eyed Sessi, now 27. "Maybe one day."

The quilt, conceived by San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones in 1985, contained 1,900 panels representing AIDS victims when stitched together in 1987. Designed as a political tool, it was displayed on the mall in front of the U.S. Capitol in 1996 and was 24 football fields in size. Today, it contains more than 44,000 panels and 90,000 names.

More than a dozen years ago, the Names Project Foundation moved to Atlanta, where rents were cheaper. Portions of the quilt travel across the nation for temporary displays.

The San Francisco exhibition, free and open to the public, began Sunday and continues through Feb. 20 at several locations - the former Tower Records store at 2278 Market St., as well as at the Under One Roof gift shop at 518-A Castro St., Catch restaurant at 2362 Market St., Bank of America at 501 Castro St. and Body, a clothing shop at 450 Castro St.

It was bright and sunny outside but solemn inside as sections of the quilt - each containing eight 3-by-6-foot panels - were unfurled before dozens of people in attendance. The quiet was broken only by a reading of a list of names of people who have died from AIDS. The reading started at noon and continued until 8 p.m., when the doors closed.

Volunteers stood at the ready with boxes of tissues for visitors whose tears spilled silently down their cheeks.

The first at the microphone was Jones, whose opening remarks were tinged with the political. "I deeply regret allowing the quilt to leave San Francisco," he said, "and I'm glad it's home."

He was also emotional, his voice choking as he finished reading the list of names assigned to him. Some of them he had known well.

"Oh, man," he said on the sidewalk out front, where he went to compose himself. "It never gets any easier."

Organizers of the event, including Beth Feingold, the executive director of Under One Roof, said the event was timed to Valentine's Day to encourage reflection and celebration of those who have died. It is also intended, she said, to raise awareness among young people of the political activism that has led not only to improved drug treatment for those with AIDS, but also to increased tolerance and acceptance of gay rights in society at large. Some San Francisco elementary, middle school and high school classes are planning to tour the exhibit, she said.

"One of the things we want most from this is for young people to come and see what we lived through, to get tested for HIV and to find out it's not like it was 30 years ago - people are living longer, there are drugs now, and there's not as much fear," Feingold said. "There were families who would not even go to the funerals of brothers or friends who died of AIDS."

For teens, Jones said, the quilt has served as a tangible method for conveying the seriousness of the disease in a way that verbal admonitions have not.

"The quilt was never made to be a passive memorial," he said. "We built it to be a weapon in the war against AIDS, intolerance, stigma, shame and politicians whose inactions contributed to the spread of the disease."

Still, the quilt's homecoming proved a bittersweet memorial for Marlon Woodward, a retired videographer who has seen it in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles before.

"It's a bit much," he said, his eyes reddened from crying. "I don't know whether to feel joy or sadness. It's good to see the quilt here, but the sense of loss is palpable. You can't help but be overwhelmed."

Posted on www.baycitizaen.org
January 30, 2012
By Zusha Elinson

On recent sunny day in San Francisco, Rebecca Scalfaro left her office to eat lunch and read a few pages of a John Steinbeck novel in Civic Center Plaza in front of City Hall. As usual, Scalfaro, a petite 48-year-old who works in accounting, found a seat along one of the low-lying concrete walls that surround the square patches of grass on the plaza, a much different scene than in the Castro District San Francisco.

"They're very uncomfortable," she said as she sat on the eight-inch high ledge and tried to rearrange her legs.

"A bench would be great," she said. "Or even if it wasn't a bench, just some chairs would be really nice."

All around the city, San Franciscans can be found seated on steps, curbs, retaining walls and on the grass — but not on benches. The Castro has a great park let as well. In a tacit surrender to the overwhelming problem of homelessness, the city has simply removed public seating over the last two decades. Benches in Civic Center Plaza were removed in the 1990s. Those in nearby United Nations Plaza were ripped out in the middle of the night in 2001, to discourage the homeless from congregating and camping there.

"Because San Francisco has been unwilling to deal with homelessness in a serious way, we have instead removed public seating from virtually the entire city," said Gabriel Metcalf, the executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, an urban policy research group. "It's such a sad statement and it makes the city that much less livable for everyone." Castro San Francisco residents wonder if this is the best solution.

Despite its problems, some people are now speaking out for public seating. In the last two years, a movement has been growing to create small, lively public spaces with places to sit. Inventive miniparks, called parklets, are popping up in parking spaces around the city, some of them with permanent seats, albeit uncomfortable ones — to discourage prolonged sitting. Food-truck operators bring temporary tables and chairs with them. Public rights-of-way are being transformed into plazas, like the Castro's Jane Warner Plaza, an erstwhile intersection where residents now sit at tables sipping coffee in the sunshine.

"The city is focused on improving the public realm and that's demonstrated by projects like parklets," Christine Falvey, a mayoral spokeswoman, said.

This resurgence has reignited the debate over public space and homelessness. Scott Wiener, a supervisor who represents the Castro, has introduced legislation to prohibit people from smoking, camping or parking shopping carts in Jane Warner Plaza and nearby Harvey Milk Plaza.

The legislation, which Wiener said could be expanded to cover parklets across the city, has been met by an outcry from some old-time Castro leaders and advocates for the homeless.

"It's really ridiculous, it's stirring up the anti-homeless sentiment," said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

"It targets a class of people that may find themselves sleeping in a plaza or pushing a four-wheel shopping cart."

Falvey said "the city has been doing significant work on homelessness. In the last seven years, we have moved nearly 15,000 people off the streets."

San Francisco city planners are now working on plans that could reintroduce some outdoor seating along Market Street, the city's major thoroughfare, from Civic Center to the Embarcadero. Granite benches were removed from Market Street in the 1990s after business owners complained about homeless people, according to a 2010 study.

Neil Hrushowy, an urban designer for the city who is working on the Market Street project, said that past planning based solely on "the fear of quote-unquote undesirables" was not good for urban design — and did not actually work.

"There is a pretty broad agreement that depriving the public of seating is not going to solve the problem of who has access to public spaces," Hrushowy said. "The question is, how can we happily coexist?" Indeed, the homeless still hang out in United Nations Plaza, a 2.6-mile pedestrian mall whose benches were removed 10 years ago. On a recent sunny day, Wayne Biggs, 61, was in the plaza waiting for a truck that offers free lunches.

Biggs, who said he was homeless, was neatly dressed and seated on a cement retaining wall next to a large suitcase filled with his belongings.

"There used to be benches here," he said. "They even had these dividers so people couldn't sleep on them. Now there's just this concrete. It's cold and there's always pigeon poop on it."