No surprise: No Badlands deal
Knoller denied parole
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Jake Blount
'The Headlands'
The
www.ebar.com Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities since 1971
Vol. 53 • No. 08 • February 23- March 1, 2023
Many Castro businesses non-LGBTQ owned, survey finds by John Ferrannini
“Pose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross, left, led about 50 transgender conference staff and volunteers in a protest with multiple grievances against the National LGBTQ Task Force’s management and planning of Creating Change 35 at the conference’s closing plenary February 20.
Trans TV star leads protest at SF Creating Change confab by Heather Cassell
“P
ose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross staged a protest against Creating Change at the conference’s closing plenary in San Francisco February 20, unhappy with alleged anti-trans incidents at the host hotels and problems with the conference itself. On Monday, attendees at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s signature event suddenly received a push alert on the conference’s app around 4:45 p.m. stating that the closing plenary was starting at 5; it was to have started at 5:30. The nearly 3,000 Creating Change attendees were used to sudden schedule changes four days into the conference and headed to the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Union Square for the plenary. What they got was transgender conference workers and attendees rising in protest. Ross was their spokesperson. “I heard that you know, we needed a demonstration and a protest because some shit wasn’t going down the way that it was supposed to go down,” Ross said about the text messages she received from transgender activists working for and attending the conference. Ross had walked out on stage and sat down with the task force Executive Director Kierra Johnson and fellow “Pose” star Dyllón Burnside to talk about the organization’s future. But then she stood up and invited an estimated 50 transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex conference staff, contractors, and volunteers on stage reading their list of nine grievances “I’ve been at Creating Change for years,” said Ross, who is a task force policy institute fellow alumna. “So, when my brothers and sisters were telling me what was going on, I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me. This is still going on?’ So, we’re not asking. These are not asks. These are demands. See page 5 >>
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ess than half of businesses in San Francisco’s LGBTQ neighborhood that participated in a 2021 survey conducted by the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District were “owned or managed” by members of the queer community, neighborhood leaders told the Bay Area Reporter. According to the survey results only 45% of the 129 businesses that responded to it were owned or managed by LGBTQ people. The B.A.R. previously reported on the survey at the time it was being undertaken. The information was gathered for inclusion in a Cultural History, Housing and Economic Sustainability Strategies, or CHHESS, report, according to Tina Aguirre, a genderqueer Latinx person who is manager of the cultural district. That report is required by the city, which funds San Francisco’s 10 cultural districts. “We did not disseminate the entire results of this survey publicly,” Aguirre stated to the B.A.R. “Instead, we used it as a data source for our CHHESS report that is currently in development, and I shared key takeaways with OEWD [Office of Economic and Workforce Development] and
Christopher Robledo
Tina Aguirre, left, manager for the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, program associate Samuel Favela, in back, and SFSU sociology students Hanelye Mazariegos, center, and Alejandro Barrientos, right, left the now-closed Harvey’s restaurant in the Castro on October 20, 2021 after collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data from the business as part of a volunteer program with the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District.
MOHCD [Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development] in the last year.” Aguirre stated, “This information underscores the need for intentional small business support that centers LGBTQ culture and community needs in the Castro district.”
They hoped the survey would be shared with the Castro Community Benefit District, the Castro Merchants Association, the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, and the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association. See page 2 >>
Spotlight shines once again on the late drag artist Doris Fish by Matthew S. Bajko
Australia and it goes on sale in the U.S. February 28. He drew on interviews he did for a profile about Mills that ran in the San Francisco Examiner in 1986, conducted additional interviews with Mills’ family and friends, as well as researched various archives in order to reconstruct not only Mills’ life story but also that of a number of his close friends and drag collaborators. “Doris was one of the most interesting people I had ever known. If I didn’t tell Doris’ story, I feared no one would,” Seligman told the Bay Area Reporter during a video interview from Perth, Australia in early February. “The U.S. media is centered in New York and was more so then. I felt the story of drag and AIDS from a West Coast perspective has not yet been told.” Mills ended up moving to the City-by-theBay in the summer of 1976, having first visited the year prior. Over the ensuing years Mills would mostly call San Francisco home, but he would make near yearly pilgrimages back to Australia in December to spend the holidays with his parents and extended family. He would stay for weeks on end in order to also connect with friends and work on fantastical floats and costumes for Sydney’s unique LGBTQ Pride parade. Mills also penned a column for the city’s gay newspaper Campaign.
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new book released this month and an upcoming museum exhibit in San Francisco are once again shining a spotlight on the late drag artist Doris Fish, who dazzled the Bay Area and was the grand dame of Sydney’s Mardi Gras Parade during the 1980s. Her home country of Australia is feting Fish this month as it hosts World Pride in conjunction with its largest annual LGBTQ celebration. “It is time, I think, time to acknowledge what a force of nature Doris was for sure. And the part she played in moving from the drag of the 1950s and 1960s and pulling drag out of where it was – not that there was anything wrong with that – but helping it to evolve,” said Bradley Chandler, a close friend who performed with Fish under the stage name of Miss X. “She was a force in the evolution of drag.” Fish was the drag persona of Philip Clargo Mills, who was born on August 11, 1952. One of six siblings, he grew up in the Sydney suburb of Manly Vale. A gay man and art school student, he turned to prostitution to make money and became a member of Sylvia and the Synthetics, described as a Down Under version of the famed pioneering drag troupe the Cockettes of San Francisco.
Dan Nicoletta
Doris Fish, left, Tippi, and Miss X at Doris’ wedding reception on April 19, 1981.
As Craig Seligman, who befriended Mills in San Francisco, recounts in his new biography “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag,” the origin story of Doris Fish’s name depends on who is telling it. A friend of Mills’ claimed to have given him it due to his “old-lady drag,” while Mills told Seligman it was a nod to the actress Doris Day as well as a cat named Lillian Fish. PublicAffairs, part of the Hachette Book Group, released Seligman’s book this week in
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“I’ve lost so much sleep ter thinking wher worr ying abou leave. I love e I might go. I don’t t it and this want to Yet Mooney city.” might have to leave if the efforts See page 12 >>
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Rick Gerhar