Mopping up after storms
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Donna McKechnie at Feinstein's
ARTS
Prof leads ethnic studies
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ARTS
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Marshall Forte at Lyon & Swan
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Vol. 52 • No. 03 • January 19-25, 2023
Email, text raise questions about future of Castro Theatre as meetings loom by John Ferrannini
A John Ferrannini
Cars prepare to enter the Central Freeway from Octavia Boulevard.
SF’s Central Freeway, Embarcadero eyed for changes by John Ferrannini
V
oters’ decisions last November to ratify two closures of major San Francisco thoroughfares to cars may prefigure further, more substantial changes to where drivers can rev their engines. Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) made the dramatic announcement late last year via Twitter that “it’s time to take down the remaining portion of the Central Freeway, south of Market” and, in a letter to Caltrans, asked the agency to study the potential cost of removing the freeway. Separately, a group of San Franciscans is advocating for a car-free Embarcadero. Wiener’s letter to Caltrans District 4 Director Dina El-Tawansy came on the heels of voters’ November decision to ratify the pandemic-era decisions to close John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to vehicles on a permanent basis, and the Great Highway along Ocean Beach from Friday at noon to Monday at 6 a.m. He stated that the Central Freeway, which lets out onto the surface streets blocks from the LGBTQ-heavy Castro and West South of Market neighborhoods, and the Bayshore Viaduct “may be approaching the end” of “useful life” and that the costs of maintenance, replacement, or rebuilding need to be studied. “The transportation sector represents the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California,” Wiener’s letter stated. “Freeways have long separated low-income communities of color in San Francisco. The continued existence of the remainder of the Central Freeway and Bayshore Viaducts straddling the Mission District, and the Interstate 280 spur cutting off the Bayview from much of the city, illustrates the vestiges of these discrepancies.” It wouldn’t be the first time such a dramatic move was made in the city. The Embarcadero Freeway was torn down in the 1990s, paving See page 7 >>
number of Castro groups will be holding a meeting Thursday, January 26, to discuss future historic preservation and planning commission meetings about the neighborhood’s eponymous theater. It comes as Another Planet Entertainment faces questions about its continued management of the venerable movie house. The Friends of the Castro Theatre Coalition, which includes the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and the Art Deco Society of California, among other LGBTQ, film and neighborhood groups, will be meeting at 7:30 p.m. that evening at Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church. The city’s historic preservation commission is set to vote on the matter of the theater’s landmark status and the preservation of its seats on February 1. The planning commission is scheduled to take up the matter March 16, after another meeting of the historic preservation commission the prior day. Expanding the theater’s landmark status had been on the historic preservation commission’s agenda at its December 7 meeting but the item was continued at the request
Scott Wazlowski
A community meeting about the Castro Theatre is scheduled for January 26.
of gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. Nevertheless, many people attended the meeting and spoke out against renovation plans proposed by Another Planet Entertainment, which took over management of the Castro Theatre last January, as the Bay Area Reporter previously reported. The proposed expanded landmarking
would bring the theater’s interior into line with the already established landmark status of the theater’s facade. In 1976, the exterior of the building, designed by prominent San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger, was designated San Francisco Historic Landmark #100. See page 10 >>
Groups mull ’24 ballot measure on ‘zombie’ Proposition 8 by Cynthia Laird
N
early lost among the celebrations late last year when the U.S. Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act and President Joe Biden signed it was the fact that California still has the same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 on the books – technically speaking. Prop 8, passed by voters in 2008 by a margin of 52.24% to 47.76%, was later ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, which an appeals court upheld. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 decided that the ruling against Prop 8 could go into effect, which resulted in same-sex marriage becoming legal in the Golden State two years before the high court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision did the same thing nationwide. But Prop 8 is still part of the California Constitution, as it was a constitutional amendment that voters decided on. Former Governor Jerry Brown signed a law in 2014 repealing the state’s law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, but that didn’t remove Prop 8 from the state’s constitution. Now, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last June that overturned the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, some LGBTQ leaders are sounding the alarm that a
Christopher Robledo
State Senator Scott Wiener spoke at a December 2 news conference about the federal Respect for Marriage Act.
ballot measure is needed – possibly as early as 2024 – to remove Prop 8 from the state constitution once and for all. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, suggested that other precedents, including on same-sex marriage, contraception, and state sodomy laws, are
also ripe for reconsideration. With the 6-3 conservative supermajority now on the high court, LGBTQ activists, legal experts, and others are concerned marriage equality could be next. The “zombie” Prop 8, as it’s referred to, is a problem, some people told the Bay Area Reporter in recent interviews. See page 10 >>
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