Category Archives: WORLD WIDE: Gay around the Globe!

Seen at Stanford: International Yarn Bombing Day?

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The Burghers of Calais on the Stanford Main Quad are sporting knitted rainbow leg warmers and scarves today. File this one under strange holidays.

-AidanAbroad

A Place to hang your…what?

The Green Man sprouts wood in an urban setting. This phallic tree provides a good impromptu paddle hook. You never know when or where you might need such a thing. This tree grows outside Rocco’s Cafe on Folsom Street between 8th and 9th in San Francisco. Highly recommended. The cafe and the tree.

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SF Giants make an “It Gets Better” video

The World Champion San Francisco Giants have made an “It Gets Better” video. For more videos and more information on the project, founded by columnist Dan Savage to give gay kids a vision of life beyond high school, visit the website here. For more Giant charitable work, click here. If you’ve ever wondered about Brian Wilson’s edgy style, here. For sadly broken Buster, here, and for Timmy the Kid, here.

Hide/Seek in San Francisco with Curator Jonathan D. Katz

Hide/Seek Curator Jonathan D. Katz

Last October, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery opened Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major museum exhibition showing how the questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture.

For background on the censorship scandal that ensued, click here, here, and here.

On June 3rd, Jonathan D. Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, will discuss his role as co-curator and will consider such themes as sexual difference in depicting modern Americans; how artists have explored the definition of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art-especially abstraction-were influenced by this form of marginalization and how art reflected society’s changing attitudes. -via QCC

The program is at The LGBT Community Center at Market and Octavia. It begins at 8pm and costs $10. Want to get more of Katz? Want to give more to regional arts and humanities? Come to the Pre-party!

From 6pm until the lecture starts, enjoy a reception for Dr. Katz to benefit the Queer Cultural Center‘s Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts: a series of lectures co-presented by QCC and the California College of the Arts. QCCA brings together locally and nationally renowned artists, writers, filmmakers, and scholars for a series of conversations to discuss a broad range of topics in the humanities and the arts. Reception tickets are $25-$100 donation and include wine, hors d’oeuvres, and preferred seating at the lecture.

A Sustainable Queer Planet? 14th Annual National Queer Arts Fest opens in SF

Philip Huang performs June 9 & 10 at Eros

We have made it this far. What next? How can we keep what we have created and protect it for the generations coming up? The theme of this year’s National Queer Arts Festival is A Sustainable Queer Planet. Presented by The Queer Cultural Center, the festival includes 22 venues and runs for a month. An array of performers, poets, writers, visual artists, musicians, comedians and dancers work through diverse notions of sustainability. Organizations, collaborations, friendships, political movements, publications, networks, connectivity, intentional communities, Queer families, and various ecological and economic interventions are all well represented in this month-long festival. High Holy Homo Days are upon us!

Watch this space for notices and commentaries on select individual programs. Philip Huang, pictured above, performs in Formerly Known As: Performances by Male and Trans Sex Workers. This two-day program, hosted by Kirk Read, takes place at The Center for Sex and Culture, and features a different line-up each night. It includes writers, performance artists, comedians and a slideshow of visual work. For a complete listing of festival offerings, visit The Queer Cultural Center’s site here.

More sights seen at Stanford

Totem pole and bicycle, outside the Native American Cultural Center at Stanford.
-AidanAbroad

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How Stanford students pass their days

Sidewalk chalking, seen today on the Stanford campus near the post office.
-AidanAbroad

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Stay Gay! SF’s Eagle Bar sprouts Critical Graffiti Wall – Big Slide Show

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It has been  a few weeks now since the SF Eagle closed its doors. No bikes out front, no men inside, chained shut, it sits empty. But not silent. Its walls speak. In several languages, actually. Graffiti farewells and protests decorate the outside of the once vibrant gathering place. What comes next, no one knows. For more on the demise of the beloved San Francisco Leather bar, click here, here, here, and here.

Broken Giant. Get Well, Buster!

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It was a painful moment when Marlin Scott Cousins sealed Wednesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants by crashing into catcher Buster Posey at home plate. Buster’s fibula snapped and he’s out for the season. According to first baseman Aubrey Huff, the atmosphere around ATT park yesterday was grim. He told Sports Illustrated: “It felt like a morgue when you walked in here today.” The baby-faced catcher is a popular Giant, both on the team and with his fans. His wholesome looks contrast with some of his edgier team mates’ styles. More on that here and here. SI‘s Anne Killion writes: “He’s their square-jawed Captain America on a goofy cartoon-strip team.” That’s one way to put it! For the rest of that article, click here.

Surveilling the SFPD: Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

This odd couple is on patrol in San Francisco’s Castro district. We were struck by the picturesque contrast. For more sights seen in and around the village, click here.