After nine years in a corporate closet, Paul Marcarelli is coming out as gay. The horn-rimmed spokesman for Verizon talked to Spencer Morgan of The Atlantic about the contract that has sealed his lips for the past decade. It had what amounted to a no self-outing clause. Anonymous mascots are not supposed to have lives that could publicly detract from the characters they play. And being gay is still good dish, way too juicy for the bean-counters to risk. Homophobia blurs with the bottom line. Marcarelli’s catch phrase “Can You Hear Me Now?” will certainly go down in the history of TV advertising slogans – along with other pervertable classics such as: “Where’s the Beef?” “Don’t Squeeze the Charmin'” and “You’re soaking in It.” Marcarelli is currently in post-production on The Green, a film he wrote and co-produced and which focuses on a small-town gay couple who become embroiled in a scandal. Look forward to it on the festival circuit. The Atlantic article is available here.
Can you hear me NOW? I’m Gay. The Verizon Guy is coming out!
Posted in Television
Tagged Advertising, Can You Hear Me Now?, Coming Out, Culture, Gay, Guy, Mascot, Paul Macarelli, Spokesman, Television, TV, Verizon
John Amaechi is a MUCH bigger man than Kobe Bryant
John Amaechi. photo: Douglas C. Pizac/Associated Press
Author, entrepreneur and former NBA center John Amaechi made basketball history when he came out in 2007. Now he has some advice for Kobe Bryant, who is contesting a $100k fee that is being imposed on him for calling another player a faggot. Amaechi tells Bryant “you did serious damage with your outburst” and challenges him, respectfully, to acknowledge that. He writes about the gay teen boy in the Southland who plays varsity Basketball who e-mailed him: “this week he feels less safe and less positive about himself because he stared adoringly into your face as you said the word that haunts him in school every single day.” Powerful stuff. I hope Bryant listens. For the full text of Amaechi’s open letter to Bryant, click here.
Posted in Basketball
Tagged Basketball, F-word, Faggot, Gay, John Amaechi, Kobe Bryant, Slur, Sports
Another Giant Lumberjack on US 101
Icons often outlast their inspirations. Lumber and fishing long since gave way to wine and weed in California’s Mendocino County. This restaurant mascot lumberjack walks roadside forever in Willits. And he’s not the only giant lumberjack on the 101: here is another.
Posted in Mendocino County, Northern California, Signage, Timbersports
Tagged Culture, Gay, lumberjack, Mascot, Mendocino County, Photography, Statue, Timbersports, US 101, Willits
Ouch! New Yaoi Bara Manga Style California Gay S/m Erotica from JoJo Mendoco
More here and here. And a brand new 3-panel Catholic guilt redeemed or “Bless Me, Father!” image right here. For “SirYesSir”, click here.
Posted in Comics, JoJo Mendoco, Leather, Mendocino County, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Art, Bara, BDSM, Comics, Culture, Erotic, Gay, JoJo Mendoco, Kink, Leather, Manga, S/m, San Francisco, Sexy, The 15 Association, Yaoi
Gay Guerrilla Leather Bar at Straight Skylark in San Francisco #SaveTheSFEagle!
What else do we do in Leather bars other than wear leather, socialize and drink? We make out, grope, slap face and ass, suck cock, drink piss, eat cigar ashes, trade gut punches, whip and get whipped, talk trash, fuck in corners, lick boots, tap sacs, work on nips, use the slaves, and so forth. In short, we have Leathersex, or at the very least our rough version of foreplay.
In the tradition of Queer Nation Kiss Ins and the club activist Guerrilla Gay Bar scene, the San Francisco-based ad hoc Save the Eagle gang is organizing a takeover of the straight Mission district hipster bar The Skylark. Its owner is purportedly involved with underhanded machinations to acquire the lease and license on the Eagle space – and turn it into a straight bar. See more here and here.
So tonight, the Skylark goes “Leather” for the night. Well, sort of. The idea is to wear Leather, use pink highlighters to encode paper money as “gay” and spend money at the bar. If everyone “respects the space that we are borrowing tonight” as the organizers suggest, then everyone may mix just fine. This begs the question: why even have our own spaces? WE know why. But – how do we show them why…while still respecting their space? That’s a hard one!
From organizers Kyle DeVries and Anna Glendon Conda Hyde: “Tonight at 8 dress in leather and head to the Skylark bar on 16th. Mark your money with a pink pen or marker so that it is seen as coming from our community. This is not about harming the Skylark but rather showing what would be lost if the Eagle went away and showing how queer space is not always the same as “just any bar”. We as a community should be vocal and visible while respecting the space that we are borrowing tonight.
So far the Skylark has not signed a lease due to public pressure. We are the first step closer to saving the Eagle. The Board of Supervisors issued a Commendation Certificate in recognition of the Eagles efforts in raising over 3 million dollars during its 30 year run for the queer community and are working to have the space land marked. They are also hoping to work with the concerned parties to negotiate a way to keep the Eagle as a space for our community.
Thanks for showing up and especially to the 15 people who stayed till 730 to make public comment at the Board of Supervisors meeting after 6 hours of waiting.
The people united can not be divided. Deep respect Anna and Kyle”
Posted in History, Leather, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Activist, Bar, BDSM, Culture, Direct Action, Gay, History, Kink, Leather, LGBT, Mission district, San Francisco, Save the Eagle, SF Eagle, Skylark, SOMA
Over 30 Gay Leather Eagle Bars Worldwide! Will SF’s Eagle Tavern turn straight for a Skylark? #SaveTheSFEagle!
Get into a cab in any big city and say “The Eagle” and you are likely to end up in a gay Leather bar. Amsterdam, Atlanta, Barcelona, Baltimore, Boston, Charolotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Guerneville, Hartford, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Castle, New York City, Paris, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Diego, San Juan, Seattle, Tampa, Toronto, Tulsa, Vienna, and Washington DC all have or have had, their own versions of unrelated bars called The Eagle.
For the past thirty years, San Francisco has had the Eagle Tavern. Now it is slated to close at the end of the month. Concerns that the site would be sold for ultimate development into condos and shops have dimmed under the glare of the immediate crisis. The Eagle may go straight.
Community member slave jody attended Monday’s “Save the Eagle” organizing meeting and broke it down: “It is about the owner of the Skylark bar on 16th buying the business and turning it into a straight bar. Two separate transactions are involved with the sale of a bar, the sale of the business and sale of the liquor license.”
Former District 8 Supervisor and out gay mayoral hopeful Bevan Dufty is involved with the ad hoc group that is organizing an eleventh hour bid to save the beloved dive. Dufty reports: “Kyle DeVries and Anna Conda did great work turning out hundreds at the Eagle tonight for a rally focusing on saving the bar and then marching to the Skylark (whose owner is believed to be trying to force a purchase and change it from the Eagle) — there will be a rally tomorrow (Tuesday) on City Hall steps @ 1p.m. and then public comment at the Board meeting — Supervisors Kim and Campos expressed strong support for saving the Eagle and Supervisor Wiener met the crowd at the Skylark.”
For more on this unfolding story, including a mock-up of a building proposed for the site earlier this year and a short historical analysis of gentrification South of Market, click here.
Leather for Condos: San Francisco’s Eagle Tavern forced to close its Doors by the end of the Month.
Neighborhoods change. Once a dozen Leather bars lined Folsom. And then there were none. The Eagle Tavern has been a longtime mainstay of San Francisco’s diverse Leather communities. A friendly, informal place with a large patio, the Eagle has also been unique in being able to support a generous mix of queer subcultures in relative harmony. Sunday afternoons would see Leathermen and drag queens, queer stoners, musicians, hipsters and quipsters all sharing the same sunny patio.
Building proposed for site of current SF Eagle
Now the owner of the building and the site won’t renew the lease. The new year brought rumors that it would be sold to developers, and this latest news supports that. Money talks. The Eagle is a one-story sprawling quirky thing under the freeway. The above rendition is the slick new multi-use building that is proposed for the site. Joe Jervis of the popular gay blog Joe. My. God. said: “I’ve had some fantastic times at the ramshackle, broke down, SF Eagle. Most of my favorite bars have been in that sort of condition.” But when money talks, neighborhoods clean up. Soon it will even be safe for the children. Isn’t that nice?
A community action planning meeting to brainstorm ways to save the Eagle is taking place TONIGHT, Monday, 2011, at The Eagle. The ad hoc committee is organizing on Facebook here. The Eagle is located at 398 12th Street at Harrison, by the freeway.
South of Market has been changing for a long time. For a historical perspective on the shifts, and the political attitudes that shape them them, Leather historian Gayle Rubin has considerable insight. This is from 1989:
“South of Market has been undergoing so much rapid change in recent years that many of its current habitues are unaware of or uneasy about its recent past. The newspapers endlessly repeat a mantra of how brave pioneers — usually restauranteurs catering to an “upscale” crowd — have wrested the area away from the “lowlife” elements that once made the area “undesirable.” This point of view rests on the assumption that it is “right” and “good” when “disreputable” populations such as gay people, the poor, or people of color are displaced by wealthier, whiter, straighter, more “respectable” folk.
Gay “leathermen” are one of the most visible and least understood of the ostensibly vanishing groups of SOMA aboriginals. Reading about the world of leather in the straight press is a bit like reading the reports about indigenous peoples written by dumbfounded missionaries in the heyday of colonialism.
When I see the disappearance of its gay population used an indicator of the South of Market “renaissance,” I am reminded of the ways white settlers in North America spoke of the Native Americans they displaced.”
Excerpted from “Requiem for the Valley of the Leather Kings,” originally published in Southern Oracle, 1989
Updates here.
Posted in History, Leather, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Culture, Gay, Gentrification, Leather, San Francisco, SF Eagle, SOMA
California poppies.
This week we celebrated the little-known holiday of California Poppy Day, in honor of our state flower. The poppies shown here are at the Stanford Farm.
Posted in Uncategorized
Eric Robinson’s Leathermen
Friend of this site Eric Robinson recently participated in Variations, a photography exhibit curated by Tommy Reyes of Las Manos Gallery in Chicago. Robinson is an antique process photographer. He works in wet plate collodion processes, producing one of a kind plates on glass, as well as tintypes and other antique photo technologies. In the summer of 2010, he visited San Francisco and Northern California where he produced Leathermen, the series that premiered in Chicago.
P. Raleigh of The Chicago Reader reviewed the exhibit: “Eric is able to present a quality of tenderness and everyday specialness not commonly attributed to such sexual “deviancy” by the mainstream audience. Eric will be a photographer to watch out for in the future…”
Robinson will be returning to California during the summer of 2011. More on him here, here and here. And more soon.
Posted in Eric Robinson, Leather, Photography, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Art, Eric Robinson, Gay, Las Manos Gallery, Leather, Photography, San Francisco, Variations, Wet Plate
The Gay Highwaymen 