Friday, August 22, 2008

Sandi DuBowski in SF this weekend


Sandi DuBowski, star of my film Apparition of the Eternal Church, cover boy for my book OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, and director of the award-winning Trembling Before G-d, is most recently the producer of A Jihad for Love, which sold out the Castro Theater at the queer film festival this summer. For those of us who were shut out of that screening, the Lumiere in SF and the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley offer us an opportunity to see the films with both Sandi and director Parvez Sharma in the house.

Here's the scoop, from my in-box to your ears:

A Jihad for Love opens in San Francisco and Berkeley on August 22nd at the Landmark Lumiere and Shattuck Theaters!

Producer Sandi DuBowski (Director of the award-winning, Trembling Before G-d) and Director/Producer Parvez Sharma will lead Q & A after screenings from Friday, August 22nd – Monday, August 25th.

Landmark's Lumiere Theatre
1572 California St., San Francisco
(415) 267-4893
Fri-Sun at 2:15, 4:45, 7:00, 9:30;
Mon-Thu at 4:45, 7:00, 9:30
Director/Producer Parvez Sharma
& Producer Sandi DuBowski in person
4:45 & 7:00, Fri 8/22, Sun 8/24, & Mon 8/25
Buy Tickets Online

Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas
2230 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley
(510) 464-5980
Daily at 3:05, 5:15, 7:20, 9:35 (valid 8/22-28)
Director/Producer Parvez Sharma & Producer Sandi DuBowski
in person 5:15 & 7:20, Sat 8/23 at Shattuck-Berk
Buy Tickets Online

After Premieres at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals and in over 20 countries, A Jihad for Love has won five international awards and has inspired a media blitz across the world. Tens of thousands of people have participated in a thought-provoking dialogue about Islam that the film has catalyzed.

See the LA Times feature story at latimes.com.

Watch Parvez on CNN here: www.ajihadforlove.com/video.html

Please come in large numbers opening weekend! On Monday morning, the booker will determine whether to hold the film for a second week based on how many people came to see the film in its opening weekend.

Buy tickets online for the Lumiere here or for the Shattuck here.

If you would like to get involved, email sandi@filmsthatchangetheworld.com.


Visit www.ajihadforlove.com, www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com, and www.filmsthatchangetheworld.com and our Facebook groups – A Jihad for Love and Films That Change the World.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

legally wed, part V - married by the mayor

Thanks to our family friend John Cronin, there is this video clip of the wedding ceremony in the mayor's office.



After the ceremony, we went out on the mayor's balcony (where he claimed, somewhat incredibly, never to have set foot). We had a champagne toast, I played something for James on the violin, and then we posed for pictures:














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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

more ways to help with the oil spill

From Baykeeper:

One Week After
the Oil Spill

oily beach

A week has passed since the devastating container ship crash that dumped 58,000 gallons of toxic bunker fuel into our beloved Bay. Thousands of us have banded together to push the cleanup agencies to let us help strip gunk from our shorelines, hold the polluters responsible, and make sure that something like this never happens again. San Francisco Baykeeper has been leading the way by patrolling our waters and coastlines, watchdogging the agencies, mobilizing volunteers, organizing safety trainings, and testifying in front of our elected officials. Your outpouring of community support and concern has been vital to our efforts. Thank you very much!

Volunteer Trainings and Shoreline Cleanups
Thanks to the pressure we've been putting on the cleanup agencies, and to the grassroots cleanups of Kill the Spill, we've finally got a few more training opportunities for you. Participating in these trainings is the only way to legally help out with beach cleanups. Please attend! No pre-registration is required, but show up early because space is limited.

San Francisco
Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Certification
Saturday, November 17
County Fair Building
9th Ave. & Lincoln Ave. in Golden Gate Park
One training at 8am - 12pm
O
ne training at 1pm - 5pm

The City of San Francisco will be leading daily cleanups for trained workers. Call 311 to find out where to go or visit http://www.sfgov.org/site/sf311_index.asp?id=70813.

Berkeley
Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Certification
Saturday, November 17
Berkeley Senior Center at 1900 Sixth St.
8am - 12pm

For cleanup schedules, visit www.cityofberkeley.info

Half Moon Bay
Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Certification
Thursday, November 15
IDES Hall, Main Street
5pm - 9pm


For more info, visit smcalert.info

Many unofficial cleanups, which are not endorsed by Baykeeper, are being organized here http://sfoilspill.blogspot.com/ and here http://www.obviously.com/tech_tips/oil_spill_volunteer_instructions.html.

Hearing on the Oil Spill
Thursday, November 15
10 am – 10 pm
Emeryville City Council Chambers, 2nd Floor
1333 Park Avenue
Emeryville, CA

Baykeeper will testify in front of Assemblywoman Loni Hancock and Members of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources.

Oil Spill Response Fundraisers
Doc's Clock
Proceeds from select beer sales and donations accepted.
Friday, November 16
6 pm - 2 am
2575 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Email us at volunteer@baykeeper.org if you want to sponsor a fundraiser!

Please continue to contact friends to sign up for volunteer alerts or to make a donation to support San Francisco Baykeeper’s efforts out on the water to respond to this crisis.

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Oil spill volunteer update

This from Baykeeper:

Baykeeper Supporters
To the Rescue!


Thank you for your support in response to Wednesday's oil spill. We appreciate the outpouring of offers to help and we'll keep you updated on opportunities as they arise. It'll take all of us working together to clean up our precious Bay after this oil spill's destructive wake.

While we are heartened by the overwhelming interest in getting involved in a clean up, a word of caution: chemicals in oil can impair breathing and may lead to long-term health affects. If you are not properly trained in oil spill clean up and rescue, please stay away from polluted beaches and stay out of the water to keep yourself and your families safe.

As of Friday evening, the first opportunity to volunteer is for those interested in attending a public workshop. The Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response is holding the following informational wildlife care trainings.

November 10, 9:30 - 11:30 PM
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
99 Grove Street, San Francisco
(415) 974-4060

November 10, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Harbor Master Richmond Marina
1340 Marina Way South, Richmond
(510) 236-1013

November 10, 5-7 PM
Headlands Institute
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Building 1033, Sausalito
(415) 332-5771


Additional volunteer opportunities will likely emerge in the upcoming days and weeks. We will let you know as soon as we have further information from our partners including the Oiled Wildlife Care Network. Consider forwarding this message to your friends and ask them to sign up on our website to show their support. You can also help out by making a donation to sustain Baykeeper's work to hold the responsible parties accountable in cleaning up this spill. Your contributions will help us respond to this crisis.

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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Wrenching the Castro into the news

Fresh paint, bright banners, million-dollar condos:
"These are wrenching times for San Francisco’s historic gay village..."


The Times story about the demise of gay neighborhoods is so squarely on the post-gay beat that I would feel obliged to blog about it even if it weren't so terribly askew in the context department.

Broadly speaking, Patricia Leigh Brown got the story right: the Castro has become a gentrified version of itself that is too precious and expensive to welcome gay refugees from those terribly benighted flyover states, and the need for such a mecca has diminished as those places have become less benighted.

The trouble with the story is that it mixes up distinct phenomena: gentrification, straightification, and Halloween, and it tries to freshen a story without acknowledging that it's twenty years old and far more complex than the story makes it seem.

The Castro is a neighborhood, not a museum. It changes gradually but sometimes radically. Since turning gay thirty years ago, it has followed the gentrification trajectory that has revived or plagued urban neighborhoods (depending on your point of view, which is probably determined by your income) since the Reagan administration at least. What happened in the Castro isn't very different from what happened in SoHo or the Haight Ashbury over the hill--in fact, according to Randy Shilts in his brief history of the neighborhood in The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, it was because rents were going up around Haight and Ashbury that young immigrant gays transfered operations to 18th and Castro. Like artists (which many of them were), gays made the Castro attractive and comparably safe. The neighborhood was unaffordable twenty years ago, a disappointment for young people who wanted to move there whether they were seeking refuge, community, easy sex, or all of the above. It became especially unaffordable, like most parts of San Francisco, after Marc Andreessen commercialized the Web browser twelve years ago. The idea that Arquitectonica condos mark some sort of sea change is nonsense.

the prospect of half-million-dollar condos inhabited by many straight people underscores a demographic shift.

Many straight people? This is reportorial laziness pure and simple, not just because of the safe, virtually meaningless "many," but because it smooths over the single most salient difference between the gays generally and the true victims of urban gentrification (primarily disadvantaged ethnic minorities but also young people generally and artists, though they're typically part of the problem). By and large, the gays have held onto the Castro. The blacks have not held onto the Fillmore. The Italians have not held onto North Beach. Yes, there are strollers and same sex couples marauding through the streets of Eureka Valley, but they were there ten years ago and they were there thirty years ago. As for the gays, the new arrivals may be unable to afford an apartment at Diamond and 19th (join the club), but their older gay brothers and sisters have double incomes, most of them have no kids, and they have jobs in venture capital and law and high-tech. They have stock options. They get their nails done. The gays are getting pushed out of the Castro and other gays are moving in.

And what about those huddled masses of young gay men and women, yearning to live in the gay ghetto? Brown clearly did not do her research at night. There are more fun parties, packed with younger and far more ethically diverse gay crowds, on almost every night, in the Castro, than at any time in my memory. 440 Castro (formerly Daddy's) is packed with kids on Wednesday nights. So is the Bar on Castro on Thursdays, the Cafe on Fridays. These multiracial young people may not be able to call the Castro home--yet--and they may never want to. But they sure do party there, and as the story reports from shrinks with the 'Net-addicted, depressed gay clients, the night life ain't nothing.

The last thing that bothered me about Brown's story is lumping in the Halloween debacle with the gentrification issue. Unrelated! Except, perhaps, if you're going to draw some sort of analogy with the uncostumed straight Muggles wrecking the party for the rest of us. Is the Castro in the grip of a crime wave, of which the Halloween shootings are an integral part? Show me the numbers. I'd be extremely surprised if crime rates in the neighborhood are significantly worse now than they were ten or twenty years ago.

I gave up on Halloween in the Castro long ago, and it had less to do with unwelcome heterosexuals than unparticipatory spectators, teenage rowdiness and, frankly, boredom. That straight woman whose babies wear "I love my daddies" t-shirts? At least she's trying.

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