Sophie Maxwell Withdraws Name from Promoter Legislation

Word comes from Supervisor Bevan Dufty's office that Sophie Maxwell, the original sponsor, has withdrawn her name from the new nightlife legislation. Though the Mayor's name is still on it as a sponsor, it now has no support from the Board of Supervisors, meaning it's effectively dead. Everyone who turned out to oppose it should congratulate themselves for their efforts. Good job, everybody!

Update on Promoter Permit Legislation: Rejected Unanimously at Entertainment Commission Meeting

At Tuesday's meeting of the Entertainment Commission over fifty members of the public, including a wedding planner, representatives of non-profit and fundraising agencies, two members of the Board of Supervisors, venue operators, and promoters all stood up at the podium to voice their opposition to the new promoter permit legislation. At the end of the meeting, all five attending commissioners also opposed it, and the President of the Commission, Audrey Joseph, said that when the review of the legislation was moved from discussion this week to an action item at the next meeting of EC, they would tell the Board of Supervisors they did not support it. Since no one spoke up in support of the new legislation, including anyone from Sophie Maxwell's office, which introduced it, this appears to be dead in the water. To drive the final nails in the coffin, everyone opposing this should still write to their supervisors and let them know how you feel, since, with this much opposition, few Supervisors would be willing to buck against their constituents to support it.

I went into the Commission meeting with a real sense of anxiety over how this could turn out, though I knew that at least Commissioners Alan and Joseph were sympathetic to the opposition. There were only a few people in the room when I showed up at 4.45, including several people I had contacted personally, so I was afraid we would be a minority voice, but then the room began to fill up and soon reached overflow capacity. I had planned to speak, but it really wasn't necessary, as every point I would have made was brought up by someone else. It was very gratifying to see how the whole entertainment community, with clubs and promoters and non-profits from across the musical and sexual spectrum, could come together like that. When I was talking with David Peterson of Fag Fridays and Temple later, he said it reminded him of 2000, when the SFLNC came together to deal with the club crackdown from Captain Martell of the Mission District. It made me think that we need to have a greater sense of solidarity among the nightlife community, because we really are all in it together, and we need to come together more often, and more effectively, to restore San Francisco to its rightful place as a center of world-class nightlife.

I was also thrilled to see Supervisor Bevan Dufty come in and state, in unequivocal terms, his opposition to the legislation, including the possibility of amending it. Dufty has taken a lot of heat over the Halloween debacle for the past couple years, and has been pilloried as a representative of the bourgeouis gay class that has "ruined" the Castro, but I've seen Dufty out clubbing, and in our discussions with him a few weeks ago, I was impressed that he clearly understood the implications of this legislation and would have nothing to do with it. He might be guilty of being more of a pragmatist than the ideologue that many people seem to want in their Supervisors, but I can't really fault him for doing what a politician is supposed to do, which is to seek out compromises that can work for everyone, and come down hard on those things that make no sense for anyone. I was happy to join in the very enthusiastic applause he received after making his comment.

Gerardo Sandoval sent his legislative aide, Luke Klipp, to represent him. Sandoval seems more equivocal, according to Klipp's statement, since he recognizes the problems with this legislation but is "willing to work" with Supervisor Maxwell on it. If you happen to live in Sandoval's district, you might want to shoot him an email and let him know that there's no way that this legislation can be made to work.

By my count, there are at least four Supervisors who will oppose this legislation, either wholly or in party, leaving only two more to find to get it killed. My feeling is that, if Sophie Maxwell is smart, she will withdraw it, rather than face political embarrassment over having it defeated in a Board vote, and come back to work directly with the entertainment community to deal with the issues that brought this about in the first place. And shame on the Mayor's office for setting her up with this ill-conceived bit of political theater.

Minutes of the meeting, including video, will eventually be up on the Entertainment Commission Meeting Information webpage.

Update on Promoter Permit Legislation

This past Friday I got together with Ted Strawser of the SFParty Party, Tenderloin community activist Julian Davis, David Peterson of Fag Fridays and Temple, and Sister Barbi Mitzvah of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to talk with Supervisor Bevan Dufty about the new promoter permit legislation proposed by Sophie Maxwell. I'm pleased to say that Supervisor Dufty supports our position that this legislation will have a severe negative impact on San Francisco nightlife, that it impacts independent hobbyist promoters and non-profits more than the "rogue" promoters it's supposed to, and that, in the end, it really makes no sense. He told us flat out that he wouldn't support it when it came to a vote of the Board. If, that is, it comes to that; it might be possible to convince Sophie Maxwell to withdraw the legislation entirely, and wheels are turning behind the scenes with that goal in mind. Meanwhile, the next legislative step is a hearing before the Entertainment Commission on Tuesday, April 1, at 4.00 PM.

If you're concerned about this legislation, you can check it out on the SFGOV website (click the link for 080321, Promoter permits), then send an email to your Supervisor, or attend the meeting of the Entertainment Commission on April 1 to let the Commissioners know how you feel about it.

Event Review: Halloween in the Castro, Much Ado About Nothing

By now you've probably read the Chronicle article about Halloween in the Castro, and what a lame fizzle it turned out to be. After dinner, around 8, the boyfriend and I got into some appropriate duds - he in a fox suit, me in an East German border guard Lieutenant's uniform (yes, the real thing). I was hoping for a chance to riff off the police state-like aspect of the Castro by asking people for their papers, but since the vast majority of people in the Castro were already dressed like cops, there wasn't much point.

We walked from our place on Diamond Street down to the Castro, up Castro to Noe, and then back down the other side of Castro. Boring, boring, boring. There were some people in costume, and a few moments of camera flash-flash, but nothing at all like in years past. At Market and Castro there was a someone dressed as a nun with a megaphone intoning "Don't vote for Gavin Newsom," but it was more evocative of a brain-dead megaphone than any real act of provocation.

We saw two bars open - Badlands, which was charging a $3 cover, and the Bar, which was dead empty - and probably would have stopped in for a drink if I hadn't been such a lame-ass and forgotten my wallet. But overall, there were far too many other things going on in the city and I think everyone just decided, meh, why deal with it when there are other things to do and places to go?

So, this turned out to be the Halloween that wasn't. On the one hand, I was thrilled to not have to deal with the goons and yabbos who regularly show up and make Halloween in the Castro a less-than-pleasant experience. On the other, I wanted my goddamn neighborhood back. I wanted to be able to get dressed up and walk around to the bars and see people I knew and enjoy the holidy, rather than feeling like I was under quarantine. The boyfriend and I had planned to go over to Oakland for a party, but when we realized that we couldn't take any public transportation back, and I was unsure about having to deal with the whole parking thing, we decided to stay in the City. If we had wanted to really go out, we would have had to have headed off to some other neighborhood, and honestly, nobody we knew seemed that enthusiastic about going out.

I really resent the way that, because some assholes are unable to figure out how to comport themselves in public situations, the rest of us have to lose out on fun. I also am very tired of the way in which the whole "controversy" around Halloween has had less to do with addressing those issues, and more to do with the political ambitions of those making the controversy. Does Alix Rosenthal really want to make Halloween in the Castro fun for those who live there, or does she just want to use it as a wedge against Beven Dufty? I didn't see much from the Citizens from Halloween that would lead me to believe that they had any better ideas about how to manage this event than the city (well, aside from portalets, portalets, portalets); rather, it seemed to me that it was more of a collection of anti-Newsom forces than people with real ideas about how to deal with a crowd as large as a third of the entire city of San Francisco in a space of about twelve square blocks. What is the city supposed to do about managing an event like that? Yes, we can handle Pink Saturday, and we can handle Folsom Street Fair, but we have to realize that those events are actually dispersed over wide areas and they attract very specific crowds who are into the event. Halloween, on the other hand, attracts a much more diverse crowd, including a lot of people who are very uncomfortable with being around gays and lesbians. And, of course, a fair number of just drunken assholes who, once they put on costume, lose many of their inhibitions around good conduct. I don't particularly like Gavin Newsom as a Mayor, but I also don't know what he and the city can do about making people not behave like assholes if that's what they want to do.

Next year Halloween falls on a Friday, and I imagine that, with the typical run of Friday night events, there will be plenty to distract people from showing up in the Castro. I hope that's the case, and, after two years of "nothing special" in the Castro, it might return to being more of a neighborhood party. And by that time, I also hope that we will have people ready to address the issues around the event in a constructive manner, rather than making it another example of the poison politics that dominates our city's cultural landscape.