Celebrations for Harvey Milk Day set for around the Castro

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Roy McKenzie

Harvey Milk Day May 22nd It’s been 5 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger established Harvey Milk Day. On May 22nd, we celebrate the life of this first-ever openly gay politician, gay rights activist, lover, brother, and to a lucky some, old friend. If you’re looking for a way to celebrate, check out some of the events happening around the Castro this week (if we are missing any, let us know and we will get them up!):

May 19th
At 1PM at Jane Warner Plaza, speeches, music and a reenactment of Milk’s stirring 1977 “You’ve Got To Have Hope” speech. The speech will be performed by five local artists: Courtney Walsh and Aaron Wimmer, two actors from “Dear Harvey”, the recent New Conservatory play about Milk’s life; Randall Mann, local poet and winner of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry; Sister Roma, drag artist and 20-year member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and; Andrea Shorter, political activist. Organized by the Castro Community Benefit District.

May 22nd
All day at the GLBT History Museum they will be giving free admission to all visitors and providing special Milk-related displays and tours. In addition, the museum is extending a welcome to Bay Area schools, many of which plan GLBT history activities in conjunction with Harvey Milk Day.

At 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30 at the Castro Theatre, the non-profit group, Friends of Harvey Milk, will be showing the film MILK which charts the last eight years of Milk’s life and his political platform, revealing a legacy that resonates in the here and now.

At 7PM at Books, Inc., in comemmoration of Harvey Milk’s birthday the SF GLBT History Museum and Books Inc. present An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk’s Speeches and Writings, with editors Jason Edward Black and Charles E. Morris III, photographer & former employee at Harvey Milk’s camera shop Daniel Nicoletta, and Harvey’s speechwriter, Frank Robinson. Check out our review of the book.

Peaches Christ Exposed: Summer Madness on Deck for the Castro

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Waiyde Palmer

Peaches Christ serving ‘face’.

Peaches Christ-aka Joshua Grannell-is a San Francisco drag-terrorist/cult leader, emcee and award-winning horror film director, writer and co-star of 2010′s ‘All About Evil’. Peaches first burst onto the City’s club scene in the early, heady, years of Heklina’s world infamous club, Trannyshack, held weekly at The Stud in SoMa.

In 1998 Peaches established the wildly popular Midnight Mass movie series at the now shuttered Landmark Bridge Theatre. There she produced original stage show interpretations of her high camp/cult favorite midnight movies as pre-show entertainment to standing room only crowds. In addition to the films she often scooped up special guest stars to pay the stage a visit as well-Mink Stole, Tura Satana, Linda Blair, RuPaul, Elvira (Mistress of the Dark) and John Waters to name but a few have held court alongside PC. As the productions and crowds outgrew the capacity of The Bridge Peaches relocated most of these spectacles-er-spectaculars to the Castro Theatre where they’ve continued to attract sold out audiences.

She gave the Biscuit a sneak peek into the upcoming Peaches Christ Summer Series at the Castro and the 40th celebration staging of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with special guest star, Patricia Quinn.
Peaches Christ: Hey! (gasping) Sorry-outta breath from running up some stairs.
Castro Biscuit: UH. Huh. (dripping with sexual innuendo) Shhhuuuree.
PC: (Laughing) Oh girl, no. Its a work day.
CB: So what’s on deck over at The Castro this coming Summer? I heard there’s going to be four events?

Mark Patton in ‘Nightmare on Elm St. Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge

PC: Yes! First up in June is Night of a 1000 Scream Queens, ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ with special guest star Mark Patton thats co-presented with Frameline. It’s possibly the gayest horror movie ever made. In July we’re showing ‘The Craft’ and I’ve got a couple of my friend’s from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Alaska Thunderfuck and Sharon Needles set to help with the pre-show madness. In August its my annual presentation of the crowd favorite and Midnight Mass staple, ‘Showgirls’-free lap dance with every large popcorn purchased of course. And for Halloween we’re gonna close out the season with ‘Gray Gardens’ starring ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ 2013 winner, Jinkx Monsoon. She’ll be recreating her role from the Season 5 contest as Lil’ Edie while I’ll be her foil, Big Edie, in the pre-show.
CB: Which upcoming Castro show are you most excited about?
PC: I’m always excited about whatever comes next in the schedule to be honest. Its been my dream to bring the only boy ‘scream queen’ of horror films, Mark Patton to San Francisco for Midnight Mass. I ran into him randomly when I wandered into his fantastic shop in Puerto Vallarta, It’s really cool-stuffed with glitter encrusted handbags and Mexican folk art. We hit it off and hatched this plan. I had to include Frameline as its Gay Pride and all the Queer subtext of the film is so interesting. Mark’s character in ‘Freddie’s Revenge’ is the lone, male survivor in the film series ever.

Alaska Thunderfuck

Sharon Needles

Jinkx Monsoon as Lil Edie on RuPaul’s Drag Race

CB: It’s cool that you’re bringing Alaska and Sharon in for roles in the pre-show for everyone’s favorite Goth 90′s Witch-fest, ‘The Craft’. What’s it been like for Peaches to work with so many of the contestants and winners of RuPaul’s Drag Race?
PC: It’s really opened the doors for us on every level. Their fame extends deeply into the drag culture the world over. Outside of SF mine has been primarily within the Horror/Gore film buff community. Now we’re seeing new fans and admirers the world over tuning in as a result of our association. I mean you have no idea just how popular they all are. It’s kind of mind-boggling. I am honored to be friends with these talented gals and can’t wait to see what our collaborations are going to accomplish.
CB: This weeks event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is quite a departure from your usual Midnight Mass formula.
PC: I can honestly say this is the most lavish and involved staging of any show I’ve ever attempted and the first we’ve ever done without showing the movie. The initial idea was our special guest star, Patricia Quinn, who played Magenta in the original film. We’re really lucky to have her here-it’s her first visit to San Francisco. I’m so excited-the cast is superb, we’ve got great singers and musicians-we’ve rehearsed our feet off and there are gonna be some surprises that people aren’t expecting. The cherry on top is Patricia Quinn, reprising her role as Magenta and singing all of her iconic songs.
CB: What’s it been like working alongside Patricia? I mean her career has been so long and varied from being on the holy grail of UK Sci Fi, ‘Dr. Who’, to working with the kings off all things humor, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
PC: Well, she’s a real royal ‘Lady’. I mean it. She was married to the late actor Robert Stephens who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth which makes her Lady Stephens. She has some great stories about the Royals and I hope I can convince her to share some during this week ends event. She’s so much fun. She has impeccable style and taste. I really admire her so very much.
CB: Wow. A Lady?! It’s not everyday an Irish lass from Belfast becomes a member of English royalty! How many shows are there?
PC: Three in all. Friday May 10th and two shows on Saturday May 11th a matinée and an evening show. I’m so excited I can hardly wait!

You can purchase tickets to the 40th anniversary celebration and uniquely San Francisco Peaches Christ staging of the Rocky Horror Picture Show here.
Tickets to any of the coming movies and stage shows this Summer and Fall staged at the world-famous Castro Theatre can be found here.

Castro Theater’s Famous Mighty Wurlitzer Needs Funds & Your Help

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Waiyde Palmer

Castro Theatre’s organ rising from the pit to entertain the film going troops. Photo: Flickr Olive Witch

The SF Chronicle clued us in that over at Castro Theatre, the City’s last single screen movie house, the Mighty Wurlizter that’s risen from the pit to entertain film goers for generations is in jeopardy and it’s organists has started a fundraising non-profit to help it stay put and expand its scope.

According to organist, David Hegarty, whose been belting out the signature song ‘San Francisco’ atop the bench perched in front of the pedals and keys of the giant music box for the last 30 years, the cultural icon is in deep peril.

He revealed the organ is actually not even owned by the Castro Theatre but a separate individual who’s getting ready to move away from the Bay Area and take the beloved musical instrument with them or find a buyer and sell it outright.

The Mighty Wurlitzer

On top of that potential tragedy the organ needs a complete overhaul and an expansion to keep up with the demands of a 21st century audience.

That augmentation plan includes adding surround sound speakers, more pipes, and enlarge the keyboard console.

Once completed the face lift will raise the bar on the level of sound the organ produces to a orchestra level instrument attracting greater attention the world over.

The monetary fundraising goal needed to keep our neighborhoods infamous organ in place is a million bucks. Mr. Hegarty has secured the needed 501(c)3 permit and established a non-profit group, SFCODA, to manage and fundraise on the Wurlitzer’s behalf.

That is some fat cash-especially in these slowly recovering economic times-but the City and the neighborhood will hopefully meet the challenge.

It would be a true tragedy to lose the organ from the Castro Theatre where it’s been since it arrived in the early 70′s from Detroit where it’d been constructed to entertain at the old State Theatre prior to being razed.

The Castro Theatre circa 1923-a year after the Art Deco masterpiece opened.

Our heritage as a City is constantly under the strain to remodel and discard. We nearly lost the treasured Maxfield Parrish painting, ‘Pied Piper’, this last week from its perch above the Palace Hotel bar where it’s watched over City patrons for the last 103 years as they celebrated victories and drowned their sorrows.

As new owners, developers and emigrants arrive in SF with less interest in its history and preservation we will see more and more of what makes the City the ‘City’ be chipped away by NIMBY attitudes and beliefs.

The battle to save the Castro’s Wurlitzer is worth the money. Click the link. Spread the word. We hope never to arrive at the Castro Theatre, popcorn in hand, ready to enjoy the melodic strains of show tunes and classical ballads only to be told that this was the day the music finally died.

‘Sunset Stories’: Not Your Average Fairy Princess Tale

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Jennifer Morris

Premiering at the Castro Theatre as part of CAAMFest-formerly the SF Int’l Asian American Film Festival, SUNSET STORIES is a true labor of love.

Set in the East Los Angeles neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park, it could just as easily be set in SF with a cast and crew who will be familiar to any savvy Castro audience.

Directors Silas Howard (By Hook or By Crook, seminal SF Punk band Tribe 8), Ernetso Foronda (Wildness and The Owls) and writer Valerie Stadler (For the Love of Dolly) begin their film with the wonderful promise of a princess story for a couple of kids in a cancer ward.

Monique Gabriela Curnen

JP Sung Kang

Our unlucky Princess is May (Monique Gabriela Curnen, CSI, Lie to Me, Fast & Furious), a hyper active pediatric Nurse who must travel to her hometown LA to pick up a cooler full of bone marrow needed for a transplant.

Soon after her trip begins, her world turns upside down when past and present collide and she runs smack into JP Sung Kang ( Fast Five, Live Free or Die Hard, Fast & Furious), the man she left behind five years ago. Thrown off by this chance encounter, she looses the cooler and her anything-but-fairytale adventure begins. JP reluctantly agrees to help May, as they search up and down Sunset Boulevard.

Mx. Justin V. Bond

They come across an enchanting cast of characters as they wander about bouncing amid the madness that can be LA including a Punk Rock Latina who leaves them graffiti clues about the cooler, a cranky old dyke who fixes motorcycles, a bag lady who’s Kevin Bacon’s biggest fan, and a lovelorn transgender chanteuse played by San Francisco favorite Justin Vivian Bond.

As the cooler travels from dumpster to taco truck, we are treated to a very alternative princess story that will satisfy both the incurable romantic and the bitter cynic alike.

Highest praise for this picture playing Sunday, March 17th, at 9:45PM. You can purchase tickets HERE.

Photos: Castro Area Time Machine

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Waiyde Palmer

Castro Street, 1948, street cars were used as primary modes of transportation up and down the street. They were discontinued at the end of that year and replaced with busses. The #24 MUNI line now partially operates on that same route.

Many of our long-term Biscuit followers know we’re fans of finding great pictures that tell the story of our neighborhood though the ages.

Images provide a visual narrative of what it was like to live, work and pursue the American dream from within the ever evolving confines of our little piece of heaven.

Recently we unearthed a treasure trove of pix while trolling the web for content of Castro specific interest.

It’s a Facebook page called, Lost San Francisco, chronicling the City and all its neighborhoods primarily between the years of 1865 and 1985.

This well researched page provides a City history lesson using stories and pictures unearthing the evolution of not only the Castro, but, the City as a whole.

It’s a pre-digital era timeline of our town’s growing pains. How each new wave of immigrants pulled it in new directions and affected it’s architecture. How the new wealthy who’d made it big in business showed off their bling in homes and downtown edifices named in their honor. And how, no matter what human endeavor may occur, Mother Nature occasionally took her pound of flesh out of the City’s, 7 by 7 mile, landscape.

We perused the length of the page’s history and have poached some great images that help piece the historic puzzle together of our neighborhood and City.

1927: Castro and 18th Street. New sewer lines installed.

1860: Duboce Triangle. The ‘Wild West’ was still a part of SF life. Acres given to cattle to keep the City fed.

1952/2013 Bi Rite Market: Everyone’s fave market to grab grub to picnic in Dolores Park on the border of Castro. Opened by 3 WWII Army pals it’s served it’s community faithfully ever since.

You can’t tell the story of the neighborhood or the City without including a nod to the 1906 Earthquake which reshaped the face of it forever. This photo is a rare find. A color shot , perhaps one of three in existence, of the City from Upper Market, above Van Ness and Market, looking toward the decimated downtown.
At the foot of the neighborhood, Market/Duboce and Market/Laguna, where in 1880, the City expanded Market Street toward the ‘new’ neighborhoods of Duboce Triangle/Castro, the devastation was immense. Nearly 3 decades of hard work and progress was wiped out in one fell swoop by the Quake. Survivors fled the fire storms of downtown and battled block by block along side the exhausted SFFD to contain the fire from eating what remained.

1906: Market and Laguna-refugees gather on the hill that would later become todays Fed. Mint while fires rage.

1906 Duboce & Market The City burns and neighbors fight block by block for their homes and lives.

1906: 15 Hermann Street. Long tents set up for Quake survivors near where today’s Castro Safeway stands at the foot of Mint Hill.

1906 Market & Duboce. Fires out, tents up, rebuild begins within a week as 1000′s are buried and mourned. The spirit of SF cannot be broken

The same scorched area, Duboce and Market, gateway to the Castro, 1951

1951: Duboce & Market. Many of the buildings you see here are still recognizable today.

For those Biscuit readers on Facebook we hope you ‘like’ Lost San Francisco’s page and support their honorable and impassioned effort to keep our history alive and a part of our present.

Ready to Walk the Red Carpet? The 2013 Nitey Awards are Just Around the Corner

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Waiyde Palmer

The 2013 debut of the Nitey Awards will take place on March 4th at the historic Castro Theatre. The Nitey is an award dedicated to honoring excellence in SF Nightlife’s world-class, always fun, multi million dollar industry.

The Niteys were conceived Site and Sound, a nonprofit who supports and promotes music, the arts, and popular culture.

The Niteys also enjoy the considerable life experience and backing of Audrey Joseph, former President, and current member of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission.

Having Audrey on board is no small matter. Her resume is unmatched in SF Nightlife. She opened the wildly popular club and event venue, 177 Townsend/174 King Street, home to the infamous clubs Pleasuredome and Club Universe. Both were ground zero for the then burgeoning Gay Circuit scene. She founded Mezzanine (444 Jessie) which has led the way for new and established DJ talent to showcase their skills. She has also organized countless benefits for LGBT causes, the LazyBear event and served her community on a variety of successful projects.

According to organizers the concept for the Niteys occurred after the City released it’s 2012, economic impact report, “Nightlife, the Other 9 to 5″, that’d been commissioned by Sup. Scott Wiener and others to analyze the impact of club/bar life on the wealth of San Francisco. The figures spoke for themselves. Millions upon millions of funds to both the economy and the tax base plus over 48,000 jobs. Somewhere a light bulb went off and it was apparent that this kind of success deserves to be officially recognized and awarded.

Renee Richardson

Liam Mayclem

VIP and Red Carpet kicks off the event. Hosts Renee Richardson-KFOG Musical Director/On Air Personality and Liam Mayclem-CBS 5′s ‘Eye on the Bay’-will helm the affair where awards will be given in 23 categories. The awards themselves were juried by entertainment media, night life and industry professionals and the public. Entertainment will be placed strategically throughout the event from bands to a dance troop.

Post award show the party moves to the Patio Cafe where victors can celebrate with supporters and everyone can network and mingle.

Tickets and more info can be purchased from Ticketfly here.

Mini Cooper gets frisky with a Prius and more Flickr finds from this weekend

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Roy McKenzie

A Mini Cooper getting rambunctious outside the Castro Theatre this past Friday (credit: Shockingly Tasty)

Twin Peaks bar with Castro Street sign (credit: dgtl1)

Nudist in underwear on Saturday in Jane Warner Plaza (credit: zot0)

Blah Guy — Somewhere in the Castro (credit: pjedlund)

Castro Wind Mobile near entrance to Castro Theatre Parking Lot (credit: zot0)

Atomic Castro (credit: the other Martin Taylor)

The Castro Biscuit

The Castro Area Happenings Blog

Tag Archives: Castro Theatre

Celebrations for Harvey Milk Day set for around the Castro

Peaches Christ Exposed: Summer Madness on Deck for the Castro

Castro Theater’s Famous Mighty Wurlitzer Needs Funds & Your Help

‘Sunset Stories’: Not Your Average Fairy Princess Tale

Photos: Castro Area Time Machine

Ready to Walk the Red Carpet? The 2013 Nitey Awards are Just Around the Corner

Mini Cooper gets frisky with a Prius and more Flickr finds from this weekend

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