Thanks to the San Francisco Imperial Council of Emperors and Emperor John Weber for electing me as an Imperial Prince. It is a thank you gesture, I was told- for publicizing their charity events in the Bay Times and other publications. And thanks for the impressive medallion that some soccer friends want me to wear daily with a leather cape that they will give to me as a gift. But an ex said that black leather on me is redundant. I met the  Imperials as a teenager when I was invited by Polk Street psychedelic light store owner Al Jutzi and the Territo brothers who owned the avant  garde Polk Street Town Squire clothing store (that was featured in an Andy Warhol film) to escort Empress Willis to the 1969 Coronation Gala. From that night when I met Empresses Jose, Maxine, Willis, and Bella, I have promoted and publicized the Imperials, who have raised millions of dollars since the court was founded in the 1960’s. 

I shared the honor on Saturday night on stage at the 2009 Coronation with State Senator Mark Leno and photographer Rich Stadtmiller. I have served the Imperial Court in their fundraising efforts for 40 years, and everyone can join them in supporting their Community Thrift Store at 623 Valencia Street.. Contributions of items can be credited to a favorite non-profit and there is unusually attractive array of items for sale, and the sales also are a fundraiser for charities.

I have resisted an offer to have crowns sewn onto my underwear (a Clifton Webb in “The Razor’s Edge” reference). And the same police officers who implied that I could legally park my car on the sidewalk in 1999 (thanks to Supervisor Bevan Dufty) and 2008 (thanks to Assemblyman Tom Ammiano) after mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom proclaimed Rink Day in San Francisco- said the same thing after they saw my new medallion. They also know that I do not own a car.

Rink
San Francisco

Get a Life, Arthur
Good Lord Arthur Evans, get out and volunteer or get a hobby and start enjoying life. The incessant diatribes (unfortunately published almost weekly) in the SF Bay Times indicate a life of criticism and projected self judgment.

The recent letter “Rafael Mandelman’s Albatross from the Milk Club” (MARCH 19) is yet another of your narrow-minded obsessions with bashing the progressive community in San Francisco. To attack individuals such as Eileen Hansen, Alix Rosenthal and Robert Haaland is laughable considering their proven leadership and advocacy of women, transgenders, labor, election reform, the working poor, and so much more.

Additionally, your attack of the Milk Club is ungrounded given its strong history of progressive leadership in this city and numerous victories for candidates and propositions year after year.

Not everyone tows the line for machine politics in San Francisco as evidenced by the sweeping changes brought about by the return of supervisorial district elections in 2000. In spite of being outspent year after year, progressives maintain their majority on the Board today.

Frankly, I stopped reading your letters years ago but this recent one caught my eye since I am fully endorsing Rafael Mandelman for District 8 supervisor in 2010.

Gary Virginia
San Francisco

Is Milk Realistic?
It is interesting to consider Milk and Brokeback Mountain as movies, their timing and what they say to and about homosexuals.
Like Stonewall, Milk, the man and “event” owe a little of their success to the media. As has been pointed out, not only did the movement for homosexual civil rights (and please, that covers - despite dear Morris Kight, et al - gay rights, lesbian rights, queer rights, dyke rights, etc.) start in Los Angeles - again, Henry Gerber and any others were a blip and died fast-but so were the first of everything, including riots, or as Stonewallers prefer, rebellions, happened in California but the media ignored them. And so lazy “historians” have ignored them. As they have ignored the founders of Mattachine and ONE. Has anyone wondered why there is no mention of Mattachine in the movie Milk?

Milk came to San Francisco, as hundreds of thousands of others came to California, some from New York, etc., perhaps because they knew that things were happening in California. Hal Call came to California. He joined early Mattachine and immediately started taking over, using the clam that the founders were communists and this would hurt the cause-probably true, although some think that ONE went too far in the other direction, being mainly conservative Republicans.

There should be no question that Harvey Milk was a great person, and inspired many people, including those who heard of him in other places. But it does not take away one iota from him and his co-workers to point out that this is true of Harry Hay, Don Slater, Dorr Legg, Jim Kepner, Frank Kameny, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Frank Kameny, Barbara Grier, Barbara Gittings, et al.

Such people, publications and organizations had been preparing the way for Stonewall and Milk since the early 1950s. And that is true of Mattachine in San Francisco, and Hal Call, Don Lucas et al (Guy Strait, SIR, Tavern Guild, etc).

What worries me about Milk is its main point, success. All the marches, the victory of No on 6 - how would people have thought of this if they had seen it before the loss of Prop 8? You can’t miss the exact tactics used by the religious bigots on 6 and 8. Only time can tell if the people running No on 8 had learned nothing from the No on 6 people or if new times needed new tactics.

And if young people come away from Milk feeling good and hopeful, will they join an organization to continue Harvey’s work? Or do they think, despite anti-gay marriage wins, Milk did it, so we can just enjoy it?

But if people get a good feeling from Milk, did they get a realistic view? And how does that compare in promoting the cause of civil rights for homosexuals to Brokeback Mountain. That is not a “gay” movie. And while today many people say to those two men, and others like them, then and now, get out of that place and go to the big city. How realistic is that today, with our economy, as it was at the time of the movie?

And do we abandon the rest of the nation to religious bigots except the blue states and urban areas? As we abandon the churches to the bigots? And is it possible that many people, seeing and feeling the pain of the men of Brokeback Mountain might finally come to a better understanding of what society has done to homosexuals? As entertainment perhaps Milk is better, as education, I’m not sure. And I wonder how I would feel if Milk had come first? But I have no doubt that both will influence everyone, even those who don’t bother to see the films. And does it do any good to tell someone that they should see them?

Billy Glover
Santa Rosa

Where’s Gavin?
Gavin Newsom should be addressed by his name only since he’s not really an acting Mayor. Running, figuratively and factually, from his own demons and for higher office while issuing one press release after another in lieu of running San Francisco isn’t governing. I thought Gavin was a great supervisor for the wealthy Marina district Mayor Brown appointed him to fill, but when he ran for Mayor and won, he changed course and became harder to find and hold accountable than George Bush the last eight years, and that’s a major accomplishment.

A one issue Mayor, “Care not Cash” got him elected and then he went into a major spin where he seemed to lose his marbles and morals. He gave us marriage equality, bold and divisive but a courageous act in itself. That’s his business, and so is being a Mayor who is present and accountable to the citizens of this city. We’ve had two marriages, one divorce, many trips to Switzerland on the Google jet, more to Hawaii on the Getty jet and God knows how many other trips on other private planes. The point is he ain’t here LEADING the city. To further complicate this mess, he decided long ago not to talk with people he doesn’t like, namely, the Board of Supervisors OR anyone who criticizes his lack of productivity as Mayor.

I give Willie Brown kudos for dignity and grace under fire, he never chickened out of a political fight, and he didn’t need the largest press and public relations staff of any Mayor in history to try and protect him. I think its time for San Franciscans, Californians and US citizens to start holding ALL politicians responsible and accountable for doing a job in the interest of those electing them, and not spend the majority of their time and the wealth of lobbyists and special interests wanting to keep them in office to grease the crooked wheels of greed and corruption.

Stu Smith
San Francisco

Drug Cartels & Politicians
An article in the LA Times of March 13 about drug cartels in Mexico should give San Franciscans cause for reflection. It claims that Mexican drug cartels have become not only brutal and powerful but also politically savvy. The cartels have infiltrated youthful street gangs in poor neighborhoods.

These young gang members sell drugs, of course. But just as important, they organize neighborhoods to demonstrate politically against effective law enforcement. Some politicians have given a sympathetic ear to their demonstrations. The upshot is that a powerful counter-state has been created in Mexico. It has an astounding amount of wealth at its disposal, is utterly ruthless in dealing with any opponents, and manipulates both the political process and particular politicians to its own purposes.

Other articles elsewhere have documented the growing influence of Mexican drug cartels in California. Their tentacles reach across the border. As in Mexico, so in California: The cartels are infiltrating gangs in poor neighborhoods and muscling into established drug-dealing scenes, including the medical-marijuana scene. They also use young illegal immigrants from Mexico to do their dirty work in the U.S. It should be immediately apparent to any thinking person that SF is ripe for such infiltration and political manipulation. The groundwork has been prepared here by the unhealthy alliance between lobbyists for the pot-dealing industry and progressive politicians.

The lobbyists have conned the politicians into forcing a network of cheesy, poorly regulated drug dealers into at-risk neighborhoods. The dealers pretend they are selling pot to patients with acute medical conditions that are untreatable with prescription drugs. In actual practice, however, the dealers sell pot to anyone who wants it for any reason, with minimal accountability to any regulatory agency. The progressive politicians have applauded and validated the lie. Anyone who calls public attention to the lie is immediately denounced as ideologically incorrect and vilified.

In addition, operatives from the Axis of Love, a PR front-group for the pot dealers and stoners, have infiltrated the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. They boast that the club now has 60 members who are on medical marijuana. They ran their own candidate in the most election for club president (she lost).

To top it off, there is the case of David Campos, a member of the Milk Club, and the rookie supe who now represents the Mission at the board.

Campos is using his position as chair of the Public Safety Committee to lambaste law enforcement and to make life easier for illegal immigrants who are suspected felons. The progressive politicians, including Campos, have acted with sincerity in regard to drug policy and law enforcement. Nonetheless, they have their heads in the sand. They have ignored ominous developments in Mexico and other parts of California. They are astoundingly naïve in their under standing of how the narco industry in general operates. They are setting the city up for disaster. They must be challenged over their folly.

Arthur Evans
San Francisco