Sad Francisco

Michael Scarce worked at a now-defunct nonprofit called the Stop AIDS Project till in 2007, he blew the whistle when it began suggesting that to end AIDS, we need to "prevent sexual mixing." Michael's Substack: 'A Parable of Second-Hand Sodomy: Lessons Learned From San Francisco's Failed Attempt at Viral Apartheid in the Name of HIV Prevention' https://gettingbeyondzero.substack.com/p/a-parable-of...

In March, viral depositions of a couple of 20-something white twinks named Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh (referred to on social media as "DOGE bros") made explicit how careless and nihilistic the federal government was in cutting humanities funding last year, as part of Elon Musk's short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. Jane Ward is a Feminist Studies professor at UC Santa Barbara who...

Raquel Willis' resume is long: the first trans lead editor at Out magazine, a TIME 100 awardee, memoirist (The Risk It Takes To Bloom), and co-founder of the group Gender Liberation, whose direct actions at the US capitol calling for basic needs like trans healthcare reverberate far outside the DMV. We discuss the limitations of mainstream visibility in saving trans lives, and her podcast series A...

The return of Susan Stryker! On this episode: The utopian potential of Trans SanFrisco of the 1990s, and why the new third edition of Transgender History may be her last time editing the classic tome. Transgender History https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/susan-stryker/transgender-history-third-edition/9781541605886/ When Monsters Speak https://www.dukeupress.edu/when-monsters-speak Susan's...

Friends Stab and Trung both texted me when about a recent, very Sad Francisco-coded feature in Wired magazine. Here's a little response, inspired partially by an impromptu reading group a few friends did around the piece. Mentioned: Alexandr Wang Barry's Bootcamp  Gawker.com Melania's box office Peter Thiel Sam Altman Tim Cook TW for brief mention of Sam Altman sexually assaulting his sister, and...

First episode covering movies set in the Bay! With dee(dee) and Jemma. Starting with: 1971's DIRTY HARRY, in which Clint Eastwood plays a vigilante cop tracking down a gay Zodiac killer clone in a San Francisco overrun with hippie scum.  Jemma on her book "The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us" https://www.patreon.com/posts/ 146458351 dee(dee) on the 1970s queer zine "Gay Sunshine"...

Uncover the lore of four masked comrades who meet up regularly to offer aid to unhoused neighbors and teach self-defense.  We talk about the discourse around wearing frog costumes to ICE protests and giving public comment at San Jose City Hall dressed as Batman (that's the clip at the beginning of the episode). BASH Linktree https://linktr.ee/bayareasuperheroes BASH IG https://www.instagram.com/ba...

Morgan Bassichis brought the 1977 queer cult fairy tale "The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions" back to print and stage a few years ago. Its messages about how to live under patriarchy feel extra prescient in 2026. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions By Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta With essays by Morgan and Tourmaline https://nightboat.org/book/the-faggots-their-friends-be...

Mama Ganuush is back home in San Francisco after hosting the first JAHA Film Festival in December in Lisbon. The festival features all trans-focused films from the Global South, and begins screening online starting this Friday, Feb. 14. JAHA Film Festival https://www.jahafilmfestival.com/ Trans Liberation Film School https://www.jahafilmfestival.com/transliberationfilmschool

Trung Nguyen teaches Asian American and ethnic studies at San Jose State. His presentation at the last American Studies Association conference covered how the interests of US empire, Airbnb.org, and refugee landlords market property ownership as a humanitarian act. Trung's site https://tpqn.org/ Iyko Day: The Yellow Plague and Romantic Anticapitalism (Monthly Review) https://monthlyreview.org/arti...

"Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia" is Jimmy Wu's recent piece for Bay Area Current, a new publication covering labor, culture and politics based in East Bay. In it, Jimmy beautifully describes some of the aesthetics and icons preoccupying the tech elites and their media mouthpieces right now.  "Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia" https://bayareacurrent.com/meet-the-new-right-wi...

In 2022, rightwing influencers began using the term "doom loop" to paint San Francisco as a crime- and fentanyl-ridden hellhole that whose downfall was due to too much woke progressivism. It didn't matter that the doom loop narrative wasn't based in reality: the media took it and ran with it. The narrative has since lost its resonance in San Francisco, but it's now being deployed in several other...

Jenny Chan founded Pacific Atrocities Education in San Francisco after learning about some of Japan's terror campaigns across Asia through World War II. It's history that Japanese conservatives are trying to suppress. The Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 was the chemical and biological warfare facility that conducted experiments on about 14,000 people in China. None of those 14,000 survived, whil...

Jemma DeCristo RETURNS! Her new book The Aesthetic Character of Blackness is out, and covers how revolutionary Black art is co-opted by capitalists and the state, and art's limits as a revolutionary tool (and it's widespread use as a counterinsurgent one).   The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us (Duke University Press) https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-aesthetic-character-of-blackness...

Janetta Johnson and zen blossom speak from the home base of Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) in SF. They speak on Miss Major (who led TGIJP for years); the year Janetta turned down the SF Pride grand marshal title; and the status of the Bay Area's reputation for being a haven for trans people. TGI Justice Project https://tgijp.org Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment a...

Public universities are under constant threat of budget cuts, but somehow administrators find millions to toss at extractive tech, like ChatGPT Edu. SF State professor Martha Kenney describes how administrators at the CSUs spent $17 million on a contract with OpenAI without asking students or professors if it was a good idea—subsidizing an industry built on hype and plaigiarism. - Martha Kenney an...

San Francisco tried to atone for the war on drugs with a DEI program for recreational weed store owners. In the end, the real winners were rich white dudes like London Breed's old roommate, Conor Johnston. Chris Roberts—America's top cannabis journalist and historian reporting from America's number-one cannabis producing region—returns. We go deep on his recent Chronicle piece detailing how it all...

dee(dee) c. ardan is live in the studio apartment for the first episode about trans/queer media from the Bay's past, showing that indeed, this place has been trans as hell for a long, long time. Starting with issue one of the 1970s zine GAY SUNSHINE, we deduce how the Bay gained a reputation for being the place you come to push the trans agenda and make life hell for conservatives.   Gay Sunshine'...

The Tenderloin in 1966: One of the earliest trans/queer actions (that we know of) against police and state violence happened at Compton's Cafeteria. Today, that space (111 Taylor Street) is occupied by Geo Group—otherwise known as the corporation that is America's number-one private prison and ICE profiteer. Zei Wilder is helping organize the local effort to get Geo Group out of San Francisco and...

For Major, who passed on October 13.   Truthout piece https://truthout.org/articles/to-honor-miss-major-we-fight-for-the-trans-and-queer-spaces-she-built/   Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5592116   A more recent episode with filmmakers behind the documentary MAJOR!, StormMiguel Florez and Annalise Ophelian https://www....

This episode was recorded before the ceasefire deal went into effect on Oct. 10. Surprising no one, Israel has already broken its promises, continuing to kill Palestinians and withholding aid. UC Berkeley lecturer Peyrin Kao just ended a 38-day hunger strike to keep Palestine on the minds of people on campus and to raise money during Israel's US-backed starvation campaign. A few days before we spo...

Bench Ansfield is a professor in the History department at Temple University. Their book "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" covers how racial capitalism, political corruption, and the insurance industry created a world where landlords can profit more by burning their own buildings down than maintaining them. They were also part of the research team on the...

Alexis Shotwell is a professor of gender and feminist studies and philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa. She's also an anarchist organizer particularly interested in the anarchist fantasy and science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin. Alexis's website https://www.alexisshotwell.com/ Punch Up Collective https://www.punchupcollective.org/ Episode with Deeg on LAGAI-Queer Insurrection! https://ww...

Court support has spread to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 100 Montgomery Street, while the mayor and SFPD continue to be complicit with ICE, against the city's sanctuary city policy.  Lxspinguinxs (updates about SF anti-ICE actions on Instagram) https://www.instagram.com/lxspinguinxs Lea on Substack https://leftylea.substack.com on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leftylea_in_sf Los Angel...

Boiler Room is a global event promotion company known for enlisting local DJs and promoters to produce Boiler Room-branded parties. This year, Boiler Room was acquired by a Zionist private equity firm, Superstruct/KKR. Three people who DJ and throw parties in the Bay—Daria Lourd, DJ Fridge, and Juanny—on creating culture that is removed from the Boiler Room industrial complex. 9/19 at The Stud: No...