Milk: The Transformation of Castro Street

For all our Milk news, click here...

There's been plenty of documentation of the transformation of San Francisco's Castro Street for the Gus van Sant film Milk and I'll attempt to round up everything I've been sent here.

Above is a shot of Toad Hall reconstructed. The black-and-white shot here is how it looked outside Toad Hall in the 70's.

According to Uncle Donald's Castro Street, "Toad Hall was one of the most popular bars on Castro Street, definitely a major 1970's social institution and an exciting part of our neighborhood story. In fact, it may have had a significant influence on the influx of gays to the Castro. The bar was a trendsetter. The management was creative and innovative. Toad Hall was the first dance bar in the Castro and was one of the first bars anywhere to use taped music instead of a jukebox, not just taped music but well-planned programs of songs that flowed into each other seamlessly. When the other bars began to catch up, Toad Hall installed a booth and hired a DJ; another major step in providing the best entertainment for the patrons. At that time, most gay bars were governed by greed. Gays were happy to have ANY place to meet and were at the mercy of slumlords who would accept them. We learned to put up with rundown places in seedy locations, run by people who didn't care about us and were unwilling to make repairs and improvements. Toad Hall welcomed us with a warm friendly smile into a clean, well-decorated establishment. So it is not unrealistic to think that gays would flock to the Castro from all over the City (and beyond) to visit Toad Hall, and in doing so would become charmed by the beauty of the neighborhood."

It opened on May 28, 1971. The bar got its name, according to Uncle Donald, "after the home of 'Toad' in the childrens story Wind in the Willows written by Kenneth Grahame in 1908. Toad was a charming and respectable but wayward frog; a misfit who didn't quite fit into the community of quiet, hard-working, rural creatures, nor could he handle the fast-paced, hectic role of a city dweller."

Our reader David Corbell took these photos as well. You can view more of them on his Flickr page.

Liquor Express, now Swirl on Castro wine shop. (source)

Much more AFTER THE JUMP...

Harvey Milk's camera shop, out of which he ran his campaign office. Quite a stunning transformation considering just weeks ago it was the gift shop Given we profiled earlier on Towleroad.
(photo source for the camera shop)

Castro Theater (source)

More Photos...
Retro-fitting [i'm just sayin]
Castro Milk transformation [flickr david78sf]
More MILK Pictures [gay cities]
Sprouting overnight, it's Toad Hall [castro shopper]
So Here We Go [the milk fanboys]
Increased Milk Production [castro shopper]
Gus Van Sant’s Milk Set Photos [/film]

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Extras Needed for Milk March in San Francisco [tr]
First Look at Josh Brolin as SF Supervisor Dan White in Milk [tr]
Grabeel, Luna, Smith Join Milk Cast as Production Begins [tr]
EXCLUSIVE: Victor Garber, Denis O'Hare, Stephen Spinella Join Milk [tr]
Singer's Harvey Milk Film in Jeopardy as Van Sant's Gains Steam [tr]

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On the Stage: The 39 Steps and Almost an Evening

Please welcome Kevin Sessums, who last looked at Is He Dead? and The Little Mermaid for Towleroad. You can also catch up with Kevin at his own blog at MississippiSissy.com.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, as the movie-as-play adapted by Patrick Barlow based on a concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon is billed, opened recently at the American Airlines Theatre. Originally a hit on the West End where it won an Olivier Award as Best New Comedy, it has been brought to New York by the Roundabout Theatre. An inventive and cockamamie pastiche of the most melodramatic of early Hitchcockian cinema, the evening is a mixture of Monty Python-like absurdity absorbed into a superior physical clowning — a kind of knock-about self-referentiality, both haughty and heightened, that is savvy enough for the audience to identify with as well — one associates with even earlier cinematic geniuses: the silent sophisticates Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin. Much of this is to the credit of director Maria Aitken as well as Tony Sedgwick, who is responsible for Original Movement, and Christopher Bayes, whose credit reads Additional Movement.

The cast of four essays all of the people who populated the film. The romantic leads onstage, repeating the Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll screen characters, are Charles Edwards, who is reprising the role he created in London, and Jennifer Ferrin, who is also hilarious in the original Peggy Ashcroft part as a Scottish highlands farm wife. But the two supporting players — Cliff Saunders and Arnie Burton — steal the show in their myriad roles. I won’t spoil all the fun by unspooling the whole story for you or how exactly they pull it off. If you’ve seen the movie you know anyway it concerns the archetypical wronged-man-on-the-run scenerio that would continue to interest Hitchcock throughout his career. But be warned the evening at times can morph into a vaudevillian turn for the tragically hip, a feat that can give the night a twee air about it. If you’re an unabashed Anglophile, however, you’ll be twittering to yourself long after the curtain falls. I felt the evening’s longueurs long after myself.

T T (out of 4 possible T's)

The 39 Steps, American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd Street, New York. Ticket information here.

**
ALMOST AN EVENING

Almost an Evening could just as well be called Ethan Coen’s Almost an Evening. Coen, along with his brother Joel, is nominated for an Oscar this year for Best Director for No Country for Old Men, arguably the best movie released in 2007. They also just won the DGA Award, the first pair to win since Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins won for West Side Story. The Coen Brothers, though more self-effacing in person than self-referential, have a rather tragically hip reputation themselves and when word got out that Ethan had written an evening of three one-acts for the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Stage 2 on 16th Street the run was immediately sold out.

Continued...AFTER THE JUMP—

The first play is called Waiting and it could have been written by an even glibber Rod Serling. It plays like a Twilight Zone episode if IFC revived the series for cable. The rubber-faced Joey Slotnick — a kind of modern-day Ed Wynn — gives an amusing performance as the man caught in a hellishly bureaucratic anteroom. If you’ve ever been caught in a bureaucratic hell of your own then this slight curtain raiser might seem more caustic to you than it finally is.

The middle play in the intermissionless evening is Four Benches and concerns a James Bond-like secret agent — the handsome Jonathan Cake — calling into question his whole existence in a world filled with secrets and subterfuge. Luckily much of it takes place in a steam room which affords us the opportunity to see the strapping and talented Mr. Cake in a towel. It also contains a sight gag at the beginning that had the audience gasping at the towel-less actor, Del Pentacost, playing Earl for a side-splitingly split second or two. J. R. Horne, as Earl’s father, is able to be both touching and amusing in his one scene as Earl’s father.

But these first two plays are only marking time for us to get to the final one, Debate, the hilarious climax to the evening. F. Murray Abraham, whose self-referential talent borders so often onstage as self-importance, is able to parody himself as well as the Deity as the character called God Who Judges. In a flowing white robe and a flowing wig, he approaches the podium set up for the debate and launches into a foul-mouthed lecture as the most bombastic version of God imaginable. I often smile to myself when something is funny onstage but Coen and his surrogate Abraham had me laughing out loud. It is an expertly comedic performance from one of our most serious of actors, an incongruity that grows and grows until it forms some new kind of hilarity, as sacrilegioius as it is — well — rather screwy. It’s a scream — almost a primal one.

The God Who Loves — the debater who takes him on — is played by the pleasingly milquetoast Mark Linn-Baker. At the end of their debate, which ends tragically, the play takes a Pirandello-like turn and we realize that Debate has also been watched by the rest of the characters in the play. Abraham takes off his wig and robe and becomes the, yes, self-important actor playing the role who takes his girlfriend out for dinner in a Manhattan restaurant after his performance. As Lady Friend, the ever-marvelous Elizabeth Marvel, one of my favorite New York actresses, gives a wry and droll performance as his long-suffering girlfriend. I’ve never seen Marvel give a bad performance and it’s worth the wait to see what she can do in her scenes with Abraham — together they are explosively funny even as they underplay their characters’ seething regard for each other.

Neil Pepe, who has been the Artistic Director of Atlantic Theatre Company since 1992, directs the evening with a sure hand. He has modulated each play expertly. Indeed, Pepe is becoming one of the city's most astute directors. David Mamet is a mentor of his — and one of the founders of the Atlantic — and is also the butt of one of Coen’s jokes in Almost an Evening. Noticing that — and nudging one's friend in the neighboring seat — can make one feel rather tragically hip oneself.

T T 1/2 (out of 4 possible T's)

Almost an Evening, Atlantic Theater Company, 330 West 16th Street, New York. Ticket information here.

Previous reviews...
On the Stage: Is He Dead? and The Little Mermaid [tr]
On the Stage: Holiday Fare — The Drowsy Chaperone, West Side Story, Xanadu and The Color Purple [tr]
Doris and Darlene and The Homecoming [tr]
On the Stage: The Seafarer and August: Osage County [tr]
On the Stage: Trumpery [tr]

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Senator Edward Kennedy Endorses Obama at American University

At American University in Washington, Senator Ted Kennedy joined his niece Caroline and son, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.), in endorsing Barack Obama for president.

The Washington Post reports: "The three Kennedys, taking turns speaking at a lectern bearing the slogan, "Change We Can Believe In," invoked the inspiration of former president John F. Kennedy in supporting the candidacy of Obama, a first-term senator who seeks to become the nation's first African American president. Addressing a cheering, overflow crowd in the university's Bender Arena, Sen. Kennedy hailed Obama as a candidate who 'has lit a spark of hope amid the fierce urgency of now.' Calling on Americans to 'have the courage to choose change,' he declared, 'It time again for a new generation of leadership! It is time now for Barack Obama!' In accepting the endorsements, Obama told the crowd: 'We will change the course of history. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.' The endorsement by the senior senator from Massachusetts was widely seen as important for Obama because it gives him the imprimatur of a major leader of the Democratic establishment."

The endorsement, courted by the Clinton camp for months, may have solidified in Obama's favor after last week's angry campaigning by Bill Clinton in South Carolina. The NYT reports: "Mr. Kennedy, who associates said had grown furious at the tone of the presidential campaign, including the words and actions of former President Bill Clinton, said Mr. Obama would usher in a new era of politics. His speech was filled with references to his distaste for the bitterness and lack of bipartisanship that has infiltrated Washington."

The broader Kennedy clan is not unanimous on the endorsement, however, the paper notes: "Another of Kennedy's nieces, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Maryland, is supporting Clinton. So is a nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading environmental activist."

Kennedy Calls Obama ‘New Generation of Leadership’ [nyt]
Kennedy Endorsement Gives Obama Key Boost [washington post]

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Kathy Griffin Spreads 'Em for The Advocate

Remember that Kathy Griffin Advocate "cover try" she showed off on her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. Well, that shot didn't make the cover of the mag's 'Hollywood issue'. Instead, that was reserved for a Britney-style thigh-spreader.

Of the shoot, Griffin told Kimmel:

GRIFFIN: This is what's called a "cover try". Being on the D-List, they won't just put me on the cover, so they told me I was a "cover try" so I may or may not end up on the cover but I love this photo shoot because it's airbrushed beyond belief, which is key, but it's me also just hugging a hot gay guy. And, uh...

KIMMEL: Is he gay, the guy?

GRIFFIN: I think so! The only straight guy who has that body is in prison and not at a photo shoot. But the photographer...has hooked me up with this gorgeous guy who coincidentally had this tattoo, and you know, me, shaking it up with the Jesus people is perfect.

While the interview holds little that you won't find in one of her shows (even writer Corey Scholibo had difficulty catching her at a non-"on" moment), the interview captures several anecdotes I hadn't heard before, including this one about the time Griffin met Liza Minnelli after a gig in Canada.

Griffin: "I knocked on her hotel room door. She opens it up. The room’s pitch black. She’s chain-smoking in bed. I get in the bed with her like Michael Jackson, and we watch The Asphalt Jungle. There was a guy who had been at the restaurant the night before — he’s one of these guys who seemed completely gay to me but had the hot girlfriend. I said to Liza, 'Did you get a gay vibe from that guy, or is it me?' She goes, 'How would I know? Look who I married.'"

Above is a video clip featuring Griffin and cover photographer Mike Ruiz. A bit of 'behind-the-scenes' footage. (warning: language NSFW)

Read part of the interview here.

In related news, Griffin reportedly made CNN anchor Anderson Cooper blush at her recent Madison Square Garden gig, according to Page Six: "Sporting a baseball cap (his attempt at going incognito) and a polo shirt that granted everyone access to the gun show, Anderson squirmed in his seat as Kathy likened him to a 'yummy panini' that she wanted to let drip from her mouth.

My Life on the Gay List [advocate]

Previously
Kathy Griffin's Advocate "Cover Try" on Jimmy Kimmel [tr]

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News: Kelly Rowland, Sundance, Vermont, Johnny Weir, Florent

L.A. Times columnist asks why The Kite Runner, and its controversial boy-rape scene wasn't included in the GLAAD awards. Maybe because sexual orientation had nothing to do with it.

Channing Tatum recruited for GI Joe film: "The 27-year-old modern-turned-actor will play Duke, a field commander and second-in-command of the G.I. Joe Team after Hawk. Other actors signed on: Sienna Miller as The Baroness, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaj (Lost) as Heavy Duty, Rachel Nichols (Alias) as Shana ‘Scarlett’ O’Hara and Marlon Wayans as Ripcord. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock From the Sun) is also in negotiations to join the project."

Randy Lovely promoted to editor of The Arizona Republic, making him the nation's only openly gay editor of a major U.S. newspaper: "Lovely says he has never hidden his sexual preference, but is not among the most outspoken gay rights activists. 'There are many others who are much more involved. I support them, but I am not on the leadership,' he says of his NLGJA membership. 'I have not had to be anything other than what I am. I can't be the one to tell anyone they have to be out. But it is not something I am afraid of.'"

New York meatpacking staple Florent, which I did a long photo piece on two years ago, may be closing...

Johnny Weir ties with Evan Lysacek at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships but Lysacek wins for skating better in the free skate: "First place, second place, last place, I'm just happy with the way I skated. I was so nervous, and it's fantastic vindication to know I came back and didn't completely fall apart. I feel like a winner."

Keith Olbermann would trade personal success for a decent president: "I think this has been a disastrous presidential administration. I would have given what I have, in terms of broadcasting success in the nature of this newscast, I would have easily said…if I were given the choice of this or some responsible presidency in the last four years or eight years? I would have taken a responsible presidency."

Gay ordained Presbyterian minister Brian Webb-Mitchell shares tips for gay parents in new book: "I wrote the book because there was nothing out there that was pro-gay, pro-child, pro-family and pro-Christian. The books that dealt with gay parenting and Christianity were not very pro-Christian. If anything, they steered people toward the United Church of Christ and away from Catholic and Evangelical churches."

Adrian Grenier brings along his own little entourage.

New board game created by son of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Sebelius set inside a prison is called "Don't Drop the Soap": "Fight your way through 6 different exciting locations in hopes of being granted parole. Escape prison riots in The Yard, slip glass into a mob boss' lasagna in the Cafeteria, steal painkillers from the nurse's desk in the Infirmary." And whatever you do, avoid those gays in the shower room!

"Pro-family" conservatives in Arkansas launch drive to stop unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents. Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee: "Anyone who tells you that this initiated act is only about gay adoption is not telling you the whole story. Anyone who will tell you, though, that gay adoption has nothing to do with this act wouldn’t be telling you the whole story, either."

Sundance Film Festival winners announced...

Work: Kelly Rowland is proud as a peacock at G-A-Y.

Gay Miller Brewing executive Vic Milford shot and killed in Milwaukee robbery: "'At this time, this is a company grieving the tragic loss of one of its dearest employees,' [a Miller spokesman] said, in a statement. 'The immediate impact of this loss is being felt most by the family and friends of Vic Milford. And out of respect for the Milford family, we believe our attention is best served by caring for those most affected by this horrible tragedy.' Milford, a citizen of South Africa, had lived in Milwaukee since taking the Miller Brewing job in February 2005, Green said, and previously worked for SABMiller since 2002. Milford is survived his parents, who are residents of Zimbabwe, a sister in Australia and a man described as Milford's life partner, who lives in South Africa, according to a Miller statement."

Carol Channing is a robber magnet!

Gay Vermont legislator Jason Lorber moonlights as a stand-up comic: "When I first came here, people said 'You're the first comedian to come to the Statehouse.' I say 'I'm the first PROFESSIONAL comedian to come to the Statehouse'...Politics is about changing society and trying to make the world a better place. And performing makes me feel so alive. I love the creative aspect of it...Growing up, I never pictured myself being with a gay guy. Now, I've come to realize that I could never be happy being with a straight guy."

L.A. Times columnist: FOX News host John Gibson should lose his platform over Heath Ledger remarks.

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Heath Ledger's Last Portrait

On his last visit to Perth in December, Heath Ledger sat for artist Vincent Fantauzzo. Fantauzzo had planned to submit his portrait for the Archibald Prize this year, but released the image early with the approval of LEdger's family.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports: "The painting depicts the notoriously private actor as three separate images. The central, and largest, image is of Ledger, bare-chested, looking straight ahead, appearing pained and exhausted. The two background images are of Ledger wearing humorous expressions, whispering into the ears of his foreground image. Fantauzzo said he felt privileged to have worked with Ledger. 'Heath was a very private person, which is one of the reasons I was so honoured that he allowed me to paint him,' Fantauzzo told reporters. 'He was so easy and professional to work with. He didn't need any direction, (he was) absolutely focused. Once done, he was back to his usual charismatic self.' Ledger's childhood friend, hip hop artist N'fa, told Channel Ten News the actor couldn't wait to see the finished work. 'He was very excited about it. He was very excited to see the finished product,' N'fa said. N'fa said the picture had captured Ledger perfectly. 'This is the way he always was. He was always a thought ahead.'"

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