Moscone opened City Hall to all
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Last night, I could breathe all the way into my brain!” Man to woman, overheard at 14th Avenue and Taraval by Dominique Isabeau
Documentarian Nat Katzman, working with the University of the Pacific, is at work on a film about George Moscone, who was assassinated in November 1978. The filmmaker and supporters of this movie are hoping that it will be premiered for the 40th anniversary of Moscone’s death this year. “So much of the focus has been on Harvey Milk and his role,” said
Yvonne Ryzak, who has been a proponent of the project since its inception six years ago. “People have forgotten that it was George who opened up City Hall to women, minorities, gays and lesbians at a time when they had absolutely no role. In fact, it was George who appointed Harvey Milk to the Board of Permit Appeals. Harvey was the first openly gay person to be appointed to a city commission in America.”
The project has been supported by members of the Moscone family, as well as various community leaders, including Don Solem, Corey Busch, Marc Benioff, Joe Cotchett, George and Judy Marcus, the Conway Foundation, and Bob Lurie. About $400,000 was raised by the George R. Moscone Institute for Public Service, and the University of the Pacific has established a crowdfunding site (pacific.scalefunder. com/cfund/project/8452).
“The people who knew George are old now and they are passing on quickly,” said Ryzak, “so we want to get as many as we can together, and include those who have benefited by his progressive agenda . ... It is such a tribute to George that after all these years, so many people remember him and still think he’s important.”
It was Friday, Feb. 9, it’d been a long week, parking would be impossible. Nonetheless, we schlepped up to Grace Cathedral for ODC/Dance’s presentation of “Path of Miracles,” and by the time the performance was over, we were so euphoric that we floated out of the place.
The work — choreographed by KT Nelson for the cathedral as part of ODC/Dance’s Around Town series, performed with music composed by Joby Talbot for the Volti singers — is about the Camino de Santiago, a Catholic pilgrimage across northern Spain. It was executed in four sections in four different locations at the cathedral, the audience following, as though on its
own trek.
The dancers interacted with the audience at several points, and also, occasionally, with the singers. The subject, of course, is sacred, but it also seemed to deal with secular struggles, the arduous path to achieving anything of importance in life. The unamplified crystalline sound of the singers — pure, modern but somehow Bach-like, too — seemed to lift the dancers as the whole lifted the audience.
There were only two performances; one can only hope it returns to the space for which it was created.
It might be noted, with Valentine’s Day behind us, that in the run-up to the annual event, the Bay Area cultural scene was swamped by a tsunami of love: The movie “Scenes From a Marriage,” a long clip of which was shown at one of the Liv Ullmann tributes to Ingmar Bergman, captured the miseries and misunderstandings of a marriage gone bad; John Kolvenbach’s play “Reel to Reel,” at the Magic Theatre through Feb. 25, captures a marriage that has lasted for 55 years. Neither story involves hearts, flowers, chocolate or expressions of love linked to proof of purchase.
The ribbon-cutting for 10 new historical markers to be embedded in sidewalks around North Beach, Telegraph and Russian hills will take place at the site of one of them: Spec’s 12 Adler Museum Cafe, 12 Saroyan Place, at 2 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16.
The markers are sponsored by the Top of Broadway Community Benefit District, and, in addition to Spec’s, are at the sites of the female impersonators’ club Finocchio’s; punk rock venue Mabuhay Gardens; Devil’s Acre & Battle Row, a block bordered by Broadway, Kearny and Montgomery where “vice and vulgarity reigned supreme”; 534 Broadway, site of San Francisco’s first county jail; Peter Macchiarini Steps on the 1100 block of Kearny; Terrific Street and the International Settlement, Pacific between Kearny and Montgomery; Mona’s 440 Club, said to be the city’s first openly lesbian club; the Jazz Workshop at 473 Broadway; Italian American Bank at 270 Columbus.