Dance Party Stories & Authors as Witnesses to History

Thursday, October 17
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Marking its 25th anniversary this year, Real Bad is a queer dance party held on the evening of the annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Produced by volunteers, the nonprofit event has raised nearly $1.7 million for GLBT nonprofits. This living-history panel will bring together past and present organizers of the party to discuss how compassion and club culture coalesced into the Real Bad  extravaganza starting in 1989 and how they have kept the party going for a quarter-century. Taking place in conjunction with “Be Bad…Do Good,” The GLBT History Museum’s current exhibit about Real Bad, the panel also will include a curator of the exhibit and the director of a documentary about Real Bad featured in the show. Panelists: Dominick Albano; Gina Gatta (exhibit curator); Matthew Johnson; Scott Saraceno (documentary director); and Jeff Stallings. Moderator: Suzan Revah.

Admission: $5.00 (general); $3.00 (California students); free for GLBT Historical Society members.

The documentary short “Real Bad: History and Legacy” is available on the Real Bad website at www.realbad.org/videos.

A novelist and a memoirist come together to look at ways authors act as witnesses to gay history. Award-winning writer Felice Picano will read from his latest book of short stories, 20th Century Un-Limited (Bold Strokes Books, 2013), which includes tales focusing on Hollywood as a gay mecca in the 1930s. Picano also will narrate oral histories and show visual materials casting light on the background of his fictional portrayal of the period.

Joining Picano will be native San Franciscan Ron Williams, who will read from his recently published memoir, San Francisco’s Native “Sissy” Son (Blurb, 2013). The book highlights the author’s 50 years as a gay man in the city and particularly in the Castro, starting from the perspective of an innocent fresh out of the closet who discovered the gay world of the early 1960s and who would later take part in the dynamic gay culture of the 1970s. Williams will accompany his reading with a showing of his personal photos of Bay Area gay life.