emchy

LGBTQIQ Pride month challenge!

 

Hi my name is Cindy Emch and I am a performer and queer activist here in San Francisco.


Every June in San Francisco, we have an amazing opportunity to witness brilliant art, film, literature, and performance by LGBTQIQ folks from the Bay Area and beyond. The National Queer Arts Festival, Frameline Film Festival, Fresh Meat Festival, and Queer Women of Color Film Festival are four gems that we are lucky enough to have once a year in San Francisco.  These events represent a vast diversity of queer folks' lives, experiences, and talents.

I have an idea about how we in various queer communities can support and draw on these venues as opportunities to get to know the different aspects of our queer communities.
  

The challenge I’m proposing is that all who are able, pledge to buy a ticket and attend at least one queer film, art show, reading, or performance event in June that represents an aspect of queer community you know nothing or little about. Let's work to strengthen ties between the different aspects of our communities. Take a friend or a group along with you!

 
The goal here is simply to take a step in educating ourselves about each other, and our similar and differing struggles and joys.

 
Below are links for the above mentioned events. Schedules will be available on the websites.

 

http://www.qwocmap.org/festival.html

http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/

http://www.freshmeatproductions.org/calendar.html

http://www.frameline.org/festival/archive.aspx

 

If this sounds like something you want to get behind, please pass this onto your lists and your friends and ask them to do the same. It would be amazing to see as many new people as possible out during the Month of June learning more about each other and supporting these amazing venues in the process.

 

**This campaign is not sponsored by any of the above mentioned organizations or festivals. This is a sincere grassroots effort to work to build and keep bridges between queer communities.   

Whoohoo we're playing Hubba in Oakland next monday and we MIGHT even break out our faboo new tune!
will i see you there?

April showers bring May flowers... but you know what else they bring? SEXY BURLESQUE DANCERS!


Come on out this MONDAY, MAY 4TH, as Hubba Hubba Revue gives ol' Oakland a serious case of SPRING FEVER!
(not to be confused with Swine Flu... )


MONDAY, May 4th, we've got:



CHI CHIS DEL FUEGO! (and it's her birthday!)

The Bombshells!
Gia Haad!
Francine Dead!
sASSy Hotbuns!
Madam Chartreuse!
Vagabondage!
Rose, Zeb & Genevieve!
Savage Man-Beast, Zip the What-Is-It?


...and everybody's favorite drunks/MC's, Kingfish & Eddie!


ALL FOR JUST *FIVE BUCKS!*


Doors 9PM, Show 10:15PM
21 & Up w/ID


THE UPTOWN CLUB
1928 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland
(1 block from 19th Street BART!)



HELP SPREAD THE WORD, Y'ALL!

i am primarily a social smoker. out at clubs. at band practice. like once maybe twice a week i light up. usually on someone else's dime. other ex smokers/ ex social smokers - how do you not smoke in these situations?  

i know its more of a mental game than physical at this point 
i hate how my body feels and that is why to quit 
but i still romanticize the smoking. it still makes me feel good and tough and like i will live forever so why not when i smoke. i feel more alive. ironic right as it means i will actually live shorter. but it makes me feel like i am living for the moment. devil may care. etc. 
 
i feel like i need to roll differently this time. to talk more about the stopping. to look for tips and ways to succeed. rooster asked me how she can help and i don't know. i don't even know how to help myself. when trying to change eating habits or lose weight i was always the extremist. only celery cut out all other foods. and it drives me to a bigger reaction the other way. i know that isn't healthy and leads to binge eating. ironically i have tried to do the same thing with smoking with the exact same binge sort of reaction. which is why i thought that social smoking - knowing i could have one if i wanted here and there, was a solution - i thought - to keep me from daily smoking. and it has kept me from daily smoking. but holding an unlit cigarette to squash the mind instinct to barely smoking one turned into a slippery slope. sure it's less than when i was working at atom and taking smoke breaks from the stress, or even at jaman where i would stress myself into a smoke break now and then too. but at jaman i broke the smoking at work habit. in the fall after tour. i just kicked it and was able to go back to the unlit cigarette at bars thing. and like i said slippery slope. now full of rationalizations and bad breathing last weekend i took a good look at what was going on and realized i needed to stop the social smoking. and that felt scary. my stress reliever pressure valve yay i am out having a good time and devil may care vice needed to go away. so i was coming around to the idea and was gonna cut it off casually. but last night i got a wake up call. and realized yea no i need to do this real. i need the quitting to not be a dirty little secret just because i am afraid of other people seeing me fail. i need it to be out in the open so that i am more accountable to myself. i need to figure out a way to have faith in myself that i can do this and that being open about it is one way to do that. i need to swallow the shame i have from being a smoker and not let that stop me from talking about quitting - from talking about the shame around the dependency. 
 
it's scary. smoking has mostly been there for me for a long time as a mean little safety net when my emotions felt too big to handle and i needed to burn some of the intense off. when i wanted to just blow off some metaphorical steam. when i felt nervous or socially awkward and it gave me something to do with my hands or a good reason to not talk. when i wanted a reason to strike up a conversation with people outside of a bar that might make interesting connections and friendships.  when i wanted a reminder of how it felt to be 17 and smoking on ianthe's porch or with judi out at the lake. there is a lot of emotion and memory and attachment tied up in it. it's a low lying physical addiction if any - but it's a huge mental and symbolic break to be making. i know smoking is neither sexy nor cool and yet my mind sees it that way. part of me thinks if i leave it completely behind do i leave all of that sexy outsider outlaw behind too? i know the answer is no logically, but emotionally i am not there yet. but there or not i need to do this for me.
 
i would rather be playing my accordion with 'grandma emchy's hot hopping jug band' at 98 years old out on the porch than i would be smoking on the sidewalk this weekend outside of a club. 

and so a new journey begins. scaring the crap out of me. 

suggestions or tips or advice welcome.

 an 85 year old man on his cell phone on the train is somehow very charming. even more so when he hands his phone across all of the ipod 20something corporates to give it to his wife for her to talk on it too.

reading your zine, a song came of from my old friend sean, and today is punks birthday and i feel like i am in all of my different histories at once and i want us all to go swimming at the lake... today while i walk through the city with blood on the sidewalks and flowers in its hair

coming out of the train the cool warm morning makes me take off my sweater to feel the air on my arms for one last walk before the midwest summer tricks succumb to the fog waiting at the ocean to remind us of san francisco

things feel like they're moving too fast but to slow them down would choke the life out of all of it

i need a nice long bike ride

so i don't usually do much reposting or cross posting from work stuff - but this is important and relevant and i wanted to post it here.

From Frameline E-News (subscribe here and see what gay film stuff i tell people about twice a month)

The sobering news of two teen suicides in the news this week remind us why LGBT education in the schools is so important. Both Eric Mohat and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover took their own lives as a reaction to constant anti-LGBT bullying and a lack of school intervention. In both cases parents complained and asked the school to intervene with no response.

 

Keeping LGBT youth, and youth perceived to be LGBT safe and healthy is one of the main motivators of Youth in Motion, the program from Frameline and GSA Network. Youth in Motion donates free films that come with curriculum and action plans to schools and Gay Straight Alliances all over California.

 

We're working hard and adding more and more California schools to the program every week. This means that more and more students will have access to information that can open minds and literally save lives at no cost to them.

 

If you know of educators or GSA's that would like to be a part of the program please email us, the more we reach out, the more it helps create a safer world for LGBT youth.

 

Wondering what we send to schools? Check out our current collection here. 

if you and i could go anywhere today... within driving distance from where either of us are right now
where would we go and what would we do?

i'll go first.

i would get you and we would drive to the lake berryessa swimming hole
on the way we would stop at that one market and get food to grill and tons of beverages to drink both boozy and not
and then we would lay on the ground and tell stories and climb trees and splash in the water and laugh until it was dark and the night was pushed back by our campfire and we ate charred meats and just relaxed. 

Hey all - this came from my old job. I liked working for these folks. Standard corporate stuff can be a drag, but Atom.com is attached to Viacom which means MTV and the best benefits in the world!

Subject: Want to work for Atom?!

Heard the news? We are moving Atom headquarters from San Francisco to Los Angeles so we can be closer to our BFFs at Comedy Central and Spike TV. So we’re looking to hire some of LA's finest (no, not the LAPD, but that isn’t to say job candidates won’t get special consideration for sporting awesome cop mustaches) for the following positions...

Sr. Web Designer
Sr. Site Producer
Sr. Editor - Producer
Associate Editor - Producer
Sr. Software Engineer
Sr. Web Developer

We're also looking for a temporary Site Editor in San Francisco for the next two months.

Interested? Get the details here:http://www.atom.com/about/jobs/

( full job descriptions )

turns out i got a three part series over here - i feel humbled
and of course reading it now i remember more people who inspire / influence that i forgot - dammit

http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/

On April 18th in Oakland. They need to replace the tranny on their bus - that would be the transmission queerbots

Check out their ad - I think i want more ads like this for local events - i am charmed