Welcome to the second issue of Seasons, the quarterly online newsletter of Marty’s Place.
Spring’s lush promises of change and growth and renewal have begun to come to fruition. The folks at Marty’s Place are settling in as they begin their second full year of residence and are making plans to expand the house’s role as a center for community activity as well as a residence. Plans for involving the community in Marty’s place include art exhibitions, spoken-word and musical performances, and other community-driven activities. Check our Calendar periodically for news of upcoming open-to-the-community events, including the already-scheduled Open House & Barbecue Fundraiser coming up on Saturday, August 20, and a Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration in November.
If you’d like to be involved in the exciting growth of Marty’s Place as a community resource, please consider becoming a member of the Marty’s Place Community Outreach Committee. This committee, open to all committed members of the community, is charged with shaping and producing and publicizing the various community-centered activities at Marty’s Place. The committee meets once a month (again, check our Calendar) and provides the opportunity to make Marty’s Place your community center. I hope you’ll join us.
Among the changes brought by Spring is the new format for Seasons. We hope you’ll find this new format easier to read and to navigate. Our goal here is to explore and report on the intersection of HIV/AIDS and homelessness or inadequate housing. As we use Seasons to explore that intersection and to get to know the residents at Marty’s Place, we seek out other voices from the community, the voices of people who have lived at that intersection.
With that in mind, Marty’s Place resident Brian Bourassa, whose artwork was featured in our last issue, introduces us to his friend and fellow artist Anthony Morrison, whose artwork will be featured in an upcoming show at the Community Arts Center, where Brian exhibited this spring.
What can I say about my friend, Marty’s Place resident Dominik Mollica? A native of New Jersey who came of age in the 1970s punk rock caverns of New York City, Dominik has lived in San Francisco since 1982. The victim of an illegal eviction and other landlord shenanigans, Dominik was among the original “gang of five” who took up residence at Marty’s Place when it reopened in July 2015. A comic book aficionado, who also has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure punk rock bands and songs, Dominik exudes a quiet intensity, often punctuated by outbursts of New York swagger and biting humor. Below, you’ll find some of Dominik’s poetry; follow him on Facebook to read his musings and… rants!
The photos of Dominik are from a series of portraits of long-term HIV/AIDS survivors that is being put together by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover (www.saul-sandraphoto.com). Bromberger and Hoover plan an exhibition and/or photo book of these portraits; watch Seasons for news of that exhibit.
Unfortunately, not all of the changes wrought by Spring have been pleasant ones. In late March, our friend Bill Ledford died of AIDS-related complications. Bill was one of the non-resident members of the Marty’s Place Board of Directors. For more on Bill and his contributions to the HIV/AIDS community and particularly his work on housing issues, see Board of Directors President Michael Rouppet’s “Letter” below.
And so now Summer is upon us. Here in San Francisco, Summer brings the largest LGBTQ Pride Celebration in the country during the last weekend of June (www.sfpride.org). Summer also brings us Frameline 40, the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (www.frameline.org), which this year features “Last Men Standing,” the remarkable documentary about the challenges and heartache faced by eight long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS in San Francisco; see www.projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-with-aids/documentary/.
Summer also brings every San Franciscan’s favorite sport – laughing at first-time San Francisco tourists shivering in shorts and tank tops after five o’clock at Union Square! That can be great fun… but only because we know that those tourists have a snug, warm room to go back to any time they want. Summer’s bizarre weather is not so much fun for the San Franciscans who live on the streets -- in tents under freeway overpasses, if they’re “lucky” and haven’t been rousted by SFPD on instructions from a heartless mayor -- with no respite, no safe snug room to go “home” to. A 2013 San Francisco Human Services Agency survey of the homeless found that fully one-third are LGBT; nearly 40% of homeless youths in the city are LGBT, and nearly 20% of those youths are HIV-positive. Those numbers are simply unconscionable and unsustainable.
Please join us here at Marty’s Place as we strike a blow against HIV/AIDS and homelessness.
Hank Trout
Editor
