The world’s most gigantic kinky leather event, Folsom Street Fair, is set to draw some 400,000 leather revelers and gawkers again this Sunday, and is now established as California’s third-largest outdoor event (behind the Tournament of Roses Parade and SF Pride). But Folsom Street Fair wasn’t originally all that big, and it wasn’t originally even called the Folsom Street Fair. Let’s set our time machines for 1984 and head back to the very first Folsom Street Fair, when the South of Market district that hosts the bacchanal was still a hotbed of groundbreaking gay establishments like Chaps, the Trocadero Transfer, Hamburger Mary’s, and Rawhide II.

The first Folsom Street Fair, which was then called “Megahood,” was held on Sunday Sept 23, 1984. Dianne Feinstein was mayor, Mondale’s Democratic Convention had just blown through town, and the “gay cancer” that had stirred genuine fears of a government conspiracy against the LGBT population had recently been dubbed AIDS and connected to sexual activity. It was against this backdrop that Feinstein — who had just refused to march in the Pride parade — was waging an “urban renewal” campaign intended to evict a large number of SoMa’s bathhouses and gay bars and replace them with high-rises, on the claim that SoMa was a mess of urban blight. (By the following month, Feinstein and the Board of Supervisors would be ordering all the bathhouses closed for public health reasons.) Hence the festival’s early name Megahood, a signifier that the neighborhood was noteworthy, thriving, and not a blighted dump.

“The Folsom Fair did not start as a leather event, and the leatherization of the fair was a slow process,” says Dr. Gayle Rubin in her fascinating, two-hour-long, deep-dive lecture History of the Folsom Street Fair. The 1984 event Megahood was meant as a celebration of all things South of Market, and only contained a smattering of BDSM presence.

Image: Joe Kukura

If you really squint at this this photo of the last remaining original flyer for Megahood, whose subheader does use the phrase “Folsom Street Fair,” you see that one of the main stage performers was Marga Gomez — still one of our favorite standup comedians — and Leila and The Snakes’ keyboardist Jane Dornacker. The biggest attraction at the fair was a 200-foot lineup of vintage muscle cars, and the 1984 fair hosted 37 booths total. Some of those booths were for organizations whose name you’ll recognize today, like Frameline, the SF AIDS Foundation, the Shanti Project, and the San Francisco SPCA.

Even something called the Concerned Republicans had a booth at the 1984 Folsom Street Fair (!). But there were only three BDSM booths, representing the Society of Janus, the Golden Gate Motorcycle Club, and a now-defunct retail shop called Sunset Leathers.

Image: Joped via Flickr

Still, the 1984 fair covered the same map as it does today. “Megahood spanned the area that to this day marks the boundaries of the fair: from 12th Street to 7th Street between Howard and Harrison, with Folsom at the center,” writes the Fair’s co-founder Kathleen Connell in her own history of the Folsom Street Fair, noting that the scene was “caught by the early morning street art painting done by pupils of the Bessie Carmichael school while watched over by nuns.”

That actually happened, people.

Connell founded the fair in 1984 with Michael Valerio, a South of Market leatherman whose day job was as an affordable housing realtor at the still-existing nonprofit TODCO. Inspired by the Castro Street Fair, they worked with Harry Britt (Harvey Milk’s appointed replacement on the Board of Supervisors) on street closures and logistics, and did not intend for the fair to be a kink event. But the character of SoMa's nightlife venues, naturally, made it a kink event.

We have only one remaining eyewitness media account from the first Folsom Street Fair, which comes to us from vintage gay porn publication Drummer magazine, Issue No. 79, November 1984:

This year saw the first-ever Folsom Street Fair, held September 23 over several blocks of leather’s Main Street USA. Crowds were bigger than most observers expected, and curiously mixed. There was certainly more leather in evidence than at this year’s Castro Street Fair — and maybe more straights as well. The Fair was, after all, a neighborhood effort, not just a leather festival.

As one spokeswoman [Ed: This was probably Kathleen Connell] noted, Folsom Street and the South of Market is a neighborhood of minorities, the elderly, and gay men — so on the same block, visitors could shop at a booth of a novelty emporium selling ‘naughty’ party items, talk seriously about SM to members of the Janus Society, and view artwork in crayon by children from a local grade school. ‘Only in San Francisco,’ as the saying goes.

There were fewer politicians, craftsmen, organization booths, and stops for food-and-beer than at the city’s more established street fairs—which left more elbowroom for the crowd, most of whom came mainly to look at each other anyway. The weather was terrific, spirits were high, and leather was everywhere, gleaming in the sunlight.

This writeup likely comes from Drummer founder and editor Dr. Jack Fritscher, who recalled kinkier and more explicit details a 2011 piece from the Bay Area Reporter insert BAR Tab that still exists thanks to the Wayback Machine. “The crowd at that first Folsom Fair was pretty much several hundred SoMa leathermen sticking their skeptical heads out of the bars to jaywalk, drink, and piss-play with attitude,” Fritscher wrote. “Almost immediately, jitters turned to enthusiasm.”

Image: Joped via Flickr

The first Folsom Street Fair was a much larger-than-expected success, and the fair returned in successive years with additional tacky, 1980s names like Attack of the Street Fair (1985), Dancin’ in the Street (1988), and Hot 6 in the City (1989, the sixth Folsom Street Fair). Not until 1990, the seventh annual edition of the fair, would the festival properly bill itself as the “Folsom Street Fair.”

It dawns upon SFist while writing this that many of you readers were not even alive yet for the first ever Folsom Street Fair, 33 years ago. (Don’t feel bad, SFist wasn’t born until 2004.) But it’s even more striking that the fundamental conflict that spawned the Folsom Street Fair — a subculture trying to maintain its presence and identity in the face of rapid SoMa development — continues to play out today. That underscores the enduring importance of the Folsom Street Fair. There is great power in the fact that at least for one day, a sexual subculture gets to be ‘the top’ and thoroughly dominate the South of Market neighborhood.

Related: A (Mostly) Gay Guide To Folsom Street Fair Weekend Parties

Add to the list of the too many things to do this week the groundbreaking annual queer gamer conference GaymerX in San Jose (Sept. 30 - Oct. 2). The world’s first LGBT gaming convention, GaymerX was founded in 2013 in San Francisco, solicited protest threats from Westboro Baptist Church (They never showed! Event organizers even made them a cake), made an appearance on Looking, moved to San Jose last year, and powers on for its fourth year this Friday through Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Below are the conference's most intriguing gameplay scenarios.

Image: GaymerX

Cosplay and Parties
The ‘grandperson of them all’ occasion at any gaming convention events is its cosplay contest, and the GaymerX Cosplay Pageant goes down Sunday morning at 11 a.m. Prizes will be awarded in the categories of Best in Show, Best Glam, Best Queer Character, Best DIY, Audience Favorite, and Best Indie Character.

“Everyone also gets a participation ribbon, because I'm from that generation,” head of cosplay Kitty Stryker told SFist.

The party scene at GaymerX is augmented with Kitty Powers' Fabulous Nerdy Game Show! Friday, the GaymerX Dance on Saturday, plus gigs of bits from chiptune violinist Aethernaut.

Image: GaymerX

Panel discussions will include How to Twitch Safely as a POC/LGBTQIA/Female ID'd Streamer, Reducing Unintended Bias Through Game User Research, and
Butts in Gaming - The Art of Characterisation, among many others.

GaymerX runs Friday, September 30 - Sunday, October 2 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Tickets here.

Related: GaymerX Conference Organizers Debut Queer Gaming Documentary

The most disturbing aspect of tonight’s Frameline documentary about “ the largest gay mass murder in US history” is that it’s no longer about the largest gay mass murder in US history. The documentary Upstairs Inferno, the gut-wrenching tale of a brutal 1973 New Orleans gay bar attack that took the lives of 32 people and screening at the Victoria tonight, gives horrible, powerful and poignant insights into what it’s like to be stuck in the middle of the a homicidal massacre of an LGBT nightclub.

The survivors of this month’s grisly Pulse nightclub shooting are not yet ready to write their tell-all books, or appear in documentaries. Ostensibly, some of them someday will. But many of the survivors of the UpStairs Lounge arson attack do appear in Upstairs Inferno to share the harrowing, tiny details of being trapped inside a gay safe space that’s under siege specifically because it is a gay safe space: the sounds of the screams, the jumping out of second story windows, the heroic (and often fatal) attempts to go back and save lovers or friends. And in an awful Orlando parallel, the attack was committed by closeted gay man struggling with his own identity.

“The term ‘hate crime’ did not exist at the time of the fire,” the film’s director Robert L. Camina told SFist. “Some people say that self-hatred was a contributing motive. Others look back at the way the gay community was treated in the wake of the fire and the deafening silence of religious and government leaders was the real hate crime.”

Image: 'Upstairs Inferno'

Indeed, the New Orleans police chief put out a statement at the time calling the victims “thieves, murderers and queers” according to one person interviewed in the film. This is not exactly the kind of outpouring of support we saw for the Orlando victims. Many of the UpStairs victims’ families flatly refused to claim their bodies or hold funerals.

“Communities across the country and world are holding vigils and standing in solidarity with Orlando,” Camina said. “That didn't happen in 1973. Over $5.6 million dollars have been raised for Pulse victims through a GoFundMe account. In the aftermath of the UpStairs Lounge arson, only $17,900 was raised through the National New Orleans Memorial Fund. Adjusted for inflation, that equals $96,951.90. That's a huge difference.”

Image: 'Upstairs Inferno'

Tonight’s Frameline screening is on the eve of the 43-year anniversary of the arson, and some of the victims’ families will be on hand for the Q&A. The film is also screening tomorrow at New Orleans Pride, as it did last year on the 42-year anniversary.

UPSTAIRS INFERNO - Trailer 1 [HD] (www.UpstairsInferno.com) from Camina Entertainment on Vimeo.

“The audience was full of survivors, friends, family members of victims and witnesses,” Camina said. “Many traveled across the country to attend the screening. Never before, have so many people affected by the fire been in the same room.”

That was significant, but that was before the Pulse massacre replaced the UpStairs massacre as the US’ deadliest gay mass murder. “No one wanted to pass that moniker on and see a horror of this nature again,” Camina admitted. “Whether bullets or arson, this is a nightmarish deja vu. It's a stark reminder that while the LGBTQ community has achieved a lot in its fight for equality, there are many people who still feel that LGBTQ lives are expendable.”

'Upstairs Inferno' plays tonight at the Victoria Theatre at 9:30 p.m., with the director and victims’ family members in attendance. Get tickets here.

Related: Remembering The Gay San Francisco Church That Was Torched Out Of Hate In 1973

Trans people have never had it easy. But they had it way less easy in rural Mississippi in the 1970s. Meet Jheri Jones, who transitioned to female in 1976, and is the subject of the incredibly riveting, wow-inducing documentary The Joneses playing Saturday at The Roxie as part of Frameline 40. We spoke to Jheri, now 74 years young, about living at the frontlines of the trans movement since before there was a trans movement. The Joneses tells her story of raising four children and two grandchildren while suffering the trials, tribulations, slings, arrows, hate, bigotry — and occasional unexpected poignance — of living trans in a deep south trailer park in Pearl, Mississippi.

This documentary is packed with powerful, three-Kleenex moments that you will never forget watching: the exasperated, “I miss calling you dad!” conversation, a son coming out to his biological mom conversation, and Jheri explaining to her grandkids that their grandmother is technically, biologically their grandfather. And you will bawl your eyes from their sockets witnessing these real-life scenes.

What’s Jheri’s secret to maintaining the peace with her rural Mississippi neighbors? “They don’t know,” she told SFist. “Unlike some of the gay people, who wear their gay pride bracelets and all of that, this is not a situation where you go around telling everyone just for the sake of telling them. I just let people take me as I am. When I meet someone, I see no point to mention anything about transgender unless for some reason that comes up. It’s not because of shame, it’s because I’m trying to keep a low profile and protect myself from any kind of bigotry or persecution.”

Jheri transitioned in the mid-1970s, with no real trans community around her for support. “There was no one to help me,” Jheri said. “It was like dancing in the dark. The medical establishment here, they didn’t want to talk about hormone therapy and all that. That was just ‘Eww!’.”

“From ‘76 to ‘86 it was just hit and miss, here and there,” she recalled. “I was working at the time and my employer would not allow me to cross-dress at work. I still had to do the male thing.”

Last week’s Orlando mass shooting resonated particularly to Jheri, who has seen decades worth of violence directed gay clubs and clubgoers. “There were several murders that took place here from the time I started going in the late 70s, in the disco era,” she remembered. A 1979 murder hit her particularly close to home.

“I made the mistake of bringing home some guy I had met this gay bar,” Jheri said. “[My roommate] decided he wanted this guy as his lover, so he made me leave, he made me move. Shortly after that, the guy murdered him, killed him, robbed him, took his car.”

“I had to go court and testify against this person, this was a very horrific incident,” she recalled painfully. “I felt responsible, because I had introduced them. If I hadn’t introduced them, he might still be alive.”

Image: 'The Joneses'

Jheri’s seen it all as a trans parent — having her children taken away from her, getting them back, raising two sons with special needs, and ultimately coming out as trans to her teenage grandchildren. She recalled the awkwardness her 17-year-old grandson had with this discovery. “He at first had some reservations about it, he was pretty confused,” she said, “He’s finally come to terms with it. He jokingly calls me his ‘grandmapa’.”

These and many many other gut-wrenching/heart-warming moments make The Joneses one of the most memorable documentaries you’ll see at Frameline, or anywhere. It’s not just about being trans, it’s about being a mother, a grandmother, and holding a family together at any cost. What some might call dysfunction, others would call deep and enduring family love. As Jheri says, “If there’s enough love there, you can overcome.”

The Joneses plays at The Roxie, Saturday, June 18 at 1:30 p.m. Get tickets here

Related: The Eight Most Awesome LGBT Films Playing At Frameline 40

You guys. The world’s longest-running LGBTQ film festival Frameline kicks off Thursday night at the Castro Theatre and runs through the end of Pride Weekend, and boy could we use some Frameline right now. Here to open a No. 10 can of social justice, solidarity, and unapologetic fabulous flair on our currently conflicted society, Frameline’s 40th annual incarnation gets loud and proud with more than 150 screenings at the Castro, the Roxie, the Victoria, and in Oakland and Berkeley. While the Closing Night screening of the feature-length finale of HBO’s Looking is “At Rush” (that’s film festival-speak for “sold out, but you can stand in line and hope to get an unoccupied seat”), there are still tickets available for these other magnificent, thought-provoking and massively entertaining contemporary works of queer cinema.

Kiki
Opening Night vogues hard with this modern-day revisitation of the underground queer ballroom dancing culture seen in the 1990’s groundbreaking film Paris is Burning. Ballroom dancing serves as an escape for a band of New York City LGBTQ kids as they struggle with poverty, homelessness, and harassment in Sara Jordenö’s unflinching and relentlessly inspiring dance scene documentary.
Castro Theatre, Thursday, June 16, 7 p.m. and Landmark Theatres Piedmont (Oakland)
Friday, June 24 7 p.m. Get tickets here

Akron
The squee, teenage gay jock romance we’ve always been waiting for has finally arrived. Put aside your LeBron hate for 90 glorious, heartwarming minutes as we take a fictional, romantic trip to the small town of Akron, Ohio (LeBron’s real-life hometown) where two hunky football players find young love. Unsurprisingly, complications ensue as the story unfolds into a hot, young beefcake version of Romeo and Juliet.
Castro Theatre, Friday, June 17, 4 p.m. and Victoria Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 4 p.m. Get tickets here

Girl Gets Girl
It’s like a lesbian Three’s Company delivered telenovela-style in Sonia Sebastián’s dyke dramedy. A teenage girl’s “Period Party” flows heavily with adult situations, mistaken identities, comic twists and sexual innuendos in this feature-length film adaptation of the popular Spanish TV series.
Roxie Theatre, Saturday, June 18, 6:30 p.m. Get tickets here
UPDATE: As luck would have it, this film has gone to Rush. But there are 54 other outstanding lesbian films for your consideration in this year's Frameline.

'Vegas In Space', image via Frameline

Vegas In Space
The Peaches Christ Productions offering at this year’s Frameline — hostessed, of course, by Peaches herself — is the 1991 Troma Entertainment low-budget epic Vegas In Space that has played at Cannes, Sundance and most prestigiously on USA’s Up All Night. Peaches packs plenty of the film’s stars into the Victoria for this screening, including longtime local drag faves Connie Champagne, Timmy Spence, and the film’s director Phillip R. Ford
Victoria Theatre, Friday, June 17, 9:30 p.m. Get tickets here

PUSHING DEAD TRAILER from MrD on Vimeo.

Strike A Pose
Rejoice, vintage Madonna fans — here’s the documentary that shows you what the documentary Truth or Dare did not dare show you. The surviving background dancers, all of whom were hand-picked by Madonna for the “Blonde Ambition” tour, reunite to tell the inside story of what really happened on tour and to their lives afterward. Christ, have they aged well, and yes the boys will be onhand at this Castro screening to hopefully dish some serious dirt about Madge.
Castro Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 8:30 p.m. Get tickets here

Growing Up Coy
The bravest little soldier in the transgender bathroom access movement is Coy Mathis, a Colorado first-grader who won the right to use the girls bathroom in 2013. This is her story. A poignant portrait of the a family whose persistence set of a national battle still being fought today, this documentary details the very personal and very public conflict they waged on behalf of the “thousands of Coys out there”
Castro Theatre, Saturday, June 25, 11 a.m. Get tickets here

In advance of tonight's vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting, the Pride flag in San Francisco's iconic Castro District has been lowered to half-mast this afternoon.

As you doubtlessly know by now, 50 people have died as the result of a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning. At least 53 more were injured, and one official has said that the death count is expected to increase as the day progresses. It's the worst mass murder in US history, and the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people ever on American soil.

According to reports, the shooter was a US-born citizen who "saw two men kissing in Miami" and became enraged. The shooter is also alleged to have been mentally ill and abusive to women. "He was not a stable person," his ex-wife told the Washington Post. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that."

According to the Post, the shooter allegedly "made a 911 call before the attack identifying himself and pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State."

Though no credible threat is apparent in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Police Department, they say that there will be an increased police presence in "places of high public concentration including shopping, transit, and entertainment areas, the City's Castro District and LGBT venues."

Tonight's vigil for the victims of the attack begins around 7:30 p.m., in Jane Warner Plaza, at the intersection of Castro and Market Streets.

Related: SF To Honor Victims Of Orlando Shooting In Castro Vigil Sunday Night
Reports: Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooter Was Homophobic, Declared Allegiance To ISIS, Beat Ex-Wife

Two days after the governor of North Carolina signed into law legislation that would eliminate protections for LGBT people and ban transgender people from using their gender-identified restrooms, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has released a statement prohibiting any city-funded travel to the state.

The North Carolina legislation, which was signed into law after what the New York Times describes as "a whirlwind special session on Wednesday," was a response to a LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance approved in Charlotte last month that "provided protections based on sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity."

According to the Times, "The state bill, put together so quickly that many lawmakers had not seen it before it was introduced Wednesday morning, specifically bars people in North Carolina from using bathrooms that do not match their birth gender, and goes further to prohibit municipalities from creating their own anti-discrimination policies. Instead, it creates a statewide anti-discrimination policy — one that does not mention gay and transgender people."

A day after the bill was signed into law, companies including American Airlines, Apple, Dow Chemical, PayPal, Red Hat, Salesforce, the NBA, ESPN, Facebook, Google, and Biogen condemned the legislation. And now, too, has Lee, who in a statement sent Friday morning said "We are standing united as San Franciscans to condemn North Carolina’s new discriminatory law that turns back the clock on protecting the rights of all Americans including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals."

"Effective immediately," Lee's statement read, "I am directing City Departments under my authority to bar any publicly-funded City employee travel to the State of North Carolina that is not absolutely essential to public health and safety."

According to the SF Business Times, the CEO of SF-based Salesforce is also agitating for other companies to fight the law.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who successfully led the charge to overturn a law in Indiana last year that allowed faith-based organizations to refuse services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, said he'll ask Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to oppose North Carolina's law. Bank of America is headquartered in Charlotte. Last month, Benioff opposed a similar measure in Georgia that legalized discrimination in the name of religious freedom.

Here's the Mayor's full statement:

Mayor Edwin M. Lee today issued the following statement after North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed into law legislation overturning protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the State of North Carolina:

“We are standing united as San Franciscans to condemn North Carolina’s new discriminatory law that turns back the clock on protecting the rights of all Americans including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. Effective immediately, I am directing City Departments under my authority to bar any publicly-funded City employee travel to the State of North Carolina that is not absolutely essential to public health and safety.

I believe strongly that we should be adding more protections to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in the United States, not taking them away.

I would like to applaud cities like Charlotte and its Mayor, Mayor Jennifer Roberts, who have taken steps at the local level to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination. I also applaud Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed who is a champion for equality for all.

With other states like Georgia on the verge of passing more discriminatory laws, let me be clear that San Francisco taxpayers will not subsidize legally-sanctioned discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in any City or State.”

Last year, disappointed by the actions of Indiana Governor Mike Pence who signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law that legalizes discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, Mayor Lee directed City Departments under his authority to bar publicly-funded City employee travel to the State of Indiana. That ban has since been lifted after Indiana amended their law.

Related: Bill To Make All SF Single-Occupancy Restrooms All-Gender Moves Forward

San Francisco State just welcomed back the first gay fraternity on campus in almost a quarter of a century. The fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, is a national organization founded by gay men in 1987, but has not had a chapter at SF State since 1992.

“Essentially our goal is to create a brotherhood like all the other fraternities, but we really feel like creating a home for the large queer male population at SF State,” Kyle Mears, president of Delta Lambda Phi, told the Golden Gate Xpress.

The new chapter became official in December, and its members spoke with the paper about their intentions on the campus of almost 30,000 students.

“We're kind of redefining Greek life in a way,” one member of the fraternity, Austin Farley, explained. “We’re just a group of diverse queer people standing at a table willing to welcome anybody. For those people who can't go out and experience queer life in San Francisco, it’s really important for them to feel welcomed and at home at SF State," he added.

And while Delta Lambda Phi is definitely a gay frat, students don't need to be queer to join — Xpress reports that the only qualifier is that the pledge must identify as male.

The fraternity was founded in 1987 by Vernon L. Strickland III in Washington DC, and the first pledge party drew 150 people.

Related: Cleve Jones: We Have To Preserve Gayborhoods Because They Save Lives

After conservative organizations countered President Obama’s push for the Boy Scouts of America to accept gay members, the organization has delayed a decision until May, citing "the complexity of this issue". The Boy Scouts were considering a possible change of policy that would lift the ban on openly gay Scouts and Scout-leaders.

Over 40 conservative organizations, including The Family Research Council, ran a prominent ad in USA Today urging the Boy Scouts to "show courage" and "stand firm for family values." The ad stated that:

Every American who believes in freedom of thought and religious liberty should be alarmed by the attack on the Boy Scouts, who have had core convictions about morality for 100 years. Every Scout takes an oath to keep himself "morally straight." The Boy Scouts have every right to include sexual conduct in how they define that term.

The ad also states that "Last year the BSA released their so-called 'perversion files,' which contain the names of 100s of sexual predators who had managed to hide their attraction to boys and enter the Boy Scouts.

The United States Supreme Court said in 2000 that the Boy Scout's ban was legal free speech by a private organization, but in a pre-Super Bowl interview President Obama stated that the group should be open to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. The President of the U.S. traditionally serves as honorary president of the Boy Scouts.

Even before Hi Tops (a new sports bar soon to take over the old Lime spot in the Castro) has opened, it's already making national news. Well, it received a hefty shout-out on Chelsea Lately. That's almost like a headline, yes? Anyway, Ms. Handler and her revolving gaggle of comedians talked about the upcoming bar on Thursday night during their roundtable.

Among the bon mots tossed about regarding the Castro's first official sports bar, the panel wondered if Hi Tops will serve cuter food than a regular sports bar, like cucumber tea sandwiches; thought that gay guys should have to choose between Judy Garland or football (if you're asking us, the former all the way); and presumed lesbians will be in charge of all construction.

Heh.

We asked Jesse Woodward, co-owner of Hi Tops, for his reaction to last night's E! Network mention. He replies, "There will definitely NOT be any cucumber sandwiches!"

Turn volume up:

Previously: Hi Tops, San Francisco's Very First Gay Sports Bar, Opening This Fall

A mid-level appeals court in New York ruled on Thursday that gay is okay — specifically, it's no longer considered a slur to call someone "gay." The ruling was sparked after Mark Yonaty of Binghamton sued a woman who allegedly spread a rumor regarding his sexuality, apparently with the hope that "Yonaty's girlfriend would break up with him." The queer accusation "hurt and ultimately destroyed" his relationship. However, said court ruled that being called gay, true or otherwise, simply isn't a bad thing. Which: hurray!

The New York decision claims that such commentary about one's sexual orientation is no longer "based on a false premise that it is shameful and disgraceful to be described as lesbian, gay or bisexual."

Does this mean that this is a widely accepted view across the country? Ha! Hardly. "The traditional view of being called gay was like being called an evil person. The state of public opinion has changed, but there are still people who feel that way," Jonathan L. Entin, law and political science professor at Case Western Reserve University Law School in Ohio, explains to Associated Press.

Saturday Night Live recently hired a new female comic, Kate McKinnon, known for her work with Upright Citizens Brigade and the Big Gay Sketch Show. The latter hints at the fact that, yes, McKinnon is gay, which effectively makes her SNL's first openly lesbian featured player. (Terry Sweeney, who appeared in the disastrous 1985-86 season, was the show's first openly gay guy.) She makes her debut this Saturday when Sofia Vergara hosts.

More importantly, is McKinnon funny? We think so. So does SNL alum Rachel Dratch. But, please, judge for yourself:

Here's a bit she starred in for Funny or Die about Vag Magazine:

McKinnon appeared in this humorous video for "Commitment Ceremony":

And here she is playing a bitter health teacher for UCB: