Category: Cycling

Today is day 28 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Day 28:

We love our figure skaters.  We can file this one under local boy makes good.  Rudy Galindo never went to the Olympics, but everybody knows his name.  He has a slew of first place finishes starting with the U.S. National Novice Men’s Championship in 1982 and culminating with his win in 1996 of the U.S. National Men’s Championship in 1996.  He is the fourth oldest man to have ever won the whole thing.  He won two Pairs championships with his partner Kristi Yamaguchi, also a local girl in 1989 and 1990.

Yeah, like that.  I wonder what it feels like to get that close to perfection.  He did it.  He got that close.  The woman you see at the end of the video is his sister Laura, who was his coach.  He came out in 1996 during an interview with Christine Brennan for her book Inside Edge on figure skating.  He is to date the only openly gay athlete to have competed in any sport.  Later in 2000 he disclosed his HIV status in another interview with Brennan.  He wrote his own book in 1997 that was published in English and Spanish.  He battled substance abuse, came out on the other side a better man.  He had both hips replaced in 2003.  His sister Laura found a new procedure that had just been approved by the FDA using a ceramic on ceramic technique.  She found a Doctor in Reno who was experienced in the procedure and performed the new technique.  Both hips were done within six weeks of each other.

Currently Rudy coaches young skating athletes throughout Northern California and Nevada.  He is an AIDS activist and has been the Grand Marshal of several pride events.  He works tirelessly for a cure.

Because the road less traveled is sometimes the most interesting, today I ride for Rudy.

Today is day 27 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Day 27:

I was traveling in Greece in 1978.  I met a woman that was traveling with a band.  I will never forget it.  She said in a thick Georgian accent “They call’em the B-52’s because of their beehive hair-do’s”.  And so they did.  They were a little band from Athens Georgia who met over a Flaming Volcano at a Chinese restaurant.  They started jamming and played their first gig in 1977.  They didn’t have a bassist so Ricky Wilson downtuned his guitar and developed his own style of playing.

The B-52’s changed music.  They were on the crest of the New Wave.  They had four highly successful albums before Ricky’s illness became so severe he couldn’t hide it any more.  He didn’t want anyone to worry about him.  His sister and fellow bandmate Cindy Wilson, found out he had AIDS because an intern at the hospital called her and told her.  Ricky was in the hospital at the time and ended up dying three days later.

The band had just recorded Bouncing off the Satellites.  They didn’t tour to support the album and ended up going on a three year hiatus.  Cindy Wilson went into a deep depression during this time.  They considered disbanding but in the end they chose to honor Ricky’s hard work and stay together.  Keith Strickland, the band’s drummer switched to guitar and taught himself to play like Ricky did.

Because that kind of creativity rolls around once in a blue moon, I ride for Ricky.

Today is day 26 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Day 26: sort of

I first moved to San Francisco in 1984.  Actually on December 30th 1983.  I started 1984 in San Francisco.  In a great apartment at 1 1/2 Broderick Street.  I never should have left that place.  I’ve got stories about that house that go on all day long.

Actually, this post was originally supposed to be about one thing and while I was thinking about that apartment it reminded me of another guy who is gone.  Charlie.

Charlie was Bill’s friend.  There were three of them all from New Jersey.  Charlie, Bill and Robert.  Back then we knew him as Bobby.  He was a dance instructor and a very funny man.  And he was one hot mess.  Bobby stories are fun…there was a party at that apartment and Bobby was there with heart shaped rose colored shades.  And a boa.  Charlie told me he looked out the window of his place and could see the entire party dancing and bouncing up and down, so he came over.  Since then, Bobby got a really good job, got himself into a program and quit partying.  And became Robert, leaving all that behind him.  He is the only survivor.  He has become an amazing man.  Robert rode the AIDS ride several years ago.

But this isn’t about Robert, it’s about Charlie.  He lived diagonally from that apartment on Broderick Street.  We were the neighbors that would wander back and forth to each other’s place for coffee.  And of course there were cocktails.  And Bill would come and visit us on the way to see Charlie and vice versa.  Quite honestly that was the best time in San Francisco.  We were all young and just really starting out, finding our way in this world.

Charlie was ridiculously handsome.  Typical for the time he had a mustache.  And a New Jersey accent.  He was like a better looking Freddie Mercury.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and was genuinely a good guy.

I remember waking up one foggy morning and getting coffee.  I walked to the front window and there was Charlie standing in his window with a cup of coffee surveying the world.  He looked over and I flashed him.  So he flashed me back.  And that became our tradition.  Only once did we get caught.  There was this little black Queen that lived around the corner.  I did not know his name but he was woven into the fabric of that neighborhood.  He was walking down the street one morning and clapped.

Charlie didn’t last long.  He was the first one out.

Because nobody looked better in a feather boa, I ride today for Charlie.

Today is day 25 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Day 25:

Here’s one that seemed like a good idea at the time.  Proposition 13, also known as the Jarvis-Gann initiative or the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation was enacted in 1978.  At the time there were a lot of stories about property taxes working their way up to the point that older people who had been in their homes for years were losing their homes.  It still happens in a lot of other States in the union.  Taxes were decreased to their 1975 level and could only increase by 2% per year max.  Here we are over 30 years later and the property tax situation in this State is ridiculous.  Really like every thing else in California government.  And we’ve got now supplemental tax bills and currently negative inflation (in spite of what Glenn Beck says). We all know how I feel about taxes, if everyone paid their fair share and only took what they needed we’d be fine.  I am fine paying my fair share to not have my suspension destroyed by a pot hole.  Or if it meant that a cop showed up in four minutes and not eight.  I personally think Prop 13 hurt education in this State and is responsible for it’s nearly last place finish in the nation.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t a Paul Gann fan.  And he did nothing in death to let me believe any other way.  Gann had emergency heart surgery in 1982.  He received 40 pints of blood during that surgery.  One or more pints was supposedly tainted.  While in 1982 the blood supply was not scrutinized like it is today, to have acquired the disease in Sacramento California in 1982 from a blood transfusion is curious to me.   No matter, the result was the same.

He was a vindictive man and felt that someone who knowingly transmitted the disease should be tried for murder.  He sponsored Proposition 102 which would amongst other things, would have required doctors to report to the State the names and addresses of anyone carrying the AIDS virus or anyone who they reasonably believed might be infected.  The voters of California rejected that Proposition.

”I don’t mind telling you I don’t understand homosexuals and that’s the truth,” he said in an interview in October. ”I can’t imagine a man going to bed with a man. That’s beyond my comprehension. But I don’t run around fighting gay people. I’m fighting AIDS. I would fight my own church choir if they were spreading a disease that would kill people.”

He came back with the Paul Gann Blood Safety Act which required physicians to discuss the dangers of blood transfusions with their patients.  It seems to me if a guy needed 40 pints during emergency heart surgery, he should quit being such a jackass and be thankful that they saved his life in 1982.  He could have been on a cold slab in 1982 or gotten another seven years out of this life.  But no matter.  I know people who have banked their own blood for surgery, although the blood supply today is pretty well scrutinized.  I’ve been giving blood since 1984 and I can attest that they do a lot of testing and verification to be sure it’s clean.

Because it takes all types, and AIDS is non-discriminatory, today I ride against ignorance.

Today is day 24 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Did I say I was going to catch up?  I didn’t count on getting sick.  I’m catching up in the next day.

Day 24:

There are some famous trainwrecks in this world.  Her contemporaries included Cindy Crawford and Janice Dickinson.  But Gia was a runaway train destined to destruction.  Now known only by one name, she was then known as Gia Carangi.  Who knows for sure which demons tortured her, but we know the demon the consumed her.

Cosmo adjusted her eye color in her first cover.  She shot to the top of the modeling world quickly, arriving in New York at the age of 17 and having made it by the time she was 18.  She appeared on the cover of Cosmo, Vogue, Italian Vogue, American Vogue and Vogue Paris, earning $10,000 a day for her shoots.  She was a dark haired brown eyed beauty in a world full of blue-eyed blondes.  She became a regular at Studio 54 and we all know that wasn’t good for anyone.  She started using cocaine there but soon graduated to heroin.  Her addiction became so epic that she  was blackballed in New York.  Later she had to work in Brazil and Germany and essentially “second” markets”.  Francesco Scavullo gave her the cover of the April 1982 Vogue, she could not have gotten that on her own any more.  Her arms are strategically placed to hide the track marks.  He had hoped it would turn her career around.  She had beaten her addiction but the New York fashion world is unforgiving.  And she didn’t look the same.  And she relapsed.

The first two years of her career she made over $100,000, in her third year she was on track to make $500,000 before she got off track.  Jack Nicholson even gave her his hotel room key one night.  In retrospect I’m sure he’s happy that she was a lesbian and didn’t use it.  I don’t know that she was the first super model, but she was the original heroin chic.  It turned out to be not that chic.  She was late and erratic if she showed at all.  She fell asleep during shoots and looked terrible.  The track marks were so bad they couldn’t airbrush them out.  She was arrested for driving under the influence of narcotics in 1981.  Later that year she had surgery on her hand to repair an open wound from injecting heroin so many times into the same place in the same vein.  Naturally blacklisting followed.

By the end of 1984 she was broke.  In 1985 she checked herself into a rehab program that would not stick.  The following year she ended up in the hospital with what looked like pneumonia but wasn’t.  It was ARC. She was dead at 26.  She is said to be one of the first women to have died of AIDS.

For having such a short meteoric career she was the subject of three biographies.  A book, Thing of Beauty, the famous HOB biopic Gia, starring Angelina Jolie and The Self-Destruction of Gia, a documentary appearing in 2004.

Because we all have demons, I ride for the runaway trainwrecks.  I ride for Gia.

Today is day 23 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

I’ll be caught up by sundown

Day 23:

Back in 1986 in Compton, California a hip hop group was forming.  They were recording under the name Panic Zone but would soon be known as N.W.A.  They are one of the main groups responsible for bringing gangsta rap into being.  I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing, but it’s a thing.  Personally, I think part of the problem in this country is the “prison culture”, but that’s another whole story and a big fat rant for another day.

Looking back N.W.A.’s line up was amazing.  Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Arabian Prince, MC Ren and Easy E.  They proceeded to get themselves into all sorts of trouble that you would expect.  Actually, they had already been in trouble, Easy E dropped out of high school in his sophmore year and started selling drugs on the street to support himself.  He was a member of the Crips as a teenager.  While he had done well as a gang affiliated drug dealer, he saw the bloodshed in the streets and decided to get involved in hip hop.  His record company, Ruthless Records was funded with money from his drug profits.

N.W.A. crashed and burned pretty quickly.  Young men with no real business sense or skills are inclined to let bluster and ego get in the way of a greater good.  Dr. Dre was bailing out and very suspicious of Easy E’ s business dealings.  Enter Suge Knight, total thug.  Dre wanted out of his contract with Ruthless and Easy knew a good thing when he saw it.  He wasn’t letting Dre out of his contract.  Suge Knight eventually threatened Easy E telling him he knew where his mama lived.  Dre was released from the contract.  Dre spent the next several albums hammering on Easy.  Easy in turn fired back including the violent depiction of Dr. Dre’s murder on one album.

The funny thing is their fan base was white suburban males.  Stupid white boys.  The thing is, I have always thought that the fact that their fan base was stupid white boys actually helped temper racism in this country.  And yeah, I just called them stupid white boys three times.

Yeah, I just did that.  Easy E was one of the driving forces behind hip hop.  And then he went to the hospital thinking he had asthma.  It wasn’t.  While the gay rumors swirled, his infection had nothing to do with homosexuality.  He wasn’t.  It was the result of bad behavior.  He’d had seven children with six different women and that was only the tip of that iceberg.  AIDS was in the gangsta community.  It was no longer a gay disease.  Easy E’s legacy has to do with hip hop and really had no effect on the AIDS epidemic.  Nobody understood how it was in the community and how it would spread.  And spread it did.

Still, because he changed the airwaves and the culture in this country, I ride for Easy.

Today is day 22 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

And now I’m just one day in the hole.

Day 22:

I lettered a bunch of times in high school.  One of the sports I lettered in was tennis.   I did very well at tennis, ranking generally number two on the team.  I spent hours banging the ball against the wall at my high school all by myself.  And many more hours playing with my friend Dave.  I was perennially grounded throughout high school and the only thing I could do outside of school was tennis.  I think I got good playing with Dave, because he took such pleasure in kicking my ass.  I graduated from high school in 1976.  And in 1975 the top tennis player in the world was Arthur Ashe.  That was the year he won Wimbledon.  Oh yeah, and he was a black dude.  And kind of a geek.

Ashe was the first African American player to compete at the international level.  He was an exponential gentleman on the court, probably due to his early instruction from R. Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson.  Johnson taught military style and stressed sportsmanship at it’s highest level, probably the best combination possible for a six year old child.  Arthur Ashe has a list of firsts that is about as long as your arm.  He won the men’s singles at Wimbledon and was named ATP Player of the Year in 1975.  In 1979 he had a heart attack which ended his career.  His mother died of heart failure when he was 6 years old.  He was now 35 years old.  Because of his amazing level of fitness it drew attention to hereditary heart disease.  He had a quadruple bypass in 1983.  They believe he received tainted blood during this surgery.  In 1988 he had brain surgery when they discovered that he was carrying the HIV.

In his retirement years he coached the Davis Cup team to consecutive victories, became the National Campaign Chairman for the American Heart Association, founded the Balck Tennis & Sports Foundation and 15-Love a substance abuse program.  He protested apartheid and was the first person inducted in the U.S. Professional Tennis Association Hall of Fame.  He won an Emmy for a television version of his book A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete.  He addressed the United Nations on World AIDS day in 1992.  And that’s before breakfast.  Ashe’s life is like a Colt McCoy joke.  Only true.

Arthur Ashe did not see his 51st birthday.

“Listen. 50 million children around the world start playing tennis. 5 million learn to play tennis. 500,000 learn professional tennis. 50,000 come to the circuit. 5000 reach The Grand Slam. 50 reach Wimbledon. 8 reach the Quarterfinals. 4 to the Semifinals. 2 to the Finals. When i was holding the Cup i never asked God: Why me? So why now in pain should I be asking Him: WHY ME?”

Because excellence is color blind.  And so is HIV, I ride for Arthur Ashe.

Today is day 21 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

And now I’m only two days in the hole

Day 21:

If the AIDS epidemic has an artist, it’s Keith Haring.

He burst onto the art scene in 1980 with his work in the New York subways.  His original works were based on cartooning and somewhat Esher-esque.

The repeating design evolved into his little people.  His little man made his first appearance in 1981.  They appeared all over New York.  His contemporaries included Jean-Michel Basquiat and he was friends with Warhol, Grace Jones, Cristo.  He committed himself to public art creating as many as 40 drawings in the subway in one day.

His vast portfolio became increasingly political as he evolved as an artist.  His art would speak to the social issues he found important, like apartheid and the AIDS epidemic.  He believed that art was for everyone.

He produced dozens of public works during the 80’s including murals in Monte Carlo, this Crack is Wack mural on FDR Drive in New York, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Pisa.  One wouldn’t expect him to have a commercial venture but in 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in New York where he hawked t-shirts, posters stickers you name it, bearing his art images.  One of Annie Leibovitz’s most famous shots was of Keith Haring having painted himself to match the Pop Shop.  The Pop Shop finally closed it’s doors in 2005, but still exists online, benefiting his foundation. The interior was painted in a black and white mural.

Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and only lived for another year.  He created numerous works which shined God’s flashlight on the epidemic.

Because when he saw injustice in the world, he spoke out with his art.  Because his art was for everyone, I ride for Keith Haring.

Today is day 20 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

And I’m well aware I’m two days in the hole.

Day 20:

I had a friend who was a travel agent.  Her original job in San Francisco was working for a travel agency that was housed in the original site where “Behind the Green Door” was filmed.  Her second job was in with an agency that she eventually bought an interest in.  I can’t remember what happened after that.  What I do remember was Brian, the owner.

Brian was one of those older queens.  Very dramatic in nearly everything he did.  You know the guy.  He’ll do drag a couple of times a year and not shave off his beard.  So he’s the world’s ugliest drag queen.  That guy.  He was probably in his mid 50’s when I knew him.  A very intelligent and well read man.  And a red hot mess more often than not.

I don’t really remember what fueled his business deals, it certainly wasn’t that travel agency.   He was the guy who liked to have grand tea parties at his home.  He had several.  Homes that is.  The one I remember, the one that made the lasting impression was Rancho Huzzpah.  It was a mid-century rancher nestled in a series of apple orchards in Sebastapol.  He was the first guy I met who liked to take junk and make it amazing.  The house hadn’t been updated or remodeled in years.  When I first saw it, I was indoctrinated into the Tribe of Flip.

Brian never saw the completion of the remodel of Rancho Huzzpah.  He soon took ill and while he fought a good fight he was gone relatively quickly.  It was the mid-80’s, they didn’t know what they know now.

Because I learned to visualize what a property could be, I ride for Brian.

Today is day 19 in a series of 31 posts about how AIDS has affected my life.  On June 5, 2011 I will embark on the SF AIDS Lifecycle.  It is a seven day 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to support the services provided to those affected by the disease in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Every day a different story about why I will be riding this ride.  Please click here to support my ride.  I have a $3000 fundraising minimum.  Every little bit helps.  If every PBE reader clicked through that link and donated just $10, I would be done fundraising by the end of this month.  I’ve got a long way to go, but not as far as anyone who is fighting this disease.

Day 19:

Nuthin’ but quality here.  What video isn’t enhanced by Greek subtitles?  Exactly.

Robert Reed was guy who worked like a dog through the 70’s and 80’s and really was the fabric of our pop culture.  The guy was in damned near everything.  Everything.  Father knows best?  Yep, he appeared in that.  The Defenders?  Yep, he was in that.  Dr. Kildare?  You betcha. Family Affair.  Check.  Ironside?  Check.  Love American Style? Yessir.  And then there was that little show called the Brady Bunch.  Followed by a nice run on Mannix, Medical Center, Rich Man Poor Man and a ton of guest spots.  If you’re going to be on Love American Style you can’t forget the Love Boat.  Or Murder, She Wrote or Jake and the Fatman.  Robert Reed appeared in a total of 98 different projects.  Hell, the guy was in Roots. I bet you didn’t know he was a trained Shakespearean actor having studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.  He actually hated a lot of the script writing on the Brady Bunch and was famous for either storming off the set to a local bar and getting hammered or retiring to his trailer and refusing to come out.  Here is a beauty of a memo to the producer of the Brady Bunch.  The dude got schooled.  The memo is brilliant.

Yet like so many other leading men of the day he had a secret.  In that era stars of his magnitude lived in Beverly Hills.  Not Robert Reed.  He lived in Pasadena.  It probably made it easier to hide his secret.  Rumor has it he hated being a gay man and really hoped for a cure for his condition.  He was conservative to the extreme.  He never had a long term relationship after his divorce from his wife.

He was very close to all six actors who played the kids on the Brady Bunch.  Barry Williams was enraged when news of Reed’s homosexuality hit the news after his death.  Reed’s friend Anne Haney told his daughter that he was gay and had the AIDS virus.  She picked up his medication for him under a psydeunym.

Yes.  Mrs. Sellner picked up his medication for him.

At the time of his death he was fighting colon cancer and the AIDS virus.  His death certificate says that the cancer got him.  It doesn’t really matter, the end result was the same.

Because he was the fabric of our youth, I ride for Robert Reed.