A trumpeting bull elephant seal (Photo: Frank Balthis, California State Parks)

It’s that time of year when the B-52s’ “Love Shack” makes its annual comeback, delighting some and annoying many at barbecues throughout the Bay Area. While I’m certainly in the latter camp , I’ve also been having a much more positive, free-associative reaction to the tune this season.

Whenever I hear croaky vocalist Fred Schneider bellow “I got me a car, and its as big as a whale” my mind flashes on a visit I paid to Año Nuevo State Park—about 90 minutes south of the city, in San Mateo County—and I want to go back.

While gray whales can occasionally be spotted off the coast of this windswept peninsula during the spring, its the extraordinary elephant seals—many even bigger than a car—that you’re virtually guaranteed to spot lounging on the beach all year round. These are gigantic mofos, with males weighing up to 2.5 tons and measuring up to 16 feet long. During breeding season, from late December through March, 2000 or so of these behemoths crash the beach, and you can only hike the grounds on a ranger-guided tour.

In the summer months, though, when the ellies return to molt in huge raggedy patches, visitors can walk amongst them unchaperoned. Just pick up a permit at the park’s entrance and after hiking a few easy miles over undulating scrub and sand, you’ll find yourself in the land of the giants. The elephant seals are remarkably unthreatened by strolling bipeds. But bipeds like myself feel humbled in their presence, marveling at their cyclical journeys to and from the northern California shore.

We also think the sound of the seals is pretty much on par with the B-52s.

The evening's hostess, Diana Agron, and performers from Cirque du Soleil

On Saturday night, John and I attended this year’s third and final GLAAD Media Awards ceremony and gala fundraiser. Hosted by local native and Glee star Diana Agron, the SF event may not have been as star-studded as the New York and Los Angeles ceremonies held earlier this spring, but the evening had a surprising number of emotionally rewarding moments. (The star stud on the SF stage was Mario Lopez, a straight ally who also just happens to be launching his own line of fancy underpants). Among the night’s most powerful elements was the further emergence of another straight ally— Zac Wahls—as his generation’s most accessible and compelling spokesperson GLBT rights. The poised, articulate 20-year-old son of lesbian mothers who came to national attention after addressing the Iowa House Judiciary committee in defense of same-sex marriage last year is broadening his scope, taking on the Boy Scouts of America for their official policy barring GLBT leaders.

On May 30, three days prior to the GLAAD awards, former Eagle Scout Wahls appeared at the Boy Scouts’ annual national meeting in Orlando where he presented a petition signed by over 270,000 Americans on behalf of Jennifer Tyrrell, a lesbian mother from Ohio who was kicked out as a den mother for her son’s troop. Tyrrell, her partner, and their children also appeared onstage.

Adam Harmon and Pete Bennett

The GLAAD Media Award for best online digital journalism article was won by Max Rosenthal of the Huffington post and accepted by its teary-eyed subjects, Adam Harmon and Pete Bennett, who first met as West Point cadets and married within weeks of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.

Jenny Boylan

For me though, the evening’s highlight came within moments of finding my assigned table, when I discovered we were seated with Jennifer Finney Boylan, whose 2003 memoir of her struggle with gender identity and eventual reassignment surgery–She’s Not There–is one of the most compelling books I’ve read in the last decade. It’s the book that led me to understand and empathize with the T portion of the GLBT community in a way I never had before. Boylan tells her story with such an effective blend of intellect, emotion, wonder, and humor that even the most gender-unconfused readers will feel like they’re spending time with a friend and begin to see past their own ignorances and prejudices. I got to tell her how much her book had impacted me. I also got to tell her that I’d  met her once before, long ago, when she was still a young novelist named James.

Here’s a complete list of the awards presented at all three GLAAD ceremonies this year.

This Sunday, May 27, city is going all out to celebrate the official first day of  Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary year. There’s a full slate of waterfront festivities featuring bridge-related art and science exhibits; displays of antique cars and boats from 1937,  when the bridge was first opened; and an evening fireworks display to cap it all off.

The celebration is just getting under way though, with activities—including daily walking tours rich in details about the bridge’s history and engineering—spanning the summer. So if you decide to skip the crowds this weekend, there’s lots more ahead. One of our favorite upcoming tributes is…The Bridge on the Big Screen Film Series

The Golden Gate may never have won Hollywood’s golden statuette, but the bridge is featured in the films screening on Saturday nights at the Presidio (FREE ADMISSION):

• It Came from Beyond the Sea, May 26 – outdoors
• Howeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco,  June 2 – outdoors
• Superman: The Movie, June 9 – outdoors
• Vertigo, June 16
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, July 21
• A View to a Kill, August 18
• Monsters vs. Aliens, September 15

Alas, 2011′s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with loads of intense action on the Golden Gate, the streets of San Francisco, Muir Woods, and even the Cable Cars isn’t included in the series.  Click here for an awesome clip.

And get a gander of Grace Jones and Christopher Walken ogling the bridge, after the jump.

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Lewis DeSimone

Last night, I had the pleasure of joining novelist Lewis DeSimone at a City Arts & Lectures event where John Irving discussed his new novel, In One Person, which chronicles 50 years in the life of a bisexual man.  DeSimone’s own new book, The Heart’s History,  focuses on four years in the life of a circle of gay Bostonians.

DeSimone’s fellow local literary luminary Michele Tea has praised The Heart’s History for its perspective on ”the slow assimilation of a larger gay culture that used to be more angry and badass.”

DeSimone studied at Harvard, but has made his home in San Francisco for 19 years now. He lives in the midst of the Castro, but has badass insider tips that will take you all over town…

What’s your favorite cultural institution in the city?

Davies Symphony Hall.  It’s a beautiful space, with great acoustics and comfortable seating.  One of my favorite events of the year is the Symphony’s opening gala.

How about your favorite view?

My favorite view in the city is from the top of Market Street, when the whole skyline just opens up before you.  My favorite view of the city, though, is on 101 south, when you emerge from the Waldo Tunnel just before the Golden Gate Bridge. Even though I know what to expect by now, every time that view of the bridge and the city emerges, it’s miraculous.

Where do you recommend for shopping?

I love to stroll along 24^th Street in Noe Valley.  It has wonderful little shops and restaurants, and the street life is totally charming.

Dim sum, fine dining, and sightseeing tips, after the jump

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The Bay Club provides an escape from the office from early morning to late at night

Alas, the San Francisco Agenda’s restaurant coverage doesn’t only show up online.  It also shows up on my waistline.

Which led me to visit Bay Club San Franciso, one of the city’s swankiest gyms.

Frankly, “gym” doesn’t cut it. With five squash courts, 11,000 square feet of yoga and pilates studios, two indoor pools, a full-size basketball court, and a relentless schedule of group exercise classes, this sprawling, light-filled facility at Greenwich and Sansome near Levis Plaza is a daily vacation of sorts for many of its members, who avail themselves of the club’s free shuttle services that zip Financial District workers to and from the club on a regular loop that runs from 6:15 am to 8:45 pm.

If you bus over to the Bay Club for a work break, you may find it suits you to spend the rest of the day here. The enormous locker lounges offer sitting areas with plasma televisions running stock tickers and sportscasts, and there are quiet, glassed-in cubicles where you can plug in a laptop and get some work done between laps in the pool and shvitzes in the steam room. The spacious café has soundproof glass walls overlooking the squash courts where you can enjoy a light meal. And with wifi that flows as freely as the sweat here, you may find the Bay Club more conducive to accomplishment than your office space. Watching the constant parade of ruddy post-exercisers certainly provides far more inspiration to work out than the jellybean jar on your receptionist’s desk.

Pilates and yoga are offered one-on-one, and in group classes

Once you’ve succeeded at knocking out both your work and your workout, reward yourself with a treatment at the club’s full-service Sanctuary Spa. Spa services are also available to the general public…and if you get a facial or massage, you get full access to the Bay Club’s facilities all day.

Darren Criss, live on Sunday night (Photo: Rebecca Sanabria)

Finally slogging your way through your taxes this weekend? Why not celebrate getting it over with by supporting a great local cause, racking up a deduction for next year, and easing your pain by staring into the limpid eyes of a singing heartthrob?

On Sunday night, Glee dreamboat and local native Darren Criss headlines the American Conservatory Theater’s annual season gala. Criss, who will perform half a dozen numbers throughout the fundraiser’s original production, is an alumnus of the A.C.T. actor training program, the gala’s beneficiary. Two-time Tony winner and MacArthur fellow Bill Irwin—who stars in A.C.T.’s upcoming mainstage production of Becket’s Endgame—will also be featured in the evening’s performance. 

Meanwhile, A.C.T.’s  current main stage offering—a smartly designed production of the high concept comedy Maple & Vine—continues through next Sunday, April 22. The fast-paced play finds a contemporary couple trading in their manic Manhattan lifestyle to join a midwestern community of full-time 1950s reenactors. The sleek, period-perfect set and costume designs by Ralph Funicello and Alex Jaeger are terrific.

Gay playwright Jordan Harrison cleverly weaves pointed commentary on good old fashioned racism, homophobia, and misogyny into his portrait of the superficially idyllic Leave It To Beaver era. But he gets a bit tangled in the limits of his premise—how does a thirtysomething Japanese American in 2010 have a sister who was in a WWII internment camp? This is supposed to be about reenactment, not time travel.

Nonetheless, Maple & Vine makes for a zippy, quippy evening’s entertainment, especially at the discounted ticket prices you can find on the web for next week’s performances. It’s like seeing the world through RomneyVision goggles.

A '50s coffee klatsch in Maple & Vine (Photo: Kevin Berne)

Daniel Dallabrida, artist

This Monday, March 26,  at 7 p.m. a multi-generational gathering of gay writers and performers will participate in “Younger Than Jesus: Older Than Aids” at the magnet community space in the Castro. The evening is an extension of artist Daniel Dallabrida’s current exhibition, discussed below…

“I want today’s young gay men to realize that those of us in our fifties and beyond have something to offer,” local artist Daniel Dallabrida told John and I over drinks at the  Eureka Lounge a few weeks back.

“Those of us who lived through the AIDS crisis can walk down the street here in the Castro and feel like we’re invisible today, in this culture of Glee and gay marriage and kids coming out in junior high school.”

Even the setting of Dallabrida’s current exhibition addresses the tensions and connections embedded in his art: His photography and photographed mixed-media collages are on display through next Wednesday, March 28, at magnet, the Castro’s sexual health services center, where so many of today’s young gay San Franciscans are regularly tested for HIV.

The small exhibit, titled  In Now’s waters burn the stars of Then, features works that combine Dallbrida’s casual, snapshot of denim clad, mustachioed gay men circa 1980—the united, unknowing members of a generation soon to be decimated—with posed, slickly lit images of twinks, bears, pigs and other self-proclaimed subtypes torn from the colorful party flyers that confetti the Castro today.

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North Beach has long been one of San Francisco’s most popular neighborhoods for an early evening stroll. It’s dense with terrific little tourist spots, from one-time Beatnik hangouts like the Vesuvio bar and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s still-going-strong City Lights Books, to Diego Rivera murals, to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul with its creepy statue of Saint Lucia holding her eyeballs on a platter.

While a perfectly pulled espresso has never been hard to find in this historically Italian American enclave (Try the legendary Caffe Trieste, or the wedge-shaped Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store) dining options have tended to lean heavily toward the heavy: Mega-portions of red sauced pasta and other Little Italy staples.  But last year saw the welcome opening of Campanula Kitchen, a great spot to drop by for nibbles and drinks without weighing yourself down.

Shareable late night savories: pork belly dice.

And sweets: ice cream finger sandwiches. (Photos: Campanula Kitchen)

On the sunny southwest corner of Washington Square, Campanula’s floor-to-ceiling windows provide a terrific view of the comings-and-goings of the neighborhood’s dramatis personae (hipster artistes, Sicilian grannies, Chinatown cool kids, and, yes, the dreaded gentrifiers). Look up a little higher and take in one of the best views of Coit Tower in town. Now, turn your attention to the menu of small plates.

Chef-Poetess Dominique Crenn (Photo: Atelier Crenn)

Like it or not, Dominique Crenn is going to play with your food. At Atelier Crenn, the most provocative restaurant to open in San Francisco over the past year, the Versailles-born queen of poetic cuisine presents carrot cake in the form of a carrot, accompanied by peas in the form of sorbet. She serves fish filets atop river rocks, and pâté in the guise of bamboo.

Crenn pays exquisite attention to every visual and textural detail of the four or more scrupulously composed courses that make up your prix-fixe meal. You’ll pay close attention too, because you’ll be trying to maintain your balance as you walk a fine line between appreciating Crenn’s art and eating dinner.

Sometimes you’ll wobble a bit.

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