For months now Ive been staring at this Award of honor hanging on his wall from some gay rights group...its in the picture corner along with his degrees. I had no idea what it was but once ran across a guy in Castro who spontaneously began speaking to Buck as we passed on the sidewalk so I stopped and visited with him. He worked at some humanitarian group and while looking through the glass of his business I commented on how much I loved his marketing design...and it jogged the memory of the award which I didnt have the right description for but mentioned it was from the 70s and he said no way we weren't around then. Haven't much thought about it since.
But recently I have been desperately drawn to the black and white picture - in the picture corner - that I posted here on another monumental day - 9/11. This is *MY* uncle. This exudes everything I ever found glorious about him...cigarette and all. I remember when he came that year with that hoop earring in his ear. I was FACINATED and enthralled. I was somewhere around 6 yrs old. I loved my uncle SO much! He always got Jons room and I have clear memories of watching him go about his business with the door wide open without an ounce of modesty. Where Jon slept during that time I have no idea? Maybe he even shared the room with them on his trundle bed. Jon had the most awesome set of trundles ever...which once gave me a black eye trying to duck a silly putty projectile aimed at my head...but I digress.
Richard was EXOTIC. He had swagger. He was liberal. He loved me too and was always engaging and interested in me. He still retains this part of his personality and is what made him such a great teacher. His students still write to this day saying what an impact he had on their lives....some even follow this blog. This man was KING. And I got him twice a year...thanksgiving and Easter. To this day these holidays hold more importance to me in my heart because of that...Christmas? meh....but THOSE holidays? they were golden. We had grandparents, uncle James and my cousins, Richard, Joe...always a full house....and Sunday Wild Kingdom and disney on a TV you had to get up to change the channel on...with all of us stuffed into the room....AND ZEPPOLI... Heaven.
This picture brings me right back there.
So I took it off the wall. I decided I'm going to scan that thing and bring a copy home with me. HOURS AND HOURS later - and I'm no computer dummy - I cannot get a clean scan of it, and printing turns its into a no depth cartoon looking thing. I cant up the resolution to get a better print because his PC has a whopping 2gb of RAM and when I try it tells me sorry - not enough memory. I give up.
On the rear of it is a handwritten sticky note saying: Luciano - This is Richard when I first met him. Interesting. The last time I was in SF, Luciano was here - and I think that was late 80s / early 90s. On the bottom it is stamped a rick jarret photo with a local phone number and a copyright notice that it should not be reproduced without consent of the photographer. Well there goes my trip to wolf camera to try to get a professional to reproduce it. The phone number is of course out of service. There is no entry in his phone or email for a Rick Jarrett. /sigh
I put my people tracking skills to work and after getting side tracked with it possibly being a student turned jazz musician - who was kind enough to call me back almost immediately to let me know I was on the wrong trail I landed on thecastro.net. Jarrett was a professional name not his real name, and this man chronicled castro in the glorious 70s (and beyond) with his camera.Rick Jasany worked in Harvey Milk and Scott Smith's Camera Shop on Castro Street in the late 1970's. As a photographer, he used the name Rick Jarrett. AMAZING! In the next unfolding hours I had a email off to him, a message to him on Facebook, and then receiving the most incredible response which pieced every single thing together.
Rick was the photographer at Vector Magazine. Vector magazine was a gay publication out of Castro that was on the leading edge of the gay movement. Richard WAS THE EDITOR of this magazine in the mid 70s! This picture that I so adore is him working at Vector as the editor. Vector was published by the Society for Individual Rights and this honor award hanging on his wall from 1976 is given by the Society for Individual Rights and the gay community of San Francisco for his contributions.Harvey Milk was murdered just two years later after being the first openly gay man to be elected to public office.
Formed in 1964, the San Franciscan Society for Individual Rights (SIR) was focused on building community, and sponsored drag shows, dinners, bridge clubs, bowling leagues, softball games, field trips, art classes and meditation groups, expanding the national movement of being openly gay. In 1966, SIR opened the nation's first gay and lesbian community center, and by 1968 they had over 1000 members, making them the largest homosexual organization in the country.
My uncle received a lifetime acheivement award from them. How amazing is that? Why didn't I ever know that? What an incredible day for me today to celebrate World AIDS day, by getting a lesson in the birth of world struggle for gay rights.
For the record, the gay community is now the smallest AIDS/HIV growth group worldwide accounting for less than 10% of the worldwide population that is living with HIV.
In addition an investigation and statistical study shows conclusively that HIV infection among San Francisco gay men was a result of contaminated vaccines...what is probably one of the most significant and overlooked issues of our time. It demonstrates proof of a strong link between the U.S. outbreak of AIDS, and hepatitis studies that were performed on gay males, starting in the late 1970s. In the first two years of the epidemic in San Francisco, between 50 and 60 percent of the earliest known AIDS cases were from persons involved in the hepatitis studies.
Odds of the disproportionate levels of HIV infection among men in the vaccine trial, relative to other men of similar risk behaviors, are shown to be as little as 1 in a trillion.
The analysis also presents evidence suggesting that HIV infections occurring in the studies were more likely to have been intentional rather than accidental as studies were performed to determine whether HIV could have accidentally survived the vaccine production methods. These studies showed that all traces of HIV would have been easily destroyed, without human intervention.
If this contamination was intentional, it would represent the worst assault in American history, and probably in human history.
Viva La Castro
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