A firsthand and close-up take on the oil spill as seen at Ocean Beach, shot by local videoblogging saint Eddie Codel last Friday. The video in full, after the cut.

Above: the first sidewalk stencil I’ve seen in the Lower Nob in three years, snapped late one night wandering Jones, near the new oh-so-politic bookstore infoshop, Babylon Falling. Because there weren’t enough places in this city to posture radical theory-blah-blah. I’m actually all for radical theory-blah-blah, too. I just can’t deal with Yet Another Anarchist Front that only stocks the books that “angry” white dudes with the cash to blow on them want. What about some shelf space for the messy, dirty, beautiful radical underbelly of the neighborhood itself, of rebel whores and hustlers? Of queers and queens? You know, the people you don’t see around these parts so often these days? You think we could at least embalm them (edit: us) in a little clever window display.

And god, just hating on trust fund kids and hipsters probably just makes it worse. That’s the insidious thing. You’re either part of the problem, part of the solution, or some jack-off stenciling slogans.

Wandering out in last night’s super dreamy fog only got better with a liberal application of wine and hooray, Hayes Valley Market is still dishing out art. Back when I was in the neighborhood, I swear I picked up a head of butter lettuce and some fruit nectar here at least a few times before the place was shuttered, gutted, and reborn as an artspace.

Flood is up now, a show of paintings by Felix Macnee, sculpture by Paul Spencer, and collages by our man Matt Gonzalez. After the cut, a bit of video of the scene: a man rowing an imaginary boat with an imaginary fog horn, and girls hugging.

Click To Play

It’s not too late to join in, recruit a team, collect some pledges, and really, really give back to the community. Not in San Francisco, or prefer, like many great local philanthropists, to remain an anonymous donor? You can always pledge yourself at home, or pledge one of the live performers at the Porn Palace and watch your good works in action on the streaming webcam feeds.

After the jump, a clip featuring the Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Carol Queen, giving a preview of the last year’s first international Masturbate-A-Thon in London, to hint at what one can expect at the world’s quite possibly most immediately gratifying charity event:

You know how it goes, in rhetoric so tired (paging, Anthony Comstock and all you other Victorians) that this “real stories of the streets!”-style deserves an “oldest profession” derived cliche of its own. First up, you’ve got your “soiled doves”!

“These guys don’t always realize what the girl has,” [Officer] Franco says. “A lot of them have hepatitis, herpes or even HIV. They get a (sex act) with no condom, get some disease and take it home to their wives. It’s bad all around.”

So we should arrest people to prevent HIV/AIDS & STI’s? Brilliant! Why follow the model of twenty+ years of solid sexual health work, in which San Francisco is a leader? But why stop with sex workers and customers? I say, let law enforcement randomly detain and test Financial District workers on lunch break.

Public health issues soundly tackled, next you’ve got your fierce, untamed hookers gone wild!

Disease isn’t the only danger. After one bust, [Officer] Villaruel comes up with a wicked-looking switchblade he took off a hooker.

“These girls will bring a weapon for self-defense,” he said. “Just about all of them have something.”

And, oh, just imagine what would happen at City Hall were we to have a United Hooker Front armed with “wicked-looking” weapons turn up asking for some answers from Fiona Ma and Kamala Harris?

The veritable happy ending though…

The women are at risk, too. Franco has seen dead hookers before, killed by homicidal johns.

… because nothing more quickly elicits that teary-eyed “human interest” like referring to the victim of a murder as a “dead hooker.”

You’d think, until the Chron gets over its breathless hooker obsession and calling its police beat reporters “embedded” (indeed), we can ask for a basic Style Guide check, right? No, reporters, you don’t get to call lesbians ‘dykes’, you don’t get to call gay men ‘queers’, and you don’t get to call sex workers ‘hookers’, period.

Webcams, they’re not just for YouTube anymore. Justin of Justin.tv has been streaming video live from a camera mounted on his head for the last four days straight, and is roving around San Francisco at the moment. Like the camgirls of yore, the urge to keep watching until something happens is the draw. That, and that this level of hyperdocumentation feels so right at home in this town.

So far today, he’s hit the offices of Reddit, and now appears to be nerding out over Ruby on Rails and fiddling with safety pins. Will he check his email next? Zoom in on another laptop covered in topical stickers? Perhaps then venture outdoors?

If you can’t get through to the nearly constantly overloaded server to catch a peek of Geeks Gone Wild, Justin’s offered up his phone number (415-948-3219) and of course, he’s posting updates to a dedicated Twitter stream.

As the cliche goes, to make a queer village, it takes more than just a clutch of GLBT residents and businesses. In other words, there’s a world of difference between a neighborhood where you can comfortably embrace your off-the-gender-charts lover and having a shop on every block where you can buy rainbow toilet paper.

If queer neighborhoods mean more to you than a preponderance of Pride flags, make some noise on Tuesday night, when the GLBT Historical Society and Castro Coalition are holding the third roundtable in their series, Queer in the City: GLBT Neighborhoods and Urban Planning, with guests:

*Dawn Philips, an East Bay activist for people of color and housing rights who helped lead a fight against gay gentrification in Oakland.

* Don Reuter an independent scholar developing a book on the rise and imperilment of U.S. gay neighborhoods.

*Leading feminist scholar and University of Michigan anthropology professor Gayle Rubin discussing the South of Market area as an alternate view of queer neighborhood.

*University of Chicago doctoral candidate Tim Stewart-Winter describing the historical transformation of the Castro and the GLBT community.

I’ll be there being a shameless Gayle Rubin fangirl.

And if you miss it, hopefully this one will get vlogged, as well — a collection of videos from their last roundtable, “Are Queer Neighborhoods Worth Saving?” (this is rhetorical, yes) are all up on the GoogTube.

(photo: Lasagna Boy, aka salim, via flickr)

Most of my “art projects” are invisible, in that, they take place on and between computers, but next time I crave busting out with old school craftiness, I’ll take over the front table at Papa Toby’s like these cute girls have right now.

Love the bottles of Red Stripe + rubber stamps.

(I wonder if they have a blog.)

Post-conference mayhem (or at least, the ‘they came from behind their laptops!‘ version thereof) begins Thursday night, with the Web 2.2 Release Party, picking up at Fluid, and again at Friday’s Bubble Free Bar Crawl, assembled by Blue Whale Labs.

Of course, there’s no one test (sex science ain’t that fancy yet), no one diagnosis that you’re ‘clean’ (a loathsome phrase, honestly — we all know we like to play dirty sometimes) and even in San Francisco in this day and age, there’s no true one-stop shop for all one’s sexual health needs (and if there is, comment, please!). But for HIV, we’re way ahead of the curve, so ahead in fact that there’s a lot to know to stay on top of your health as the sex nerd you know you really are at heart.

Get hooked up, all over again, after the jump…

(Image: still from a French HIV education commerical [NSFW, of course, unless you're an HIV counselor], found at blip.tv)

So, navigating sex and public health can be complicated, and politics from above impact greatly on the sweet folks at the clinic. Here’s some background on the latest changes to HIV testing in California to give you a sense of what’s going on behind those all-too-underfunded scenes.

This Spring, the State Senate approved a bill mandating that health providers change how they report positive test results to public health departments and in turn, the Center for Disease Control. Previously, a unique numeric code was permitted, though now, a name must be attached to each positive. The adoption of Names Based Reporting in California means that one’s options for true, anonymous HIV testing in San Francisco are dwindling.

Here are three remaining anonymous HIV testing sites, some of which also provide additional STI testing and counseling:

Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Association, 415.292.3420 x304 or 415.573.9230 (Fridays & Saturdays), or by anonymous email
Their Flash educational resource, Testing for You, gives some options on Rapid Oral & Finger Stick Tests (where you will get your test result in 20 minutes), as well as Standard Blood & Oral Tests (with a test result in a week). Counselors speak English, Burmese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Lao, Tagalog, Visayan, and Ilokano. Call to make an appointment in your preferred Asian language.

AIDS Health Project, 415-502-TEST, between 9:00 am and 4:30 pm Monday through Friday
AHP provides free one-to-one HIV/STD Counseling, Testing and Linkages services to Gay and Bisexual Men, Men who have sex with men and to all Transgendered Men who are residents of San Francisco. Rapid testing is also available, in which a preliminary result is available in about an hour. Multilingual counseling is offered, including ASL. For an appointment, call ahead at (415)-502-TEST (8378), 415-476-3587 TTY.

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, 1-800-967-PLAN, call Monday – Thursday 8:30am – 6:00pm, Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm, and Saturday 9:00am – 1:00pm
Planned Parenthood isn’t just for women and reproductive care — this is the only one of these testing sites I’ve been to personally, and can say, don’t be deterred by the anti-choice protestor-proof plexiglass, just go rejoice in the actually sex-positive health care. Standard HIV testing is available at several Bay Area locations, with results in one week. Appointments can also be made online.

One last ounce of prevention: here’s who to call, even at 4am after a gorgeous all-night marathon, to get your hopefully-not-burning questions answered:

San Francisco AIDS Foundation Hotline:
(415) 863-2437 or 1-800-367-2437
(Mon. – Fri., 9am – 9pm)
Spanish or Tagalog – San Francisco AIDS Foundation Hotline:
1-800-345-2437

AIDS/HIV Nightline:
1-800-273-2437
(5pm – 5am, 7 nights a week)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National AIDS Hotline:
1-800-342-AIDS
(24 hours a day, 7 days a week)
Spanish – Centers for Disease Control National AIDS Hotline:
1-800-344-7432
(5am – 11pm, 7 days a week)

San Francisco Sex Information Hotline:
(415) 621-7300
For hearing impaired:
TTY day: (415) 864-6606
or night: (415) 781-2228

And one last resource, with confidential-only testing, but fabulous services for partners, too:

San Francisco City Clinic
415-487-5500
DROP-IN HOURS
8:00-4:00 M-W-F
1:00-6:00 Tuesday*
1:00-4:00 Thursday*
*On Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00-3:00, can only see patients with symptoms of an STD or those who have a partner with an STD.