Gay Shame Pillories London Breed, Gay SF Supervisors in Pride Month Installation at ATA

2023-06-21 00:24:11

The queer activist collective Gay Shame is at it once more, this time with a Pride Month installation at Valencia Street’s ATA that delivers satirical mockeries of Mayor Breed, and Supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Matt Dorsey.

It’s Pride Month, so it should not be surprising that we’re hearing once more from the local chapter of Gay Shamethe radical queer activist collective whose whole purpose is to be the antithesis of Pride festivities that are increasingly corporate, capitalized, and homogenous. While Gay Shame started in New York City in the late 1990s, the Gay Shame movement soon got itself a San Francisco chapter, which gained prominence ten or so years back for their vitriolic anti-tech, anti-gentrification flyers and “Queers Hate Techies” stencil campaign.

We had not heard much from Gay Shame since their 2021 art installation depicting the beheading of a fnnch honey bear. That was seen in the windows of the Valencia Street’s Artists’ Television Access (ATA), and a Monday social media post tipped us off that the Gay Shame gang was up to their old tricks with a new installation in the same window.

gay.shame via Instagram

Gay Shame’s Instagram account does seem to take credit for the act, and the installation has apparently been there for weeks. “This June GAY SHAME is celebrating the grand opening of the LGBT-PIC Cop Cultural District,” says the post dated June 8. “London Breed was joined at tonight’s ceremony by two of her Gay Best Fascist (GBF) to celebrate Stonewall, the first pro-police riot.”

There were not paper artist’s statements as there were for the fnnch installation, though the words “Gay Shame” and “Queers Hate Cops”do appear in stencil work at the bottom of the installation.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Let’s unpack what we see going on here. A cardboard cutout of Mayor Breed is cutting a rainbow ribbon, while next to her, a cutout of openly gay SF Supervisor Rafael Mandelman dons a police hat and holds an SFPD flyer.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

A cutout of gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey holds a “Party N Police” sign, a likely reference to his time as a police department public relations guy. And I suppose there is hay to be made that Dorsey is calling for harsher crackdowns on drug dealers and users, when he and his own dealers avoided such consequences when Dorsey struggled with substance abuse.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

There are several references to the “LGBT-PIC Cop Cultural District,” a fictional construct mocking the police.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Another segment in paintings behind the display showing the phrase “Assigned Cop At Birth,” a take on the acronym for “All Cops Are Bastards.”

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

And we will tip our hat to this clever reference to the art gallery owner who water-sprayed a homeless woman, also see in the painting in the rear of the display.

This is all likely a response to last year’s London Breed boycott of the Pride Parade over the decision to ban uniformed officers. That decision was reversed in a compromise, and Breed got COVID and mightn’t participate in the parade anyway. But this particular display indicates that the wounds from that controversy may not yet have fully healed, among some at least.

Related: Beheaded Honey Bear On Guillotine Depicted In Valencia Street Window Display [SFist]

Images: Joe Kukura, SFist

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