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BARtab BARtab brings you expansive LGBTQ nightlife coverage from the Bay Area Reporter.

BARtab is the weekly LGBT nightlife guide brought to you by the publishers of the Bay Area Reporter, America's oldest and best read LGBT newspaper. We are the only publication with expansive weekly LGBTQ nightlife features and event listings.

Out singer/songwriter Kyle Motsinger is baring his soul and reveals a lot about himself in “Take It Back,” his new album...
08/28/2026

Out singer/songwriter Kyle Motsinger is baring his soul and reveals a lot about himself in “Take It Back,” his new album. Motsinger sings about his battle with depression, about feeling “Dangerously Uncool,” and in the song “Bad Years” about what’s going on in the world today. It’s a confessional album in which Motsinger belts it out with a raw intensity that’s deeply emotional.

Some of the songs are startling, like “The Attack,” a track which is a mere 31 seconds long. In this all too brief tune, Motsinger recalls being branded a social pariah. It’s one of three tunes on the album which run less than a minute.

“Once the album order was decided it felt like there needed to be a few interludes to bridge the gap between themes,” Motsinger said in an interview with David-Elijah Nahmod. “The idea of creating these short story moments really excited me. I wrote them quickly because I really knew what I wanted to say.”

“Down Down Down” is perhaps the most revealing song on the album.

“I fell into a really bad depression,” said Motsinger. “I felt like a complete failure and I wrote about it. The song doesn’t end on a hopeful note because I wasn’t there yet. I got out of it thanks to new medication and the people in my life.”

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169621

San Francisco has its very own ‘O Face.’ Sure, we share a certain lips-contorted, eyes-rolled-back-to-their-whites cm c...
08/28/2026

San Francisco has its very own ‘O Face.’ Sure, we share a certain lips-contorted, eyes-rolled-back-to-their-whites cm countenance with rest of the world. But we’re the sole province of the goofy smile, raised brows, and occasional secret blush induced by the in-house theatrical extravaganzas at Oasis.

The latest of club proprietor D’arcy Drollinger’s adventures in drag and drollery, which opened a four-week run on August 21, is called “Disastrous!” It’s anything but, says reviewer Jim Gladstone.

Rather, the show delivers a Phoenician return to form as the club rises from the ashes of last year’s money-crunched closure with its first full production under the auspices of its restructured non-profit Oasis Arts incarnation. Drollinger wrote, directs, and stars in this flaming campfire of a caper, the third installment of her Champagne White chronicles (after “Sh*t & Champagne” and “Lady Champagne”), previously staged at the club, somewhat differently, in 2016.

A trilogy topper that could well be heralded as “The Return of the Queen,” its plot finds the thrice-divorced White in a mash-up of James Bond films and classic disaster flicks.

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169624

Meet up with old friends or make some new ones at events near you. We’ve got bar listings, nightlife fun, and arts event...
08/27/2026

Meet up with old friends or make some new ones at events near you. We’ve got bar listings, nightlife fun, and arts events every week in Going Out.

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169670/

Twelve years in the making, the independent graphic novel “The Queen’s Heroes,” about six LGBTQ superheroes, is based in...
08/24/2026

Twelve years in the making, the independent graphic novel “The Queen’s Heroes,” about six LGBTQ superheroes, is based in part on San Francisco residents and locations. It is available now as a 678-page digital edition and will arrive as a large-format print version, the “Founder Collector Edition,” in San Francisco in September.

Creator Fernando Velez will be in San Francisco that month to introduce and promote the book alongside a slate of companion tabletop games, and will be at a booth at the Castro Street Fair on October 4 for a public meet and greet and to show and sell his work.

As with any superhero, Velez has an origin story, which he tells in detail in the prologue to “The Queen’s Heroes” and in the pages of his magazine and other materials on his website. In the phone interview, Velez told writer Stephen LeBlanc that as a kid growing up in Puerto Rico, superhero comics were not the escape he hoped they would be.

“I never found characters like me” Velez said. “I didn’t feel…secure. You know what I mean? I wanted to not be so invisible.”

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169412

Elegant, classy, tasteful, risqué, raunchy; there are a lot of adjectives to describe our various arts and nightlife eve...
08/21/2026

Elegant, classy, tasteful, risqué, raunchy; there are a lot of adjectives to describe our various arts and nightlife events this week, but we'll stick to the facts for your perusal in Going Out.

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169456

A diverse group of performers will return to the stage at The Stud to compete in “The Talent* Show All Stars,” a q***r t...
08/21/2026

A diverse group of performers will return to the stage at The Stud to compete in “The Talent* Show All Stars,” a q***r take on “America’s Got Talent.” The show plays August 20, September 17, and October 15, followed by a finale on November 13, all at The Stud bar.

According to producer Whit Latimer, aka drag artist Florida Man, the competition will present acts that resist easy categorization. Such as Garrett Schlichte, a chef by day whose act consists of making mayonnaise from scratch while delivering a Laura Dern monologue with a perfectly straight face.

The judges will be just as unusual. Judges will include a personal trainer, an opera singer, a 911 operator, drag performers, recruits from Craigslist, and District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who will serve for the finale.

“People don’t totally get it at first, which was part of the fun,” Latimer said in an interview with David-Elijah Nahmod. “But four seasons in, the show has developed its own language. Now we get completely wild open submissions from people who’ve never been onstage before, alongside season performers who want an excuse to try something they wouldn’t normally do. Some of the best acts aren’t the most technically talented, they’re the people who are the most authentically themselves. It’s a little like karaoke; the best singer doesn’t always win the room.”

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169333

Returning for its sixth year from August 21-23 at the Roxie Theater, The SF Q***r Film Fest presents 13 different progra...
08/20/2026

Returning for its sixth year from August 21-23 at the Roxie Theater, The SF Q***r Film Fest presents 13 different programs throughout the three days with six features and 49 shorts, including animation, web series, music videos, and documentaries. Executive Director Amir Jaffer writes, “SFQFF was born in response to being able to offer more q***r filmmakers and filmgoer’s additional outlets to be able to screen and see films.”

Jaffer has commented in previous years that there are now so many more q***r films made and available, that the venerable Frameline Film Festival can’t screen them all, so SFQFF is happy to pick up the excess.

According to film writer Brian Bromberger, the best of the feature films is the documentary “Velvet Vision” on the life and career of beef-cake photographer, window dresser, drag artist, costume designer and director James Bidgood, who created the 1971 cult classic film “Pink Narcissus.” It’s an experimental kitschy erotic art film, with no dialogue, hyper-saturated colors, theatrical staging, artifice, and excess, visualizing dreamlike erotic n**e fantasies of a gay male pr******te as he envisions himself in worlds where he is the central character (i.e. Roman slave boy). It’s surreal, lewd, sensual, and visually sophisticated.

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169356

Producer Ricky Vidrio and director Jeremy Von Stilb are on a mission. The filmmaking duo are now in the midst of creatin...
08/15/2026

Producer Ricky Vidrio and director Jeremy Von Stilb are on a mission. The filmmaking duo are now in the midst of creating “A Very Oral History,” which is what they describe as a “kaleidoscopic history of q***r San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s.”

The film will be divided into six chapters, beginning with AutoErotica, the Castro store which has become a living museum of q***r history. Chapter two will focus on magazines, such as the legendary Drummer. The chapter will recall how q***r publications built community before the internet.

In an interview with the David-Elijah Nahmod, Vidrio and Von Stilb talked about the importance of preserving the items in AutoErotica.

“I think some people assume AutoErotica is simply a p**n shop, but it’s really something much more significant,” said Vidrio. “It’s a living archive of q***r culture. For many LGBTQ+ people, especially those who lived through the AIDS crisis, the magazines, posters, photographs, films, and books inside AutoErotica aren’t just collectibles. They’re reminders of friends, lovers, artists, photographers, writers and entire communities that were lost far too soon.”

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169119

In her shows at Feinstein’s at the Nikko this week, Broadway star Emily Skinner will not be sharing the saga of her life...
08/14/2026

In her shows at Feinstein’s at the Nikko this week, Broadway star Emily Skinner will not be sharing the saga of her life in the theater.

“Oh no! That’s so deadly,” exclaimed Skinner during a recent interview with Jim Gladstone.

Skinner, whose life in the theater is, in fact, fascinating (It includes leading roles in 11 Broadway, including “Billy Elliot,” “The Full Monty,” and the 1992 cult favorite, “Sideshow,” for which she and co-star Alice Ripley, playing conjoined twins, shared a rare dual Tony nomination), also won’t be indulging in those other cabaret tropes, “Selections from the Great American Songbook” or “Thematically Linked Lyrics.”

“I’ve tried to put together shows with a theme and I’ve always ended up feeling boxed in,” she said.

Read more: https://www.ebar.com/story/169092

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