Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

Today marks the second anniversary of Stephen’s wildly successful public debut as a poet at Housing Works in Soho in Manhattan. A host of luminaries of the literary and film worlds were there, including Stephen’s daughter Maggie, five months pregnant at the time, and her guy, Peter. I have to say that of out the whole clan Peter was the friendliest to me and Michael. Afterward during a late-night clan dinner at Balthazar he came up, shook my hand and declared what a great thing we were doing. And then when Stephen, still high from the evening’s success, went off to phone Jake (who he’d claimed was back in California doing pickup shots for Zodiac, but was actually hiding behind a hoodie in the audience) I turned to Peter and asked him, half-jokingly, “Once you enter the Gyllenhaal circle, do you ever get your life back?” He smiled and said, “No.”

Barbary Coast Prostitutes Ah, San Francisco, the erotic playground of America. Home to proud, dynamic sex workers like Margo St James, Sally Stanford, Scarlet Harlot. And, in the last few decades, home to a host of sex-positive movements with a political bent. The latest, a drive to introduce a ballot measure in the city’s upcoming election, is being championed by the three year-old Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU). Its success in November will mean millions of dollars in savings to the city—and the end of a cash cow for one local non-profit agency. If voters approve the measure, the SFPD would be prohibited—in the absence of any other crime they might be perpetrating, and regardless of whether they are indoors (in a club or massage parlor, for example) or outdoors (on the street, in a park)—from arresting people simply for asking for, or offering, sex in exchange for money. It's somewhat akin to the “blind eye” attitude city police have been directed to take, since the ...