Queer4Decades - Mark H. FreemanVoyages going back: to Stonewall 25 with a rogue rabbi, a crew-cut Lesbian folksinger and a die-in with ACT-UP; to the Crescent City and SF By the Bay for interviews with Dr. John, “Daddy” Elllis Marsalis and Queen Ida; the medieval Silk Road in modern times; an ancient monk at Montserrat monastery confronted on the Church’s antigay policies; and a hike past the end of the road in Kauai. Take your pick!
Revised 2022 from a personal essay in Bay Area Reporter’s Arts & Entertainment section July 7, 1994. “Are you from New York?” is a question people frequently ask me. My response: “Nope. I’m just Jewish.” Even my Filipino-Portuguese boyfriend Ken laughs, although he’s heard it more than once. Today we have flown from San Francisco […]
IN CENTRAL ASIA: KAZAKHSTAN People keep asking why we went to Central Asia and Berlin last year, and the easiest answer was “For the food.” Yes, I have always been interested in the land where stone fruit originated: those “Golden Apples of the Sun”
by Mark Freeman Sierra Magazine Sept/Oct 1987 The ideal trail begins where pavement can go no farther. It’s not merely an alternative route to a destination, but the only overland route available. Such a trail leaves the last beach parking lot on the rainy northwest side of Kauai and follows the soaring volcanic cliffs and […]
by Mark Freeman @1994, revised 2021 As a member in fairly good standing in one of history’s earliest immigrant groups—we Wandering Jews—I visited one of our older stomping grounds two summers back. That ground being Spain. The occasion: the 500th Anniversary of the Expulsion of the Jews and Arabs by Ferdinando and Isabella, known as the […]
BAYOU BY THE BAY:TALKING WITH QUEEN IDA IN BERNAL HEIGHTS, ELLIS MARSALIS IN BERKELEY AND DR. JOHN BEYOND THE ELYSIAN FIELDS, MARK FREEMAN FOLLOWS THE MUSIC BACK TO ITS SOURCE. SF WEEKLY MAY 16, 1990 The SF Bay Area loves New Orleans music. This was the first place outside the Crescent City that really welcomed […]
It is around midnight in Havana, and our room is only a block or so from the gay bar Las Vegas, which did not exist on our last visit here back in 2001. Another few blocks on is a corner—known for some reason as the Big Bang, which in Cuban sounds more like ‘pingpong’—that is gay cruising central, […]