QUEER QUOTE: The entire Palm Springs City Council is LGBTQ!

The City of Palm Springs is Queer. Really, really queer! The Williams Institute at UCLA says that Palm Springs has the largest number of same-sex couples per capita in the state of California and is 3rd in the nation.

After last Tuesday's election, Palm Springs has another reason to be considered really queer. All 5 members of the City Council are members of the LGBT community (and Democrats!) Not even "Boystown, USA" (i.e. West Hollywood) has achieved that feat.

The five openly LGBT members of the City Council will be:

• Lisa Middleton*, transgender woman 

• Christy Holstege*, bisexual woman 

• Geoffrey Kors, gay man 

• Robert Moon, gay man 

• J.R. Roberts, gay man

Middleton and Holstege were just elected. The Los Angeles Times reported:

But now, the city is marking a new milestone in gay politics as well. When the two new members of the Palm Springs City Council are sworn in next month, every person on the panel will be a member of the LGBTQ community.

Lisa Middleton, a transgender woman, and Christy Holstege, a woman who identifies as bisexual, each won about 30% of the citywide vote to beat four other candidates and fill two vacant seats on the council. The pair will join three gay men on the five-person body.

Hmmmm, I haven't been to Palm Springs for awhile either. Time to make a trip!

hat/tip to Los Angeles Times

VIDEO: EQCA Encourages LGBT Community To Vote In June 7 California Primary

It's exactly two weeks until California's 2016 Statewide Primary Election on June 7th. Equality California, the state's largest LGBT political advocacy organization, is urging the LGBT community to vote, and will be running PSA on television in important markets like Los Angeles, San Diego and Palm Springs.

INDIAN WELLS 2013: Federer-Nadal XXIX, Scouting Report

Milos Raoinic (l) versus Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in their
4th round match which ended on a controversial double fault

On Wednesday I attended the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells and saw Jo-Wilfried Tsonga come back from a set down against Milos Raonic to win while Petra Kvitova had one of her epic collapses to lose against Maria Kirilenko and I had to leave before Roger Federer finished his 3-set win over Stanislas Wawrinka.

Unlike Saturday, where the temperature was merely balmy, a near-perfect 65 degrees most of the day, Wednesday's heat almost hot triple digits and the desert sun was brutal. And this was for the spectators! I can't imagine how tough it must have been for the players. One thing that the players got access to that spectators did not was shade. The picture I took above (with my iPhone 4S) shows you that Stadium 2 has no covered sections! This is really unacceptable for a tournament that is trying to seriously be considered the fifth slam.

The match between Raonic and Tsonga was a very interesting affair which was really lost by Raonic more than it was won by Tsonga. When Raonic was serving well, his serve was untouchable and it was rare to see Tsonga win even a single point in the Canadian's service games. However, towards the end of the 2nd and 3rd sets it seemed to me that Raonic got nervous and his service percentage dropped precipitously, leading to a sudden break and loss of set in the second set. The third set was pretty similar. Because Tsonga served first, he was able to hold to go up 6-5 and, again, Raonic's first serve deserted him and he is not even close to matching Tsonga in groundstroke production or movement so if the point starts on even terms with a second serve then Tsonga would wi the majority of those rallies.

However the match ended on a very strange note when on Raonic was break-point down and he hit a serve which was clearly long, and then he hit as second serve which was very close into the corner of the box that was also called out. The on-court monitors had been down for about 10 minutes so it was not surprising when the umpire announced that there was no challenge system available so the call would stand and Tsonga had won the match. The serve was probably out but Raonic had hit very few doublefaults all match long (and usually when he misses he misses by a lot) so it was just an unfortunate way to end the match. Final score was 4-6 7-5 6-4.

A lot of the matches went the distance on Wednesday, with Federer losing a 2nd set tiebreaker to Wawrinka but prevailing 6-3 6-7(4) 7-5 while Ernest Gulbis served for the match against Rafael Nadal but then lost 4-6 6-4 7-5. Thus, the much anticipated quarterfinal showdown of Federer-Nadal XXIX will be set up for tonight at 7pm PDT/10pm EDT when the two great meet for the 29th time (with Nadal sporting an 18-10 head-to-head advantage and Federer having beaten Nadal here at Indian Wells in the semifinals on a very windy night last year in Federer-Nadal XXXVIII.

The other highlight of the visit for me was watching Roger Federer on a practice court no more than 50 feet away from me. Despite the ridiculous heat at 12:30pm, there were hundreds of people sitting quietly in the sun watching Raja and his coach hit the ball back and forth for a half-an-hour or so.

Seeing marquee players on the practice court is a great feature of the BNP Paribas Open. On Saturday, I had also seen Marion Bartoli practicing with her new coach Jana Novotna, who seemed to be trying to do something to the Frenchwoman's "unique" (some would say bizarre) service motion. I also was in a mob scene when Rafael Nadal left his practice court session and my friend got his kid a signature by Tsonga.

Seven of the Top 8 seeds are in the quarterfinal, with only the steady David Ferrer being replaced by Kevin Anderson. The other matches are #1 Novak Djokovic versus #8 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, #2 Federer versus #5 Nadal, #3 Andy Murray versus #6 Juan Martin del Potro and #7 Tomas Berdych versus Anderson.

On the women's side Maria Kirilenko is into her first semifinals with 5 consecutive 3-set wins in 2013, having beaten Agnieska Radwanska and Petra Kvitova in come-from behind fashion in subsequent rounds. In the first semifinal, Kirilenko will face her best friend on tour, Maria Sharapova who won a hard-fought match with sara Errani a little before midnight on Wednesday night.

The other semifinal will have Angelique Kerber facing the winner of the Victoria Azarenka versus Caroline Wozniacki match, which features the 2012 champion versus the 2011 champion. Azarenka is still undefeated, with 17 consecutive wins on the year. I'm pretty sure it's going to be 18, and cold very well get to 20-0 when she wins the tournament, although I think Sharapova may be able to stop her.

Should be an exciting weekend of tennis!

Going to BNP Paribas Open Wednesday!

I am in Southern California for Spring Break and unlike Serena Williams I will be going to Indian Wells, CA in order to attend the BNP Paribas Open. Tickets are not too expensive, and there are some good match-ups during the day session:

STADIUM 1[5] Petra Kvitova (CZE) v. Maria Kirilenko (RUS) [18] Stanislas Wawrinka (SUI) v. [2] Roger Federer (SUI)[5] Rafael Nadal (ESP) v. [Q] Ernests Gulbis (LAT) 

STADIUM 2[17] Milos Raonic (CAN) v. [8] Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA)[6] Tomas Berdych (CZE) v. [10] Richard Gasquet (FRA)

I doubt I'll be able to do much live-blogging, but I may be able to send some tweets @Madprofessah, so follow  me!

Where We Live: The "gayborhoods" of America

This is interesting! The real estate blog Trulia did an analysis of 2010 U.S. Census data which recorded in what geographical census tracts same-sex couples lived and overlaid it with median price per square foor for homes listed to come up with the list of the Top 10 "gayborhoods" in the U.S. by percentage of the neighborhood which is either male or female same-sex couples. One interesting thing to note is that of the Top 10 the only jurisdiction where same-sex couples can get legally married right now (or in 2010 when the data was from) is Provincetown, Massachusetts (although I suspect many of the California couples would have been married in the June 15-November 3, 2008 173-day window when marriage equality was legal in my home state).

To summarize

Just three neighborhoods — Provincetown, Rehoboth Beach, and the Castro — are on both the men’s and women’s top lists. The top four women’s neighborhoods, including Provincetown, are in Massachusetts. But one of the biggest differences is that the top men’s neighborhoods are much gayer than the top women’s neighborhoods: just one women’s neighborhood breaks the 5% barrier, while five men’s neighborhoods have more than 10% same-sex male couples. Remember, there are roughly the same number of male and female couples in the U.S. So, that means that male couples are much more clustered in particular neighborhoods than female couples are: female couples are more likely to be the only ones on their block.


[...]


The gayest male neighborhoods are a mix of well-known urban neighborhoods (Castro,West Hollywood), less-well-known communities (Wilton Manors, FL; Pleasant Ridge, MI), and vacation areas (Provincetown, Palm Springs, Rehoboth Beach).

Trulia also did an analysis of the gayborhoods in my hometown of Los Angeles:

 The gay center of LA for men includes two zip codes in West Hollywood: roughly from Doheny Drive to Sweetzer (90069, $481) and from Sweetzer to La Brea (90046, $465), as well as the Hollywood Hills (90068, $410). By Los Angeles standards these are expensive areas, though New Yorkers might not think so. Much more affordable, and still very gay relative to the rest of the region, is Signal Hill (90755, $200), a small city surrounded by Long Beach, about 30 miles south of West Hollywood. 

Long Beach also hosts the six neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of female couples in the LA area. The top three are Belmont Heights (90814, $278), Plaza / South of Conant (90808, $299), and Eastside (90804, $207) – all of which are far less expensive than West Hollywood.

Where do you live?

Hat/tip to Towleroad

Celebrity Friday: Pougnet Decides Not To Run For Congress

 Steve Pougnet is the openly gay Mayor of Palm Springs. He was also the Democratic nominee for the 45th Congressional District of California in the 2010 federal elections. He was widely expected to seek a rematch in 2012 but recently he announced that he would seek re-election as Mayor of Palm Springs in Fall 2011 and would suspend his 2012 Congressional campaign.

Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet announced Thursday he will not seek to unseat Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, in the 2012 election.

Instead, Pougnet told friends and supporters at the Hyatt Regency Suites that he wants to focus on finishing his job as the city’s mayor.

“The new congressional district is one that a Democrat can win," Pougnet told Patch. "There are some wonderful things happening here in the city of Palm Springs.”

Good luck to Mayor Pougnet on winning a second term. Let's hope some ohter Democrat steps up to the plate to challenge Chaz Bono's step-mom, the odious Rep. Mary Bono Mack.