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'90s San Francisco lives on with Berkeley author's debut

'90s San Francisco lives on with Berkeley author's debut

It's the summer of 1996 and Hannah and her girlfriend Sam are following their post-high school plans to drive from Long Beach, N.Y., to San Francisco, a place where you could hold hands with your girlfriend in public. Growing up in Long Beach with a strict and stressed Orthodox Jewish mother, Hannah has to keep her identity a painful secret.
Armed with extra cash from beloved Bubbe and little knowledge about how to make it in the world, Hannah and Sam scream when they see the Golden Gate Bridge. Hitting the pavement in the Castro is surreal. Everything is exciting until reality hits: Where will they live? How?
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At 18 and with no work experience, the girls turn to one of the only ways to make enough money to survive in an expensive city: stripping.
While the queer coming-of-age novel 'Girls Girls Girls' is fiction, the book, due out June 17, is also very much based on Berkeley writer Shoshana von Blanckensee's youth while living in San Francisco in the late 1990s. It was a time when a lot of people like her 'came out in a rage' and had a necessity to enmesh themselves in their queer community.
'I think at that time period, it was almost impossible to be gay and not have some amount of shame just from the culture, even if your family did accept you,' von Blanckensee reflects. 'There's a million ways to stifle a child and religion is one of them.'
Regarding stripping, she shares that when she's alone with herself or with her community, she has no shame around that experience. Still, sharing that part of her life feels like coming out in a different way, she says.
'Putting this book out has been really hard because I know how the world sees stripping,' she says. 'Now, I'm a nurse. I'm a parent … A lot of people that I know that are not queer have no idea of that history.'
While flunking out at UC Santa Cruz, the LGBT performance group Sister Spit invited von Blanckensee to join them on tour in the summer of 1998. ('It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me,' she says.) Soon after, she relocated to San Francisco, where her real coming-of-age began.
'I started all these prose poems in 2004, 2005 … many were about my grandmother; many about stripping and sex work, about being young and queer,' von Blanckensee says, noting that eventually, she began imagining those poems forming a book.
After several more years, she convinced herself to write it as a novel, and let herself off the hook by thinking, 'let yourself do a s—y job,' just for the sake of having a draft to work with. It didn't really take shape until she reached out to other queer writers she came up with in the vibrant queer community of '90s San Francisco. Von Blanckensee was surrounded by artists and writers like Eileen Myles ('Chelsea Girls') and Michelle Tea ('Valencia'), whom she remembers clanking away on a typewriter at house parties and handing out her work. 'Everyone's writing like maniacs; everyone's painting,' she recalls. 'It was make, make, make. Zines, zines, zines.'
Being surrounded by that level of creativity was immensely inspiring. 'It was like Paris in the '20s,' shares photographer Chloe Sherman, whom von Blanckensee lived with for a period in Noe Valley and with whom she remains close. Sherman's 2023 book ' Renedes: San Francisco, The 1990s ' features some of her thousands of photos that captured the nostalgia of that time and the importance of queer and artistic community.
'We encouraged each other, we were entertained by each other,' Sherman went on, 'and it allowed for this support network and freedom to be creative and express ourselves — and to feel loved and adored while doing it.'
In 'Girls,' Hannah is slower than her girlfriend at making new friends and finding her own community. Meanwhile, she's too afraid to call home and hear her mother's wrathful voice. The only person in her family she feels safe to talk with is her ever-so-encouraging grandmother.
'The Bubbe character was based on a combination of my own Bubbe and my first therapist — who I could only afford because I was stripping,' von Blanckensee shares, explaining that she was one of two therapists a lot of her queer friends saw. 'She was this older, Jewish femme lesbian and I felt so deeply connected to her. And actually, a lot of things that she literally said to me, the Bubbe character said.'
Both mentors have since passed away, but their guidance lives on in the book.
'Girls' tackles addiction and depression, loneliness and otherness; it's a teary-eyed love letter to the San Francisco that remains and to its establishments that are long-gone. But above all it tenderly tells the story of a vulnerable young queer person in an unfamiliar place, just trying to create a new version of home.
'The community was out of necessity … I mourn the loss of what it was,' von Blanckensee shares, referencing how many of the establishments and artists mentioned in the book are no longer in the city.
Sherman recalls people seeing the younger version of themselves on the walls of the Schlomer Haus Gallery in the Castro at her 2022 'Renegades' photography show. 'Being together in the same neighborhood all these years later, we were all so intensely reminded of the value of community,' she says. 'I think it highlighted what a big turning point (that '90s community was) for a lot of people.'
'Girls' is about to have a similar reunion. Rather than a bookstore interview, Von Blanckensee plans to debut her novel on Wednesday, June 18, at El Rio, a queer space in the Mission, where she can be surrounded by her community similar to the way it was in the '90s.
'One of my big fears with having a book come out is that somebody is going to try interview me in an extremely academic way that I'm gonna be totally lost with, because I'm not an academic-y person. I know I wrote a book but, I'm really regular,' she says with a laugh. 'I didn't want to do my book launch at a bookstore, I wanted to have a big party.'
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'Ted Lasso' Season 4: Jamie Tartt and Danny Rojas in Talks for Guest Appearances
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time2 days ago

  • Yahoo

'Ted Lasso' Season 4: Jamie Tartt and Danny Rojas in Talks for Guest Appearances

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10 Times Girls' Hannah Horvath Was the Absolute Worst
10 Times Girls' Hannah Horvath Was the Absolute Worst

Time​ Magazine

time6 days ago

  • Time​ Magazine

10 Times Girls' Hannah Horvath Was the Absolute Worst

Often thought of as a more unlikeable spiritual successor to Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, Girls leading lady Hannah Horvath was a character that fans struggled to love—or, for that matter, even tolerate—over the course of the HBO dramedy's six-season run. Created and played by Girls showrunner Lena Dunham, self-absorbed and entitled Hannah was seen as an archetype for a specific type of millennial woman, particularly the messy 20-something kind living in Brooklyn in the mid 2010s. However, much of the ire aimed at Hannah seemed to be intertwined with what viewers thought about Dunham herself, who touted the character as semi-autobiographical and was the subject of intense scrutiny during the years Girls was on the air. Dunham has defended Hannah's faults—as well as those of her pseudo-besties Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet)—as relatable and honest, and spoken out about how their flaws were criticized much more than the exponentially worse offenses of their male antihero counterparts. "I'm constantly being asked about these characters being un­likable, and I'm like, 'What does that even mean?'" Dunham told Vogue in 2016. "Walter White and Tony Soprano literally murder people, and everybody's like, 'I love them,' and all we do is be kind of rude and do drugs sometimes and we're unlikable." Still, that doesn't mean Hannah's behavior was always easy to watch play out on screen. So here, in chronological order, are the 10 Girls episodes where Hannah Horvath was the worst. "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1) Girls doesn't waste any time letting us know just what type of person Hannah is. After her parents cut her off financially in the pilot episode's opening scene, insisting she try to get a paying job at the age of 24, Hannah responds by telling them she doesn't want to see them for the rest of their visit to New York. However, she later proceeds to get high on opium tea, show up at their hotel room to confront them, and—in what has become one of Girls' most defining moments—deliver a half self-aggrandizing, half-self deprecating plea for support: "I think that I may be the voice of a generation. Or, at least, a voice of a generation." In the morning, Hannah wakes to find her parents have checked out and left behind two envelopes, one with $20 for her and one with $20 for housekeeping. She pockets both bills without pause and heads out. "Bad Friend" (Season 2, Episode 3) "Bad Friend" may be one of Girls' funniest installments, but it's also one of Hannah's most unflattering—which is saying something. After asking her downstairs neighbor Laird (Jon Glaser), a recovering addict, for a drug hook-up, Hannah goes on a Wednesday night coke bender with Elijah (Andrew Rannells) that results in him revealing he and Marnie briefly had sex in a moment of confusion. Despite the fact that he and Hannah broke up years ago and he's since come out to her as gay, this prompts Hannah to kick Elijah out of their shared apartment and show up unannounced at Booth Jonathan's (Jorma Taccone) home to accost Marnie with a self-righteous diatribe about how Marnie is the bad friend and she's the good friend. During a pit stop at a local pharmacy, Elijah succinctly sums up her bad behavior: "Leave it to you to make this whole night about you and your role in my path to honest what happened between Marnie and I had very little, nay, nothing to do with you whatsoever." To make herself feel better after terrorizing her friends, Hannah ends the evening by sleeping with Laird, who has spent the night racked with guilt over the fact that he supplied her with drugs. It's the cherry on top of a narcissistic spiral. "Video Games" (Season 2, Episode 7) While accompanying Jessa on a trip upstate to visit her estranged father, Hannah deems it appropriate to have a sexual encounter with Hannah's 19-year-old stepbrother Frank (Nick Lashaway) while Jessa is attempting to work through the issues her dad's immaturity and frequent abandonment have caused in their relationship. When Jessa questions Hannah's behavior, demanding to know whether she really "had no idea this was not supposed to be a sexcapade," Hannah blames Jessa for making her think that's what the evening was about. Later that night, she further isolates her friend by offering up the less-than-helpful advice that no one is ever in the right frame of mind to see their parents. To make matters even worse, when Frank tells Hannah the next morning that he feels like she used him for sex, she's dismissive of his hurt despite the fact that he's a literal teenager and seems to have been a virgin. Turns out actions have consequences, Hannah. "Only Child" (Season 3, Episode 5) After Hannah's editor David (John Cameron Mitchell) unexpectedly dies, she decides it's a good idea to show up at his funeral to question his widow about the fate of her forthcoming ebook. When she finds out the publisher David worked for has dropped all his projects, Hannah is more concerned with trying to suss out the name of another potential publisher than the fact that she's surrounded by David's grieving family members. In turn, she earns the only acceptable response to such an ill-timed and callous request: 'If I do give you another name, will you get the f-ck out of here?' "Beach House" (Season 3, Episode 7) During a weekend getaway to Marnie's mom's friend's beach house in North Fork that Marnie organized in hopes of healing the girls' fractured friend group, Hannah invites Elijah and his pals (including a new boyfriend literally named Pal who's played by Danny Strong) to come over without even checking to see if it's OK with the others. She then rudely laughs at everyone's jokes about how little food there is at dinner, a problem that only exists because Marnie thought she was shopping for four people not eight. Does Marnie's response to her plans getting derailed come off as a bit neurotic? Yes. Does that cancel out how inconsiderate Hannah is? Certainly not. "I Saw You" (Season 3, Episode 11) As Adam (Adam Driver) prepares for his first Broadway role, Hannah reverts to full on clingy mode, even going so far as to show up at Ray's (Alex Karpovsky) apartment, where Adam is temporarily staying, and interrupt his vocal exercises when she wants attention. Later, even though Adam is a guest in Ray's home, she barges into Ray's room after proclaiming that "everything" is her business to find him having sex with Marnie. She then proceeds to scream at a humiliated Marnie that she's never allowed to judge her again. With friends like these who needs enemies? Sadly, that's not all. Hannah also blows up her latest professional gig by going on a tirade against her fellow GQ colleagues for working in what she describes as a "sweatshop factory for puns"—all because she's insecure about her own faltering writing career. This quickly provokes her boss (played by Jenna Lyons) into firing her. "Two Plane Rides" (Season 3, Episode 12) In the Season 3 finale, an increasingly flailing Hannah finds out she got into the Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate program she applied to. This is a cause for celebration, but she selfishly chooses to deliver the news to Adam in the minutes before he's set to take the stage on opening night of his Broadway play. The unnecessary added stress of her announcement leads to Adam delivering what he judges to be a not-so-perfect performance and ultimately results in what appears to be a near-relationship-ending fight between the two. Hannah obviously isn't the only one at fault in their downfall as a couple, but her decision making certainly leaves something to be desired. "Ask Me My Name" (Season 4, Episode 7) On her first date with fellow teacher Fran (Jake Lacey), Hannah sabotages what seems to be a positive new connection in her life by dragging him to Adam's new girlfriend Mimi-Rose's (Gillian Jacobs) art show. Once Fran gets wise to the fact that she's using him as a pawn in her twisted attempt to interact with Adam, he quickly dips. But that doesn't stop Hannah from spending the night making herself and everyone around her miserable by trying to get to know Mimi-Rose, who clearly has some personality disorders of her own. Hannah's inner turmoil over her life trajectory is on full, chaotic display here. "Homeward Bound" (Season 5, Episode 8) After agreeing to go on a three-month summer road trip with Fran despite their issues, Hannah figures out before the first pit stop that she doesn't actually want to be with him anymore. But instead of handling the situation like an adult and having a conversation, Hannah chooses to lock herself in a rest stop bathroom and refuse to talk to him. She then rejects Fran's offer to drive her home and opts to call on Ray to come pick her up in his fancy new coffee truck. As a completely misguided thank you, Hannah tries to perform a very hesitantly accepted sexual favor for Ray, which causes him to drive off the road and tip over his recent $50,000-investment. She then hitches a ride with a stranger, leaving Ray on the side of the road to deal with the busted-up truck on his own. It's difficult to justify pretty much any of Hannah's actions in this one! "Goodbye Tour" (Season 6, Episode 9) Hannah's overall arc in the series' penultimate episode is a step in the right direction for her. But there is one glaring misstep that recalls the Hannah of old. After ignoring Shoshanna for months and neglecting to even tell her she was pregnant, Hannah shows up at her apartment uninvited to say goodbye. Only, it turns out Shosh has gotten engaged in the meantime and is in the middle of her engagement party, which Hannah was decidedly not invited to. Hannah's longtime disinterest in Shosh is particularly egregious considering how Shoshanna leapt to her defense over the whole Mimi-Rose situation and even stood up to Jessa after she shacked up with Adam (even if that wasn't really what she had a problem with). As Shoshanna says her fiancé Byron helped her realize, she can't be friends with the others anymore because of 'how exhausting and narcissistic and ultimately boring this whole dynamic is." You tell em, Shosh.

Home Security Cam Captures Moment Stray Cat Gets His First-Ever Scratcher
Home Security Cam Captures Moment Stray Cat Gets His First-Ever Scratcher

Newsweek

time16-07-2025

  • Newsweek

Home Security Cam Captures Moment Stray Cat Gets His First-Ever Scratcher

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A black cat named Ollie has captured the hearts of social-media users after a home security camera recorded him reacting to his very first scratching post. The video, posted on TikTok in July by user @ladyandbugs, shows Ollie approaching the cat scratcher before it is even fully assembled, immediately putting it to good use. As soon as Ollie sees his new present from the edge of the door, he immediately walks up to it, before beginning to scratch it enthusiastically as if he already knows what it is and what it's used for. "POV [point of view]: you're a stray cat seeing your very own cat scratcher for the first time," reads layover text in the clip. The caption says: "He was in disbelief. You deserve the world and more Ollie cat." Cats love dipping their claws into anything they possibly can; furniture, curtains, and even sometimes walls. That's why it is important to get them a scratching post if you care about the condition of your furniture. Felines scratching their nails onto surfaces is not a behavior that can be tamed, because they have very valid reasons for it. It helps them sharpen their claws and shed their outer sheaths, which become dull over time, says Englishtown Vet MD. There are different types of scratching posts for all personalities. Generally, vertical ones are perfect for cats that are long and lanky and love to stretch their paws high. Horizontal ones are for those who tend to enter a room and immediately claw the carpet. Scratchers should be positioned strategically, near the places they already like to scratch. Having both a vertical and an horizontal scratcher can help to satisfy the feline's changing desires and behaviors. Stock image: A black cat plays with a scratcher. Stock image: A black cat plays with a scratcher. getty images The video quickly went viral on social media and has so far received over 755,000 views and more than 127,200 likes on the platform. One user, Hannah, commented: "[You] should invest in a cat scratcher lounger i buy the XL one on amazon [because] my cats are fat but they love running to it and laying on it." LadybugLife posted: "He was like, 'DUDE, a scratch poll!?!?! No friggin way!!! Thanks mom!" Cece added: "That jump was a jump of joy of seeing something familiar and it breaks my heart. I'm so happy he has you." Newsweek reached out to @ladyandbugs for comment via email. We could not verify the details of the case. Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@ with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.

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