Photo: Daniel Nicoletta

May 22, 2008 Is Pure San Francisco

Tonight a statue of Harvey Milk will be dedicated at City Hall. The Rotunda looks like a stage setting for Beach Blanket Babylon. The celebration of both Harvey’s birthday and homecoming is made more perfect by the California Supreme Court’s declaration a few days earlier that every individual has the right to marry. For this event, it makes wearing bride costumes de rigeur. Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams’ “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” dream ’twas never so gay.

Guests stroll under giant hoops of balloons and wild colored streamers. They gawk and laugh at (and with) the brides in drag as well as the Latin gods wearing feathers and other YMCA- type characters who have dressed for the occasion. Oh yes, there are also the rest of us: the plain ones, the ones in suits, and the ones fresh from the nine to five trenches stopping off on our way home to pay our respects, gloat, or perhaps sing Happy Birthday Harvey.

Those of us who were young and fresh-faced in the 1970s in that small area of San Francisco once called Eureka Valley and now referred to as The Castro, stand around drinking good wine, eating appetizers and talking about the old neighborhood, all of us wishing Harvey could be here. Of course in a way, he will be.

The mayor speaks, supervisors speak, even people who weren’t originally on the program elbow themselves into the merriment. We, Harvey’s old friends, practically kin now, wait upstairs, slowly recognizing each other thirty years after the fatal shooting and inquiring about health, family, and asking the inevitable question “Whatever happened to…” All the while remembering how young we were, how dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal and that if we pulled together we could accomplish anything. Harvey Milk, a simple man who owned a camera store, became the first gay office holder. He was also a neighborhood builder, a man who knew a nice place to live needed the elderly as well as children and whose political action revolved around the word “community.” Yes, how right we were to pursue our lofty goals. We just didn’t think Harvey would be killed over it.

Now with the endless tutelage of Danny Nicoletta, Castro Camera employee and photographer, and the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee, a statue of Harvey Milk, a mere Supervisor among the statues of mayors, will be ensconced in City Hall, mere steps away from where he and Mayor George Moscone were brutally slain by Supervisor Dan White that fateful November day in 1978. Amazing. I never thought I would see this. I thought (silly me) that placing Harvey’s statue in City Hall was one of those things you supported, but actually had little chance of metamorphosing into reality. But now my husband, Bill, Harvey’s former campaign Treasurer, and I wait at the top of the grand staircase with the old Harvey campaign gang. Down on the main floor, our grown sons, Rob and Will, are in the audience. Finally, the cue is given, eight across, we link arms and march down the grand staircase to show our support, perhaps also to show we are still alive. Yes indeed, Harvey would have loved it.

And when finally, the drape is removed from the veiled statue, we behold Harvey Milk, unbelievably real, unbelievably life-like. People pose in front of him, toast to his successful new reign at City Hall, and Harvey, frozen in stone and forever middle-aged, his smile ceaselessly jovial, laughs back at us from the other side, reminding us that indeed, anything is possible.