2nd Gay Bashing, or Something, In a Week in SF Bay Area
No, friends, it’s NOT the Folsom Street Fair every day of the week in every neighborhood in the Bay Area. This is why we still have pride parades in 2011, at all.
I met Mr. Purnell at a Young Lovers performance (his current band) a couple months ago. He’s a friend of a friend.
Another couple friends of mine — together for 15 years, homeowners — live two blocks from the Duboce Triangle attack.
First incident:
Teens Yell Homophobic Slurs While Beating Man With Bat In SF
SAN FRANCISCO — A man was struck with a baseball bat in San Francisco’s Duboce Triangle neighborhood on Saturday night by three suspects who yelled homophobic slurs at him, police said Monday.
The attack was reported at about 9 p.m. Saturday near the intersection of Market and Sanchez streets.
The victim, a 52-year-old Santa Barbara man, was approached by the three suspects, who struck him with the baseball bat once or twice while yelling the slur “faggot,” police Capt. Denis O’Leary said.
One of the three suspects also took the victim’s keys during the beating, but the motive for the attack appears to be hate rather than robbery, O’Leary said.
The suspects, described as white males in their mid-teens who were wearing dark clothing, fled and had not been found as of today, according to O’Leary.
The victim waited until Sunday afternoon to report the attack, and officers who responded to the call noted bruising on the side of the man’s body, O’Leary said.
The case has been referred to the department’s special investigations division, which handles hate crimes, he said.
Anyone with information about the attack is encouraged to call the Police Department’s anonymous tip line at[no phone numbers allowed] or send a tip by text message to TIP411.
Next incident:
Oakland Musician Beaten, Alleges Gay Bashing
Brontez Purnell, formerly a member of Oakland’s energetic Gravy Train and currently a musician in Younger Lovers, and his bandmate Adal Castellon were beaten outside a club in Oakland last night —allegedly for being gay.
The musicians were at Club Paradiso on Telegraph Avenue when they were approached by two men around 2 a.m. who had also been at the club. As Purnell and Castellon were unlocking their bikes, the pair approached them, shouting gay slurs and telling them that ‘if they were in Jamaica they’d be dead,” according to Purnell.Purnell yelled back at them, ‘How dare you?’ and as he rode past them, one of them men hit him on the head, knocking him from his bike. He swung his bike lock at them. Meanwhile, one of the men hit Castellon in the face. The pair and two women, who had witnessed the attack, then got in a black Porsche Cayenne, an SUV.
Purnell threw his bike lock at the car in an attempt to stop them, but they drove away.
The violence shocked Purnell, a longtime Oakland resident.
‘[The attackers] were so arrogant,’ he said, ‘They were saying I was in the wrong club. I’ve been going to that club since I was 22…Nothing bad has happened to me here. Especially not like that.’
Purnell described the two men as black, with dreadlocks and what seemed like Caribbean accents. He said they both appeared between 26-32. The women were dark skinned, and he thought one might have have had an Ethiopian accent.
White on ? crime, black on black crime, both being more straight on gay crime. Potentially. In one of them, at least.
I expect a lot more of these physical attacks from the social/cultural conservative Anders Breivik set…same old vicious bigots gone apocalyptic because we won’t let them RULE anymore. They no longer have access to dogs and waterhoses, so baseball bats and fists must now suffice.