From Bay Area Reporter
Safe space for LGBTQ sports fans opens in SF
By Matthew S. Bajko
Best known as drag queen Juicy Liu and for being a gay local Democratic Party leader, Michael Nguyen is also a longtime athlete. He played on the Dragons, a softball team of mostly LGBTQ Asian players, and with another team in the local gay softball league until switching to ultimate frisbee 11 years ago.
A former board member for Proud Ultimate, a local queer rec ultimate frisbee team, Nguyen recalled how in his youth he saw sports as being for “bullies and straight people.” He associated athletics “with a lot of shame” for students like himself. Thus, his excitement for attending the opening of Pride House San Francisco Thursday at the city’s LGBTQ community center...
“The San Francisco Bay Area deserves something like this as a place of innovation and the queer capital of the world,” said Charles Wollin, a gay San Francisco resident who has played on the Spikes since 2012 in various positions and is a play-by-play broadcaster for collegiate soccer with ESPN+ and the University of San Francisco, as well as for the professional Oakland Roots & Soul SC soccer teams.
More than $100,000 has been raised to cover the Pride House expenses, said Wollin, who volunteered to be its director of development. Financial support has come from local professional sports teams, foundations and more than 100 individual donors, he told the B.A.R.
Seeing the Pride House come to fruition has been “really phenomenal,” he added.
“It is a chance to unite the LGBTQ community here around sports,” said Wollin, director of alumni relations at the UC Berkeley School of Information...
Charles Wollin is the director of alumni relations at the UC Berkeley School of Information.
