Barry Miles, pre-attack and post-attack. – Photos: Instagram.
A gay man was brutally attacked after leaving a popular gay bar in San Francisco last weekend, ending up in the hospital with serious injuries.
In an Instagram post showing him in a neck brace with bruises and dried blood all over his face, Barry Miles wrote that he was jumped by two unknown men after leaving Powerhouse, a popular LGBTQ bar on Folsom Street in the city’s SoMa neighborhood.
Miles wrote that his wallet was stolen, and that he suffered a heart attack during the assault due to high cholesterol, requiring doctors to put in two stents.
“My face hit the sidewalk,” he wrote. “Also a front tooth was knocked out, and a small fracture in my neck. I’m pretty banged up.”
Miles is a well-known figure in San Francisco’s local LGBTQ community. He’s a former titleholder of the Krewe de Kinque charitable Mardi Gras club, a former Mr. May 2016 of the charity Bare Chest Calendar, and has been involved with several other local organizations.
According to The San Francisco Standard, the Powerhouse draws large crowds on Saturday nights. On weekends, a taco truck is typically stationed outside the bar, which is on the same block as another LGBTQ venue, Hole in the Wall.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed to the Standard that officers responded to a well-being check on nearby Langton Street, just minutes after midnight on Sunday, Feb. 5.
“The victim was unable to provide details regarding what led up to his injuries,” a department spokesperson told the newspaper. “Officers responded to a business on the 1300 block of Folsom Street, where the male stated he had come from and during their initial investigation, officers were unable to determine that a crime had occurred at that location.”
Gary Virginia, a local LGBTQ leader, organized a GoFundMe page for Miles, who is the self-employed owner of a housekeeping business, and whom Virginia says will need extensive medical care to recover from his injuries.
“This fund will directly support Barry’s living expenses for the next three months or more, and he will need dental surgery including a tooth implant,” the description in the GoFundMe reads. “Any size donation will help us reach our initial goal and allow Barry to focus on healing.”
So far, more than $14,000 has been raised to help Miles.
While San Francisco is often considered one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the country, there have been occasional outbreaks of violence directed against gays.
Last year, a gay man, Pepe Solis, was beaten unconscious and subsequently placed in a medically-induced coma after sustaining serious industries as part of a late-night assault that occurred in the Castro, the city’s most well-known gay neighborhood, according to the Bay Area Reporter.
San Francisco Pride President Nguyen Pham condemned the attack against Miles in a statement.
“All of us at San Francisco Pride condemn this horrific attack against a member of our community,” Pham said. “While we might not know the motive for the attack, we cannot ignore the growing nationwide trend of violence against the LGBTQ+ community, from the streets to the statehouses.
“We remain in solidarity with Barry, as well as other victims of anti-LGBTQ+ hate, and we will hold him in our hearts toward his speedy recovery.”
A 26-year-old Bronx man will finally stand trial for an alleged anti-gay assault committed more than two years ago, according to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.
Tavaughn Thompson was indicted on May 21 on two counts of third-degree assault as a hate crime and one count of second-degree aggravated harassment. He was previously arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court in February, days after his January 31 arrest.
Thompson was initially detained in connection with an unrelated incident, but police identified him as the suspect in the 2023 assault case.
David Green, the founder of the conservative Christian retailer Hobby Lobby, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Them Before Us, an anti-LGBTQ organization behind the Greater Than Campaign, a national effort seeking to overturn the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling.
Them Before Us, the lead organization behind the Greater Than campaign, was founded in 2018. It advocates against marriage rights for LGBTQ couples based on the presumption that being raised by same-sex parents is harmful to children.
IRS reports show that, for its first few years, Them Before Us had less than $50,000 in revenue. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a national right to abortion, the group's revenue surged. In 2022, it received $200,000, growing to nearly $1 million in 2024, with founder and president Katy Faust collecting a salary of $135,000.
San Francisco police are investigating after a suspect vandalized a floral design shop with homophobic graffiti before fleeing in an SUV bearing a pro-Charlie Kirk message on the back windshield.
Jeff Dumlao, co-owner of the floral design studio Chartreuse by Roje in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, said he and his partner, Roberto Cancel, had just closed for the day on May 16 when they were alerted to the graffiti.
"We were going to support one of our friends at an art show down the street, and on the way, we get a text from one of our clients saying, 'I know you just closed, but you might want to come back because there's some unpleasant graffiti on the wall outside your store and some sort of disturbance happening,'" Dumlao told SFist.
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