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Breeders threaten Gay 'hoods; Cranberry crop threatened by loss of bees

Gay neighborhoods may be victims of own success
Ptown #1 in same-sex couples, San Franciso #2

SAN FRANCISCO - Even on a weekday in winter, the Castro district vibrates with energy, most of it male. Men holding hands, walking dogs and lounging at cafes have long been the main attraction in a neighborhood known as a gay mecca the world over. Yet where visitors see a living monument to gay pride, longtime community leader Brian Basinger sees a cultural enclave at risk of becoming a faded museum piece - or worse, a place where men who love men may one day feel like they don't belong...

...Besides the brigades of baby strollers in the Castro, ominous signs include the security gates installed last year by a local hotel to discourage "cruising," and the recent closings of two longtime stores, one that sold leather goods and the other bath products. National retail chains like Pottery Barn and Diesel now occupy prominent Castro locations.

Several nonprofit agencies serving the gay community have also moved out due to rising rents. Meanwhile, 500 new apartments and condominiums are planned for the area, half of which have been designated as "family housing."  But no one is suggesting that the Castro has been overrun by heterosexuals just yet.

After the Cape Cod resort of Provincetown, Mass., the neighborhood has the nation's highest concentration of same-sex couples, according to 2005 census estimates. And San Francisco as a whole ranks first among cities, with gay and lesbian residents making up 15 percent of the population...  Read the rest of this Examiner story here.    cctoday Photo of Ptown in August.  Leave a comment
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Cranberry growers stung by disappearance of honeybees
A nationwide collapse of colonies of crop-pollinating bees

Maryann Frazier, an entomologist from Penn State University who is part of a task force that’s trying to address this ‘‘Colony Collapse Disorder,’’ provided plenty of information to the more than 200 people who packed a conference room on Friday. But very little of what she had to say was what the growers wanted to hear.  Scientists first discovered the problem in November when a beekeeper working in Florida suffered a sudden loss of bees...  Read the rest of this Patriot Ledger story here.