Arts & Entertainment
Lita Ford says she left The Runaways because her bandmates were lesbians
guitarist left band after noticing Joan Jett and Cherie Curry were involved
Guitarist Lita Ford says she left teen girl rock band The Runaways after discovering her fellow bandmates, such as Joan Jett and Cherie Curry, liked girls.
In her new memoir “Living Like a Runaway” Ford says she noticed the girls in her band always talked about girls and never boys. Of all her band members, Jett, Currie, Jackie Fox, Cherie and Sandy West, Ford discovered only Fox wasn’t interested in girls.
“First I found out that Sandy, the one I had bonded with the most, was a lesbian,” Ford recounted in her memoir. “Then I found out that Cherie was messing around with Joan. I was so freaked out that I quit the band.”
In an interview with Huffington Post, Ford says as a teenager in the mid ’70s she wasn’t familiar with homosexuality and that affected her reactions towards the band.
“I didn’t know anything about [homosexuality], and it was still in the closet. Nobody [back then] came out and said, ‘I’m gay,'” Ford told Huffington Post. “When I found out that the girls were all gay in the band, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I didn’t know what it was.”
Ford says that she told her parents the reason for her departure from the band was because The Runaways’s manager Kim Fowley was “too weird.” Eventually the band called her back and Ford decided to rejoin the band. She doesn’t believe her bandmates knew the real reason she quit.
“We just carried on, you know, because it was no big deal,” Ford says. “But to me it was, back then, and it just really threw me for a loop. I didn’t know that people do that.”
The 2026 World Pride March was held on Saturday, Aug. 8 in Amsterdam. Tens of thousands of participants marched from Martin Luther Kingpark to the grounds of the Pride Village at Museumplein.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)








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The weekly drag show “Daddy Issues” was held at Kiki on Wednesday, Aug. 5. Performers included Evry Pleasure, Indiana Bones and Tiara Missou-Sidora.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)









Books
Something’s off about Dad. When is it time to step in?
‘When Memory Fades’ can help when families face dementia
‘When Memory Fades’
By Nathaniel Chin, MD
c.2026, St. Martin’s Essentials
$30/422 pages
Mom called you in a panic the other day.
She’d lost her keys and by the time you arrived to help, she’d found them. In the refrigerator.
These kinds of things keep happening, not often but often enough, and you don’t know quite what to worry about. But in the new book “When Memory Fades” by Nathaniel Chin, MD, you’ll learn about the journey ahead, for both of you.
You can’t remember why you walked into a room. You got lost last week, going to the bank. Popular wisdom says that things like that are normal as we age, but Chin says that’s not true – although the answer may not be a worst-case scenario, either. Yes, memory problems could just be signs of stress, dehydration, or lack of sleep – or is it time to see a doctor?
Chin says maybe, yes.
He was working his way through medical residency when his father, a geriatrician in Madison, Wisc., was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Chin, now a geriatrician, was blindsided, but that diagnosis also changed his life.
Here, he writes about the brain, and how Alzheimer’s and dementia are diagnosed, explaining that dementia has many faces and, depending on a doctor’s evaluation, memory problems might be slowed or improved. He shares his father’s illness with readers, but he also writes about his mother, a steadfast, steady caretaker.
Her story reminds reader-guardians to care for themselves, too.
Know how to talk the talk, so that you can have “a more productive” conversation with your doctor. Understand that there’s nothing “normal” about dementia or Alzheimer’s. Know the statistics – African Americans are affected with dementia twice as much as whites – and know how to lower your risks. Learn here what questions to ask, how to break the news to everyone, and any legal matters that will be important soon. And know how to tend to you.
Says Chin, “The best action you can take is to educate yourself… The more you understand, the better equipped you are to make sound judgments.”
Something’s off about Dad, just a lot of little things that don’t add up. When is it time to step in? “When Memory Fades” can help you decide.
Wise, wide-spread, comprehensive, and compassionately helpful, this is a book you can read and then take it to the doctor with your loved one. It’s a book that makes sense when nothing else does, and its biggest feature is that it smoothly transitions from easy-to-grasp science and charts, to gentle coaching for caregivers. Author Nathaniel Chin, MD writes with storytelling, humility, grace, and experience from both sides of the Alzheimer’s/dementia issue, and his words are reassuring but also urgent. Learn, but don’t wait, he says. Know how to safeguard yourself. See your doctor, and don’t fear testing. Watch for signs of depression. And never, ever stop asking for help.
Read those last seven words, and find “When Memory Fades” now. It’s a book to have on your shelf, whether you’re 45 or 95 because, as you’ll see, dementia happens and knowledge is key.
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