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‘Blindspot’ reveals stories of NYC AIDS patients that haven’t been told
Former Blade reporter’s podcast focuses on POC, women, trans people
“We said that people had The Monster, because they had that look,” activist Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, said, remembering how people in her New York neighborhood reacted when people first got AIDS.
They didn’t know what to call it.
“They had the sucked in checks,” Reyes-Jimenez, added, “They were really thin…a lot of folks were saying, oh, you know, they had…cancer.”
“We actually had set up a bereavement clinic where the kids would tell us what they wanted to have when they die,” Maxine Frere, a retired nurse who worked at Harlem Hospital for 40 years and was the head nurse of its pediatric AIDS unit said, “How did they wanna die?”
“Nobody wanted to come on,” said former New York Gov. David Paterson, who in 1987 was Harlem’s state senator.
At that time, Manhattan Cable Television gave legislators the chance to do one show a year. “So I decided to do my show on the AIDS crisis and how there didn’t seem to be any response from the leadership in the Black community,” Paterson added.
These unforgettable voices with their searing recollections are among the many provocative, transformative stories told on Season 3 of “Blindspot,” the critically acclaimed podcast.
“Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows” is co-produced by the History Channel and WNYC Studios. The six-episode podcast series, which launched on Jan. 18 and airs weekly through Feb. 22, is hosted by WNYC’s Kai Wright with lead reporting by The Nation Magazine’s Lizzy Ratner.
The show is accompanied by a photography exhibit by Kia LaBeija. LaBeija is a New York City-based artist who was born HIV positive and lost her mother to the disease at 14. The exhibit, which features portraits of people whose stories are heard on “Blindspot,” runs at the Greene Space at WNYC through March 11.
If you think of AIDS, you’re likely to think of white cisgender gay men. (That’s been true for me, a cisgender lesbian, who lost loved ones to AIDS.)
From the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, most media and cultural attention has been focused on white gay men – from playwright and activist Larry Kramer to the movie “Philadelphia.”
“Blindspot” revisits New York City, an epicenter of the early years of the HIV epidemic.
The podcast reveals stories of vulnerable people that haven’t been told. Of people of color, women, transgender people, children, drug-users, women in prison and the doctors, nurses and others who cared and advocated with and on their behalf.
“Blindspot,” through extensive reporting and immersive storytelling, makes people visible who were invisible during the AIDS epidemic. It makes us see people who have, largely, been left out of the history of AIDS.
Wright, 50, who is Black and gay, cares deeply about history. He is host and managing editor of “Notes from America with Kai Wright,” a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.
Recently, Wright, who worked as a reporter at the Washington Blade from 1996 to 2001, talked with me in a Zoom interview. The conversation ranged over a number of topics from why Wright got into journalism, to how stigma and health care disparities still exist today for people of color, transgender people and poor people with AIDS to the impact he hopes “Blindspot” will have.
“I came to work at the Blade in 1996,” Wright said, “the year after I got out of college.”
He’d done two six-month stints at PBS and “Foreign Policy.” But Wright thinks of the Blade as his first proper journalism job.
From his youth, Wright has been committed to social justice and to understanding his community. Reporting, from early on, has been his connection with social justice. “I often say, journalism has been my contribution to social justice movements,” Wright said.
His first journalistic connection to the Black community came when he was 15. Then, Wright became an intern with the Black newspaper, the Indianapolis Recorder.
“That’s how I got the [journalism] bug,” Wright said.
Since then, Wright said, he’s worked almost exclusively with media that have a connection with the community.
Wright grew up in Indianapolis and went to college at Emory University in Atlanta. He didn’t intend to be a journalist, he wrote in an email to the Blade. At Emory, he studied international politics.
Wright’s life and work changed direction when he began working at the Blade. “I was a kid,” Wright said, “I’d just come out. I used journalism to find out what it meant to come out.”
Wright, when he came to Washington, D.C., was, as he recalled, just a kid. He didn’t know anyone in D.C. and there was a Black, queer community. This helped Wright to come out. “I couldn’t have told you that at the time,” he said, “but in retrospect I can see that I moved to D.C. to come out.”
Journalism was Wright’s way of finding his way through coming out.
“I didn’t know if the Blade was hiring,” Wright said, “I just walked in.”
He didn’t have a deep resume but he had a lot to say. The Blade hired him and immediately put him to work reporting on AIDS.
“It was a pivotal cultural and political moment – a pivotal moment for the community,” Wright said.
That year, when Wright began working with the Blade, life-saving treatments (early drug cocktails) were emerging for AIDS.
“There was no way that HIV and AIDS wouldn’t become a central part of my journalism,” Wright said, “I really wanted to report on it.”
With the emergence of treatments, white gay men with health insurance began to feel that they were turning the page and that AIDS was no longer a death sentence.
“But, as a reporter, I was meeting Black gay men who were going into emergency mode about the AIDS epidemic,” Wright said.
Black people, poor people, drug users and others without health insurance and access to treatment were still dying and transmitting AIDS. “‘This is getting more and more dire,’ the activists said,” Wright recalls.
They told Wright, “The rest of the community is starting to turn the page. We can’t turn the page.”
In D.C., Wright could see, through his reporting, the racial discrimination in the community at large in the AIDS epidemic, and in the queer community.
Two things are true simultaneously, Wright said, when asked if there is still stigma and discrimination around HIV and AIDS today.
“Science has made so much progress,” Wright said, “It’s no longer necessary for any of us to die from HIV.”
“I take a pill once a day to prevent me from catching HIV,” he added, “I can do that. I am a person with insurance…with a great deal of social and economic privilege.”
But many people in the United States don’t have health insurance, and exist outside of the health care system. The divergence in treatment and stigma that he saw as a young reporter in 1996 are still there today, Wright said.
“The divergence in class and race has grown even more profound,” he said, “among people of color, young people – transgender people.”
Wright hopes “Blindspot” will make people who lived through the epidemic and whose stories weren’t told, feel seen. And that “they will hear themselves and be reminded of the contributions they have made,” Wright said.
The queer press plays an important role in the LGBTQ community, Wright said. “We need a place to hash out our differences, share stories and ask questions that put our experience at the center of the conversation,” he emailed the Blade.
“There’s more space for us in media than when I started my career at the Blade,” Wright said, “but none of it is a replacement for journalism done by and for ourselves.”
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The queer Asian comics building collective joy in D.C.
Spotlighting chaotic ways family, romance, identity take shape in their lives
Kevin Chen’s family tombstone has room for four: him, his parents and his boyfriend. The arrangement might prove to be a little awkward.
“My boyfriend is 100% white, and my parents are 100% disappointed,” Chen confessed.
Jokes about family traditions and the untraditional ways they’re practiced earned a burst of laughs at the bar where Chen was opening for the Pride Comedy Special. The D.C. stand-up event, produced by Comedy Bonfyre last month, spotlighted queer Asian comics who shared the chaotic ways family, romance and identity take shape in their lives.
From candid oral sex takes to top surgery hypotheticals like “Where do the boobs go?”, the night highlighted the loud camaraderie of the queer Asian experience — one that sounds like a cacophony of snorts, cackles and belly laughs. While the comics say they are not quite a community, there’s more than enough shared material to bring them together.
“It was such a magical experience. I loved performing in a queer API lineup. It feels so validating,” Chen said after the show. “I’m wondering, ‘Is this how white men feel all the time?’”
Each performance evoked queer Asian joy through a medium that could use more of its presence.
According to Chen, who is based in D.C., it’s hard to say whether there is a true queer Asian comedy presence in his city. There are only a scattered “handful” of Asian comics, and people of color are underrepresented in queer comic circles, he said.
When Tarunika Anand, a nonbinary lesbian comic, first entered the mainstream D.C. comedy scene, they mostly encountered straight white men, describing the experience as “a culture shock.”
“I feel like sometimes a lot of queer spaces are really white, and then a lot of Asian spaces are really straight,” Anand said. “I don’t feel like I fit into either.”
But feeling marginalized didn’t stop these comics from honing their craft and creating spaces for others like them. Alex Kim, who headlined the special and is based in Brooklyn, runs the queer Asian comedy group Boba Gays, which began on WhatsApp and has since made its way to Lincoln Center.
Every Wednesday, Anand co-produces a free comedy show called Funny Side Up. The queer-led group focuses on inclusivity and showcasing new talent.
“It’s really beautiful to speak about your experience and your existence in a way that’s uplifting,” Anand said.
Family is a major throughline of their comedic repertoires.
Chen, for instance, shared that he identifies with jokes about having Asian immigrant parents and the expectations they pass down.
“You see me, you know this part about me, you know this experience intimately, and I can see the truth that you’re trying to wrap a joke around,” he said. “That hits even harder because that’s my truth too. I think that’s what makes good comedy.”
Anand had the audience at the special howling when they explained that their parents’ be-more-like-them comparisons didn’t end when they came out. Instead, the expectations took on a new form.
“Now, my parents want me to be the best gay,” Anand said. “They’re like, ‘Do you know Ellen DeGeneres?’”
Kim said he’s been trying to unlearn things from his Christian Korean mom. Yet he described a moment when he was getting ready for the club and realized he looked just like his mother getting ready for church.
“I’ve been finding it hard to escape her,” Kim said.
Mutual recognition also radiates through the different ways queer love can take shape. From singlehood to death-do-us-part commitments, the comics cover just about every corner.
Anand is holding out hope for settling down with “a nice, pretty, Indian girl.” They recently went through a breakup and said they felt they dodged a bullet.
“As a person of color, I just don’t think I should be with a Swiftie,” they said.
Chen, touching on what it’s like to be in a queer interracial relationship, said that meeting his white boyfriend’s baby nephew for the first time felt like he was forced to participate in a diversity, equity and inclusion training.
“The dad was like, ‘Please welcome Kevin. Be curious about his culture, his history, his foods,’” Chen joked.
Laughter is not the only reward for the comics.
To Anand, comedy is a space where they can say whatever they want. “It gives me a voice,” they said.
Nik Narain, a North Carolina-based trans and nonbinary South Asian comic who performed at the special, said meeting older trans comedians and taking the stage helped him feel reassured in his identity during his transition.
“Stand-up was a really cool way to process that onstage,” he said. “[It] became a way for me to repackage my thoughts.”
Queer Asians are still figuring out their place in the greater D.C. comedy scene. The group is small in numbers and many are still working toward a full-time comedy career. But Narain feels he’s already made it.
Narain is reluctant to pin it all on one moment. He feels that success is already peeking through in milestones — opening for celebrities, traveling to performances and self-producing shows.
“As long as I can keep doing this, I’m super happy,” he said.
This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
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Mr. Henry’s celebrates 60 years of proud inclusivity
Capitol Hill staple remains ‘a caring community’
America’s 250th isn’t the only milestone birthday D.C. is celebrating this year.
Beloved D.C. restaurant Mr. Henry’s, that Capitol Hill staple, celebrates its Diamond Jubilee all year long. Named for its original owner Henry Yaffe, the restaurant opened on a warm day 60 years ago in the summer of 1966 and has never looked back.
Yaffe took over what was then a country western restaurant, renovated the interior to his liking, and created an institution. Yet Yaffe had another goal. As a gay man, “he created Mr. Henry’s to be a place where everyone felt welcome — not easy in 1966 — and he succeeded,” says current owner Mary Quillian.
“Mr. Henry’s has long been a place the LGBTQ community has supported because they felt and still feel welcomed,” says Quillian. Even in the current administration, “the gay community and the diversity-minded community continue to come.”
Since then, Mr. Henry’s has changed hands, opened and closed its second floor, welcomed famed musical acts, and played host to politicians, date nights, breakups, and birthdays. But it still feels like home (and has a note in the National Trust for Historic Preservation) at 601 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.
Its wood-paneled, Victorian-inspired art-filled décor in the downstairs dining room and bar serves American pub fare for lunch and dinner daily, with brunch on weekends (and a dog-friendly patio). Upstairs, Mr. Henry’s hosts live jazz performances and special events most nights, continuing a musical tradition that has defined the venue for decades. That upstairs bar has played host to names like Roberta Flack and Woody Allen.
Musician Kevin Cordt said that, “Mr. Henry’s has been a part of my life for more than 30 years. I started as a customer, then became a bartender and server, and now I have the good fortune to play trumpet at one of the best live music venues in Washington, D.C.”
Aaron Myers, executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, is also a supporter. “Not many cities can sport venues that have consistently served the community in the space of culture for more than 50 years, let alone can brag as the birthplace of culture defining talent.”
From the start, Yaffe promoted a rare yet celebrated combination of locals’ bar and soulful nightlife venue. Mr. Henry’s has attracted a diverse crowd at a time when such spaces were – and perhaps still are – uncommon, a diversity that is credited with helping protect the pub during the 1968 D.C. riots.
Longtime customer Evelyn Branic said, “Mr. Henry’s has been my ‘Cheers’ hangout since my wife and I moved to the Hill in 1987. I’ve experienced many iconic moments meeting politicians, reporters, civic activists, and neighbors engaging in spirited conversations. Whether political, LGBTQ, historians, neighbors, or out-of-towners, everyone could find a special place to be greeted as a friend.”
Its welcoming tables come dabbed with a bit of tea: In 1971, in a moment that has since become part of Capitol Hill lore, Yaffe lost the pub in a poker game to Larry Quillian. The Quillian family, recognizing the special role Mr. Henry’s played in the neighborhood, took over ownership, and committed to preserving its spirit. Today, Larry’s daughter Mary owns the bar, having given it a bit of a facelift for the bar’s 50th birthday, bringing in new tables and some fresh menu items.
For example, the menu has some of those dishes that regulars would riot if they disappeared. The Reuben and the hamburgers, the chili and in-house roasted turkey have never departed the menu. Dishes do evolve, says Quillen: they added wings about two decades ago.
In 2026, the restaurant is hosting monthly ticketed “decades” parties, celebrating each of the 10-year periods the restaurant’s been open, plus there were specials in June for Pride. The official 60th anniversary gala takes place Aug. 29, featuring performers, beverages, timeless favorite foods, swag – and the unveiling of a new cocktail.
Inclusive, eccentric, eclectic, Mr. Henry’s is looking forward to maintaining its centrality to diverse crowds in Capitol Hill. Battling inflation, rising menu prices, changing tastes, and thin margins, Quillian says that Mr. Henry’s has — and will always be — “a caring community for so many different folks. And THAT is why I am committed to keeping us going. Society needs places like Mr. Henry’s, now more than ever.”
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Television loses a legend, longtime ‘Will & Grace’ director James Burrows
Iconic hitmaker leaves behind a legacy of telling LGBTQ stories
You don’t have to be a pretentious film major to name 10 movie directors. But naming television directors is not that simple. They’re the unsung heroes of your favorite shows, and the late James Burrows was the television director. He passed on June 19, but his DNA runs through television history.
He directed over 1200 episodes of television and over 50 pilots. He co-created “Cheers” and directed many episodes of long-running series like “Friends,” “Taxi,” “Frasier,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Two and a Half Men.” You also may remember him from playing a heightened version of himself on the Lisa Kudrow comedy “The Comeback.”
He has left an indelible mark on the LGBTQ community. As recently as last year, he directed the series run of “Mid-Century Modern” starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Linda Lavin. He was also a longtime director of “Will & Grace” and directed every episode of the series revival. He even directed the unaired “Absolutely Fabulous” pilot with Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Johnston, and Zosia Mamet.
Not to mention he’s worked with queer icons throughout history, including Betty White and Stockard Channing on their single-season series, and Jennifer Coolidge in “2 Broke Girls.”
He started his career on shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Laverne & Shirley,” and the first four seasons of “Taxi.”
He continued to work steadily and directed successful pilots that went to series for “Roc,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “Dharma & Greg,” and “Wings.” He directed multiple episodes of “Friends,” “Caroline in the City,” and “Frasier.”
This magic continued into the 2000s with him directing the pilots for “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and multiple episodes of “Mike & Molly,” and the entire return series of “Will & Grace.”
What was the secret to his success? He’d enact the “fun clause” in his contract. In his words, “Life is too short to deal with obnoxious leads,” he shared. “So as long as the writing is good and the cast is fun, I’m going to enjoy the experience.”
He had the magic touch, having multiple pilots turned into long-running series. He was nominated for an Emmy 24 times in 26 years and worked consistently until a year before his death.
The secret was the way he brought the cast together. He describes, “it was my job to mold them into an ensemble, and they did round into a group of people who loved each other.”
This earned him 11 Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards, including being awarded the inaugural DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Television Direction.
In a 2003 interview by the Television Academy, he was asked how he wants to be remembered, and he said, “That every night forever you can tune in somewhere, and there’ll be a show I did.”
He’s survived by his wife, Debbie, four daughters, seven grandchildren, and the countless people whose careers he launched and the countless viewers he inspired with his television legacy.
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