In case you haven’t heard, Russia’s a pretty terrible place to be if you’re gay–or even an ally. President Vladimir Putin just signed a law that makes it a jail-worthy offense to tout “gay propaganda,” which can be something as innocuous as wearing a rainbow T-shirt. In July, four Dutch tourists were arrested for simply asking some locals their views on same-sex relationships.

To protest the rampant homophobia some gay bars, including San Jose’s Splash Video Dance Bar, took author-activist Dan Savage’s lead in boycotting Russian vodka, particularly Stolichnaya, promoting their dissent online under the hashtags #dumpstoli and #dumprussianvodka. Chicago’s biggest gay bay dumped the stuff last week, as did Moby Dick’s in San Francisco. This week, bars in West Hollywood threatened to pour Russian-made vodkas down the gutter.

But the majority of South Bay gay bars–four out of five in San Jose, specifically–refuse to follow suit. Luis Sarmento, owner of Renegades on West Taylor Street in San Jose, considers the movement misguided.

“I know that boycotts can be a powerful political statement for human rights, but this isn’t well-researched, it’s not well-organized, it’s off the cuff, it’s just something to throw out there because of inflamed feelings and passions,” says Sarmento. “People are letting their emotions get in the way.”

While it’s great that Savage’s social media-fueled #dumpstoli campaign has drawn attention to the plight of gays in Russia, actually dumping Stoli on a wide scale can do more harm than good, Sarmento insists.

“Stoli is not the bad guy here,” he says.

Stoli has a history of supporting the LGBT community, donating grant money and sponsoring events. Buzzfeed called the boycott “slacktivism at its finest,” a way to make a statement without demonstrably helping a cause and probably actually promoting more xenophobia than tolerance.

Locally, Stoli donated 2,500 whistles, condoms, safe sex pamphlets and bottles of lube to an LGBT anti-violence event organized by the charity-activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco. That same group just backed out of a Stoli-sponsored event as part of the “Dump Stoli” boycott.

The brand isn’t even Russian anymore, boycott critics point out.

The vodka brand split after the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving half to a Latvian operation and the other half in Russia. They’re separate companies. The U.S., Canada and Australia gets their Stoli from Latvia, not Russia. Savage maintains that there’s still a relationship with the two divisions.

The Olympics and its sponsor corporations might be a better target for a boycott, some say. The 2014 winter Olympic games are slated to take place in Sochi, where the Russian government is spending billions on an Olympic village with help from sponsors like McDonald’s, GE and Coca-Cola.

“If you get corporate sponsors to pull support, Russia will be left holding the bill,” Sarmento notes. “I find it hypocritical that some of the bars calling for a Stoli boycott are still using Coca-Cola products to mix cocktails with. There’s a smarter way to get your point across.”

San Jose native Derek Jameson is known for songs that fuse hard beats with naked emotion. One of the biggest weaknesses of club music is its tendency toward dehumanized, assembly-line blandness, but Jameson turns this blueprint for mechanization on its head with the passionate sincerity of his lyrics. He has an unusual talent for channeling emotion and even a message in the chaos of the dance-floor grind.

Yet surprisingly, that wasn’t always the case. Instead, the singer, dancer and actor, who headlines San Jose Pride this weekend at Discovery Meadow in San Jose says he was actually “the most shut off person when I was younger.” And his journey from that icy teenager to a man with “rule by heart” tattooed on his chest began in the most unexpected of places.

“At 15, I was asked if I wanted a job in entertainment at Paramount’s Great America. I took it not knowing that it would set me up as a performer for the rest of my life,” he says. “I was acting, dancing, and singing in stage shows for years at that park.”

The rigor of doing show after show after show every day for the crowds boosted his confidence immensely, so much so that he counts it among the most important formative steps in launching his musical career—along with a little soul-searching.

“Performing at Great America, being in bands, traveling the world, and learning to love myself were the most important steps in becoming who I am today,” he says.

Once he realized what an outlet it could be, music became his passion. “I knew that the only way I could express emotion was to write it down. I started playing the piano at the same time as I got the Paramount gig,” he says. “I just took to it naturally, like the the sound was part of my mental makeup. It was the way to marry the feeling of music with the depth of words that I had kept internal.”

He made his first real impact on the music industry with his single “Ribcage” off his 2010 debut album, The Invention of Love. The video probably had even more of an impact, both metaphorically and practically, with its sly equation of boxing with affairs of the heart—both delivering their blows to the body part of the title.

His latest single, however, shows how he’s evolved both musically and lyrically on his second release, the EP A History of Heroes. Heavily infused with dubstep, “Mr. Soldier Man” expands on his effort to bring meaning to dance music, digging into the definition of masculinity.

For Steven Sheehan, the San Jose bartender who won the Palm Springs Summer Splash Cocktail Challenge, bartending is really just a side job. He’s teaches English as a second language and is currently a University of San Francisco student studying organizational behavior and leadership.

Bartending, which he’s been doing for the last 12 years is just a way to get him through school, but at the end of May, he found himself representing San Jose and Brix Nightclub with his own creation at the Palm Springs Summer Splash Cocktail Challenge.

His cocktail, the “Pom Springs Fling”—made of Stoli white pomegranate, pomegranate Schnapps, soda water and 7UP, simple syrup, muddled cucumber, mint and a squeeze of lime—beat out bartenders from 12 cities, including New York and Las Vegas.

“It’s a very refreshing, light drink,” Sheehan explains. “When I made it, I thought, what would celebrities drink down by the pool in Palm Springs?”

The criteria for judging in Palm Springs included the cocktail, the presentation and the performance; Sheehan’s was a 1950s Elvis number.

“I wore my leather jacket, my ’50s glasses, my pompadour—I channeled Elvis for a bit,” he says. “I was a little bit nervous. I’m not a big performer.”

Sheehan has been at Brix for three of the five years the club has been open, and he said most of the time he thinks up his drinks off the top of his head.

“Customers always ask us make something new,” he says. “They always want us to make something up.” Just the

The winning drink. // Photo by Justin Albert

other night, he said, a bachelorette party group asked for a drink, and he made a lemon-meringue wedding-cake cocktail on the fly.

For his winning cocktail, though, he spent some time working on it and tested it on other people.

Winning in Palm Springs didn’t come with a cash prize but with bragging rights.

“It’s validation after 12 years of bartending,” Sheehan says. “It’s good to know that I know what flavors go good together.”

Another bonus for Sheehan was winning the competition on behalf of San Jose. “I had to represent San Jose—put us on the map.”

Originally from Costa Rica, Sheehan moved around a lot––high school in South Korea, middle school in Guam––before landing in San Jose. This moving, he said, has made him want to experience different cultures. When he graduates in December, he hopes to get into international human resources work for Silicon Valley companies like Apple or Google.

“I’m a mover. It’s really hard for me to stay in one place,” he says.

Read more about Silicon Valley Bars & Clubs in the June 13 special issue.