Afternoon Greg: Coffee Bean’s Wi-Fi controversy; Roger Federer’s Sports Illustrated cover; Pride parties

Well, it’s a good thing that my coffee house of choice is Java Detour in West Hollywood – the heart of all things gay. The free wi-fi allows me to go to pretty much surf wherever I want. Apparently this is not the case with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

The site Unite The Fight alleges “technical discrimination” saying it was unable to access neither Pam’s House Blend or Towleroad from an LA Coffee Bean which had been blocked due to “sexuality.” These are two of the leading sites for LGBT news, not porn sites!

What is this? Amazon.com all over again?

The Internet provider responded to Unite the Fight’s complaint: We only provide network admins with the tools to block content on their networks, we as a company do not block anyone for any reason. If this user (i.e.business) chooses to block a particular type of content on their network, we cannot interfere. You however, as a consumer, have every right to boycott their business for the way they choose to block content on their networks.

I got this statement earlier today from Coffee Bean: At approximately 3:00pm on Thursday we were notified by a customer using our complementary wi-fi service that two specific sites catering to the LGBT community were blocked from access. Those sites included Pam’s House Blend and Towleroad. After learning of the issue, our technical team researched the situation and took immediate steps to unblock the sites that were brought to our attention. It is not, and has never been, the policy of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to block Internet content or websites from our customers or members of the LGBT community.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf subscribes to an OpenDNS platform that incorporates a peer review component which allows users to flag particular sites they deem inappropriate. In this case, a small amount of flags triggered the system and the sites in question were blocked automatically. No web-content filter is perfect, but we are grateful to the customers who quickly brought this to our attention for resolution. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf supports diversity on all levels and values the community members of the areas we operate in. Our goal in offering free wi-fi service is to open communication and exchange of information, not to block information,” stated Tim Casey, Vice President of Marketing & Operations, International Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, LLC.

ON THE COVER: I’m even more excited about this than Adam Lambert on the cover of Rolling Stone: Roger Federer graces the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated with this headline: Master Stroke: Winning the French, Roger Federer Makes His Case As the Best Ever.

I’m happy because tennis has always gotten short-shrift with Sports Illustrated. About 20 years ago, they published a letter I wrote to them about their coverage of Steffi Graf’s grand slam win in 1988. I’ve got a copy of it somewhere! The next year the magazine featured a retiring Chris Evert on the cover with the stupid headline: “I’m going to be a full-time wife.” John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were on the cover after several of their Wimbledon or US Open wins but rarely – if ever – has a European tennis player been on.

So I’m thrilled with Federer and when I saw it on the newsstand, I grabbed it and bought it in about five seconds flat. It was a bit of a rush. Here is a LINK to the story.

LIFEWORKS PARTY: LA Pride weekend is packed with events and I’m trying to go to as many as I feel up to. Tonight is the Federal Club Pride Kickoff garden party at the home of friends David Beckwith and Dietrich Nelson. I wouldn’t miss this one.

Another party I would not dare miss is the annual bash for Lifeworks Mentoring which is tomorrow evening. Dustin Lance Black is being honored.

My friend Michael Ferrera is co-founder of Lifeworks and its executive director. There is a nice article on Michael and Lifeworkx in the current issue of Frontiers.

“There are a lot of youth organizations that focus on crisis services but there wasn’t one around town that prepared our youth for fully transitioning into adulthood,” Michael said. “So many of them lack families and role models, that is really a huge deficit.”

To cope with that deficit, Ferrera and co-founder Garrison Smith decided to start a stand-alone youth mentoring program: Said Michael: “We wanted to create an organization that looked at youth holistically so that they would have a place that welcomed them, that unquestionably affirmed them and that helped them to focus on goal achievement and becoming exceptional instead of languishing like so many of our kids unfortunately do.”

To Ferrera, it is as simple as giving kids “an arena to build social networks, even if it’s just a place to read a book, use a computer, listen to music or get life skills training.”

Of honoring Black, the Oscar winning screenwriter of Milk, Michael said: . “Lance is a young man who went through the struggles that many of our youth go through, and he had to be courageous to come out. He’s a role model because he shows our youth that they are talented and, if given the opportunity, they can excel. He realized what his talent was, and he applied it.”

There are some photos that have surfaced that appear to be Lance having sex. I don’t know the circumstances but I still admire him greatly.