The illustrations that go with this week’s column are merely exhibits A and B from the veritable alphabet of the International Vintage Poster Fair, which returns to SF this weekend.

It’s that time of the year when you can feel the heat of Indian summer slide into autumnal chill at sundown. Even the pulchritudinous parade of international models who pose for Bay Area photographer Steven Underhill are putting their clothes back on!

This week we’re proud to bring you a small sample from the bounteous beauties on display in the new coffee-table art-book Bruce Sargeant and His Circle - Figure and Form by Mark Beard (Chronicle Books).

Labor Day is over, and we’ve put our white back into the closet. Time to go to the dark side? No, according to Castro Theatre impresario Marc Huestis, it’s time to "go into the light!"

For your September delectation, Brazilian model Marcello poses for photographer Steven Underhill . He’s a harbinger of the upcoming fall season in the arts!

Let Brazilian model Jonas Janez serve as your inspiration to whisk away the midsummer doldrums. Even though August is usually the downtime in many arts groups’ seasons, there’s still plenty going on around town. We do include eye-candy entertainment!

GLAAD Media Awards handed out in SF

Coming soon to damn near all print and new media near you: critics’ Top 10 lists for the year 2009. This column isn’t one of them, because we didn’t read nearly enough to compile a list of Top 10 books. But Out There did take this year’s digital conversion of broadcast frequencies as our cue to stop watching TV altogether (except on our computer or on DVD). Here are some books we read in the time we freed up, any one of them worth our attention more than The Situation and his abs greasing up for Jersey Shore.

Writer Jonathan Ames’ The Double Life Is Twice As Good - Essays and Fiction is out in a Scribner paperback, and Out There dove right into devouring it... that and more in this week’s Out There.

Fashion tips from the Folsom Street Fair... and other items of interest in this week’s Out There.

This week Out There reports that Golden Girl Rue McClanahan is coming to the Castro Theatre in November, joined by some local Golden Girls going wild. Catch the experimental films by Tom Chomont. Donna Sachet breaks the drag ceiling at the Giants game. 85-year old playwright George Birimisa gives a reading with a little help from his drag friends. Catch some free theater - gay or otherwise. And a pair of highly buzzed films come to town.

A new chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts ponders on why the American public doesn’t warm to artists... could they be a little gay? And a Bye Bye musical (no, not Birdie).

Four films currently in Bay Area cinemas

Is Rufus Wrainwright a new Puccini?