In San Francisco , Petrelis witnessed the White Night riots at San Francisco City Hall , a reaction to the lenient sentencing of Dan White , convicted of killing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk . Petrelis remembers feeling outrage on hearing the news of White 's sentence and said of the property destruction he had watched that night , " I remember feeling that was okay — that you had to have this destruction of personal property to send a message ... to gay people here in San Francisco — White 's lenient sentence is not okay . And we had to look out for ourselves — even with the relative liberal attitudes of San Francisco . " Petrelis moved to New York , in 1981 , where he renewed his acquaintance with a male couple he knew from his teenage visits to the city . One of these men was the first of Petrelis ' friends to die of the disease that would later come to be known as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ( AIDS )
White Night riots
White Night riots
Michael Petrelis