1. Pot Shot: A Mary Jane–for–pain booster put it plain at a January rally in the nation’s capital.

2. Bound for Gory: At Visual AIDS’ second annual Bloody Valentine blowout, New York City artists erected a human altar in the bowels of the Lure, a leather haunt, to honor artist Copy Berg, who died of AIDS in January.

3. Diva, Esq.: A pre-Grammy Madonna helped to launch AmFAR’s new ad campaign and March’s celebrity-studded Esquire Does AIDS cover at a glam Manhattan fete. “There is no cure,” the Material–turned–Geisha Girl stressed, but it was AmFAR spokestar Sharon Stone’s no show that got the tabloids tonguing.

4. Lap Happy: This Team New York Aquatics free-styler counted out her strokes at the ninth annual “One-Hour Swim” benefit in February, helping to raise $20,000 for Iris House, a Harlem-based ASO for women.

5. Brown Nosers: Treatment wonks honked when San Francisco mayor Willie Brown (lower right) sat for an “HIV is not the cause of AIDS” lecture from HEAL and ACT UP/San Francisco dissidents last January. 

6. Bareback Chic?: No, just Atlanta porn star Will Clark auctioning off some wares at AIDS Survival Project’s campy “Salute to Sodomy” January benefit.