Dogs

Will 49er tailgating burn the Alice Griffith Housing Project?

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By Sarah Phelan

Residents of the Alice Griffith Housing project were a tad upset when they learned that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s retooled effort to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco could involve their homes being demolished. A resolution that came before the Board the day before the Mayor’s Sex scandal hit, included the surprising news that over the past 18 months developer Lennar, working in cooperation with the 49ers and the City, had created a preliminary plan that would provide a world-class stadium 49ers stadium and related mixed-use development. This development would consist of about 6,500 housing units, including affordable units and the replacement of the Alice Griffith Public Housing Development.
According to a letter from Newsom that was included with the Feb. 6 Board of Supes package, “The city and the Bayview in particular will benefit from extensive jobs and economic development opportunities, over one thousand units of affordable housing–including replacing the Alice Griffith housing project for the benefit of Alice Griffith residents.”
The problem was that Newsom hadn’t share this vision with the Alice Griffith residents and the few that showed up to the Feb. 6 Board meeting, which took place during the workday, expressed outrage at being left out of the loop.
As one lady said, waving a copy of the resolution in one hand, as she pounded the public comment lectern with the other “It’s not OK to have this in here without my input.”
Another, a single mother with four kids, recalled having to fight for four years to get into the project, in the first place. “I don’t want you guys to knock it down,” she said.
As Lavelle Shaw of the Alice Griffith Tenants Association told the Guardian, ” a lot of things seem to be going in through the back door. We want to be at the table for the replacement housing. And it can’t just be affordable. We want it to be low-income.”
As a result of all this uproar, Sup. Sophie Maxwell demanded a hearing, during which the resolution was reworded, reports Shaw, to give AG residents greater input. That said, Shaw urges folks to show up at the Feb. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting, to express their feelings, fears and desires.

Don’t know about you, but i sure wouldn’t want to be roasting hot dogs when displaced folks descend

THURSDAY

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Feb. 1

VISUAL ART

“Is Heaven Any Sweeter”

Thanks to Paul Mullins’s skill with ink and acrylics, images of sad dogs become something more than kitsch, something akin to a free-floating vision from a dream. The SF artist digs into his Appalachian roots in the new show “Is Heaven Any Sweeter,” and the occasional canine is mixed in with his memories of mountain boys. (Johnny Ray Huston)

5:30–7:30 p.m. reception, free
Through March 17
Heather Marx Gallery
77 Geary, second floor, SF
(415) 627-9111
www.heathermarxgallery.com

COMEDY

Jesus Roast

Speaking of assassination, isn’t there a famous historical figure who’s already endured a very public humiliation once before? Is it possible that he’s come again — as he promised — in order to sit through an evening of jabs, jibes, and tribute courtesy of Comedy Noir? Well, Jesus H. Christ, if isn’t the son of God himself (a.k.a. Kurt Weitzmann) and a panel of equally prestigious roasters, including Satan (Nick Leonard), Mary Magdalene (Candy Churilla), Red Buttons (Howard Stone), and Muhammad (Will Franken). (Nicole Gluckstern)

8 p.m., $10
Comedy Station
244 Taylor, SF
howardstone.com/jesus.html

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I complain a lot too. I understand: The buses don’t run on time. Everything costs too much, particularly a place to live, if you can even find one. Traffic is terrible, and there’s no place to park. Developers keep destroying good stuff and putting up ugly stuff.

And then there are moments like last Sunday afternoon, when my kids and I spent a couple hours communing with the pair of great horned owls that decided to take up residence in a tree on Bernal Hill.

The owls showed up a couple weeks ago. They sleep during the day, on branches maybe 25 feet off the ground, opening their yellow eyes every once in a while to cast a nonchalant glance at the humans and their dogs gawking up from below. They don’t seem to mind the fact that they’re constantly the center of attention, that it sometimes feels like a zoo exhibit up on the hill — except these aren’t captive creatures. They actually live here.

Great horned owls don’t tend to hang out in urban areas; I’ve never seen one before in San Francisco. But our new neighbors seem well at home on the hill, where there are plenty of mice, rats, and other small mammals to hunt. They’ve become quite the attraction; even Vivian, who isn’t exactly a nature girl, was excited to walk up and see them.

Michael, of course, was way into owls long before these guys showed up. He knew that they eat their prey whole but can’t digest fur, feathers, bones, teeth, or claws, and that once a day they burp that stuff up in a tight wad called a pellet. Naturally, we had to go looking.

So we climbed around the base of the tree for about half an hour, searching for owl pellets. They don’t look a whole lot different from dog turds, which are also common to this particular habitat, but I’d brought a couple sharp wooden barbecue spears to poke around with. After a few unpleasant errors, I snagged one; we took it home, picked it apart with tweezers, and managed to extract what appeared to be almost an entire mouse skeleton, which is now in a carefully labeled specimen jar on a shelf in the kids’ room.

After a quarter of a century in San Francisco, the city continues to amaze me.

I mention this in part because I happened to be looking for something else on the SF Weekly Web site the other day and came upon a peculiar and typically nasty piece columnist Matt Smith had written in the guise of advice to out-of-town reporters descending on the city to find out about the place whence comes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I’m sure he was trying to be funny, but in the end all I got was bile and vitriol. One typical comment:

"People move here, meet a group of fighting-mad friends, then join one of the city’s myriad wars: dog-owners vs. parents, renters vs. owners, bus-riders vs. drivers, bohemians vs. geeks, everybody against newcomers.

"A few years ago, I denounced the city as a petty battle zone."

That’s one way to look at it. Me, I love the fact that people in the city care enough to fight for its future.

Not to go after our corporate-chain rivals (who? me?), but I have to wonder sometimes: do the folks at the SF Weekly even like San Francisco? *

NOISE: Waits’s cheap shite serenaders

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Hey, who let the raindogs out? Revere that downtown trainwreck of a songwriting god? Bow down before all beery minstrels’ household saint? You love Tom Waits – ‘fess up.

raindogsml.jpg

You’re not alone – 21 Grand has found a way to freshen up the ole bandito’s catalog with “Everything’s a Dollar in This Box: The Songs of Tom Waits on cheap instruments” featuring 5 Cent Coffee, Stella!, Salty Walt & the Rattlin Rattlins, Dogs in Doublets, and more bad puns than you can shake a gin bottle at.

It’s happening Saturday, Jan. 27, 8:30 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St. (at Broadway), Oakl. $6-$10. (510) 444-7263. Be there or be under the table in a deep drunk – or better, be both.

WOW now

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Every January the Women on the Way Festival throws a spotlight on the performing arts as practiced by the female of the species. Not that producer Mary Alice Fry has to dig very deep in the field of dance, which is still heavily dominated by women. (For the moment we have to leave the reasons to sociologists — or perhaps psychiatrists.)

If this year’s second of three programs is any indication, the festival’s move from a tiny space on Ninth Street to Dance Mission Theater a couple years ago has blunted its funky edge. Understandably, some of the informal give-and-take that comes when artists perform practically on top of their audiences cannot be reproduced in a larger venue. But more seriously missing were a sense of discovery, the daring of something new in the making, and the need to put big ideas into a tiny space. Given more time and a larger space, artists will fill both — and not always with the best results. Maybe that’s why so much of this WOW program, which was built around dance-music collaborations, felt so drawn out, despite the enthusiasm and real competence of its dancers.

Standing high above the fray were Molissa Fenley’s two solos: Dreaming Awake, set to Philip Glass; and Four Lines, to Jon Gibson. A veteran of more than 20 years of solo dancing — though a serious injury and recent residencies at Mills College have prompted more ensemble work — Fenley is a master at saying much with little. Unadorned, almost emaciatedly spare, her movements spun long phrases that trailed and curled but were never anything but crystal clear in their trajectories. Every stretched leg and turned arm transformed space into something thinner and more transparent yet completely owned.

Fenley’s ability to make us hear the music remains a wonder. She inhabited it completely; her choreography, though meticulously crafted, seemed to flow spontaneously out of the music. Glass is not always an easy composer to listen to, but Fenley makes him so with Dreaming Awake, set to his eponymous piano piece. She roamed inside this score as if it were a home, picking up a rhythmic pattern here and anticipating a phrase there. The conversation between dance and music never stopped, and it was fascinating throughout.

Four Lines, set to Gibson’s soprano saxophone, was just as rigorously playful. Each of the four sections seemed to ride a different type of breath; in one of them Fenley found herself close to the ground. By the end of the piece, one had the sense that Gibson (performing on tape) was actually responding to the dancer — no mean trick for a choreographer to accomplish.

The rest of the WOW program also offered work that stood out, although for different reasons. Take Goat Hall Productions’ Cats, Dogs, and Divas, with libretto and direction by Harriet March Page, music by Mark Alburger, and movement direction by Fry: for some inexplicable reason this mono-opera was performed by six aspiring sopranos, most of them singing more or less on the same pitch. They were quite a sight to behold and to listen to. The subject matter of this very long, very bedraggled affair was the suggestion of father-daughter incest, apparently originally inspired by the Teutonic gods’ rather complicated family relationships. It’s good for the artists to try a humorous approach to a taboo, but this piece needs lots of therapy. Still, cheers to Fry for taking a chance on it.

The festival also offered an always-welcome opportunity to see Printz Dance Project. The company has performed full-evening concerts of Stacey Printz’s choreography for several years. Skirting the edge of jazz, hip-hop, and show dancing and driven by a strong beat, Printz has developed her own following. A beautiful performer, with one of the most eloquent backs around, she can be at once lyrical and aggressive. What Printz lacks at this point is the ability to choreograph organically so that connections grow beyond one section simply following another. Finding the Morning, inspired by a personal injury, was the strongest piece, with a solo Printz searching for a place for herself. Carlos Aguirre’s live beatboxing immensely enlivened Beat Sequitur, performed by Printz’s beautifully trained, energetic ensemble of six.

Raisa Punkki’s red Xing, set to a score by Albert Mathias, remained incomprehensible. Inspired by an E.E. Cummings poem, it rambled endlessly; Punkki and dancer Kakuti Davis Lin traded off solos that were punctuated periodically with duets in which they exchanged mysterious smiles. The poem, however, was lovely. *

WOMEN ON THE WAY PROGRAM 3

Thurs/25–Sun/28, 8 p.m., $15–$20

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 289-2000

www.ftloose.org

>

Where are the chicks?

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› amanda@sfbg.com

It’s a warm, blue-sky day in late November, and about 35 people are gathered outside one of the National Park Service buildings in the Presidio, trading tales of where and when they last saw California quail. Point Reyes is named most frequently. The Marin Headlands get a few nods from the bird enthusiasts. Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park raises a minor cheer. Someone mentions "Quail Commons" in the Presidio, and an "Ooh" ripples around the circle, but it turns out the sighting was a while ago.

The enthusiastic volunteers, mostly bird lovers and Presidio neighbors, have turned out for today’s annual Quail Habitat Restore-a-Thon, an event aimed at transforming Quail Commons, the quarter-acre sliver of property located behind the Public Health Service Hospital on the western edge of the Presidio, into the national park’s premier quail habitat.

And the handful of quail that still live in the Presidio will surely appreciate it — although they might have a better time if only there were some ladies around.

Unfortunately, there aren’t. After a long morning of trimming back trees and planting sprouts of native coffee berry and coyote bush, Damien Raffa, a natural resources educator for the Presidio, confirms all the rumors that have been raked up with the weeds: the quail population has reached a new low. There are just six remaining in the Presidio. And yes, they’re all male.

The demise of the local quail population sounds like something only bird nerds would be fluffing their feathers over, but the strange thing is that the birds didn’t just fly away while the binoculars were trained elsewhere. A concerted effort to save the city’s quail population was made by multiple parties, costing thousands of dollars and using hundreds of work hours.

In 2000 the Board of Supervisors named the sociable fowl with the cunning head plumage the official bird of San Francisco. Since the informal inception of the Habitat Restore-a-Thon in the late ’90s, the number of volunteers has increased more than fivefold, and hundreds of park staff hours have been spent restoring habitats to the quail’s particular standards.

The Golden Gate Audubon Society dropped $15,000 on a Quail Restoration Plan and budgets $6,000 a year for the project. In the Presidio education has included a Web site, bright yellow "Quail Area" bumper stickers, and road signs in sensitive areas warning drivers to watch out for the little ground-loving birds. For the past two years biological monitors have been hired by the Presidio Trust to study the precious few remaining quail, with the hopes of pinpointing why they’re disappearing.

So why are the plump little fowl more commonly found trussed in gravy on sterling platters in some of the Embarcadero’s finer eating establishments than nesting under scrubby bushes among the windswept dunes on the western side of the city?

What went wrong? And what does it say about how the Presidio and other natural areas in the city are being managed?

PRESIDIO PRIORITIES


A mere 20 years ago, the state bird of California, Callipepla californica, was so bountiful in the Presidio that the average bike ride down Battery Caulfield or along Land’s End yielded at least one sighting.

"Brush rabbits, wrentits, Western screech owls, and the California quail" are the common wildlife listed off by Josiah Clark, a San Francisco native who spent his childhood scrambling around the Presidio with his binoculars. He’s now a wildlife ecologist and runs an environmental consulting company called Habitat Potential. "Those were once ‘can’t-miss’ species when I was a kid. Now I’m more likely to find a vagrant bird from the East Coast than a wrentit or a screech owl in the Presidio."

Since the former US Army base was decommissioned and opened to the public, the wrentit and screech owl have disappeared, and the quail are flying the coop too, despite the protective national-park status of the city’s largest natural area.

"Sometimes I think about the irony of it," says Dominik Mosur, a former biological monitor for the Presidio Trust who still birds in the national park once or twice a week. "The Presidio Trust was founded in 1998, at the same time habitat restoration for the quail really started happening. The more people got involved in somewhat of a misguided manner, the less successful it’s become."

Having a species of animal disappear from a national park is very unusual, according to Peter Dratch, who oversees the Endangered Species Program for the National Park Service. "It’s a rare event for a species in a national park to become locally extirpated," he says. Just three national parks have lost an animal out of the thousand endangered and threatened species he tracks.

Mosur is concerned that economic interests are trumping ecological needs in the Presidio. "I’m not saying that ecologists who work for the trust want to see the quail extinct," Mosur says. "But I think their bosses wouldn’t mind. Preserving nature and making money are really conflicting things. You can’t make any money off of an open lot of sagebrush with some quail in it, but you can make quite a bit of money converting Letterman hospital into a lot of apartments."

And making money is the bottom line for this national park. The Presidio, unlike any other national park in the country, is forced to fully fund itself, according to a mandate proposed by Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the mid-’90s. Guardian investigations and editorials over the years have raised questions about the viability of this arrangement. The cash cow is supposed to be the abundance of housing and development opportunities made possible by the abandoned army barracks and buildings, which means this national park is in the business of real estate, not natural resources.

While an annual $20 million federal allocation has been meted to the park during its teething stages, the Presidio Trust is tasked with weaning itself off that funding by 2013. Halfway through the 15-year deadline, the 2006 annual report for the trust shows that revenue is up just 4.5 percent while overhead costs have jumped 22 percent from last year’s numbers.

So making money is more important than ever. The doubtful are invited to trawl the Presidio’s Web site, where it’s easy to find information about housing rentals and development opportunities, the new restaurants that have opened, and the free coffee now available at transit hubs, but only a deep search will reveal anything about birds, trees, and flowers. A click on the "Nature in the City" link scores you a picture of the very common and abundant great horned owl. If you want to "read more," you get a blurb about mushrooms. The "Save the Quail" link, which was up as recently as this fall, has disappeared, just like the bird itself.

At press time, spokespeople for the Presidio Trust had not answered our questions about quail habitats or future restoration plans, despite repeated inquiries.

To be fair, the decimation of local quail is a phenomenon not exclusive to the Presidio. The population in Golden Gate Park has also dropped to a dangerous low. Annual citywide "Christmas Bird Counts," conducted by the Golden Gate Audubon Society, show more than 100 quail 10 years ago but as few as 40 just 5 years ago. Last year there were 27. This year promises to have even fewer.

"When a population gets low, it’s easier for it to get really low really fast," Clark says.

Most local bird-watchers and ecologists agree that it’s been a collision of conditions such as increased predation, decimated habitats, and unsavory, incestuous mating stock that has meant the gallows for the quail. But poor management decisions on behalf of the people in power have been the tightened noose.

SAVE THE QUAIL


Mention quail to anyone in management at Golden Gate Audubon, the Presidio Trust, or the city’s Recreation and Park Department, and you’ll be directed to Alan Hopkins, who has lived and watched birds in the city since 1972 and is the most widely regarded local expert on quail.

Initially, it wasn’t one of his favorite species. "They were a little too cute," Hopkins says. "But the more I started to study them, I saw how social they were. They’re fascinating, and they were here way before we were."

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that he really started making a special effort to look for them during his daily bird-watching. Within a few years he began to worry about the health of the local population as he saw an increase in predators like raptors and feral cats.

At the same time, habitats were decimated by an aggressive campaign to purge the parks of homeless people. This involved cutting back the deep underbrush where quail like to hide out. In addition, the preservation of tall, stoic trees such as cypress, pine, and eucalyptus has meant an increase in habitats for quail predators like hawks and ravens, which prefer to spot prey from a heightened roost. As these factors conspired, numbers continued to drop, and the breeding stock became more and more narrow, until the coveys were rife with incest.

While predation is always a possibility, it doesn’t start having a big effect until the quail take to the streets, driven by disrupted habitats and dismal mating prospects. Though not generally migratory birds, when a spot becomes inhabitable, quail have been known to move around the city using wild property edges for succor until they find another covey or place to roost. And in San Francisco, they really are in the streets. Quail can’t fly long distances, and they travel mostly on foot.

Two birds wearing leg bands left the unpalatable conditions of the Presidio and resurfaced in Golden Gate Park, which means the unappealing mating scenario and disrupted habitat drove them to negotiate several city blocks in search of greener pastures. "They probably went through people’s backyards," Hopkins says. "That’s one of the reasons we think people need to preserve their backyards."

But increased gentrification has destroyed these wild, backyard corridors, which have been the secret highways for wildlife through the city.

Hopkins started an education-and-restoration campaign called "Save the Quail" in the ’90s. His hope was that the more people were aware of the quail and the small things they could do to save them, like preserving certain plants in their yards and keeping their cats indoors, the more it would benefit the birds and the parks.

"If we can restore the quail, it’s a good harbinger of health in the city," says Peter Brastow, director of Nature in the City, a nonprofit group that works to restore biodiversity in San Francisco by encouraging citizens to work and play in natural areas. "If we have great success with them, then we’re probably doing a lot for many other species too."

And that, Brastow argues, is important for the health of the people who live here. "Connecting to nature should be a bona fide recreational activity. Going bird-watching, walking your dog on a leash, [and] doing stewardship are all ways for urbanites to reconnect with these threatened natural areas that need people to sustain them. People need nature. It’s a feedback loop."

But, as is so often the case in San Francisco, for every pro, there’s a con.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE


As the quail preservationists beseeched the city’s Rec and Park Department and the Presidio Trust for places to restore habitats, efforts were waylaid by the competing interests of feral cat fans and off-leash dog lovers.

"It really became a polarized issue," says Samantha Murray, Golden Gate Audubon’s conservation director. "Unfortunately, quail have had a lot working against them for the last 20 years, and none of that helped."

As arguments played out in public meetings, time ticked away for the birds, and the population continued to plummet. Eventually, a strip of unused land between Harding Park Golf Club and Lake Merced was granted as a new place for a quail habitat, even though it’s not an area where quail have ever been seen.

"It was a compromise," Hopkins says.

In addition, a quail niche was carved out of a quarter-acre plot in the Presidio where a covey still existed. Dubbed Quail Commons, it became the locus of restoration efforts, with regular work parties weeding out nonnative invasive species and sowing new shoots of quail-approved plants.

It wasn’t long, however, before the plot became more of a poster child for the trust and less a place where effective restoration occurred. Hopkins and other local birders and ecologists proffered regular advice on what might work, but they say the trust depended too heavily on outside studies by experts and seized on a rigid formula rather than a fluctuating plan that responded to unexpected changes in the local ecology.

"Quail are dependent on a lot of nonnative species for food source and cover," Hopkins says. In a burst of antipathy toward nonnative species, much of the Himalayan blackberry and wild radish, two of the quail’s favorite plants, were scourged from the parks. The native plants that replaced them provide a very limited diet for the birds.

"One bad year for those plants," Hopkins says, "and the ability to eat is gone."

He points out that providing water or food where necessary and introducing more birds when the population became so inbred could have been very effective.

"I think it’s naive to think if you simply restore habitat, it’s going to be enough," he says. He admits that contradicts statements he’s made in the past, but that’s the nature of the beast when it comes to ecology. No specific formula is guaranteed to work in every situation, which is what, some scientists say, makes local knowledge so valuable.

"Local knowledge is huge," says Karen Purcell, leader of the Urban Bird Studies project at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, which uses "citizen scientists" from around the country to supplement its bird research. "People who know their birds and what’s going on in their areas contribute information that many times we could never get."

To maintain reliability, the lab gathers as much data as possible from as many sources as are available, so that rogue or ill-informed data is diluted.

"There are so many people like myself who’ve spent so much time watching this place and the animals that live in it. People from as close as Marin couldn’t even say the things that we know," says Hopkins, who’s been hired by the trust to consult for a few projects but not granted any regular position or much compensation for his expertise.

"The people I’ve had to deal with through the Presidio Trust and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy try to do their best, but I always get the feeling there are conflicting interests," he says. "There’s always the budget. There are always aesthetic issues."

When it comes to action, things drag at the federal level much like they do when negotiating with competing interests around the city. "As far as the National Park Service goes, they’ve got to have a study," Clark says. "And the study has to be done by qualified academics. That’s the way the system works."

This past year’s Presidio biological monitor, Chris Perry, describes himself as "not really a birder," even though "99.5 percent of my job was monitoring quail." Perry has a master’s degree, and the bulk of his career has been spent doing a variety of environmental work. "It doesn’t require someone to be a birder to be a good ecologist."

Perry agrees with the locals on one contentious issue: efforts to reintroduce quail into the Presidio are long overdue. Hopkins says he hoped for reintroduction years ago, but politics invaded.

"They hemmed and hawed about it. It costs money," he says. One of the problems with reintroduction, he adds, is that you can’t just "open the cage and let them loose." Quail are social birds, and like any new kid in town, the birds are more likely to succeed if there are some old-timers around who know the local ropes.

That may be a problem for the other primary habitat-restoration area in the city, Harding Park, where no quail have been spotted.

"We’d like to do reintroduction a few years from now," says Murray of Golden Gate Audubon, which for the past three years has been working to establish a habitat there. "If we do it — invest the resources and time — we want it to work."

In the past year the group has decided to ramp up the effort, hiring a part-time volunteer coordinator, Bill Murphy, to oversee the planting of lupine and coffee berry and the weeding out of English ivy and ice plant.

The hope is that "if you build it, they will come," Murphy says of the site. But it doesn’t take an expert to realize that Harding Park is far from being a perfect place for quail. Tall cypresses dominate, and the ground is thick with heavy wood chips and duff, rather than the sand quail prefer.

Brush piles have been another issue, falling into the aesthetics category. Quail experts have long advocated them as an easy way to naturally house species. If done properly, the small mountains of sticks, logs, and branches — resembling something you’d take a match to for a first-class bonfire — can have a screening effect, with openings large enough for a quail to squeeze in and take cover but too small for a pursuing cat or dog.

"At Land’s End I suggested they put up brush piles, which are very beneficial, and they agreed to do it," Hopkins says. "But the landscape architect they hired is complaining because they think these brush piles are unsightly."

In addition to being unsightly, the ones that have been built are too uniform, resembling the neatly laid bare poles of a teepee. According to Clark, they are essentially ineffective.

"The brush piles in the Presidio are like skeletons," he says. "It looks like a brush pile, but it’s not actually serving any purpose. They’re almost analogous to the whole structure of the restoration program."

ISLANDS AMONG ISLANDS


Consider the boundaries of the city: water laps the edges on three sides. San Francisco not only thinks and acts like an island — it practically is one. The parks and natural areas, separated by streets and concrete and scattered throughout one of the most densely populated cities in the country, are oases for humans as they shed the stresses of busy workdays. They’re also habitats for wildlife who began life on this peninsula and have no way to really leave it.

Those interests are sometimes in concert, sometimes in competition.

The Presidio is the largest of the islands, and the fact that the 1,400 acres were once an army base with stringent rules about access, populated by a military with a predictable routine, worked to the advantage of local wildlife for many years.

"There weren’t as many cats, no off-leash dogs, not as much street traffic." Hopkins says. "Army bases across the country are a lot of our best habitats because of benign neglect."

"Military activities are actually easier for many of these species to deal with than an area with wide public access," says John Anderson, a professor of ornithology at College of the Atlantic who specializes in island avian populations. "It serves as a ‘habitat island.’ This is why you have nesting birds at the end of the runways at JFK. As long as you get a jet taking off every 30 seconds, it doesn’t have much impact. On the other hand, if you have a jet making a low pass over a nesting colony once a summer, it is likely to cause a lot of disturbance."

If there’s the equivalent of a jet flying low over the Presidio, it would be the increase of hikers, bikers, park staff, and volunteers regularly traipsing through areas that until recently never saw much action.

And one place that’s stood empty and secluded for years is about to see an enormous influx of people.

The Public Health Service Hospital is slated to become condominiums with 250 to 400 market-rate units. It’s the largest housing development in the park, and the Presidio Trust is relying on at least $1 million in net revenue from the project: it’s a keystone in the overall plan for financial sustainability.

However, the decrepit building is located next to the oldest relic scrub oak habitat in Presidio Hills. "This area has been here since time began," Clark says on a recent tour through that tucked-away corner of the park.

Indeed, the overgrown dunes have an ancient, haunted feel. Listening to the unique song of the white-crowned sparrow, standing among the small scrub oaks and some of the rarest plants in the Presidio, it’s possible to forget the nearby high-rises, highways, and houses and imagine a time when the whole western edge of the city was little more than acres and acres of windswept sand and scrubby brush.

"This is the first place I had interactions with park stewards and saw them doing something that worked," Clark says. "They took down a couple of trees, and people complained, but so much diversity popped up where those trees were. Pines can be great and support a lot of birds, but in an intact, native ecosystem they aren’t very helpful. This area is a relic, and quail are a part of that relic."

It’s clear that this original setting would be perfect for quail and anything else is just a compromise. The soil is loose and sandy, perfect for the dirt baths that clean their feathers. The ground cover is negotiable for their small stature, but there’s good shelter and ample food and water.

We’re just down the hill from Quail Commons, where the last six Presidio quail live, but there’s a lot of unfriendly activity between here and there — a road, a fence, a parking lot, and a dump where construction debris is regularly tossed.

"These two areas would be so much more valuable if they were connected," Clark says.

Through the trees that line the hills, it’s possible to see the back of the old abandoned hospital. It remains to be seen if more quail will be able to live here among more people and all the things that come with them — dogs and cats, trash and cars. Will the new inhabitants take quail education to heart?

As if they’re harbingers of what’s to come, two joggers with a baby stroller and a dog cruise by. As the dog leaps through the scrub, the couple pass by without a glance at the Quail Habitat sign. *

Cinema 2006

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CRAIG BALDWIN’S PRIZED CINEMATIC PEANUTS

Ever wonder why there’s an Automotive section in the newspaper every week … and perhaps consider that the Film section might also be driven by the same industry forces?

And so commercial cinema, dinosaurlike as it is, does continue to lumber along. ‘Tis built on the model of the automobile industry, and hey neighbor, why don’t you get yourself a moped (or an electric bike)?

For me, what’s most interesting in the motion picture arts and sciences is the move to molecularize — smaller, more intimate, even itinerant salons, installations, and interventions, bolstered not by (master-)narrative architectures of the cinema experience but by the satisfaction that the truly curious take in its dismantling, to analyze its history and process, and hell yeah, to repurpose its tropes for the contemporary moment.

Against this year’s model, this molecular filmwork acknowledges rather than erases what is resonant in film history, remediating the genre motifs as Menippean satire and inspired human-scale critical agency.

Speaking of scale, it was the six-inch-small twin girls named the Peanuts who paradoxically topped my list of ’06 epiphanies. While we were ensconced in the veritable bowels of the Artists’ Television Access basement for its life-saving fundraiser, David Cox’s nuanced, obsessively detailed three-hour deconstruction of kaiju — the Japanese rubber-monster idiom — demonstrated oh-so-marvelously how personal (and political) meaning can blossom from the Other-worldly visions of fantasy and exploitation film just like the aforementioned fairies, sprouting from the ferns of a lush jungle tableau. In Cox’s essay-cum-homage, here are dinosaurs (and giant moths, dragons, and smog monsters!) that we can use for allegory and imaginative play, not those that consume us in a vicious cycle of oil addiction and predatory foreign wars.

The Peanuts rhapsodize:

Mothra oh Mothra

The people have forgotten kindness

Their spirit falls to ruin

We shall pray for the people as we sing

This song of love

Craig Baldwin programs "Other Cinema" at the ATA and is the director of Spectres of the Spectrum, Sonic Outlaws, Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America, and other movies.

BONG JOON-HO’S TOP EIGHT MOVIES

(1) Family Ties (Kim Tae-yong, South Korea)

(2) In Between Days (Kim So-yong, US/Canada/South Korea)

(3) Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/US)

(4) The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, France/Italy)

(5) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US)

(6) Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)

(7) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)

(8) Yureru (Miwa Nishikawa, Japan)

Bong Joon-ho is the director of The Host, Memories of Murder, and Barking Dogs Never Bite.

BRYAN BOYCE’S TOP 10 SIGHTS

Au Bonheur des Dames (Julien Duvivier, France, 1930) at the SF Silent Film Festival on July 15.

The sauerkraut western Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, US, 1952).

Guy "King of the Q&A" Maddin presenting a program of his short films at the SF International Film Festival on April 25.

Rest in peace Shelley Winters, peerless in Larceny (George Sherman, US, 1948), at the Noir City Film Festival on Jan. 15.

Portrait #2: Trojan (Vanessa Renwick, US).

Sword of Doom (Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1966).

Not bad for a work-in-progress: Miranda July’s Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About at SF Cinematheque on Oct. 23.

Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29.

Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1961).

Crispin Glover’s 1987 Late Night with David Letterman platform shoe karate kick demonstration, on YouTube.

Bryan Boyce is the director of America’s Biggest Dick, Rumsfeld Rules, and other movies.

MICHELLE DEVEREAUX’S 10 BEST AND 10 WORST

Best walkies: Helen Mirren, black labs, and corgis, The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK/France/Italy)

Best 1/8th mighty Choctaw: John Michael Higgins, For Your Consideration (Christopher Guest, US)

Best German whore: Cate Blanchett, The Good German (Steven Soderbergh, US)

Best Russian whore: Vera Farmiga, Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella, UK/US)

Best ex-junkie whore: Amy Sedaris, Strangers with Candy (Paul Dinello, US)

Best bloodsucking: Stockard Channing, 3 Needles (Thom Fitzgerald, Canada)

Best unnecessary invention: 3-D glasses for real life, The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, France/Italy)

Best western: The Proposition (John Hillcoat, Australia/UK)

Best meltdown: Frances McDormand, Friends with Money (Nicole Holofcener, US)

Best performance by the artist formerly known as Marky Mark: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US)

Worst performance by the artist formerly known as Marky Mark: Mark Wahlberg, Invincible (Ericson Core, US)

Worst meltdown: polar ice caps, An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, US)

Worst nudity: Ken Davitian, Borat (Larry Charles, US)

Worst role model for Britney Spears (excluding Paris Hilton): Rinko Kikuchi, Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, US/Mexico)

Worst date movie: United 93 (Paul Greenglass, US/UK/France)

Worst love interest for Tom Cruise since Katie Holmes: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, US/Germany)

Worst stand-in for Margot Kidder: Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, US/Australia)

Worst reason to become a vegetarian: Barnyard (Steve Oedekerk, US/Germany)

Worst emoter (someone give this man a lozenge): Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, US)

Worst excuse for two upcoming sequels: Goal! The Dream Begins (Danny Cannon, US)

Michelle Devereaux is a Guardian contributing writer.

SARAH ENID HAGEY’S PRESCRIPTIVE LOOK AT THE CINEMATIC CRYSTAL BALL

Here is my prediction for the coming year of film. I know I may sound like a new age mumbo-jumboist, but I sense a return to mysticism and spirituality. The age of nihilism is really just some shortchange bullshit. The postmodern, amoral, canned reality period has proved its point and has been nothing more than a carbuncle. What, then, is my prescription? The surreal, detached from reality, psychedelic, hallucinogenic, optimistic fantasy film. In the words of my dear friend Chad Peterson, "Fantasy intoxicates only the strong mind. It is horror and humor, the twin children of their mother imagination, which open a sea chest of all memories, hanging above the heart an anchor and above the plow a star." Fantasy embraces the nostalgia and hope that we’ve spent our angsty years repressing. When you think all hope is lost but then that Giorgio Moroder track starts, you just weep like a very small child.

Sarah Enid Hagey’s short films include The Great Unknown and Lovelorn Domestic.

JESSE HAWTHORNE FICKS’S 10 PICKS*

(1) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US).

(2) The New World (Terrence Malick, US).

(3) L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France). Be patient with this quiet cinematic poem — along with my first two picks, it will completely break your heart.

(4) Battlestar Galactica (created by Michael Rymer, US). I know, I know, it’s on the SciFi Channel. But seriously, this show is more thought-provoking than most feature films.

(5) A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, US). Creatively hypnotizing and terrifyingly relevant.

(6) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US). Best performance of the year, easily: Marky Mark.

(7) District B13 (Pierre Morel, France). The Transporter + John Carpenter’s politics = sheer bliss.

(8) Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, US). It’s embarrassing to connect so strongly to these awkward hipsters attempting to figure themselves out.

(9) Hostel (Eli Roth, US). How satisfying is it to watch a bunch of sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Americans get horrifically sliced and diced? Try multiple viewings.

(10) BloodRayne (Uwe Bol, US/Germany). Another supersleazy, terrifically pathetic video game adaptation by the master of contemporary B-movies.

* Though he hasn’t seen David Lynch’s Inland Empire yet.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks teaches film history at the Academy of Art University and programs "Midnites for Maniacs" at the Castro Theatre.

SAM GREEN’S TOP 10

(1) "The Tailenders," P.O.V. (Adele Horne, US)

(2) John and Jane (Ashim Ahluwalia, India)

(3) Portrait #2: Trojan (Vanessa Renwick, US)

(4) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US)

(5) Reporter Zero (Carrie Lozano, US)

(6) Rap Dreams (Kevin Epps, US)

(7) "Lampoons and Eye-tunes," an evening of Bryan Boyce’s short films at the ATA on Oct. 7

(8) Workingman’s Death (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Germany)

(9) "War-Gaming in the New World Order," presentation by film critic Ed Halter at the ATA on Oct. 21

(10) American Blackout (Ian Inaba, US)

Sam Green is the director of The Weather Underground and Lot 63, Grave C.

DENNIS HARVEY’S 10 MOST ALARMING PORN TITLES (NO, HE DID NOT MAKE THESE UP)

Bareback Twink Squat

Hole Sweet Hole

Dirt Pipe Milkshakes

I Dig ‘Em in Pigtails 2

Boob Exam Scam 3

CSI: Cum Swappers Incorporated

Gorgeous Chloroformed Women!

A Little Cumster in the Dumpster

What Happens Between My Tits Stays Between My Tits

Ass Jazz 2

Dennis Harvey is a Guardian contributing writer and a reviewer for Variety.

RIAN JOHNSON ON THE TELEVISION RENAISSANCE OF 2006

I resisted for a long while. Even as the rising tide of TiVo-wielding friends and coworkers lapped at my doorstep, I stiff-armed them with the dismissive battle cry "I don’t really watch TV." I’m not sure what happened in the past year, but the levee has broken. Big-time. I have no shame. I pimp Lost like no one’s business. I spread box sets of 24 like some modern-day Johnny Appleseed. The scales have fallen from my eyes: any given episode of South Park contains more hilarious and incisive satire than American cinema has offered in decades. Freaks and Geeks is the most painfully true window into adolescence since the glory days of John Hughes. And the new Battlestar Galactica (I swear to God) stands shoulder to shoulder with the best cinematic sci-fi of the past century. So drop your burdens by the coaxial river, all ye high-cultured unbelievers, and join us. The water’s fine.

Rian Johnson is the writer-director of Brick.

JONATHAN L. KNAPP’S TOP 10 CINEMATIC RETURNS AND ARRIVALS

(1) The return of Big Edie and Little Edie, plus the Marble Faun (a.k.a. Jerry Torre), who accompanied the screenings of Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, US, 1975) and The Beales of Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, US) at the Castro on Nov. 22.

(2) The Up series: 49 Up (Michael Apted, UK) may not have been the most eventful chapter, but a new installment is always welcome.

(3) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, France) at the Castro Theatre

(4) Scott Walker in the video for "Jesse" (Graham Wood, UK) plus various clips on YouTube.

(5) The Criterion Collection DVD of Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, US, 1939), a film that equals any of the director’s beloved westerns.

(6) The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan), SF International Film Fest screening at the Castro Theatre on April 23.

(7) The Host (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea), opening night SF Animation Festival screening at the SF Museum of Modern Art on Oct. 12.

(8) Brick (Rian Johnson, US).

(9) The Descent (Neil Marshall, UK).

(10) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US).

Jonathan L. Knapp is a Guardian contributing writer.

JOÃO PEDRO RODRIGUES’S MOST REVEALING MOVIE MOMENT

On Dec. 9 I saw John Ford’s The Searchers in the same theater where I had seen it for the first time when I was 15. It was a Saturday evening; 25 years ago, it had been a Thursday evening. Back then, I had never thought a western could be as moving as a Robert Bresson film.

This time the projectionist oddly forgot to put the VistaVision mask in the film projector, and I (and everybody else that was in the audience, even if nobody complained) saw a film "around" the film that continuously took me out of the tale of revenge happening below. Things that shouldn’t be seen, that usually remain hidden were revealed. I saw the lights, the microphones, the sets. I was outside the drama, but it was as if the film turned inside out in front of me.

How new can an old film be?

João Pedro Rodrigues is the director of Two Drifters and O Fantasma.

JOEL SHEPARD’S 11 FAVORITE FILMS (PLUS RUNNERS-UP AND MEMORABLE ODDITIES)

(1) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France/Austria).

(2) Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, US).

(3) Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria).

(4) "The Dundies" and "A Benihana Christmas," The Office.

(5) Miami Vice (Michael Mann, US/Germany). Except for the lame part where they go to Cuba.

(6) Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, US).

(7) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US).

(8) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea).

(9) United 93 (Paul Greengrass, US/UK/France).

(10) "A Time for Love" segment of Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, France/Taiwan).

(11) Jackass Number Two (Jeff Tremaine, US).

RUNNERS-UP AND MEMORABLE ODDITIES:


Shadowboxer (Lee Daniels, US). What? Helen Mirren as a female assassin, Cuba Gooding Jr. as her lover, and lots of nudity and graphic sex? I am in awe of its stupidity.

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria).

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania).

Same Day Nice Biscotts (Luther Price, US). Price takes 13 identical, abandoned 16mm film prints and turns them into one of the most emotionally wrenching shorts I’ve ever seen.

www.sexandsubmission.com. Um, isn’t this illegal?

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan, US).

The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (Thomas Clay, UK). Offensive, mean, juvenile garbage, and I’ve never seen a more pissed-off audience reaction at the Rotterdam Film Festival — no small feat against the unshockable Dutch.

For Your Consideration (Christopher Guest, US).

Sitting alone in a decrepit theater watching a triple feature of generic "pink" films in Beppu, Japan, feeling boredom and pain so intensely that I began to travel through time and space.

"The Last Wild Tigers," 60 Minutes, Nov. 19.

Gravedancers (Mike Mendez, US). Delightful old-fashioned horror, from "After Dark Horrorfest: Eight Films to Die For."

"Evelyn Lin," sigh.

Joel Shepard is film and video curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

SEAN UYEHARA’S COUNTDOWN OF THE 10 MOST OVERUSED DEVICES AND PLOT POINTS IN FILM FESTIVAL ENTRIES

(10) My pet is cute.

(9) To me, "experimental" means playing the same thing 412 times in a row. Crazy, huh?

(8) This old person is kind and sage. Listen to him/her. Or: these old people are kind and sage. Listen to them.

(7) Things are happening to these 10 people. Wait, they all know each other in different ways. Weird.

(6) Someone is following me. I know it because I can hear their echoey footsteps.

(5) I am a struggling writer/director/actor/painter/chef/mime/dancer/sculptor/other, and I smoke cigarettes, and I won’t compromise.

(4) There is a woman. She’s just like you and me, except that she is a prostitute/stripper — and she is so hot. Just watch her.

(4a) It’s hard out here for a pimp.

(3) Strange things keep happening to me. Additionally, I am somewhere where I don’t know where I am.

(2) God talks to me.

(1) You thought this was real? No way, this is a "mockumentary"!

Sean Uyehara is a programming associate at the San Francisco Film Society.

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL’S 10 FILM-RELATED FAVORITES

(1) The Boy from Mars, film installation by Philippe Parreno.

(2) Hamaca Paraguaya (Paz Encina, Argentina/Paraguay/Netherlands/Austria/France/Germany).

(3) Los Angeles–based Festival Management no longer works for the Bangkok International Film Festival.

(4) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea).

(5) www.brucebaillie.net.

(6) Quay Brothers — the Short Films 1979–2003 DVD (BFI).

(7) Tokyo Filmex.

(8) Nintendo Wii. It’s sort of new cinema.

(9) The Wave (Kumar Shahani, India, 1984).

(10) Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is the director of Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, and other films.

PINKY AND D. ERIC BECKLES OF TV CARNAGE LOOK BACK AT A LITIGIOUS YEAR

For us, 2006 was the year of the entertainment lawyer. It’s not a year recognized by the Chinese calendar yet, probably because being born during the year of the entertainment lawyer would be the worst thing in the fucking world.

Our year in TV and film was made love to by the word vetting — the process by which people’s thoughts and ideas are raked over, much like hot hands raking over unsuspecting pubes. (Trust me on that one.) When lawyers start examining your phrases and intentions, existence enters another dimension. It’s beyond psychedelic; it’s an assault by litigious wizards on a naive concept of freedom of speech. No matter what your intentions are, they will be examined and altered to a level of incompetence that makes you embarrassed for even having parents who engaged in the intercourse that made you.

Lawyers make work for lawyers. No one is oblivious to this, but the times spent waiting for their responses are the golden moments or the reeking turds of life, depending on the situation.

In the case of a recent situation I was privy to, we waited in real time as lawyers in another city examined the use and placement of words in a sentence to such a horrific degree it was obscene. The problem is these guys and gals (I’m so open-minded I even realize women can be lawyers) are zingless word calculators. They have the comedic timing of a court stenographer reading back testimony. So when they finally rewrite something, it feels like you’re reading an autopsy report. They ruin everything with a fear of being sued that they use to make everyone paranoid so they can get as much money from your fear-induced wallet as they can.

TV Carnage’s videos include A Sore for Sighted Eyes and When Television Attacks.

Holiday Listings

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HOLIDAY
Holiday listings are compiled by Todd Lavoie. Listings for Wed/20-Tues/26 are below; check back each week for updated events. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings.

ATTRACTIONS
“Reindeer Romp” San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Road, Sloat at 47th Ave; 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org. Daily, 10am-5pm. Through Jan 1, 2007. Free with paid zoo admission ($4.50-11). Here’s a chance to show the little tykes what reindeer actually look like. Take a trip to Reindeer Romp Village and admire the beautiful creatures.
“San Francisco SPCA Holiday Windows Express” Macy’s, Stockton at O’Farrell; 522-3500, www.sfspca.org. During store hours. Through Dec 26. Free. The SF Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presents an adorable display of cats and dogs; all featured pets are available for adoption.
BAY AREA
Knight Ridder’s Downtown Ice Circle of Palms, S Market across from Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose; (408) 279-1775, ext 45, www.sjdowntown.com. Dec 20-24, 26-30, noon-midnight. Mon/25, 2pm-midnight. Dec 31-Jan 1: noon-10pm. $12-14. A glide around this outdoor rink is a perfect way to ring in the holidays; price includes skate rentals.
BENEFITS
“Donna Sachet’s Songs of the Season” York Hotel, Empire Plush Room, 940 Sutter, SF; www.donnasachet.com. Wed/20, 8pm. $60. Deliciously entertaining MC Donna Sachet celebrates her 14th year of “Songs of the Season,” a variety show benefiting the AIDS Emergency Fund. Performers include Sharon McNight, T.J. and Sheba!, and Connie Champagne.
CELEBRATIONS
“A Chaos Christmas Carol with Chicken John and Friends” 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission; 970-9777. Sun/24, 9pm. $7. Proclaimed by the mighty entertainer Chicken John as “either the greatest show anyone has ever seen or the worst show on earth,” this holiday game show in which everyone wins is a sure thing when it comes to hilarity. Make sure to bring a gift to insure that everyone goes home with a prize!
“Dark Sparkle Christmas” Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market; 861-5016. Sat/23, 10pm-2am. $7. If too much holiday cheer is bringing you down, you might as well revel in it, right? DJs Miz Margo and Sage spin only the finest in dark and gloomy sounds with a goth-, new wave-, and punk-themed holiday party.
“Golden Age of Hollywood’s Central Ave Holiday Show” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa; www.oldtimey.net. Sat/23, 8:30pm-1:15am. $15. Dames and gents are encouraged to slip on their finest vintage threads and dance the night away to the sweet sounds of jazz, blues, and swing. Wax nostalgic with live music by Stompy Jones and Cari Lee and the Saddle-ites, as well as performances by the Chippenbelles and the Jitterdales. MoniKaBOOM and BeBop Becca heat things up with their Miss Sultry Claus act, and DJ Jumpin’ Jeff provides the proper martini-sipping tunes. Arrive early for Hep Jen’s helpful dance lessons.
“Latkes and Vodka Chanukah Party” Medjool, 2522 Mission; 512-6279. Thurs/21, 7pm. RSVP requested. $15. Mmmm, latkes. Sponsored by the SF Jewish Community Federation LGBT Alliance and Congregation Sha-ar Zahav, this evening of festive food and drink promises to fill the room with happy tummies and holiday cheer. Be sure to arrive early: the first 100 guests receive a free goodie bag!
“Unsilent Night” Starts at Mission Dolores Park, 18th St and Dolores; (707) 869-2778. Sat/23, 7pm. Free. New York composer Phil Kline’s free, all-volunteer outdoor boom box holiday concert and public art event returns for its fourth year of enchanting San Franciscans with glorious ambient music. Participants are invited to bring a stereo to the starting point, where Kline will hand out cassettes and CDs to be played as part of a huge, mobile sound system that will parade along a mile-long route through the Mission, Noe Valley, and Castro neighborhoods.
BAY AREA
“Russian Christmas Dance Party” Avalon Nightclub, 777 Lawrence Expwy, Santa Clara; www.novoeradio.com. Sat/23, 8:30pm-2am. $20-25. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Christmas, the words “psychedelic trance” spring to mind. NovoeRadio.com, the biggest Russian radio station in the United States, hosts a party to remember, with DJs Playdoughboy and Stranger and special guests Slon from Germany and Owonlapi from Switzerland.
“Solstice Celebration” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; (510) 525-5054. Sat/23, 6:30pm drum circle and potluck, 8pm concert. Free. Ashkenaz celebrates the solstice and honors founder David Nadel with an evening of food and music. The first portion of the program is a potluck dinner and drum jam; the second is a full itinerary of live performances, including the Afro-Caribbean flavors of the Sidewinders and the rollicking Balkan rhythms of Edessa.
“Telegraph Ave Holiday Street Fair” Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk. Sat/23-Sun/24, 11am-6pm. Free. The Telegraph Business District transforms into a street party with an impressive array of live music, fine food, and unique handicrafts from area artisans.
“Winter Solstice Service and Celebration” Corte Madera Recreation Center, 498 Tamalpais Drive, Corte Madera; (415) 924-1494. Fri/22, 7-8:30pm. Free. The Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living sponsors a family-friendly evening of celebrating new beginnings and spiritual fellowship. In addition to songs and prayers to warm the heart, there will be hot and hearty soup to warm the belly on a cold, cold night.
MUSIC
“A Cathedral Christmas” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 1-866-468-3399. Fri/22, 7pm; Sat/23, 3 and 7pm. $15-50. The Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, with orchestra, sings a program of holiday favorites.
“Celtic Christmas” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; www.oldfirstconcerts.org. Fri/22, 8pm. $12-15. Boasting a lively sound featuring fiddle, Celtic harp, tin whistle, and bouzouki, three-piece Golden Bough perform traditional and original holiday songs from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” St Ignatius Church, 650 Parker; 392-4400. Sat/23, 8pm. $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sing a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Christmas Winds” St John of God Church, 1290 Fifth Ave; 488-7632. Sat/23, 7:30pm. $15-20. Carol Negro directs the Baroque Arts Ensemble in a holiday show featuring Gregorian chants, medieval carols, madrigals, spirituals, and many other forms of celebratory music.
“Contra Costa Chorale Concert” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Wed/20, noon-1pm. Free. Treat yourself to an inspiring lunch break with a program of traditional and unusual Christmas carols performed by one of the oldest community choruses in the East Bay, the Contra Costa Chorale.
“Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers Concert” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Thurs/21, noon-1pm. Free. Nothing beats breaking up your workday with an hour of festive song; the Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers lift spirits with a show of seasonal favorites.
“Golden Gate Men’s Chorus Winter Concert” St Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; www.ggmc.org. Wed/20, 8pm. $20. Musical Director Joseph Jennings guides the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus through a repertoire of holiday favorites and audience sing-alongs.
“Home for the Holidays” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro; 865-2787. Sun/24, 5, 7, and 9pm. $17-22. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus celebrates its 16th annual holiday show, with a segment of the program dedicated to heartwarming tunes from the movies. The chorus will be joined by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, directed by Stephanie Lynne Smith, for the 9pm show.
“Oakland Interfaith Gospel Ensemble” Slim’s, 333 11th St; www.slims-sf.com. Sun/24, 7 and 9:30pm. $15. Raise your spirits with a family-oriented holiday show bringing messages of peace, love, and joy. The soaring harmonies of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Ensemble will provide inspiration lasting well into the New Year.
“12 Bands of Christmas” 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission; 970-9777. Fri/22-Sat/23, 9pm. $8 one-night ticket, $12 two-night ticket. All caroled out? For a more amped-up Christmas concert, 12 Galaxies offers an eclectic roster including Ryan Auffenberg, Joel Streeter, and the Bittersweets.
BAY AREA
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. Dec 23, 28-30, 8pm. $10 suggested donation. Members of the Masquers Playhouse and the Joyful Noise Choir of the First United Methodist Church of Point Richmond deliver a heartwarming rendition of the Gian Carlo Menotti winter favorite.
“Brian Setzer Orchestra Christmas Extravaganza” Fox Theatre, 2215 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) FOX-4119.Thurs/21, 7:30pm; Fri/22, 8pm. $60-85. Swing-lovin’ rockabilly king Brian Setzer returns with his 18-piece big band for an evening of toe-tapping, poodle-skirt-twirling holiday fun.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berk; 1-800-407-1400. Thurs/21, 8pm. $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sing a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Expect a Miracle Holiday Benefit Concert” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; (510) 525-5054. Thurs/21, 9pm. $10-20, sliding scale. Reggae performances by Ras Kidus, Undah P, Hurricane, and Mcguyva heat things up this holiday season in an evening of spiritually uplifting music. Proceeds benefit the Urban Community Action Network and Roots Connection Reggae University Project.
“From the Darkness, Solace” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 228-3207. Thurs/21, 7pm. $10-20. In honor of the darkest day of the year, more than 35 solo artists perform original music in this winter solstice celebration.
“In Harmony’s Way” Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, 1111 Addison, Berk; (510) 548-1761. Fri/22, 8pm. $18.50. Renowned Irish singer Shay Black MCs a program of traditional carols, sea chanteys, folk ballads, and much more. Performers include Riggy Rackin, Pam Swan, and members of a cappella ensemble Oak, Ash, and Thorn.
NUTCRACKERS AND CRACKED NUTS
“Ronn Guidi’s Nutcracker Ballet” Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl; (510) 625-8497. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, 11am. $15-50. Watch the Sugar Plum Fairy and her handsome Cavalier dance along with the rest of the charming characters of the Kingdom of Delights. Members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony provide the whimsical musical accompaniment.
THEATER, COMEDY, AND PERFORMANCE
“Beach Blanket Babylon’s Seasonal Extravaganza” Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St); 421-4222. Wed/20-Thurs/21, 8pm (also Wed/20, 5pm); Fri/22-Sat/23, 7 and 10pm; Sun/24, 2 and 5pm. Through Dec 31. $25-77. Sure, the label gets used a lot, but Steve Silver’s musical comedy is really and truly an extravaganza, with topical humor, dancing Christmas trees, outrageous costumes, and the biggest Christmas hat you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Black X Mass” Elbo Room, 647 Valencia; 552-7788, www.elbo.com. Mon/25, 9pm. $6.66 (of course). High Priestess Karla LaVey of the First Satanic Church hosts a variety show focusing on the darker side of things. Performers include Mongoloid, Graves Brothers Deluxe, Sergio Iglesias, Meathole Bitches, Wealthy Whore Entertainment, Theremin Wizard Barney, Tallulah Bankheist, and Ginger the Stripper. See pick box.
“Bud E. Luv Xmas Show” Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk; 921-1695. Mon/25, 8pm. $12. San Francisco’s smoothest operator, lounge lizard extraordinaire Bud E. Luv, throws a Christmas bash you aren’t likely to forget for a long, long time. Brace yourself: his disco and ’80s medleys contain artery-clogging amounts of cheese.
“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sun/24, noon. Free with regular admission. The museum hosts a screening of the 1963 classic written and narrated by Dylan Thomas. Also showing will be the animated film The Sweater, a tale of boyhood in rural Quebec in the 1940s.
“Christmas Ballet” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, theater bldg, 700 Howard; 978-2787. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm (also Thurs/21, Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, Tues/26, Dec 28, 2pm; Dec 27, 7pm. $45-55. The Smuin Ballet offers a mix of ballet, tap, swing, and many other dance styles in a holiday performance set to music by everyone from Placido Domingo to Eartha Kitt.
“A Christmas Carol” American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Wed/20-Sat/23, 7pm (also Wed/20, Fri/22-Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, noon. $13.50-81.50. The American Conservatory Theater presents Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh’s adaptation of the Charles Dickens holiday story, featuring sets by Tony Award-winning designer John Arnone, original songs by Karl Lundeberg, costumes by Beaver Bauer, and choreography by Val Caniparoli.
“The Da Vinci Files” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St; 206-0577. Thurs/21, 6pm. Free. Mystery-exploring Spanish-language network Infinito hosts a celebration dedicated to the San Francisco Latino community with a free screening of its new documentary, The Da Vinci Files, which covers the myths and mysteries surrounding the master painter. Infinito will be giving away prizes at this screening.
“Holiday Animation Film Festival” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Dec 26-30, noon, 1 and 2pm. Free with regular admission. The Exploratorium’s McBean Theater screens a series of quirky animated shorts and minidocumentaries certain to stimulate the mind as well as tickle the funny bone.
“It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life” Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 820-1400. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 3pm. $20-25. Fred Raker’s laugh-filled retelling of the Christmas classic delivers a distinctly Jewish spin on the Frank Capra story.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287. Thurs/21, 8pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 2pm. $10-30. Joe Landry’s adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic holiday film, directed by Kenneth Vandenberg, is performed in the style of live radio broadcasts from the ’40s.
“Kung Pao Kosher Comedy” New Asia Restaurant, 772 Pacific; www.koshercomedy.com. Fri/22-Sun/24, 6pm dinner show, 9:30pm cocktail show; Mon/25, 5pm dinner show, 8:30pm cocktail show. $40 cocktail show, $60 seven-course dinner show. Celebrating Christmas with Jewish comedy in a Chinese restaurant, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy throws its 14th annual bash with hilarity from Cathy Ladman, Stephanie Blum, and Dan Ahdoot. Kung Pao mastermind Lisa Geduldig hosts the show.
“Oy Vey in a Manger” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400. Sat/23, 8pm. $25-35. “America’s favorite dragapella beautyshop quartet” the Kinsey Sicks leave no taboo untouched with their over-the-top drag, fierce comedy, and truly twisted renditions of holiday classics, including the perennial fave “God Bless Ye Femmy Lesbians.”
“A Queer Carol” New Conservatory Theatre, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Dec 31, 2 pm. Through Dec 31. $22-40. The New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Joe Godfrey’s comedy A Queer Carol, a retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic tale with gay themes and characters.
“Santaland Diaries” Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; 1-866-811-4111, www.theatermania.com. Dec 22-23, 27-31, 8 (also Fri-Sat, 10pm; Dec 31, 10:30pm); Sun/24-Mon/25, 7pm (also Sun/24, 3pm). Through Dec 31. $20-30. Steinbeck Presents and Combined Art Form Entertainment bring shrieks of glee with their adaptation of David Sedaris’s hilarious play featuring the comic genius of actors John Michael Beck and David Sinaiko.
“Trimming the Holidays: The Second Annual Shorts Project” Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 503-0437, www.lveproductions.com. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $17-20. La Vache Enragee Productions presents a holiday-themed evening of short plays and silent films accompanied by music composed by Christine McClintock.
“A Very Brechty Christmas” Custom Stage at Off-Market, 965 Mission; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-35. The Custom Made Theatre Co., under the direction of Lewis Campbell and Brian Katz, brings two short socially conscious plays to the stage for a bit of holiday season perspective: Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule and Daniel Gerould’s Candaules, Commissioner.
BAY AREA
“Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show XIV” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Tues/26, 8pm. $15-17. Political satirist Will Durst is joined by a cast of barbed-tongued comics in an evening of comedy addressing the major news stories of the year.
“A Christmas Carol” Sonoma County Repertory Theater, 104 North Main, Sebastopol; (707) 823-0177. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-20; Thurs, pay what you can. Artistic director Scott Phillips leads the Sonoma Country Repertory in an inventive rendition of the Charles Dickens tale.
“A Christmas Carol: A Solo Performance” Marin Art and Garden Center, Barn Theatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Ross; (415) 226-1316. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 1pm); Sun/24, 1pm. $10-25. Talk about juggling many balls at once! Ron Severdia portrays more than 40 different characters in his ambitious solo-show adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.
“Christmas Dreamland” Heritage Theatre, One W Campbell, Campbell; 1-888-455-7469. Wed/20-Thurs/21, 2 and 7pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, 1pm. $48-73. Artistic director Tim Bair leads the American Musical Theatre of San Jose in the world premiere of its multimedia holiday showcase.
“A Christmas Memory” Berkeley South Branch Library, 1901 Russell, Berk; (510) 981-6107. Wed/20, 4:30pm. Free. Actor Thomas Lynch performs a 40-minute abridged reading of Truman Capote’s holiday favorite, A Christmas Memory. Refreshments will be served after the performance.
“Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Wed/20-Sun/24, 1 and 3pm (also Thurs/21, 9pm). $8-15. The Clown Conservatory of the SF Circus Center brings holiday cheer with a comedy stage show filled with acrobatics, juggling, dance, live music, and yes, clown high jinks.
“Freight Holiday Revue and Fundraiser” Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, 1111 Addison, Berk; (510) 548-1761. Thurs/21, 8pm. $17.50. The nonprofit community arts organization Freight and Salvage hosts an evening of music, food, and Charles Dickens readings. Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum perform blazing bluegrass numbers, Cascada de Flores explore Mexican and Cuban musical traditions, and famed Dickens actor Martin Harris reads passages from the timeless classic A Christmas Carol.
“Keep the Yuletide Gay” Dragon Theater, 535 Alma, Palo Alto; (415) 439-2456, www.theatrereq.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 30. $10-25. Theatre Q presents this world premiere of its irreverent comedy about a Christmas Eve dinner party that devolves into chaos when one of the guests hires a mystic to try to make their gay friend straight for the hostess.
“A Little Cole in Your Stocking” Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 30. $25. Bay Area husband-and-wife cabaret duo Meg Mackay and Billy Philadelphia weave Cole Porter tunes and swinging holiday ditties into a mischievous, irreverent show.
TREE LIGHTINGS AND FAMILY EVENTS
“Bill Graham Menorah” Union Square; 753-0910. Sixth candle lighting: Wed/20, 5pm. Seventh: Thurs/21, 5pm. Final: Fri/22, 3pm. Observe the Festival of Lights by visiting the impressively large public menorah in Union Square.
“Boudin at the Wharf’s Old-Fashioned North Pole” Boudin at the Wharf, 160 Jefferson; 928-1849. Sat/23, 10am-5pm. Carolers, refreshments, and special visits from Santa mean family fun as Pier 43 1/2 is transformed into a wintry wonderland.
“Children’s Tea” Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, One Nob Hill; 616-6916. Sat-Sun, noon-3pm. Through Dec 30. $39. The legendary Top of the Mark sky lounge hosts a holiday-themed afternoon tea for families. In addition to some fine views of the city, guests will be treated to a magic show.
“Young and Young at Heart Open House” Wells Fargo Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Wed/20, 11am-2pm. Free. This family event will feature stagecoach rides, trivia treasure hunts, and many other activities with a holiday theme.
BAY AREA
“Gingerbread House Party” Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk; www.habitot.org. Wed/20, 9:30am-1pm. Free. Take your little ones, along with a bag of candy, to the museum for a chance to decorate a giant gingerbread house. Once completed, the mouthwatering creation will be donated to a local family shelter for the children to enjoy.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
Creativity Explored’s Holiday Art Sale 3245 16th St; 863-2108, www.creativityexplored.org. Regular hours: Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm; Sat, 1-6pm. Through Dec 28. Free. The nonprofit visual arts center offers works created by artists with developmental, psychiatric, and physical disabilities.
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 1-800-510-1558. Sat/23, 11am-7pm. $8-20. For a slower-paced shopping experience, this winter wonderland offers a range of theater and entertainment, costumed Victorian-era characters, sumptuous feasts, and gift ideas aplenty.
“Peace, Love, Joy, ART” ARTworkSF, main gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080. Gallery hours: Tues-Sat, noon-5:30pm. Through Dec 30. Browse locally made handiworks for holiday gift ideas.
“Public Glass Artist Showcase” Crocker Galleria, 50 Post; 671-4916. Wed/20-Fri/22, 10am-7pm. Free. More than 15 local glass artists will exhibit their work, offering many one-of-a-kind gifts. Public Glass is the city’s only nonprofit center for glassworking, and this will be its sole downtown event of the year.
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Potters Guild Gallery Show and Holiday Sale” 731 Jones, Berk; (510) 524-7031. Wed/20-Sun/24, 10am-5pm. Free. Browse through the wares of the oldest and largest clay collaborative group on the West Coast.
“EclectiXmas Art Show and Sale” Eclectix Store and Gallery, 7523 Fairmount, El Cerrito; (510) 364-7261. Wed/20, noon-6pm; Thurs/21, 11am-7pm; Fri/22, 10am-7pm; Sat/23, 10am-6pm; Sun/24, 10am-2pm. Free. Nothing says “I love you” like a sculpture or painting or photograph. Browse the gallery’s group show for imaginative gifts.
“Pro Arts Holiday Sale” 550 Second St, Oakl; (510) 763-4361. Wed/20-Thurs/21, noon-6pm. Free. This nonprofit organization supporting Bay Area artists offers jewelry, glassware, ceramics, and other potential gifts.<\!s>SFBG

They rule — and drool

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
REVIEW It may sound like a toast at a wedding reception, but in order to have some measure of success in a collaborative project, there has to be an agreement between the parties involving respect, patience, and a dose of humor. The opposite would be when a couple filing for divorce cites “irreconcilable differences.” For the collaborative art team leonardogillesfleur (Leonardo Giacomuzzo and Gilles-fleur Boutry), this phrase is also the clever title of their recent body of work currently on exhibit at Catharine Clark Gallery. The title plays on the struggle to create collaboratively and points to the sometimes fruitless results in pushing idealistic — or just plain romantic — notions. Paired with this work is “Action Series,” a grouping of videotaped performances that touch on a similar vein.
The team graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 with MFAs from the New Genres Department. And it shows. Upon entering the gallery, you are confronted with a candy-apple red contraption: a push-me-pull-you Fiat, a car with two front ends seamlessly melded together to create a vehicle that can drive in two directions. It has two steering wheels, two front windows, no back seat, and a propensity for going in circles. The car isn’t real, but the photos and schematic layouts are convincing enough. On close investigation, you can see that the car is actually an altered toy and leonardogillesfleur altered its photograph. This is something children would happily invent with crayons.
The pair have also included a recording of their own childlike car sounds, which emits vrrrroommms from a corner in the gallery, near the large-scale photo of the car, One Way or Another Puzzle. The vehicle sits waiting, parked on cobblestones, with the pair walking toward it, dressed in matching exercise gear — ready for action. But the action they get, as shown in one photo of the car after it’s made donuts (“Going in Circles”), is likely to prove frustrating. A real object the team made prior to this two-way Fiat is a bicycle with two handlebars and two seats. Unlike on a tandem cycle, a third wheel in the center has the riders facing away from each other and forever pedaling hard to try and go their direction instead of their partner’s. These objects are visual puns and teeter on the edge of dadaism but fall more directly in the realm of conceptualism, the kind taught at a clown college — smart but also smart-ass.
In the next room video monitors on the walls and a large projection in a small theater loop the staged photolike performances of “Action Series.” Leonardogillesfleur are playing with the idea of holding a moment, markedly a special occasion, for as long as they can. Akin to a freeze-frame kiss at the end of a sappy movie, Myself as a Fountain highlights the team seconds before they go into a passionate lip-lock. They stand outside in some city park, amid the sound of cars and dogs barking — with heavy strings of drool pouring from their mouths. In all these videos — including one with the painfully cold setting of a blizzard, in which the couple hold a waving-at-the-camera pose — the title includes the length of time the subjects endured these attempts to hold on to the moment. In the loop in which a birthday cake’s candles melt down while awaiting a puff of air from Boutry’s mouth, friends wobble and work to hold their poses in the background. The time reads “8:42.” Family and friends actually suffered it out as we do when enduring each other’s company for too long. In these video pieces leonardogillesfleur capture the clear sense of futility in preserving a moment that didn’t happen the way it was imagined. The duo are fortunate in their pairing: they have figured out how to mix their multimedia works with just enough humor to hold viewers’ attention, yet leaving them open to the works’ harder messages.<\!s>SFBG

LEONARDOGILLESFLEUR 2006
Through Fri/22
Wed.–<\d>Fri., 10:30 a.m.–<\d>5:30 p.m.
Catharine Clark Gallery
49 Geary, second floor, SF
(415) 399-1439
www.cclarkgallery.com

Holiday Listings

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Holiday listings are compiled by Todd Lavoie. Listings for Wed/13-Tues/19 are below; check back each week for updated events. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings.
ATTRACTIONS
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Victorian Holiday Party” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 897-4555, www.dickensfair.com. Sat-Sun, 11am-7pm. Through Dec. 23. $8-20. Step into a day in the life of Victorian London at this annual fair featuring costumed characters from literature and history, street vendors, games, and adult-only “after dark” festivities.
Ice Sculpting Union between Gough and Steiner; 1-800-310-6563. Sat/16, noon-4pm. Jaws will drop in wonder as nationally acclaimed ice sculptors work their magic for public display.
“Reindeer Romp” San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Rd, Sloat at 47th Ave; 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org. Daily, 10am-5pm. Through Jan 1, 2007. Free with paid zoo admission ($4.50-11). Here’s a chance to show the little tykes what reindeer actually look like. Take a trip to Reindeer Romp Village and admire the beautiful creatures.
San Francisco SPCA Holiday Windows Express Macy’s, Stockton at O’Farrell; 522-3500, www.sfspca.org. During store hours. Through Dec 26. Free. The SF Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presents an adorable display of cats and dogs; all featured pets are available for adoption.
BAY AREA
“Holidays at Dunsmuir” Dunsmuir Historic Estate, 2960 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakl; (925) 275-9490, www.dunsmuir.org. Sat-Sun, 11am-5pm. $7-11. Through Sun/17. The mansion presents self-guided tours of its historic grounds, holiday teas, horse-drawn carriage rides, and more.
Knight Ridder’s Downtown Ice Circle of Palms, S Market across from Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose; (408) 279-1775, ext 45, www.sjdowntown.com. Through Sat/16, Jan 2-14: Mon-Thurs, 5-10pm; Fri, 5pm-midnight; Sat, noon-midnight; Sun, noon-10pm. Dec 17-24, 26-30: noon-midnight. Dec 25: 2pm-midnight. Dec 31-Jan 1: noon-10pm. $12-14. A glide around this outdoor rink is a perfect way to ring in the holidays; price includes skate rentals.
BENEFITS
BAY AREA
“Holiday Sweater Good Vibe Drive” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; www.falcorandfriends.com. Sun/17, 9pm, $15. Throw on your most Cosby-licious sweater and head down to Ashkenaz for an evening of socially conscious entertainment by the Everyone Orchestra and Magicgravy. Falcor and Friends, in conjunction with Conscious Alliance, encourage attendees to not only sport their cheesiest in knitwear finery but also to bring a new, unwrapped toy or gift to help those in need in the Bay Area.
CELEBRATIONS
“Ask a Scientist Holiday Trivia Contest Party” Bazaar Café, 5927 California; 831-5620. Tues/19, 7pm, free. Looking to flex your trivia muscles a bit? The Exploratorium’s Robin Marks hosts an evening of holiday-themed noggin-scratching and chest-puffing with a science quiz show. Bring your own team or form one with other people who show up; winners receive drinks, prizes, and Nobel Prizes. OK, I made the last part up …
“Bill Graham Menorah Day” Union Square; 753-0910. Sun/17, 2-5pm, free. Honor the Bay Area legend and celebrate the Festival of Lights with music by hip-hop artists Chutzpah and rocker Rebbe Soul. A ceremony follows the performances, culminating in the lighting of the third candle of the Bill Graham public menorah at 5pm.
“DJ Abel’s Black XXXMas” Factory, 525 Harrison; www.industrysf.com. Sat/16, 10pm-6am, $30. Industry and Gus Presents join forces to deliver one of the biggest holiday bashes in the city. Alegria superstar DJ Abel pumps bootylicious beats for revelers wishing to work off all of those Christmas candy calories.
“Good Vibrations Goodie Shoppe Ball” Club NV, 525 Howard; www.goodvibes.com. Thurs/14, 8pm-2am. $20-25. Good Vibrations will satisfy your more carnal Christmas wishes with an evening of sensual revelry hosted by Dr. Carol Queen and blues temptress Candye Kane, who will also perform. Jack Davis brings his inspired designs to the runway with his Lick your Lips line, and Miss Kitty Carolina raises temperatures with a festively feisty burlesque show. Candy-themed attire is encouraged.
“Old English Christmas Feast and Revels” Mark Hopkins International Hotel, One Nob Hill; 431-1137. Sun/17, 4pm, $80-130. Reservations required. A five-course dinner fit for royalty and a performance by the Golden Gate Boys Choir are certain to make for a memorable holiday celebration.
BAY AREA
“Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair” Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk. Sat/16-Sun/17, 11am-6pm. Also Dec 23-24. Free. The Telegraph business district transforms into a street party with an impressive array of live music, fine food, and unique handicrafts from area artisans.
MUSIC
“A Cathedral Christmas” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 1-866-468-3399. Fri, 7pm; Sat-Sun, 3pm. $15-50. Through Dec 22. The Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, with orchestra, sings a program of holiday favorites.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” St. Ignatius Church, 650 Parker; 392-4400. Sat/16, 8pm, $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sings a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Alien For Christmas Party” Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St; 546-6300. Sun/17, 9pm, $6. Be sure to dress up in your favorite alien attire for an evening of wacky fun. Groovy Judy and special guests Third Date and Mobius Donut will bring the funk-rock your holiday season so desperately needs.
“Ariela Morgenstern’s Classical Cabaret” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. Fri/15, 8pm, $12-15. Need some Kurt Weill and Marlene Dietrich to get you in a jolly mood? Ariela Morgenstern, accompanied by two other vocalists, a pianist, and an accordion player, performs cabaret and musical theater favorites from the Weimar Republic right up to today’s showstoppers.
“Candlelight Christmas” Most Holy Redeemer Church, 100 Diamond; 863-6259. Fri/15-Sat/16, 8pm, $10-15. San Francisco State’s four choral ensembles from the School of Music and Dance present an eclectic program in a candlelit setting. Works performed range from Renaissance motets to gospel favorites.
“Festival of Carols” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; 1-888-RAG-AZZI. Sun/17, 4pm, $10-25. The Ragazzi Boys Chorus performs a medley of carols arranged by Allen and Julie Simon, with accompaniment by a chamber orchestra and guest organist Susan Jane Matthews.
“Frankye Kelly and Her Quartet” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-4165. Mon/18, noon-1pm, free. Treat yourself to a relaxing lunch hour with a Christmas-themed performance by Bay Area jazz-blues vocalist Frankye Kelly.
“Golden Gate Men’s Chorus Winter Concert” St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; www.ggmc.org. Thurs/14, 8pm; Sun/17, 2 and 7:30pm. Also Dec 20, 8pm. $20. Musical director Joseph Jennings guides the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus through a repertoire of holiday favorites and audience sing-alongs.
“Handel’s Messiah” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 749-6350. Mon/18-Tues/19, 7:30pm, $20-55. The American Bach Soloists’ version of this classic work is sure to impress, especially when performed in such gorgeous surroundings.
“Hardcore Hanukkah Tour” Balazo Gallery, 2183 Mission; www.hanukkahtour.com. Fri/15, 8pm. $7. Mosh your way into the Festival of Lights with performances by Australian punks Yidcore, New Orleans klezmer-zydeco upstarts the Zydepunks, East Bay rockers Jewdriver, and many others. Clips from the Israeli punk documentary Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in The Holy Land will also be shown.
“House of Voodoo Deathmas Ball” Club Hide, 280 Seventh St; www.houseofvoodoo.com. Fri/15, 9pm, $5. If you’ve had your fill of jolly elves, creep into your darkest, deathliest goth-industrial clubwear and brood away to the sounds of DJs Hellbrithers, Geiger, and Caligari. Get your nibbles with Mizzuz Voodoo’s famously ill-willed cookies and be sure to bring something suitably gothic (and wrapped with black ribbon, perhaps) for the gift exchange.
“Martuni’s Holiday Extravaganza” Martuni’s, Four Valencia; www.kielbasia.com. Sun/17, 6pm, free. Camp it up this holiday season with an evening of martini-fuelled debauchery. Scheduled performers include Bijou, Cookie after Dark, Katya, and Kielbasia — “San Francisco’s Favorite Accordion-Playing Lunch Lady.”
“Renaissance Christmas” St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, 2390 Bush; 567-7824. Tues/19, 7:30pm, $10-20. The St. Dominic’s Solemn Mass Choir and Festival Orchestra, directed by Simon Berry, raise spirits with an inspiring program of music, including work by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Sing-along carols will round out the evening.
San Francisco City Chorus Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-4165. Tues/19, noon-1pm, free. A venerable musical institution in the city since 1979, the San Francisco City Chorus performs a program of holiday favorites.
“Season of Sound Performances” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/16-Sun/17, noon-3pm. Free with admission. The Exploratorium hosts two afternoons of eclectic holiday entertainment, with programs including the Golden Gate Boys Choir, opera singers Kathleen Moss and Will Hart, hand bell group Ringmasters of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Eastern European folksingers Born to Drone.
“Snowfall: An Evening of Holiday Carols” Mission Dolores Basilica, 3321 16th St; 840-0675. Sat/16, 8pm. $15-20. The San Francisco Concert Chorale, accompanied by harpist Dan Levitan, evoke snow-covered landscapes with relaxing English Christmas carols.
“This Shining Night” St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; 863-6371. Tues/19, 8pm, $15. Local men’s a cappella ensemble Musaic, led by artistic director Justin Montigne, bring tidings of comfort and joy with a program of Christmas carols and holiday songs.
“’Tis the Season Holiday Concert” St. Gregory of Nyssa, 500 De Haro; www.cantabile.org. Wed/13, 8pm, $20-25. Join the Cantibale Chorale, artistic director Sanford Dole, and pianist T. Paul Rosas in a unique holiday celebration. Poems by Robert Graves and e.e. cummings are transformed into Christmas songs, and the Chorale reinterprets Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite as a song cycle.
“What I Want for Christmas” Jazz at Pearl’s, 256 Columbus; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs/14, 8 and 10pm, $15. Jazz vocalist Russ Lorenson celebrates the release of his new holiday CD, What I Want for Christmas, with a romantic candlelit performance accompanied by the Kelly Park Jazz Quintet. Among the holiday chestnuts will be swinging Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer numbers.
“Wintersongs” Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez; (510) 444-0323. Fri/15, 8:15pm. $25. KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble explores Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions with a concert of carols, pre-Christian incantations, and Hebrew folk songs.
BAY AREA
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” St. Hilary Catholic Church, 761 Hilary Drive, Tiburon; (415) 485-9460. Sat/16, 4pm. Donations accepted. Paul Smith directs Contemporary Opera Marin in its adaptation of the Menotti classic.
“Bella Sorella Holiday Show” Little Fox Theater, 2219 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) FOX-4119. Sun/17, 7pm. $16. Renowned soprano ensemble Bella Sorella will enchant audiences with songs from its new album, Popera, as well as a series of holiday favorites.
“Celtic Christmas” Sanchez Concert Hall, 1220 Linda Mar Blvd, Pacifica; (650) 355-1882. Sun/17, 3pm. $12-20. Old World holiday cheer will be had by all as Golden Bough perform Celtic carols and winter favorites, as well as its own original compositions.
“Christmas Revels” Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Dr, Oakl; (510) 452-3800. Fri/15, 7:30pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 1 and 5pm. $15-42. Get a taste of Christmas in Quebec as the musical dance troupe California Revels pay tribute to French Canadian traditions.
“Harmonies of the Season” St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito, Oakl; (510) 652-4722. Sat/16, 7pm. $15-20. The Pacific Boychoir Academy sings a program featuring Rutter’s Gloria with brass ensemble as well as an a cappella performance of Francis Poulenc’s Four Motets for Christmas.
“Hardcore Hanukkah Tour” 924 Gilman, Berk; www.hanukkahtour.com. Sat/16, 8pm, $7. Mosh your way into the Festival of Lights with performances by Australian punks Yidcore, New Orleans klezmer-zydeco upstarts the Zydepunks, East Bay rockers Jewdriver, and many others. Clips from the Israeli punk documentary Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in The Holy Land will also be shown.
Klezmatics 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley; (415) 383-9600. Sat/16, 8pm. $35-45. What better way to celebrate Hanukkah than tapping your feet to the joyful sounds of klezmer? The legendary Klezmatics pay tribute to the Jewish songs of Woody Guthrie with a program of wildly imaginative adaptations of his lyrics.
“Seaside Singers and Friends” Sanchez Concert Hall, 1220 Linda Mar Blvd, Pacifica; (650) 355-1882. Sat/16, 7:30pm. $5-8. Ellis French directs the Seaside Singers in a performance of the Britten favorite Ceremony of Carols. The program also includes the Ocean Shore School Chorus and the Friday Mornings Ensemble.
“’Tis the Season Holiday Concert” St. John’s Presybterian Church, 2727 College, Berk; www.cantibale.org. Sun/17, 7:30pm. $20-25. Join the Cantibale Chorale, artistic director Sanford Dole, and pianist T. Paul Rosas in a unique holiday celebration. Poems by Robert Graves and e.e. cummings are transformed into Christmas songs, and the Chorale reinterprets Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite as a song cycle.
“Wintersongs” First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St, Oakl; (510) 444-0323. Sun/17, 7pm. $20-25. KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble explores Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions with a concert of carols, pre-Christian incantations, and Hebrew folk songs.
NUTCRACKERS AND CRACKED NUTS
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Ballet Theatre Presents: The Nutcracker” Julia Morgan Center For the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Fri/15, 7pm; Sat/16, 2 and 7pm; Sun/17, 2pm. The Berkeley Ballet Theatre performs the holiday classic, with choreography by Sally Streets and Robert Nichols.
THEATER, COMEDY, AND PERFORMANCE
“Beach Blanket Babylon’s Seasonal Extravaganza” Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St); 421-4222. Wed/13, 5 and 8pm; Thurs/14, 8pm; Fri/15-Sat/16, 7 and 10pm; Sun/17, 2 and 5pm. Through Dec 31. $25-77. Sure, the label gets used a lot, but Steve Silver’s musical comedy is really and truly an extravaganza, with topical humor, dancing Christmas trees, outrageous costumes, and the biggest Christmas hat you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Big All-Sunday Player Holiday Musical” Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Buchanan at Marina; 474-6776. Sun/17, 7pm. $8. The fast-on-their-feet folks at BATS Improv end their year with a completely improvised comedy musical.
“Christmas Ballet” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Building, 700 Howard; 978-2787. Opens Fri/15. Fri/15-Sat/16, Tues/19, 8pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm; Sun/17, 7pm. $45-55. The Smuin Ballet offers a mix of ballet, tap, swing, and many other dance styles in a holiday performance set to music by everyone from Placido Domingo to Eartha Kitt.
“A Christmas Carol” American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Wed/13, 2pm; Thurs/14, 2 and 7pm; Fri/15, 7pm; Sat/16, 2 and 7pm; Tues/19, 7pm. Also Dec 20-23, 7pm; Dec 20, 22-23, 2pm; Dec 24, noon. Through Dec 24. $13.50-81.50. The American Conservatory Theater presents Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh’s adaptation of the Dickens holiday story, featuring sets by Tony Award–winning designer John Arnone, original songs by Karl Lundeberg, costumes by Beaver Bauer, and choreography by Val Caniparolo.
“Classical Christmas Special” Florence Gould Theater, Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park; 392-4400. Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm. $35-40. For holiday family fun with a classical music theme, this variety show is sure to be a hit. Enjoy performances by San Francisco Opera singers Kristin Clayton and Bojan Knezevic and 10-year-old cellist Clark Pang; watch a ballet set to the music of Robert Schumann; and listen to a telling of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” accompanied by the music of Scott Joplin.
“Holiday Cabaret” Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida; 252-9000. Fri/15-Sat/16, 7pm dance lessons, 8pm showtime. $25-30. Director Heather Morch leads a cast of more than 50 student and professional dancers in this showcase from the Metronome Dance Center. The program includes everything from tango to Lindy Hop and salsa; arrive early for dance lessons.
“I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas” Off-Market Theatre, 965 Mission; (510) 684-8813. Fri-Sat, 10pm. Through Sat/16. $15. Submergency! presents an evening of holiday-themed improv comedy with its multimedia squirtgun-toting laugh fest.
“It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life” Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 820-1400. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Dec 24. $20-25. Fred Raker’s laugh-filled retelling of the Christmas classic delivers a distinctly Jewish spin on the Frank Capra story.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287. Thurs/14, 8pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 23. $10-30. Joe Landry’s adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic holiday film, directed by Kenneth Vandenberg, is performed in the style of live radio broadcasts from the ’40s.
“A Queer Carol” New Conservatory Theatre, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. Wed/13-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 31. $22-40. The New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Joe Godfrey’s comedy A Queer Carol, a retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic tale, but with gay themes and characters.
“Santaland Diaries” Off-Market Theatre, 965 Mission; 1-866-811-4111, www.theatermania.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 31. $20-30. Steinbeck Presents and Combined Art Form Entertainment bring shrieks of glee with their adaptation of David Sedaris’s hilarious play, featuring the comic genius of actors John Michael Beck and David Sinaiko.
“Trimming the Holidays: The Second Annual Shorts Project” Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 503-0437, www.lveproductions.com. Runs Fri-Sun, 8pm; Mon/18, 8pm. Through Dec 23. $17-20. La Vache Enragee Productions presents a holiday-themed evening of short plays and silent films accompanied by music composed by Christine McClintock.
“A Very Brechty Christmas” Custom Stage at Off-Market, 965 Mission; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 23. $15-35. The Custom Made Theatre Company, under the direction of Lewis Campbell and Brian Katz, brings two short, socially conscious plays to the stage for a bit of holiday season perspective: Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule and Daniel Gerould’s Candaules, Commissioner.
BAY AREA
“Bad Santa: The Director’s Cut” Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; www.cafilm.org. Sat/16, 7:30pm. $9.50. Bay Area filmmaker Terry Zwigoff introduces the original director’s cut of his wonderfully snarky holiday feature and answers questions posed by San Francisco film programmer Anita Monga.
“A Christmas Carol” Sonoma County Repertory Theater, 104 North Main St, Sebastopol; (707) 823-0177. Thurs/14-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 23. $15-20; Thurs, pay what you can. Artistic director Scott Phillips leads the Sonoma Country Repertory in an inventive rendition of the Charles Dickens tale.
“Christmas Dreamland” Heritage Theatre, 1 West Campbell Ave, Campbell; 1-888-455-7469. Wed/13, 7pm; Thurs/14, 2 and 7pm; Fri/15, 8pm; Sat/16, 2 and 8pm; Sun/17, 1 and 6:30pm; Tues/19, 7pm. Through Dec 24. $48-73. Artistic director Tim Bair leads the American Musical Theatre of San Jose in the world premiere of its multimedia holiday showcase.
“Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Through Dec 24, 1 and 3pm; Dec 21, 9pm. $8-15. The Clown Conservatory of the SF Circus Center brings holiday cheer with a comedy stage show filled with acrobatics, juggling, dance, live music, and yes, clown high jinks.
“Keep the Yuletide Gay” Dragon Theater, 535 Alma, Palo Alto; (415) 439-2456, www.theatrereq.org. Thurs/14-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 30. $10-25. Theatre Q presents this world premiere of its irreverent comedy about a Christmas Eve dinner party that devolves into chaos when one of the guests hires a mystic to try to make their gay friend straight for the hostess.
“Navidad Flamenca” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, ext 20. Sat/16, 8pm. $20. Bring some fiery holiday passion into your holiday season with an evening of flamenco magic. Performers include special guest vocalist Vicente Griego and dancers Carola Zertuche, Cristina Hall, Fanny Ara, and Flamenco Kalore.
TREE LIGHTINGS AND FAMILY EVENTS
Bill Graham Menorah Union Square; 753-0910. First candlelighting: Fri/15, 3pm. Second candle: Sat/16, 7pm. Succeeding candles: Sun/17-Tues/19, 5pm. Also Dec 20-21, 5pm. Final candle lighting Dec 22, 3pm. Observe the Festival of Lights by visiting the impressively large public menorah in Union Square.
“Boudin at the Wharf’s Old-Fashioned North Pole” Boudin at the Wharf, 160 Jefferson; 928-1849. Sat, 10am-5pm; Sun, noon-4pm. Through Dec 23. Carolers, refreshments, and special visits from Santa mean family fun as Pier 43 is transformed into a wintry wonderland.
“Breakfast With Santa” Aquarium of the Bay, Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach; 623-5300. Sat/16-Sun/17, 9-11am. $20-35. Bring the kids down to the aquarium to watch Santa arrive by boat. Afterward, they can enjoy breakfast, games, craft-making, and a chance to meet Santa.
“Children’s Tea” Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, One Nob Hill; 616-6916. Sat-Sun, noon-3pm. Through Dec 30. $39. The legendary Top of the Mark sky lounge hosts a holiday-themed afternoon tea for families. In addition to some fine views of the city, guests will be treated to a magic show.
BAY AREA
“Fairyland Tree Lighting Ceremony” Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue, Oakl; (510) 452-2259. Fri/15, 6:45pm. Free with admission. Enjoy holiday nibbles and cocoa as the lights go aglow in Fairy Winterland.
“Menorah Lighting Ceremony” Bay Street Plaza, Powell at Shellmound, Emeryville; www.baystreetemeryville.com. Sun/17, 4:30pm. Chabad of the East Bay hosts the lighting of a 10-foot-tall menorah, officiated by Rabbi Yehuda Ferris. Families will be treated to traditional sufganiyot (jelly-filled donuts),a Hanukkah sing-along, and performances by Buki the Clown.
“Miracles at the Chimes” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 654-0123. Sat/16-Sun/17, 10am-5pm. Free. Admire the 15-and-a-half-foot noble fir tree, drink hot cocoa, and enjoy fine musical performances. Santa will visit occasionally; check ahead for dates.
“Night of Remembrance” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 654-0123. Wed/13, 7pm. Free. Honor loved ones who have passed and celebrate their lives. Participants can create a memory ornament to hang on the Chapel’s Remembrance Tree. Music by the Bay Bell Ensemble, Catherine J. Brozena, and the Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus. One day only.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
“Feria Urbana” Canvas Café and Gallery, 1200 Ninth Ave; 505-0060. Thurs/14, 6-11pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. Here’s an opportunity to support the local arts community and take care of your shopping needs at the same time. Local artisans and designers show off their clothing, home accessories, and many other gift ideas; all three days feature different vendors. If you like groovy beats to accompany your shopping experience, attend Thursday’s event, which will be DJed by the swell folks at OM Records.
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 1-800-510-1558. Sat-Sun, 11am-7pm. Through Dec 23. $8-20. For a slower-paced shopping experience, this winter wonderland offers a range of theater and entertainment, costumed Victorian-era characters, sumptuous feasts, and gift ideas aplenty.
“Hands-on Mexican Holiday Cooking Class” Encantada Gallery of Fine Arts, 908 Valencia; 642-3939. Sat/16-Sun/17, 11am-2:30pm, $70. Advance registration required. Laurie Mackenzie, chef and scholar of Latin American cuisine, leads an instructional course on making tamales. While you’re there, check out the Encantada’s Bazaar Navideno for Mexican folk art and ceramics, as well as locally made fine art.
“Mexican Museum Holiday Family Day” Mission Library, 300 Bartlett; 202-9700, ext 721. Sat/16, noon-2pm, free. Multimedia artist Favianna Rodriguez of the Mexican Museum presents a slide show and hands-on workshop about nichos, a Latin American craft designed to protect special treasures and pictures of loved ones. The museum will supply materials for these decorative boxes; participants are encouraged to bring photos and mementos to personalize their nichos.
“Peace, Love, Joy, ART” ARTworkSF, main gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080. Tues-Sat, noon-5:30pm. Through Dec 30. Browse locally made handiworks for holiday gift ideas.
“Physics of Toys: Museum Melody” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/16, 11am-3pm. Free with admission. Learn how to make noisemakers for delightful Christmas gifts and for ringing in the New Year just around the corner.
“Public Glass Artist Showcase” Crocker Galleria, 50 Post; 671-4916. Through Sun/17: daily, 10am-6pm. Dec 18-22: daily, 10am-7pm. Free. More than 15 local glass artists will exhibit their work, offering many one-of-a-kind gifts. Public Glass is the city’s only nonprofit center for glassworking, and this will be its sole downtown event of the year.
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Potters Guild Gallery Show and Holiday Sale” 731 Jones, Berk; (510) 524-7031. Sat-Sun and Dec 19-22, 10am-5pm. Through Dec 24. Free. Browse through the wares of the oldest and largest clay collaborative group on the West Coast.
“Bilingual Piñata-Making Party for All Ages” Oakland Public Library, Martin Luther King Jr. Branch, 6833 International Blvd, Oakl; (510) 238-3615. Sat/16, 2pm. Free. Learn how to make and decorate your own holiday piñata, with instruction given in both Spanish and English.
“Crucible’s Gifty Holiday Art Sale and Open House” Crucible, 1260 Seventh St, Oakl; (510) 444-0919. Sat/16-Sun/17, 10am-4pm. Free. The Crucible, a nonprofit sculpture studio and arts center, opens its doors to the public for a holiday sale meant for the whole family. In addition to providing one-of-a-kind gift options such as ceramics, glassware, and sculptures, the studio will offer glass blowing and blacksmithing demonstrations, hands-on activities for kids, and the memorable experience of seeing Santa arrive by flaming sleigh!
“EclectiXmas Art Show and Sale” Eclectix Store and Gallery, 7523 Fairmount, El Cerrito; (510) 364-7261. Tues, 10am-2pm; Wed, noon-6pm; Thurs, 11am-7pm; Fri, 10am-7pm; Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-2pm. Through Dec 24. Free. Nothing says “I love you” like giving the gift of sculpture or painting or photography. Browse the gallery’s group show for imaginative gifts.
“Expressions Holiday Bazaar and Trunk Show” Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby, Berk; (510) 644-4930. Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. For interesting handcrafted gifts, the Expressions Gallery’s show offers jewelry, scarves, mittens, among other things.
“Holiday Land Gift Sale” Blankspace, 6608 San Pablo, Oakl; (510) 547-6608. Sat/16, 1-7pm; Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. Bay Area artists sell their cards, artwork, accessories, and unique gifts; proceeds from ornament sales support the Destiny Arts Center in Oakland. A performance by Kittinfish Mountain will get you in the shopping mood, and prizes will be given away as well.
“Pro Arts Holiday Sale” 550 Second St, Oakl; (510) 763-4361. Tues-Sat, noon-6pm; Sun, noon-5pm. Through Dec 21. Free. This nonprofit organization supporting Bay Area artists offers jewelry, glassware, ceramics, and other potential gifts. SFBG

The kitchen sink

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS There’s this thing in sports and therefore maybe life where you’re supposed to “act like you’ve been there before.” But how are you supposed to act like you’ve been there before if you’ve never been there? What if every single thing is news to you?
You strike out the big hitter, score a touchdown. Or let’s say you’re not into sports, so you, I don’t know, close the deal, or achieve the … thing. What do people do in life? Or what do you do if you’re me and the whole world is suddenly one big end zone? How am I supposed to not jump around and make a fool of myself, for example, while buying my first bra? At the tender age of 43.
Act like you’ve been here before, said the voice in my head. I’d never been to San Mateo, let alone Lula Lu Petite Lingerie shop.
“Do you know what size you are?” asked a voice outside my head. The only other customer had left and my tiny friend Sockywonk, the famous Godzilla artist, was already in the other fitting room, trying stuff on, so finally our friendly salesgirlperson could turn her attention to me.
I peed my pants.
Unfazed, Ms. Lula Lu whipped out her cloth tape measure. “Hold your arms out like this,” she said, making like an airplane.
I asked if I could do Superman instead because airplanes wig me out.
“Like this,” she said. The airplane. I closed my eyes and tried to think of it as doing Jesus, and that was a little better. Jesus being fitted for a bra … eerie look on His face, like He knows what’s being foreshadowed, oh shit.
Forty inches, that’s the circumference of My chest. The cup size, well, I don’t think there are enough As in the alphabet to describe my cup size. But I do have boobs, I swear.
And so does Sockywonk, and they’re beautiful, I’ve seen them. She can’t keep her hands off them, not even in restaurants. I don’t blame her.
Chemo starts tomorrow, and then, down the road, she loses one. She told me over noodles at Pho Little Saigon 3, across the street, that she’s not going to go for no chest reconstruction surgery. So this bra she’s deciding on in the next fitting room might be the last nonmastectomy one she ever buys.
The food was great! For some crazy reason it was Sockywonk’s first time eating Vietnamese. Barbecued chicken over rice vermicelli ($5.95) and a seafood combo soup with egg noodles ($5.95). We shared and slurped and swirled and it was my way of returning the favor, firstswise. Lula Lu being her idea.
Pho Little Saigon 3. You can’t miss it. It’s the only place in San Mateo that isn’t a sushi place.
When Sockywonk first found out about the cancer was around when I found out I was a witch, so naturally I promised to use all my spells and powers on her behalf, which means basically that I will write like I write and try to make her laugh and want to eat food. Those are my powers, and I think she might need them because chemo ain’t funny, or appetizing.
I love all my friends, and they’re just going to have to get used to that. But I feel like I have extra chambers in my heart right now for Sockywonk, and not just because she wanted to take me bra shopping after coming down with breast cancer. And not just because she’s a freaky and freakin’ amazing painter of monsterish beauty. And not just because she showed me her boobs, either, although of course that helped. It’s all of the above, plus she invited me last summer to that rooftop paella party I wrote about, which kind of kick-started me socially at a time when I needed a kick.
I met some of my other new friends, like Orange Pop 2, on that same roof, and these are Sockywonk’s people and they’re lively, weird, rockingly good-cooking folks. And she knows but I want her cancer to know too that it ain’t just chemo: we’re all coming after it with everything we’ve got. And I don’t mean good vibes and health food, either.
I mean, yeah, good vibes and health food — but I also mean beers and guitar solos and horn sections. Fresh eggs. Funky restaurant reviews. Funny dances, dessert, impossible hats, pretty bras, everything. Good books. Scary dogs. Strong coffee. Combat boots. Bicycle kicks. Everything, and the kitchen sink. The dirty dishes. Big slow curve balls and fast, freaky serves. SFBG
PHO LITTLE SAIGON 3
Daily, 10 a.m.– SFBG9 p.m.
147 E. Third Ave., San Mateo
(650) 685-6151
Takeout available
Beer
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible

Give, give, give

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It’s happened again. December has rolled around, and last year’s promise not to buy gifts for anyone has melted into a familiar panic. “Just a few people,” I thought — and those few quickly snowballed into a dozen, that dozen into many, that many into, well, the onset of a big ol’ holiday freak-out. What the hell to buy for everyone? The thought of going to a mall gives me the all-overs. Too many people, too many shiny displays. Too many “it” items this year — though I must admit, this season is mild compared to past years of Tickle-Me-Elmos and Furbies. Furbies really freaked me out, man. At least there aren’t any Furbies this year.
It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. In fact, on a holiday scale from “Ho, ho, ho!” to “Bah humbug!” my seasonal sentiments rate a solid “Fa la la la la.” I’m just oozing with holiday cheer — what I’m lacking is the cash to spread that cheer around.
Another major deterrent to the mother of all shopping seasons: people scare the hell out of me. Last year I almost lost an eyeball attempting to navigate around the umbrellaed masses of Union Square. There was barely a light drizzle, but the umbrellas were up, the people combative, and once I reached the safety of the Disney Store, there was another enemy force: children. Screaming, snot-nosed children. Sleep-deprived mothers trailing behind, trying to wrangle the ankle biters to the next shopping destination.
Is it worth all the stress? Not in my estimation. That’s where good planning comes in. I have three rules. One: make every gift thoughtful, personal, and original. Two: stay the hell away from shopping centers, big-box stores, and those umbrella-wielding maniacs of Union Square. Three: spend as few of my hard-earned dollars as possible. I’m no expert on shopping, but I’ve made enough mistakes to know I’ll need one hell of a strategy to pull off the perfect shopping caper. The plan? Divide and conquer. Get ’er done. Make it up.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Consider who the most important people on your list are. The people you love the most are always the most difficult to shop for. Get the important stuff out of the way early to minimize stress. Special people call for special circumstances — that’s why shopping at smaller, local businesses is best. Your big brother might love that copy of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, but you can bet your ass he saw it on the Border’s clearance shelf for $6.98.

THE HEAD HONCHO
Chances are most bosses have received more bad gifts from their underlings than they can fill their oversized offices with. Steer clear of tchotchkes and give the gift of booze. A good bottle of wine goes a long way. Try K and L Wine Merchants (638 Fourth St., SF; 415-437-7421, www.klwines.com) for a huge selection and a staff so helpful they could explain the nuances of a petite sirah to a donkey. Or try Coit Liquor (585 Columbus, SF; 415-986-4036, www.coitliquor.com). This San Francisco landmark looks like your basic bodega, but the corner haven offers one of the best selections of fine wines in the city.

YOUR COWORKERS
If you have to buy for half the office, at least take comfort that these are the only people on your list who truly understand your financial woes. Think stocking-stuffer small. Think clever. Think original. Think Wishbone (601 Irving, SF; 415-242-5540, www.wishbonesf.com) for all the odds and ends of your shopping this season. Everyone loves adorable useless bullshit.

YOUR (FEMALE-GENDERED) SWEETIE
Known affectionately among locals as “Oh — that store with all the skulls?” Martin’s Emporium (3248 16th St., SF; 415-552-4631, www.martinsemporium.com) also happens to have an obscenely large collection of antique jewelry. So if your honey has an itch for F. Scott Fitzgerald, get her all Gatsbyed up with some jazz age earrings, brooches, and pendants. Or pull a Clinton: find a signed or first edition of your lady’s favorite book among the antique items at Thomas A. Goldwasser (486 Geary, SF; 415-292-4698, www.goldwasserbooks.com) or the pulp paperbacks of Kayo Books (814 Post, SF; 415-749-0554, www.kayobooks.com).

YOUR (MALE-GENDERED) SWEETIE
I blame Sears. Men are hard to shop for, yeah, but it seems like department stores have all but given up. Steer clear of the mall stores with the prepackaged wallet–<\d>watch–<\d>grooming kit gift sets. Stay away from the cologne-aftershave-and-soap-on-a-rope gift set he’ll never use, and think outside the little boxes. If you can’t spring for the PlayStation 3 that he really wants, you can agree to let him loose for an afternoon in Isotope Comics (326 Fell, SF; 415-621-6543, www.isotopecomics.com). Or if you refuse to feed his geeky side, go for his cuddly one. The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (2500 16th St., SF; 415-554-3000, www.sfspca.org) always has little friends who need loving homes. What’s better than a faceful of puppy kisses for the holidays?

MOM
It’s hard to skimp on Mom’s gift. Something heartfelt, personal, and dirt cheap — is that so much to ask? Lucky for us, moms these days are hardly the June Cleaver types. Give her something original, social, and rewarding. She’ll thank you for foregoing another year of bath salts. Classes make great gifts, and she’ll never expect it. It’s never too late to learn a new language: The Alliance Français (www.afsf.com) has beginner courses starting at $365. The Goethe-Institut (www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco) will teach Mom German starting at $230. For every other language in the world, starting at $175, try the ABC Language School (www.abclang.com). For even cheaper options, hit up Craigslist for a private tutor (most start at around $20 an hour) or send her packing to City College.
If you don’t think Mommy Dearest is into spending her days conjugating verbs, she might give yoga a try. At Mission Yoga (2390 Mission, SF; 415-401-9642, www.missionyoga.com), the Bikram program rules. The huge studios are open every day of the year, and they even offer Spanish language classes! Yoga Tree (www.yogatreesf.com) has locations all over town and offers tons of different styles. Perfect if Mom still thinks “asana” is a swear word.

DAD
Ah — my Republican Dad. We both love Johnny Cash and mob movies — that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Instead of delving into the dangerous world of politically themed gifts (boy, was that year fun), hiding behind an ugly tie, or grabbing yet another ratchet set, shoot for the common ground. Records are great because they are traditional, and Daddy can get all nostalgic about how much better Gordon Lightfoot sounds on vinyl. Check out Grooves Inspiralled Vinyl (1797 Market, SF; 415-436-9933) for a huge country section.

YOUR BFF
Time to play Let’s Make a Deal. No gifts until January. My closest friends and I are all always broke, so we have a tradition of buying each other dinner for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. More often than not, by the time our schedules align we all owe each other at least one meal. This means we can justify an outlandishly expensive restaurant, split the bill evenly, and settle all debts. If this won’t swing in your inner circle, go for something experiential. Close friends are close for a reason — usually a common interest. Bond over art? Buy each other yearly memberships to the SF Museum of Modern Art (www.sfmoma.org) or Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (www.yerbabuenaarts.org). Love music? Concert tickets at Slim’s (333 11th St., SF; 415-255-0333, www.slims-sf.com) and the Independent (628 Divisadero, SF; 415-771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com) are as cheap as CDs and, as something you can do together, much more personal.

LITTLE BRO OR SIS
It’s every older sibling’s privilege — nay, responsibility — to introduce the younger family members to the more subversive side of life. If the kids happen to be teenagers, now is the time to pump them full of all the J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac you can get your hands on. Go to the source of the rebellion and buy from City Lights (261 Columbus, SF; 415-362-8193, www.citylights.com). If you really want to start a fire, hit up anarchist ground zero Bound Together Books (1369 Haight, SF; 415-431-8355). You are also well-placed to mold their fallible little minds into appreciating good music. Find all the songs that riled you up in your adolescence at Streetlight Records (3979 24th St., SF; 415-282-3550, www.streetlightrecords.com). Even if they hate your picks, you’ll have taught them a valuable lesson about snubbing all that fancy marketing and finding their own taste. You’re such a good role model.

BIG BRO OR SIS
It’s always hard to shop for the person who made your young life a living hell. To help you turn the page on that awkward history of rivalry, sign your tormentor up for the gift that keeps on giving. Magazine subscriptions are always a great idea for the holidays — but really, who wants to funnel their money into publishing houses all the way out in New York? We have tons of extraordinary publications based right here in the Bay Area! You can’t go wrong with Planet (www.planet-mag.com) for culture vultures, SOMA (www.somamagazine.com) for artsy types, Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com) for the world conscious, or Wired (www.wired.com) for the tech savvy.

THE YOUNG ’UNS
The only reason I tolerate the holiday shopping madness is that it offers a valid excuse for grown people like myself to play with toys. Now that there are some nephews in the picture, I don’t feel so creepy fondling everything on display at the Discovery Channel Store (865 Market, SF; 415-357-9754, shopping.discovery.com) in the Westfield Center. I know, you have to brave the big, scary new mall, but the payoff is strong. From crime scene kits to talking globes, this store will make you feel like a kid again. Everything is educational, but the children will never know. Ambassador Toys (186 West Portal, SF; 415-759-8697, www.ambassadortoys.com) has all the lovely LeapFrog (a local company!) baby things and tons of interesting multicultural stuff too.

GRANDPARENTS
Mom-mom and Pop-pop are so easy. If you remember to call, they’re thrilled. Getting them a gift? Oh, you’re such a honey pie! Head to Paxton’s Gate (824 Valencia, SF; 415-824-1872) and pick up some orchids or carnivorous plants for her to fawn over. Grandpa will probably be happy if you just show him how to use the digital camera you got him last year, but go the extra mile and start an aquarium for him. This way you’ll know exactly what to get him every year: more fish! The folks over at Ocean Aquarium (120 Cedar, SF; 415-771-3206) will get you started right.

PETS
Don’t forget about your little critters this season. San Franciscans like to give their pets the run of the house — in my case, the tortoise Bukowski has the painfully slow and woozy stagger of the place, but you get the idea. Bukowski will be getting a tasty bouquet of dandelion greens from Golden Produce (172 Church, SF; 415-431-1536) in his stocking this year. Fido probably won’t enjoy chewing the weeds, so try Babies (235 Gough, SF; 415-701-7387, www.babiessf.com). This store is pretty much the holy grail for spoiled little dogs.

DREADED EX
Admit it, you have an inkling that your ex is probably stalking you on MySpace. Why not call the sneak out with some kitschy spy wear from the International Spy Shop (555 Beech, SF; 415-775-47794, www.internetspyshop.com)? Nothing says “I can still see right through you” like some X-ray glasses. The Fisherman’s Wharf shop is also ground zero for all things private dick.

THE IN-LAWS
Just put your name on the damn card. Fin.

GET ’ER DONE
So you waited until the last minute — you haven’t bought a single gift. People have started dropping hints about the great things they’ve found for you (some of these people weren’t even on your list — the jerks). What the hell do you do now? Don’t panic. Get to the Castro. Stat.
Cliff’s Variety (479 Castro, SF; 415-431-5365, www.cliffsvariety.com) is the best store in San Francisco. OK, I’ve shown my hand. The toy section is top-notch. It’s got games, gizmos, and playthings galore. Great for the kids, even better for your coworkers and casual friends. The windup animals, novelty tokens, and traditional knickknacks will have them waxing nostalgic for days. The kitchenware section has the best in sleek, smaller appliances (FYI: giving a French press or percolator to everyone on your list who still subsides on drip coffee will make you a hero for years to come) and unnecessary (but totally useful) gadgetry. Check out the annex for swanky furniture, household items, baby clothes, and all things craft. Oh, and shopping at Cliff’s is dirt cheap.

MAKE IT UP
Do yourself a favor and don’t put all your holiday stock in a DIY project you’ve never tried. Even if you have every intention of knitting scarves for the 35 people on your list, even if you bought every spool of fancy yarn in the city, even if you took three weeks off from work to do the project — if you still don’t know how to handle the needles, you may as well shoot yourself in the foot. Your peeps will get squat, and all you’ll have is a three-by-five-inch scrap of knotty wool. There are safer ways to craft. Here are some:
Use those concert tees. Music is a huge part of my life — likely one of the reasons I’m always broke and most certainly the reason I have an enormous collection of swag I never wear. This year that T-shirt collection overflowing the closet is going to shrink. The quick how-to: Pick out the ones with obscure bands, ridiculous logos, or just great colors and restructure them into cost-free, made-with-love gifts. Cut a big square out of the center of both sides of the shirt (this should include whatever graphic is involved). Put the insides on the outside. Stitch around all four sides, leaving a three-inch gap in the center of one side. Turn right-side out and stuff (use cotton, newspaper, more old shirts — whatever isn’t perishable). You just made a pillow! Simple quilts and tote bags are also pretty easy to swing with limited knowledge of sewing. If all you learned in junior high home ec has escaped, run over to the Stitch Lounge (182 Gough, SF; 415-431-3739, www.stitchlounge.com) in Hayes Valley. The rockin’ ladies there will show you the ropes for a nominal fee. Bonus: they offer gift certificates, so you can give the gift of craftiness even if you gave up on threading the needle.
Feeling guilty for paring down your list? Making personal holiday cards for everyone you snubbed will cure your ills. This project will only take an afternoon (or an evening with friends and lots of liquor), and you already have the supplies! Look at all the paper crap you’ve collected around the house. Those calendars you got at a discount last January have some high-quality photos. Magazines stacked everywhere, coffee table books on their last legs, and all that cheesy holiday junk mail. Got scissors? Glue? You know what to do. Try Paper Source (www.paper-source.com) if your home stock won’t cut it.
Since you’ve already made such a mess, here’s another project for you. Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, sit back and let me tell you a thing or two about gift baskets. They suck. They are predictable, boring, and awkward as hell to carry on Muni. The day of basket-wrapped gifts is over. Instead, take all that stuff you’re cutting up and do some decoupage. My favorite gift vessels are mason jars and shoe boxes — both are simple, portable, and look great once you start decorating them. Stick to themes and you’ll be golden. Example: decoupage a box with images from Italy and fill it with gourmet noodles, a decent wine, and that killer sauce recipe you have. Add a cheap vintage apron from Held Over (1543 Haight, SF; 415-864-0818), and voilà — you have a gift!
Use your skills. Computer savvy? Check your list for any artist, comedian, musician, or writer who could benefit from your illustrious Web site–<\d>designing skills.
Take great photos? This is San Francisco — chances are several people on your shopping list are in struggling bands. Bands need press kits. Press kits need photos. Photos are expensive. You take great photos. Are you there yet?
Do you give Rachael Ray a run for her perky money? Baking for people is still way festive — just steer clear of fruitcakes, and your gift will be well received. Or cheat like hell — that’s why they put cookie dough in those convenient little tubes.
If you totally suck at the DIY thing, you aren’t alone. Lucky for you there are some people in the city who are very, very good at making things. Needles and Pens (3253 16th St., SF; 415-255-1534, www.needles-pens.com) showcases a variety of paper goods and clothing made by local craftsters. My favorite is the 2007 Slingshot Organizer, but be sure to check out the other DIY goodies at this little shop that loves you back.

Junk bonds

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Sweet — doesn’t the sight of Gwen Stefani shaking her logo in your face on that singing-nun mess of a video for “Wind It Up” — off her new album, The Sweet Escape (Interscope) — make you want to look for the exits? Booze, barbiturates, love, angels — all the traditional escape hatches look good, because as much as I sneakingly enjoyed the creative mosh-slop of Stefani’s ur-kitsch solo debut, her new one looks and sounds like a Scandi-stinker so far. Maybe Sound of Music lederhosen camp just can’t hold a candle to organic movements like African American step culture. Maybe the reality of childbirth spoiled the wish-fulfillment magik of her Love. Angel. Music. Baby. equation. In any case, all the gloss (we do like our pop princesses — B, G, and Fff-urgh-ie — predictably blond and brassy in ’06 ) makes you want to repair to the proudly ramshackle, raw-cuz sonic junkyard that Tom Waits built, especially when you listen to his recent Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards (Anti-). The arrival of this three-disc set of never-released oldies, comp odds, loose ends, and unifying newbies might even spark a few murky thoughts on Waits and a few of his musical offspring: Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, who put out his first album in more than five years this fall, Dreamt for Lightyears in the Belly of a Mountain (Astralwerks), and Calexico, who truck through town this week. “Alternative” and “experimental” seem like weak adjectival gruel for their obsessively archival, at times combustible aural tinderboxes. Is it fair to call them the pop foundlings of found sound? Or better, the deadbeat dads of pomo rock’s darkling plain?
These junk-shop mixologists have a few things in common: critical descriptors like “dusty,” “distressed,” maybe even “stone-washed.” The music often emanates from a solitary, male figure (one exception: Calexico’s Sanford and Son bedrock duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino) surrounded by a shifting gang of ace musicians. Horns, the Delta blues, evocative music from travels abroad, and samples from around the street corner follow the contours of what might loosely, goosily be called rock. Accordions hound their sound like junkyard dogs. Hissy, dirt-caked, lo-fi production values hit the spot. And they’re not above reaching for an erhu.
Next to Stefani’s frantic semiotic scramble of crucifixes, Singer sewing machines, and yodels, these savage songsmith salvagers seem positively, perhaps geriatrically, old-school. Flaws glare like the humanism shining through a handmade rug. Their music’s creaky mechanism — even when driven by a beatboxed gasp, as on Waits’s “Lucinda” — is more deeply nostalgic, in love with a tattered industrial, rather than information, age, less preservation-minded than resigned to soldiering forth in a jalopy burdened by the ever-weighted cargo of music history — the male counterparts of Mother Courage in the recent crack Berkeley Rep production of that Bertolt Brecht bleakathon.
It’s a nonformulaic formula of sorts that Waits seems to have dreamed up with Swordfishtrombone (Island), way back in ’83 — and it’s been refined to the degree that even the castoffs of the cantankerous, bluesy Brawlers, the sweeter, soporific Bawlers, and the story-laden, weirded-out Bastards are all of one compulsively listenable piece. Covering Leadbelly and the Ramones twice, utilizing the simpatico musicianship of locals such as Ralph Carney, Carla Kihlstedt, Gino Robair, and the late Matthew Sperry along with tens of others, Waits shows that even his off-the-cuff leavings — à la his reading of Charles Bukowski’s “Nirvana” and the sorrowful instrumental fugue “Redrum” — are better than most belabored new studio releases. Hell, does it make a difference that these 54 songs have been culled from far-flung corners in film, theater, and tribute comps, what with the mishmash of producers on most mainstream pop albums? It all glitters, magpie.
So what about Waits’s other spawn? Linkous shows up on Orphans (“Dog Door”) just as Waits materializes on Linkous’s album (“Morning Hollow”), while Sparklehorse takes the noise down a notch and foregrounds melancholy melodies with production help from Danger Mouse. Calexico also got hit with the pop stick — witness this year’s Garden Ruin (Quarterstick). Borders — between north and south, white and brown, ranchero and rock — are still a major leitmotif for the band, Calexico cofounder and guitarist Joey Burns told me, citing Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and the 1993 documentary Latcho Drom, which makes graceful connections between gypsy musicians across centuries and countries. Yet the streamlined Garden Ruin seems to represent a race from the wrecking yard of music’s past, the inevitable legacy of collaborating with artists ranging from Neko Case and Los Super Seven to Gotan Project and Goldfrapp.
“What stands out the most for most people is there are no instrumentals, so that kind of soundtrack quality is not there, and the focus is on songs,” the talkative Burns told me from Tucson. “But within songs there are a lot of orchestrated passages, and there’s just as much variety there as there’s always been.”
The collaborations — and soundtracks — continue. After our talk, Burns was heading out to listen to Calexico’s mixes of Bob Dylan songs for Todd Haynes’s forthcoming filmic reverie on the singer-songwriter, I’m Not There. Iron and Wine and Roger McGuinn were among the group’s musical partners, with Willie Nelson clocking in as the most memorable. Tracking “Señora” at the red-headed stranger’s golf course–<\d>cum–<\d>studio, Burns said Nelson “barely knew he was supposed to record. Heard about it during a poker game in Dallas, and he stumbled in with friends. It was phenomenal watching his process.”
Perhaps the ragtag process of Waits, Linkous, and Calexico is even getting dusted off, cleaned up, and given a new spin by another generation. One can’t help but hear a little of their aural roamings in the shambling brass-band collectivism of A Hawk and a Hacksaw and Beirut. And apparently, I’m not the only one discerning an umbilical chord: those combos recently toured Europe with Calexico, Burns said. “We all bonded beautifully.”
CALEXICO
With Los Lobos
Fri/8–<\d>Sat/9, 9 p.m.
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
$36.50
www.livenation.com

Editor’s Notes

0

The death of David Ayoob didn’t get a lot of headlines. He wasn’t famous in that way; he never ran for office or made speeches. But everyone on Cortland Avenue knew him, and when he died suddenly of a heart attack at 53, Bernal Heights — and the city — lost a great citizen.
Ayoob ran 4-Star Video, and he was the essence of a good small businessperson. He was active in the community and friendly to everyone and treated his employees well. (When he opened a second shop on Potrero Hill, he made two former employees partners in the business and let them run the new outlet.) His shop felt like the neighborhood — full of a diverse collection of people, with plenty of kids and dogs running around. Everyone was welcome.
As one post on a Bernal listserv put it, “With David it was never just about running a business. Bernal was his family. He was a larger-than-life character. The fabric of the neighborhood is weaker, a bit less comforting, and a lot less colorful without him.” Sup. Tom Ammiano added, “He had such a wonderful heart, so generous.” We’ll all miss him.
The memorial for Ayoob is Dec. 9, 2 p.m., at St. Kevin’s Catholic Church, 704 Cortland, SF.
I’m liking Frank Rich’s most recent analysis in the New York Times, which has President George W. Bush in effect talking to the walls, like Richard Nixon in the final days, and utterly losing touch with reality. It’s not clear that he even remembers why we got into this war in the first place: if he wanted control of Iraqi oil, he’s pretty clearly bungled any hope of that, and nothing in the current course is going to make the situation any better. If it was all about his ego, then that’s a lost cause.
My only problem with the Rich line (other than the fact that you can’t get it on the Times Web site without registering and subscribing, which is pretty damn stupid for the nation’s paper of record) is that it assumes Bush actually had a grip on reality in the first place.
I remember way back in the early days of the presidency of Ronald Reagan reading a piece by Carl Bernstein in the Washington Monthly that said something considered heresy in the nation’s capital: Reagan, he wrote, really wasn’t terribly intelligent and didn’t know what was going on half the time. Agree with his policies or disagree, it was a bit alarming to have someone in the White House who was really a pretty dim bulb (and thus was easily manipulated by the people around him — even before the Alzheimer’s hit).
Even today there’s this sense of respect and decorum in Washington that prevents people from just coming out and saying it: the president really doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Consider the other fascinating Bush item from the past week, his interaction with senator-elect Jim Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq. Bush (like an idiot) asked Webb, an outspoken war critic, “How’s your boy?” Webb responded appropriately: “I’d like to get them out of Iraq.” Bush’s lashback: “That’s not what I asked.”
Well, yes, it was what he asked. And the father of a kid who is risking his life for Bush’s insanity answered the same way a lot of fathers would: honestly. Somehow, in Washington, this is a big deal.
Hey: 2,900 US soldiers are dead. Time to get over the protocol.

Bumpy ride

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a 50-year-old male. I’ve been married for 23 years and have two grown kids. The problem is my wife. She has never needed or been interested in sex. I have tried everything — books, videos, even suggesting counseling. She says no, there’s no problem. Our wedding night was a disaster. Is there any hope for me? What can I do?
Love,
High and Dry
Dear Dry:
File for divorce or pray for a painless, early death. I just don’t see another way out for you, sorry.
That was flip and a little cruel, and I do apologize but only sort of. You knew that sex was not, let’s say, a priority for her way back when you were dating, what, 25 years ago? And you married her anyway and cemented your relationship by having children and further enforced the union’s permanence by staying with her after the children were grown. I’m going to assume that you did all this because you actually love your wife, not merely because you were willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of nice-guyism. Either way, you don’t sound like you’re going anywhere, and I applaud that. But your wife is right: there is no problem, or rather, she does not have a problem, and the fact that you have one is not her problem either. Since she isn’t broken, you can’t fix her. She is the “doesn’t need sex” model, and there’s no kind of rigging her up with after-market parts that’s going to change that. If you love her and don’t want to leave her, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.
I print your letter not so much because I think that hearing “Sorry, you’re stuck with it” is going to be of any earthly use to you but as a warning to the many much younger people who write in wondering if their otherwise “perfect” boyfriends, girlfriends, or — worse — fiancés can be induced to change their apparently deeply wired sexual preferences (or lack of same) before the wedding. I said no. I still say no. I am using you, somewhat without your consent, as an exhibit, Exhibit A, the purpose of which is to demonstrate how much I really meant “no” when I said it. No. People who are already interested in some kinds of sex can quite often be induced to try some other kinds. People who are reluctant to be sexual may be coaxed into letting go of fears or inhibitions. People who simply do not care about sex — the way I simply do not care about, say, sports — are probably not going to change. It isn’t like I’ve never seen or played any sports. I have done both. I’m just not excited about it, and no amount of nagging at me to get excited would ever have the desired effect. Quite the opposite.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
What does it mean when a woman does the “walk and bump,” meaning a guy is standing there minding his own business, and a woman walks by and bumps his crotch with the back of her hand when she clearly has room to clear without contact? I have asked females about this, but I can’t seem to break the code of silence. I perceive several different reasons why they do this. but I want to hear what you have to say.
Love,
Do the Bump
Dear Bump:
This doesn’t really happen, does it? Readers? Has this ever occurred anywhere, ever, outside my correspondent’s fevered imagination? And correspondent, I ask you: which is more likely — that there is a secret cabal of crotch-bumping women and their supporters, who may not bump crotches themselves but are sworn to uphold the secrecy of those who do, or that you are a little bit nuts?
The closest thing to the “walk and bump” that I’ve ever encountered, and that only in fiction, is “elbow titting,” a disgusting pastime of sniggering, pimply youths who could not make proper, consensual contact with said body parts if their miserable, sniggery lives depended on it. There are no citations for “walk and bump” except a few descriptions of the walking habits of poorly trained dogs, which is pretty much apropos but not what we’re looking for.
I’m hardly the “women are from Mars, men crawled out of the swamp and ought to crawl back there” type, but I’ve got to say that women do not, as a rule, grope strangers on the street. Some men, very low and ill-bred men but men all the same, do. In Japan, it is the women who require protection from grabby-handed men on the subway, never the other way around. I dare say, Mr. Bump, that conscious or not, you are “walk and bump”–ing your crotch into their hands, and one of these days one of them is going to “bump” you back, with rather more force than you’ll find comfortable, so you might want to consider not doing that.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Online Exclusive: Method Man at the crossroads

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a&eletters@sfbg.com
When a bumped phone interview with hip-hop legend and putf8um artist Method Man mushroomed into a proposed
backstage post-show encounter, I naturally jumped at the chance.

Being a devotee of the ultimately more funk-based grooves of Bay Area hip-hop, I tend not to pay
attention to the doings of NYC, and I can’t claim to have ever followed the Wu-Tang Clan in general or Meth
in particular, though I have always admired both from afar. Yet one needn’t follow the Big Apple’s scene in
great detail to appreciate its impact, and with Meth’s successful film and TV career, most recently as a recurring character in this season of HBO’s cop drama The Wire, one needn’t even listen to hip-hop anymore
to appreciate his.

This situation is exactly what’s troubling Method Man. His very success in the cultural mainstream, he
feels, has been held against him by the hip hop-industry, a curious situation considering
mainstream success is the perceived goal and direct subject matter of most raps these days. Unlike the
recent fashion among rappers like Andre3000 to pooh-pooh their interest in music in favor of their
“acting career,” Meth wants to be known primarily as an MC. But Hollywood success has proved to be a
slippery slope, paved by Ice-T and Ice Cube — each in his turn the most terrifying, authentic street rapper
imaginable — to the end of your hit-making potential in hip-hop.

Couple this perception with Meth’s vocal challenges of the effect of corporate media consolidation, and it’s
not difficult to imagine why Def Jam released his fourth solo album, 4:21: The Day After, without a peep
at the end of August, as if the label had written him off despite his track record of one gold and two
putf8um plaques.

Still, no one who’s heard the angry, defiantly shitkicking 4:21 (executive produced by the RZA, Erick
Sermon, and Meth himself) or saw the show Meth put on that evening (leaping from the stage to the bar and
running across it by way of introduction, later executing a backwards handspring from the stage into the crowd by way of ending) could possibly doubt his vitality as an MC. He put on a long, exhausting show,
heavy with new material, that utterly rocked the packed house.

Shortly after the show ended, I was brought backstage by Meth’s road manager, 7, to a tiny corridor of a
dressing room crammed with various hangers on. A man in a warm-up suit with a towel over his head was
sitting alone on a short flight of steps in the center of the room.

“That’s him,” 7 said, before disappearing to take care of other business.

It was like being sent to introduce yourself to a boxer who’d just finished a successful but punishing
brawl. The face that looked up at my inquiry was that of a man who’d retreated somewhere far away into
himself, requiring a momentary effort to swim to the surface. Quite suddenly I found myself face to face
with Method Man, whose presence immediately turned all heads in the room our way as he invited me to sit down
for a brief discussion of his new album and his dissatisfaction with his treatment by the music
industry.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN: I read the statement on your Web site [www.method-man.com] in which you
discuss your problems with the industry. Could you describe the problems you’ve been having?

METHOD MAN: My big problem with the industry is the way they treat hip-hop artists as opposed to artists
in other genres. Hip-hop music, they treat it like it’s fast food. You get about two weeks of promotion
before your album. Then you get the week of your album, then you get the week after, then they just
leave you to the dogs.

Whereas back in the day, you had artists in development, a month ahead of time before you even
started your campaign, to make sure that you got off on the right foot.

Nowadays it’s like there’s nobody in your corner anymore. Everybody’s trying to go into their own
little club, for lack of a better word. Everybody has their own little cliques now. Ain’t no money being
generated so the labels are taking on a lot of artists because of this at once that they don’t even have
enough staff members to take care of every artist, as an individual. Their attention is elsewhere, or only
with certain people.

SFBG: Your new single [“Say,” featuring Lauryn Hill] suggests you’ve had problems with the way critics have
received your recent work and even with the radio playing your records. How can someone of your status
be having trouble getting spins?

MM: You know what it is, man? A lot of people have come around acting like I’m the worst thing that ever
happened to hip-hop, as good as I am.

Hating is hating. I’ve been hated on, but just by the industry, not in the streets. They never liked my crew
[the Wu-Tang Clan] anyway. They think we ain’t together anymore and they try to pick at each and
every individual. Some motherfuckers they pick up. Other people they just shit on. I guess I’m just the
shittee right now, you know what I mean?

SFBG: Do you think it has to do with the age bias in hip-hop? The idea an MC is supposed to be 18 or 20?

MM: You know what I think it is? As our contracts go on, we have stipulations where, if we sell a certain
amount of albums, [the labels] have to raise our stock. A lot of times dudes just want to get out their
contracts so they can go independent and make more money by themselves. There’s a lot of factors that
play into it.

SFBG: Are you not getting enough label support?

MM: A label only does so much anyway. It’s your team inside your team that makes sure that you got a video.
Or that you got that single out there, or that your tour dates are put together correctly. The labels,
they basically just do product placement. They make sure that all your stuff is in the proper place where
it’s supposed to be at. They’re gonna make sure your posters are up. They’re going to make sure that
they’re giving out samples of other artists that are coming out also. [But i]t’s really up to us [the
artists] to make sure our music is going where it’s supposed to.

Right now there’s so many artists people can pick and choose from, don’t nobody like shit no more.

SFBG: Do you think you’re getting squeezed out of radio play as a result of corporate media
conslidation?

MM: Absolutely; this shit ain’t nothing new. It isn’t just happening to me. It’s been going on since dudes
have been doing this hip-hop music. They bleed you dry and then they push you the fuck out.

That’s why I always stress to the fans to take your power back. I always hear people talking about things
like, “Damn, what happened to these dudes? What happened to these guys? I always liked their shit.”
But the fans, not just the industry, tend to turn their backs on dudes. They get fed so much bullshit,
they be like, “Fuck it; I’m not dealing with that shit. I’m going to listen to this.”

SFBG: So what about your acting career? Do you feel like you’ve been overexposed as an actor or that
you’ve been spread too thin and are readjusting your focus?

MM: Fuck Hollywood, B.

SFBG: But I heard you say on the radio today you wanted to play a crackhead and get an Oscar….

MM: I do want to play a crackhead in a movie. I’m going to be a crackhead who dies of an overdose at the
end of the movie, and people cry, and I’m going to get me an Oscar. But fuck Hollywood; tell ‘em to come see
me. Tell ‘em to come to my door.

SFBG: Obviously, from what you said during the show and the lyrics on 4:21: The Day After you haven’t
renounced smoking marijuana, so could you discuss the concept behind “4:21”? Is it about the difficulties
of living the hard-partying lifestyle of the rap artist?

MM: It was just symbolic of a moment of clarity for me. I made a symbol for myself of a moment of
clarity. You know I’ve always been an avid 4:20 person. I like to get out there and smoke with the
best of them. But I picked “4:21” as like, the day after. I got tired of people running up on me and
being like, “You was funny in that movie,” because I was an MC first and foremost. It used to be like, “Yo,
that fuckin’ verse you did on that song, that was hot.” Now it’s like, “My kids love you; they love that
movie, How High.”

It gets to the point when even when I’m having a serious moment, or a serious conversation, people
laugh at the shit like it’s funny. But they laugh cause they thinking of the movie; they thinking of
some sitcom shit.

SFBG: Besides yourself and RZA, Erick Sermon executive produced the album. Can you talka bout your
connection with him?

MM: I’ve been fuckin’ with E ever since I’ve been fuckin’ with Redman. E knows what I like, you know
what I’m saying? The same way he knows what Redman likes. And RZA, that’s a given right there. I’ve been
down with RZA’s shit A1 since day one.

SFBG: 4:21 also features a collaboration with Ol’ Dirty Bastard. When did you guys record this track?

MM: “Dirty Meth” — that’s a posthumous joint with O.D.B. It was after he was gone already. I tell everyone
that so they know.

SFBG: But he seems to permeate the new album.

MM: He does. Good word, too. He permeates it.

Change of heart

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS It still says Carl’s on the sidewalk in the doorway because that’s what it used to be, and the light from the big scripted Carl’s sign used to romanticize our windows. I was on the bottom (like I like it), and then Wayway lived upstairs from me, and Earl Butter lived on top of him. So anytime any of us looked out our windows, Guerrero and 18th, that was what we’d see: Carl’s.
Ten years later, Wayway, having circled around the Mission, is back on that corner, haunting my old apartment (or vice versa), and Earl Butter still lives up top. Carl’s is something else. The latter-day Missionaries line up around the corner weekend mornings, and their dogs bark, and their cars block people’s driveways, and horns blow, and the longtime residents of 18th and Guerrero wake up too early with hangovers and hate the world. Or at least the little section of it called Tartine. At least Earl Butter does.
I crash in his closet sometimes, and I see him in the morning looking out the window and shaking his fist or worse. Out of respect for Earl and Carl and the “good old days,” I refused for years to eat at Tartine.
Then this: I get an e-mail in response to something I wrote about unisex bathrooms being like bacon to me, and this cool-sounding woman with a cool-sounding name wants to point me to a cool-sounding Web page called PISSR (People in Search of Safe Restrooms). Cool. Oh, and by the way, while she’s at it, she wonders if I’m still looking for dates, and if so, would I happen to be at all interested in queer girls?
I wrote back and said, in effect, where do you eat and when do you want to go there?
Of the three places she mentioned, the only one I’d never been to was Tartine. So we made a plan — Monday, lunch — and that was the day I was cooking one of my chickens all day to say good-bye to my closest, dearest friend Carrie with. Remember?
Big dinner, four courses. So around 11 in the morning, well into Lucille Ball mode and covered in feathers, flour, and tears, I called my lunch date to cancel. First time we’d actually spoken, but before I could come to the point, I must have accidentally said something funny, because she laughed, and that was the end of it. I don’t know if you know this about your favorite chicken farmer, but whether it’s menfolk or the wimmins, the sexiest thing in the world to me is a good laugh. Know what I mean? You can have all your body parts. I want to hear what you laugh like.
She laughed like I like.
“I’m running a wee bit late,” I lied. (I was running a lot late.) “Can we push it back a bit?”
We could! We did, and I was halfway to the city before I realized I was still wearing my apron. At red lights, in the rearview mirror, I tried to make myself pretty, plucking my eyebrows and feathers, etc.
Now, out of necessity, I use the word “date” very loosely these days. Watch out! If you’re meeting me to return a book you borrowed, chances are I’m telling everyone I have a date. In this case, she’d used the word first, so even though it was a pressed sandwich to go, a short walk to Dolores Park, and sitting in the grass for an hour between cooking and more cooking, hell yeah, I was nervous.
Especially about the getting-the-sandwich part, because what if Earl Butter saw me? I had no doubt he would have opened his window and ruined everything. (He confirmed this later: he would have.)
My date was sitting on a bench out front, as planned, reading a Nancy Drew book. She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes you want to run back home and take a longer bath (or in my case, a bath), put on different, cleaner clothes, do something about your hair, and read a lot more than you’ve read so that at least you might seem smart.
Too late for all that. Too late for any of it. I knew Earl Butter to be out gigging until three, and it was quarter till. We got our sandwiches, prosciutto and provolone and something ($8.25) for me, banana and something for her, and we escaped into the park.
So just like that, I have a new favorite restaurant. The sandwich — I’m serious — was awesome!
As for the date … oops, outta space. SFBG
TARTINE
Mon., 8 a.m.–7 p.m.; Tues.–Wed., 7:30 a.m.–7 p.m.; Thurs.–Fri., 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sat., 8 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.–8 p.m.
600 Guerrero, SF
(415) 487-2600
Takeout available
Wine
AE/MC/V
Wheelchair accessible

NOISE: Ka-Chingy! For free, actually

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Who doesn’t love free music? Can we all agree that despite its mammoth size and the weird experience of tearing through brambles and over big dogs, small children, and oldsters reading the Sunday paper, that Hardly Strictly Bluegrass wouldn’t be quite the same if it wasn’t free, free, free!?

chingy.jpg

Anyway here’s even more for you cheapskates: we all know pop stars are increasingly making more appearances at, of all things, cellie stories (Chris Brown showed at a San Leandro Verizon store last week), but now phone and wireless companies are also getting behind music in other ways.

Tomorrow, Oct. 11, Flash Concerts (backed by Cingular Wireless and Sony Ericsson) present Chingy, free, at the Mezzanine. The dealie is that fans have to register to “Get in and Win” and sending the text message city code “SF” to “FLASH” (35274). Registrants will receive “Alerts” including: event details, exclusive free concert invites, VIP access, meet & greets and special music prizing. Text “SF” to “FLASH” or visit your local Cingular Wireless store for more details.

Then you’re “Right Thurr,” as the Chingster might say. One wonders how many Sony Ericssons the dude scored with this tie-in. Ah, something to contemplate when the doors open at 8:30 p.m. at 444 Jessie St., SF.

At least you didn’t have to sit through any commercials…

Welcome to the nightmare

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MEXICO CITY (Sept. 14th) – In an epiphany of how he might have to govern Mexico if, in fact, an aggrieved left opposition allows him to assume the presidency December 1st, right-winger Felipe Calderon had to be helicoptered to the bunker in the deep south of this conflictive capital, where the nation’s top electoral tribunal doing business as the TRIFE was to hand him the certificate attesting that he had, in the judges’ less-than-august opinions, won the hotly-contested July 2nd election from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO.).

Upon emerging from the chopper, which had been accompanied by a military gunship, the stubby, balding Calderon, his eyes darting like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, was quickly hustled into the TRIFE headquarters by the back door, a full 90 minutes before the actual ceremony was to commence, a subterfuge necessitated by the presence by thousands of AMLO’s enraged supporters, some of whom had already stripped naked.

Calderon’s witnesses – members of his campaign team and functionaries of the archly-rightist PAN party who had the misfortune to arrive by land — were greeted by clods of earth and screams of “Rateros!” (Thieves) and “Fraude!” (Fraud.) The ritual unfolded under a steady barrage of rotten eggs and tomatoes that AMLO’s people kept hurling at the TRIFE bunker, a kind of Aztec version of a U.S. missile silo, to express their unhappiness with the seven-judge panel that had neither heard nor seen any evil in the maladroit machinations of President Vicente Fox, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and the PAN to steal the election from their candidate.

On September 5th, just hours before the constitutional deadline for confirming the next president of Mexico, the TRIFE had finally handed down its eagerly anticipated decision. In the learned justices’ unanimous judgment, outgoing president Vicente Fox’s unconstitutional intromission in the electoral campaign on behalf of Calderon had put the validity of the July 2nd balloting “at risk.”

Moreover, months of venomous anti-AMLO hit pieces designed by U.S. carpetbagger Dick Morris that labeled Lopez Obrador a DANGER to Mexico in big red letters “unquestionably” impacted the results and were illegally financed by big business councils that included such transnationals as Wal Mart and Halliburton, a patently criminal act.

In addition, the election was riddled with “arithmetic mistakes.” The TRIFE’s own recalculation of the actual vote count, effected by its much-maligned twin the IFE, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Calderon had been credited with hundreds of thousands of votes that could not be substantiated by the number of ballots inside the ballot boxes. A partial recount of 9.7% of the 130,000 “casillas” (precincts) had turned up a total of 237,000 questionable votes that the TRIFE had chosen to annul, a quarter of those cast in the sample, and more than Calderon’s supposed margin which had been reduced to 233,000 out of a total 41.5 million cast.

Having duly noticed these egregious outrages, the seven judges concluded that they could not calibrate the impact of such organized criminal activity upon the final outcome and awarded the presidency to one Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa to the great delight and immediate congratulations of Mexico’s masters in Washington D.C.

Did the TRIFE go into the tank? Three of the justices are expected to be promoted to the Mexican Supreme Court when and if Felipe Calderon takes over the presidency. A fourth, Alejandro Luna Ramos, who will remain at the helm of the electoral tribunal, is a business partner of PAN topdog “El Jefe” Diego Fernandez de Cevallos – El Jefe won millions for the Ramos family from the Mexico City government before AMLO became mayor in a shady land deal involving the site of the Aztec football stadium. A Ramos sister sits on Mexico’s Supreme Court.

Lopez Obrador has suggested that the judges were willing recipients of “canonazos” (cannonades of pesos) to help them better contemplate the “validity” of the election. Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a hoary political chameleon who was Fox’s ambassador to the European Union, describes a post-electoral huddle at the home of Chief Supreme Court Justice Mariano Azuela, a Fox ally, where the Presidente warned the “TRIFitos” that should they declare the election null and avoid due to the overwhelming evidence of fraud, the Mexican economy would collapse and anarchy would reign in the streets. Although Munoz Ledo is an unsavory sort, his sources are usually impeccable.

Now that the TRIFE has legitimized the fraud, the IFE brain trust under the beady gaze of the chief architect of the July 2nd debacle, Luis Carlos Ugalde, is moving quickly to destroy the evidence. Following the modus operandi established after the stolen election of 1988 when the then-ruling PRI in connivance with the PAN ordered the ballots to be burnt by the military, the IFE has refused petitions from 16,000 suspicious subscribers to PROCESO magazine and a blue-ribbon commission of prominent members of the civil society to allow them to conduct a citizens recount of the ballots that are now, once again, under the protection of the military. Never! Ugalde and his mafia scoff. The ballots are “inviolable!” “The property of the people!”

But, on the other hand, the ballots are not “documents” open to public scrutiny as guaranteed by law, the IFE contends, and therefore are eminently “burnable” under current electoral stipulations. Ugalde’s ruling was described as “metaphysical” by National University law professor John Ackerman. According to the IFE’s hypothesis, the ballots were “documents” before they were marked by the voters but now they have been reduced to symbolic “expressions of the people’s will” and thus are candidates for the incinerator.

AMLO is sworn to preventing a repeat of the 1988 flimflam and his people are pleading with Azuela’s Supreme Court to stay the December date set for the burning – after all, an Ohio court just stepped in to save what ballots remain from Bush’s stealing of that state’s electoral votes in the smarmy 2004 presidential balloting. Not without a certain sense of déjà vu all over again, the final arbiter in this dispute may well be (who else but?) the TRIFE.

As illustrated by his armed airlift to the TRIFE silo, Felipe Calderon has a problem meeting the people he intends to govern over the next six years. In his first junket as president-elect, Fecal (as his detractors have dubbed him) took a sentimental journey to his native Morelia, the capital of the narco-ridden western state of Michoacan, where he was scheduled to lay a wreathe at the feet of that city’s namesake, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, a black defrocked priest who led the guerrilla war against the Spanish Crown several centuries before the 44 year-old Calderon first slithered from the darkness of his PANista mother’s womb.

Calderon’s family on all sides is a founding pillar of the PAN, an Opus Dei-like creature of Catholic bankers formed to denigrate Mexico’s beloved depression-era “Bolshevik” president Lazaro Cardenas, also a Michoacan native whose grandson, also Lazaro Cardenas, now besmirches that hallowed name as governor. Indeed, Calderon ‘s trip to Michoacan was designed to split Lopez Obrador’s three-party Coalition for the Good of All – young Cardenas is titularly a member of the PRD, AMLO’s home party, founded by his father Cuauhtemoc after he was swindled out of the presidency in 1988.

But Felipillo never made it to Morales’s feet (the good padre probably exhaled a sigh of relief). Hundreds of AMLO’s faithful tore down the barricades, tossed the usual rotten eggs and tomatoes at Calderon’s entourage, battled Cardenas’s state police and the elite Presidential military guard, and generally made the venue so unsafe that the wreath-laying had to be called off and the president-elect sped into a nearby locked-down convention center for a speech to a carefully-culled audience of “perfumados” (literally the perfumed ones.)

The draconian security measures at the convention center – sniffer dogs, metal detectors, pat-down searches – were not unwarranted. On the eve of Calderon’s confirmation, in Michoacan’s second city Uruapan, the capital of the state’s “hot lands” where drug cropping accounts for the whole economy, a ski-masked commando burst into a local dance hall, forced the patrons to lie face down on the dance floor under pain of being Swiss cheesed by the automatic weapons they were waving convincingly, and carefully removed five severed human heads from black plastic bags which they artfully arranged in the center of the “pista” (dance floor) with the accompanying message: “the family does not kill for money. It does not kill women. It does not kill innocents. Those who deserve to die, die. Justice is divine.”

This country has been visited by unspeakable acts of narco-terrorism in the months that Calderon has been blaspheming Lopez Obrador as “a DANGER to Mexico” (thanks Sasha for this observation). Such beheadings are now a regular feature of the cityscapes in Acapulco and Tijuana. Corpses are strewn in Baghdad-sized numbers each month in the rural outback of Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero, Michoacan, and Chiapas. Judges are gunned down on their way to court at La Palma, Mexico’s maximum narco-lockup – published reports speak of a “psychosis of fear” spooking the nation’s judiciary. The brains of industry and the stock market are not immune from being splattered all over the street. Last week, the top official of a privatized customs agency part-owned by Fox’s financial secretary Francisco Gil, was cut down by professional hit men on a busy Mexico City street as the end-of-the-administration chickens begin to come home to roost. La Jornada, the left daily, has even gone on “suicide” watch – officials often blow their brains out or sever their veins with box cutters at such moments in the Mexican political dynamic.

The TRIFE’s confirmation of the stealing of the 2006 election has generated an avalanche of accolades for Felipe de Jesus – Bush and his crony ambassador Tony Garza were first in line to extend their congratulations all over again (they did so hours after the deeply flawed preliminary vote count came in July 2nd.) Spain’s Rodriguez Zapatero and his pals at REPSOL were right behind, looking to get in on the ground floor of the fire sale of privatization Calderon has pledged for PEMEX, the once-nationalized state petroleum enterprise. The U.S. State Department’s “democratic” answers to Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, Alan Garcia and Oscar Arias, along with Salvador’s fawning Tony Saca chimed in. Improbably, so did Nestor Kirschner – can Fidel and Lula be far behind?

But to my ear, the most appropriate toast to Felipe Calderon ‘s confirmation as the next president of this dangerous neighbor nation was one that was not sounded (at least not yet.) In 1994, after Ernesto Zedillo had finally relieved the reviled Carlos Salinas at the wheel of state, the still missing-in-action Subcomandante Marcos scribbled salutations to the new prez that began, much as does this chronicle, “Welcome to the Nightmare.”

This past Sunday, Lopez Obrador’s weekly packed-as-usual revival meeting in the Zocalo transpired parallel to Felipe Calderon’s “victory” celebration, held appropriately enough in a bullring in an affluent district of the capital. AMLO’s numbers as always dwarfed his diminutive rival’s – the PAN reportedly padded out the crowd by requiring the compulsory attendance of Catholic school children and their parents. and the wealthy burghers in the south of the city were said to have obligated their servants to attend.

While the President-elect swore vengeance on his enemies across town, AMLO did not. As always, he let his furious flock call Fecal bad names but eschewed even mentioning his rival. Lopez Obrador had other plans. The seven week, seven mile encampment of his followers that so vex upper and middle class “capitolinos” would stay in place through Friday night, September 15th, the eve of Mexican Independence Day when AMLO intends to deliver the “Grito” of “Viva Mexico!” to the multitudes gathered in the great square, an honor reserved for the President of Mexico.

But rather than challenging the Mexican military, AMLO’s people will then dismantle their encampments and retreat from the Zocalo for 12 hours to allow the Generals and Admirals to conduct their traditional Independence Day parade. “The army belongs to the people, not the government – we have no argument with this institution,” AMLO explained seeking to mollify his militants who are reluctant to step back. “Many members of military families voted for us July 2nd. And besides the troops are so badly paid that they can’t even support their families.”

Once the military procession which always features tanks and jet fighter planes is done with – Vicente Fox will wave it on from a balcony of the National Palace and receive it at the newly refurbished (by the PRD Mexico City government) Angel of Independence – an expected million delegates to Lopez Obrador’s National Democratic Convention (CND) will retake the Zocalo and sit in session to install AMLO as the legitimate president of Mexico.

But Fox, who was prevented from delivering his State of the Union address to congress September 1st when Lopez Obrador’s senators and deputies stormed the tribune, is said to be obsessed with decrying his final Grito from the presidential balcony overlooking the Zocalo. Cornered between his hubris and personal ambition for a notch in history, and the huge angry crowd seething in the plaza below, the outgoing president could make a fatal mistake by turning the military and/or the military police on AMLO’s people to force them out of the Tiennemens-sized square that sits at the heart of Mexico’s political life, a move that indeed invokes both Tiennemens and Tlatelolco where in 1968 hundreds of striking students were massacred by the paranoid, anti-communist president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, and a wound that has never closed here.

As Sub Marcos so eloquently waxes: “Welcome to the Nightmare.”

John Ross’s “ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible – Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006” will be published in October by Nation Books and the Blindman will set out on a tour of the left coast from border to border and beyond to flog it. But before the flogging comes the honeymoon. Sasha Crow and John Ross (they met while human shielding in Baghdad) will be traveling in Turkey and Greece for the next few weeks.

Doggie do

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Bring your favorite pooch (even if he regularly snacks on your US Weekly — dude, a tooth mark right through Jennifer Aniston’s face!) to Dolores Park tomorrow for SF Dog‘s “Dog Days of August” event.

black_tongue.JPG

According to the event website, there’ll be “dog arts and crafts” (presumably, made by humans with dog motifs, not actual arts and crafts made by dogs), a doggie fashion show (so Project Runway!), and a screening of Best in Show hosted by the canine-friendly San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation.

UPDATE! Pics from the event after the jump.

The slither king

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› cheryl@sfbg.com
Meet the individual who just may be the coolest cat in America right now — snake handler Jules Sylvester, the guy responsible for charming winning performances out of Samuel L. Jackson’s fork-tongue costars in Snakes on a Plane. Sylvester, a Hollywood veteran who’s wrangled critters on everything from Men in Black (thousands of cockroaches) to Out of Africa (lions, dogs, and owls) to Arachnophobia (duh), is bar none the jolliest person I’ve ever talked to at 8:30 in the morning on the subject of killer snakes.
SFBG: What was your first reaction when you heard there was gonna be a movie called Snakes on a Plane? Most people are, like, “Say what?”
JULES SYLVESTER: That was my reaction too. I actually laughed my head off, like, there’s no way they’re gonna keep that title. I was quite impressed that Samuel L. Jackson liked the title so much that’s one of the reasons he took the movie.
SFBG: How do you direct snakes? Are they pretty smart?
JS: No, they’re thick as a brick! But each snake has his own slightly different character. It’s snake management more than anything. They’re not trained at all. People are very vain. We like to say our reptiles love us. They really don’t give a rat’s butt.
SFBG: So for particular scenes, they would say, “OK, we need a snake to fall here,” and you’d figure out which type to use?
JS: That’s correct. I had about 450 snakes I took up to [the set in] Canada.
SFBG: [Interrupting] Did you take them on a plane?
JS: I thought it was pretty tacky to put them on a plane to do a movie called Snakes on a Plane. So I drove them! When we actually filmed, I only used like 60 or 70 at any one time. I used them for maybe two hours on the set. The temperature by that time is pretty hot, and they’re getting a little tired. You take that team out and you bring in the second team, so you never exhaust your snakes.
SFBG: What’s the fiercest snake in the movie?
JS: Definitely the albino cobra. When I put him on the airplane seat and touched his tail, he turned around and he just laid into the cushion. He just chowed on that cushion. He kinda hoped it was me. [Laughs delightedly.] That’s just his job — his job is to be very pissed off.
SFBG: If you actually encountered a snake on a plane in real life, what should you do?
JS: Cover [the snake] with a blanket. It’s an awkward one, in that I know what I would do, but Joe Blow wouldn’t know what the hell to do. It’s like, screaming bloody murder and pointing at it is the worst thing you can do — that will panic everybody. SFBG
SNAKES ON A PLANE
Opens Fri/18
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com
for theaters and showtimes
www.snakesonaplane.com
For the complete Jules Sylvester interview, visit www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

The slither king: the complete interview

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This is not a story about the feverish hype swirling around Snakes on a Plane. It’s not a review of the film, because Snakes on a Plane is so critic-proof that snotty journalists like me don’t get to see it before it opens. And it’s not yet another piece in praise of Snakes star Samuel L. Jackson’s inherent awesomeness (not that I’m denying it, of course). What follows is an interview with the individual who just may be the coolest cat in America right now — snake handler Jules Sylvester, the guy responsible for charming winning performances out of Jackson’s forked-tongued co-stars. Sylvester, a Hollywood veteran who’s wrangled critters on everything from Men in Black (thousands of cockroaches) to Out of Africa (lions, dogs, owls) to Arachnophobia (duh), is bar none the jolliest person I’ve ever talked to at 8:30 in the morning on the subject of killer snakes.

Albinomonacledcobra02.jpg
Image of Albino Monocled Cobra from Chameleon Counters.

[Note: this is the complete transcript of the interview that appears, in edited form, in this week’s Guardian print version.]

Pup culture

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› deborah@sfbg.com
Move over, onesie makers. San Franciscans are more likely in need of a dog collar than a baby outfit.
According to San Francisco Animal Care and Control, based on 2000 census reports, there are just under 118,000 canines in the city. The same census report tallied 112,812 locals 18 or younger.
Not surprisingly, pet product manufacturing is a growing cottage industry among Bay Area crafters. Shea Pet, a Santa Cruz company, helps keep Fifi’s coat shiny with its shampoos made from fair-trade shea butter; Berkeley’s Dorothy Bauer makes sparkling crystal bling in your pet’s first initial, if you like; and Red Rover in Marin bakes homemade biscuits in a variety of animal and Louis Vuitton handbag shapes.
Furthermore, a host of vendors will be present at the SF Dog Owners Group’s Dog Days of August picnic and celebration, an arts and craft fair for canines and their owners to be held in Dolores Park on Aug. 26 from 3 to 6 p.m. Helping to fill the pet accessories niche, at the fair and in general, is Ana Poe, the brains and beauty behind Paco Collars.
“Dogs are the new kids!” exclaims the lithe and garrulous designer during a visit to her subterranean Oakland studio. Upon my arrival, Poe, her handy assistant Jack, and three rather affectionate pit bulls, one of which had an unfortunate case of the runs, greeted me. The lean and handsome brown pit is Paco himself.
As a self-described “tool whore,” Poe became passionate about craft and animals while growing up in Sonoma County. She raised pygmy goats in the 4-H program for years and learned sewing from her mom. Paco Collars was born four years ago while she was working at Every Dog Has Its Day Care in Emeryville. She wanted a tough-looking collar for Paco, but, as she explains, “The only leather collars I could find had three-inch spikes — and people cross the street when they see him as it is.” Which seems unfair, considering Paco was a perfect angel in my presence.
The eye candy alone on the Paco Collars Web site is enough to make any doggy or kitty owner browse and shop online at length. Mushy-faced bull dogs, newborn pups, and the beckoning Siamese known as Pirate all don the 100 percent handmade leather collars that are Poe’s trade. And the animal handlers aren’t too shabby either.
But I digress. As the story goes, Poe decided to make a collar for her pit that looked cool but nonthreatening. She ended up studding a leather strip with Paco’s name, and her boss at the dog care facility liked it so much, she asked Poe to make one for her dog. She also encouraged the budding leather worker to put a few on display for customers. Eventually Poe decided to go full-time with her hobby, put together a Web site, and hired a handful of part-time employees, mostly other local artists. In the last year, her business has increased threefold.
All of the collars are made from Latigo leather, which is what pros use for horse saddling and is very strong. Paco’s been wearing his sheriff’s collar, sporting gold stars on silver conchos, for more than two years straight. Each collar is named after the animal it was originally designed for. Thus, the Celtic-design-inspired Gunther ($82.99) was made for a pit-lab mix while the Chickie ($45) was crafted especially for a Chihuahua, so that even little dogs can look badass. Harnesses and braided leashes are also for sale, as are special leash add-ons for training purposes. Humans can purchase a variety of wristbands and belts. Custom-designed collars go for about the same price as a comparable collar.
Meet Poe and check out her Paco Collars line at the dog fair or see the goods at George (2411 California, SF; 415-441-0564) and Pawtrero (199 Mississippi, SF; 415-863-7297) pet stores in San Francisco. Also, help raise money for Bad Rap (www.badrap.org), the nonprofit that tries to foster a better understanding of pit bull terriers, by attending the Living Room Gallery art show (3230 Adeline, Berk; 510-601-5774, www.thelivingroomgallery.com) — curated by the very busy Poe — and buying some pit bull–related art at the gallery’s black-tie gala Aug. 19. SFBG
PACO COLLARS
www.pacocollars.com
SHEA PET
www.sheapet.com
DOROTHY BAUER DESIGNS
www.dorothybauer.com
ROLL OVER RED ROVER
www.rolloverredrover.com
SF DOG
www.sfdog.org

Habitat Potential

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The biggest deterrent for the east-west migratory subset of species homo sapiens is a lack of niche habitat in San Francisco. While a unique western habitat like San Francisco offers much “to do” for the migrating easterner, the difficulty has been ingratiation with local population. Repeatedly, the search is for “common ground.”

On a steamy Sunday afternoon bird walk along Land’s End, this is how the ecologists were rapping — about pigeon guillemots and oystercatchers, and not bereft New Englanders. But during the three hour tour from Suttro Baths along the cliffs toward China Beach, the crowd of twenty or so had a chance to get pretty chummy. My own recent migration from east to west has left me looking for a niche, and I felt a bit at home with this pack of ornithologists. I am not a bird nerd, but in my past life I spent some serious QT with researchers on an offshore island so I can at least feign binocular interest. Mostly I was there to hear what the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy has planned for the area. Within the 49 square miles of San Francisco, there are 41 natural areas, some as well-known and loved as the Presidio, and others as small and locally cherished as Kite Hill. They are all considered potential habitats where a coyote, a California Quail, or a native live oak could find a home, and a human could find a place to connect with the wilder aspects of the city. Much of that area has been invaded by non-native species like eucalyptus, nasturtium, feral cats, and pet dogs, and on Wednesday, July 26, the Recreation and Parks Department will be holding a special meeting to decide how to proceed with protecting these areas. There’s been a lot of controversy between dog owners and native species advocates, and this is something of a final showdown between the two factions, so it should be interesting to see how the commission decides.

-Amanda Witherell
amanda@sfbg.com