Nature

Breaking the chains

96

steve@sfbg.com

San Franciscans have always been wary of chain stores, more so than residents of any other major US city, none of which have taken on the ever-expanding national corporations and their homogenizing impact on local communities as strongly as San Francisco.

In the decade since San Francisco first adopted trail-blazing controls on what it calls “formula retail” businesses, those restrictions have only gotten tighter for various commercial districts around the city as elected supervisors seek to prevent big companies from taking over key storefronts from local shopkeepers.

But now, as the Planning Department and Mayor’s Office push a new set of formula retail regulations that they say standardizes and expands the analysis and controls for chain stores throughout the city, neighborhood groups and small business advocates are decrying aspects of the proposal that actually weaken those controls.

Most controversial is the proposal to almost double the number of outlets that a company can have before it is considered a formula retail business, going from up to 11 stores now up to 20 under the proposal, which was approved by the Small Business Commission last week and heads to the Planning Commission next month.

Opposition is particularly strong in North Beach, one of two neighborhood commercial districts that have an outright ban on formula retail business (Hayes Valley is the other) and where residents are organizing to fight the proposal at the Board of Supervisors and at the ballot if necessary.

“The Planning Department proposal to redefine what a chain store is flies in the face of the voters’ will and 10 years of successful chain store policy,” Aaron Peskin, the former Board of Supervisors president from North Beach who sponsored the ordinance banning chains there, told the Guardian.

The citywide voters he refers to are those who approved Prop. G by a wide margin in 2006, defining formula retail business as having 11 or more outlets with common branding and merchandise and requiring that they obtain a conditional use permit before opening in most neighborhood commercial districts, thus giving local residents a vehicle to stop those projects.

Although Prop. G allows the city to update its standards and definitions regarding formula retail, Peskin and others said throwing out the negotiated number of 11 outlets undercuts “the fundamental underpinning of the formula retail controls.”

The Planning Department proposal also does nothing to prevent big national chains from creating spin-offs to circumvent the controls, a growing trend that raised controversy in the last few years, including when Gap subsidiary Athleta opened a store on Fillmore Street and when Liz Claiborne owner Fifth & Pacific Companies tried to open a Jack Spade store in the Mission District.

Those two controversial provisions in the Planning Department proposal aren’t in rival legislation by Sup. Eric Mar, who has long been a champion of expanding controls on chain stores. Both the Mar and Planning Department legislation will go before the Planning Commission on July 17, and they could be either merged or move forward as rival proposals.

“We’re hoping this legislation moves forward as quickly as we can,” Mar told us. “We’re losing neighborhood character in many areas.”

 

WEAK LINKS

For all the indignant opposition to the Planning Department proposal expressed at the June 9 Small Business Commission meeting, where mayoral appointees led that body’s 4-2 vote approving the measure, the planners who developed it say they’re actually trying to expand the controls on chain stores.

Senior Policy Advisor AnMarie Rodgers and Project Manager Kanishka Burns sat down with the Guardian to go through details of the proposal and a May study it was based on, “San Francisco Formula Retail Economic Analysis,” by Strategic Economics, as well as an earlier study by the Controller’s Office.

“Our department is super committed to encouraging the diversity of neighborhood commercial districts,” Rodgers told us, acknowledging that small businesses often need protection from deep-pocketed corporations that can pay higher rents and enjoy other competitive advantages over mom-and-pop stores.

Rodgers cited studies showing that local small businesses circulate more of their revenues in the city than big chains, boosting the local economy. That’s one reason why the Planning Department proposal expands formula retail controls to include the categories business and professional services (including Kinko’s and H&R Block), limited financial services (including street front ATMs and small banking outlets), and fringe financial (such as check-cashing and payday loan outlets).

The new controls would also count a company’s outlets in other countries and locations that have been leased but not yet opened, it would expand some of the neighborhoods subject to formula retail controls, and it would require formula retail businesses to minimize their signage on the street, improve their pedestrian access, and fund more detailed analysis on their impacts on the local economy. Big box stores, in particular, would be required to submit to even more detailed economic impact studies.

Many of these same provisions are included in the Mar legislation, which also goes further in including gyms, gas stations, smoke shops, strip clubs, massage establishments, and various automotive businesses under the formula retail controls. Like the Planning Department measure, Mar’s also requires more data for formula retail applicants.

“We want to make chains fund economic impact statements before they go into the neighborhoods,” Mar said, noting how those studies will allow city officials to make better decisions about whether to approve formula retail applications.

Stacy Mitchell is the senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization that has been working with San Francisco on its formula retail controls since their inception. She applauds the city’s current efforts to create more comprehensive guidelines and to require more economic analysis.

“San Francisco doesn’t have a good mechanism for fully evaluating the economic impact of these proposals,” Mitchell told us, calling the Planning Department and Mar efforts “a really good place to start the conversation.”

But Mitchell said that she doesn’t want to weigh in on what specific number of outlets may be right, saying city officials just need to decide, “What is the right balance and mix and how do we want to handle it?”

Rodgers told us the Planning Department legislation will expand the number of businesses that fall under formula retail controls, even as the threshold is raised to 20 outlets, although she couldn’t quantify exactly how much.

But critics are focusing on aspects of the proposal that loosen current restrictions, noting how that cuts against the trend in recent years of supervisors seeking to tighten restrictions in their districts, creating a hodgepodge of legislation that the Planning Department was trying to overcome with comprehensive new legislation.

 

WHAT’S A CHAIN?

The Planning Department’s new threshold and the arguments being made to support it rely heavily on making the case that three specific homegrown companies should be excluded from formula retail protections: Philz Coffee (with 14 stores), Lee’s Deli (13 outlets), and San Francisco Soup Company (16 locations).

“Right now, we would treat Philz the same way we treat Starbucks,” Burns said, noting that Starbucks has more than 20,000 outlets.

“Can’t you cut a break to the businesses that started here?” was a question that Rodgers says helped shape development on the regulations. The Strategic study found that about 5 percent of the retail establishments in the city had 11 to 20 outlets, while another 4 percent had 21-50 outlets. “We’re just trying to find the sweet spot.”

Yet Peskin said the change doesn’t make sense, and it’s just a way to give special treatment to a handful of local companies with political connections, and which have more resources to go through the conditional use process than a true small business.

“They’re basically finding another way to satisfy San Francisco Soup Company, a stalwart member of the Chamber of Commerce,” Peskin said.

Asked how she can seemingly circumvent the will of the voters, Rodgers told us, “It was a voter initiative, but it says the Planning Commission will establish further details.” In fact, Prop. G simply relies on the formula retail definitions that had already been adopted by ordinance started with a measure by then-President Matt Gonzalez in 2004.

But Peskin said the proposal to increase the threshold to 20 is an affront to popular local controls on chain stores, one that has little chance of becoming law.

“I don’t think the Board of Supervisors is crazy enough to go and undo one of the most successful pieces of legislation from the early part of this century. And if they do, then the voters won’t stand for it,” Peskin said, pledging to personally work on the campaign to protect existing formula retail controls.

Mar also said he will defend the current threshold. “The 11 that was written into the legislation was the result of a compromise,” Mar said, noting that Gonzalez initially placed the threshold at four stores and compromised with the business community on 11. “We’re going to do our best to work with our coalition to hold it to 11.”

 

CORPORATE CONTROL

Mar was also critical of the Planning Department proposal for not looking at corporate ownership of subsidiaries, something that his legislation does, stating that companies with a 50 percent or more ownership stake in an outlet get included in the formula retail designation.

“Our proposal has been attacked by people who think we’re over-regulating and those who think we’re under-regulating,” Rodgers told us.

Yet as the June 9 Small Business Commission hearing made clear, supporters of the proposal predictably came from the same business groups that have opposed formula retail controls from the very beginning: San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, San Francisco Association of Realtors, and San Francisco Building Owners and Managers Association.

Representatives from each of those three groups were the only people who spoke in favor of the proposal, each of them declaring it a “balanced” and “data-driven” compromise that they support, even as they argued for loosening the restrictions even more. But the vast majority of speakers were neighborhood activists critical of the proposal.

“Going from 11 to 20 makes no sense at all. Who picked out this number?” Susan Landry, owner of Animal Connection in the Marina District, told the commission. “Please have a conscience and vote for independent businesses.”

But Small Business Commissioner Kathleen Dooley said the vote was just the latest example of a commission stacked with mayoral appointees (including two bankers) doing the bidding of downtown rather than advocating for small business interests.

“Nine supervisors have tightened up the restrictions in their districts, but the Planning Department has gone the opposite way,” Dooley told us. “The irony was it all started with the protests [of chain applicants skirting local controls], but the Planning Department turned it on its head to loosen the restrictions.”

Yet the planners involved on the proposal call that a simplistic view that discounts the comprehensive nature of the new policy, which they say could serve as a model for other cities.

“I think they’ll all catch up to us,” Rodgers said of the other big US cities that have become to explore formula retail controls as local small businesses struggle against competition from chain stores. “We are a national leader on this and we want to get it right.”

Mitchell agreed: “There are lots of conversations going on around the country about how to meet this challenge, and people are watching what San Francisco does.”

Gimme 5: Must-see shows this week

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Happy Monday, y’all. I know, it’s rough. I hope at the very least that your weekend was better than this guy’s.

If not, don’t despair! Here are some rad shows to look forward to this week from the Bay Guardian team. As the late great Casey Kasem (aka Shaggy) would say, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars. Keep your friends close, and your pizza closer. (Okay, that second part’s just me.)

WED/18

Zara McFarlane
You’ve got to be plenty ballsy to venture a cover of “Police and Thieves,” the immortal 1976 reggae track by Junior Murvin (produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry, no less) and transformed into a rock classic by the Clash on their debut 1977 album. But this fascinating Jamaican-British singer’s version, a hypnotic cabaret-jazz version floated by a voice clear as a bell, earns the praise heaped upon it. Included on McFarlane’s new album, If You Knew Her, “a tribute to women, from the alpha female to the housewife,” it puts a feminist spin on the spooky lyrics that decry “scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition, from Genesis to Revelation.” With her classic poise and lucid style (Roberta Flack springs to mind), it’s easy to see why global soul guru Gilles Peterson snagged McFarlane quick for his Brownswood label — Marke B.

8pm, $18 advance
Yoshi’s SF
1330 Fillmore, SF.
(415) 655-5600
www.yoshis.com

THU/19

mewithoutYou
Ten years ago Philadelphia’s experimental post-hardcore outfit mewithoutYou released their sophomore album Catch For Us the Foxes. Now, a decade and three albums later, Foxes is still a beloved fan favorite and the defining album of mewithoutYou’s lyrically rich and musically unique career. The album, which borrows its name directly from the Song of Songs, tackles the band’s usual themes of spirituality, nature, and literature in their trademarked spoken (well, shouted)-word vocals over beautifully melancholy, churning instrumentals. In honor of the record’s tenth birthday, mewithoutYou will be playing the entire record front to back, followed by a set taken from the rest of their catalog. — Haley Zaremba

With The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Dark Rooms
8pm, $16
Slim’s
333 11th St, SF
(415) 255-0333
www.slimspresents.com

FRI/20

Dean Wareham
While his sharp tenor has gotten a bit lower and his hair is noticeably grayer than it was during his days fronting Galaxie 500, Dean Wareham has remained astonishingly consistent since his burst onto the burgeoning indie rock scene almost 30 years ago. His eclectic and minimalist guitar work and profoundly detached lyrics are on display once again on his eponymous first solo album, which came out in March. To celebrate the occasion, Wareham has embarked on a tour of intimate venus along with his stellar four-piece band. Wareham’s wife and frequent collaborator Britta Phillips, who was an instrumental creative force in Wareham’s post-Galaxie 500 group Luna and on several duet albums since, will also perform with the group. The Chapel, with a capacity of a few hundred, provides the perfect venue to examine Wareham’s instrumental and emotional subtlety a set that he has promised will include tracks from throughout his career. — David Kurlander

9pm, $20
The Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
(415) 551-5157
www.thechapelsf.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSIe4eGaT0M

SAT/21

Nightmares on Wax
With a career that now spans two and a half decades, producer George Evelyn (aka DJ E.A.S.E., aka Nightmares on Wax) is credited with being among the first to merge early New York hip-hop with the British B-boy and graffiti scenes of the ’80s, forming what would come to be known as trip-hop. Work with greats like De La Soul followed, but Evelyn has evolved with the times — he’s still considered a go-to inspiration and dream collaborator for today’s up-and-coming hip-hop, dub, and funk hopefuls. He also just released a two-disc “best of,” N.O.W. Is the Time, so this show should be a good time to time-travel a bit — while dancing your ass off, of course.
 

With Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist
9pm, $22-$25
Regency Ballroom
1300 Van Ness, SF
www.theregencyballroom.com

SUN/22

Allah-Las
Fresh from an appearance at Hickey Fest in up in Medocino County, the psych-garage quartet will bring their grooved out, British Invasion-influenced swagger to the stage at GAMH. It makes sense that three of four Allah-Las members met while working at Amoeba in LA; their sound comes off like they’ve absorbed the entirety of the ’60s soul and pop sections of a record store, thrown in a healthy handful of ’70s psychedelia and surf-rock, mixed them all together, and now can’t help but have the dark-tinged, dreamy result basically leaking out their musical pores. It doesn’t hurt that lead singer Miles Michaud channels Jim Morrison eerily well (in vocal tone, hopefully not in recreational drugs of choice).
 

With Dream Boys, Old Testament
8pm, $16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com


Tropical impressions

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cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM We’re neck-deep in local film festival season right now — which, yeah, is kind of 12 months out of the year around here, but the SF Silent Film and Green Film festivals just ended, DocFest is underway, and Frameline starts June 19 — but there are plenty of reasons to carve out time for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ outstanding New Filipino Cinema mini-fest this weekend.

A big one is opening-night selection How to Disappear Completely; director Raya Martin, a bright light in the Philippines’ burgeoning indie film scene, will appear in person at the screening. This is a good thing, since Disappear is a bit of a head-scratcher, but in a commendable way — part coming-of-age drama, part dreamy puzzle, part old-school exploitation flick (I can’t be the only viewer who sees Martin’s shot of someone pawing through a pot full of intestines and immediately thinks of Herschell Gordon Lewis). Martin told the Philippine Star that Disappear was partially inspired by 1980s American horror filmmakers like Wes Craven, and there are fragments of 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street lurking in this tale of a troubled tomboy (Ness Roque) whose vibrations of high-tension fear conjure a sinister spirit only she can see. This, on top of threats both natural — her island home is dark and lush, with nature’s stormy menace permeating every frame — and domestic: “You think the road home is safe? No one will hear you when you scream,” snarls her mother, who has a bit of Carrie White’s Bible-thumping mama in her.

Mom’s not even the biggest issue, though — that’d be the girl’s drunk, leering father (Noni Buencamino, one of the country’s most acclaimed actors — along with his wife, Shamaine Buencamino, who plays his wife in Disappear), who lurches around with a loaded shotgun and spends all his money betting on cockfights. Aside from its more experimental sequences, which are set to a buzzing electronic soundtrack (and thankfully, no Radiohead), Disappear‘s deliberately loose narrative pivots around strained dinner-table conversations among this dangerously dysfunctional family. Most of the longer passages of dialogue take the form of recitations: Bible stories (Lot and his daughters get a thematically appropriate shout out); folklore (a surprisingly funny tale involving a royal chicken); and a school recital on Filipino history, in which the young heroine plays a gun and her classmates, portraying vengeful villagers, warn the parent-filled audience: “We are going to hunt you down!”

Disappear‘s title card appears a full hour in, or nearly at the end of this 79-minute tale; it’s a blazing beacon in a film otherwise dominated by water imagery. Things only get bleaker, more surreal, and more shockingly violent from there. “If you’re wondering why we’re making such a fuss about new Filipino cinema, this is a great place to start,” explain series co-programmers Joel Shepard and Philbert Ortiz Dy in their program notes.

A far sunnier view of youth in the Philippines emerges in Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo’s Anita’s Last Cha-Cha, also about a tomboy, whose coming-of-age through first love begs the question why this film isn’t called Anita’s First Cha-Cha instead. Anita is 12 and not ready to embrace puberty, despite her widowed mother’s best efforts to dress her up like a princess for the community’s annual fertility festival. This all changes when she catches sight of long-limbed lovely Pilar, the former town beauty who’s returned after a stint studying physical therapy abroad. As Pilar sets up a massage practice in her house (not surprisingly, the local men line up for appointments), Anita begins spending all of her time daydreaming about the older woman.

Of course, her fantasy girlfriend — who has a tortured romantic past with Anita’s age-appropriate male cousin — is just that, and the two become allies as the story takes a melodramatic turn. Writer-director Bernardo will attend the screening in person to discuss her feature debut.

Probably the most high-profile entry in the YBCA series is Sean Ellis’ urban thriller Metro Manila, which won an Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the top prize at that year’s British Independent Film Awards. Ellis is a Brit, but Metro Manila is acted (splendidly) by an all-Filipino cast. After a meager harvest, naïve farmer Oscar (Jake Macapagal) convinces his wife, Mai (Althea Vega), to move with their small children to the big city in search of work. But the grimy metropolis proves a dangerous place, and what’s essentially a predictable tale of country-bumpkin-learns-a-hard-lesson-on-the-mean-streets is elevated by a ruthlessly desperate tone and a killer performance by John Arcilla (as Oscar’s shifty new co-worker). Even better: a couple of clever last-act twists that shake up the story’s seemingly inevitable arc.

These three films are just a surface glimpse of what New Filipino Cinema has in store. Closing night’s screening of Brillante Mendoza’s Thy Womb, starring veteran superstar Nora Aunor, is already sold out, but fret not: The film, the much-praised latest from the director of 2009’s controversial Kinatay, returns to the YBCA for its own engagement June 26-29. Also screening post-fest is Lav Diaz’s acclaimed Norte, The End of History (June 19-20), a 250-minute epic inspired by Crime and Punishment. *

NEW FILIPINO CINEMA

Wed/11-Sun/15, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

Drought legislation would undermine endangered species protection

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By Mike Lynes

OPINION California’s ongoing drought has brought hardship to nearly every corner of the state, but the Central Valley has been ground zero. Communities are struggling just to fill their taps, farmers are letting fields go unplanted, and dry conditions are decimating habitat for birds and other wildlife.

Clearly, our elected leaders need to pull together, put aside political agendas, and take steps to minimize harm from the drought by improving how we manage our water in California. Sadly, some have chosen to exploit the crisis for political points rather than find reasonable solutions.

As you read this, negotiations are just getting started between backers of drought relief bills from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. These will be difficult negotiations, as each piece of legislation contains an entirely different vision of a future California. We can only hope that common sense prevails.

Earlier this year, several members of the House of Representatives descended on the Central Valley for a series of press conferences at which they blamed the water shortages on environmental protections that placed fish before farmers and habitat before crops. They then returned to Washington and passed a drought relief bill, authored by Rep. David Valadao [R-CA21], which would override the Endangered Species Act, suspend the San Joaquin River Restoration efforts, and divert critically important water from the 19 Central Valley wildlife refuges.

Efforts like endangered species protection, water for the wildlife refuges, and the San Joaquin River Restoration settlement became necessary only after decades of habitat destruction due to water diversions that resulted in the loss of more than 90 percent of the Central Valley’s wetlands and riparian habitats. The changes in California’s water system to benefit cities and farms has resulted in population declines in more than 80 percent of California’s native fish species while migratory shorebirds and waterfowl populations have also endured significant declines.

Drought legislation should not make it even harder to hold on to our last remnants of habitat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed legislation for drought relief without gutting environmental protections. While the version of Feinstein’s bill that recently passed the Senate no longer has provisions to actively help birds and habitat that it initially had, it nonetheless preserves several essential environmental protections.

Some in the House are vowing to ensure that any drought legislation will include Valadao’s provisions to gut the Endangered Species Act and disregard management of wildlife and habitat. This effort is really just the same they have made for years under the guise of “drought relief.” It’s cynical opportunism to serve a particular special interest. If successful, this policy shift will have long-term negative impacts without providing any real relief to farmers.

We are already seeing the biological impacts of the drought. Just last week, a report from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife showed a 20 percent decline in the number of breeding mallards over last year. While the survey showed that the total number of breeding ducks was only slightly slower — 448,750, compared to 451,300 last year — this year’s number is nonetheless 23 percent below the long-term average. Department officials cited the degradation of Central Valley habitat due to the ongoing drought as the cause. We’ve seen similar declines in breeding efforts in other birds as well, including pelicans, hawks, and owls.

Hardship due to the drought hasn’t been caused by the Endangered Species Act or the small amounts of water that go to Central Valley wildlife refuges. It’s been caused by an inadequate water infrastructure, decades of poor management worsened by California’s byzantine water laws and policies, and, of course, Mother Nature herself.

The smarter way forward is for the House to adopt Feinstein’s bill without playing political games with the Endangered Species Act, Central Valley wildlife refuges, or the San Joaquin River restoration.

The House’s version of drought legislation will only divide the various interests in the Central Valley, pitting one beneficial use against another, at a time when we need unity and sound, sustainable policy.

We hope that Feinstein will hold firm against that House resolution’s supporters.

Mike Lynes is the Public Policy Director for Audubon California

 

The Selector June 11-17, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 11

Luke Sweeney

“Miss Me?” Luke Sweeney asks in the lead track from his forthcoming album Adventure:Us, and in response I’d probably deny, avoid eye contact, but then demurely say, “Um…maybe a li’l bit.” Truth be told I’ve been quite won over by the album, maybe because of the apparent shared affectation for Mark Bolan’s swinging shuffle, George Harrison’s weepsy guitar, Jeff Tweedy’s pop twang, and a little bit of Question Mark and the Mysterians mysterious…something or other. Now Sweeney is returning to SF from a California tour with a homecoming show at Monarch (of all places.) Luke, please don’t leave us like that again. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Farallons, Tidelands

9pm, $5 – $8

Monarch

101 6th St, SF

(415) 284-9774

www.monarchsf.com

 

 

 

Guided By Voices

Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard is one of the most insanely prolific songwriters in rock history. Since its inception in 1983 in Dayton, Ohio, Guided By Voices has released 22 studio albums, 17 EPs, and 39 singles. Each of these records contains around 20 songs, most hovering around the one-minute mark. Within these little vignettes of genius (read: insanity) Pollard explores surrealist narratives, charmingly compact and catchy melodies, and genuine emotional impact. 30 years into their career, GBV play hard, drink hard, and make much younger rockers look washed-up and tame. The band also rarely tours, so don’t miss tonight’s show. There’s no knowing what they’ll play, but it’s going to be a night to remember. (Haley Zaremba)

With Bobby Bare, Jr.

8pm, $38

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

THURSDAY 12

 

San Francisco Black Film Festival

At a time when cultural landmarks like Marcus Books are being evicted from the historic Fillmore district, this festival, which celebrates African-American contributions to cinema, might strike a more poignant tone than ever before. Now in its 16th year, the three-day fest aims to present films that “reinforce positive images and dispel negative stereotypes” and connect Black filmmakers from around the Bay Area and beyond. This opening evening features the Life of King, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Eugene Brown, who turned his life around after 18 years in prison, funneling his passion for chess into a way to help inner-city youth in Washington, D.C. (Emma Silvers)

Through Sun/15

Prices and showtimes vary, see website for details

Jazz Heritage Center

1320 Fillmore, SF

www.sfbff.org

 

 

FRIDAY 13

 

Alice Glass

Alice Glass is one of the most dynamic frontpeople in the music industry. Half of Toronto’s infamous electro-duo Crystal Castles, Glass’ clear, piercing voice and fiercely frenetic stage presence make her a stunning vocalist and onstage force of nature. Hard-partying and un-compromising, Glass is a born performer, commanding arenas and collecting a following of cult-like fans with ease. Since she ran away at 14 to join a punk squat, fronting an all-girl crust-punk band called Fetus Fatale, Glass has been making a name for herself as a skilled musician and magnetic personality. Combining punk and hardcore aesthetics with harshly catchy electronics, Glass’ music is a unique concoction that will make you dance your ass off. (Zaremba)

With Sad Andy, 28 Mansions, We Are Isis (side room)

10pm, $17.50

1015 Folsom, SF

(415) 431-1200

www.1015.com

 

 

 

Hayes Carll & Bob Schneider

“The World’s Greatest Living Songwriters of All Time” is a pretty cocky name for a tour, but this team delivers. Both singer-songwriters from the state of Texas, Carll and Schneider are performing together for the first time in their careers. Carll, from just outside of Houston, has been lauded as a modern songwriting heavyweight among the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Carl’s songs sound timeless, although his content speaks to a modern world. Bob Schneider has been making music in Austin for decades with various bands: Joe Rockhead, the Scabs, Ugly Americans. Schneider’s output reaches across pop, rock, folk, and country, while his uncensored songwriting has some labeling his music “adult alternative.” This is a show songwriters can’t miss.

8pm, $21

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

 

#MyGreatCat Pop-Up Photo Gallery

You’d be lying if you said you’ve never been victim of the Internet black hole dedicated to cats. There’s no denying that the world wide web is the best thing to have happened to our pets. Take a look at the @Cats_of_Instagram account and you’ll find 1.4 million people who are just like you! From the silly to the cuddly to the serious, these fuzzy fellows have a wide range of adorable emotions, which is why @Cats_of_Instagram are hosting a pop-up photo gallery in the middle of Union Square for your viewing pleasure. “What’s so great about a cat” is the theme of the exhibition. Last month, Instagram users were encouraged to post photos and the hashtag #MyGreatCat for a chance to be part of the exhibit. Photos by teenage pet photographer Jessica Trinh will also be on display and the founders of @Cats_of_Instagram will be at the event too. Cat lovers unite for a heart-warming night that (you’ve been warned) may leave you melted into a pile of goo. (Laura B. Childs)

11am-7pm, free

Union Square, SF

www.catsofinstagram.com

 

SATURDAY 14

 

Queer Women of Color Film Festival

Now in its tenth year, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival kicks off Pride Month with 32 short films, all of which are captioned for the benefit of deaf and hearing-impaired audience members — a presentation choice that reflects the festival’s quest to empower (and entertain) its diverse community. Standout programs include the doc-heavy “Seeds of Resistance,” spotlighting themes of cultivation and community organizing; “Girl Power!,” with films celebrating the younger generation; and a panel discussion with queer cinema pioneers Cheryl Dunye and Madeleine Lim on “the art and transformative power of film.” (Cheryl Eddy)

Starts Fri/13, through Sun/15, free ($5-$10 suggested donation)

Brava Theater Center

2789 24th St, SF

www.qwocmap.org

 

 

Phuture

Commercially, the Roland TB-303 was discontinued in ’84. Should have been obsolete, but when a trio from Chicago got their hands on the bass synthesizer the next year, they discovered something else: the sound of the future. On Phuture’s seminal “Acid Tracks” the overdriven sound that gave birth to acid house is unmistakable. Perhaps feeling the impact of their legacy on music more than ever, original members DJ Pierre and Spanky (along with Lothario “Rio” Lee) are prepping a new album and performing together again, on a tour that brings them from a recent gig at the Sydney Opera House to Sunset’s annual picturesque bayside “electronic music picnic.” (Ryan Prendiville)

With Kyle Hall, Beautiful Swimmers, Awesome Tapes from Africa, J-Boogie, Galen, Solar, J-Bird

Noon-9:30pm, $20 – $30

Great Lawn, Treasure Island

www.sunsetmusicelectric.com

 

SUNDAY 15

 

Buzz Osborne

Having earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the heaviest purveyors of down-tuned, sludgy rock as the leader of The Melvins, Buzz Osborne likely turned some heads when he announced he was putting out an acoustic album. That release, This Machine Kills Artists (Ipecac Recordings), which hit stores earlier this month, isn’t as much of a departure as one might think, however — songs like “Dark Brown Teeth” aren’t fluffy folk, they’re still vintage Osborne. When Nirvana thanked him at their Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction, it was for good reason; he helped shape the sound that defined hard rock in the early ’90s, and he continues to do so today. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

MONDAY 16

Tupac Birthday Celebration

Tupac Shakur lives on — in holograms, in our hearts, and tonight, at the Elbo Room. In honor of what would have been the late rapper’s 43rd birthday, the club is hosting a birthday party featuring the music of Tupac and other special guests, hosted by Bay Area rapper/activist/event producer Sellassie. Enjoy the moving and eloquent music Shakur left behind and celebrate the impact he still has on hip-hop and culture today. (Childs)

9pm, $5

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

TUESDAY 17


Yann Tiersen

Yann Tiersen wants you to know that he is more than just composer of film soundtracks. Perhaps best known for his musical score for the french film Amélie, the Breton musician’s passion lies in touring and recording studio albums. His music just happens to fit seamlessly into films. Though renowned in France for his studio albums, Tiersen remains mostly known as the guy who created the magical accordion and piano driven tunes that fuel Amélie’s imaginative adventures. However, tonight at the Regency Ballroom, Tiersen will play from his own albums, his most recent, “Ï” (aka Infinity) in particular. Those expecting a classical performance will be sorely disappointed. Heavily influenced by punk music, Tiersen’s minimalist tracks range from noisy to melancholic with his five-piece band. The musical influence of each of his nine album varies greatly, but his musical style simple and recognizable. With each album, he shows a new facet to his talent, proving that he is so much more than an orchestral composer. (Childs)

8pm, $25

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Still hungry

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER A figure wanders into the void — a pristine wooden stage, that is, pinpointed by four delicate weights hovering pendulum-like at the corners, alive to the slightest ripple of air. In the back, behind a scrim and awash in crepuscular light, a large and blooming tree floats exquisitely in space. For the wanderer, the time (if such a thing can be said to exist here) is ripe. “This must be bardo, then,” thinks the ghost. “I’m cool with that. I was beginning to think I’d live forever.”

The bardo, the in-between state between one life and another in the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation, affects different people in different ways — our wanderer is only one of 28 characters we come across — but throughout New York playwright Chiori Miyagawa’s witty, dreamy, and discerning Bay Area debut, the bardo becomes a supreme vantage on a reality burdened by desire and that transubstantial baggage known as karma.

Now enjoying a splendid world premiere (in a limited two-week run) as part of Theatre of Yugen’s 35th anniversary season, Miyagawa’s This Lingering Life freely adapts nine 14th-century Noh plays, infusing them with a decidedly present-day sensibility. Under artistic director Jubilith Moore’s expert touch, the production amounts to an exceptional blend of modern Western dramatic style and traditional Noh influences. And at its best, it strikes one as some of the more contemporary theater around.

Miyagawa’s astute grasp of the human comedy of living and dying does not always translate with equal force across the various plots — which include, for instance, a mad woman’s desperate search for her abducted son; a Romeo and Juliet–like tragedy involving two drowned lovers; the suicide of an old man who falls in love with a spoiled young princess; and the fallout between a rich father and his disinherited son, in which the impoverished younger man goes blind but ultimately grows wiser than his father. Nevertheless, the majority of the scenes (underscored by a transporting sound design from Michael Gardiner, sitting with laptop offstage right) are remarkably successful, and cumulatively powerful as characters rub shoulders in the afterlife.

Moreover, the nine-member ensemble (composed of Theatre of Yugen’s Moore, Sheila Berotti, Sheila Devitt, Alexander Lydon, Norman Munoz, and Lluis Valls; joined here by Nick Ishimaru, Hannah Lennett, and Ryan Marchand) does fine work running the gamut of earthbound emotions, from visceral anguish to driving lust and petty cruelty, while freely trading genders too in a hint of the promiscuous cycle of rebirth. Particularly fine comedic performances make the most of the playwright’s hilariously down-to-earth dialogue, while expert Noh-inflected vocal modulations and movement add a frisson to decisive moments.

San Francisco’s dedicated practitioners of classical Noh and Kyogen styles, Theatre of Yugen has long been adept at channeling Western stories in these ancient Japanese dramatic forms, setting them in a highly ritualized context that can set off their content with surprising intensity. In fact, Yugen (which takes its name from the Japanese word meaning “mysterious elegance”) led off its anniversary season last November with a Noh-inspired staging of an enduring American tragedy and Civil Rights Era–case: a beautifully composed, movingly effective meditation entitled Emmett Till, a river. The hour-long poetical-musical treatment by co-writer Judy Halebsky and lead writer and composer Kevin Simmonds not only explored the role of individual action, or inaction, in the perpetuation of systemic racism, but also opened up a space for reflection, communion, and an unsettled yet pointed act of reconciliation with the past.

This Lingering Life in a way takes the opposite tack, and thus is something of a departure for the company, since it mines the contemporary in a Westernized, interlocking set of ancient Japanese stories — supporting it all with a few choice elements of the Noh aesthetic. The hybrid creation, spread over 24 scenes, retains a Buddhist worldview, however, in which a person’s actions in one life determine the nature of the next. This lends a particular moral force to what we see, including an abiding sympathy with the dead that is both affecting and thought provoking. But, as the play suggests, karma is not always destiny. In the in-between space of the bardo, clarity and free will can penetrate the hazy sleepwalking of existence, and even fate can be renegotiated.

THIS LINGERING LIFE

Wed/11-Thu/12, 7pm; Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm, $15-50

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

www.theatreofyugen.org

This Week’s Picks: June 4 – 10, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 4

 

 

‘Mr. Irresistible’

Multifaceted showman and irrepressible art-dragster D’Arcy Drollinger, the brains and falsies behind such contemporary camp classics as Shit & Champagne and Sex and the City Live!, is poised to deliver on his biggest project since Project: Lohan, or even 2010’s cutting-edge Scalpel!: A sci-fi musical comedy about love and robots and office work entitled Mr. Irresistible. First produced in workshop form last year at New York’s La Mama E.T.C., the Aesop-inspired story of unpopular Eileen Morchinsky and her titular mechanical friend (purchased from a magazine ad and destined to turn her life right around) sails into the fairly exotic Alcazar Theatre for a limited run, aloft on a score by Christopher Winslow, book and lyrics by Drollinger, and some big-wig talent. (Robert Avila)

Through June 8, 8pm; Sun. 7pm only, $25

Alcatraz Theatre

650 Geary, SF

(415) 766-4588

www.mrirresistiblemusical.com

 

 

The Damned

Remember, kid: Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Yes, we’re talking about THE Damned. Formed in 1976, The Damned were the first punk band in the UK to release a single, a record, or tour the United States. They cut their teeth opening for bands like the Sex Pistols and T. Rex, and are still going strong. Not only were they punk rock pioneers, they also were some of the frontrunners of the goth scene in the ’80s, and now, nearly into their fourth decade, The Damned are still going strong. With an ever-changing lineup and an incredible repertoire of revolutionary tunes, these dudes are incredible at evolving and even better at performing. They’re not to be missed tonight at Slim’s. (Haley Zaremba)

With Koffin Kats, Stellar Corpses

9pm, $30

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 225-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

THURSDAY 5

 

 

XV: St. James Infirmary 15-Year Anniversary Party

Lost in the outpouring of accolades in the wake of the great Maya Angelou’s passing last week was her crucial time as a sex worker, which she chronicled, unashamed, in her 1974 book Gather Together in My Name. It’s indicative of the stigma sex workers still face when even the well-documented past of the nation’s literary godmother is scrubbed free of any reference. San Francisco’s own groundbreaking St. James Infirmary, the first occupational safety and health clinic for sex workers in the United States, deals with the damage of that stigma by offering non-judgmental medical and social services. The organization also knows how to celebrate: This huge party and fundraiser boasts one of the city’s best house DJs, David Harness, as well as porn-star-turned-DJ Ricky Sinz, movers and shakers from the international sex workers rights movement, sexy pole dancing, a Kink.com demonstration dungeon, and oodles more. The whole joint will be singin’ and swingin’ and getting’ merry like Christmas. (Marke B.)

9pm-3am, $20 ($40 includes free lapdance)

Temple

540 Howard, SF

www.templesf.com

 

 

Urban Air Market Summer Night Block Party

Urban Air Market’s newest addition to its community-enriched neighborhood events around the city begins tonight. Head on over to Fern Alley — a hidden walkway located between Polk and Larkin Streets — for this one-night affair. In partnership with the Lower Polk Art Walk, Urban Air Market is hosting a summer night block party of sustainable art, fashion, food, and live music at this unassuming Tenderloin location. While occasionally occupied by a small farmers’ market, tonight Fern Alley will be bustling with food trucks, henna tattooing, face painting, interactive fashion film installations, live bands, and countless booths from sustainable and local brands: Oaklandish, Synergy Organic Clothing, Indosole, and Skunkfunk USA to name a few. (Laura B. Childs)

6pm, free

Fern Alley (Fern St. between Polk and Larkin St.)

www.urbanairmarket.com

 

 

Nature For Sale

For the past few years, Bolivian-born artist Javier Rocabado has been producing stunning, icon-like portraits of famed gays like RuPaul, early AIDS activists, and local beauties. All these figures have been posed with gold halos against Rocabado’s signature dollar-bill background, glowing with symbolic meaning. (Rocabado paints only the backside of the dollar.) His new series turns to nature: Beautiful bird specimens, frogs, and weeping monkeys take on aspects of holy saints. “I want to point out the universally ridiculous thinking of ‘economics is first’ under Capitalism. Through this new series of paintings, I strive to create images of animals that allow the viewers to experience the false pride in human civilization to conquer nature and profit from it,” he says. Dark spirits of Chevron, BP, and other disaster-fueling multinationals hover at the borders of his exquisite new works, but their sheer gorgeousness radiates hope as well as guilt. (Marke B.)

Through July 1, opening party 8-11pm, free

Public Barber Salon

571 Geary, SF

www.publicbarbersalon.com

 

FRIDAY 6

 

 

 

‘Test’

Test is not great, but it’s a beautiful, honest film that evokes the mid-’80s, when AIDS was ravaging San Francisco’s gay community, a time when a test had become available but no cure was in sight. The film follows a naïve young man’s coming of age (a splendid Scott Marlow of LEVY Dance) as a gay man and as dancer in a local modern dance company. The film excellently captures what it meant living at the edge of uncertainty, when nothing could be taken for granted and yet, despite of it all, everything seemed possible. Test includes extensive and fine dance sequences choreographed by the remarkable Sidra Bell. Fun to see was just how many other local dancers were involved in this small, but big-hearted movie. (Rita Felciano)

Opens June 6, times vary

Presidio Theater

2340 Chestnut, SF

(415) 776-2388

 

Rialto Cinemas Elmwood

2966 College, Berk.

(510) 433-9730

 

 

The Buzzcocks

It must be punk rock royalty week at Slim’s, because just two days after The Damned grace the SoMa stage the Buzzcocks are coming to town. Part of the Holy Trinity that also includes the Clash and the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks are a crucial piece of UK punk history. Bringing the world such killer tunes as “Ever Fallen in Love” and “What Do I Get,” challenging British radio with songs like “Orgasm Addict” and confronting the punk community with an open and serious examination of homosexuality, the Buzzcocks are a tireless and fearless force of nature. Plus, 38 years into their career, they’re still touring regularly and have a new record out this year. Is there anything more punk than refusing to succumb to gray hair or body fat? (Zaremba)

With Doug Gillard, Images

8pm, $35

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 225-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

SATURDAY 7

 

 

Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang

Les Claypool has an amazing eye for weirdness. His band Primus has made a decades-long career out of defying every possible genre classification, wearing monkey masks onstage, and naming their albums things like Pork Soda and Sailing the Seas of Cheese. Now Claypool is going the opposite direction, creating the most minimalist, deconstructed music possible, with one vocal, one bass, one guitar, and one makeshift percussion tool — but don’t worry, it’s still bizarre. In his Duo De Twang, which was originally organized as a one-off for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Claypool teams up with longtime buddy and collaborator Bryan Kehoe to play originals and tasty twang covers (including the Bee Gees and Alice in Chains). The show promises down-to-earth, intimate weirdness, plus seriously incredible musicianship. (Zaremba)

With Reformed Whores

9pm, $38

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

 

tUnE-yArDs

What a difference five years makes: Merrill Garbus moved to the Bay around that time, as word quickly spread about the undeniable force of her musical vision, one that draws from African, folk, and electro-acoustic quarters, and her visceral one-woman performances. Since her maiden tUnE-yArDs outing, BiRd-BrAiNs, she’s put out the album that every critic could agree on in 2011, whokill, which scored her the coveted top spot in that year’s Pazz and Jop poll. Her third full-length, Nikki Nack, takes tUnE-yArDs further, into Garbus’s fascination with Haitian artistic traditions, as she turned to the country’s boula drum to lay the groundwork for the recording’s intoxicating call and response. (Kimberly Chun)

With the Seshen

9pm, $26

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


SUNDAY 8


Silent Frisco Beats on Ocean Beach

Summertime throwdowns are the types of shows the brilliant Silent Frisco have made their niche — take a pristine outdoor environment, add groovin’ music and people, let fun ensue. “Scene Not Heard” as the Silent team puts it. The key to making these public shows possible is ditching speakers and substituting wireless headphones, removing complaint-inducing noise, and leaving the amusingly awesome sight of befuddled onlookers observing limbs gyrating to what appears to be silence. For this event, two channels allow movers and shakers to select from a rotation of California electronic music talent throughout the day. Fresh off touring with The Glitch Mob, Ana Sia will bring big, bouncy, driving bass, while Dutch grandmasters Kraak & Smaak headline with two hours of their lush, disco-tinged sound. (Kevin Lee)

With Kraak & Smaak, Ana Sia, Pumpkin, JLabs, Motion Potion, and more

11am, $20; kids and dogs free (all-ages show)

Ocean Beach Great Highway at Balboa Ave, SF

www.silentfrisco.com


TUESDAY 10


Tom Robbins

“If Tibetan Peach Pie doesn’t read like a normal memoir, that may be because I haven’t exactly led what most normal people would consider a normal life,” forewarns writer Tom Robbins in the preface of his first nonfiction book. With that on readers’ minds, Robbins reflects on his colorful adventures, from an accident laden-youth in Depression-era North Carolina in which his mother dubbed him “Tommy Rotten,” to an established literary career in Washington state. Along the way, Robbins studies the weather in Korea, experiments with acid, embarks on international religious journeys, tangos with Hollywood, and discovers some love. Tibetan Peach Pie‘s 41 succinct tall tales crackle with a Robbins’ rare blend of warmth, wisdom, and wit. (Lee)

In conversation with Isabel Duffy

7:30pm, $27

Nourse Theatre

275 Hayes, SF

(415) 392-4400

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Nature kids

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esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL The words “folk music” conjured only cheesy things for me when I was a young teenager. I liked the standard Bob Dylan songs, Arlo Guthrie‘s “Alice’s Restaurant” at Thanksgiving. But to really give in to wind-blown, ocean- and redwood-shaped singer-songwriter stuff just felt like an impossibility to me: That was the music of my parents’ youth, after all. Joni Mitchell was (is) a great songwriter who made quintessential songs about the West Coast, but I just couldn’t quite get over that mental block of an association. Bring on the three-chord punk or bass-thumping hip-hop; anything but the f-word.

About a decade later, of course, I decided that my parents actually had very good taste (a timeless cycle in and of itself) and that I was being an idiot; folk is of course a very simple word for a very wide, complex umbrella of music. But I was thinking on all this recently when I realized that some of the most interesting music coming out of Northern California right now is music that’s for and about California itself — full of words penned by singer-songwriters who’ve been shaped by the coastline, by hikes up Mt. Tam, by the exhilaration of paddling out into the freezing, cleansing Pacific in a salty wetsuit at Ocean Beach. Call it folk, call it surf-pop: Some 46 years after Joni first sang “Song to a Seagull,” at least 20 years after a lot of us rolled our eyes at the stuff our parents wanted to listen to in the car on a family vacation, the nature kids are taking over — and it’s anything but boring.

“The plan is to go down the coast, strap our surfboards to the roof, and do a show one day, surf the next day, the whole way down,” says singer-guitarist Alexi Glickman enthusiastically, of his upcoming tour with Sandy’s. “We only want to go places with waves.”

Glickman has been writing and performing reverb- and sun-drenched love songs for the California coast — both literally lyrics about it and music that just begs to be played while driving down it — for more than a decade now. At the helm of the Botticellis, SF’s reigning surf-pop darlings from 2004 through 2008, he was responsible for the tightly-crafted, intricately composed nature of the band’s dream-moody pop songs.

That band is no longer, but if the Botticellis had to meet their end to get Glickman to sound like he does now, fronting Sandy’s, fans shouldn’t mourn too hard. Possessed of an immersive, wide open space of sound, the band’s debut album, Fourth Dementia, out June 3 on Um Yeah Arts, is just as thoughtfully arranged, but there’s room to breathe around it, maybe a druggier-end-of-the-Beatles-spectrum vibe, a sweet melancholy and nostalgia around shaping the edges of the surf-happy guitar.

“When the band broke up in 2009, I had some songs I’d been working on that just got shelved,” says Glickman, while on a break from his day job — he teaches music lessons at the Proof Lab Surf Shop up in Marin, and he’s happy to report that he just taught two nine-year-olds how to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on guitar. Following the Botticellis’ demise, faced with the prospect of rebuilding a musical career from scratch, Glickman went out on the road with fellow surfer-musician Kyle Field, aka Little Wings.

“His approach is very different from mine; he writes these poems, basically, and the music is an accompaniment to that. It’s very lyric-centric, and playing in his group each night was this very spontaneous thing,” he says. “The songs were not super-arranged, not ‘Ok, you hit the crash cymbal three times, then the guitar goes like this and we do a jump-kick,’ none of the preciseness I was used to. So every show was different. A lot of the shows were amazing, a few were total shitshows. But that was a way to do things that had never really crossed my mind, and it had a big influence on me.”

He took the songs he’d shelved and rearranged them, playing them with open tuning, all in D major. “Especially when we play live, I think you can see an openness to the sound that’s new for me,” he says. Certainly it’s reassuring, in part, to have familiar folks at his side for that: The Sandy’s album features includes former Botticellis co-writer Blythe Foster, Zack Ehrlich (of Sonny & the Sunsets and Vetiver), Burton Li (Citay), Ryan Browne (Sonny & the Sunsets and Tortured Genie), Apollo Sunshine‘s Jeremy Black, and Range of Light Wilderness‘ Nick Aive.

As for the pervasive sense of melancholy, Glickman acknowledges that Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos — the epically composed folk-power-pop opus by the tortured and underappreciated Big Star songwriter — was on repeat during the year or so after the Botticellis broke up (a time in which Glickman also had a relationship end), during which Glickman was writing these songs.

And yet: “We have a lot of fun at our shows, and I get the sense that the audience comes to shows to smile and have fun, and that’s kinda new for me too,” he says with a laugh. “When I was in my 20s, I had a lot to say and I wanted to make this beautiful music and share this experience with people, but I don’t think anywhere in that experience was the word fun. Now there’s a lighthearted element there.”

Catch Sandy’s at Hickey Fest June 20-22 or at their record release party July 11 at The Mill, which Glickman promises will feature a keg and tacos. Works for me.

ELECTRO-FOREST NYMPH JAMS?

“I think we’re both just naturally more inspired when we can be in nature,” says Emily Ritz, one-half of the psych-folk duo Yesway, who released their self-titled debut June 3. She and bandmate Kacey Johansing, who’ve been moving in musical circles around one another since meeting at the Hotel Utah’s open mic in 2006 (Ritz is in the noir-pop band DRMS, Johansing’s provided vocals for the likes of Geographer, and more recently has enjoyed local success as a solo singer-songwriter) have called from the road — they’re on a mini-tour of the East Coast, with our conversation providing the soundtrack for their drive from Brooklyn to upstate New York.

Though they forged their friendship and musical collaborations in San Francisco, both musicians have since moved to small beach towns in the North Bay, whose lush wilderness and dreamy pace of life unmistakably color songs like “Woahcean” and “Howlin’ Face.” The pair’s voices layer over and call-and-response to one another in unexpected ways over fingerpicked acoustic guitar that flits like light on water; throughout the album, there’s the soothing hush of being surrounded by tall trees as opposed to skyscraper, while electronic elements, vibraphones, odd time signatures, and the odd R&B/hip-hop percussive move keep you wide-awake. This isn’t easy-listening music.

It helps, of course, that they’re strong singers; there’s an easy harmony that feels like they’re letting you in on something. “We do have a really unique musical connection, and I think that comes across to people right away,” says Ritz. “We both have voices that are really different from each other, but they melt together in a way. I think it’s rare to see two front women, two kind of powerhouse vocalists come together, meet each other as equals musically, and create something totally different together.” They’ll headline the Rickshaw Stop June 25, so you can go suss out exactly what that is for yourself.

ALSO: This coming weekend is overwhelmingly packed with good shows, so time to make some decisions. Marcus Cohen & the Congress, who bring their funk-soul-hip-hop-R&B stew to the Great American Music Hall Fri/6, are one option that will not likely disappoint. Last time I saw them live I’m pretty sure no one left without a dancing-tired grin on their face. Check the Noise blog for a conversation with Cohen this week.

Good green: Lessons from the 4th annual SF Green Film Festival

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I can count on my two hands the days it’s rained in San Francisco this year. You’d have to be living in a cave to not know that our city is having its worst drought in decades.

For that reason, the theme of the fourth annual San Francisco Green Film Festival is “Water in the West.” The festival, which began on Thu/29, is pushing us to reevaluate our relationship with water. As our state is faced with its worst drought since 1977, it is imminent that we answer the question on everyone’s minds: What is the future of water in California?

With over 60 films coming from 21 countries, the SFGFF is tackling our complicated relationship with water. Like a river flowing through the week-long festival, six feature films address this issue in varying ways: DamNation, Watermark, Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek, The Great Flood, Lost Rivers, and Chinatown.

Yesterday’s centerpiece film at the Roxie Theater, Watermark, explores humans’ relationship with water, traveling to countries far beyond what most of us have experienced. The film, directed by Canadian documentary filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky, superimposes breathtaking aerial perspectives of water scenes from around the world. Watermark travels to the National Ice Laboratory in Greenland, the disturbing and daunting Xiluodu Dam in China, a heavily-polluted leather tannery in Bangladesh, a pilgrimage of 30 million people bathing in the Ganges river, and a parched, cracked desert in Mexico where the Colorado River used to run wild, among many other beautiful sites.

The film exposes the manifold layers of our water consumption and offers awe-inspiring cinematography but leaves something to be desired. With no narrator and minimal context, the documentary shows rather than tells. It excels visually, but flounders thematically. We see how the world consumes water for farming, for energy, for spiritual and recreational purposes and most importantly for survival but what does it all mean?

The Green Film Festival finds answers with a handful of other films. On Saturday night, Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek was awarded the Green Tenacity Award for capturing the inspiring community fight for environmental justice in Mississippi. Over the weekend, the festival hosted two shorts showcases, several workshops, various panel discussions and nightly feature films, including a special 40th anniversary screening of Chinatown.

The event’s opening ceremony last Thursday night was fittingly held at the Aquarium of the Bay. It’s difficult to process the imminence of climate change with the majestical bay at fingertips length. But the opening night’s feature film DamNation drove the point home. The award winning documentary weaves together the ecological, political, economical and psychological implications of river dams. Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, the 87-minute film tracks the “era of dam removal.”

With nature-drenched cinematography and a candid narrator — co-director Ben Knight who admits in the first five minutes to his embarrassingly minimal knowledge on rivers dams when he signed onto the film — DamNation offers an excellent introduction to how the removal of river dams restore watershed ecosystems, revive fish migrations, improve water quality and the lives of adjacent communities and cultures. “The great beauty about wild fish is we don’t have to do a damned thing for them except leave them the hell alone,” says one of the activists in the film. At the end of the night, DamNation took home a 3-D printed award for Best Feature Film. The festival came full circle with Sunday night’s showing of The Great Flood, a film-music collaboration about the Mississippi River Flood of 1927, a catastrophe that prompted the “era of dams.”

The first leg of the Green Film Festival offered a wide array of perspectives about the green movement. Water is the world’s most precious resource and it affects all environmental issues from food security, healthy kids, and livable cities. The festival continues on with daily panel discussions and films promoting social change. Wednesday night’s Lost Rivers is the final installation of the six-part “Water in the West” theme. “Do you know what is hiding beneath our cities?” the film asks. Lost Rivers retraces history in search for disappeared rivers around the world. The film not only offers insight on how and why most rivers in major cities have disappeared today but also answers the question of whether we will see these rivers again.

Activism is rooted in community. For the fourth year, the Green Film Festival is engaging with the community through discussion and film. The community support in San Francisco is heartening. From the filled theaters to the community organizations who’ve partnered with this event: Earthjustice, American Rivers, Save the Bay, Restore the Delta and many others.

Water is invaluable to our daily lives but we treat water as an inexhaustible resource. The films showcased this week prove that this is not the case. Climate change is imminent and we are at the root of it. We can make a difference through education, engagement, activism, and our vote. And if you’re too lazy to do any of that, why not watch a film?

MONDAY JUNE 2

Seeds of Time + panel discussion with Sandy McLeod, director; Cary Fowler, agriculturalist; Greg Dalton, Climate One 

6pm, Roxie Theater


A Will for the Woods

8:30pm, Roxie Theater

 

TUESDAY JUNE 3

Free Screening: Thin Ice: The Inside Story of Climate Science

12pm, SF Public Library

 

Angel Azul  + panel discussion with Marcy Cravat, director

6pm, Roxie Theater


Uranium Drive-In

8:15pm, Roxie Theater


WEDNESDAY JUNE 4

Lost Rivers

6pm, Roxie Theater

 

Wrenched: The Legacy of the Monkey Wrench Gang + discussion with Ariana Garfinkel, archivist; David J. Cross, Earth First! photographer; Karen Pickett, activist; and other guest activists from the film.

8pm, Roxie Theater

 

Closing Night Wrap Party

10pm, Slate Bar

PrEP school

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Two weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it was recommending physicians consider Truvada, a medication used to treat HIV/AIDS, to prevent infection for high-risk patients who are HIV negative. Seen as a miracle drug by some and a “party drug” by others, Truvada has struggled to take off as a preventative measure and, prior to the CDC’s endorsement, foundered under its own controversy.

The drug regimen is known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and involves taking one pill of Truvada daily. The most common side effects are initial nausea and headaches, but even those generally subside after a couple of weeks. Most impressive is the efficacy rate: Studies point to a reduction in risk of contracting HIV that is higher than 90 percent for individuals who take the medicine daily as recommended.

Additionally, the CDC has recommended PrEP only for high-risk patients — meaning gay men who have sex without condoms; intravenous drug users; and couples, gay or straight, where one partner is HIV positive and the other is negative.

“While a vaccine or cure may one day end the HIV epidemic, PrEP is a powerful tool that has the potential to alter the course of the U.S. HIV epidemic today,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, in a press release.

But PrEP comes with its detractors, the most vocal of whom have come from within the HIV/AIDS and gay community. PrEP users often carry the stigma of being hypersexual gay men, looking to justify their promiscuous sex lives and disavowal of condoms with a daily pill. The label “Truvada whore” soon emerged as a means to shame PrEP users (though the term is now being reclaimed by PrEP activists as a source of pride through hashtags and T-shirts).

However, the loudest critic by far has been the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that provides care to HIV positive patients around the globe.

“This is a position I fear the CDC will come to regret,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein in a public statement. “By recommending widespread use of PrEP for HIV prevention despite research studies amply chronicling the inability to take it as directed, and showing a limited preventive effect at best, the CDC has abandoned a science-driven, public health approach to disease prevention — a move that will likely have catastrophic consequences in the fight against AIDS in this country.”

The push for PrEP is playing out like a grand battle between two formidable foes. On one side is the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company that produces Truvada, Gilead Sciences, headquartered just a few miles south in Foster City. On the other is AHF, the largest provider of HIV/AIDS medical care in the US. While on the surface it may seem like a massive corporation taking on the not-for-profit underdog, the reality is much more complex.

 

THE TRUVADA TRAIN

When Truvada was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration 10 years ago, it was a revolutionary new pill used in combination with other drugs to help control the virus in HIV-positive patients. At a time when most HIV medications required taking pills throughout the day and carried intolerable side effects, Truvada was a once-a-day godsend.

Since then, Gilead has established itself as one of the leading companies for HIV medications, producing or helping to produce many top drugs, such as Atripla, Complera, and Stribild, all of which use components of Truvada in their formulas.

But Truvada’s truly revolutionary moment came in July 2012, when it became the first drug approved by the FDA to reduce the risk of HIV infection in negative individuals.

Controversy immediately ensued.

Medicating healthy people is not a popular approach, especially when those drugs cost $13,000 annually per patient (most insurance companies, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, cover PrEP). In comparison, the CDC estimates that the annual cost to treat someone who already has HIV is $23,000. If all of the 500,000 high-risk Americans who the CDC recommends use PrEP were to begin the therapy, the gross revenue for Gilead would be $6.5 billion — all for people who aren’t even sick.

Despite the potential for astronomical profits, as of September 2013 only 2,319 unique individuals had been prescribed Truvada as PrEP, according to Gilead. Half of those patients are women, suggesting that gay men are not being aggressively targeted for PrEP. When PrEP users who are part of research studies are included, the total number of patients is still estimated to be under 10,000.

One reason for the slow start is a lack of awareness. Outside of big cities, there is less dialogue surrounding HIV and prevention techniques. And even in metropolitan areas, familiarity with Truvada is often limited to the HIV specialist doctors treating patients who already have HIV and wouldn’t benefit from PrEP.

“We get a fair number of patients here who are rejected for PrEP from other physicians in the city,” said Dr. John Nienow of One Medical Group in the Castro. “I haven’t heard about widespread adoption in other offices, but I have heard of other physician groups not wanting to prescribe Truvada for PrEP.”

When asked whether the recent CDC announcement endorsing PrEP would change that, Nienow was hopeful.

The CDC announcement “will educate and legitimize PrEP’s use on a widespread basis,” he said. “I think physicians might be uncomfortable prescribing it, and this will make them more comfortable.”

Another reason PrEP has failed to gain traction is that Gilead has spent virtually no money on advertising its own drug. Well, sort of. It is true that Gilead has avoided advertising campaigns — drug companies that push their own drugs tend to stir up controversy — but many of the organizations that have come out publicly in favor of PrEP have received grants from Gilead. According to tax forms, Project Inform and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, two prominent local nonprofits that support PrEP, have both received large donations from the pharmaceutical company.

One such grant was awarded to Project Inform, for the group to produce videos about PrEP targeted toward young gay men, particularly men of color, according to David Evans, director of research advocacy.

Was this donation a part of Gilead’s marketing strategy? It’s tough to say for sure; Gilead did not return Bay Guardian calls seeking comment.

Regardless of money, it is clear that a new approach is needed for combating HIV. New infections in the US have stubbornly hovered at around 50,000 incidences per year since the ’90s, despite pushes for condom usage and education efforts.

“Yes, PrEP is working. It works when it’s adhered to,” Nienow said. “It’s been extensively studied in populations at risk for HIV, and the conclusion was that it is dramatically successful. So much so that one expert even said that the debate about efficacy is now over.”

 

FROM SELF-PROTECTION TO “SLUT”

It’s true that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is no billion dollar corporation such as Gilead. But with an operating budget this year of $904 million and a presence in 28 countries, AHF is still a force to be reckoned with.

Though the list of organizations that are loyal exclusively to condoms as a method of prevention is dwindling, AHF has been one of the most powerful and resolute allies of latex protection since the very beginning. Even before Truvada was approved by the FDA as PrEP in 2012, AHF campaigned to prevent it from happening. Even though AHF may be growing more and more isolated in its anti-PrEP stance, it is anything but ready to give way.

Though the efficacy rate for using PrEP is upwards of 90 percent reduction in risk, AHF and other critics consistently cite a drastically lower 40 percent reduction. The difference between these two figures lies in patient behavior: When Truvada is taken correctly, that is, every day without skipping doses, then it’s been shown to reduce new HIV infections by over 90 percent. However, when research studies publish data they must include all participants, regardless of whether they took the dosage as instructed. Average out the effectiveness of the drug between participants who adhered religiously and those who didn’t take it at all, and you arrive at about a 40 percent reduction in risk.

But as AHF points out, the outcome for the participants who did not follow instructions is an important reality that should not be overlooked.

“When you read these studies carefully, what they say is that research modeling can be whatever percent effective, but research modeling is not real-world applicable,” said Ged Kenslea, AHF director of communications. “In every study participants were given incentives and paid to participate,” yet still didn’t adhere to instructions consistently.

“We can’t even get people who already have HIV to take their pills as prescribed,” Kenslea added.

Even amid legitimate concerns about health risks associated with improper use of PrEP or its inability to act as a safeguard against other STDs, much of the debate has become infused with anti-PrEP rhetoric rooted in stereotypical assumptions about the promiscuity of gay men. Patients who use it to protect themselves are reduced to “Truvada whores,” men who live capriciously and are always on the lookout for their next fuck.

“The last couple of years that we’ve been prescribing [Truvada], there have been reports from patients who have received negative reactions from some people,” said Nienow. “Some people, particularly online, regard it as a marker for whores and promiscuity, and others as a marker for self-protection. The stigma kind of ranges from, ‘Great, you’re protecting yourself,’ to, ‘Horrible, you’re a slut.’ My patients have seen all of those.”

Just last month, AHF President Michael Weinstein referred to Truvada as a “party drug,” setting off such a fury that a petition to remove him as head of the organization is now circulating around the Internet. It has amassed nearly 4,000 signatures.

AHF’s policy of championing condoms above any other method is strange, considering that it cites poor adherence to Truvada as the drug’s primary downfall. While the efficacy of the drug clearly drops when it is not taken correctly, AHF critics point out that condoms are not used consistently either, and having multiple methods of protection is better than one.

After viewing donations by Gilead to HIV/AIDS groups, the Bay Guardian requested a list of donors from the AHF as well, but the organization provided a 2012 tax form that did not include a donor list.

PrEP does have some efficacy, Kenslea said, and AHF clinicians are free to prescribe Truvada as a preventative drug.

“If an AHF physician feels that prescribing PrEP is appropriate, then we do not stop that,” Kenslea said.

Still, AHF’s uncompromising reluctance to consider endorsing PrEP is puzzling. AHF leaders repeatedly list reasons that the drug will not work, despite mounting scientific evidence stating the contrary. There is no doubt that PrEP should not be taken lightly or with a blasé attitude, but why eschew it with such fervor?

“We are not refuting the science,” Kenslea said. “We are disagreeing on the understanding of human nature.”

 

A DAILY ROUTINE

When Damon Jacobs re-entered the dating game in 2011, it was a completely different playing field from what he remembered. At first, he wasn’t sure what to expect after coming out of a seven-year relationship with his boyfriend, but he quickly realized there were some significant differences since he had last played the field.

“For me, getting back into the dating world and the cruising world, I was realizing that people were not using condoms as they were a decade earlier,” Jacobs said. “And I wasn’t using them like I was in 1990’s San Francisco either.”

But even scarier than Jacobs’ risky behavior was the reasoning behind it.

“I noticed that my thinking had changed,” he admitted. “I started thinking of HIV as a ‘when,’ not an ‘if.'”

It was during that time when the PrEP studies were just beginning to be published. After attending a forum about using an HIV treatment drug to prevent HIV, Jacobs gathered all of the information he could on this unconventional approach and ran back to his doctor. He knew he wasn’t being as diligent to prevent HIV as he once had, and PrEP seemed like an effective way to stay negative.

His physician had never heard of giving Truvada to a patient without HIV, but Jacobs showed him the research and promising results. He began taking PrEP in July 2011, exactly one year before its FDA approval for HIV-negative individuals.

“Those of us using PrEP now, we were the first ones asking for this, so we’ve had to be the educators and the advocates,” Jacobs said. “We even educate the doctors. Some doctors take that and say, ‘yes, I want to work with you.’ Others give tacit dismissal, and then some tell outright lies about it.”

In the past three years, Jacobs has never missed one of his daily pills. He has built it into his everyday routine: eat breakfast, brush teeth, take PrEP. If you can remember to brush your teeth, he postulates, you can remember to take your pills.

Unfortunately, Jacobs has dealt with the stigma that surrounds PrEP as well.

“If I’m on a date with someone who is negative and he finds out, he’ll ask me, ‘Oh, so you’re a whore? Do you have sex with everybody?'” Jacobs lamented. “It’s not a common reaction, but it stems from a misunderstanding of what PrEP is.”

Instead of being offended, embarrassed, or angry, he takes the time to educate, often resorting to the same analogy: that it’s very similar to women taking birth control; it reduces the unwanted consequences of condom-less sex.

Even though Jacobs disagrees with today’s critics of PrEP, he seems to understand where they are coming from. He volunteered with the Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco in 1992, while HIV was crippling the gay community and condoms were considered the only safeguard from a then-fatal virus.

“Michael Weinstein’s message has been that people should use condoms,” said Jacobs. “When I started volunteering at Stop AIDS [Project], we had a marketing campaign where we gave out pins and T-shirts at local bars and clubs that said, ‘100%’ because we knew that if everybody used condoms 100 percent of the time, we could eradicate AIDS by 2000. “Well I ask you, how did that pan out?”

An evening with Herbie Hancock and Nancy Pelosi at the SFJAZZ Gala

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By Micah Dubreuil

If you were driving down Fell street last Friday, you might have come upon an unexpected detour. This would have been the block cordoned off for the first annual SFJAZZ Gala in their new facilities at 201 Franklin St. The building opened in January 2013, and in addition to featuring near-perfect acoustics in the main auditorium — arguably the best on the West Coast for jazz — it provides a sophisticated space for a social and fundraising event such as this one.

The Gala was officially honoring pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, and featured performances by Hancock himself in addition to the SFJAZZ Collective, Booker T., Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, Terrance Brewer, the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, and a number of special guests. Standout performances were delivered by Avishai Cohen and Warren Wolf of the SFJAZZ Collective, in particular. And then of course there was Charles Bradley, whose emotional commitment is so thorough that he seems always to be on the verge of tears. Seeing Hammond Organ master Booker T. in a room as small as the Joe Henderson Lab was also a rare and unique experience.

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Charles Bradley. All photos by Scott Chernis, courtesy of SFJAZZ.

The High School All-Stars played exceptionally well, highlighted by an inspired arrangement of Hancock’s “Eye of the Hurricane.” It must have been no simple feat for the teenagers (particularly the pianists) to perform mere feet from the legendary Hancock, but they acquitted themselves with distinction. It’d be easy to take the profoundly high level of youth musical achievement in the Bay Area for granted, if not for events like these reminding us that, you know, actual programs drive these accomplishments — programs like the SFJAZZ ensemble, the Berkeley High jazz program, the California Jazz Conservatory (formerly known as the Jazz School) and a number of others — and those programs take passion, effort, and funding. All told, their sweeping institutional support of this music is a remarkable achievement in its own right.

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The SFJAZZ High School All Stars, with Paula West

Presenting the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement award to Hancock was saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who was himself honored in 2008. After receiving the award, Hancock performed a solo interpretation of Shorter’s classic “Footprints,” which was followed by a SFJAZZ arrangement of the same tune. If I had one criticism, the night’s overall programming was extremely safe, featuring nearly all well-traveled (but beautiful) standards by Hancock (and one by Shorter), including Maiden Voyage, Watermelon Man, and Actual Proof. The only deep cut, as it were, was “And What If I Don’t” from Hancock’s 1963 release, My Point of View, performed by the SFJAZZ Collective. However, the programming reflected the nature of the event: A fundraiser aimed at gaining financial support from perhaps a broader audience than merely hardcore jazz fans — though, to be sure, plenty of those were also in attendance.

When the tally was in, SFJAZZ raised over $1.4 million for its educational and artistic programs, which is roughly in line with previous fundraisers. The event reflected this level of ambition, with a red carpet entrance and deliciously decadent food from local and national culinary artisans: Oysters from Tomales Bay, bacon-wrapped mochi, heirloom tomatoes topped with white chocolate. The statuesque models flanking the front doors with platters of champagne might have been a bit much, but otherwise the event was classy and dignified, with a crowd (which included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) dressed to impress; the invitation has read “black tie optional.” Master of ceremonies Robert Townsend, who directed Eddie Murphy’s stand-up film Raw (among other achievements) was jocular, jovial, and energetic. Even his (undeniably offensive) parody of sign-language interpreters received hearty laughter from the mostly-full auditorium.

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Booker T. Jones

Watching Shorter and Hancock sit by the side of the stage, it was hard not to reflect on their 50-year history of close collaboration and friendship. Jazz is obviously a major cultural institution, now propelled by organizations such as SFJAZZ, but for decades it was driven primarily by the passion and fearlessness of musicians like Hancock and Shorter. Their personal achievements are nothing short of colossal, and jazz itself would not be what it is today without them. In his acceptance speech, though, Hancock intoned that the jazz spirit “was all about we,” not the individual. He complimented hishosts for continuing those values: “SFJAZZ is all about sharing.” Here’s hoping the coming years keep allowing them to do just that.

Thick as blood: Sibling duo Broods are the next kiwis on the rise

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“Kiwis tend to hold back and be too humble. They don’t want to be over-confident, but I think people are starting to realize that a little bit of confidence can go quite well,” says Caleb Nott, the elder brother of the sibling sensation from New Zealand known as Broods. He sits comfortably next to his sister, Georgia, in the back of The Independent, several hours before their show.

The brother-sister electro-pop duo didn’t get that confidence until the release of their first single, “Bridges,” on SoundCloud, created waves on the world wide interwebs last October. “Bridges” became a hit in the blogosphere and in this hemisphere alike, earning over 200,000 streams in a week.

“It all happened at once,” says 19-year-old Georgia. The singer has an innocent face, giving her the appearance of a much younger teenager. “We went from nobody really knowing us to people on the other side of the world wanting to meet us.”

Later that night, the band starts the night off with “Never Gonna Change,” a deep-synth track with correspondingly morose lyrics. “You’re pushing down on my shoulders, and emptying my lungs,” sings Georgia, lyrics reminiscent of a certain internationally-acclaimed Kiwi. Georgia moves slowly around the stage while Caleb creates layered synths and hypnotic beats. The two remain relatively reserved both on stage and in private. Georgia’s voice is sweet and breathy to the likes of Imogen Heap and Romy Madley Croft of The XX. Caleb brings more energy during the upbeat tracks, bouncing up and down behind his keyboard while Georgia skips around stage in a printed corset crop top and white billowy shorts.

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Georgia, a self-proclaimed depressing music lover (“I love sad songs,”) falls deeply into “Taking You There,” a personal favorite and one of the strongest songs from the self-titled EP. Caleb gently strums an acoustic guitar and offers deep vocals to accompany his sisters’ silvery, dream-like hums. The audience moves to the soft beat and sings along. Most of the audience knows the words to every song on Broods’ EP, which the siblings admit to still be adjusting to.

“Seeing people wearing our T-shirts in the crowd,” says Caleb before the show. “That’s so weird and crazy, you’ve got my face on your T-shirt.”

Since October, Broods — the name obviously referring to the band members’ blood relation but also the melancholic nature of their songs — has played two US tours, spent a brief stint touring with Haim, and is scheduled as the opening act for Ellie Goulding’s Australia/New Zealand tour this summer.

“Over the last couple of years, people have started to look over to Auckland and to New Zealand as a whole for new music.” Caleb explains. From LadyHawke, to The Naked and Famous, Lorde and now Broods, the New Zealand music scene is a treasure trove of indie talent. Caleb says the music scene remains relatively tight-knit where everyone supports each other in their own music genre but doesn’t reach out beyond, reminiscent to a private high-school. “It’s pretty cliquey, because it’s very small.”

“This one’s for Lorde,” says Georgia in between songs. She dives into the gentle lullaby “Sleep Baby Sleep.” The mesmerizing beat and soft vocals is characteristic of Lorde’s debut album.

The band is clearly following in her footsteps, from the grassroots release of the Broods EP, to the dark coming-of-age tones, to the producer who discovered them. Joel Little found Caleb and Georgia while a judge for a music competition in 2011 but the band wasn’t formed until early 2013 in Auckland. After producing Lorde’s Grammy Award-winning debut album, Joel Little began work on “Bridges.”

broods

Broods closes the show with its first single, “Bridges,” a moody track about broken relationships. Georgia starts out with muted piano chords and an ethereal voice that builds into Caleb’s rich synth soundscape. Georgia’s voice is exceptionally developed for her age. She plays a soft version of a song from their upcoming album. She’s most comfortable behind the piano, her instrument of choice. “And I’m trying hard to make you love me, but I don’t wanna try too hard,” she sings moodily about falling in love with the perfect man.

Broods has played in San Francisco twice now but has yet to play a show in New Zealand. The siblings will head home next week to work on their debut album with Joel Little. Then, they will play their first proper show in their hometown of Nelson with their 17-year-old sister, who is set to open with her folk band. Clearly, talent runs in the family.

Burning mouse

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Mike Daisey is a talker. He can talk about a lot of things. Hell, he can talk for 24 hours straight (and did in All the Hours in the Day at Portland’s TBA Festival in 2011). This gift of gab has brought him acclaim as an artist in the theater, where he’s known as an eminent monologist of the desk-bound Spalding Gray school. In one case, it’s even brought him public scandal, to wit, NPR’s 2012 call-out regarding fabricated bits in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs — an experience Daisey says has made him not only “wiser” but “a better storyteller.”

But Daisey doesn’t tell stories for the sake of talking alone. He chases after questions that intrigue him, and these, more than his comically barbed but affable stage persona, make his stories worth listening to. Occupying a fertile middle ground between high concept and low humor, his self-referential yarns confront issues he sees as central to how we live and — in a related, no less passionate way — to how the theater lives and dies in American culture. He directly essayed this latter theme in his 2008 show, How Theater Failed America, but it remains a lively concern, as he suggests below.

His latest, American Utopias, makes its Bay Area debut at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend. Following the format he has been honing since the late 1990s, Daisey uses a few notes written on loose sheets of paper to re-create afresh each night a set of three intertwining stories about Disney World, Burning Man, and Occupy Wall Street, following all three down their respective rabbit holes to glean what, individually and cumulatively, they might teach us about ourselves.

SF Bay Guardian You grew up in a really remote corner of the country. When you consider what brought you to where you’re at now, how much of that do you attribute to this background?

Mike Daisey I grew up in a place called Fort Kent, Maine, which is on the Canadian border. It’s actually the end of US Route 1, which begins in Key West. To me, psychically, it always feels like this must be the most remote place possible because every piece of mythology about roads is that sort of Tolkien idea, “The road goes ever on!” Whereas I was like, “No, it doesn’t actually. It ends. Right here. This must be the furthest place from everything.” It’s a very interesting area, the St. John Valley, around the St. John River. The people are predominately French Canadian. It’s a very different place from what I’ve come to recognize as the rest of America.

I do think that there’s a storytelling tradition that grows up in Maine, that exists there, that informs the work I do now. I think partly it’s informed by years of speech and debate at a very tender age. I think it’s informed by a couple of years of playing Dungeons & Dragons at a formative time. And, layered on top of all of that, was a very earnest desire to discover a form that would allow me to create theatrical experiences that were new in the moment that they were spoken. I was really dedicated to that proposition, that there could be a form of theater that lives in the moment that it’s spoken, both for the performer and the audience. I was looking for a form that would allow both there to be rigor and precision in the structure, but at the same time allow true spontaneity, and allow discoveries to happen in the moment that could not be anticipated.

That’s what I love about the monologues, about all storytelling. I often think of jazz when I’m trying to explain it to people. In the Western tradition, it is hard for people to understand how it is that something is composed without being written. We’ve all become so mired in the tyranny of the written word that we actually come to believe that the act of writing is the act of thinking. The spoken work is actually closer to the thought; it’s a more primal form than the form that writing takes. We forget that. So it’s hard to explain to people sometimes how something [spontaneous] can have form and precision and texture and depth. People often want to know, “How long did you work on this monologue?” And there really is no right answer to give, except the one that the jazz legends often give, which is to say, my whole life.

SFBG Do you think that that fascination with the research and work that goes into a piece is part of the way art gets commercialized, packaged as discrete products?

MD Yeah, I think that’s true. You know, I just went to Cuba. I was in Havana for about two weeks. I’m working on what’s going to be a separate piece, from the show that I’m bringing to Yerba Buena, about the commodification of art. When art transforms into a good. As soon as it does, as soon as it enters that market place, we really want to know its provenance; we want to know that this piece was not just tossed off by the artist. We want to know that the artist was thinking about something, or dreaming about something. We want to know that the piece we’re holding is a piece of the artist’s greatness and is an important piece at that. A lot of what it’s about is really acquisitive in nature.

That’s one of the reasons my going to Cuba was so fascinating. Being in a culture where a ballet dancer is paid the same amount that a surgeon is paid is really fascinating for what it does to cultural priorities. I’m not even saying that we all should pay surgeons the same amount as ballet dancers. But coming from my own culture, which I think is anti-art — I think it’s heavily tilted against art because of a real grain of Puritanism that runs through the center of the American character — it’s really fascinating to think about different ways that lives could be lived. Watch me: I’m slowly dovetailing! That connects to American Utopias in a really direct way. A lot of that monologue is about the effort to imagine a different way of life.

SFBG Where does theater figure in that imagining?

MD Theater really needs to make more radical shifts if it wants to take back some ground in the cultural conversation. Not necessarily in a traditional way, opening large movies that everyone’s talking about, but in a quieter way. I feel like theater sometimes suffers from being neither fish nor fowl. I’m often struck by the difference between a play [that’s considered a success] with 400, 500 performances. But those numbers don’t compare to millions of page views on YouTube.

At the same time, there’s another unique number, which is one, like when I create a show that’s for one night only and only happens once. There’s uniqueness to that, which the American theater also has a hard time [working] with because the form involves playwrights and rehearsals — we have a hard time doing the unique event. So instead we have this weird compromise, where we create this unique event but we then do this unique event 23 times. There’s this very odd middle ground. I often feel a correspondence between those numbers: like a run of 23 or 31 performances and page views of seldom-visited pages on the Internet. It’s really hard to thrive when you’re not doing something that’s singular each time and, at the same time, you’re not doing something that’s digital and ubiquitous and anyone can watch anywhere.

I just wish theater would grapple with one world or the other. I feel sometimes like the theater is a little bit its own version of The Glass Menagerie. It’s ignoring the war, everything that’s going on outside, like Tom talks about in his opening monologue of that beautiful play. But then the whole play is in this apartment, in this world where everyone’s dreams become sort of curdled and small. I sometimes feel like we really need to break out of the apartment. We all need to be like Tom and we need to hit the road.

SFBG Given it has three very different strands to it, what is American Utopias ultimately about?

MD American Utopias is about how we create spaces. But not just in the traditional architectural terms, but how we create them socially. So it’s an examination of three very different types of spaces. In each case, the members of the community that have made that space think of it as a kind of utopia. They see it as a reflection of a more perfect world. In many cases they wish they could live there more of the time but they know it’s not possible. I have preferences among the three to some extent but, on the other hand, none of the three are really my utopia. As a consequence, my role, I feel, is to talk about the connections between them. What really interests me are the anthropological systems, how humans organize themselves and how we share dreams. That interests me a lot. *

AMERICAN UTOPIAS

Fri/16-Sat/17, 7:30pm, $30-$35

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater

700 Howard, SF

www.ybca.org

 

A few quick hits from the SF International Film Festival as it comes to a close

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Sexual jealousy, filial betrayal, and bloodshed amid a civilization’s ruins. The SF International Film Festival began on these cheerful notes, with Viggo Mortensen, Oscar Isaac, and Kirsten Dunst tensely keeping company in opening-night film The Two Faces of January, Hossein Amini’s adaptation of the 1964 Patricia Highsmith novel. Mortensen plays Chester MacFarland, a New York con artist who, having bilked investors out of large wads of cash back in the States, is on the lam in Greece with his pretty young wife, Colette (Dunst).

When they catch the eye of Rydal (Isaac), a fellow American who’s idling in Athens — leading impressionable female tourists around the Acropolis and engaging in petty acts of grift — he becomes entangled in their affairs through a volatile mix of chance and attraction. The three become uneasy travel companions, as Rydal helps them evade Chester’s enemies and the local authorities. The sexual tension between Colette and Rydal runs along a foreseeable track, their shared youthful resilience a relentless rebuke to Chester, as he grimly knocks back whiskeys and fails to keep pace. But as Amini — a first-time feature director whose screenplay credits include Snow White and the Huntsman, Drive, and The Wings of the Dove — pointed out during the post-film Q&A, the relationship between Rydal and Chester proves much more complicated and fluid, shifting repeatedly, unpredictably, from con and mark (and mark and con) to sexual competitors to unwilling collaborators to quasi–father and son. The suspense heightens and the drama deepens as the characters struggle to keep their emotional footing and save their skins.

There’s no saving Mia Wasikowska’s skin — scarlet and blistering under a punishing desert sun — in John Curran’s Tracks, another adaptation, whose source material is the 1980 memoir of a young woman named Robyn Davidson, Tracks: A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback (and the 1978 National Geographic article that preceded it). In the film, Robyn’s single-minded aim is to walk, for six or seven months, across nearly 2,000 miles of desert from Alice Springs in central Australia to the Indian Ocean, with, for company, a team of four feral camels (Australia apparently has the world’s largest population of them), which she would tame and train and use as pack animals, and her black lab Diggity. There’s some Into the Wild here, and some All Is Lost as well — in Robyn’s driving impulse toward deep isolation, her almost frantic need to remove herself from the cacophony of human transaction and commune with her animals in the empty desert, as well as in the film’s steady focus on logistics.

Nearly everyone — with the loopy exception of Adam Driver as Rick Smolan, an admiring freelance photographer who periodically joins her on the trail, at the behest of National Geographic — Robyn encounters at the film’s outset thinks she’s nuts, and doomed, and the viewer is likely sympathetic to this viewpoint. Robyn, radiating an unyielding idealism and a white-knuckled ethic of self-reliance, can seem naïve and unreasonable, and doesn’t much trouble to explain herself. The camera, meanwhile, follows in her tracks without judgment, accepting her decision and watching, solicitously, to see who she is out there and how she will make her way.

Three other films that left a mark: James Ward Byrkit’s twisty Coherence is a sci-fi thriller in which the possible influences of a comet passing overhead disrupt the urbane table talk and relationship tensions among four couples at a dinner party. François Ozon’s latest film, Young & Beautiful (now in theaters after its fest debut) takes a 17-year-old girl’s summer-vacation sexual discoveries as a jumping-off point for an uneasy exploration of a teenager’s decision to engage in prostitution. Even more than Tracks’ protagonist, the young Isabelle (Marine Vacth), and the film itself, is tight-lipped about her motivations, leaving us to wonder and worry — and scan her household (voyeuristic little brother, possibly philandering mother, oddly laid-back stepfather) for clues, an activity that Ozon, through the structure of the film, both encourages and critiques. And fellow French director Sophie Fillières gives us scenes from a marriage in decline in her sometimes absurd yet poignant If You Don’t, I Will, wherein Pierre (Mathieu Amalric) and Pomme (Emmanuelle Devos) struggle to navigate the glitches — physical, verbal, emotional — that have overtaken their every interaction.

It’s not that the relationships in The Skeleton Twins are less riddled with dysfunction, but at least the film, starring Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Luke Wilson, gives us permission to laugh out loud amid the psychic wreckage. Wiig plays the melancholy, quietly floundering Maggie, one half of a long-estranged pair of twins, who is brought back into the life of her brother, Milo (Hader), under dire circumstances. When he comes to live with Maggie and her husband, oblivious sweetheart and nature lover Lance (Wilson), the two siblings are placed in uncomfortable proximity to a history of loss and upheaval they’ve both worked hard not to reexamine.

This sounds like the difficult, even dismal material of familial drama, and there are moments of pathos here, as well as sweetness. But director Craig Johnson’s script, cowritten with Mark Heyman (Black Swan), gives Hader and Wiig — who showed up with Johnson to the fest’s first screening to answer a few questions in between stand-up riffing off of the audience — plenty of room to generate hilarity (see, in particular: a power ballad lip-synch routine and an after-hours dental office visit involving clouds of laughing gas).

Watching the police

2

rebecca@sfbg.com

Nearly two years ago, on July 18, 2012, on-duty San Francisco police officer Mary Godfrey fired her weapon twice, killing 32-year-old Oakland resident Pralith Pralourng in an encounter at Washington and Davis streets.

Following the incident, police said Pralourng was mentally ill and had lunged at Godfrey with a box cutter, prompting her to fire in defense of her own life. Just before it happened, Pralourng had slashed his coworker at Tcho chocolate factory and fled.

Last September, the San Francisco Police Department honored Godfrey with a silver medal of valor for her conduct in that incident. The second-highest possible honor, silver medals are awarded in cases where an officer exhibits “outstanding bravery in the performance of duty,” according to a definition on the SFPD website, and “risks his or her life with full and unquestionable knowledge of the danger involved.”

However, an internal affairs investigation into the officer-involved shooting remained open at the time that the medal was awarded. In fact, in a May 5 voicemail, police spokesperson Albie Esparza confirmed to the Bay Guardian: “That case is still open, so there is no more information that we are going to release at this time.”

More than eight months have passed since Godfrey was honored — and yet the shooting is still under investigation.

The San Francisco Police Commission voted to approve Godfrey’s silver medal, along with a list of other medal of valor recipients, at its June 26, 2013 meeting. But it was Commissioner Angela Chan, who was recently denied reappointment to her post in a 7-4 vote by the Board of Supervisors, who cast the lone dissenting vote (See “SFBG Wrap” in this issue).

Chan was later quoted in press reports as saying she believed that awarding Godfrey with a medal of valor before the formal investigative process had concluded seemed to undermine that process. Internal affairs investigations are part of the city’s formal process to ensure police accountability. San Francisco also has an independent city department, the Office of Citizen Complaints, which provides civilian oversight by making determinations about citizen complaints alleging officer misconduct.

Chan’s dissenting vote prompted a backlash from the San Francisco Police Officers Association. In a blistering letter dated September 11, 2013, President Martin Halloran informed police commissioners of the POA’s “extreme disappointment” in the dissenting vote, also sending a copy of the letter to Mayor Ed Lee.

“Officer Godfrey was extremely upset when I met with her and immediately voiced her regret at having to take the life of another human being,” Halloran wrote. “It is every officer’s worst nightmare. The emotional and psychological trauma following an officer involved shooting can be severe, and it is absolutely essential that officers involved in these types of incidents receive positive reinforcement, as well as counseling, to reassure them that they did nothing wrong.”

Counseling seems appropriate, but Halloran’s blanket statement that officers involved in deadly use of force incidents should be reassured that “they did nothing wrong” seems to discount the city’s process for determining whether or not an officer’s action was justified.

The SFPOA president went on to note that his organization has long complained that “officers are left hanging for months, and in some cases years, before being recognized for their heroic acts, sometimes making them feel more insecure and raising more self-doubts about their actions.”

The SFPOA’s overt condemnation of Chan for her dissent suggests that the police commissioner faced strong opposition from a politically powerful entity when she came up for reappointment.

More importantly, it suggests that the SFPOA won’t hesitate to exert pressure on police commissioners who question the department’s actions — and raises questions about why top brass would ignore an open investigation that had yet to establish whether Godfrey “did nothing wrong.”

Internal affairs investigators weren’t the only ones looking into this fatal shooting of Pralourng. The OCC, the civilian police oversight board, was also investigating the incident when Godfrey was honored. Almost two years after the fact, the OCC investigation also remains open.

The OCC’s annual report, released March 12, was slated for presentation at the Police Commission on May 7. The 179-page report shines a light on the allegations filed against police officers, the process by which these complaints are investigated and addressed, and the rate at which complaints are sustained and followed up with disciplinary action.

Being a police officer isn’t easy, and can be very dangerous — even costing officers their lives in extreme circumstances. The OCC report notes that 75 percent of San Francisco police officers did not have any complaints filed against them in 2013. But of the remaining 25 percent, the report noted that 131 officers had been named in two or more complaints, while another 405 officers had each been flagged in a single complaint.

If the OCC determines that a complaint about officer misconduct is valid, then it is counted as “sustained.”

In 2013, according to the report, the OCC received 727 complaints, and closed 722 complaints. Of the 722 that were closed, 43 — or about 6 percent — were sustained. Of those sustained cases, 91 percent resulted in corrective or disciplinary action by the SFPD, the report noted, ranging from a verbal admonishment to a suspension.

Of the 43 cases that were sustained, 56 percent were for “neglect of duty,” the majority of which was issued for failure to collect traffic stop data. That was followed by “unwarranted action” at 24 percent, “conduct reflecting discredit represented” at 10 percent, “unnecessary force” at 7 percent, and “discourtesy” at 3 percent.

A synopsis of the “unnecessary force” findings provides examples, such as an incident in which “a sergeant and officers used unnecessary force when without cause, they entered a residence, grabbed, detained, arrested and removed an occupant from the residence, and took him to the ground.”

But according to the report, “By far the most frequent finding in all allegations was ‘not sustained,'” reflecting the outcome of 61 percent of allegations in OCC complaints.

The determination “not sustained” isn’t the same as finding that an officer acted appropriately, nor does it mean a complainant made false allegations. Instead, the finding is issued when “there is not a preponderance of evidence to prove or disprove,” the allegation, OCC Executive Director Joyce Hicks told us.

Put more simply: An officer responds to a complainant with a contradictory account, and since there isn’t enough evidence to prove otherwise, the case is closed.

“Officers were found to have engaged in proper conduct in 25 percent of the allegations,” the breakdown continued. “Complainants’ allegations were ‘unfounded,’ or not true, in 2 percent of the allegations.”

A chart of “findings closed” in 2013 (a separate measure from complaints) showed that out of 2,183 findings, just 72 — or 3 percent — were sustained. The vast majority, 1,337 were “not sustained.”

A breakdown showing the nature of complaints filed reveals that five allegations of unnecessary use of force were sustained in 2013, while 167 were not sustained, out of a total of 208 complaints alleging unnecessary use of force.

At the end of 2013, according to the OCC report, the civilian oversight board “continued to investigate three officer-involved shootings. Two of these shootings resulted in the death of the suspect. In 2013, the OCC closed two 2011 officer involved shooting cases with no sustained findings.”

Hicks noted that she faces budgetary constraints that have prevented her from hiring more investigators, an ongoing problem at the OCC. “We still don’t have the best practices number of cases,” she said, noting that the City Controller had issued a 2007 audit stating that investigators should be handling no more than 16 cases at once, while “my investigators’ caseloads have never fallen below 21.”

Aside from its investigations into citizen complaints, the OCC also makes policy recommendations. Following a number of officer-involved shootings in 2012 involving mentally ill individuals, the OCC issued a set of recommendations on handling responses to individuals experiencing mental crisis — the exact sort of situation that led to Pralourng’s death in 2012.

Samara Marion, an attorney with the OCC, noted that one recommendation pertains to how the Firearm Discharge Review Board, which evaluates whether a shooting was justified, performs its analysis. Rather than merely relying on the internal affairs and homicide reports, Marion said, the OCC recommendation is to “have the training division do an analysis that’s point by point,” so that the determination is made taking into account “all of the decision-making and tactical steps leading up to the officer-involved shooting.”

That work is expected to continue, but as far as the Police Commission is concerned, it will have to go forward without input from Chan, who had planned to take a close look at officer-involved shootings in her next term.

“It was shameful and outrageous what happened, because I was targeted for doing what I believe in,” Chan said later. But she said political pressures has thwarted that goal.

“What happened was not really about me,” she continued. “It was about whether something as important as a civilian police oversight body should be politicized.”

Naming of a park facility sparks political fight

We at the Bay Guardian were alerted today that San Francisco Recreation & Parks commissioners are poised to name a Golden Gate Park building after a conservationist who blogs openly about “illegal aliens,” and has widely disseminated his view that environmentalists have been “silenced” on the subject of immigration “by intimidation and political correctness.”

But prominent members of the environmental community say Jake Sigg, who worked as a gardener for the Recreation and Parks Department for 31 years, ought to be recognized for his years of contribution to San Francisco parklands. 

A single agenda item for the May 1 meeting of the Operations Committee of the Rec & Parks Commission proposes renaming a Golden Gate Park facility located at 811 Stanyan Street as the Jake Sigg Stewardship Center. The building, which recently underwent a $2.3 million renovation, houses the headquarters for the department’s volunteer and Natural Areas programs.

Sigg, who is in his late 80s, sends out a regular email newsletter to his personal list; it reportedly reaches thousands locally. He also posts content on his personal blog, naturenewssf.blogspot.com. While his emails contain an assortment of poetry and ruminations on the natural world, he’s also been known to express his point of view on immigration – and it has not been well received. It’s prompted rebukes from readers; some have characterized it as racist.

In an exchange from last May that is posted to his blog, a reader named Linda Hunter told Sigg she was offended by an installment in which he used the phrase “illegal aliens.”

In response, Sigg wrote: “I’m not clear on what offends you, other than language. Undocumented workers are illegal aliens, so I don’t understand your point. Trotting out racism is lazy and a refusal to think about a serious problem. I will repeat what I’ve said several times in the past:  My concern on immigration derives solely from population pressures. If you are concerned about human numbers and what that is doing to the planet and to us, you cannot ignore immigration, especially when it is uncontrolled, as now.”

In a private email sent by environmentalist Becky Evans last year and later published by Sigg, Evans said she was “dismayed by the anti-immigrant diatribe in your newsletter,” saying, “all of us are descendants of immigrants except the few who are Native Americans.”

In response, Sigg wrote:

“I am surprised at you, Becky, especially when you use stale, no longer relevant, arguments–such as being descendants of immigrants, &c.  That is a dull old saw.  This country seemed limitless in space and resources and we welcomed immigrants with open arms. Can you say that today?”

When we caught up with Sigg by phone he said he did not believe his views on immigration should be at all connected to the proposal to name the building after him, which stemmed from his decades-long track record as a leader of volunteers.

When we got into a discussion on immigration policy, he said, “I think that our immigration policies are too lax. The borders are too loose, and we need to stabilize our population. If someone wants to accuse me of racism, it just doesn’t hold water. Racism is an implication that somehow and some way certain races are inferior to others and I find that idea absurd.”

Regardless of what anyone thinks, Sigg has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants.

But things get complicated when one considers that Rec & Park is about to name a public building – owned collectively by San Franciscans, in a city of immigrants designated as a safe zone for the undocumented – after Sigg, who isn’t shy about broadcasting his opinion that undocumented people should be prevented from migrating by land from south of the Mexican border.

This idea of naming the building after Sigg has won the support of prominent environmentalists including Tom Radulovich of Livable City, San Francisco Environment Commissioner Ruth Gravanis, Nature in the City, San Francisco Laborers Union Local 261 and others in a formal letter submitted to the Operations Committee. Unclear is whether supporters know of his views on immigration, or even care or believe it should have any bearing on naming the building.

There’s also a murky political backstory. Brent Plater, executive director of Wild Equity, told us that the whole thing stems from an ongoing controversy over Sharp Park.

The idea of naming the building after Sigg originated with Phil Ginsburg, who directs the city’s Rec & Park Department. Sigg is aligned with Ginsburg in the belief that Rec & Park should move forward with a Significant Natural Resource Areas management plan, which would generally do positive things for natural lands yet contains provisions that many environmentalists oppose, given the negative ramifications they would have for Sharp Park.

“The vast majority of the environmental community opposes this plan – except Jake Sigg,” Plater explained. “To reward Jake for this, Phil wants to put Jake’s name on a building.”  

In response to that idea, Sigg said it had no merit, saying, “People just imagine these things … They just want to poke Rec & Park in the eye.”

Meanwhile, Wild Equity and other environmentalists are suing Rec & Park over its planned construction at Sharp Park, the subject of a long battle over how the area’s golf course impacts two endangered species: the San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog.

Sigg said he thought the lawsuit had no merit and would hold up the management plan, which he hopes to see advance.

It will be interesting to see what the commissioners do with this one. Will Sigg’s views on immigration be deemed irrelevant to the decision over whether or not to name a public San Francisco building after him, as he believes is appropriate?

We left messages for Rec & Park but we did not receive a call back by press time.

Manscape

0

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It’s no wonder John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo is already shaping up as one of the year’s few indie hits so far — like many such before it, it offers a titillating surface premise belied by the reassuring confirmation of a staid moral outlook beneath. The writer-director plays Fioravante, a middle aged native Brooklynite whose working hours as a florist are shrinking; meanwhile older friend Murray (Woody Allen) faces closing the bookstore his family has operated for three generations. The latter hits upon an unlikely moneymaking scheme when his female dermatologist mentions she and her best friend would pay for the first-time novelty of a three-way. Murray proposes Fioravante provide the meat in their sandwich, and despite all initial resistance, he consents to a trial one-on-one with the client — played by Sharon Stone, so it’s not exactly a huge sacrifice. This goes well, as do appointments with her BFF Sofia Vergara, another socialite bombshell in unlikely need of professional erotic assistance.

It’s with the addition of a third customer that things get complicated: Fioravante gets referred to Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), whose status as widow of an older Hasidic rabbi requires a suffocating level of propriety. Starved for affection, she lets Fioravante (passing himself off as a Sephardic Jew) touch her ostensibly aching back, which is just as bad as a five-alarm coital orgasm so far as her community elders are concerned. Their clandestine meetings do not escape the vigilant notice of an officious neighborhood patroller (Liev Schreiber) already smitten with Avigal, and whose suspicions of criminal activity are enflamed by jealousy.

It’s ironic that while most screen depictions of heterosexual prostitution feature nothing but young, beautiful women servicing men of more realistically variable attractiveness, this ostensible role-reversal keeps the gender inequity just so. Fioravante is a not-so-young, not-particularly handsome man (albeit one made attractive by Turturro’s air of gentlemanly gravity here) who gets only hot numbers as Janes — it’s still a male fantasy, only now the guy is getting paid. Fading Gigolo‘s general affability lets it get away with a boatload of cultural and casting stereotypes, not least Vergara as a fiery Latina who might as well have muy caliente tattooed on her voluptuous flesh. For “plain,” virtuous contrast we get a glammed-down Paradis, the model-singer-actor who’s been France’s leading pop pinup for about a quarter-century. Then there’s Sharon Stone, playing Sharon Stone, which is to say archly channeling two things: a) Aren’t I hotter than ever? and b) I am smarter than the rest of you combined (and hotter too).

There are no unattractive women here — in fact Brooklyn itself seems to have been airbrushed free of clutter, human and otherwise. Even Allen, doing his usual dithery standup shtick, gets a spouse (Tunisian singer M’Barka Ben Taleb) half his age, and who further extends the film’s gloss of multiculturalism as harmless exotica. (It wasn’t clear to me whether the dark-skinned kids running around were their kids, or grandkids — while Avigal’s six children are kept conveniently off screen, lest they spoil the mood of desire.)

Fading Gigolo goes down very easily, even if on his fifth feature behind the camera Turturro remains a sometimes stilted director and careless scenarist. Taking a leaf from Allen’s notebook, this romantic fantasy is shot in warm, soft tones, draped in cool jazz, and takes place in an idealized New York City that’s part nostalgia, part pure imagination. The scented-bath atmosphere allows you to overlook the clumsier, poorly developed bits. And the film’s sometimes naive good nature almost lets it get away with being an entirely narcissistic male daydream of what women really want: an average (but secretly exceptional) guy whom beauties throw themselves at because he alone understands they want to be wooed.

Another guy performing a sort of perfected masculinity for the benefit of needy others is Tom Hardy’s titular character in Steven Knight’s Locke. This virtual solo show has the actor as Ivan Locke, a 40-ish construction manager driving to London on the eve of “the biggest cement pour” ever attempted in Europe. But he’s driving away from that, to the shrill indignation of superiors who expect his reliable on-site supervision, and the increasingly drunken panic of the flunky (voice of Andrew Scott) he’s deputized to take his place. The reason for this unprecedented dereliction of responsibility is that Ivan is committed to another responsibility, to “take care of my fuckup.”

As we gradually realize during his 85-minute drive, that means showing up for the premature birth of the baby he’s sired by a fragile, rather hysterical-sounding woman (Olivia Colman) in the brief sole detour from marital infidelity he’s ever taken. Doing so may well end his career, as well as his long-standing marriage to the mother of his sons. But our protagonist is determined at any cost not to become his own late father (with whom he has imaginary conversations), a wastrel who never made good on his obligations to family or anyone else.

Shot repeatedly in real time with multiple cameras over 12 nights (the actors voicing Bluetooth callers also performed “live” in conference-call fashion), then assembled from 16 full-length takes, Locke is a striking experiment that never quite escapes an air of theatrical stunt. In retrospect you realize most of its tension derives not from the core emotional crises, but from narrative red herrings — primarily our terror that anyone multitasking this recklessly behind the wheel is an accident waiting to happen. But the chameleonic Hardy, playing a rather square, middle-class, essentially humorless type unlike any he’s done before, makes this effortfully “decent” man so compelling you can’t look away. If there’s anything this actor can’t do, he hasn’t tried it yet. *

 

FADING GIGOLO and LOCKE open Fri/2 in SF.

Opening up

0

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE “Location, location, location” is real estate’s mantra, as those of us who keep running up against it know only too well. But location has also become essential to dance, especially for artists who want to forego the theater and make the outside world their stage.

For the last six years, Dancers’ Group, the Bay Area’s dance service organization, has sponsored the ONSITE series, weaving free dance performances into the urban fabric. Recent events have showcased Amara Tabor-Smith’s He Moved Swiftly (various locations), Jo Kreiter’s Niagara Falling (Seventh and Market streets), and Erika Chong Shuch’s Love Everywhere (City Hall Rotunda). Sara Shelton Mann’s The Eye of Horus, performed in Jessie Square, is the latest addition. She could not have chosen a better location.

Gently terraced and surrounded on three sides by glass and steel — but also the warmth of the old bricks of St. Patrick Church and the newer ones of the Contemporary Jewish Museum — Jessie Square opens itself to the greenery of Yerba Buena Gardens. The totality suggests an urban environment in which disparate perspectives (nature and culture, the past and the present, private and public spaces) harmoniously bump against each other.

In other words, Jessie Square was a perfect stage for Mann to send her dancer-disciples into a 40-minute performance in which they revealed different aspects of themselves, inspired by the way the Egyptian god Horus embodied multiple identities.

Each of the four — Christine Bonansea, Jorge de Hoyos, Jesse Hewit, and Sara Yassky — had developed a multi-sectional solo that, according to the preperformance information, was based on archetypes as derived from Caroline Myss’ book Sacred Contracts. Whatever the generating forces for these solos were, in performance they emerged and receded into the much larger activities at Jessie Square, the whole becoming a kind of moving tableau vivant. The dancers transformed lunchtime crowd actions — eating, talking, strolling, and waiting — into something beyond the commonplace. They injected poetry into daily life.

Generous and welcoming as these types of performances are, I personally miss the more intimate and more focused encounters that inside spaces offer. Mann and production designer David Szlasa stepped in with props or directions as needed. In a favorite moment, Szlasa’s breadcrumbs coaxed a flock of pigeons into a procession across the square. Mann pulled Bonansea up to her full height to send her off on an imaginary tightrope; she also shushed (or at least I think she did) Hewit’s screaming tantrum. Later on, when he sat immobile in a beggar’s pose, she brought him what I first saw as a fishing rod. It was a whip.

Eye is full of small incidents — some touching, some hilarious, some nonsensical — controlled by planning and a lot of serendipity. Hewit tried a shoulder stand, holding a carnation. De Hoyos raced along a diagonal as if shot from a bow. Yassick played what looked like a solitary game of bocce ball. Interspersing these lighter incidents were moments of anguish, lack of stability, and a sense of mortality. At one point or another, just about everyone looked dead as the plank that de Hoyos dragged around.

Bonansea bitterly wept as she put her clown makeup on; her mad laughter while racing the square became monstrous. Yassky, apparently in severe pain, rubbed a balloon against her belly and approached a passerby who politely put his phone away to acknowledge her.

Sometimes, the dancers disappeared in the crowd. I had lost sight of de Hoyos when someone pointed him out leaping and gesticulating on top of the parking garage. If there were any narrative suggestions, it was the ongoing give and take between de Hoyos and Mann. Or perhaps it was Bonansea marching up to de Hoyos, who had dropped to the ground after his lovely ballad fragment. In her best French rhetorical manner, the petite performer started a discourse (on, among other things, mortality) and the corpse in front of her. She finally decided that theory had run into reality and proceeded with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

If Bonansea was something of clown figure, the powerful Yassky seemed imprisoned inside her own body. She is a slender, gamine performer, and I don’t think I ever saw her relax. When she held her limbs tight to her body, they looked like they were enchaining her. When she crouched on a tiny stool on one leg, she repeatedly spilled water and salt offered to her. Whispering into a mike, she asked for help. Clawing her throat while lying on her back, she looked about ready to expire.

For all the portentous self-examination in Eye, the work was free-spirited, unpretentious, and yet quite serious. The boom box sound score, however, needs rethinking; much of it was too blatantly obvious. While Eye greatly benefited from its gorgeous location, at times it looked too thin, dissipating some of its energy. It probably will benefit from the additional performers — Sherwood Chen and a group of community volunteers — who will join the final show Sat/3. *

THE EYE OF HORUS

Wed/30 and Sat/3, 12:30pm, free

Jessie Square

736 Mission, SF

www.dancersgroup.org

 

Two views of the waterfront

31

rebecca@sfbg.com

The Golden State Warriors’ announcement that its planned 18,000-seat basketball arena would be moved off the San Francisco waterfront was fresh in everyone’s mind when former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos visited the Bay Guardian office on April 23, and he was electrified by the win.

“I resent anyone suggesting that this is not a genuine people-powered victory — again,” Agnos said. “Because that’s what it was, bottom line.”

The former mayor has traveled up and down the city in recent months promoting Proposition B, an initiative on the June 3 ballot that may well have cleared the Warriors Arena from its proposed waterfront perch at Piers 30-32 had the team not announced that it would be taking that step independently.

If it passes, Prop. B will require voter approval for any development project along city-owned waterfront property that exceeds height limits set by the Waterfront Land Use Plan approved in 1997. Such a rule would have squarely targeted the Warriors’ proposal.

The sports arena had been slated for a 13-acre parcel a stone’s throw from the Bay Bridge that is now a parking lot, where it would have hovered above the water like a floating spacecraft. Across the street, at a site known as Seawall Lot 330, the Warriors had proposed installing shops, parking, a condo tower, and a hotel.

Agnos and the backers of Prop. B hadn’t anticipated the Warriors’ announcement that its waterfront venue would be moved to private property, a 12-acre lot in Mission Bay purchased from tech giant Salesforce.com.

“We thought, because people at the top of this city’s government told us so, they would prevail,” Agnos said of Mayor Ed Lee and others championing the waterfront arena. “They didn’t.”

Agnos and his allies say it was the prospect of voters having to sign off on a proposal that was hatched behind closed doors that caused the Warriors to choose a more appropriate location.

“We helped them go to a different place where we now support what they’re doing — because it makes more sense for this city, and for our bay, as well as our waterfront. That’s what the issue is,” Agnos told us. “The spin doctors had their ass handed to ’em … had their ass handed to ’em, by a low-income group of allies, over their $20,000–$30,000, gold-plated contracts per month. And so now, they understand.”

They understand that the waterfront of San Francisco is a battleground and the people are willing to fight to ensure the public interest trumps private profits.

pier70

A rendering of proposed development at Pier 70, envisioning tech offices and housing.

PRECIOUS PARCELS

A historic map hanging in a corridor at the Port of San Francisco building, in a rehabbed terminal at Pier 1 along The Embarcadero, traces the original curve of a coastline that once separated the city from San Francisco Bay.

The existing waterfront juts out considerably from where its natural edge once fell, and today’s urban landscape features a mix of entire neighborhoods, tall buildings, parks, restaurants, merchant corridors, and transport terminals, all perched atop fill covered by layers of concrete.

Its shipping days long gone, much of San Francisco’s human-constructed waterfront now serves as a draw for visitors, the iconic subject of countless tourist photographs. But at other locations along the shoreline, vacant waterfront parcels are hotly contested land-use battlefronts.

“We’re clearly in a period of significant controversy,” the Port’s Special Project Manager Brad Benson told us. The Warriors Arena, Benson said, had been an opportunity for the Port to rehabilitate and generate revenue from Piers 30-32, which originated as two finger piers constructed in 1912, joined by a concrete slab in the 1950s.

Despite being in control of some of the most valuable real estate along the West Coast, the Port of San Francisco remains in a perpetual financial pinch, due to its need to fix up crumbling piers and aging infrastructure. The Port is governed by a Waterfront Land Use Plan, outlining possible uses for each parcel, and it also conducted a survey to identify properties that could be developed to help generate revenue.

“The Port has a big capital need,” Benson said, noting that many of the “piers and buildings were beyond their useful life when they were transferred to the city” from the state in 1968. Facing nearly $2 billion in capital needs, the Port’s modus operandi is to seek out private developers to partner with on development projects for parcels under its ownership, in order to secure funding that would go toward backlogged improvements.

That didn’t happen with the Warriors, however — the sports team approached the city out of the blue, and the project quickly won the fervent backing of Mayor Lee, who has appointment power over the five-member commission that governs the Port. At one point, Lee even claimed that this flashy sports arena would be his “legacy project.”

To longtime grassroots activists who are deeply involved in how land-use decisions are made on valuable waterfront parcels, it looked to be yet another example of what Prop. B supporter Jennifer Clary called “kneejerk development” — out of sync with carefully thought out shoreline planning efforts.

“The Port gets jerked around by every mayor,” said Clary, president of San Francisco Tomorrow, part of the coalition backing Prop. B. “Every mayor comes up with some stupid project.” She ticked off a list of failed waterfront developments (such as Mills Mall, proposed for Piers 27-31; and a 50-story U.S. Steel Building that would have towered over the Ferry Building), only to have them voted down or halted by grassroots neighborhood activists who viewed them as inappropriate designs fueled by greed and greased by political connections.

Behind the objection to Prop. B, Clary added, “is that the mayor will have to think a little more” before backing projects of this nature.

Whether opponents of the Warriors Arena plan looked at it and saw a traffic nightmare, an inappropriate use of public land, or a bad financial deal for a city needing to contend with ever-growing pressures on its critical infrastructure, members of the coalition that’s backing Prop. B feared the public would have little sway when it came to the final decision-making. A bid to restore that balance, by arming voters with veto power under the law, was the impetus behind Prop. B.

City Hall has ignored the will of regular folks who collectively own Port land along the shoreline, said Agnos, campaign consultant Jon Golinger, and Prop. B proponent and Sierra Club volunteer Becky Evans — listening only to the Mayor’s Office and deep-pocketed developers who stand to make millions by building on extremely valuable land that’s held in the public trust under California law.

“The people are putting the developers in touch with the values of this city, and what we want in this city,” Agnos said, thumping his index finger on the table to emphasize the point. “Prop. B puts people in the room who have not been there, and now [developers] have to pay attention.”

The task of developing Piers 30-32 would have required expensive substructure modification, requiring the involvement of bureaucratic agencies such as the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Bay Conservation Development Commission, and the State Lands Commission. The Warriors estimated that it would invest $120 million in improvements such as seismic upgrades and an elevation grade to deal with the looming problem of sea-level rise, but the threat of having to win voter approval represented yet another hoop to jump through. So when a new option opened up offering greater certainty, the Warriors pulled the plug on Piers 30-32.

Even though Lee’s “legacy project,” the main physical target of Prop. B, is no longer a factor in the June election, backers of the initiative say the measure is still important to restore democratic balance in a development process that freezes out ordinary citizens. Opponents, meanwhile, say the initiative threatens to undermine a complex planning process that engages the public and needn’t be tampered with.

 

IN THE PIPELINE

Prop. B would prohibit city officials from approving taller buildings than are currently allowed under zoning for Port-owned waterfront parcels, unless voters give those height increases a green light at the ballot box.

Since many of the properties in question are already built out, or preserved by historic landmark designation, Prop. B would impact only a handful of waterfront lots that remain in play as potential sites for new development. Among them are Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 351, the site of the 8 Washington luxury condo tower that the electorate flushed down the tubes in a decisive ballot referendum vote last fall, despite Board of Supervisors’ approval.

The same group that opposed 8 Washington launched Prop. B. Last year’s ballot referendum — also named Prop. B, and buoyed by the campaign slogan No Wall on the Waterfront — asked voters whether they favored increasing building heights above the zoning limit at the waterfront site where the luxury condo project would have gone.

San Francisco voters, in no mood to support a high rise for the superrich at a time when anger over skyrocketing rents was bubbling over and droves of low-income residents were being edged out by eviction, shot it down. Many political observers took the outcome as a signal that City Hall politicians are out of touch with voters.

Simon Snellgrove, the developer of the failed 8 Washington project, is reportedly working on a new building design. But since any new plans for 8 Washington are embryonic at best, and the fate of Piers 30-32 is anyone’s guess, the Prop. B ballot measure has immediate implications for two waterfront developments in particular.

One, on and around Pier 48, is being pushed by the San Francisco Giants. The other lies farther south, at Pier 70, a sprawling strip of waterfront that runs behind Illinois Street, from The Ramp restaurant at Mariposa to the old Potrero Power Plant.

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The Giants’ planned development would be a short distance from AT&T Park. 

During World War II, some 18,500 workers built ships at Pier 70 for the war effort, in brick and metal warehouses that still stand vacant and dilapidated. The site also housed a coal-fired power plant that was later converted to natural gas, leaving behind toxic residue that is up to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to remediate. Farther north along Pier 70, BAE Systems conducts ship repair, a task that has been performed at the site since 1868.

Today, a 28-acre parcel of Pier 70 that is proposed for development by Forest City is home to nothing more than pigeons, feral cats, and the occasional hawk that swoops into a cavernous metal-roofed structure that stands near the waterfront and dates back to 1941, barely visible from the street. Someday in the not-so-distant future, developers imagine it will be populated with tech office workers (Google is used as an example of an anchor tenant in slides presented to the city), makers and small vendors, and thousands of residents who would call the place home.

The site is zoned with a 40-foot height limit, but developers are considering plans with a range of building heights that would be on a similar scale to Mission Bay. Part of the improvements to the property will require raising the elevation grade to deal with sea-level rise. Forest City has planned for a minimum of around 1,000 residential units — the majority market-rate, but with a mix of affordable housing as well.

Representatives from Forest City said that if Prop. B passes, “We’ll be prepared to seek voter approval with a dynamic project guided by … a community-based master plan,” and had not taken an official stance on the ballot measure. If voters were to reject an increase of the 40-foot height limit at the site, which is zoned for heavy industry, the project would no longer be financially feasible.

 

GIANT TOWER SCRUTINIZED

At Seawall Lot 337, a parcel near the Giants’ stadium which is primarily used as a parking lot during baseball games, the team is backing a project that would include 3.5 million square feet of new residential, office, and retail development, possibly including a 380-foot tower. Across the way at Pier 48 would be a new Anchor Steam brewery, and about five acres of open space.

The Giants plan resulted from the Port’s request for potential development partners to submit bids for that property, which went out in 2007.

“They very quietly have been pushing a plan that Prop. B made public,” Golinger said of the Giants’ plans. “They screamed at everyone involved in our coalition during the signature drive to get us to drop it. They funded a lawsuit … to get it kicked off the ballot.”

The Guardian independently confirmed that the team is part of the group that has challenged Prop. B in court. That legal challenge was unsuccessful in getting the initiative struck from the June ballot, but a judge could take up the question again if Prop. B is approved.

The parcel where the Giants have pitched a rental housing, office, and retail complex with a maximum height limit of 380 feet is zoned with a height limit of zero, zoned for open space in city plans. Nevertheless, “The [Port’s request for qualifications] called for developing up to 300 feet,” Benson explained, calling the current zoning “a remnant of the old Mission Bay plan,” which envisioned a park with wetlands and open space. The Port’s request for proposals went out after a subcommittee was formed, and public hearings were held on the design plans.

Asked why the Port would bake such a tall height limit into its RFQ, Benson responded, “There was a desire to avoid replicating the heights at Mission Bay,” the nearby redevelopment area characterized by lower, boxy buildings that seem to be universally regarded as ugly and lacking charm.

Few people are as intimately familiar with Mission Bay as Corinne Woods, whose houseboat is enveloped on either side by the sprawling development. When Woods first claimed a berth at Mission Creek for her floating home in 1985, “it was surrounded by open empty fields, abandoned warehouses, and lots of fennel,” she said. “We had wonderful parties.”

Outside her dock just off Channel Street is a community garden, a strip of green space shaded by willow and eucalyptus trees where night herons take refuge. Just beyond that is the Mission Bay South redevelopment area, a sprawling construction site that’s ushered in building cranes, swirling dust, pile drivers, and more recently, a five-alarm blaze that required the entire Fire Department to extinguish.

The fledgling neighborhood that now occupies the already-built part of Mission Bay might as well have dropped out of the sky, and the building profiles are wide and flat. “I would rather see slim, articulated towers, with more open space,” Woods admitted.

In the years between 1985 and today, Woods has fought the Port on behalf of her live-aboard community to be allowed to remain floating in place, becoming an unlikely expert on the byzantine process of waterfront planning along the way.

As a key member of half-dozen or so community advisory groups formed to weigh in on major waterfront developments, Woods has ardent faith in the civic engagement aspect of the planning process. She fears Prop. B could upset years of careful neighborhood negotiations by limiting the discussion to nothing more than a conversation about height limits.

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Corinne Woods opposes Prop. B.

Woods is a plaintiff in the lawsuit the Giants are funding to challenge Prop. B, aligned with developer-friendly housing activist Tim Colen and building trades head Michael Theriault on the side that opposes Prop. B. But despite the millions of dollars that are on the line, Woods insists she has no dog in this fight. “I can’t even get free tickets to Giants games,” she said.

She does hope for the five-acre park that the Giants plan would install as part of the Seawall 337 / Pier 48 plan, a short walk from her houseboat. But she says her opposition to Prop. B is rooted in her experience of a traditional planning process that rewards neighbors who have the patience to sit through hours of grueling advisory group meetings with negotiating power vis-à-vis developers. Asked directly what the problem is with letting voters weigh in, Woods responded, “Because they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about!”

But that leave-it-to-the-experts attitude is just the thing that Prop. B’s backers say is dangerous for waterfront planning, since it places final decision-making in the hands of profit-seeking real estate interests, a public agency in dire need of funding, and a mayor with political ties to developers.

 

THE HOUSING QUESTION

Given that the thrust of Prop. B is to democratize the planning process, few are in a hurry to align themselves with the formal No on B campaign — most of the opposition money seems to have been funneled into the Giants’ lawsuit, even though the Giants have officially taken a neutral stance on Prop. B. However, the message from opponents of Prop. B is that the initiative would kill sorely needed housing.

The Port of San Francisco, which is legally barred from taking a position on the initiative, reported in a February analysis to the Department of Elections that it could have the effect of leaving between 1,990 and 3,690 new housing units “delayed, reduced, or abandoned,” including between 268 and 596 affordable units. Those figures are based on early project proposals brought by the Warriors, the Giants, and Forest City, assuming those planning proposals would be “delayed by a need for a vote, or rejected by the voters” under a Prop. B regime.

A nonbinding Giants term sheet notes that the team would build rental housing, 15-20 percent of those units affordable, while Forest City’s Pier 70 proposal includes 1,000 new housing units with on-site affordable that would exceed the 12 percent required under city law.

Targeting housing “is a scary message,” campaign consultant Golinger said, charging the opposition with preying on voters’ fears to encourage people to vote down a measure that would democratize waterfront planning.

“This myth that we’re trying to stop housing is just that,” Agnos chimed in. “It’s just a political ploy by those who want to build high-end, high-rise, luxury condos — a la 8 Washington, a la Giants — on public property.”

The housing question is key. At a time when so many people are facing eviction or being priced out, the refrain that building more housing is the only solution to relieve pressure is oft-repeated, particularly by developers. However, these projects would introduce far more market-rate units than affordable projects, plopping down well-to-do neighborhoods in spaces that have sat on the margins in recent history, further changing the social character of the city. And proponents of Prop. B question whether the waterfront is really the right place to add new affordable units.

Meanwhile, the affordable housing community seems to be aligned in its support of Prop. B. The San Francisco Tenants Union, the Affordable Housing Alliance, the AIDS Housing Alliance of San Francisco, and other organizations that have aligned to push for stronger tenants’ rights and promote affordable housing have all endorsed the measure.

WHO DECIDES?

Given the popularity of a measure that fundamentally seeks to democratize the planning process, all development teams with skin in the game have declined to take a position on the measure. So have Mayor Lee and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who each played significant roles in recent waterfront battles, with Lee championing the Warriors Arena and Chiu opposing 8 Washington and assisting with the signature-gathering effort to stop it.

Sup. David Campos, in contrast with Chiu and Lee, has taken a stance on Prop. B. In a recent interview, he outlined his reasons for supporting it.

“I think that something has happened in City Hall, where I think the approval process is such that it has led to certain projects being approved that don’t really reflect the reality of what this city needs, and that have truly left the public out of the process in a meaningful way,” Campos told us. “And 8 Washington passed 8-3 at the Board of Supervisors, with a supermajority. The fact that the voters overwhelmingly rejected that project tells you that there has been a disconnect between what the board and folks in City Hall are doing, and where the public actually is.” To correct that imbalance and allow more San Franciscans to shape the city’s waterfront, Campos said, “I think it’s appropriate for us to go to the ballot and let the voters decide.”