Pets Archives — Page 6 of 6 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Small Business Awards 2007: Community Activist Award

April 24, 2007

When Mark Klaiman and Virginia Donohue opened Pet Camp, a kennel for cats and dogs, in 1997 in the Bayview, they wanted to do more than just make money housing pets.

"A lot of businesses drive in, do their work, and leave. They don’t actually get involved in the community," says Klaiman, who with his wife, Donohue, worked for the Environmental Protection Agency prior to becoming an entrepreneur. "We have taken a fundamentally different approach to doing business in the Bayview."

Wedged between Third Street and the Southeast Pollution Control Plant, in a large warehouse complete with a synthetic-grass outdoor play space and a doggie swimming pool, Pet Camp is a stridently green business. It uses huge low-power fans to circulate air, sends its animal droppings to an East Bay methane plant for electricity production, and gets 75 percent of its electricity from a solar-panel-lined roof.

"You get a great view of the settling ponds from our second floor," Donohue says wryly, adding that housing activists threw around the idea of redeveloping their block for new homes.

But the gaseous and chemical smell from the tanks permeates the air, and the housing advocates quickly realized the block might not make for the best living conditions.

The Pet Camp owners are glad about that. They want to stay in the Bayview and have put in countless hours working with others on community projects.

He’s the secretary of the Bayview Merchants Association, which works to ensure that the neighborhood creates and maintains a positive environment for small businesses. During the disruption caused by the construction of the new T-Third line, he helped the group push Muni to develop an ad campaign to let people know that businesses in the neighborhood were still active. They also successfully pressured Muni to speed up the project by making construction crews work weekends and holidays.

"While everyone now thinks the light-rail is going to be great, during the five years it was under construction, it really desecrated Third Street," Klaiman recalls.

The merchant association is also working with the national group Volunteers in Medicine to establish a free health care clinic for Bayview residents.

Pet Camp has a staff of about 20 and offers all employees full benefits and profit sharing. Klaiman says these and other industrial jobs are better than those offered by the tourist and service industries.

For this reason, Klaiman has worked with the Planning Department to retain industrial jobs in the Bayview. Housing activists and other neighborhood merchants have criticized him for that relationship.

According to Al Norman, president of the merchant association, he handles the flack well and takes everything in stride. "He’s levelheaded and evenhanded," Norman says.

At the same time, Klaiman is watchful of downtown developers who are working on changing the Bayview. He keeps track of their efforts through the Planning Department and the San Francisco Urban Planning Association, which has a hand in proposed plans for the area.

"They’re downtown think tank people," Klaiman says in reference to SPUR. "They’re the type of people from north of Market who say they know what is right for the Bayview."

In order to make SPUR sensitive to the needs of Bayview businesses, Pet Camp put together a bus tour for the group to familiarize it with the business community there.

"We should get together as businesses to improve our neighborhood, not just have everything go to downtown," Klaiman proclaims. "And that’s something I think we’ll actually achieve success in – getting better organized out here." (Chris Albon)

PET CAMP

525 Phelps, SF

(415) 282-0700

www.petcamp.com

Digging the roots

March 28, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Whinny, moan, or emote weakly, if you will, at the prospect of so many bland acoustic guitars — singer-songwriters have it rough, warbling softly alone on a big stage, so often the first to get slapped with the "you suck" stick. The worst scenario is too easy to picture: cliché love ballads about the lady or lad up front with the wine spritzer, uncompelling bellyaching about dead pets, lame chord progressions, an unexamined affection for James Taylor and Simon and Garfunkel. You’ve got a friend — who wears khakis. So consider it a good fight when singer-songwriters and those who love them wanna bust the stereotypically sensitive mold à la Jay Farrar, Britt Govea, and Marc Snegg. The last started Nevada City’s Grass Roots Records and is sincerely trying to shine a light on songsmiths succored by the rocky, roaring shores of the sweet South Yuba River with, this week, a traveling songwriters revue including Mariee Sioux, Lee Bob Watson, Alela Diane, and Casual Fog.

Can one expect thin song stylings from clotted brains? "That’s not what’s going to be going on at our show!" Snegg protests on the horn from up north. "Each of these songwriters has strong songs, though I guess singer-songwriters sort of get a bad rap.

"The original thing came up because I’m looking around and seeing what’s happening here, what people are doing anyways. I’m trying to congeal and coalesce it into a thing that’s a tour or a record, something that’s a lasting picture of a moment."

You can’t blame the dude, with all the talent pouring out around his hometown, from Joanna Newsom and Noah Georgeson to Hella and the Advantage, many of whom are not only solo artists but bandleaders as well, as Snegg puts it. The ex–UC Berkeley art major heads his own Sneggband, has already had Watson and Hella vocalist Aaron Ross into Dana Gumbiner’s Brighton Sound studio for new albums, and plans to pull in Sioux by April. His latest project: partnering with Nevada City promoters to bring touring and Bay Area bands to the town.

FOLK YOU Snegg isn’t the only wild-eyed seer bringing together two different NorCal scenes with, in his words, "musical momentum" and a few acoustic guitars. Folk Yeah Presents’ Govea has been putting on quiet and increasingly louder shows at Big Sur’s leafy Fernwood Resort and the woody Henry Miller Library for the past two years. The Crime in Choir performance on March 24 laid the heavy down at the first show of the ’07 season, continuing the move toward the harder psych-rock that closed the series last year. "I didn’t want to barge into Big Sur making a big ruckus, but as it turns out, the locals really like to head-bang," the Monterey promoter says as he hurtles down the coast, promising a pair of Chris Robinson shows and a big outdoors bash with as yet unnamed German electronic artists. He’s also folked up about a Mt. Tam performance around the time of Monterey Pop’s 40th anniversary, a very rad, free Earth Day concert at the Henry Miller Library on April 22, and more shows in "exotic" locales closer to San Francisco, including his first in the city with Howlin Rain and a Mission Creek Music Festival night that should have Red Hash heads humming.

"What keeps it unique is the marriage of LA and San Francisco that comes — an interesting mix. The metaphysical fight goes back to Laurel Canyon and Haight Ashbury, but once everyone gets to Big Sur, it’s nothing but hugs. And other things," Govea adds merrily before breaking up amid the pine needles.

FARRAR OUT Also unfurling a louder, prouder sound is Farrar, who’s been working the other side of the folk acoustic spectrum and mining a kind of Midwestern country-soul for years, in Uncle Tupelo and solo and now once again with Son Volt. The band he cultivated while former UT cosongwriter Jeff Tweedy nurtured his Wilco has birthed an admirably multitextured new CD, The Search (Sony/BMG), full of songs seeking insight amid post-9/11 wartime ("The Picture"), soullessness ("Automatic Society"), drugs ("Methamphetamine"), and other trad forms of escape ("Highways and Cigarettes").

"I probably read too much current events in the paper," Farrar, 40, says from St. Louis. "And some of those topical issues do find a way into the writing. ‘The Picture’ is a song like that. There’s a line — ‘War is profit / Profit is war,’ and that’s kind of being borne out by companies like Haliburton moving to the Middle East where the money is being made."

The title song seemed to best tie together his thoughts about this moment. "I mean, I didn’t want to call it Methamphetamine!" he says, gracefully allowing that, yup, Uncle Tupelo once lived together, subsisting on ramen, and contrary to rumor, their house did not have dirt floors.

Farrar isn’t working "Handy Man" territory yet, but it’s safe to say his partying days are behind him. He’s currently reading S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, about the band’s somewhat infamous 1972 tour, though not for inspiration for his own travels. "Heh-heh, it can definitely be used as a reference point. I think most people who have done as much touring as I have tend to get that out of the way the first couple years. Eventually, you find rhythm that works."

What’s working for him now is playing with a band, a new lineup that includes keyboardist Derry deBorja, who can replicate everything from a banjo to a flute. "I guess having a band," Farrar says with no little irony, "is the one true way to make sure that no one mistakes you for someone that came from American Idol." *

GRASS ROOTS RECORD CO. SONGWRITERS REVUE

Fri/30, 7 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Mama Buzz

2318 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 465-4073

DEAD MEADOW

With Spindrift and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound

Sat/31, 9 p.m., $12 advance

Fernwood Resort

Hwy. 1, Big Sur

www.fernwoodbigsur.com

SON VOLT

Fri/30, 9 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

NOISE: My how Time Flys…

January 30, 2007

Is raucous, reeling rock with a sense of punk history your poison? Cradle your Nuggets comps close to your cold, cold heart? High on those bad boys in the Cuts? Then the Time Flys‘s latest, Rebels of Babylon (Birdman), is for you, you, you. The Oakland combo’s second album is a quantum leap into a gritty, grimy future of hand-claps, cocky vocalizing, and filthy-sounding guitar riffs.

This is where late ’70s NYC punk meets early ’70s Detroit rock, drawing blood in some extremely unsterile back alley and vowing to be friends forever more. Yeah, you can toss around references to DMZ, Lyres, Real Kids, the Voidoids, the Dead Boys, and all those other pluralized pussies — if you wanna annoy me! Better, you can practically taste the snot pouring off these archetypal rock ‘n’ rollers. Nice.

The Time Flys – spelling be damned! – toast their new record with a party, natch. Apache and the Pets open on Friday, Feb. 2, 10 p.m., at the Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. They’re going down on history, as they’d put it, so get in on some of this action.

Bus lust

January 24, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER What’s 40 feet long and 13 feet, 9 inches tall and fun all over? Sounding like a potentially lame "you’ve gotta be kidding me" joke and accelerating in Bay Area underground rockers’ imagination as a real alternative to your average bad show experience, John Benson’s converted Muni veggie-biodiesel bus is the latest in a bohemian nation’s short parade of party starters on wheels — driven by motorvators like the Merry Pranksters and Friends Forever in order to cavort, make art and sometimes community, and blow minds. Le difference is that this art ‘n’ good times vehicle is huge — able to fit an audience of 50 — and despite its whitewashed exterior, green.

Just join the scattered, happy misfits and in-the-knowsters wandering in from off the street on this particularly deserted stretch of the Mission-Potrero area Jan. 21. The bus is peacefully parked and perfectly inaudible beneath a pretzel of elevated freeway off-ramps, like the sweet overgrown offspring of Miss Open Road USA. Take a look under the hood as Benson — once in A Minor Forest and Hale Zukas and now with Evil Wikkid Warrior — opens up the works in the butt end of the bus with the cool little lookout tower on top. Two tanks hold the vegetable oil that primarily propels the bus and the diesel or biodiesel fuel that heats the radiator fluid, which keeps the vegetable oil liquid enough to course through the pipes. With a lot of help from friends, Benson spent only $300 to veggify the bus. And the beautiful part — especially to those in perpetually touring poverty-stricken bands who know what it’s like to spend all the money from a show on gas — is that he gets his fuel free from the pits of used grease behind truck stops and fast-food joints, which ordinarily pay people to take it away.

This is just the latest in a handful of vehicles Benson has vegged out (give or take a few fires caused to keep the vegetable oil flowing), including a Twin Towers dust–saturated ambulance retired after 9/11 service. In 2005, Hale Zukas ended up touring the country in the EMT vehicle alongside the mobile Friends Forever. "I really liked the whole paradigm shift of everything. People didn’t know what to expect," Benson recalls fondly. "We’d come in an ambulance, and everyone would say, ‘Someone got hurt!’ I was excited by the whole chaos and confusion and trickery, and you don’t have to rely on clubs or booking agents or soundmen." And of course there was that added sense of poetic justice, he adds, "driving it around on vegetable oil, the whole statement against the war for oil going on."

Inside the bus, far from maddened neighbors, the music goes on. Slight, skinny-mustached Carlos of Hepatitis C — in town from Bloomington, Ind., where Benson drove him around on his world-record bid to play the most shows in one day — is throwing the party. Living Hell, Ex-Pets, He-War, Noozzz, Erin Allen, and Russian Tsarlag are on the free-to-all, free-for-all bill, and Carlos runs down the street to the opposite street corner — the unofficial green room, where the bands and friends are milling — to tell them the first artist is starting. Backed by crunchy minimal beats, Sewn Leather is flailing around the small stage inside the bus, shouting, "Noise is dying, punk’s been dead, the only rock ‘n’ roll is in your head!" through a PA fed by a battery fueled by the bus’s solar panels. At one of Benson’s biggest events, which included Warhammer and Rubber-O-Cement among 13 bands, the overflow turned into a double Dutch jump-rope contest in the middle of the street. The vibe resembles a kid’s clubhouse taken to the next level — on the road and relatively off the grid.

"Another great thing about the bus is that during all that downtime usually spent staring out the window driving through Nebraska, you can actually plug in instruments. A full band can be playing in back like it’s a practice space," Benson says earlier over the phone of the bus that shall remain nameless (he likes the anonymity).

The all-ages club on wheels simply just "fell into my lap," he continued. "A retired Oakland cop was selling it, and I just saw it going by one day. It was a monstrosity."

The Oaktown police department had torn it up to convert it into a mobile police unit, he was told, and its last owner was going to remake it as a family RV. That intrepid soul was "so hilarious," Benson raves. "I was sold on it because of his personality. He was this 6-foot-7, really huge black guy with these huge hands — such a can-do person. He was sooo the antithesis of Burning Man, because my first reaction was ‘Oh, no, this is some big, gross Burning Man art-car thing.’ Being a retired cop, he said, ‘From driver’s seat back, it’s perfectly legal to rock out with your cock out’ — his exact words. ‘You can drink a fifth of JD and whatever,’ and he then did this funny little dance."

"It’s a surprising tidbit," Benson says. "You don’t have to have seat belts and can have open containers. And you can have a regular driver’s license. If the bus was any longer, you’d need a commercial license. It’s kind of shocking."

Shocking, especially when shortly after he finished converting the bus to use vegetable oil last summer, Benson took it on the road with a bunch of bands to the Freedom From Festival in Minneapolis, where they played before the Boredoms. Because of the bus’s height, they got stuck in an underpass in Chicago’s Wicker Park district. They also couldn’t get it into the Pennsylvania Turnpike and instead were forced to drive through the Poconos. "I got lost in a white-picket-fence neighborhood and was forced to turn around in this poor lady’s yard," Benson recollects. "She and her neighbors came running out, and she was, like, ‘What are you?!’ I was so busy trying to do a 20-point turn I could only yell, ‘We’re a bus!’ ‘What kind of bus are you?’ she yelled. And then someone in the bus jumped out and gave her a hug and said, ‘We’re a magic bus.’ "

You’ve gotta admit there’s a bit of magic going on when Sewn Leather finishes his riveting songs on dead lice, bad pickups, and the end of music genres and the kids pile out, over the oriental carpet cushioning on the floor, and share cookies and other comestibles outside. The cars rumble overhead, oblivious to this DIY snatch of culture-making quietly going about its beeswax. *

BUS SHOW

With the Fucking Ocean and other bands

Feb. 3, 8 p.m., free

Highway 24 overpass Shattuck and 55th St., Oakl.

followthatparade@yahoo.com

Holiday Listings

December 20, 2006

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

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

Holiday Listings

December 12, 2006

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

Give, give, give

December 6, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crap of the future

November 28, 2006

› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION Because I write about technology and science for a living, a peculiar burden falls on my shoulders every holiday season. I’m expected to make pronouncements about what stupid gadgets people should buy for the holidays. I’ve already been asked repeatedly if I’d rather buy a Wii or a PlayStation 3. I’ll admit I found it vaguely glamorous that people were shooting and rioting in line while waiting to buy the PlayStation — it gave me that retro concert-trampling-frenzy feeling. But it didn’t make me want to own one.
However, I reserve the right to do another thing that tech-sci writers are supposed to do: predict the future. So instead of bitching about the stupid holiday gadgets of today, allow me to predict what kinds of lameass holiday crap I’ll be bitching about in the future.
1. Peer-to-peer brain distribution client: Everybody is uploading and downloading their brains via the Internet. It’s certainly the best way to travel — just upload your brain in San Francisco and download it into another body in France. The problem is bandwidth. With everybody uploading and downloading their brains around the holidays, the network gets awfully slow. That’s why Yahoo! BitTorrent has introduced the P2P brain distribution client, which allows you to store several copies of your consciousness on multiple computers across the network. Downloading goes a lot faster because you grab segments of your consciousness from different computers at the same time, assembling it piecemeal at your destination. The problem is that sometimes the pieces arrive out of order, so you spend half an hour thinking the Star Wars series has gotten better over time. Also, people often mislabel copies of your consciousness. You think you’re downloading your mind, but actually you’ve gotten Cher’s childhood or somebody’s false memory of being abducted by aliens.
2. DNA DRM: The latest solution to the problem of media copying is a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that relies on identifying the DNA of the consumer. When you purchase a piece of media, your licensed copy is encoded with 13 unique sequences of nucleotides from your genome. Each time you hit the power button on your new DNA DRM Zune media player, a hair-thin needle painlessly pierces your flesh and feeds a drop of blood into an embedded genome sequencer. If you are the registered owner of the media, you are permitted to play it. If you aren’t, the media is deleted from your device and a record of your transgression is reported to the central media certification authority. You will be forced to pay an extra “unlicensed play penalty tax” to license it next time. The only thing good about this system is that biohackers can take the DNA DRM Zune apart, remove the embedded sequencer, and use it to figure out if they have cancer.
3. Animal mashup maker: A home biology kit for kids, the mashup maker lets you create new animals by combining the best of all your favorite pets’ genomes. What could go wrong? The dats and cogs are great, but when you start getting into fish-frogs or bird-fish or snails combined with anything, cleaning the litter box really gets kinky. Also the product tie-ins suck. I’m going to spit if I see another one of those cutsey, knitted lizard-pig holsters.
4. Retinas-B-Gone: While I sympathize with the political project that inspired the invention of this device, I’m not sure the means justify the ends. Retinas-B-Gone temporarily burns out people’s retinas to stop those annoying in-eye ads. But this extreme adbusting technique feels too much like poking out your eyes to spite your own ubiquitous mediascape. Plus, people could get hurt. What if unscrupulous users start burning out everybody’s retinas in traffic? And what if there are people who want to see the price of toothpaste flashed into their eyes as they pass the Walmart-Google store? I don’t like seeing those tiny ads marching up the side of my vision either, but sometimes it’s worth it to see a free movie. At least the damn things are relevant, though admittedly it’s weird to see plugs for cheap funerals when you’re watching the death scene in Romeo and Juliet. Instead of tearing your retinas out and feeding your blood to the Zune this holiday, why not learn how to build a potato launcher or a Tesla coil instead? Or go write some free porn for asstr.org, fer chrissake. This is the season for giving! SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who will be celebrating the holidays by eating your brain.

Roughin’ Justin

October 3, 2006

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Don’t be tripping, sit your sexy back down slowly, and I’ll try to break the news to you gently: Justin Timberlake and I have a history.
OK, it’s not like we sat around in Pampers and OshKosh B’Gosh, playing gastroenterologist with Barbie and GI Joe and gurgling along to “White Lines.” Though I am getting a dose of feverish white-line nostalgia listening to coke-daddy ode “Losing My Way” off dusty Justy’s new Jive album, Speakerboxxx … whoops, I mean FutureSex/LoveSounds. And it’s not as if we met on The Mickey Mouse Club, brawling over mouse ears and bawling about diaper rash and paltry camera time. We don’t go that way back.
But Kimberly discovered Timberly long before a certain sheepish someone made contact with that Jackson scion’s nipple ornament. I first saw el Cueball, as I so lovingly dubbed my mousy darling’s shaved pate, fronting *NSYNC at the Santa Clara County Fair around ’98. You know, back when the strings were still apparent. I was there with a few other geezer peers, measuring the hype on the opening local Filipino American vocal group, when the budding boy banders entered prancing and the 14-year-old girls went positively cuckoo, clutching photos and near weeping with longing as Timberlake and company worked the whistled theme to Welcome Back, Kotter into the encore.
Then I met up with Timby again at the Oakland Arena when the “Justified and Stripped” tour broke away from the rest of the bubblegum boys and strapped on Christina Aguilera. Whatever you think of Aguilera’s dirty-girl front, she certainly displayed pipes and pride live, strutting around like Femlin in a black corset and short pants and belting out “Beautiful.” But that was forgotten when Timberhunk emerged — thin voice or no, the little girls were still going utterly nutzoid. They screamed, freaked, and gaped like ravenous baby birds beneath the catwalk he beatboxed upon. That’s the power of cute, man.
But Just-oh doesn’t want to be just cute anymore, as the cover of FutureSex attests: suited up in a skinny black suit like a baby Reservoir Dog, little buckeroo looks outright pissed, crushing a disco ball beneath his heel. If Justified hasn’t made it perfectly clear, Timberlake wants to be considered a force — artistic, tough-guy, whatev — to be reckoned with. Pity the poor pop-pets — Madonna, Britney, Justy — they all have such an ambivalent relationship with le fickle dance floor. FutureSex reeks of such ambition — as the swinging singles prince offers up a kind of archaic devotion to the album format and a familiar if downbeat trajectory tracing a loverboy’s woozy weave from lust to lovesickness. Witness the first half of the full-length: “FutureSex/LoveSound,” “Sexyback,” “Sexy Ladies.” Either someone’s out of synonyms for doing the doity or someone’s ob-sexed.
Musically kitted out by Timbaland in the Neptunes’ absence, FutureSex is clearly intended to be a kind of Prince-ly, sensual opus, and for having the good taste to imitate the most original funk rock stylists of the ’80s, Timba-lake should be commended. But all the CD images of Timbo smashing disco balls seem out of character, overwrought. To wax crassly, Justin tries to show us he has the balls to both musically embrace Grandmaster Flash, Queen, Lil Jon, and yes, the alpha and omega, libertine and spendthrift couple of ’80s soul, Prince and Michael Jackson, and strike out on his own. Just ignore the slimness of Timberlake’s vanilla soul. It’s barely flavored, not quite iced, with techno, barebacked beats, and retro soul, and despite the disc’s initially fluid, almost mirror-ball-like reflective programming, it opens into a dull middle section that’s broken up only by the frisky groove of “Damn Girl.” It makes you wish Timberlake had the courage of his initial fantasy-fueled single’s conviction. If only this disco baller had left it at FutureSex and Timberlake stuck to his, er, cheesy pistols and the Prince of schwing’s original program.

CALIFONE DREAMING Califone’s Tim Rutili can probably understand the urge to try out new personae. While talking about his new, gorgeous album, Roots and Crowns (Thrill Jockey), the frontperson and soundtrack composer fessed up to believing in past lives — and indeed relying on that knowledge when it came to penning tunes about kittens that see ghosts, lost eyes, and black metal fornication. “The writing process is all about that — just letting things bubble up,” he says from Chicago, where the band is rehearsing. And what does he imagine the members of Califone were in a past life? “Circus clowns.”
The ex–Red Red Meat member doesn’t seem to spook easily. Case in point: the last time Califone played San Francisco, their van was broken into. Treasured gear such as Rutili’s grandfather’s 1917 violin and a custom-made acoustic guitar, which he says was “nicer than my house,” were stolen. “They were nice enough to leave stuff that looked shitty,” he waxes positively. “It was heartbreaking, but in the end it forced us to learn a lot of new tricks, open up our ideas, and gather new things. It really did inform the recording to not have to lean on any of the old stuff.”
The scattered Califone seems to be working out the kinks in its evolution, with Rutili in Los Angeles writing music for film and the rest of the band in Chicago and Valparaiso, Ind. “I see us getting older and becoming more creative,” Rutili muses. And most people just get older and watch more TV. “That doesn’t seem to be happening with us, but it makes it more difficult too. TV is easy — keeping your eyes open and your ear to the ground and trying to remain connected and in touch with creativity is difficult.” SFBG
CALIFONE
With Oakley Hall and D.W. Holiday
Tues/10, 9 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455

SUNDAY

August 30, 2006

Sept. 3

Music

Dub Mission

Sometimes finding a unique spin on a familiar concept only leads to bankruptcy (e.g., the thankfully short-lived Pets.com), and sometimes it can lead to a 10-year residency at the Elbo Room, which is what San Francisco’s only weekly dub, dancehall, and progressive roots club, Dub Mission, celebrates tonight. Founded in 1996 by former KUSF DJ Sep (who recently returned to the decks after a brief spot of maternity leave), Dub Mission has consistently attracted a thoroughly mixed, laid-back fan base whose primary focus is dancing, not dissing. This week’s festivities will feature a live performance from J-Boogie’s Dubtronic Science. Happy anniversary, Dub Mission, shall we dance? (Nicole Gluckstern)

9 p.m.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
$15
(415) 552-7788
www.dubmissionsf.com
www.elbo.com

Film/dvd

A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005

Ah, Market Street. How many lonely nights I’ve stood on you, freezing my pachangas off while waiting for the stupid 9 to show up. How many times (two) I’ve gotten my tire stuck in the F car rails and flipped over my handlebars. Whether you’re a financier, panhandler, chess player, or German tourist, the street has undoubtedly worked its way diagonally into your heart. Even if your connection to Market is – like mine – cold and painful, you owe it to the relationship to check out the screening and DVD release party for A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005, two movies made a hundred years apart about its illustrious past and present. (Jason Shamai)

2 p.m.
Exploratorium
3601 Lyon, SF
Free with museum admission ($8-$13)
(415) 563-7337
www.exploratorium.edu

LIFE IS SHORT

August 8, 2006

In its almost 27 minutes, Samantha Reynolds’s Back to Life doesn’t break down the history of taxidermy, but it does prod, stumble, and finesse its way into some memorably off-kilter portraiture, not to mention insight about mortality. Her decision to be on camera initially might seem amateurish (especially after the movie’s opening animation), but as a surrogate viewer, she achieves an uncomfortable intimacy with her subjects. And her subjects are something else. They include one taxidermist who is simply continuing the family business and another whose creative memento mori urges are directly connected to family horror: a father who shot himself and an uncle who committed matricide, for starters. “I put it in her hands before I pushed the button,” the latter taxidermist says, referring to the book I’m OK, You’re OK and another relative, both now in powder form in a glass bottle on her mantle.
There are no Norman Bates types in this doc, just bereaved pet owners, artists dealing with their lot in life, and businesspeople doing their job — a job that just happens to involve sawing off the legs and heads of dead pets to make molds, a task that Reynolds herself joins in on with a grimace. Back to Life is just one of the many byways available in the varied programming of “SF Shorts” — the first San Francisco International Festival of Short Films. Even better is Kim Romano’s Muriel, a profile of a 67-year-old woman in Key West who tosses off one-liners that Woody Allen would covet; Romano has a gift for funny and even poignant framing, and there are more vivid characters in her 19-minute movie than you’d find in a full day of Sundance drama features. Overseen by a jury that includes filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, the seven programs include sections devoted to documentary and comedy. Festival directors James Kenney and Michael Coyne took in over 900 entries before choosing 56. That last number includes a movie by Melissa Joan Hart, a.k.a. the director formerly known as Sabrina the teenage witch. (Johnny Ray Huston)
SF SHORTS
Thurs/10–Sat/12
See Film listings for venues
and showtimes
$9–$10
(877) 714-7668
www.sfshorts.org

Rabid rabbi

July 11, 2006

› news@sfbg.com
“You are my rabbi,” said the caller who claimed to be a Methodist. “Good,” said the talk show host, “Everybody needs a rabbi.”
This is no shock jock being irreverent — he’s a real rabbi. But make no mistake, this is no jolly rebbe kvetching about marrying a nice Jewish boy, nor a lefty Jew talking about justice, diversity, and the Holocaust. He’s Daniel Lapin, dubbed “the show rabbi of the Christian right” by the New York Times. And now he’s a San Francisco talker, Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. on right-wing radio station KSFO.
But Lapin’s more than a front man. He’s a faith-based political operative who was deeply implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandals when Lapin’s nonprofit, Toward Tradition, was exposed as one of a cluster of tax-exempt organizations through which Abramoff secretly routed tribal Indian and other gambling clients’ funds to an aide to Rep. Tom DeLay in return for favorable legislation.
According to news reports published as recently as last month, Abramoff’s nonprofit money-laundering operations are still under investigation. “It’s not a tax-exempt activity to act as a bagman for Jack Abramoff,” Marcus S. Owens, a tax lawyer and former IRS official, told the Washington Post in June.
The Post piece claims Lapin introduced Abramoff to deposed GOP House leader Tom DeLay, a social feat of epic political proportions. Lapin wrote in a letter to supporters after the scandal broke, “Although I have no clear recollection of having formally introduced them, it is certainly possible.”
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has called Lapin his “spiritual adviser,” and white supremacist David Duke wrote, “There are so few honest voices like that of Rabbi Lapin.”
A rabbi without a congregation, the 59-year-old Lapin gave up his Seattle talk show in February. He’d been filling in for other KSFO hosts and began his show in April, broadcasting from a Seattle studio. Although Lapin denies it, observers opine that he moved to the Bay Area for a fresh start after national publicity about the Abramoff scandals made him radioactive in Seattle.
Toward Tradition has reportedly fallen on hard times after postscandal donations tanked. Lapin has given up his offices, laid off staff, and works out of his home on Mercer Island, a wealthy suburban enclave outside Seattle. He founded Toward Tradition with film critic and neocon radio talker Michael Medved and Abramoff in the early 1990s. The disgraced lobbyist joined the board and served a few terms as chairman. Lapin calls his organization a coalition of Jews and conservative Christians dedicated to faith-based American principles of constitutional and limited government, the rule of law, representative democracy, free markets, a strong military, and a moral public culture.
Until his recent problems, Toward Tradition allowed Lapin to pay himself a $165,000 annual salary, according to a 2003 IRS filing. He also fetched high speaker’s fees and right-wing Christian street cred that’s taken him to the George W. Bush White House for Shabbat dinners and the speaker’s podium at the 1996 Republican National Convention.
Lapin has been a conduit between the GOP and the fundamentalist “values” crowd, but was also directly involved in Republican fundraising. Newsweek reported last year, “When fundraising began for Bush’s re-election effort, Rabbi Daniel Lapin . . . urged friends and colleagues to steer campaign checks to Bush via Abramoff.” For his loyalty, Bush appointed Lapin to the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, which helps protect cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in eastern and central Europe. He recently resigned from this post.
Although Lapin can be tedious on the radio, he’s charismatic one-on-one and on the stump. A striking figure in expensive dark suits, bright ties, meticulous ear-to-ear rabbinical beard, and bald pate usually covered with a yarmulke, he is a tall, lanky, ascetic presence.
His mission, as stated on his Web site, is “standing astride America’s secular path to decline, decadence, and depravity.” But his version of Judeo-Christianity looks like a right-wing Republican wish list. Lapin believes that currency and capital markets are revelations granted by God to the Jews and passed on to Christians.
As a man of God, he not only supports stable marriages, family life, faithfulness, and integrity, but (along, he says, with God) favors tax cuts, property rights, sodomy laws, school prayers, school vouchers, arranged marriages, and elimination of government social programs. He opposes promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, welfare, crime, funding for the arts, gun control, environmental laws, and black people giving their kids “funny” names.
“Recycling,” Lapin told the Guardian, “is the sacred sacrament of secularism.” He told KSFO listeners recently that saying a prayer over your dead pets is sick and bizarre.
According to Lapin’s writings, Terri Schiavo’s death was a “premeditated murder-plot,” and he’s said on the radio that living wills are “suicide notes.” Tattoos, birth control, piercings, abortions, and assisted suicide are all sinful because, as he told the Guardian, it’s not your body, thank you very much, you’re only a tenant. And tenants, in Lapin’s view, have no rights, especially when it comes to moving or evictions.
Lapin also crusades against homosexuality and is a headliner and co-organizer, with virulent Seattle homophobe Rev. Ken Hutcherson, of the effective, antigay Mayday for Marriage rallies, one of which drew some 150,000 supporters to the Mall in Washington, DC, just before the 2004 elections. He makes appearances on the pulpit of Hutcherson’s megachurch near Seattle and they’re jointly involved in other political activities. (Hutcherson is the evangelical who bullied Microsoft in 2005 into withdrawing support for a gay rights bill before the Washington State Legislature, which effectively killed it.)
There was comic relief at hearings last year before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee provided by e-mails between Lapin and Abramoff, and read by North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan. Abramoff asked Lapin to help him sex up a résumé to help him get into Washington’s exclusive Cosmos Club, whose membership includes Nobel Prize winners and establishment elites.
“Most prospective members have received awards and I have received none,” Abramoff complained, going on to say, “It would be even better, if it were possible, that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean.”
Lapin apparently knew what he meant, writing, “Yes, I just need to know what needs to be produced . . . letters? Plaques? Neither?”
Lapin wrote in a letter to supporters that it was merely a “jocular interchange” that he regrets, but Abramoff later used Toward Tradition’s award of “Scholar of Talmudic Studies” in serious applications, according to investigators.
Lapin also leads an organization called the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, which seems to exist only as a page on his Web site. Its board of advisers shows the company he keeps, such far-right luminaries as James Dobson, the current Christian right’s front man; the scandal-tainted Gary Bauer, a failed 2000 presidential candidate; the came-to-Jesus Watergate convict Charles “Tex” Colson; Michael Medved; and preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, whose wacky prophecies and laughable gaffes of the last few years have rendered them useless as national spokesmen for the evangelical right. It also includes hard-right orthodox rabbis like Barry Freundel, David Novak, and Meir Soloveichik.
Many Jews are nervous about such lovey-dovey political alliances with the Christian fundamentalists, considering many evangelicals don’t believe God even answers Jewish prayers. To born-agains, Jews will burn in hell if they don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior. Their support of Israel is not born of Christian love, but of Book of Revelation end-world myths that say Jews must control Israel for Christ to come back.
Lapin reassures Jews that despite evangelicals’ having been some of the most persistent anti-Semites in the past, they are the Jews’ natural allies. “I do not fear a Christian America,” he was quoted as saying in an Eastside Weekly article. “I fear a post-Christian America.”
So why does David Duke — the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard turned Republican congressional candidate — like Lapin? Good question, since Duke’s Christian Identity beliefs hold that Jews are “the children of Satan.” This does not look good on a Judeo-Christian résumé.
In an essay that ran in the Orthodox paper Jewish Press in January, Lapin denounced the silly 2004 movie Meet the Fockers, which starred his old friend Barbra Streisand. He compared its Jewish producers (and such Jews as Howard Stern) with the Jews producing Berlin theater in Weimar Germany, with their “deviant sexuality in all its sordid manifestations.” Lapin quoted Adolf Hitler (the leading voice on “values” of his day) charging that these Jews were responsible for “nine-tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy.” Apparently, Jews were practically begging to be hauled off to the ovens.
Duke, on his Web site, heartily agreed with Lapin and Hitler, and added that anti-Semitism isn’t just blind hatred, it’s for a darn good reason: “It is revulsion to the actions of the Jewish overseers of our mass media.”
Although he spent time growing up in Britain, Lapin was born and raised in and around white supremacist South Africa in the 1950s. Alongside his Afrikaner accent, it’s easy to detect in Lapin a sense of superiority reflecting the mid-20th-century South African Dutch Reformed Church, whose retributive, racist, and self-righteous worldview justified the apartheid system and provided a sociopolitical framework for his formative years.
Lapin often says non-Judeo-Christian cultures and secular liberalism are more of animals than of God and holds historically contentious theories that Western scientific superiority was developed directly from Judeo-Christianity. “Why didn’t the periodic table surface among the Eskimos?” he asked in a 1996 Eastside Week article. “It doesn’t make sense that Africa hadn’t figured out the wheel by the time England was at the end of the Industrial Revolution.”
The reason, Lapin said in that article, is because they never had the opening lines of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth.”
And that’s not just for third world heathens — it goes for the rest of us who don’t share the rabbi’s opinions. “Modern American liberalism,” he was quoted as saying, “is unquestionably at odds with everything Judeo-Christianity stands for.”
Strange worldview for a Bay Area audience? Maybe, but not for the station that launched Michael Savage and other angry right-wingers. However, the didactic Lapin has never had real broadcasting success, with short stints at Seattle stations and a stab at national syndication that was short lived. He says he’s doing well in the liberal Bay Area, but time will tell. SFBG
For Lapin’s denunciation of Meet the Fockers, see www.towardtradition.org/our_worst_enemy.htm. For David Duke on Lapin and anti-Semitism, see www.davidduke.com/?p=226.

My night with “Marie Antoinette” — live at Cannes

May 27, 2006

Gary Meyer of Balboa Theater fame dishes the Cannes screening of Sofa Coppola’s forthcoming opus:

Can we get more frills on that? A still from Marie Antoinette.

A hometown girl made good at the world’s most prestigious film festival when Valley Girl (Napa Valley, that is) Sofia Coppola presented her newest film, Marie Antoinette, at Cannes.

The movie was filmed in France and deals with one of the country’s most famous historical characters — an American is always taking chances dealing with something so essentially French. Kirsten Dunst said at the morning press conference, “In America we learn mostly about our history and only a paragraph is dedicated to the French Revolution. “

An 8:30 a.m. press screening generated a handful of predictable boos from a group of French critics though the published reviews were generally favorable and the opening day box office was huge here. What happens at the public showings in more important.

And that is how I wanted to experience Marie Antoinette. I scored hard-to-get tickets for the evening gala. This is the “big deal” where the celebrities and France’s crème de la crème put on their finest. Everyone is required to dress accordingly. Following a day of screenings, I rushed back to my hotel to get into my tuxedo at 5:30. At 6:30 I met my date in front of the Palais. This massive structure is entered via dozens of red carpeted steps flanked by hundreds of photographers and TV camera crews.

Photo opps galore. Credit: Gary Meyer

As we started our ascension, Yseult, wearing a stunning long dress, was stopped because a security guard noticed she wore black tennis shoes underneath. With some fast talking and a flash of her smile, she got him to look the other way. And then we started an entrance that seemed to take a very long time. Not only are there numerous sets of stairs, but everyone is expected to stop and pose for pictures…just in case we happened to be famous. Suddenly there was loud cheering. We put on our best we-are-important look and pretended to belong. Reaching the top steps we turned to look back and it soon became clear that maybe the cheering had been for Samuel L. Jackson. Oh, well, we had our fantasy moment.

Inside the 3,000-seat auditorium we had excellent orchestra seats thanks to Columbia Pictures. On the huge screen was projected the arrivals. We’d been up there minutes before. And now we had a close-up view as jurors ZiYi Zhang, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, Monica Bellucci, Tim Roth, and Wong Kar-Wai arrived. Soon came Sharon Stone and Faye Dunaway, then Pedro Almodovar with his film’s star, Penelope Cruz. Several women in astonishing dresses and massive colorful hats came dressed right out of the film. And finally the cast and crew of Marie Antoinette led by director-writer Sophia Coppola under the watchful eyes of proud parents Eleanor and Francis Ford. Ellie made certain to capture everything on her camcorder. Kirsten Dunst was glowing, and her co-stars Jason Schwartzman, Marianne Faithfull, and Steven Cooper seemed to be thrilled, too. As the film’s entourage entered the cinema, the TV cameras followed, and suddenly we saw them a few yards away while projected 50 feet tall. The entire audience rose to offer an advance standing ovation.

Face time inside the Palais. Credit: Gary Meyer

The movie began. It is a beautifully made work that concentrates on the life of a young woman brought from Austria to be married at 14 years old to the heir to the throne, Louis XVI. The rules were strict at Versailles. Annoyed at first that she couldn’t even get undressed without a staff helping her, Marie soon became accustomed to her escape from family infighting and gossip by indulging in the constant pampering, shopping, eating, and playing with her pets. Her husband wasn’t interested in intimacy, and for years Marie was blamed for their lack of an heir.

Coppola has brought a contemporary sensibility to this tale about the young queen. Her script largely avoids politics with the coming revolution being a factor only at the end of the two-hour film. Sofia explained at the press conference that she wasn’t telling the story of the French Revolution, but it is clear to the audience why the masses would rise up in protest at the extravagance of the royal family while most people were starving.

Jason Schwartzman and Kristen Dunst maneuver at the press conference.
Credit: Gary Meyer

The settings and costumes are authentic, and the actors explained how they worked to move and inhabit the clothing. They all did considerable research for their characters. Schwartzman told how amazing it was to wander around Versailles alone and develop a sense of what it might have been like to live there. But Coppola wants the movie to come alive for today’s audiences, and her musical score features 1970s and ‘80s tunes while the spoken language feels comfortably contemporary. She admits to having taken liberties with history while drawing parallels between the excesses of the 18th century French monarchy and modern-day affluence. Valley Girl, indeed…Loire Valley Girl.

“I wanted the film to be credible, but I was inspired more by the visual than historical facts. I want people to be transported into another era with an echo of today,” Coppola said.

The film comfortably coasts along with little dramatic tension, but is a pleasure and should be a popular, if unlikely success to follow Ms Coppola’s very different but linked The Virgin Suicides and Lost In Translation.

Following the screening was a lengthy standing ovation and then those with colorfully painted fans/invitations moved outside and over to Plage Marie Antoinette for the after party. Tables filled with assorted seafood from raw tuna on spoons to crayfish and oysters, were supplemented by vegetables, salads, and the tastiest cheese balls that have ever melted in my mouth. A large table sported a tall fountain of flowing chocolate waiting for assorted fruits to be drowned. Sofia was spotted indulging, and when nobody noticed (except my friend from the Hollywood Reporter), she wiped some chocolate off on her dress. Additional guests, many dressed casually, arrived. We spotted Robin Williams, Michele Yeoh, REM’s Michael Stipe, and cyclist Lance Armstrong. There were crème puffs but they didn’t let us eat cake, the famous reference, which is referred to as a joke in the movie.

The weather was perfect, and at midnight a spectacular fireworks show erupted over the harbor. A DJ played great ‘80s dance music. My feet started to hurt at 2 a.m., and it was time to go home. There was an 8:30 am screening to rest up for. I carefully exited in hopes that the masses weren’t waiting outside to rise up against the most extravagant party I’ve attended.

To read quotes from the Marie Antoinette press conference, visit the festival site.

Noise Pop popped open

April 4, 2006

It’s over! And we all feel like we didn’t quite see as much as we would have liked. Ain’t that always the case for we, the pop neurotic? We came. We drank. We rocked. We nodded our heads with our arms folded loosely about ourselves. We stumbled home. We got damp. We didn’t quite conquer, but when we managed to get into the club, we felt that strange, ineffable sense of accomplishment.

Popping open an internal reporter’s notebook, I threw together a few highlights from my not-quite-embedded week in Noise Pop’s world:

The Lips have a lock on SF hearts.

Word has it that beaucoup bucks were being passed for Flaming Lips ticks on Noise Pop’s opening night at Bimbo’s. How nice to finally get inside, out of the drizzle — and to find the special edition silk-screened Lips poster also sold out. Stardeath and white dwarfs — including Lips frontperson Wayne Coyne’s nephew sporting a skin-tight, alluring green costume — opened with palate-tickling psych.

After a short set-up break, Coyne read the proclamation from the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, naming March 27 through April 2, 2006, Noise Pop Week. Then all hell, balloons, and costumed Santa’s helpers broke loose. Don’t you miss those cozy, not-so-quiet shows in parking lots?

I’d include a pic of Steven Drodz deep-throating a mic, but I should keep it clean for all those soccer moms out there.

Balloons must be free.

Later, Coyne launched into an anti-Bush admin monologue. We’re with you, guy — I just got the slight, ever-so-slight impression that he uses those same lines on all the states, both red and blue. “We got to make it popular to be gay, smoke pot, and have abortions!” he shouted. Say it loud — say it proud.

The next night at Bimbo’s, Feist managed to gracefully skirt a PA outage, refusing to stop the show and singing a few tunes a cappella. Her drummer, however, threw a hissy fit and stomped off at one point. “We love you, Ringo,” yelled one onlooker. Hey, dude, the Beatles broke up years ago.

Jason Collett resembles the dapper bastard son of Peter Wolf
and Willy DeVille, no?

Feist was name-checked by her Broken Social Scene bandmate Jason Collett, who rolled out some nice 4/4 rock songcraft Friday night at Cafe du Nord. He paid tribute to his bad-seed years hanging at the mall and even unleashed some goofy, little soft-shoe. Brroooo — I mean, Jaaaaaasss…

Saturday day: It warmed the cockles of my dark lil’ heart to see so many turn out for the lady-dominated Indie Night School panel on music journalism, or how to get your CD reviewed (well, we hope).

On Saturday night, we hunkered down at Bottom of the Hill for a full night of hard rock with headliners Wolfmother. Portland’s Danava impressed with their mix of ’70s-referencing hard prog and ’80s-tinged crazed keys. What decade are we in? We had to admit — it was original.

A lotta Danava.

Wolfmother are good at what they do — rocking the house with a mix of Detroit rock, ala the Stooges and MC5, along with, natch, Sabbath. I just wish it they didn’t seem so studied — just a feeling you got watching the bassist go through his not-breaking-a-sweat moves.

That’s no puppy — that’s my band mate! Brightblack Morning Light at Great American Music Hall.

Sunday night wound down with Vetiver, Brightblack Morning Light, Neil Halstead, and Peggy Honeywell at Great American Music Hall. This show was notable for the sheer number of indie folkies sitting on the floor. No standing room only, goddammit. If only we were all reclining — that would complete the cool-down vibe of the fest’s final night.

Halstead forgot the words to one of his songs but was lovely nonetheless. Mojave who? Brightblack was stirring –showing off some slow, swinging folk-jazz fusion chops.

One interesting trend, apparent also at the recent His Name Is Alive show at Cafe du Nord: minion-like band members who sit on the stage like pets. Maybe the sitting thing was simply spreading, like a virus. But does anyone realize that these people are pretty much invisible to most of the room? Additionally these mascot-like stage sitters are usually women, who tend to look shy, servile, and childlike down there. Aw, c’mon, raise ’em up to where they belong.

All photos by Kimberly Chun.

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