Welcome to the other side. There’s got to be a morning after, and here it is. It brings 14 reasons why the Bay Area doesn’t just create its own political discourse — through art, it charts wonderlands and hells beyond any campaign promise.
The Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards turn 20 this year. The Goldie Awards have manifested as marathon-length award ceremonies, wild parties, and even as formal affairs. They’re usually rough around the edges, and always as great as the people they honor. Four years ago, in the immediate wake of George W. Bush’s reelection, Lifetime Achievement winner Bruce Conner exorcised a desolate awards night by dancing. This year’s awards, in part a celebration of all the winners of the last two decades, are dedicated to his memory.
This year’s Goldie winners were selected by the Guardian‘s Kimberly Chun, Cheryl Eddy, and Johnny Ray Huston, with valuable input from our writers and critics, including Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Glen Helfand, as well as members of the Bay Area arts community. The people in this issue turn apartments into stages and art galleries, transform entire theaters into stage sets, and bring the changing face of San Francisco to the screen. They make guitars sing, and in turn they sing like well-tuned strings. They write the history of modern art and poetry. They know the force of a cosmic ray. Join them, and us, on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 111 Minna — 11/11 at 111 — for a celebration. It’s free. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Click below for more on our winners. All winner portraits by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover Photography
The winners of the 20th annual Goldie Awards
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LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
>>LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI AND CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
Anything but a vanity press
By Ari Messer
>>V. VALE AND RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS
The monkish punk elder of counterculture in the Bay
By Kimberly Chun
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DANCE
>>ERIN MEI-LING STUART
Focusing on the mess humans manage to create for themselves
By Rita Felciano
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FILM
>>BARRY JENKINS
Viewing the city — and its displacements — through the prism of a relationship
By D. Scot Miller
>>KINO21
Creating a lively forum for critical engagement with aesthetics
By Matt Sussmanr
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LITERATURE
>>BILL BERKSON
Fifty years of slow-dawning epiphany
By Julien Poirier
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MUSIC
>>CITAY
Sublimely interwoven acoustic and electric guitars and lushly appointed folk-rock
By Kimberly Chun
>>THE DODOS
Concocting a sound that verges on epic, minus muddle
By Johnny Ray Huston
>>JONAS REINHARDT
Wembley-sized dreams for the contemporary Krautrockers
By Michael Harkin
>>TRACKADEMICS
Different buzzes in different circles, consciously
By Garrett Caples
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THEATER
>>THE CUTTING BALL THEATER
It’s often the warped glass that furnishes the truest picture
By Robert Avila
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VISUAL ART
>>MATT FURIE
Endangered species to champagne-and-SpaghettiOs
By Johnny Ray Huston
>>KAMAU PATTON
Behold the warp of truth, infinite
By Marke B.
>>MARGARET TEDESCO
An approach that always includes inviting others into the fold
By Glen Helfand