Volume 40 Number 27

Apr. 5 – Apr. 11, 2006

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Hotel California

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The father of all masked superheroes, Zorro first appeared in California in 1919, in serial form, brought to life by pulp writer Johnston McCulley. Soon afterward, the suave, playful Zorro (the secret identity of the decidedly unglamorous Don Diego Vega) became an enduring international phenomenon, thanks to screen legend Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and continues to evolve in a slew of films, TV shows, and comic books — up to and including a new Isabel Allende novel and a forthcoming musical scored by the Gipsy Kings.

A new wave of anti-immigrant demonizing and criminalization under way nationwide makes all the more obvious the urgency behind the breezy but pointed comedy Zorro in Hell, Culture Clash’s beautifully staged romp in black leather, mask, and cape, in a coproduction with La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Rep and deftly helmed by the Rep’s artistic director, Tony Taccone. If it took the LA-based, Mission District–bred Latino political-comedy troupe (composed of Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Sigüenza) 22 years of writing and performing to finally tackle the mythical Hispanic crime fighter, their timing couldn’t have been better.

But is Zorro to be considered an authentic pop-cultural or folk hero despite his conflicted origins in mass entertainment, ethnic stereotype, and pseudohistory? The trio’s own initial ambivalence serves as an engine for Zorro in Hell‘s critical but redemptive excavation of the myth at a time when resurrected rebel heroes, as spurs to mass action, seem to be the order of the day (very Z for Vendetta, in other words, and little wonder the Wachowski Brothers’ film is one of myriad cultural reference points bandied around to nice effect here).

The story centers on a frustrated LA writer and nominal Latino (Montoya) who’d prefer to be penning sitcoms but, meanwhile, has an “other voices” grant to write a play about the Zorro legend. He arrives at the El Camino Real Inn less than enthusiastic about a subject he considers culturally specious and politically irrelevant and meets a couple of larger-than-life characters who take it upon themselves to set him straight: the 200-year-old proprietress (a feisty, very funny Sharon Lockwood) and her ancient bellhop, Don Ringo (Sigüenza), proudly self-described as “the first Chicano.” Together, their careers seem to touch (literally in the case of Doña’s countless love affairs) upon most of California’s cultural history.

Cracking open the Zorro legend (given stage form by a versatile and amusing Joseph Kamal) sets in play a whole history and rebel tradition peopled by names like Ambrose Bierce, William Saroyan, Jack London, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Sacco and Vanzetti, Marx, Nietzsche, and, of course, the Scarlet Pimpernel (likely inspiration for McCulley’s masked avenger). Other references are more off the wall, or off the flag, as in the case of a talking grizzly named Kyle (Salinas), an erudite bear offering the slightly spooked, drug-addled writer some talking-cure in a charmingly professional bedside manner. Then there’s legendary outlaw Joaquin Murieta (Salinas again), the incarnation of crafty but principled revenge: “I taught myself to walk, talk, drink like them. But I never murdered like them.” The writer’s own transformation includes entering an old Zorro movie in the part of the archetypal “sleepy Mexican,” who, in this radical reappropriation of cultural capital, we’re told, is more like a sleeping giant beneath the wide brim of his tilted sombrero.

Doña has an ulterior motive behind all this consciousness-raising: She needs help fending off the imminent threat brought by land-snatching developers in league with the evil Gobernador, who naturally arrives by Humvee. (As the Latinos who voted against their own interests by helping to elect an action movie icon demonstrate, the superhero sword can cut both ways.)

Charming, sharp, and frequently wacky, the cutting jokes, quips, and allusions in Zorro come at a remarkable clip (a breathless 20 rpms, or references per minute, at least). All of it unfurls amid Christopher Acebo’s colorful, kinetic, and multifaceted scenic design; some zesty swordplay choreographed by fight director Dave Maier; and appropriately dramatic on- and offstage musical accompaniment by guitarist Vincent Christopher Montoya as the swashbuckling movies of yesterday spill onto the stage, and the stage antics of Culture Clash and company, in turn, transform into cleverly refashioned celluloid dreams projected onto a massive movie screen.

And so, with rapier wit, Culture Clash leaves its own mark on the Zorro legend, proving the pun to be mightier than the sword and the myth capable of new, subversive energies in a reactionary age. It might be that its sprawling, garrulous nature fails, in the end, to lay the best ground for the play’s final call to arms (at least the culminating “rise up!” segment feels a bit forced and tends to drag on), but no matter: Hundreds of thousands of Latinos and others are already in the streets of LA and other cities across the country. Zorro may or may not be a myth with real political traction, but either way, justice, as Zorro would be the first to tell you, is a do-it-yourself job.

CULTURE CLASH’S ZORRO IN HELL

Through April 16

Tues., Thurs.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.

Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater

2015 Addison, Berk.

$10–$59

(510) 647-2949 or (888) 427-8849

www.cultureclash.com

www.berkeleyrep.org

Danger! Danger!

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Dear Andrea:

Being in my second trimester, I’ve read volumes about the so-called danger of air embolisms caused by blowing air into the vagina during oral sex. Now, I can’t imagine I’m part of an elite few who have had the somewhat embarrassing, occasional “vaginal farts” during or after sex. What do you suppose is the risk of the infamous air embolism occurring from simply getting air forced into the vagina from your basic act of intercourse?

Love,
Airy Mary

Dear Mary:

I’ve actually looked into this subject some while in the process of putting together a talk on all the horrible things that can happen to you while having what you thought would be nice, normal, even salubrious sex. You can break your penis — or someone else’s penis! You can burst a previously unsuspected ovarian cyst! You can — well, never mind. You can do all sorts of horrible things to yourself or someone you are quite fond of, but chances are, you won’t.

A few years after essentially pooh-poohing the embolism issue (“Don’t sit on an air compressor,” I believe I wrote), I had the opportunity to interview and then work with Dr. Charles Moser, the unchallenged expert on how to avoid killing yourself or others in the pursuit of sexual gratification, and he succeeded in convincing me that air embolisms really are a potential danger, even (occasionally) in nonpregnant women. But not even the good doctor suggested that intercourse was likely to cause one, except in certain very specific circumstances that we will get to shortly. A quick review of the literature turns up many articles on air embolisms due to (poorly executed, one assumes) oral sex, although the cases themselves are pretty scarce and often not fatal. You get to go to the hyperbaric chamber, like Michael Jackson!

Since “vaginal farts” are caused by air pumped into the vagina during intercourse, not, heaven forfend, into the uterus, there is likely no correlation whatsoever between your propensity for producing them and any possible danger to you or your fetus. The air has to get into your bloodstream, and the most likely route for that would be through the (open) cervix into a (possibly damaged) uterus. You will, of course, have had a thorough exam, including an ultrasound, to clear you for any cervical or placental abnormalities, before taking my word on anything like this. If you haven’t, we are not having this conversation.

Now, those few fatalities. They were mostly due to intercourse too soon after delivery, a thought that makes me cringe anyway, although I have spoken to women who felt ready to go as soon as the doctor cleared them for takeoff. Doctor and cleared would be the operant words there.

Love,
Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend and I always have sex with a condom, and only when she is on birth control, to play it extra-safe. Recently, however, she’s been noticing the antiabortion displays that show up on our college campus sometimes. She now refuses to have sex, because she is so freaked out about becoming pregnant and needing to have an abortion, and she talks about seriously never having sex again because of it. I obviously want to talk to her about this and reassure her, but everything I say, no matter how understanding, makes her think I’m just trying to persuade her into giving me sex. How should I help her calm down about this situation?

Love,
Out in the cold

Dear Cold:

You realize your girlfriend’s reaction is way out of the norm, right? That is to say (not that I recommend putting it this way when you do have that conversation), she’s gone a little off-plumb, at least where her risk assessment abilities or lack thereof come into play. Or was she always a little nutty on this topic, as evidenced by the doubling-up of pill plus condoms, which is borderline nutso overkill for birth control purposes (although perfectly rational for disease prophylaxis)?

Look, I have walked through those antiabortion displays. Quite recently I arrived at the restaurant where I was meeting my husband a little pale and shaky from having to walk through two rows of giant, dismembered-fetus posters. They were stationed outside of what I believe was an obstetrician’s convention, and I confess I could neither eat nor engage in small talk until the ghastly images, mixed with my anger at the fact that these assaultive theatrics were aimed at doctors who provide essential health care to women, had faded. But, dude, I got my groove back. There is something going on with your girlfriend that cannot easily be laid at the feet of the antichoice brigade, not that it wouldn’t give me great pleasure to heap blame upon them.

Suggest that your girlfriend go see a nurse practitioner or someone who can calmly walk her through the actual risks (essentially nonexistent) of condom-wrapped, hormonally blocked intercourse. If that plus taking a different route across campus when the crazies are afoot don’t work, well, I hope you like blow jobs. I hear they’re quite popular.

Love,
Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her former life, she was a prop designer. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Zombies are back!

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In early 1981 a Los Angeles punk band called the Flesh Eaters made a record called A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die for the Slash Records imprint Ruby. The band members that recorded the album played only a handful of shows and then went their separate ways. Now, almost 25 years later, these monsters have crawled out from under a rock to perform just a few more times, concluding with an appearance at the influential All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival, in Great Britain. Minus any additional details, this might seem like nothing to get excited about, but for anyone who cares about the genesis of the West Coast punk scene, this is a bona fide event.

The Flesh Eaters began in 1977, masterminded by singer Chris Desjardins, hitherto known to the public simply as Chris D. The film school graduate and erstwhile B-movie junkie named his project after a particularly sleazy 1964 sci-fi-horror flick, foreshadowing the sordid lyrical matter to come. An embryonic 7-inch EP on the Upsetter label was self-released the following year (appearing as bonus tracks on the Atavistic reissue of their 1980 debut, No Questions Asked, also on Upsetter), featuring howling, almost cartoonishly intense vocal depictions of decay and desolation bolstered by vigorous, stripped-down, guitar-driven rock.

What ultimately set the Flesh Eaters apart from the glut of period LA punk identikit units was the macabre eloquence of D.’s words. Often channeling chilling imagery through his characters’ psychotic delusions, the results loom like some sort of cryptic, hallucinatory-schizophrenic crime-scene testimonial. Early songs such as “Dynamite Hemorrhage,” “Cry Baby Killer,” and “Jesus, Don’t Come Through the Cotton” evoke surrealistic images of murder, addiction, and religious dread with a focused, poetic articulation matched by few contemporaries.

By 1981, after cycling through a seemingly endless series of backing musicians (featuring people from Wall of Voodoo, the Plugz, the Controllers, and other influential bands), Chris D. hit upon a winning combination featuring John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake from X, Blasters Bill Bateman and Dave Alvin, plus future Los Lobos member Steve Berlin. The second Flesh Eaters album, A Minute to Pray (released by Slash and titled after a 1968 spaghetti western), revealed a perfect collision between D.’s outrageous noir–shock prose elocution and hard-nosed rock ’n’ roll that also masterfully fused modern punk angularity with elements of jazz and subtle allusions to early rock and American roots music.

One of the striking things about the album is the unexpected integration of marimba and saxophone into the mix — the former firmly punctuating and prodding the nimble rhythm section; the latter adding vivid color to the chord progressions before lashing out with succinct solos teeming with articulate dissonance. The overall feel of the music swaggers with raw emotion and force while retaining a sense of swing and nuance not necessarily commonplace in much of the so-called punk rock of the era. Chris D. is in fine form on standout tracks like “See You in the Boneyard,” in which his gurgling crypt-keeper mewling climaxes in hair-raising shrieks — a crazed undertaker drowning in a life of decrepit damnation.

Performing together live only a few times during the spring of 1981 (documented on side one of the 1988 Live LP, on Homestead Records), the various members of this punk rock “all-star” incarnation went on to various levels of mainstream success with their primary concerns. Chris D. soldiered on through the decades with his various live and recording pursuits (including intermittent, sometimes heavy metal–inclined Flesh Eaters formations) before the bright idea of momentarily reincarnating the mythological A Minute to Pray band came to pass.

While many rock ’n’ roll reunion acts tend unintentionally to err on the side of flatulent and half-baked — either missing the point or lacking any of the impetus that made their own prime work great — the musicians who make up this combo have never strayed very far from their original inspirations. After almost a quarter century away, skeptics might wonder what’s in store. But this crack ensemble comes armed with classic material, and it’s a safe bet the Flesh Eaters will once again rise from the grave and devour their fans.

Flesh Eaters

With HUD

Wed/5, 9 p.m.

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

$15

(415) 522-0333

www.slims-sf.com

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all right already

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SONIC REDUCER In the best of all music fans’ worlds, an album will grow on you — like lichen, excessive body hair, or a parasite à la guinea worm, only with more pleasure and less arterial spray, I pray. You like it more and more as you play-repeat-play. It starts with an ear-catching opening track or appetite-whetting overture, as that well-worn pop recipe goes, and builds momentum until track three or four. That one should sink its little tenterhooks into you and refuse to let go until you listen to it once again or upload it to your iPod or whatever musical delivery system serves the addiction.

That analyzed, it’s amazing how some bands, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, can go from compulsively listenable to annoying with one album, Show Your Bones (Interscope). Too bad because the YYYs still stand out, like a slash of smeared red lipstick, as one of the few female-fronted groups to emerge from that much hyped, new-rock New York music scene of the early ’00s. That barely sublimated burden of representation, the YYYs’ association with the Liars and the more artistically ambitious NYC crew, as well as the heightened critical expectations after the strength of 2003’s Fever to Tell hasn’t helped Show. Once the flurry of screeching, obscuring noise and rockabilly riffs are stripped away and the songs are spruced up in the studio, the poppier YYYs sound deathly similar to peers like the Strokes at their most singsong (“Dudley,” “Mysteries”). O’s slight lyrics are exposed as the slender vehicles they are — her piercing tone, which cut through the distortion in the past, simply seems affected.

Even when O toys with teasing double entendre on “Cheating Hearts,” confutf8g the act of taking off a ring with a sexed-up strip (“Well I’m / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And she’s / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And he’s / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off / And we’re / Taka-taka-taka-taka-takin’ it off”), the story doesn’t go anywhere beyond the (again, repeated) lines “Sometimes / I think that I’m bigger / Than the sound.” The entire enterprise gives up the reheated, ego-stroking aroma of Zep knockoffs like Heart. That wouldn’t necessarily be bad, if those commercial rock invocations seemed to serve more than an ego that seems “something like a phenomena, baby” (see the key fourth track, “Phenomena”). This album feels like a grandiose, strident, ultimately airheaded mess — all Show, no go.

“Fab Mab” flap

I was a humongoid Flipper fan back in the day, but, truthfully, I wasn’t thinking too hard about the imminent “Fab Mab Reunion” show featuring the SF dadaist-punk legends and Mabuhay Gardens regulars the Dead Kennedys, the Avengers, and the Mutants. The reunion part of the show’s name brought out ex-DK vocalist Jello Biafra, who issued the statement, “No, it is not a Dead Kennedys reunion. Yes, I am boycotting the whole scam. These are the same greedmongers who ran to corporate lawyers and sued me for over six years in a dispute sparked by my not wanting ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ sold into a Levi’s commercial. They now pimp Dead Kennedys in the same spirit as Mike Love suing Brian Wilson over and over again, then turning around and playing shows as the Beach Boys.”

I was curious about the pimping notion. The idea can’t help but cross one’s mind with the crowded pit of punk reunion shows (including the Flesh Eaters; see “Zombies Are Back!” page 35), all within spittin’ distance of each other in the past few years. So I spoke to Flipper drummer Steve DePace, who put together the “reunion” after the band’s first performance after a “10-year hiatus” (Bruno DeMartis sitting in for the late Will Shatter) at a CBGB’s benefit last year. Following that, they answered a request to play LA’s closing Olympic Auditorium. “I thought to myself, in the spirit of the funnest days of my career back in the late ’70s and early ’80s at the Mabuhay Gardens — when that scene was flourishing and that club served as the hub to the punk rock scene that developed in SF — what if we were to do a show with that vibe?” says the 49-year-old ex–animation industry project manager, who now lives in LA. “What are the bands around that are still playing from back in those days?

“Listen, Flipper is not making a ton of money,” he continues, adding that Flipper has reformed because they still have a passionate audience. To DePace, the most famous of those Flipper fans was likely Kurt Cobain, who wore his homemade Flipper T-shirt on TV and magazine covers. Of course, there were no official Flipper shirts, he says. “Back in those days we were not into the commerce,” he explains. “No one thought about selling merchandise — nowadays it’s the biggest thing. People gobble it up.” Just keep feeding.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

April 28 and 29

Warfield

982 Market, SF

Call for time and price.

(415) 775-7722

“Fab Mab Reunion”

Sat/8, 9 p.m.

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

$25

(415) 346-6000

GET A LOAD OF HIS DOWNLOAD

After supporting his buddies the Shins and finding inspiration on Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games (Reprise, 1971), ex-Califone side guy Eric Johnson made one of the loveliest, most underrated indie pop LPs of 2005, Spelled in Bones (Sub Pop). Images of blood injury (the legacy of cutting his head open as a five-year-old and, later, one auto accident too many) crop up, as does a ref to that distinctively northern Midwestern “land of sky blue waters” from the old Hamm’s beer commercial. Johnson’s obviously comfortable listening in the past, judging from these items in the iTunes library on his new computer:

•Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (Bizarre/Straight/EMI)

•Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde (Columbia)

•Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies (Rhino/WEA)

•Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy (WEA)

•Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II (SST/Rykodisc)

•Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story (Polygram)

•Kelley Stoltz, Below the Branches (Sub Pop); “Favorite thing I’ve heard this year so far.”

•T. Rex, The Slider (Rhino/WEA); “I listen to it when I clean house.”

Fruit Bats play Mon/10, 8 p.m., the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. $10–$12. (415) 771-1421

MORE, MORE, MORE

Dada Swing

Italy’s punky musical absurdists swing through town once more, after last year’s power-packed Hemlock and Cookie Factory dates. SF experimentalists the Molecules also reunite. Fri/7, 9:30 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $7. (415) 923-0923

Levi Fuller

The Seattle musician makes moody folk songs with a bleeding edge; check his second album, This Murder Is a Peaceful Gathering (Denimclature). Jean Marie, the Blank Tapes, and 60 Watt Kid also play. Thurs/6, 8:30 p.m., Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St., SF. $6. (415) 546-6300

Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani

The Trieste trumpet-player and Bollani back up their recent album, Tati (ECM), while collaborator, drummer Paul Motian, remains in NYC. Enrico Pieranunzi fills out this il Jazz Italiano bill. Fri/7, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. $25–$51. (415) 621-6600, www.sfjazz.org

Use that Star Power wisely

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GAMER Rhythm games are a mixed bag, but the good ones are great. Games like Karaoke Revolution, Dance Dance Revolution, and now Guitar Hero (PS2) set the standard. This game is so much fun it makes jerks explode.

The controller is shaped like a guitar — a Gibson SG to be exact — and it features five colored buttons on the fret board, a whammy bar, and a little flicker lever where the strings would be. The SG, for those who don’t know, is the guitar Angus Young from AC/DC and Mick Barr from Orthrelm play — it is attractive. Guitar Hero features 30 famous guitar-heavy rock songs, most of which were originally recorded by longhairs.

The game has several difficulty levels, and the hard setting is too difficult to begin with, even for guitar lords. A well-designed tutorial will get you started and show you the ropes. You watch colored notes float down the screen, then have to hit the corresponding buttons on the fret board and strum the flicker button on beat to get points and hit all the notes. Star Points can be earned by playing the star-shaped notes when they appear. When you’ve filled your Star meter, you can engage Star Power and get double points! To engage Star Power, point the guitar toward the sky and continue shredding.

A career mode moves you through the game nicely and eases players from easy to medium to difficult songs. The easy setting only asks you to hit three fret buttons — songs get progressively more intricate and even demand that you use real guitar techniques like hammer-ons and pull-offs. If you miss a note, you’ll hear a realistic muted pluck — just like when you miss a note on a real guitar. A quick-play mode allows you to jump in and play any of the 30 songs (more songs can be unlocked), and a two-player mode enables you and a friend to trade solos. You’ll need a second guitar controller for the two-player mode to be mega, but the game can be played with a standard controller. Devo would probably have liked a controller-shaped guitar.

While most rhythm games focus on game play and ignore graphics, Guitar Hero comes correctly with solid game play and impressive graphics. The backing band is legit, environments like the stadium and the basement look great, and the game includes a giant Viking as well as songs by Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Franz Ferdinand, Sum 41, David Bowie, Queen, and Pantera. Guitar Hero is terrific and worth buying. (Nate Denver)

Arbitrary anachronism

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TECHSPLOITATION We listened to 1930s music in the car, pretending we were on a country jaunt in our new automobile. But when we finally made it out to the country — or at least to Yolo County Fairgrounds — we had to go a lot further back than 70 years. Standing in the muddy parking lot, we shed our jeans and sweats and button-<\h>down shirts and put on the garb of medieval peasants. We could see the colorful peaks of royal pavilions over the roofs of several RVs parked nearby. Just as I was pulling my handmade linen underdress over my head, a knight clanked by in his armor. He was talking on a smartphone.

Quinn, Jesse, Danny, and I followed another set of peasants toward a very non<\h>medieval chain-link fence that would be the gateway to our strange adventure. Little Ada, wearing a tiny quilted princess dress with purple trim that matched her sash, wasn’t impressed by anything — not the Russian ladies in their fur, not the Renaissance rapier fights taking place next to eighth-century cudgel matches, and not the magic potions for sale next to leather vambraces.

“I’m cold,” she declared definitively. “Let’s go home.”

But we couldn’t turn back now. We had come from afar to see the bout to end all bouts. Its winner would ascend to the throne of the Kingdom of the West. Weaving between dogs in jester outfits, humans in thick leather belts and thicker capes, tents full of strange supplies, and a group of women with beaten copper mugs of mead and bags of Doritos, we at last arrived at a wide, marshy promenade around the battlefield. One end of the football field–<\d>size arena was devoted to practice, while at the other end the current king and queen of the West presided over the fights that would determine the kingdom’s future. The fighters, whose efforts were getting them muddy and grass-stained, came from every place and time. Some were dressed in the garb of Arthurian legends, while others had studied early-<\h>modern British history and had perfectly re-created weapons of the period. Some had meticulously knitted their chain mail out of repurposed coat hanger wire, while others had ordered it on the Internet.

“He’s hit! He’s hit!” someone yelled enthusiastically as a knight fell to his knees. When a fighter has been hit on the leg, he or she must keep fighting while kneeling. A hit to the arm means no more using that arm in the bout.

“A hit to the head or torso usually means death,” a serf from Southern California told us. “But ultimately the fighter determines whether it’s a killing blow. Only the fighter can judge, and it’s a matter of honor to take hits when they fall. Certainly some have become king by not acknowledging hits, but they’re in the minority.”

“What time exactly are we in?” I asked.

“The Dark Ages,” replied the serf.

“But this can’t be the Dark Ages,” I argued, gesturing at all the early-second-millennium finery around me. “The Dark Ages come after the fall of the Roman Empire and stretch into about 500 AD. Really, this is the Middle Ages, which start in the 500s and stretch into the early-modern period, say the 1400s.” I neglected to tell him about the Battle of Maldon, which marks a key turning point in Anglo-Saxon history of the 900s. It’s when the Anglo-Saxons finally kicked Viking ass. Although my companions were dressed as Vikings, I had decided I was an Anglo-Saxon.

“Well, we just call it the Dark Ages,” the serf said, edging away.

Quinn rolled her eyes and started snapping pictures of the final bout. A cute herald with long blond hair called out the names of the fighters, the ladies for whom they fought, and their standards. She was interrupted briefly by another herald, who announced that somebody’s car was being towed. Then the fight was on. An Arthurian knight in white who bore a broken lance instead of a shield was fighting a lanky 12th-<\h>century fellow in what looked like black Kevlar. At last the Arthurian knight struck the killing hit. After much heralding he was crowned king, and crowned his lovely partner queen, in a ceremony that was both touching and theatrical.

Night was falling, and the cold was getting to us. We decided to skip the feasting and head straight to Fry’s Electronics without changing our garb. Wandering the warm, clean aisles, we were one of many strange, anachronistic groups who had traveled through time and/or space to buy laptops and WiFi equipment. Nobody looked twice at us. It was just another Saturday night in geekland.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose favorite Anglo-Saxon poem is The Wanderer and whose new king will be announced on www.westkingdom.org.

Laying on of hands

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From the outside, the faceless office building at 22nd Street and Mission looks like a misplaced Soviet ministry, but its blank walls enclose a candlelit warren, a hideaway where women facing tough times can close their eyes and leave behind some of the strains of illness.

Last December the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic opened its doors in San Francisco, offering female cancer patients free alternative treatments to accompany Western cancer therapies. Staffed by professional practitioners who volunteer their time on Friday evenings as well as on Saturdays and Sundays, the clinic provides massage, homeopathy, acupuncture, and other therapies to women who can’t afford to pay.

The San Francisco clinic is an offshoot of the Oakland-based Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic, which got started in 1991 and continues to operate five days a week from its location on Telegraph Avenue. The organizers decided to expand into San Francisco in order to cut transit times for current clients as well as to increase the total number of women it could serve.

Beverly Burns, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and clinic cofounder, explains the need for a San Francisco–<\d>based clinic, citing the huge demand for the services in Oakland. “When we first opened, we were amazed at how far people came for treatment…. If you are doing chemo, and you are ill from cancer or ill from the treatment, it is hard to get to us, even with drivers.”

In addition to its logistical advantages, Burns says, the SF clinic is a locus for cooperation with public hospitals. “The city and county of San Francisco have worked very hard to orchestrate community and agency involvement. The Department of Public Health and San Francisco General both work with community agencies…. Being in San Francisco will enhance our ability to collaborate and block some of the holes that are opening in the safety net.”

Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of hematology-oncology at San Francisco General, believes the CMCC San Francisco will be an important resource for his patients. In addition to his practice at SF General, Dr. Abrams works with cancer patients at UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, which offers a combination of Western medicine and alternative therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy. “Taking care of women with cancer at SF General, I sometimes feel frustrated that they don’t have access to the same kind of complementary care that people at the Osher Center do. Beverly and the people at the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic have taken a big step forward in making those treatments available.”

Dr. Abrams is convinced that alternative therapies help to control the side effects of cancer and chemotherapy. “Pretty much every patient I see in my Osher Center practice, I recommend that they use traditional Chinese medicine,” he says.

Many patients and providers are eager to spread the word about the benefits that alternative treatments can provide to cancer patients. Sabina (last name withheld) recently switched to the San Francisco Clinic after four years as a client at the Oakland location. A strong believer in alternative therapy, she says, “I know for sure that acupuncture definitely helps. I have experienced it myself.”

Along with the physical benefits it provides for its clients, the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic offers a place of emotional support for women who sometimes feel isolated by their illness. “No matter how good a friend is, they will never really know the experience you are having, because they don’t have the same illness,” Sabina says. “That’s the really nice thing about the Maxwell Clinic: There are women there who have the same experience.”

Annie Sprinkle, a breast cancer patient who has been visiting the San Francisco clinic since it opened, found women there who could identify with her situation. “The support groups at the hospital — certainly they’re lovely, but … they seem to be women whose finances were not an issue. For someone who was going through some stress about finances and cancer, it was helpful to meet other women going through that too.”

Likewise, both women cherish the attention and concern they receive from Maxwell’s practitioners. Sprinkle says, “In a word, love and compassion is what you get at the clinic. It takes the form of a social worker, acupuncture, or a massage…. Love heals, and you need that.”

Charlotte Maxwell Clinic, San Francisco

2601 Mission, Suite 201, SF

(510) 601-7660

www.charlottemaxwell.org

Real tolerance

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OPINION On March 24, 2006, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to pass a resolution opposing the message that a group called Battle Cry for a Generation was set to deliver the following Friday on the front steps of City Hall. The appearance of Ron Luce’s teen program at the site had nothing to do with the group’s apparent reason for being in the city, which was to promote Christianity amid smoke machines and rock bands at SBC Park. Luce decided to rally on the steps of City Hall specifically because gay marriages had been performed there two years earlier.

The intent to somehow purify the steps with prayerful teens, the quick response by citizens of San Francisco, and the meaning of that entire encounter was lost completely as local journalists and former politicians rushed to smear the Board of Supervisors with labels like "clueless" and "intolerant."

In doing so, John Diaz at the San Francisco Chronicle and Joanna Thigpen at the San Francisco Sentinel both missed an opportunity to summarize for their readers the meaning behind the meeting of two groups. Instead, both city leaders and organizers of the counterprotest were admonished for their lack of tolerance.

For those in need of a working definition of tolerance, the American Heritage College Dictionary offers the following: "The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others." The key word within that sentence is recognize, which is hard to do if all you do when the Christian right comes to town is stay home and fume. Engagement (another version of recognition) is also a value, one that walks hand in hand with tolerance as the citizens of this fair city go forward in search of bigger and better expressions of human and civil rights. Showing up and shouting back don’t indicate intolerance. And staying away doesn’t display tolerance, just benumbed passivity.

Curiously, the charge was made that by issuing resolutions and press statements, both Sup. Tom Ammiano and Assemblymember Mark Leno were attempting to stifle Battle Cry’s right to free speech. Supervisor Ammiano’s office, which was the primary sponsor of the resolution, was contacted by neither the Chronicle nor the Sentinel. What he would have pointed out was that no one in city government made any attempt to silence anyone. The resolution was simply the progressive community’s proverbial two cents thrown into a debate Battle Cry started when the group assembled on City Hall’s steps. No public official ever came close to opposing Battle Cry’s right to frankly indict both queers and women who have chosen abortion or who support its legality.

Civic engagement like the sort displayed by Ammiano and Leno is what makes this city a haven for those who could not get tolerance for themselves, on their own terms, elsewhere. Far from impeding the right of Battle Cry to spread a message of hate disguised as love, we are forwarding the rights of speech to those whose voices are still being suppressed by fear and hate disguised as Christian love and tolerance.

Elizabeth Creely
Elizabeth Creely works with the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights.

The condo war continues

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Planning Department is having a little trouble dealing with the fact that — for the moment — no more condo developers can build high-priced units in the eastern neighborhoods. In the wake of a Board of Supervisors decision demanding an extensive environmental review of a condo project at 2660 Harrison St., planners have been ducking and weaving around the reality that the supervisors have effectively put a moratorium on market-rate housing projects — and on anything else that could displace blue-<\h>collar jobs (see “A Grinding Halt,” 3/22/06).

The latest installment is a March 31 memo from Paul Maltzer, the department’s chief environmental review officer, who concluded that yes, indeed, all developments in the vast eastern neighborhoods project area that could affect affordable housing or jobs would need detailed environmental review. That’s an admission, of sorts, that no more market-<\h>rate housing can be quickly approved, but it comes with a caveat: The memo states that projects will be evaluated on a "case-by-case basis" and leaves an awful lot of wiggle room. It also suggests that as soon as the city’s official broad-based environmental impact report on the eastern neighborhoods rezoning is completed, the floodgates will be opened again.

That EIR is on the fast track: Maltzer projects that a draft will be completed by late this summer and a final report by March 2007. But there’s a huge problem: An EIR has to evaluate a specific project, and the "project" — a rezoning of some 3,800 acres of the city — is pretty damn vague at this point. For example, there’s nothing about affordable housing in the scope of work that was put forward for the EIR.

So it’s entirely possible that the Planning Department will produce a report next spring that glosses over the biggest issues surrounding the future of the eastern neighborhoods — and that developers will use it as a green light to begin a new building boom that will forever change the city.

We’d like to hold a few facts to be self-<\h>evident: San Francisco doesn’t need more million-<\h>dollar condos for young single people who work in Silicon Valley. The city can’t build the equivalent of another good-size town, with a population of perhaps 100,000 new residents, in eastern San Francisco without massive improvements in infrastructure, particularly transportation. The costs of the new streets, bus lines, train lines, and pedestrian walkways will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars — and there’s nothing anywhere in any Planning Department document about who will pay for it.

And there’s nothing in the current proposals for the eastern neighborhoods that’s consistent with the housing element of the city’s own general plan.

The housing element is clear: San Francisco needs a lot of new below-<\h>market housing — housing for families with kids, housing for people who work in the city and make moderate wages, housing for people living on fixed (and not gigantic) incomes. Housing for teachers and firefighters. Housing for the people who change the sheets at the hotels and clean the bathrooms at the convention centers that keep the city’s biggest industry thriving. In fact, it says, 40 percent of all new housing needs to be affordable for low- and very-low-<\h>income people, and another 32 percent needs to be affordable for families with moderate incomes. That kind of housing simply won’t be built under the current plans — and that means any EIR the planners (or any private developers) prepare will be fundamentally flawed.

There’s a solution here, and if the Planning Commission won’t demand it, then the supervisors must: Any final EIR on the eastern neighborhoods has to consider not only the current rezoning plans but also an alternative that would bring the city into compliance with its own general plan. Asking planners to comply with their own plans shouldn’t be a radical notion. And until the Planning Department can explain how that might happen, this entire process — and all new market-<\h>rate housing — needs to be on hold, indefinitely.

Make Wal-Mart pay

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EDITORIAL According to the University of California’s Labor Center, the state spent $86 million last year paying for heath care and social services for the families of people who work at Wal-Mart. That’s right: Wal-Mart pay is so low, and so few of its workers have decent health insurance, that a lot of employees wind up using public health clinics — and the taxpayers foot the bill.

It’s unfair not only to the Wal-Mart employees and the rest of us who have to pay the bills for one of the most successful and lucrative companies in the world, but also to other employers in the state, particularly small businesses that struggle to provide health insurance.

State senator Carole Migden has introduced a bill that would force Wal-Mart to quit demanding millions in public subsidies. SB 1414 would require any business with 10,000 or more employees in California either to put 8 percent of its total payroll into health insurance for workers or pay an equivalent amount of money to the Department of Industrial Relations. That’s still a fairly low payment — a lot of companies spend far more than 8 percent on health benefits, and Wal-Mart can well afford to do better. But it’s a good start, and it sends the message that employers who won’t pay a living wage can’t just count on California to make up the difference.

Wal-Mart is under fire from activists around the country for its cutthroat competition and its attempts to keep unions out and wages low. But it’s by no means the only employer that is trying to get out of paying health benefits. Migden’s bill would only hit the biggest of the big, but it’s similar to legislation proposed by Sup. Tom Ammiano that would force San Francisco businesses (including much smaller companies) to provide some sort of health care.

In the end, all of this is the wrong model: Employer-based health insurance is an unstable, inefficient, and hugely expensive way to cover medical bills. At some point, even the Wal-Marts of the world should realize that paying taxes to fund a national single-payer health system is cheaper and better for everyone.

But that’s not happening today, and Wal-Mart’s corporate welfare is. The legislature should pass Migden’s bill posthaste.

San Francisco needs better candidates

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The last time we had a major Democratic primary race for state assembly in San Francisco, you didn’t see a lot of head-shaking. In 2002 you were for Mark Leno or you were for Harry Britt, and either way you had very few doubts. Two strong candidates, two people who were eminently qualified to represent San Francisco in Sacramento, two people who had the credentials to be Democratic party leaders.

But I’ve talked to a lot of people about the June 6, 2006, race to fill the spot of Assemblymember Leland Yee, who is trying to move on to the state senate, and what I’m getting is: Gee, well, yeah. Gotta vote for somebody.

The thing is, Sup. Fiona Ma, the front-running candidate, has been absolutely horrible in office, a terrible vote on everything I care about. Her lukewarm supporters say she’d be a good liberal compared to most of the state legislators, and that may be true, but it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Her opponent, Janet Reilly, is taking some excellent stands on issues, running hard to the left of Ma — but she’s never held any elective office before, and, frankly, not that many people in San Francisco even know who she is. If she didn’t have a lot of money, she wouldn’t be much of a factor in this race.

Then you look slightly southward, at the race for state senate. The candidates: Yee, who has done almost nothing to distinguish himself in the state legislature, and Mike Nevin, a former San Francisco cop and San Mateo County supervisor. I don’t know a single person in the progressive San Francisco world who can get a bit excited about either of them.

San Francisco has got to start doing better.

Leno’s term will be up in two more years. I can think of a lot of great Democratic candidates (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, Robert Haaland), but we all ought to be thinking about it, now, the same way we need to be thinking about the next mayor of San Francisco and the next member of Congress. Otherwise we’ll have a lot of Fiona Mas and Bevan Duftys in our future.

Now this: Speaking of politicians who need to get out of the way, Leslie Katz, the chair of the local Democratic County Central Committee, recently pulled an act of world-class political sleaze. She opposes Sup. Chris Daly’s Proposition C, a measure that would force the mayor to serve on the Transbay Terminal board, but the committee wasn’t quite ready to take a stand. So March 22, shortly after noon, she filed an official no-on-Prop.–C ballot argument on behalf of the San Francisco Democratic Party.

In other words, she decided on her own to file a legal document to appear in the ballot handbook committing the party to a position it hadn’t taken.

In the end the party did vote — later — to oppose Prop. C. But Katz sent a clear signal that she had the committee wired and wasn’t even going to wait for the formality of an actual vote. Nasty business. It sends the exact wrong signal about the local party. She ought to resign in disgrace.<\!s><z5><h110>SFBG<h$><z$>

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