Volume 42 [2007–08] Archives — Page 52 of 68 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Volume 42 Number 52

Clay Oven

December 18, 2007

› paulr@sfbg.com

Two cheers, then, for Google, which recently rerouted its Noe Valley shuttle-bus lines so as to cause less air pollution and other distress in the heart of a neighborhood that has become, in effect, Googleberry RFD, the nesting habitat for those countless Google employees who spend their working days in the suburban wilds of the Peninsula. The child is father to the man, and the city is now the suburb, a dangling appendage to industry but no longer itself industrial. Just recreational.

During the last dot-com boom, in the late 1990s, a rise in both quality and quantity was noted in Bay Area restaurants serving Indian food. Software engineers and other tech types of Indian heritage were drawn here for work, and they expected — and got — an improvement in Indian restaurants, which previously were scarce and abysmal. The renaissance, or naissance, first took hold in the South Bay, whose environs were and are dotted with gigantic tech installations (including Google’s, in Mountain View), but now that everyone has moved to the city, enabled by shuttle buses with wi-fi and probably whirlpools, the city is getting better Indian restaurants too. Two more cheers.

Before the recent opening of Clay Oven, Noe Valley had no Indian restaurants at all, not a one, despite the neighborhood’s profound connection to Silicon Valley. An Indian restaurant in Noe Valley was arguably overdue — and not just because of software engineers and other Googloids either, but also because many of the rest of us marginal-Luddite types happen to like Indian food and its hit parade of spices. Of course, Dosa and Aslam’s Rasoi, each within a few steps of Valencia and 22nd streets, aren’t exactly light-years from Noe Valley, but there is something cozier about Clay Oven’s setting on outer Church, amid a quieter but flourishing restaurant row and Muni’s J trains rumbling past at odd intervals: a real convenience for those lucky enough to catch one.

If you believe addresses are portents, then you might think Clay Oven’s prospects are no better than mixed. The space was occupied most recently by a California-style bistro that never quite caught on, and before that by a Chinese restaurant that never quite caught on, and before that by a Burmese-inflected spot whose owners kept an old sofa and a dead television at the back of the dingy dining room. The Burmese food was pretty good, but eating there was like having dinner in a U-Store warehouse.

All of that dimness and debris has been cleared away. The old TV and sofa are long gone, and the kitchen has been separated from the stylishly low-key dining room by a new wall. Even the building’s faded facade has been remade; it’s now clad in red granite. If you didn’t know what used to be here, you would never guess.

The food is what many of us would probably consider standard-issue in Indian restaurants these days, but it’s carefully prepared and intensely flavorful. (Clay Oven, not coincidentally, has a number of older siblings around the city, including India Clay Oven in the Richmond, as well as a namesake Clay Oven in San Mateo.) The only real disappointments for me were the pappadum ($1), the crinkly lentil wafers, which were cold and therefore a little flat, and the palak pakora ($3.50), fritters of spinach in a batter of chickpea flour — also cold, and apparently fried (well ahead of time) in rancid oil.

Other than that: satisfaction. How about tandoori chicken, which is so cliché that it transcends cliché? You would expect a place called Clay Oven to have a pretty good version, since a tandoor is a clay oven, and Clay Oven’s version ($9.95 for a half bird) is exemplary, very tender and juicy, with the requisite reddish pink color (from the seasoned yogurt marinade), presented on a sizzling iron platter with slivers of onion and quartered lemons.

But we were pleased too to find tandoori chicken meat turning up in a dish called chicken makhai ($10.95): chunks of boneless flesh swimming in a voluptuous, spicy sauce very similar to that of chicken tikka masala. The restaurant offers this latter preparation too ($11.95), the only difference being … well, we couldn’t really detect any difference. If you’re concerned about the heat factor, incidentally, you needn’t worry, since the kitchen will tune the food’s fieriness to your specification.

Vegetarian dishes, as is typical at South Asian restaurants, are more than sufficient if you are a shunner of flesh. Saag paneer ($8.95) struck us as unusually and agreeably creamy, with a heavy allotment of white cheese, while chana masala ($7.95) — chickpeas cooked in a spicy gravy — was rich in said gravy, which helped allay any sense of dryness. (Chickpeas can be chalky.) Rice, of course, is offered to help capture the sauces of all of these dishes, but the breads work just as nicely, from a simple, well-blistered naan ($1.95) to a whole-wheat chapati ($1.50) glistening with oil.

Some of the humblest of dishes were among the most memorable. A cucumber salad ($2.75) turned out not to be a yogurty raita (though raita is available) but instead a heap of peeled coins sprinkled with salt and curry powder. And mulligatawny soup ($3.50), a hearty combination of shredded chicken and rice, was Soup Nazi–worthy, though served in a dainty little bowl. Ordinarily I might have hoped for a slightly bigger serving, but the world is not ordinary in the wake of Thanksgiving. So: two cheers yet again for little bowls of soup, and a dessert menu (of such usual suspects as rice pudding and saffron ice cream) from which one can abstain with a clear conscience. *

CLAY OVEN

Lunch: daily, 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Dinner: daily, 4–10 p.m.

1689 Church, SF

(415) 826-2400

www.indiaclayoven.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DISC/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Chopped liver

December 18, 2007

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS What I like about technology is iTunes, because you can do a search for songs about rivers. It’s coming up on Christmas. People are cutting down trees, putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace. I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

This week’s column will attempt to answer the oft-asked and seldom fully explored question, "What am I? Chopped liver?"

There’s an easy answer. That’s why the question’s seldom fully explored. But you know and I know that easy answers don’t tend to be any righter than convoluted ones. Plus, they’re not nearly as fun. So let’s put on a pot of coffee and our thinking caps and work this one out. Shall we?

Speaking of breaking it down, thank you for riding in the nervous breakdown lane with me last week. Like a lot of other people and Joni Mitchell, I don’t do too well during the holidays. Not anymore. I think it’s because I have friends and parties and now even dates and shit, so I get desperately nostalgic for the happy days when I would spend Christmas camping out by myself in the desert, or holing up in Idaho with Mr. and Mrs. Johnny "Jack" Poetry and some llamas.

Now, alas, I am popular and neurotic. I was at an art opening at this sex club, on my hands and knees on the floor … cleaning up the wine I’d just spilled all over my pretty dress and everything, when I overheard the following from somewhere up and over me, where heads were:

"Are you ready for your Hanukkah party?"

"I can’t find anyone to make the chopped liver. Nobody knows how to make chopped liver. Do you know how to make chopped liver?"

"No."

I jumped to my feet and located the owners of the voices. "I don’t know how to make chopped liver either!" I said. "But I love liver and would like to learn!"

Luckily I knew the conversationalists. They were friends of a friend and had no choice now but to invite me to their Hanukkah party. Didn’t I tell you I was popular?

The art show was on a Saturday, and the Hanukkah party was on Wednesday, so I had four days to learn how to make a dish that I had not only never made but also never eaten. I’d never even seen it. I’m not Jewish. I started calling all of my Jewish friends and exes and asking them who makes the best chopped liver. And, being good Jews, they all said the same exact thing: their mother.

The Liver Lady, the only one I know who loves liver more than I do, gave me the general idea: chopped-up chicken livers, some chicken fat, chopped-up onions, and hard-boiled eggs, also chopped. She would have been more exact, she said, but her mom was out of town.

I e-mailed Crawdad de la Cooter’s mom, my favorite ever ex-mother-in-law and kitchen comrade and, according to Crawdad, the best chopped-liver maker in the world. She sent a recipe, but I didn’t exactly follow it, even though it called for enormous amounts of butter. I figured if I was going to impress the Jews — which is, after all, my ultimate goal in life — I was eventually going to have to learn to make schmaltz.

Now, schmaltz … schmaltz is a beautiful thing. Especially considering what a goofy word it is. What you do is, you cut all the fat and skin off a chicken, throw it in a frying pan with some onions, and render the bejesus out of it. What you wind up with is not bacon grease, but it’s up there. Bacon fat, butter, schmaltz. I fried the chopped onions in it, broiled the chicken livers, boiled the eggs, and then brought everything together and chopped it some more.

So that’s chopped liver. As for the rest of the question, the "What am I?" … Um, the punctuation? The mark at the end of the question, the dot dot dot. Period. Pause. Your huckleberry friend?

Oh, and the chopped liver, yes. The host said it was the best he’d ever had. Out of respect for his mother, I won’t print his name.

My new favorite restaurant is Pho 84. Its hot and sour soup not only is the hottest hot and sour soup going but also has — get this — okra in it. Swimming with the shrimps and celery and pineapple and tomato. Only thing: try getting out of there for $10 or under. Definitely a date place. *

PHO 84

Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m.; Sat., noon–9 p.m.; Sun., 5–9 p.m.

354 17th St., Oakl.

(510) 832-1338

Takeout available

Beer/wine

AE/MC/V

Loose women

December 18, 2007

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a good one for you! What does being pregnant and having a baby do to your body? Is it true that birth will enlarge your vagina, or make it "loose?" Does it get worse if you have more children? Is it noticeable to men? What about if you have a C-section? Are there other postpartum changes to a woman’s body that affect how much she enjoys sex?

Love,

Trepidatious

Dear Trep:

The harsh truth is that pregnancy and childbirth usually do cause physical changes (thanks for asking!), although these are by no means always dire or even particularly notable. The change you sound most concerned about is vaginal looseness and yes, it does happen. As I am constantly repeating, the vagina is not a fixed size like a train tunnel. It is a potential space, like a sock. Even so, it’s supported by a whole complex of structures in the pelvis: not only muscles but also connective tissues of various types, all of which can get stretched out of shape, weakened, or even torn. Tone at the front of the vagina, where we feel most of the sexual sensation, can be lost due to perineal stretching, tearing, or the increasingly unfashionable but still sometimes necessary episiotomy. Nerve damage is fairly common too, and we need those nerves for more than just sensation; they also tell our muscles what to do. So while the sort of looseness that a million extremely crass jokes are built on may be rare, it’s probably not as rare as the completely pristine and unchanged postpartum vajayjay. Change happens, and yes, pregnancy itself — a.k.a. carrying a smallish medicine ball firmly lodged above your cervix for half a year — is enough to do some of the changing.

There’s an excellent if not particularly cheerful article called "Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Your Pelvic Floor: Understanding the Connections" at www.augs.org/custom/kb/answer.cfm?id=61. It’s adapted from a book called Ever Since I Had My Baby (Random House, 2003), which sounds informative if a bit dispiriting. Do we really want to know that we might lose a fair amount of the sensation we enjoy during intercourse? Do we want to know how extremely common a little bit of urinary stress incontinence — something we thought only happened to great-grandma — really is? Actually, yes, we do. Much of the potential damage can be avoided or at least mitigated by good care and careful choices, so of course we want to know about these things ahead of time.

I looked up "changes after childbirth" or some such thing on About.com yesterday and found the usual sprightly lecture on doing your Kegel exercises. Under the "Did you find this article helpful?" heading was a large, crabby "No!," which cracked me up. I’m sorry the Kegels didn’t work for Crabby Reader, but in truth they’re about all we’ve got in our looseness-mitigation and restoration of continence arsenal. There are surgeries, but surgery is expensive and risky and requires the kind of recovery time that mothers rarely have available for lolling about on the chaise longue sipping sweet tea. In truth, a lengthy course of Kegels, energetically performed, can vastly improve muscle tone and help prevent its loss in the first place. Exercising your hoo-ha can feel undignified, but being afraid to sneeze (or laugh!) for fear of leaking is damned depressing. After all the Kegels there may still be a little extra space up there, but frankly, that can be put to good — or at least entertaining — use. It’s the tonelessness toward the front that both partners can find dismaying and that inspires the jokes that end with (please forgive me, mothers everywhere): "Flashlight? Hell! Help me find my keys, and we can drive out!"

Other changes you wonder about (arousal, lubrication) are generally more of a more hormonal nature and will right themselves in time. "But what other long-term disfigurements and indignities await?" the anxious nullipara asks. Have you seen those trend pieces in the papers on the so-called mommy makeover? That’s a tummy tuck (for weakened abs and loose skin), lipo (to remove new fat deposits on hips, thighs, or belly), and breast augmentation (for deflated boobs). Not always mentioned but also available: trimming or plumping stretched or saggy labia and a little internal spiffication. Think what you like about the doctors who push such services and the women who feel they need them. Many of my own such thoughts fall on the uncharitable side, and a browse through those cosmetic surgery Web sites, which are as unappealingly (to me) slick and pink as a freshly Brazilianed mons veneris, does little to change my reaction. Still, if you need help, you need it, and we should be glad the procedures are available to those in need, even if it’s hard not to think about all of the yachts and country-club memberships some of those unwarranted labiaplasties are buying.

Love,

Andrea

PS Don’t forget my favorite girl-power Web site, Shape of a Mother (theshapeofamother.com/home.php). Consciousness raising, not boob lifting!

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Humans are dogs

December 18, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Two new studies of animal intelligence caught my attention last week because they prove that humans are no better than dogs and monkeys. This is something I’ve always felt to be true on an anecdotal level, and now cognitive science backs me up.

A researcher in Vienna, Austria, trained dogs to sort photographs into two categories: pictures of other dogs and pictures of landscapes. This is big news because it means that dogs not only recognize what’s happening in symbolic visual representations (photos) but can also figure out how to translate an abstract concept ("dog") into a category of pictures. Previously, nobody thought dogs could categorize photographs or even abstract concepts other than "food" and "enemy."

The other study is even better, partly because it’s called "Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students" (oh, those zany editors at PloS Biology). In this study, cognitive scientists gave monkeys and college students a series of very simple tests to determine how quickly and accurately they could add up the number of dots on a screen. On average, the monkeys and students answered in the same amount of time. The students were 94 percent accurate in their answers, while the monkeys were 76 percent accurate. So monkeys are nearly as good as humans at adding dots, even without the benefit of a college education.

What struck me first on contemputf8g these studies is that cognitive science has taken us in an unforeseen direction. This is a field that promises to study consciousness as if it were a machine, to look at thoughts as electrical impulses and biological structures rather than sublime metaphysics. It would seem, therefore, to run the risk of dehumanizing us, of converting all of our crazy, ambivalent feelings into mere blips on a chart. Instead, what cognitive science has done, at least in these studies, is show us how deeply connected we are to the living creatures around us.

By breaking down our thought processes into their component parts — pattern recognition, counting — we are able to see that the building blocks of thought are not unique to Homo sapiens. Dogs and monkeys are doing this shit too. In fact, there is a monkey out there who can add better than a college student (some of the humans did in fact score lower than some of the monkeys in the study).

So what do we do now that we know dogs and monkeys are capable of humanlike intelligence? Shall we test more animals and discover what we already knew about elephants and dolphins having language? I hope so.

If nothing else, this should teach humans to be a lot more damn humble about our supposed niftiness.

Of course, there are dangers in taking this scenario too far. Instead of seeing ourselves as having something in common with animals, we might use this information to make animals into better slaves. Science fiction author David Brin’s Uplift series is partly about this. He describes humans using biotech and genetic engineering to "uplift" chimps and dolphins, giving them human-equivalent intelligence. The creatures become fully intelligent, but socially they remain second-class citizens.

The two transformed species are in a constant struggle to prove themselves to the humans, and often fail; Brin portrays the dolphins as liable to slip back into incoherent animalness when threatened.

Still, we have not yet appointed ourselves uplifters. Humans are at a moment in our history when we are still in awe of animals who can think the way we do. Now we have to figure out the appropriate next steps.

Obviously, we need to test more animals for intelligence, using a variety of methods.

Probably the most oddly hopeful news to come out of all of this is the fact that both of these tests were done without any killing or brain invading. The researchers who did the dog test even invented a special paw-operated touch-screen computer for the dogs to use. I like that. Not only have we discovered that dogs are like us, but we’ve also invented the first dog-friendly user interface. What next? Wii for dogs? That would pave the way for true interspecies bonding. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose cat is unfortunately not among the mentally gifted creatures who can add, sort, or even recognize food.

The case for Kucinich

December 18, 2007

OPINION At a recent Potrero Hill Democratic Club presidential forum, when the representatives of Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama spoke more about how the candidates made them feel than about their positions on the issues, it first struck me as strange. Eventually, though, their approach made sense — I realized these people weren’t necessarily all that hot about their candidates’ actual policies.

In defending their health care programs, for instance, the Clinton and Obama reps tacitly acknowledged that a single-payer plan was superior to their candidates’ offerings, while the Edwards spokesperson cautioned the audience against seeking a candidate who believed everything they believed.

Maybe it’s the lack of distinct seasons in San Francisco or something, but these people seemed confused about the difference between voting in a primary and in a final election. November is the month when you vote for what you have to vote for; in February you can vote for what you believe in. In November the halfhearted health plan of one of these candidates, which would continue siphoning scarce public funds away from health services and into the coffers of the private health insurance industry, will likely be superior to whatever scheme the Republican nominee offers up. But in the February primary you can actually vote for Dennis Kucinich’s single-payer plan.

Logically, we might ask why any of these front-running candidates who won’t pledge to have all American troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term should expect much support in San Francisco, arguably the nation’s most antiwar city. Why would anyone who opposes this war not back a candidate like Kucinich, who calls for complete troop withdrawal within three months? Or why, for that matter, would voters who support gay marriage not also back Kucinich, a gay-marriage supporter himself?

Well, when I appear as a Kucinich representative at election forums, people answer those questions for me all the time in postmeeting conversations. They and their friends believe in what Kucinich says, they often tell me, but "he can’t win," so they’ll vote for someone who they think can.

Now let’s be honest here and admit that those of us who get worked up about peace and justice issues are prone to complain a lot. We are ever bemoaning the influence of money in politics and the poor job the news media do in covering the real issues. But when we get to the point where a candidate is raising the important issues and we know we agree with him and we still won’t vote for him, then the next time we start complaining, it may just be time to look in the mirror.

Casting a vote against the war in Iraq is a lot easier than marching against it or even writing a letter. But if antiwar voters won’t vote for antiwar candidates, you have to ask why those candidates should go to the trouble of running and why the big-money candidates should pay any attention to the supposed antiwar vote.

Whatever else happens in this election, one thing is certain: if you don’t vote in February for what you believe in, you won’t get to vote for it in November. And then there will be no one else to blame. *

Tom Gallagher, a former Massachusetts state representative, is a San Francisco activist.

Is New College dying?

December 18, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

After a turbulent year in which its accreditation was suspended and school president Martin Hamilton reluctantly resigned, New College of California is in dire financial straits. Some even fear that the innovative liberal arts institution — whose central campus at 777 Valencia Street once housed a mortuary before the school was founded there 40 years ago — could be in its death throes.

New College has experienced a 41 percent decrease in enrollment this year, seeing its population drop to fewer than 500 students. And the institution is losing about $80,000 each month, according to minutes from a faculty meeting that took place in late November. The school needs more than $2 million to cover operating expenses into January, and school trustees have considered filing for bankruptcy protection.

A Chapter 11 reorganization would allow New College time to improve its finances without shuttering completely. But acting school president Luis Molina says bankruptcy would also mean the school wouldn’t receive any federal financial aid for its students, a source of tuition revenue it desperately needs to survive. So he insists bankruptcy is off the table.

"I’m not going to deny that the school is in a financial crisis," Molina said. "But from my perspective, I don’t see bankruptcy as the solution."

New College is nonetheless struggling to make payments to vendors, and payroll checks have bounced or been withheld by the school. Molina also acknowledged that in the summer Pacific Gas and Electric Co. threatened to turn off the school’s power due to unpaid utility bills.

Dozens of financial aid applications for the just-ended fall semester still need to be processed, which means New College can’t yet receive the federal loans and grants it pays out to students, many of whom rely on the funds to cover basic expenses while attending classes.

"We can’t believe it’s happening," said Cheryl Fabio, a second-year law student at New College. "No one knows anything. We’re operating completely on a rumor mill, and the worst of the rumors keep on becoming [true]."

Fabio returned to school after working for several years as an Oakland city employee. Despite the uncertainty about New College’s future, she was studying for finals and continuing to attend classes. But she hasn’t received $10,000 worth of financial aid from New College this semester, and she’s four months behind in rent at the home in Pittsburg where she lives with her daughter.

The US Department of Education sent a letter to the school in August informing administrators that applications for federal funds submitted by New College’s Financial Aid Office would face heightened scrutiny due to the discovery by investigators earlier this year that the school may have illegally mishandled scholarships and other aid money.

New College must repair dozens of student files and submit a mountain of documentation for preapproval on each financial aid package before being reimbursed. Eighty such packets were submitted Dec. 12, Molina said, but as of now money from earlier applications is only trickling into the hands of students.

That’s a considerable setback for the school, since it relies heavily on student tuition to continue operating, so it’s considering a big fundraising drive and a halt in enrollment in some programs for the spring semester until its finances are stabilized.

The November minutes show proposals including an across-the-board 25 percent pay cut as an alternative to layoffs, but up to 20 full-time faculty members between January and spring of next year might need to be cut to keep the school from going under. Another option, Molina said, is for some faculty to work part-time and apply for limited unemployment benefits from the state to make up the difference.

Maria Bourn is a second-year law student who moved to San Francisco from Washington to attend New College. She’s received her financial aid for the fall semester, but her last $1,200 check for her work-study job as a legal clerk bounced. Bourn says that while she’s fortunate enough to receive help from a partner who works, one of her classmates was forced to return to Pennsylvania because he couldn’t continue paying rent without federal assistance.

"It has just been one disaster after another," Bourn said. "Last year I didn’t receive my financial aid for several months because of difficulty after difficulty with [New College’s] financial aid department."

Recently departed president Hamilton had vowed to stay on for up to a year during a transition period, but Ralph Woolf, the executive director for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, insisted during a July meeting with the school that it would be "unacceptable" for Hamilton to stay, according to minutes.

WASC’s accreditation commission for senior colleges suspended New College in June after a rare special investigation revealed flawed financial controls, sloppy record keeping of student files, and ill-conceived academic curricula. A blistering report from the commission concluded, for instance, that the school couldn’t explain the course requirements and specific content of its Pilot Hybrid Leadership in Urban Transformed Environments program, which New College hoped would benefit adult African Americans who otherwise have trouble accessing higher education.

"The commission has repeatedly found that, in addition to longstanding and ongoing financial challenges, New College did not have systems and structures in place in very basic areas of operation, including governance, faculty oversight of academic matters, assessment of student learning, and financial management and accounting," the report stated.

WASC will decide in February whether to remove New College from probation or strip the school of its accreditation. Woolf refused to comment when we called his office.

Molina said the school may also have to liquidate some of the buildings it owns in San Francisco to maintain solvency. In the meantime, he said, a committee charged with finding a new president for the school has identified three candidates for the job.

"The students, the faculty, the staff — there’s a huge commitment to keep the college open," Molina said. "It’s part of the social fabric of San Francisco…. Nancy Pelosi is a strong supporter of the college. I know her office is concerned…. We’re doing everything we can to make sure this college can survive."

Money woes and accreditation problems were a common occurrence during Hamilton’s rocky tenure, which often divided the campus into factions of supporters and opponents of his administration.

New College bought one of San Francisco’s oldest and most beloved movie theaters in January 2006 in an effort to save it from closure. But employees at the Roxie Film Center on 16th Street are now unsure about its future. Sunny Angulo has worked there for two and a half years. A payroll check from early November bounced, and she hasn’t received checks for the two following pay periods.

"We have seen single-screen, small independent theaters all over the city — all over the country, really — close down," Angulo said. "They’re sitting around rotting. Without another source of revenue tying in a nonprofit, educational component, I think that it would be very difficult for the Roxie to survive. Almost impossible."

Peter Gabel, a board trustee of New College, admitted during a small Dec. 14 all-campus meeting that he’d recently loaned the school money to help cover payroll expenses. Shortly afterward, however, the attendees voted 10–9 to eject the Guardian from the room after discovering that a reporter was present.

New College’s federal tax forms show that in late 2005, Gabel loaned the school $95,000 to cover operating expenses, and other records show that he loaned the school more than $400,000 in August 2007. As of May 2006, the school owed creditors nearly $6 million, New College’s most recent federal tax forms show.

Despite WASC’s sweeping indictment of the school’s operation, New College’s leaders indignantly responded in a June letter that the school was "shocked and even traumatized by the sudden abruptness of the investigation," which it claimed "lacked due process."

The school also denied that its administrators were reluctant to cooperate with the investigation and implied that complainants who first contacted WASC conspired to damage the school.

New College did admit, however, that Hamilton was duped by an exchange student who promised the school a sizable donation in return for help in attending classes after entering the country from Nepal. The student claimed he was a wealthy bureaucrat there but turned out to be more or less a con artist without money even to cover tuition.

New College has long served as an academic training ground for social justice advocates and liberal activists. In 2002 it made national news when it launched a green business master’s degree that balances traditional marketing and management courses with sustainability concepts in an attempt to marry profit with ecological sensitivity.

Despite the challenges, Molina remains optimistic about the school’s future: "Once we get our record-keeping offices in order so that we don’t have delays processing the financial aid, things will start running smoothly." *

Shop like a Scrooge

December 18, 2007

› deborah@sfbg.com

As soon as Black Friday came, you reflexively started rocking back and forth, chanting, "No, no, no," in order to drown out the concert of ho, ho, hos blaring from malls and gift shops across town. The shopping frenzy that occurs between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings you down faster than a kid-wet Santa. Until, in a moment of weakness, at the 11th hour, you decide it’s a wonderful life after all and you want to partake in the joy of giving. So how are you going to round up a sack of gifts before it’s too late to avoid the bitter loneliness of being a Scrooge? Don’t worry — lots of places are open on Christmas Eve, and a few on Christmas Day. Follow one of these strategies and you won’t even feel like you’re Christmas shopping, or trying to cram it all in last minute.

Hit the corner store

I’m not suggesting you get your loved ones cancer sticks and a bottle of Night Train for the yuletide, though for some, booze and smokes might be at the top of the list. Still, if you’re in a bind, you can always buy a bottle of top-shelf liquor. Personally, I’m a Jameson’s girl. Less embittered individuals might prefer Yellowtail’s celebrated Shiraz, while sober friends might appreciate a handful of Lotto tickets. Any of these are available at your convenience store just around the corner. But when seeking out the finer things in life, try these gourmet mini-marts:

26TH AND GUERRERO MARKET

Organic fruits, fresh flowers, imported sparkling wines like Prasecco, and fancy chocolates will help you throw together an assortment of decadent gift baskets for all of your peeps.

1400 Guerrero, SF. (415) 282-6247, 26thandguerreromarket.com. Open Christmas Eve, 8 a.m.–9 p.m. Closed Christmas Day.

HEALTHY SPIRITS

Your gift recipient will think you special-ordered the rare Belgian beer from Europe, but all you had to do was grab it on the go at this top-shelf Castro District liquor dispensary.

2299 15th St., SF. (415) 255-0610. Open Christmas Eve until 6 p.m. and Christmas Day, 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

ARLEQUIN WINE MERCHANT

The first step is admitting it: all of your friends are winos. The next step is popping over to this classy Hayes Valley cellar for vintages in all varieties and prices.

384 Hayes, SF. (415) 863-1104, www.arlequinwine.com. Open Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

Resort to the Internet

The road to Scroogeland is often paved with the best of intentions: last year you vowed not to fill your shopping cart at the megachain stores. Of course, they’re the only ones that will ship your product overnight if you buy online, but you can PayPal these purchases on Christmas Day and still make it look like you thought of them months ago.

SF BALLET

It doesn’t matter if you give tickets to a ballet fan or someone who has never been. The 2008 season has many exciting things in store, such as a new-works series that will debut pieces by Mark Morris and Paul Taylor.

www.sfballet.org

GLOBAL EXCHANGE FAIR TRADE STORE

Buy a 2008 Peace Calendar from this international human rights organization. No one needs one for another week anyway. Or make a donation in the name of your loved one for any amount. They get the tax deduction, you get the easy way out, and the world gets a little better.
www.globalexchange.org

KQED WINE CLUB

Worsening the pressure of the holiday shopping season is the nonstop guilt trip of public television subscription drives. One way to make up for the nature shows you watched without subscribing is to join our local PBS affiliate’s wine club.

www.kqedwineclub.org

Be a tourist in your hometown

You can kill two birds with one stone by doing your Christmas shopping while showing your relatives around town. Tourist areas always have lots of places open on holidays.

Chinatown is your one-stop shop for everything, especially for those most quintessential of Christmas gifts: robes and slippers. And many shops there will be open until as late as 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, just as they always are. On Pier 39, where Moms and Dads can’t resist going, no matter how much of a trap it is, there are a few shops that sell something more than shot glasses with the Golden Gate Bridge painted on them.

CANTON BAZAAR

You’ll find three full floors of those good-luck cats with raised paws, Buddhas for your spiritually Eastern friends, kimonos and house slippers, and sake sets for your ample heavy-drinking associates at this classic Chinatown store.

616 Grant, SF. (415) 362-5750. Call for hours.

SAN FRANCISCO SOCK MARKET

Give the classic Scrooge gift of socks. The huge selection means you can cover the feet of everyone in your life with something they’ll actually like.

Pier 39, bldg. G, level 1. (415) 392-7625. Open Christmas Eve, 10–6 p.m. Closed Christmas Day.

Lighten up, for Christ’s (oops, I mean Pete’s) sake:

Maybe you just need a few laughs to get into the spirit of things. Head to one of these comic shops, get lost in the escapist pleasures they offer, then grab some gifts for your friends.

AL’S COMICS

Now that Al’s has moved from his cramped Mission spot to roomier digs in the Castro, he’s turned his store into a one-stop gift shop. In addition to comics in all genres, the store sells greeting cards and a few toys.

1803 Market, SF. (415) 861-1220, www.alscomicssf.com. Open Christmas Eve until 5 p.m. Closed Christmas Day.

COMIC OUTPOST

From the huge selection of back issues and superhero figurines at this Sunset District shop, you should be able to find something that will bring a smile to the faces of many in a matter of minutes.

2381–2387 Ocean, SF. (415) 239-2669, www.comicoutpost.net. Open Christmas Eve, noon–5 p.m. Closed Christmas Day.

Learning from Enrique

December 18, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

While chatting with her Guatemalan house cleaner one day, journalist Sonia Nazario casually asked the immigrant mother of four if she planned to have more children. The house cleaner broke down and began crying. She explained to Nazario, a Los Angeles Times reporter, that she hadn’t seen her kids in 12 years, having migrated to the United States so she could make money to send home to them.

Nazario realized her house cleaner’s plight was a common one among Central American women, whose families are so often abandoned by the fathers that the women must do whatever is necessary to ensure that their kids have enough to eat. "Most Americans don’t understand that kind of desperation," Nazario explained to a crowd at San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium on Nov. 28.

She felt bewildered that someone could come to work in the US while leaving her children behind to live in squalid conditions in Central America. At first, Nazario said, she even felt a bit judgmental. But her house cleaner’s story inspired Nazario to learn more about the level of desperation so many immigrants and their families live with.

Touched by the women’s sacrifices and curious to learn more about the struggles of immigrants — undocumented immigrants in particular — Nazario embarked on an epic journey that led to her writing a newspaper series about a Honduran boy named Enrique who braved numerous obstacles so he could reunite with his mother in the US.

The series won Nazario a prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and became the blueprint for her book Enrique’s Journey (Random House, 2006), which is currently being developed as an HBO special. Nazario’s work offers a complex and insightful perspective on an immigration issue that has often been oversimplified by pandering presidential campaigns.

TRAIN OF DEATH

Tens of thousands of Latin American youths travel from their home countries toward the US each year on top of trains. The perilous, Odyssey-like trip takes weeks to complete, and migrants rarely reach their goal on their first try. Enrique, for instance, attempted the journey eight times. Other immigrants try dozens of times.

Nazario, wanting to understand the struggles of undocumented immigrants as intimately as possible, replicated Enrique’s journey by boarding the top of a train in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and riding through the heart of Mexico in a three-month excursion. Having received permission from Mexican officials and with the resources to spend the occasional night in a hotel, she didn’t rough it to the extent that migrants — adults and children alike — have to.

But that’s doesn’t mean it was easy. On returning to the US, Nazario began having nightmares about being raped by bandits during the journey and ended up in therapy to deal with the trauma.

The US-Mexico border, she noted, is far from the most daunting leg of the journey for these immigrants: the hardest part is the lush southern Mexican state of Chiapas, which migrants call "the Beast." The region is home to Mexican immigration authorities, corrupt cops who are out to shake down and deport travelers, and ruthless gangsters who control the tops of many of the trains. Mexico deports roughly 200,000 illegal immigrants each year, mostly from Central America.

Enrique still wears the scars of a beating he sustained at the hands of bandits. Torrid heat, all the more unbearable to those riding atop trains made of metal, exhausts and wears down the travelers in an unforgivable fashion.

They call the trains los trens de la muerte, or the trains of death, due to the regularity of death and maiming that occurs when immigrants fall off. Nazario, during her trip, was once hit in the face with a branch and nearly tumbled off the train top, an experience she describes as "harrowing."

HUMAN FACE

The ubiquity of bandits and harmful forces along the railroads is not without a yang to its yin. The enormous compassion of the people of Veracruz, an impoverished region in the south of Mexico, made an indelible impact on Nazario. When trains pass by villages, crowds of supportive villagers throw food and water to the migrants. When townsfolk have no material possessions to share with the immigrants, they offer them their prayers.

Nazario has not only studied the physical dangers experienced by undocumented immigrants during their northbound trips but also analyzed the psychological toll taken by splitting up families. Enrique and many children like him have often wondered of their absent mothers, "Does she really love me?" Enrique, whose mother left him when he was five and was apart from him for 11 years, would stare out his window every Christmas during his mother’s absence, hoping for her return.

Hundreds of thousands of Latin American children have trouble adjusting socially without parental guidance. Given that many fathers in Latin America’s third world enclaves "stray in more ways than one," as Nazario said, many mothers come to the US to find work. Sometimes children like Enrique grow up resenting, even hating, their mothers. Most mothers, Nazario learned, only intend to be away for a year or two, but when they discover that the quality of life and opportunities in America aren’t quite as golden as advertised, their stays become extended indefinitely.

Nazario learned through countless interviews that many children left behind can’t fully comprehend why their mothers left, and they say they’d rather remain penniless than apart.

CROSSING OVER

The immigration debate is hotly contested in the US, particularly in the wake of the May Day protests and the George W. Bush administration’s failure to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package. Rather than bombard listeners and readers with ideological pleas to mend America’s broken immigration system, Nazario mixed her humanizing account of the immigrants’ hardships with relevant facts. Dedicated journalist that she is, she parroted neither the La Raza talking points nor Pat Buchanan’s.

Around 100,000 children like Enrique cross the US border annually in search of their parents. And while the US permits about one million immigrants to enter the country legally each year, they are joined by an additional 850,000 people who enter illegally. Business interests seeking "cheap and compliant" labor lobby on behalf of the influx of undocumented workers, Nazario explained.

Undocumented immigrants undoubtedly do many jobs that Americans won’t, Nazario noted, most prominently agricultural and domestic work.

That said, the large number of undocumented immigrants does undercut wages for some Americans and denies citizens and legal immigrants jobs in fields like construction.

SOLUTIONS

"The women I talked to said it wouldn’t take radical changes to keep them in Honduras," Nazario told her audience. The US, she argued, must play a more proactive role in helping Latin American nations develop their economies. For instance, many products the US imports from China could just as easily be manufactured in countries like Honduras, which would dramatically reduce the number of illegal immigrants from Central America and keep more families together.

In an e-mail to the Guardian, Nazario said that if the US is serious about reducing the flow of undocumented immigrants through its borders, it should not only supply foreign aid to nations in need but also provide "micro-loans through NGO’s to women to create jobs in these countries. They then pay back the loan, which can go to another woman to start a business, and create jobs."

A quarter of El Salvador’s citizens, she added, live outside the country, mostly in the US. Were it not for El Salvador’s dismal economy, most of those people would choose to remain in their native land.

Renee Saucedo, the community empowerment coordinator for La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco, an immigrant rights organization, told us that "using enforcement and punitive policies are never going to be effective…. Many of the reasons people are forced to uproot their families are because of global free trade agreements." Saucedo said the only effective way to deal with the issue of illegal immigration is to develop policies that serve the poor majority, not the economic elite.

Nazario believes, based on her conversations with countless immigrants, that the US government’s decision to build a fence along the border with Mexico is wasteful and will not accomplish its goals. "People this determined will find their way over a wall, under a wall, around a wall." *

Homes for whom?

December 18, 2007

› sarah@sfbg.com

After years of letting the free market dictate San Francisco’s housing mix — as a result steadily losing ground on the city’s affordable housing goals — the Board of Supervisors appears primed to place an ambitious bond measure on the fall 2008 ballot to address the housing imbalance.

Winning the necessary support from two-thirds of voters won’t be easy, coming on a ballot with the majority of supervisorial seats up for grabs, the presidential election, and a likely bond measure for rebuilding General Hospital. But Sup. Chris Daly, author of the affordable-housing bond measure, believes it’s a good time to have progressives focus on this most important of problems facing the city.

Last summer affordable-housing funds became a political football in a budget showdown between Daly and Mayor Gavin Newsom, a fight Newsom won, leading to a budget that prioritizes clean streets and a beefed-up Police Department over affordable housing. Newsom’s reelection campaign, which was just gearing up at the time, successfully cast Daly as the villain after the occasionally hotheaded supervisor threatened to bolster housing funds by cutting Newsom’s "pet projects," as Daly called them, which included a community justice center, a Police Academy class, street trees, and the Small Business Assistance Center.

Daly clearly lost that duel when he was savaged by the media and removed from his chair on the Budget Committee by board president Aaron Peskin. But now Daly has bounced back on the issue and secured solid support for his measure, which progressives and affordable-housing activists are already gearing up to fight for next year.

"Just because Newsom had a significant political operation this year does not mean that the affordable-housing issue went away," Daly told the Guardian after securing support for the amendment from six of his colleagues and a broad coalition of housing activists.

The measure would set aside $2.7 billion in city funds for affordable housing over 15 years. It is cosponsored by Sups. Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, Ross Mirkarimi, Gerardo Sandoval, Sophie Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, and Peskin and backed by Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth (which has made affordable family housing its top priority), the San Francisco Organizing Project, and the Housing Justice Coalition.

The measure would give affordable housing the same baseline of funding that the city already allocates to the Recreation and Park Department fund and the Library Preservation Fund — and less than what it sets aside for the Children, Youth and Families fund, the police fund, and the fire station maintenance fund.

"If we don’t have affordable housing, who is going to use the parks and the libraries?" housing activist Calvin Welch asked.

The amendment would also require the Mayor’s Office of Housing to prepare an affordable-housing plan every three years, present an annual affordable-housing budget, and complete these steps before the rest of the mayor’s budget proposals are finalized.

"I hope these provisions will bring some much-needed transparency and clarity to the affordable-housing process so we can avoid the train wreck of last year," Welch said.

In a June 8 editorial still posted at Newsom’s www.actlocally.org reelection Web site, the San Francisco Chronicle appears to have bought the mayor’s spin that Daly’s request to prioritize housing was all just political theater.

"There was nothing wise or efficient about Supervisor Chris Daly’s bald political ploy to strip $37 million from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget priorities and shift most of it into affordable housing," the Chronicle claimed. "Now let’s be clear. We know that San Francisco does need housing. Newsom’s budget also acknowledges the shortage, pumping $217 million into housing programs."

But, according to Welch, "the lie was that Newsom allocated $217 million when he really only allocated $78 million and the board added a further $10 million to the pot…. Newsom was taking credit for more than he was actually allocating and using those other funds to imply that he’d already used a massive amount of the General Fund when he was, in fact, allocating less than the year before. So he was actually talking about a cut."

Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard told the Guardian that the total affordable-housing budget for fiscal year 2007–08 was $226 million — and of that total budget, "just approximately $90 million is General Fund dollars.

"The balance of funding (the difference between $226 million and $90 million) is a whole variety of other funding sources," he added, listing inclusionary housing in-lieu fees, redevelopment funds, jobs housing linkage fees levied on private development, federal and state sources, and other funds, many of which accumulate over many years, further distorting the budget picture.

But Welch said the housing situation is grim. As he told us, "The truth is that 92 percent of the city’s population can’t afford housing."

Daly’s affordable-housing amendment awaits a Jan. 8 board vote, following a request by Maxwell to allow for affordable housing to be built on sites used under the San Francisco Housing Authority — the so-called Hope SF program — a request Daly supports.

"My issue with Hope SF is [with] any proposal to build a large number of market-rate units on public housing sites," Daly explained, referring to a central tenet of the Newsom-created program.

Meanwhile, a June 2008 ballot measure being pushed by Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other prominent local power brokers threatens to drain what little money the city does have for affordable housing in order to subsidize a massive push by Lennar Corp. to build 8,000 to 10,000 new houses in Candlestick Point, Hunters Point, and the Bayview.

Other than committing to replace low-income Alice Griffith public housing units at a one-to-one ratio, the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Measure does not specify what percentage of the Lennar-built homes will be considered affordable or sold below market rates. Publicly, backers of the measure are presenting the efforts as focused on building a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, even though the team has said it would rather move to Santa Clara. Yet the campaign is also keenly aware of the public support for more affordable housing, at least if its ground-level pitches are any indication.

A paid signature gatherer who was recently working the 24th Street BART station (and who also told a Guardian source he was getting the unusually high sum of $2.50 per signature) presented the proposal to passersby as "an affordable housing measure."

Green City: The baby question

December 18, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY I remember exactly where I was — sitting on a BART train, reading yet another magazine article about global warming — when it hit me harder than ever before: the year 2050 is going to suck.

Predictions suggest it’s going to be hotter, colder, drier, wetter, and stormier in all the wrong places. Sea levels will be up. Resources will be down. The view from 2007 is not good. So how can I, an educated, middle-class American woman, reasonably consider having a child with such a future to offer?

To have or not to have is the baby question everybody asks. I’ll admit I’ve been on the fence for a long time. A survey of my female role models reveals that exactly half took the motherhood plunge (including my own mother), yet the other half refrained. I’m clearly drawn to the childless life for a number of reasons, and reading the International Panel on Climate Change reports released this year has given me one more.

By virtue of our existence, we’re all contributing to global warming, and my impact will be at least doubled by every child I have. According to Al Gore’s carbon calculator (at www.climatecrisis.net), I’m emitting 2.35 tons of carbon dioxide per year, well below the national average of 7.5. But that would certainly increase if I were to have a baby. I’d need a bigger place to live, and that would require more heat and electricity. More flights back East to see Grandma and Grandpa would be in order, and I’d probably buy a car, not to mention all that crap that babies need.

I would become more like the average American, who has a life span of 77.8 years and, according to estimates by the Mineral Information Institute in Golden, Colo., needs 3.7 million pounds of minerals and energy fuels to construct and support a lifetime of stuff — from cars and roads to batteries and soap.

It seems like an effective way to cut our impact on the earth would be to cut population, yet such a strategy almost never comes up.

"In the entire discussion of climate change, there’s been no mention of population," Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, told me.

The IPCC’s fourth assessment, released in November, discusses mitigation measures but never suggests decreasing population — except as the unintended result of a natural disaster. Historic attempts to limit population growth have never been popular. China has been chastised for its one-child policy, as were environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which called for limiting immigration in the 1970s to curb population growth in the United States.

"It’s an incredibly personal decision," environmentalist and author Bill McKibben told me. "In our culture it’s not one that’s easy for people to talk about." He addressed it in Maybe One (Simon and Schuster, 1998), in which he explains his decision to have a child after years of saying he and his wife wouldn’t.

McKibben says he wrote the book to uncover the weak mythology that only children are spoiled, myopic brats, to show how religious beliefs have been manipulated, and to point out that an increasing population is really an economic advantage.

Ehrlich, who thinks the US should at least have a population policy, also had one child with his wife, Anne. The realization that having more would contribute to an unsustainable future for their daughter led them to author numerous books on the subject, including The Population Bomb (Ballantine Books, 1968), one of the bellwethers on the impact of unchecked population growth. Since then the issue has essentially disappeared from public consciousness, and Ehrlich thinks that’s because the world’s total fertility rate has, in fact, dropped — from five children per woman to three. In the US it’s decreased even further, to less than the replacement level. This has created the impression that population is no longer a problem.

But that’s not entirely true. While birthrates may be down, the overall population has still grown, because life expectancy has increased. Most of us don’t die when we give birth. We go on living, breathing, eating, drinking, shitting, idling in traffic, jetting between cities, and consuming more and more of the dwindling resources we have — with a child or two at our side.

And the equation is simple, right? The more people, the bigger the problem.

"Well, it’s not a direct multiplier," McKibben said. He offers as an example an Amish family of eight "living simply" and having less of an impact than the average American Brady Bunch. "In global terms it’s so much more about consumption."

Ehrlich and McKibben agree that’s really the problem. "An important point, which is usually missed, is the next 2.5 billion people are going to have a much bigger impact than the last 2.5 billion," Ehrlich said.

According to his research, we’ve surpassed the earth’s carrying capacity, and Americans are only able to overconsume because Africans, Indians, Asians and other developing countries are underconsuming.

If the entire world population ate and drank and drove around like Americans — which is the aspiration of many — we’d need two more Earths.

"The current population is being maintained only through the exhaustion and dispersion of a one-time inheritance of natural capital," the Ehrlichs and Gretchen Daily wrote in the 1997 book The Stork and the Plow (Yale University Press), in which they grapple with the question of a sustainable population for Earth.

Their answer: about two billion. How many are we now? Worldwide, 6.5 billion, which will rise to about 9 billion by 2050 — with most of the growth slated for developing countries. Family planning and education are largely considered the primary factors in keeping the US population under control, and that’s where international efforts have focused, according to Kristina Johnson, population expert for the Sierra Club.

This has required an artful dance around the Mexico City Policy, in place in one form or another since 1984, when Ronald Reagan refused aid to any international agencies that use any monies for abortions. So while we’ve managed to handle our head count at home, we’ve done the opposite abroad.

As for how to deal with our enormous abuse of natural resources, technology has long been hailed as the solution. The guiding principle has been that our children will be smarter than we are, so we’ll leave it up to them to figure it out. However, as the Ehrlichs conclude in their most recent book, One with Ninevah (Island Press, 2004), "The claim that ‘technology will fix the problems’ has been around for decades — decades in which the putative advantages of claimed technological ‘fixes’ have often failed to appear or proved to be offset by unforeseen nasty side effects."

For example, we essentially avoided large-scale famine by figuring out how to reap more crops from our soil. But we haven’t mastered how to do this without the use of pesticides and, increasingly, genetically modified organisms that have transformed diverse farms into precarious monocultures.

Today we’re counting on technology even more, but some of the proposed solutions still raise questions. Do we have enough acreage to grow biofuels? What would be the long-term impacts of capturing carbon emissions and burying them underground? Ditto for spent nuclear fuel.

And all of these variables factor in those 2.5 billion people to come, without suggesting people consider not having children.

If there’s a mantra for any concerned citizen to adopt, it should be less. Use less. Buy less. Be less of a draw on the system. But as Richard Heinberg writes in Peak Everything (New Society, 2007), "People will not willingly accept the new message of ‘less, slower, and smaller,’ unless they have new goals toward which to aspire."

Cutting carbon emissions is a serious goal, and it looks like leadership is going to have to come from within. The Bali talks have produced no binding agreement except … more talks.

Our elected representatives have finally raised US fuel-economy standards for the first time since 1975, to the slightly less shameful level of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Environmentalism is peaking as a popular movement, but the credo to consume less has been divorced from its consciousness.

"Green" products are now the fastest-growing consumer market. In fact, this holiday season you can buy a pair of chic Little Levi’s for your kid. They’re just $148 at Barney’s, and "a portion of proceeds" will go to the Trust for Public Land. How much? Who knows? The company isn’t saying. Just shut up and shop and don’t worry about it — they’re organic. *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Gifts for good causes

December 18, 2007

› molly@sfbg.com

Everyone loves the two-birds-with-one-stone approach to gift giving: a piece of furniture that covers both Mom and Dad, a pair of event tickets for your SO that means you get to go too, or the ever-popular this-item-is-so-big-it-covers-Christmas-and-your-birthday gift.

But in most cases, this gift-that-keeps-giving approach only benefits you and the giftee. How about letting one of the worthy organizations below in on some of the action? These gifts for good causes will benefit your loved ones and the planet, giving you the gift of a good conscience.

UNDER ONE ROOF

For everything from sleek kitchenware to funky, rainbow-themed holiday ornaments, this HIV/AIDS service provider has it covered with its "A Home for the Holidays" holiday store and event center, through Dec. 31.

2278 Market, SF. www.underoneroof.org

826 VALENCIA

Pirate gear from this Mission District store helps support mentorship programs in writing skills.

826 Valencia, SF. (415) 642-5905, www.826valencia.org

GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY

Books, art, toys, and games from the Crissy Field Warming Hut Bookstore and Café (Presidio Bldg. 983, SF; 415-561-3040), the Crissy Field Bookstore (603 Mason, SF; 415-561-7761), Alcatraz Island Bookstores (415-561-4922), and the Muir Woods Visitor Center (415-388-7368) all benefit the conservancy.

www.parksconservancy.org

CREATIVITY EXPLORED

When you choose the ceramic masks, tiles, handmade pillows, note cards, or other wares at the Creativity Explored Holiday Art Sale going on through Dec. 28, 50 percent of the proceeds go directly to the artist, while the rest helps maintain this nonprofit visual arts center for artists with developmental disabilities.

3245 16th St., SF. (415) 863-2108

ARC OF SAN FRANCISCO

DRAWBRIDGE

Buying ArcAngel holiday cards will benefit Arc of San Francisco, which serves, supports, and advocates for individuals with developmental disabilities. Or get individual cards or 10-packs from San Rafael’s Drawbridge, a program for homeless children. In both cases, the cards are designed by clients.

www.thearcofsanfrancisco.org

www.drawbridge.org

iGIVE

GREATERGOOD

Shopping online doesn’t disqualify you from do-gooding — even if you want to shop at major retailers. Before buying that radio from Best Buy or that towel set from Target, check online malls that donate a portion of proceeds to organizations like the March of Dimes and the Nature Conservancy (at no extra cost to you).

www.igive.com

www.greatergood.com

WORLD OF GOOD

You can also try the more direct approach at World of Good, a Berkeley organization that works with artisan cooperatives around the world to import high-quality goods, like fuzzy scarves from India and olive trays from Tanzania, while providing living wages, safe working conditions, and career stability to the artisans.

www.worldofgood.com

ORGANIC BOUQUETS

If you’re a sending-flowers kind of gifter, try Organic Bouquets, the Marin florist that not only sells and delivers organic flowers, plants, and chocolates online, by phone, and at Whole Foods Markets nationwide but also dedicates a percentage of its profits to charities like the Red Cross and the National Wildlife Federation.

1-877-899-2468, www.organicbouquet.com

FIFTY CROWS FOUNDATION

The purpose of this organization is to effect positive social change through documentary photography. Support it by gifting one of its prints.

49 Geary, Suite 225, SF. (415) 391-6300, www.fiftycrows.org

CASA BONAMPAK

This Mission fair-trade shop’s paper cutouts, party streamers, clothing, and Day of the Dead items are gorgeous — and proceeds support indigenous artisans from Chiapas and central Mexico.

3331 24th St., SF. 1-888-722-4264, www.casabonampak.com

Reining in the UC

December 18, 2007

EDITORIAL The deal that’s slated to turn a former University of California campus into a private housing development in San Francisco is another demonstration of a long pattern of problems between the UC and local governments. Put simply, the university is a bad neighbor and a bad actor — and it’s time the State Legislature did something about it.

The history of local communities fighting the UC is legend in this state, dating back at least to the People’s Park battles in Berkeley in the 1960s, and today that city is fighting the school’s plan to build a new sports stadium. In San Francisco the UC has tried to run over local planning laws to build a garage at Hastings College of the Law, is angering neighbors with its expansion plans at Mission Bay — and is now in the spotlight at 55 Laguna Street, the site of an old UC Extension campus.

The university wants to let A.F. Evans Co. build 440 units of housing — much of it high-end, with an average rent of $4,000 per month — on the 5.8-acre site. Only 15 percent of the units would be available below market rate.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has been trying to increase the number of affordable units but has run into a giant obstacle: the UC is demanding $18 million for the land, and it won’t budge an inch. In fact, the university has told him it’s prepared to drop the whole deal and walk away (leaving the campus empty and crime-infested and angering its neighbors) if the city tries to get a penny of that lease money.

We recognize that, like every other state agency, the UC desperately needs cash — but we’re sick of university officials acting arrogant, refusing to deal in good faith, and threatening to use the power of a state agency to bypass local land-use laws. While San Francisco struggles to make the 55 Laguna project work, the State Legislature ought to find a way to force the UC to work with local governments — and remove its ability to circumvent local laws.

Editor’s Notes

December 18, 2007

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I think 2008 is going to be the year when we decide as a city if we’re serious about San Francisco.

We’re going to decide if we want this to be a place where working people can live, a place that isn’t just a playground for the rich, a place where the people who drive the buses and clean the hotel rooms and teach in the schools can get to work without commuting 50 miles.

And it’s not going to be an easy choice.

See, there’s a city charter amendment headed for the November ballot that would set aside a fairly good-size chunk of money, around $30 million per year, for affordable housing. It won’t solve the city’s housing crisis — that would take at least three times as much money, maybe more — but it will, for the first time, create a large, predictable fund of money that can be used and leveraged over the next decade to try to create the type of housing this city desperately needs.

And not entirely coincidentally (see: the subprime mortgage crisis), the voters will be considering this in a year when the city is looking pretty broke.

So the mayor, who hates this charter measure (and who won’t talk seriously about raising new revenue), is going to go all over town and tell everyone that we can’t afford it, that it will mean even more service cuts, that it’s fiscally irresponsible … that whole line. He’ll try to blame the supervisors for the cuts in Muni and the Health Department and the library — and then he’ll run his own candidates in the November board elections, all of whom will oppose the housing measure, and he’ll try to sell them as responsible managers of the city’s treasury.

And all of us will have to make some choices:

Do we recognize that if we can’t build enough low-cost housing, San Francisco will cease to exist as we know it? Are we willing to look at the long run and realize that there will always be good and bad budget years, and that saving the city’s middle-class base is actually good management? Are we willing to accept that the budget should be balanced by new taxes on the rich and not by abandoning everyone else?

God, I hope so. Happy holidays. *

Don’t accept Bike Plan delays

December 18, 2007

EDITORIAL The way city officials are describing the situation, it’s going to be another 18 months at least before San Francisco can add even a single bicycle lane or road stripe or put in a single new bike rack. That’s because a lone nut who thinks bicycles shouldn’t be on the city streets sued San Francisco and forced it to do an environmental impact report on its Bike Plan. And that report has been delayed and delayed again as city planners have been unable to complete it.

That’s infuriated some advocates, including Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Tom Ammiano — and for good reason. The San Francisco Planning Department seemed to have no problem whatsoever forcing an EIR on the 55 Laguna Street development project onto the fast track, but the Bike Plan … that’s just creeping along.

And in the meantime, bicyclists and pedestrians continue to be run down at some of the most hazardous intersections in town, particularly Fell and Masonic streets and Octavia Boulevard and Market Street. City figures show that Fell and Masonic is one of the most dangerous places in town for pedestrians and bikers; the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition reports that at least eight collisions between cars and bike — all of them causing injury to the rider — have occurred at the intersection since April. It’s not an acceptable situation, and with a little creativity, the city ought to be able to do something about it.

The lawsuit, brought by blogger Rob Anderson, claims the city failed to do a complete EIR before approving its Bike Plan. That’s put everything — even the restriping of pavements for safer bike lanes — completely on hold.

In a sense, it’s absurd to have an environmentally positive change — a city policy promoting bicycling — held up by environmental law. But the California Environmental Quality Act and the way the city is interpreting it still have roots in the era when automobile traffic was considered the most important form of urban transportation.

For example, CEQA requires cities to evaluate how projects would impact traffic — and San Francisco has always used a yardstick called "level of service," or LOS, which refers to the number of cars using a particular intersection and the speed at which those cars can proceed. If a project slows down car traffic beyond an acceptable level, there’s an environmental impact that has to be addressed.

But that’s a backward analysis; the city’s job shouldn’t be to find ways to facilitate more cars on busy streets. And it allows bizarre interpretations: if, for example, the addition of a bike lane on a street reduces the available space for cars, that ought to be looked at as a positive environmental step; the city interprets it as a negative impact.

State senator Carole Migden has discussed legislation that could exempt bike plans from CEQA, and while we’re nervous about any exemptions to the state’s premier environmental law, that might make some sense. But it might not even be necessary.

San Francisco’s city planners are still looking for ways to accommodate cars — all of the city’s development policies are based on the assumption that the number of private vehicles in San Francisco will increase over the next 10 years. An assumption like that leads to mandates for more parking, wider roads, and (maybe) fewer bike lanes.

But there’s nothing in the law requiring the pro-car approach. The Planning Commission could simply adopt new rules that define the level of service on streets differently. Instead of tracking how many cars go through an intersection, the city could track the number of people — including people on foot, people on bikes, and people in buses — and made a determination that pedestrian and bike safety and the quality of the travel experience for non–car users is as important as the degree of auto traffic.

That simple change would render much of the Anderson suit moot: new bike lanes, for example, would no longer be a potentially adverse impact. The city could move forward with much of its bike plan, now.

CEQA doesn’t require cities to accept public safety hazards — and the law clearly creates exemptions for situations in which lives are at risk. Mirkarimi has proposed legislation to change the LOS system, but it has languished; the supervisors need to move on it if the city planners won’t. You don’t need an EIR to tear down a freeway that’s about to collapse — and you shouldn’t need an environmental review to fix the most dangerous intersections in the city, including Fell and Masonic. City planners should simply define those hazardous sites as imminent dangers to public safety and immediately start changing the traffic lights, rerouting cars, and redefining bike lanes to put an end to the carnage, now.

Year in Music: Rather ripped

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December 12, 2007
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I traded one obsession for another in 2007, a tedious game of music on a Möbius strip. Eleven months ago I had some 10,000 CDs — few of them ripped — a couple of 150 gig hard drives packed with MP3 files, and a tiny apartment with no room to move, and I mean it. So I ripped and I ripped and I ripped some more — disc by disc, day after day, week after week. When I looked back, I’d moved the music from 5,000 CDs to a quartet of 250 gig GDrives, and I was ready, sort of, to head for Amoeba Music’s buyback counter. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The shadow of Steve Jobs hovers, uncomfortably close to my soul. I’m all Apple, all time — it’s a ball of convenience that picked up steam over the years until process became pleasure, a mystery dance played out in zeroes and ones. Classic? Nano? Touch? Shuffle? I have iPods like some people have shoes. CDs? Vinyl? Not in these parts.

It wasn’t always so. I once had speakers that cost more than my car. They’d generate music so thick, rich, and three-dimensional I could swim in it — and that was straight. Did you ever listen to Jimi Hendrix doing Bob Dylan’s "All Along the Watchtower" on audiophile headphones? Were you ever experienced? So much the better to appreciate a guitar that spoons down and back up, constrained and compressed — a short loop that suddenly wah-wahs into a new dimension. As a woodblock reverberates in the distance, Hendrix greets the howling wind with an exhilarating roar of his own.

But that was then, apparently, because now is all about MP3 files. Besides, I live in Los Angeles, and people go out in LA. Who wants to spend life stoned, listening to music in a fucking apartment? I can pack the essentials onto a slim, white, 160 gig object, hook it to a noose around my neck, and have more music than I will listen to in the next five years — never mind the obvious question. I’ve got a score for the car wash, for grocery shopping, for the laundry, for my commute.

I love music as much as I ever did, yet digital toys shape not just when and where I listen but also how it sounds. It’s not just that the frozen food aisle at Safeway isn’t ideal for anything other than frozen food, much less listening to the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows (self-released), or the Flaming Lips’ 2002 masterpiece, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros.). I heard both this year while purchasing ice cream. The truth is MP3s sound like shit.

Fortunately — or not — technology is cooperating on the other end. Of course I’m all for Pro Tools, the M-Box, and opportunity in our fabulous democratic world. This is the era of the bedroom studio. You too can have a hit record — DIY, and I mean it. Much if not most of the music I run across these days, no matter how well crafted and played, sounds like it was recorded at home. Which is to say, one might as well download a tune, put it on your iPod, and head out for the market.

There was a time when the recording studio was a place to explore sonic possibility — where music was enhanced with richness and surprise. Those days are gone, lost in the dot-com world, and damned if I’m going to be a square wheel. I got so busy ripping and keeping up that it was months before I knew what I was missing.

TOP 10 ALBUMS

•<\!s><0x0007>Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Sony Legacy)

•<\!s><0x0007>Angie Stone, The Art of Love and War (Stax)

•<\!s><0x0007>Sly and the Family Stone, The Collection (Epic/Legacy)

•<\!s><0x0007>James Brown, The Singles Volume 4: 1966–1967 (Hip-O Select)

•<\!s><0x0007>Rahsaan Patterson, Wines and Spirits (Artistry)

•<\!s><0x0007>The Nightwatchman, One Man Revolution (Epic)

•<\!s><0x0007>The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show DVD (Sony Legacy)

•<\!s><0x0007>Queens of the Stone Age, Era Vulgaris (Interscope)

•<\!s><0x0007>Emmylou Harris, Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems (Rhino)

•<\!s><0x0007>Mavis Staples, We’ll Never Turn Back (Anti-)

Year in Music: iFunk?

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December 12, 2007
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This year we were consumed by our obsession with the latest piece of technology and the immediate gratification that comes with it. My personal part in this collective cultural obsession hit me one day as I sat on the bus, my multitasking mind elsewhere, my phone in one hand receiving text messages, my MP3 player in the other on random shuffle, playing a song by Project Pat boasting about having "the number one ringtone." And on my lap sat not a laptop, but a relic from another time: a book, an ordinary page-bound, nonfiction book. But as I read, instead of flipping to get a referenced page, I found myself absent-mindedly, or rather, tech-mindedly, tapping my finger on the bold-faced word, unconsciously thinking that I was clicking on a computer screen — confirming my obsession with and dependence on digital technology.

Our obsession drives us to grab the fastest and the newest and consumes us with possessing the latest iProducts, the most recent Guitar Hero, the most up-to-date ringtones, and the hottest celebrity gossip, which we seemingly can never get enough of. Hence in 2007, YouTube videoblogger star Chris Crocker’s "Leave Britney alone" rant, which attracted more than five million hits, was essentially far more popular than its subject’s new album, Blackout (Jive).

But our obsessions aren’t necessarily a bad thing, since they are driven by passion as much as by anything else, and consequently we are experiencing a renaissance of enthusiastic people producing amazingly intricate and imaginative music, blogs, visual art, literature, photography, video — all made and distributed DIY-style. In fact, there is so much being created right now that we can’t even follow, let alone fathom, it all. After all, how can we when it’s possible to create hit blogs, video diaries, and hip-hoperas while multitasking on the bus?

TOP 10

1. The Bay Area’s noncommercial radio stations

2. DJ Yoda, The Amazing Adventures of DJ Yoda (Antidote)

3. Various artists, Soul Jazz Records Singles, 2006–2007 (Soul Jazz)

4. Emcee T’s Yay Area version of The Sopranos intro, on YouTube

5. Zeph and Azeem, Rise Up (OM)

6. Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip-Hop (Rizzoli), by Johan Kugelberg, Afrika Bambaataa, Buddy Esquire, Jeff Chang, and Joe Conzo

7. Copperpot, WYLA? (EV Productions)

8. Ultimate Force, I’m Not Playin’ (Traffic)

9. MF Grimm, The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man (Class A)

10. edIT, Certified Air Raid Material (Alpha Pup)

Year in Music: Bling

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December 12, 2007
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There’s no getting around it: for me, 2007 was the year of the vibes, case closed. But before anyone gets the wrong idea and paints me as a hacky sack–thwacking trustafarian slathered in sandalwood oil and picking chunks of crusted hummus from my beard, let me qualify: those ain’t the kind of vibes I’m a-grooving on. Nah, we’re talking vibraphones here. You know, aluminum bars, mallets, the whole bit, just like Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, and Cal Tjader used to rock. And while we’re at it, let’s throw in xylophones, glockenspiels, and marimbas too. Basically, if you hit it with a couple of sticks and it chimes out a sunny-day "ping," "bling," "blong," or "pong" in response, you’ve got my undivided attention. I’m a hopeless sucker for percussion with pitch, and this year has heaped a veritable bounty of warm, mellow tones into my headphones.

Oh, the twinkles and sparkles of the ceaselessly charming, thrillingly cheeky Gruff Rhys. The title track of the Super Furry Animals vocalist’s sophomore release, Candylion (Team Love), rolls along like an ice cream van from a subversive children’s television show, thanks to its misleadingly bright, singsong xylophone patterns, trilling away while Rhys plays the part of the medicated host, informing the kiddies, "Dreams can come true. Nightmares can also." Delicious! Then there’s the Brunettes. The Kiwi duo lay down a mighty double assault of lush glock action on their Structure and Cosmetics (Sub Pop) with "Her Hairagami Set" and "Credit Card Mail Order." The former picks up the mallets to plunk down an OMD-inspired round of ’80s romanticism, while the latter evokes images of poodle skirts and beehives with a glock melody beamed down from Buddy Holly.

How about Midnight Movies, whose glorious, Mazzy Star–like "Ribbons" billows and whirls heavenward with its elegiac xylophone line? The Barbarella-isms of Dean and Britta’s Back Numbers (Zoë) just wouldn’t be the same without the orbit-seeking wooziness of those space-jazz vibraphones. And where would I be without Welsh xylophone abusers Los Campesinos!, whose breathless pummeling of the metal bars on "You! Me! Dancing!" approaches levels of rapture? Finally, I bow to my icon as I revel once more in the mesmerizing marimba rumbles of Siouxsie’s captivating solo debut, Mantaray (Universal). Honestly, what could possibly beat a rhythm that’s also hummable? Good vibes are flowing, indeed.

TOP 10 ALBUMS

•<0x0007>The National, Boxer (Beggars Banquet)

•<0x0007>Beirut, The Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing)

•<0x0007>Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge)

•<0x0007>Blonde Redhead, 23 (4AD)

•<0x0007>Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti-)

•<0x0007>Bat for Lashes, Fur and Gold (Echo/Caroline)

•<0x0007>Grinderman, Grinderman (Anti-)

•<0x0007>Celebration, The Modern Tribe (4AD)

•<\!s><0x0007>Jens Lekman, Night Falls on Kortedala (Secretly Canadian)

•<\!s><0x0007>Gruff Rhys, Candylion (Team Love)

Year in Music: Move me

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December 12, 2007
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It was during my early teens that the obsession struck. I oversaw the building of a stage, booked a bunch of bad garage bands, and charged $10 for admission to boondocks Maryland’s first semiannual Punk Fest. During my high school years I snuck into the seediest venues that Baltimore and Washington DC had to offer — still the scariest I’ve seen to date. By my arrival in San Francisco, I was a full-fledged music scene devotee, immediately taking a job at the Great American Music Hall to pay the rent during college. My SoMa warehouse hosted concerts a few times a month — my bed was a futon unrolled over a segment of 58 Tehama’s stage. For years my drinks were comped, my seats were great, and I was always on the guest list.

It wasn’t until the final months of 2006 that I realized I’ve spent most of my postpubescent life inside concert venues. It was getting increasingly difficult to ignore my ringing ears, to justify the copious waves of shift-off cocktails, and to keep my love for music intact. Flag down any soundperson, bartender, or bouncer working anywhere in the city tonight, and they’ll tell you the music industry breeds bitterness.

How to live in San Francisco without working in the music business? At least my job kept me firmly in the so-called creative class — a label that made me feel much better about my financial situation. Moving to a less expensive city could mean a better standard of living and a way to cut the industry apron strings for good. My husband, having spent more than a decade working in music stores, was game. His only stipulation was that he would not, under any condition, be taking a record store job ever again.

We caught a train to Chicago, where my husband promptly took a job at a record store. I managed to stay away from music for a month, instead focusing my energies on writing food reviews for local publications. But by the time the festival season rolled around, the prospect of seeing Patti Smith perform against the impressive skyline of my new hometown ruined everything. The University of Chicago recently published a study comparing the music scenes of American’s top metropolises. Chicago kicked some serious ass. The study described Chi-town as "a music city in hiding."

I doubt I’ll ever shake music totally, but living in Chicago has taught me it doesn’t have to be a way of life anymore. When it comes to the scene these days, I’m nothing more than a music fan in hiding.

TOP 10

1. During my last night at the Great American Music Hall, I danced like crazy to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

2. Tyva Kyzy. Anyone who missed this all-female group of Tuvan throat singers is probably still kicking themselves.

3. Barbarasteele’s 7-inch release party at Cafe du Nord blew some minds. Rest in peace, Mike J.

4. Patti Smith performing at Lollapalooza in the pouring rain.

5. No, I wasn’t among the Milanese elite who got to see Ennio Morricone at La Scala opera house, but just knowing about this show makes me a better person.

6. Rediscovering Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas (Snapper UK).

7. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir (Bloodshot).

8. Thanks, Sopranos, for making Journey relevant again.

9. Happy centennial to the glorious buildings that house the Great American Music Hall and the Cafe du Nord.

10. De la Soul closing out the Pitchfork Music Festival in style — with a little help from Prince Paul.

Year in Music: Throwback or keeper?

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December 12, 2007
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I was born at the dawn of the 1980s, and as I’ve gradually climbed the aging ladder, the remnants of what I recall from my childhood have slowly faded into a dim star set to expire in some far-too-advanced digital-age contraption. I’ve been pretty hungry of late for an endless helping of nostalgic pop culture, and nothing satisfies an empty stomach more than watching The Making of Thriller or catching a five-second clip of Hulk Hogan leg-dropping Mr. Wonderful. You see, when I was a wee youngster, I channeled many of my fantasies from TV debauchery: I wanted to be the Karate Kid and yearned to live on the set of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I started watching MTV before kindergarten, and the thought of soaring from a wire above the sea of 10,000 screaming fans in Bon Jovi’s "Livin’ on a Prayer" music video seemed like heaven to me. I longed to spike a volleyball in some drunken beachgoer’s face during the weeklong episodes of MTV’s Spring Break, but the closest I ever came to a beach was the grungy kiddie pool in my backyard. Sadly, I was never able to find another means of capitalizing on my fool’s paradise, but I remain convinced in my adulthood that something will eventually creep up and take me back to the Cosby generation.

YouTube finally answered my prayers in the beginning of 2005. Then I had the entire 1980s at my fingertips, and I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s been nothing but talking cars, pastel-clothed coppers, and cat-eating aliens from the planet Melmac in my tiny universe. I can now explore and eat up all of the catchy theme songs from old faves such as Pinwheel, Hey Dude, and Hickory Hideout, or scratch my head and wonder why I found Punky Brewster so compelling in the first place. I’m able to watch Alanis Morissette getting slimed on You Can’t Do That on Television, and then I can immediately point and click on a poor-quality money shot of Mr. T flexing his muscles in front of a burning helicopter. It’s so damn bad, but it’s addicting. I’ve come to realize that most of these flashes from the past should have stayed in my childhood, simply because they seemed so much cooler back then. Just last week I watched the first two segments of The Decline of Western Civilization, but they didn’t do it for me, because I just didn’t identify with those lifestyles as a toddler.

Much of my compulsion of wanting to relive the ’80s stems from the fact that all of my idols from that period — from Luke Skywalker to the Lost Boys — were larger than life. And I suppose I’m seeking an escape from the perpetual yawn of reality TV. I might not be Marty McFly, but if I ever find myself behind the wheel of a time-traveling DeLorean DMC-12, I will probably set the flux capacitor to the year 1989 and put it in park.

TOP 10

•Britney Spears loses it

•The Spits at the Great American Music Hall, Oct. 15

•No Age, Weirdo Rippers (FatCat)

•Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cendre (Touch)

•Calvin Johnson at the Rickshaw Stop, June 15

•Black Dice, Load Blown (Paw Tracks). Someday they could become a really great pop band.

•Paula Abdul’s drunken interview on the Fox News Channel

•Japanther at the Hemlock Tavern, May 30

•Aa, GAaME (Gigantic)

•Kanye West, Graduation (Roc-A-Fella). My favorite album of 2007. I hear he’s remixing a Michael Jackson song for the 25th-anniversary rerelease of Thriller.

Year in Music: Bliss you

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December 12, 2007
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"It was definitely Kevin Shields — it was his playing that made me want to play guitar in a different way," explains Mark Clifford, former guitarist and studio mastermind of United Kingdom electro innovators Seefeel. "I saw My Bloody Valentine every time I could around ’88, right after ‘You Made Me Realise.’ And it was amazing, the kind of noise they could make: one sound, one chord that was this long, sustained wash of noise."

If Shields’s Valentines were the guitar experimentalists of the shoegaze era, then acolytes Seefeel, a Too Pure acoustic turned post-rock turned electronic group, were the six-string geniuses of the post-rave era. The Brighton band’s 1993 debut, the much-lauded Quique — rereleased this year — was a vital piece of electroacoustic art, so defiant of the conventional boundaries of techno, indie rock, and the dubiously termed IDM genre that it forced critic Simon Reynolds to invent a new descriptor: post-rock.

"When we started up, we were pretty much labeled in every genre — rock, dub, techno, electronic," Clifford recalls. "And it just seemed silly, really. I remember we were getting compared to bands like [labelmates] Disco Inferno. To be honest with you, I couldn’t see any similarity in our music whatsoever." In fact, Quique — in many ways the equal of its inspiration, Loveless (Creation, 1991) — remains less a timely "rock" record than a series of liminal compositions whose meanings shift and decay like glaciers or isotopes according to some inexplicable molecular clock. The album’s concoction of guitar drones, buzzing keyboard loops, and cooing vocals — courtesy of bassist Sarah Peacock — has a narcotic vastness that might very well induce a century-long slumber. So it might come as no surprise, then, that Seefeel’s oeuvre would draw the attention of somnambulists Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, and yes, even Radiohead.

Criminally remanded to the record store dustbin since Seefeel’s demise in 1996, Quique was finally given the full-on two-CD treatment in April by Too Pure, and, as in ’93, it’s one of the best listens of the year. Few new bands experimenting with tones and drones have managed to match Quique‘s blend of infectious creativity and instrumental minimalism. Rather, the noughties’ profusion of laptop technology and easy-listening soundtracks has caused increasing schisms between electronica’s subcultures and an attendant creative stagnation. "There seems to be something extremely decadent about electronic music, which it didn’t have in the ’90s," Clifford says. "It had something fresh and virginal then that it doesn’t have now."

For all of his accomplishments in genre bending and musical innovation, Clifford, now producing work under the Disjecta and Sneakster monikers and running Polyfusia Records, remains modest and somewhat aloof. "The thing about electronic music is a lot of stuff you hear sounds new, but when you listen to people like Tod Dockstader, who was doing it 40 or 50 years ago with just tape and found sounds, you realize [technology’s] just enabled us to do that kind of thing easier," he says. Fifteen years on, Quique still makes sonic brilliance sound easy.

TOP 12 ALBUMS

•Alog, Amateur (Rune Grammofon)

•Caribou, Andorra (Merge)

•Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, Songs of — Love and Hate (Columbia/Legacy)

•Dean and Britta, Back Numbers (Zoë)

•Fennesz, Hotel Paral.lel (Editions Mego)

•Fire Engines, Hungry Beat (Acute)

•Grinderman, Grinderman (Anti-)

•PJ Harvey, White Chalk (Island)

•Seefeel, Quique (Redux Edition) (Too Pure)

•Robert Wyatt, Comicopera (Domino)

Year in Music: Keep on truckin’

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December 12, 2007
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I do a lot of driving, which sucks. I don’t like cars. They stress me out, they mess up the environment, and even 10-year-old minivans are stupidly expensive, but I live in the sticks and do a lot of traveling to places where public transportation is an urban myth, so I don’t have much of a choice. However, one thing makes long trips in the car bearable: DJ mixes. Whether it’s neck-snapping hip-hop (perfect for manning up and not letting that 18-wheeler cut you off) or relentless techno (tailor-made for the final miles of an eight-hour jaunt to Oregon), a solid DJ mix is the perfect accompaniment to hours spent trying to go as fast as possible without getting yet another speeding ticket.

This year offered more than the usual share of potential candidates for the perfect driving mix. In addition to the typically top-notch offerings from the likes of Fabric (check James Murphy and Pat Mahoney’s Fabric 36 for a spectacular romp along the edges of past and present disco) and the typically abysmal efforts by DJs voted number one by tasteless trance lovers all over the world (Armin van Buuren’s Hoover festival Universal Religion 2008 on Ultra, replete with synchronized crowd noise and snare rolls, tops that list), two stuck out in particular.

More often than not I found myself reaching for Future Soul Sessions Vol. 1 (Bagpak), on which the stop-and-start rhythms’ broken beat perfectly matched the stop-and-go traffic one usually faces when attempting to escape the Bay. Ernesto Vigo of Elevations Radio on Harlem’s WHCR did a stunning job of charting a trip through broken beat’s best, from international figures like Ty, whose flowing rap for "What You Want" is up to his usual smooth snuff, to New York cats like Bagpak boss Yellowtail, who teams up with Alison Crockett for "You Feel Me," an absolutely smashing future soul classic with a vocal break that had me frequently causing consternation in nearby drivers with my attempts to match Crockett’s vocal prowess.

Once free of the urban congestion, I invariably turned to some good old four-on-the-floor. Only one mix survived my periodic pogroms of the iPod Shuffle that stores my house and techno mixes: "Hot Oven Hand," by San Francisco’s DJ Worthy. Worthy is a rising star within the twisted techno world centered around the dirtybird Records camp, and "Hot Oven Hand" came from the label’s Web site, though there isn’t a single dirtybird track in the mix. Fair enough, since I already have all of their damn stellar output and look to mixes for the new. Instead, we’re treated to the pop-locking percolation of "Back the Beat," by Ran Shani on CR2, and the spaced-out synth swirl of Swag’s "Just Pull It Dub" of Jimpster’s "Don’t Push It" on Freerange. Yet the highlights of the mix are Worthy’s compositions, particularly the grin-inducing, squelchy bounce of "Crack El" (Leftroom) and the speaker-testing tension of "Bass Quake," on his Katabatic Records. With an absurdly stuttering, chittering hook and a progression that belies its creator’s relative newcomer status, "Bass Quake" was one of 2007’s high points. But be warned: although the impulse to stupidly wave your hands in the air is perfectly acceptable on the dance floor, it’s not advisable while doing 90 over the Tehachapi Pass in a thunderstorm. *

TUNES FOR DANCING IN YOUR CAR

1. LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great" (DFA/EMI)

2. Baby Oliver, "Primetime (Uptown Express)" (Environ)

3. Square One, "Vesuvius (Justin Martin Mix)" (Freerange)

4. Bassbin Twins, "Woppa" (Bassbin)

5. Lanu, "Disinformation" (Tru Thoughts/Ubiquity)

6. Riton, "Hammer of Thor (Roman Fluegel Mix)" (Souvenir Music)

7. Sebo K and Metro, "Transit" (Get Physical)

8. Chateau Flight, "Baltringue (Henrik Schwarz and Dixon Mix)" (Innervisions)

9. Titonton Duvante, "Oishii Manko" (Refraction)

10. Paranoid Boyz, "Paranoid" (mothership)

Year in Music: Nonplussed and pissed

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December 12, 2007
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Usually around Halloween, I start a top 10 list in my head of the best musical moments of the past year, both live and recorded. Maybe it’s my fucked-up state of late — I’m not feeling too thrilled about anything — but the idea of making such a list didn’t cross my mind until a week ago. I had no obsessions, no CD that wouldn’t leave the deck. But I could remember a few dismal concertgoing experiences:

Jan. 26: The Heartless Bastards play 12 Galaxies on a Friday at the end of a crappy workweek, wherein I was nearly moved to violence against one of my coworkers. Not proud of it, but woot! — there it is. You can only push the Dunc so far before his Cro-Mag DNA reveals itself. So this show, which I had been looking forward to for so long, may simply have been an example of "kicking the dog," or what psychologists get overpaid to call "transference." In the middle of the show some yahoo got within inches of my date’s face, talkin’ about "Hey, what’s up?" She turned to me in horror, I told him to go away, he pleaded his case with his hands waving too close to my face, and the next thing you know he’s on his knees and I’m pounding him on top of the head, which hurts the hand more than the head. It’s still the Age of Quarrel.

Sept. 24: I finally get to see the almighty Bad Brains live, only to have my nose broken in the pit by the back of some Fred Durst wannabe’s exceptionally hard dome as he does the "nookie" dance. Punk rock may not be dead, but it’s sure been infiltrated.

Oct. 8: Turbonegro play Slim’s, and I use my plus one on a sweet but very stoned German girl I don’t know at all. Everything is going swimmingly until the barricade, which appears to be made from San Francisco Police Department fencing and kegs, starts collapsing around security and the band leaves the stage.

In the ensuing soccer chants of "Oh-oh-oh-oh, I got erection!" some tool with an erection starts chatting up my Teutonic friend. That’s all well and good — she wasn’t my girlfriend and we weren’t even dating, but nonetheless, she came to the show with me and I’m standing right next to her. When I tell him to go away, he goes through a beer-soaked nightclub version of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. (1) He denies that there is any issue. (2) He gets angry and gets in my face, saying he isn’t "scared of an old man." (But if I crack you in the face, it’s going to hurt, unless you’ve got the adrenaline from being afraid, so fear might be beneficial.) (3) He bargains with me, trying to bro-down with some rock-lock handshake. (4) He gets depressed when I refuse to be his rock ‘n’ roll, Turbo sailor buddy and keeps yapping in amazement how he can’t understand why I won’t talk it out with him. (5) In a reversion to the anger stage, he gives me his best hockey shoulder check as he walks by, at which point I am compelled to jack his arm behind his back and pray to whatever god or gods might be listening to restrain me from bringing my knee to his face. I do this praying by shouting, "Someone get this motherfucker out of my face!" Security takes him out the back door. I’m sure the cold night air ushered in feelings of acceptance.

Of the three times I’ve seen Turbonegro, the first was flaccid and boring, the second was incredible, and the third was, well, this.

My New Year’s resolution is going to be to meditate more regularly so I’m not driven to aggravation and violence at shows. Or perhaps I’ll just see bands more sparingly. With a little heavy mental excavation, I’ve come up with some good to great musical moments in 2007, which I have saved for my top 10 list.

TOP 10

1. Grinderman at the Great American Music Hall, July 26, and Slim’s, July 27

2. The Stooges at the Warfield, April 19

3. Qui, Lozen, and Triclops! at Cafe du Nord, Sept. 12. Qui’s Love’s Miracle (Ipecac) is most certainly top 10 material as well.

4. Love Me Nots at the Elbo Room, Aug. 31

5. The Shout Out Louds, "Blue Headlights," Our Ill Wills (Merge)

6. King Khan and BBQ Show at 12 Galaxies, Nov. 16

7.Rykarda Parasol and the Tower Ravens at Cafe du Nord, Jan. 5

8. The White Barons, Up All Night with the White Barons (Gearhead)

9. Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II (Reprise)

10. Les Savy Fav, Let’s Stay Friends (French Kiss)

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