Volume 43 [2008–09] Archives — Page 18 of 62 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Volume 43, Index 45

Eliminating dissent

June 17, 2009

sarah@sfbg.com

For years, the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board has served as the Bayview-Hunters Point community’s main voice in the U.S. Navy’s environmental cleanup plans for the toxic former naval station. But the committee is suddenly being disbanded just as the cleanup enters a crucial phase.

Used for shipbuilding and submarine maintenance and repair, and the decontamination, storage, and disposal of radioactive and atomic weapons testing materials, the shipyard was added to the Superfund national toxic site cleanup list in 1989. But it is also at the heart of where Mayor Gavin Newsom has partnered with Lennar Corp. on the city’s biggest development proposal, involving 10,500 homes and a new stadium for the 49ers.

As the Navy prepares to release a series of important studies and reports concerning the cleanup of the dirtiest parcels on the former shipyard, community members were outraged by the Navy’s announcement in late May that it is preparing to dissolve the RAB in the next 30 days.

In July the Navy will release draft feasibility studies for the cleanup of Parcel E, along with a final remedial investigation/feasibility study for Parcel E2, the dirtiest parcel on the base, and a radiological data-gathering investigation in the sediment surrounding Parcel F, which is the underwater portion of the base.

Some insiders say the announcement was not unexpected, given an escautf8g series of confrontational RAB meetings with the Navy over the last two years. But they fear the community will lose its ability to give the Navy direct, timely, and meaningful feedback, even if many believe the Navy wasn’t listening.

"The Navy fully supports the need for open, meaningful dialogue with the diverse Bayview-Hunters Point community regarding our environmental cleanup actions and decisions. However, the RAB is not fulfilling this objective," the Navy’s Laura Duchnak wrote in a May 22 letter to the RAB.

In her letter, Duchnak said the RAB meetings no longer provide community input on the Navy’s environmental cleanup program, that their atmosphere is not productive to effective public discourse, and that Navy attempts to improve the process have failed. "The revised community involvement program may include community environmental forums, including using Internet-based technologies to more easily reach a diverse audience, expanded monthly progress reports and fact sheets, and hosting technical discussions and tours of cleanup sites for interested community members," Duchnak wrote.

Duchnak’s announcement followed a tense January meeting in which RAB members reacted with horror when the Navy announced it was moving forward with controversial plans to cap radiologically-affected areas on the shipyard’s Parcel B instead of digging and hauling them, which the community preferred (see "Nuclear Fallout," 07/16/08).

Led by RAB co-chair Leon Muhammad, who teaches at the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement, which has been repeatedly dusted by unmonitored asbestos (see "The corporation that ate San Francisco," 03/17/07), and joined by newly sworn-in members Archbishop King, Marie Harrison, and Daniel Landry, the board voted to seek a civil grand jury investigation into whether local truckers are getting their fair share of the Navy’s shipyard contracts.

Members then voted to remove the city’s public health representative Amy Brownell from the RAB, and to call for the stoppage of all work on the yard until the Department of Defense, the Navy, and the city can prove, as Muhammad said, "where the ongoing dust exceedences are coming from."

The final straw, insiders say, occurred in February when members voted to remove the Navy’s RAB co-chair Keith Forman from the advisory board. Eric Smith, who was sworn onto the RAB in January but did not vote to remove Brownell and Forman, said the Navy’s dissolution response wasn’t surprising.

"The dissolution of RAB is not a good thing in terms of what it is supposed to do. But it was also doing things that were dysfunctional," Smith said. "The bitter irony is that the folks who caused the trouble were trying to get the Navy to sit up and take notice."

Smith said there is frustration with the Navy’s communication style, which the community feels is patronizing. "But the RAB was naïve to think the Navy would allow a forum over which it has unilateral authority to become a platform for attacks," Smith said.

RAB member Kristine Enea, who missed the RAB’s last two meetings, confirmed that the atmosphere got increasingly confrontational but added that the Navy ignored suggestions her calls for wider community involvement.

"It’s ironic that the Navy had decided to respond to criticisms, which include the charge that it is a poor communicator, by cutting off communications with the community," said Enea, who works at the India Basin Neighborhood Association. "Dissolving the RAB is a drastic step. There is so much going on, and so much that we need to know."

But Enea hopes IBNA can help fill that void, noting that the association has applied for a US Environmental Protection Agency technical assistant grant to review shipyard clean-up documents, provide fact sheets, and host community meetings.

The Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein said that his group’s main concern around the dissolution is that Parcel E2, which contains an industrial and radiologically-impacted dump that burned for six months in 2000, and Parcel F are both coming up for analysis.

"These are some of the most significantly contaminated areas on the shipyard, so the timing is terrible," Feinstein told the Guardian, observing that some RAB members did not appear to be looking for solutions and were so aggressive they destroyed meetings.

"Unfortunately there weren’t enough forceful people to say ‘shut up and sit down,’" Feinstein said. "But without a RAB, there will be no public forum where folks are able to get and read materials ahead of the meeting, and then ask and submit questions."

Harrison, a member of the environmental justice group Green Action, believes the Navy’s intent is that there be no meaningful interaction with the community. "When you don’t toe the line and play like good little children, the Navy shuts you down," said Harrison, whose group, along with the Nation of Islam and the Caravan for Justice, are planning a June 30 demonstration at the shipyard to protest the move.

In another point of controversy, Sen. Mark Leno has legislation that seeks to trade 25 percent of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, the only major piece of open space in the Bayview, for small strips on the shipyard so Lennar can build condos on the parkland.

Noting that Sen. Leland Yee and Assembly Members Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma oppose the parks-for-condos plan (see "Going Nuclear," April 29), Harrison said, "What possessed anyone to believe that we’d say, okay, take the only open space in the Bayview, and in exchange we’ll accept contaminated land scattered around on the shipyard?"

Environmental advocates believe the Sierra Club intends to fight Leno’s legislation with a challenge under the California Environmental Quality Act, but Leno told the Guardian that he is "continuing to work and meet with the lobbyists for the Sierra Club here in Sacramento to see if there are any additional amendments we can take that would get them to a neutral position on the bill.

"I think there is a good possibility we can get there," Leno said.

In February, Arc Ecology released a 133-report titled "Alternatives for study" that recommended the removal of the Parcel E2 landfill and explored changes in land use arrangements in the current redevelopment proposal to avoid environmental impacts (see "Concrete Plans," Feb. 4). Unfortunately, they were largely ignored by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which is working with Lennar on the public-private development deal.

Arc Ecology executive director Saul Bloom remains undaunted, recalling how 87 percent of voters citywide supported Proposition P, an advisory measure he wrote and that then-Sups. Ammiano, Leno, Michael Yaki, and the late Sue Bierman placed on the ballot in 1989 to establish community acceptance criteria for the shipyard, under federal toxic cleanup guidelines.

"The Navy had offered their opinion that voters in San Francisco, and especially in the Bayview, would accept a nonresidential industrial level cleanup for the shipyard because they were primarily interested in jobs," Bloom recalled. "We said that this was a mischaracterization and we’d go ahead and prove them wrong."

He believes the current struggle with the Navy over the RAB, and with the city and Lennar over Arc’s alternatives, are "emblematic of the problem facing the Bayview with regard to accessing good information and being told the straight story on health and development issues."

Wild Thing!

June 17, 2009

This year’s Frameline — a.k.a. the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival — is one of the strongest in the event’s 33-year history. The Frameline Award, annually handed over to someone “who has made a significant contribution to lesbian/gay/bi/transgender film,” is being bestowed on George and Mike Kuchar, who in addition to meeting the criteria noted above, have also made significant contributions to filmmaking in general, and San Francisco filmmaking in particular. The Kuchar kudos mesh well with Frameline’s focus on 60s and 70s-themed films, including Guardian cover boy Joe Dallesandro (profiled in the doc Little Joe). Our coverage also includes a look at a long-awaited local project, Cary Cronenwett’s Eisenstein-inspired, transgender-populated Maggots and Men; nostalgic edu-tainment kid pic Free to Be … You And Me; and short takes on festival films, including Centerpiece selections Patrik, Age 1.5 and Prodigal Sons. (Cheryl Eddy)

The 33rd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs June 18–28 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. Tickets (most shows $8–$10) are available at www.frameline.org

>>Hello sailor
Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men (re)stages a revolution
By Matt Sussman

>>Kucharmania!
It Came from Kuchar is a splash of foam within a whirling cinematic cesspool
By Johnny Ray Huston

>>The man from camp
Movie maker Gary Gregerson likes guys with chaka hair
By Johnny Ray Huston

>>The man from camp
Little Joe reveals the real Joe Dallesandro — plus: a special appreciation
By Louis Peitzman and Johnny Ray Huston

>>When we grow up
’70s relic Free to Be … You and Me still resonates
By Dennis Harvey

>>Quickies
Our short, opinionated takes on several featured Frameline flicks

This one’s ugly

June 17, 2009

news@sfbg.com

The most painful and divisive city budget season in many years was just getting under way as this issue went to press, with dueling City Hall rallies preceding the June 16 Board of Supervisors vote on an interim budget and the board’s Budget and Finance Committee slated to finally delve into the 2009-10 general fund budgets on June 17.

Both sides have adopted the rhetoric of a life-or-death struggle, with firefighters warning at a rally and in an advertising campaign that any cuts to their budget is akin to playing Russian Roulette, while city service providers say the deep public health cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom will also cost lives and carry dire long-term costs and consequences.

Despite Newsom’s pledges in January and again on June 1 to work closely with the Board of Supervisors on budget issues, that hasn’t happened. Instead, Newsom’s proposed budget would decimate the social services supported by board progressives, who responded by proposing an interim budget that would share that pain with police, fire, and sheriff’s budgets — which Newsom proposed to increase.

Rather than simply adopting the mayor’s proposed budget as the interim spending plan for the month of July, as the board traditionally has done, progressive supporters proposed an interim budget that would make up to $82 million in cuts to the three public safety agencies and use that money to prevent the more draconian cuts to social services.

“It’s the start of a discussion to figure out what that number should be. I don’t know where we’re going to end up,” Sup. David Campos, who sits on the budget committee, told us.

Board President David Chiu said Newsom did finally meet with him and Budget Committee chair John Avalos on June 15 to try to resolve the impasse. But he said, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.” They planned to meet again on June 19.

“What we proposed represents the magnitude of the challenge we face this year,” Chiu said of the interim budget proposal, seeming to indicate that supervisors are open to negotiation.

The real work begins the morning of June 17 when the Budget and Finance Committee dissects the budgets of 15 city departments, including the Mayor’s Office, of which Avalos told us, “I don’t think the mayor has made the same concessions as he’s had other departments make.”

The next day, another 13 city departments go under the committee’s microscope, including the public safety departments that were spared the mayor’s budget ax and even given small increases, and the budget of the Public Defenders Office, where Newsom proposes cutting 16 positions.

“This creates a severe imbalance in the criminal justice system,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi told us. “Why is he cutting public defender services while fully funding police, fully funding the sheriff’s department, and essentially creating a situation where poor people are going to get second-rate representation?”

That theme of rich vs. poor has pervaded the budget season debate, both overtly and in budget priorities that each side is supporting.

BUDGET JUSTICE

Hundreds of people whose lives would be affected by cuts marched on City Hall under the banner Budget Justice on June 10. Some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable citizens, including homeless people, immigrants, seniors, and public housing residents, turned out for the march, chanting and waving signs asking the mayor to “invest in us.”

Sups. John Avalos and Chris Daly delivered resounding speeches mirroring the anger in the crowd, and promised to fix the budget by reallocating money to protect the city’s safety net. Daly charged that even as services to the city’s vulnerable populations are being slashed, “the politically connected and the powerful get huge increases.”

Avalos took the podium just before heading into City Hall to lead the Budget and Finance Committee meeting and implored the hundreds of people gathered out front to make their voices heard. “Mayor Newsom, he told us, he said, ‘We have a near-perfect budget.’ Do we have a near-perfect budget?” Avalos asked, and then paused while the crowd cried out, “Nooo!!!!!”

During an interview discussing Newsom’s budget priorities, Avalos twice made references to The Shock Doctrine, using the Naomi Klein book about how crises are used as opportunities to unilaterally implement corporatist policies. “We have a budget deficit that is real, but it’s being used to do other things,” Avalos said. “I look at it as a way to remake San Francisco. It’s a Shock Doctrine effect.”

He referred to the privatization of government services (an aspect of every Newsom budget), promoting condo conversions and gentrification, defunding nonprofits that provides social services (groups that often side with progressives), and helping corporations raid the public treasury (Newsom proposed beefing up the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development by a whopping 32 percent).

“It’s things that the most conservative parts of San Francisco have wanted for years, and now they have the conditions to make it happen,” Avalos said.

Much of that agenda involves slashing services to the homeless and other low-income San Francisco and de-funding the nonprofit network that provides services and jobs. “There’s an effort to say nonprofit jobs aren’t real jobs, but they are an important economic engine of the city,” Avalos told us. Those cuts were decried during the June 10 budget rally.

“What people don’t realize,” Office & Professional Employees International Union Local 3 representative Natalie Naylor said, “is that everything that’s being proposed to be cut from the city is creating no place for homeless people to go during the daytime. I don’t think Newsom’s constituents realize that we’re going to see more homeless people on the street than ever before.”

Pablo Rodriguez of the Coalition on Homelessness told the crowd that he was furious that the mayor would make such deep cuts to social services. “Stop riding on the back of the homeless, and the seniors and the children and all the community-based organizations,” Rodriguez said. “Why make the poor people pay for the rich people’s mistakes? The poor people didn’t make the mistakes.”

WHOM TO CUT?

The public safety unions were equally caustic in their arguments. An announcement for the Save Our Firehouses rally — which was heavily promoted by members of the Mayor’s Office and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign team — claimed that “the Board of Supervisors voted to endanger the progress that we’ve made in public safety by laying off hundreds of police officers, closing up to 12 out of 42 fire stations and closing part of our jail.”

Actually, all sides have said the interim budget probably won’t lead to layoffs, station closures, or prisoner releases, but those could be a part of next year’s budget.

Tensions temporarily cooled a bit in the days that have followed, but the two sides still seemed far apart on their priorities, mayoral spin aside. Asked about the impasse, Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard told the Guardian, “The mayor has already included over 90 percent of the supervisors’ priorities in the budget. But he’s against the supervisors’ efforts to gut public safety. He’s willing to work with people who have reasonable ideas to balance the budget. Balancing the budget with draconian cuts to police and fire is unreasonable.”

Campos disputed Ballard’s figure and logic. “I don’t know where that number comes from,” Campos said. “A lot of the things we wanted to protect, the mayor cut anyway.”

Campos said Newsom’s slick budget presentation glossed over painful cuts to essential services, cuts that activists and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose have been discovering over the last two weeks. “I felt the mayor has done a real good job of presenting things to make it look like it’s not as bad as it really is,” Campos said.

COMMITTEE WORK

Avalos expressed confidence that his committee will produce a document to the full board in July that reflects progressive priorities.

“We’re going to pass to the full board a budget that we have control over,” Avalos said, noting that a committee majority that also includes Sups. Campos and Ross Mirkarimi strongly favors progressive budget priorities.

He also praised the committee’s more conservative members, Sups. Bevan Dufty and Carmen Chu, as engaged participants in improving the mayor’s budget. “I think the tension on the committee is healthy.”

Ultimately, Avalos says, he knows the board members can alter Newsom’s budget priorities. But his goal is to go even further and develop a consensus budget that creatively spreads the pain.

“Ideally, I want a unanimous vote on the Board of Supervisors,” Avalos said.

In the current polarized budget climate, that’s an ambitious goal that may be out of reach. But there are some real benefits to attaining a unanimous board vote, including the ability to place revenue measures on the November ballot that can be passed by a simply majority vote (state law generally requires a two-third vote to increase taxes, but it makes provisions for fiscal emergencies, when a unanimous Board of Supervisors vote can waive the two-thirds rule).

Avalos has proposed placing sales tax and parcel tax measures on the fall ballot. Other proposals that have been discussed by a stakeholder committee assembled by Chiu include a measure to replace the payroll tax with a new gross receipts tax and general obligation bond measures to pay for things like park and road maintenance, which would allow those budget expenses to be applied elsewhere.

But Avalos said Newsom will need to step up and show some leadership if the measures are going to have any hope of being approved. “To get the two-thirds vote we need to win a revenue measure in this bad economy is going to be really hard,” Avalos said.

“The mayor is open to new revenue measures as long as they include significant reforms and are conceived and supported by a wide swath of the community including labor and business,” Ballard said.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd — one of the most conservative supervisors — has repeatedly said he won’t support new revenue measures unless they are accompanied by substantial budget reforms that will rein in ballooning expenditures in areas like city employee pensions.

“Pension reform. Health care reform. Spending reform. One of the above. A combination of the above,” Elsbernd told the Guardian when asked what he wants to see in a budget revenue deal.

Avalos says he’s mindful that not every progressive priority can be fully funded as the city wrestles with a budget deficit of almost $500 million, fully half the city’s discretionary budget. “It’s a crappy situation, and we can make it just a crummy situation.”

Terzo

June 17, 2009

paulr@sfbg.com

Fish might not need bicycles, but does a restaurant with an Italian name need pasta? Terzo does offer fish on its menu — and pasta too, though rather glancingly, considering that many of us would put pasta right at the center of Italian cuisine. But despite the name — "terzo" means "third" in Italian and is meant to suggest the public spaces where people gather when they’re not at home or work — Terzo isn’t quite an Italian restaurant. It’s both less (a minimum of pasta and pizza-like items) and more, in its use of flavors and influences from around the Mediterranean. A friend found that the restaurant, with its emphasis on small, shareable dishes, reminded him of SPQR, the Roman-style small-plates spot on Fillmore, but for me the deeper resonance was with SPQR’s predecessor, Chez Nous, whose tapas-style cooking drew on all sorts of Mediterranean roots.

It must be said that, similarities in food notwithstanding, Terzo doesn’t remotely look like either of those places. Behind a demure street face, the surprisingly spacious interior is a kind of warm metropolitan glam: caramel-colored wood, flickering candles, mirrors, and touches of glass; the look is like that of a monastery designed by Mies van der Rohe. The patrons, while casually dressed, have an air of importance about them — but then, we are in Cow Hollow, an enchanted land of importance. Sort of our Green Zone.

That Middle Eastern staple hummus ($8), then, to set the mood. Our server told us that chef Mark Gordon’s kitchen is particularly proud of its version, and so it should be. The chickpea puree was rich and smooth, with no hint of tahini bitterness, but it was the house-made pita triangles, warm and swabbed with olive oil and za’atar, that provided the burst of extraordinariness. Pita bread like this tells you that you’ve probably never had fresh pita bread before.

Subtle touches similarly raise many of the other small dishes to the heights. A marriage of crispy polenta and morel mushrooms ($14) was discreetly though powerfully enhanced by a splash of crème fraïche scented with thyme and braised green garlic. Baby artichokes ($9), halved and achingly tender, had been braised — evidently in or with lemon juice — before being heaped atop piquillo peppers, then covered with tumbled sheets of prosciutto. A panzarotto ($9), a kind of calzone, was filled with mozzarella, chard, and chili (whose bite was palpable), then napped with a radiant marinara sauce, but it was the bread pouch that caught my attention, with its serrated lips and faintly shiny crispness, like that of pastry. And a salad of shredded fennel and porcini ($12), although laid flat on the plate like a kind of unsettled carpaccio, jumped up impressively under the coaxing of lemon, olive oil, and truffle pecorino.

Spiedini ($12.50) were simple skewers of free-range chicken chunks, bread, and onion, brushed with a cilantro-chili marinade and then grilled until everything was soft and lightly caramelized. Campfire food, for rather boutique-y campers. The only small plate that didn’t quite come off for me was roasted asparagus ($9). The spears seemed very much al dente (how much roasting did they get?) and were scattered with toasted hazelnuts — a clever idea that did not work, since these hard hemispherical pellets made an already difficult-to-eat dish that much harder to eat: knife and fork for the asparagus, plus a spoon to scoop up the nuts. At some early point, we dropped the pretense and used our fingers.

We also used our fingers, greedily, on a huge bowl of fried-onion rings ($6). No ballpark I’ve ever been to offers anything better. The red-onion rings were dunked in buttermilk batter, then fried to a delicate, crisp gold; the shreds seemed almost to want to float.

"Don’t let me eat any more, I’m going to be sick," moaned an addicted party from across the table, who nonetheless kept right on eating.

As is so often the case at small plate-ish restaurants that also offer some big plates, the latter at Terzo do not shine quite as brightly. I wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with plentitude — delight diluted by too many bites. I did like the roasted halibut ($27), topped with a surprisingly gentle radish-lemon salsa verde and presented in a shallow bowl on a rubbly bed of chickpeas. The fish had the sublime moistness I associate with poaching, while the chickpeas were plump and perfectly cooked. I liked this dish fine, but I suspect I would have thought it was a knockout if it had been half the size.

The flourless chocolate cake ($8), with fleur de sel and whipped cream, would have been a knock-out at twice the size. It had the primal intensity of some ingredient lifted from a pastry chef’s secret cache. Entre nous: amazing.

TERZO

Dinner: Sun.-Thurs., 5:30–10 p.m.;

Fri.-Sat., 5:30-11 p.m.

3011 Steiner, SF

(415) 441-3200

www.terzosf.com

Full bar

AE/DC/DS/MC/V

Moderate noise

Wheelchair accessible

Goran Bregovic

June 16, 2009

PREVIEW I’m a reactionary when it comes to miscegenated American pop and world music: Paul Simon’s South African appropriations (unself-conscious baby-boom entitlement), Vampire Weekend’s recent iteration (self-conscious, sneering entitlement), and Beirut’s similar (well-meaning, self-conscious attempts at naturalness) foray into the Eastern European musical forms. I mean, come on you well-born Eastern-seaboard Protestants, don’t you have your own cultural traditions to plunder?

Without a qualm, one can look toward the Balkans as a source for authentic cultural product. In the previous century alone, this region’s peoples have been battered about by bitter battles among fascist, communist, and capitalist systems. Against this political backdrop, ordinary life takes on an air of untethered surreality, and life can imitate art, and/or art becomes the most logical response to the ambient chaos. In the case of Goran Bregovic, his life resembles an amalgam of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n Roll and Aleksandar Hemon’s Nowhere Man. Half-Serb, half-Croat, Bregovic has had a long musical career (he’s been a professional guitar player since 15) and currently composes film scores as well as modern-day gypsy music.

Bregovic played with a Yugoslavian rock band called the White Button, and became a bona fide Balkan teen rock idol. He lived in a drug-dazed Italian exile at 20, and was nearly a professor of Marxism by 24. He is a thoroughly modern global star, and has collaborated with Iggy Pop and Cesaria Evora. Bregovic is currently on tour with a nearly 40-person ensemble called the Wedding and Funeral Orchestra. The gypsies are real, the horns are very likely 100 years old, and there’s a string ensemble, a men’s choir, and three Bulgarian singers. The tunes range from mournful to ecstatic; if cathartic party music speaks to you, this is your show.

GORAN BREGOVIC WITH WEDDING AND FUNERAL ORCHESTRA Sun/21, 7 p.m., $20-$60. Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California, SF. (415) 776-4702. www.sfjazz.org

Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight

June 16, 2009

REVIEW Stroll through New York City and you can’t help but stumble onto one of Milton Glaser’s iconic designs, be it a Brooklyn Brewery label, New York magazine cover, or even the big white nose perched above Trattoria dell’Arte across from Carnegie Hall. Of course, Glaser, one of the world’s most talented, postmodern graphic designers, has also left his stamp, quite literally, with the ubiquitous I Heart NY insignia. Wendy Keys’ new documentary Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight pays homage to this humble, erudite, and mirthful man who transcends traditional lines between high art and commercial design to make art accessible to the public. Keys incorporates anecdotes from students, clients, colleagues, and Glaser himself and highlights not only Glaser’s powerful aesthetic, but also his art’s implicit call for political and social responsibility. Whether encapsuutf8g the psychotropic ’60s in a Bob Dylan profile, rendering the plight of gay men in America in an print ad for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, or embodying his pacifist beliefs in a poster condemning genocide in Darfur, Glaser informs and delights with his constant reinvention and incredible ability to capture the current zeitgeist.

MILTON GLASER: TO INFORM AND DELIGHT opens Fri/19 at the Roxie.

Planetary Dance

June 16, 2009

PREVIEW By now the Planetary Dance, Marin County’s annual solstice celebration, has become a joyous, all-day event that starts at sunrise — for early trekkers — on top of Mount Tamalpais and ends, after the main event at Santos Meadow in Mount Tamalpais State Park, at a sunset fire at Muir Beach. The idea is to use communal dance as way of healing the earth, a concept and practice as old as humankind. Some hardy souls, event instigator Anna Halprin among them, have been participating since the beginning, 29 years ago. They are now bringing their children and grandchildren. Others drop in for a few years, then drift away. It’s worthwhile remembering that the event came out of a tragedy when, in the late ’70s, Mount Tam had to be closed because of ongoing murders of young women. Halprin and some friends wanted to take back the park and walked the very trails where the crimes had been committed. A few days later, the perp was caught. Coincidence — or did those simple meditative gestures result in healing the place? Either way, the event developed out of those tragedies by Halprin, its shaman, is inviting, simple, powerful, and beautiful. At the heart lies the three-part "Earth Run," which has been (accurately) described as a "moving mandala." No dance experience is required, and you can come and go as you like.

PLANETARY DANCE Sat/20, 11 a.m. $10–$20 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds).

Santos Meadow, Mount Tamalpais State Park, Mill Valley. www.planetarydance.org

Hightower, One in the Chamber, Futur Skullz

June 16, 2009

PREVIEW Hightower is quite possibly the only prog rock group that could be accurately described as "gnarly" (sorry, Van Der Graaf Generator). Proving that complex compositions and unpretentious rock ‘n’ roll aren’t mutually exclusive, the San Francisco power trio mixes unpredictable tempos and spacey guitar shredding with beer- and weed-fueled skate thrash to create a style tailor-made for raging circle pits and blacklight poster stare-downs. With song titles like "Wizardhawk" and "I Am the Wallride," the band celebrates and pokes fun at some of the, er, imaginative concepts of their bell-bottomed forefathers. But even if you think the term "progressive rock" is shorthand for overly complex wanking, Hightower proves the genre can be surprisingly crucial.

I inadvertently stumbled into a show featuring local metal band Futur Skullz about a month ago and was blown away by how LOUD these guys play. There’s nothing about them that isn’t deafening — the thrash-meets-sludge guitar, buzzing bass, crusty-ass vocals, and thundering drums are ready to pummel, but with enough variation to keep their sets interesting. Like Hightower, Futur Skullz combine massive, arena-ready riffs with relatable garage band energy; it’s a case of powerhouse heavy metal filtered through punk rock sensibilities. Oakland-based One in the Chamber’s collage of punk, stoner metal, aggressively jazzy weirdness, and everything in between completes this bill, which should be a revelation to anyone whose nights out have been lacking raw power.

HIGHTOWER, ONE IN THE CHAMBER, FUTUR SKULLZ Sat/20, 9 p.m., $7 (21 and over) El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

Bicycle Music Festival

June 16, 2009

GATHERING Is it any surprise that the city responsible for Critical Mass would also have birthed the country’s largest 100 percent pedal-powered musical festival? We didn’t think so. Since 2007, a group of volunteers have been hosting this multi-location celebration of bikes, music, and sustainable culture — and we expect this year’s to be bigger than ever, with musical participants like Cello Joe, Manicato, Sean Hayes, and many more. The day starts early at 935 York St. for a Critical Mass-style bike parade (complete with a 2,000-watt pedal-powered PA system, of course) to Golden Gate Park’s Marx Meadow, where bands will play on the bike-powered, bike-hauled stage. Another cruise takes revelers to Dolores Park for a series of live shows starting at 3 p.m. The event officially concludes with another set of concerts — including the fantastically entertaining Tornado Rider (think cello metal) — at 8:45 p.m. But we’re pretty sure that after all the riding and playing, the city’s bike aficionados aren’t going to call it a night — so drivers, beware! And bikers, game on!

BICYCLE MUSIC FESTIVAL Sat/20, 8 a.m. Free. 935 York, SF. (415) 572-9625. bicyclemusicfestival.com

“2012: Super-Bato Saves the World”

June 16, 2009

REVIEW Energy must not be conserved in Enrique Chagoya’s universe. From his earlier pieces on paper through his show-stopping work on linen at the turn of the century (Le Cannibale Moderniste, 1999; Aparición Sublime, 2000; Pocahontas Gets a New Passport (More Art Faster), 2000), the experimental printmaker’s mock-specificity and hidden sensitivity — both aspects of a brilliant pictorial stubbornness — leave the whole body buzzing. This is art that gathers energy from its viewers as much as its subjects. An edition of eight fully-functional, gaudy, lusty, but also mystically calm slot machines in the style of souped-up Camaros, "2012: Super-Bato Saves the World" lacks the intentionally confusing expansiveness of Chagoya’s accompanying work on paper, but maybe that’s the point.

Spread out in one area of Electric Works is Histoire Naturelle des Espécies: Illegal Aliens Manuscript I, a 2008 contribution to an ongoing series that explains our country and the world at large, especially the art world, to "others." In this panoramic piece, creationists are represented by an ape kneeling before a paper-like flame, conservatives by a man in monk’s clothing, and neocons by a happy couple between human and ape; all are setting fire to Aztec iconography. Elsewhere art historians lay siege to the museums and emerging media artists visit the world in a UFO. Around the corner, Super-Bato grins.

The date cited by Chagoya doesn’t just mark the next U.S. presidential election — it’s also the end-year of the ancient Mayan 5125 year calendar. In Chagoya’s eyes, the world might have already ended, collapsing in a mockery of a sham. In addition to an obvious affinity with Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s vision (the two have collaborated on some iconic books), Chagoya’s most affecting work here recalls Mildred Howard’s politically charged, lushly wrought assemblage sculptures and intricate installations. Both artists map aesthetic delights on top of the real world. What happens in politics no longer stays in politics.

2012: SUPER-BATO SAVES THE WORLD Through July 2. Electric Works, 130 Eighth St., SF

(415) 626-5496, www.sfelectricworks.com

A bailout for the middle class

June 16, 2009

OPINION I don’t need to remind you that our economy is in trouble. The current banking crisis has demonstrated to all of us just how fragile and susceptible to manipulation our current system is. President Obama has spent billions of dollars and untold hours trying to bail out our failing banks and financial institutions. Whatever your opinions about his efforts, I think we can all agree we should also be helping out American workers — the real engine of the economy. The Employee Free Choice Act, currently being debated in Congress, offers needed help.

In 1979, 23 percent of the American workforce earned the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $20 an hour. This level of pay, about $41,000 per year, is generally considered the minimum necessary for a family of four to live something like a middle-class lifestyle. I wish I could say that progress marched on, that every year after 1979 the percentage of workers earning the minimum to support a middle-class family grew. In fact, the opposite happened — today only 18 percent of American workers earn enough to support a family of four.

What happened to the other end of the spectrum during that time? In 1978, American CEOs earned 35 times what the average worker earned. Over the next 10 years, this ratio grew, so that in 1989 the average CEO was earning 71 times what the average worker was earning. By 2007, the ratio had grown to an unbelievable 275.

The causes of this imbalance are many, but one is declining labor union membership. In 1983, 17.7 million workers were members of unions, accounting for 20.1 percent of America’s workers. In 2008, only 16.1 million workers were unionized, accounting for 12.4 percent of our nation’s workforce. These numbers are critically important because union membership makes a large difference in the well-being of America’s workers. In 2008, the average union worker earned $886 a week, while the average nonunion worker was paid only $691.

With all the effort we’re putting in to a bailout of the banks, we need to be discussing a bailout of the middle class. We don’t have to wait for the Treasury Department to come up with the plan — it’s sitting there in Congress and is called the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would give workers a fair, direct route to forming a union without illegal interference from corporations.

Unfortunately, the middle-class bailout is stuck in Congress. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the other shills for mega-corporations have turned up the pressure and succeeded in preventing the Employee Free Choice Act from moving forward in the Senate. Our own Sen. Feinstein recently said she wouldn’t vote for the bill because of the economic downturn, even though she cosponsored the legislation last year.

With the current state of our economy, we need a middle-class bailout — and we need it soon. Feinstein has the ability to make that happen. She should deliver the one bailout we all really need. *

Debra Walker is a San Francisco artist and progressive activist.

FOR THE RECORD

The caption for last week’s dine review should have referred to Fly, not Terzo.

Editor’s Notes

June 16, 2009

Tredmond@sfbg.com

In the midst of all that is bleak in the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco, I am having fun specuutf8g about what will happen when Gavin Newsom is no longer mayor.

It’s a fascinating exercise — and trust me, I am by no means the only person engaging in it.

The broad outline is that the race to replace Newsom at this point bears no relation to the dynamic that brought him into office. Back in 2003, the race was the progressives against downtown; Tom Ammiano, Matt Gonzalez, and Angela Alioto were competing for the progressive vote, and Newsom was downtown’s darling, running on a platform of taking welfare money away from homeless people. The Newsom-Gonzalez runoff was about as clear and stark a choice over political vision as the city could ask for.

Six years later, I can count four people who are getting ready to run, and none is much like either Newsom or Gonzalez.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is sometimes with the progressives and sometimes with the mayor, told me last week that he’s definitely running. He’s part of the board’s moderate wing, but isn’t the downtown call-up vote that Newsom was and clearly isn’t counting on the big-business world for most of his support. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has made no secret of his political ambitions and is putting himself in the limelight with high-profile statements about Proposition 13 and taxing the Catholic Church. He sounds pretty liberal these days, although his chief political consultant is Newsom (and PG&E) operative Eric Jaye.

Just about everyone in local politics assumes City Attorney Dennis Herrera will be in the mix. He’s had the advantage of not having to take stands on local measures and candidates (as the city attorney, he’s not allowed to endorse), and while some progressives see him as the most appealing choice, he’s not Ammiano or Gonzalez. And then there’s state Sen. Leland Yee, who is utterly unpredictable, sometimes great on the issues and sometimes awful — and is almost certainly going to run.

And right now, other than Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who might or might not run and isn’t putting together any kind of a pre-campaign operation, there’s no obvious progressive candidate in the race. If Mirkarimi’s serious, he needs to be moving.

But wait: There’s more.

Assume for a moment — and whatever you may think about the guy, it’s not a crazy assumption — that Gavin Newsom is the next governor of California. (How? He beats Jerry Brown in the primary by running future vs. past, then beats any Republican, who will be saddled with the Schwarzenegger mess. He isn’t remotely ready for the job, but that’s politics.)

Gov. Newsom would be sworn in Jan. 4, 2011. David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors, would be acting mayor — until he convenes the board and somebody gets six votes to finish Newsom’s term. That decision could be made by the current supes, who hold office until Jan. 8, 2011, if they can meet and decide in four days, or by the new supes — and we don’t know who they will be.

The person appointed doesn’t have to be a supervisor. Could be anyone. Could be Chiu. Could be Mirkarimi. Could be Dufty. Could be …. Aaron Peskin. Just takes six votes. And then that person could run as the incumbent.

Don’t go thinking any of this is just idle chatter. There are political consultants all over town having the same discussions, today. *

Stop PG&E’s alarming ballot measure

June 16, 2009

EDITORIAL One of the greatest threats to public power in a generation is quietly working its way toward the California ballot.

As Rebecca Bowe reports on page 12, a proposed initiative that would require two-thirds of the voters to approve any sort of public electricity measure, including community choice aggregation (CCA), has been submitted to the state attorney general’s office. And Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s fingerprints are all over it.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that this measure is designed to derail successful CCA efforts in places like Marin County and San Francisco, where the supervisors are moving forward to set up the equivalent of a buyer’s co-op for electricity. A San Francisco CCA would offer lower costs and much greener power — and would give the city far more control over its energy future.

The measure could also hamper the efforts of existing public power agencies to expand their territories or offer service to new customers.

The state Legislature approved a bill back in 2002 allowing California cities to replace private utility service with CCAs — and the bill included language barring PG&E and the other giant electricity companies in the state from spending money to undermine CCA efforts. In other words, it’s illegal for PG&E to use its immense resources and lobbying clout to try to block San Francisco’s efforts.

And PG&E has spent tens of millions of dollars in San Francisco, Davis, and elsewhere trying to block public-power programs.

So now the utility is going to the state ballot, where a campaign with enough money on an issue that’s sufficiently complicated can often pass. The law firm that filed the initiative papers, Neilsen Merksama (a political powerhouse that represents, among others, PG&E) won’t divulge much about the funding sources — except to say that the filing fee came from … PG&E. So there’s little doubt the measure will have the funds it needs to gather more than 600,000 signatures and mount a campaign of lies and disinformation.

That’s why supporters of CCAs and public power need to rally, now, to start planning to defeat this thing.

Mustering a two-thirds majority at the ballot for almost anything is difficult. Even in liberal San Francisco, bond measures requiring a two-thirds vote often pass only narrowly — and that’s if there’s no opposition. Even the most popular sorts of measures — say, for funding schools or libraries — can go down to defeat if anyone mounts serious opposition.

And PG&E, with its unlimited resources, would have the ability to kill the current CCA plans — or anything in the future that threatens the company’s illegal monopoly.

The two-thirds majority requirement is undemocratic and has paralyzed state government. Two-thirds mandates for new tax measures have made it almost impossible for cities and counties in this state to raise new revenue, even in desperate times like these.

The San Francisco supervisors need to immediately pass a resolution opposing the measure. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have told us they oppose it, and they should see if there’s any way the Legislature can add language to the CCA bill to bar regulated utilities from spending money to undermine public power statewide. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission should be talking to public power agencies all over the state and helping organize the opposition. If the measure makes it onto the ballot, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and every other municipal utility agency in the state will need to raise money — millions — and marshal forces against it.

This is a very serious threat, and the time to start defusing it is now. *

P.S.: Mayor Newsom has nominated Anson Moran, the former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, for a seat on the commission. This is a terrible idea. Moran had a notoriously anti-public power record when he was running the agency. In fact, in 1994, he tried to stop the city from bidding on the lucrative contract to supply electricity to the Presidio, saying that going up against PG&E would be "too political." And although he later said he would be willing to bid on the contract, he privately urged then-Mayor Frank Jordan to veto then-Sup. Angela Alioto’s measure pushing for public power at the Presidio. With all the battles over CCA and public power, the last thing the city needs is a PG&E call-up vote on the PUC. The Rules Committee hears the nomination June 18, and should vote to reject him.

Art listings

June 16, 2009

Art listings are compiled by Johnny Ray Huston. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings. For complete art listings go to sfbg.com.

MUSEUMS

Asian Art Museum 200 Larkin; 581-3500, www.asianart.org. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, 10am-5pm; Thurs, 10am-9pm. $10 ($5 Thurs after 5pm), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 12 to 17, free for 11 and under. "In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection." Ongoing.

California Palace of the Legion of Honor Lincoln Park (near 34th Ave and Clement); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5pm. $8, $6 seniors, $5 for ages 12 to 17, free for 10 and under (free Tues). "Surrealism: Selections from the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books." Work by surrealist poets and artists. Ongoing.

Cartoon Art Museum 655 Mission; CAR-TOON. Tues-Sun, 11am-5pm. $6, $4 students and seniors, $2 for ages 6 to 12, free for five and under and members. "The Art of Stan Sakai: Celebrating 25 Years of Usagi Yojimbo." Through July 5. "Watchmen." Illustrations, sketches, and comic book pages by Dave Gibbons. Through July 19. "The Brinkley Girls." Retrospective devoted to early 20th century illustrator Nell Brinkley. Through August 23.

Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission; www.thecjm.org. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:30pm; Thurs, 1-8pm. $10, $8 seniors and students, free for 12 and under and members. "Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater." An exhibition of 200 works of art and ephemera. Through Sept 7. "Being Jewish: A Bay Area Portrait." Ongoing.

De Young Museum Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive (near Fulton and 10th Ave); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm (Fri, 9:30am-8:45pm). $10, $7 seniors, $6 for ages 13 to 17 and college students with ID (free first Tues). "Signs: Wordplay in Photography." Thematic survey. Through Sun/14. "The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific." Mural by Miguel Covarrubias. Ongoing.

Legion of Honor Lincoln Park, 34th Ave and Clement; 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm. $20 adults, $7 seniors, $6 youths and students, free 12 and under. "Waking Dreams: Max Klinger and the Symbolist Print." Retrospective of the German Symbolist artist. Through July 4.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 151 Third St; 357-4000. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:45pm; Thurs, 10am-8:45pm. $12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues; half price Thurs, 6-8:45pm). "Austere: Selections From the SFMOMA Collection." Photography and architecture and design. Through July 7. "Otl Aicher: Munchen 1972." Graphic design. Through July 7. "Patterns of Speculation: J. Mayer H." German architectural studio. Through July 7. "Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’." Exhibition devoted to the photographic classic. Through August 23. "Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities." Show dedicated to the two popular American artists. Through Sept 7. "Art in the Atrium: Kerry James Marshall." Monumental murals. Ongoing.

San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness, fourth floor; 255-4800, www.sfpalm.org. Tues-Fri, 11am-5pm; Sat, 1-5pm. Free. "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward." Exhibition dedicated to the icon. Through August 29. "Maestro: Photographic Portraits of Tom Zimberoff." Portraits of national and international conductors. Ongoing. "150 Years of Dance in California." Ongoing. "San Francisco in Song." Ongoing. "San Francisco 1900: On Stage." Ongoing.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission; 978-ARTS. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, noon-5pm; Thurs, noon-8pm. $6, $3 seniors, students, and youths, free for members (free first Tues). "Under a Full Moon: 30 Years of Perpetual Indulgence." Show devoted to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Through June 28. "Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth." Mixed media sculptural "soundsuits" by the Chicago dancer-turned-artist. Through July 5. "Through Future Eyes: The Endurance of Humanity." Contemporary work by ten artists, incuding six Young Artists at Work curators. Through July 5.

BAY AREA

Cantor Arts Center Lomita and Museum, Stanford University, Stanford; (650) 723-4177. Wed, Fri-Sun, 11am-5pm; Thurs, 11am-8pm. "Appellations to Antiquity." 19th and 20th century works from the museum collection. Through July 26. "Pop to Present." Survey from the 1960s to the present. Through August 16. "Contemporary Glass." Modern glass works. Ongoing. "Rodin! The Complete Stanford Collection." Ongoing.

Judah L. Magnes Museum 2911 Russell, Berk; (510) 549-6950. Mon-Wed, Sun, 11am-4pm. $4, $3 students and seniors. "Memory Lab." Interactive installation allowing visitors to make family albums from their documents, photographs, and memories. Ongoing. "Projections." Multimedia works from the museums archival, documentary, and experimental films. Ongoing.

Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm (first Fri, 10am-9pm); Sun, noon-5pm. $8, $5 seniors and students (free second Sun). "Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century." Panoramic photos with commentary. Through August 23. "Squeak Carnwath: Painting is No Ordinary Object." A solo exhibition dedicated to the Oakland artist. Through August 23. "The Art and History of Early California." The story of California from the first inhabitants through the Gold Rush. Ongoing.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology UC Berkeley, 103 Kroeber Hall, room 3712, Bancroft and Bowditch, Berk; (510) 643-1193. Wed-Sat, 10am-4:30pm; Sun, noon-4pm. $4, $3 seniors, $1 students, free for 12 and under. "From the Maker’s Hand: Selections from the Permanent Collection." An exploration of human ingenuity found in living and historic cultures around the world. Ongoing.

San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art 560 S First St, San Jose; (408) 283-8155, www.sjica.org. Tues-Wed, Fri, 10am-5pm; Thurs, 10am-8pm; Sat, noon-5pm. Free. "It’s Not Us, It’s You." Rejection-themed art. Through Sat/20.

UC Berkeley Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk; (510) 642-0808. Wed-Sun, 11am-5pm. $8 adults, $5 seniors and young adults, free for members and 12 and under. "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye." Museum survey curated by Lawrence Rinder. Through August 30. "Human Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet." Collaborative exhibition. Through Sept. 27.

GALLERIES

ONGOING

Brian Gross Fine Art 49 Geary, fifth floor; 788-1050; Tues-Fri, 10:30am-5:30pm; Sat, 11am-5pm. "More Than Meets the Eye," metal collages by Tony Berlant. Through June 27.

Dolby Chadwick Gallery 210 Post, suite 5; 956-3560. "Suburban Birthday Party," new paintings by Douglas Schneider. Through June 27.

*Electric Works 130 8th St; 626-5496. Mon-Fri, 11am-6pm; Sat, 11am-5pm. "2012," slot machine by Enrique Chagoya. Through July 3.

Fraenkel Gallery 49 Geary, fourth floor; 981-2661. Call for hours. "A Survey: 1972-2006," photography by Bernd and Hilla Becher. Through July 3.

Gregory Lind Gallery 49 Geary; 296-9661. Call for hours. "Garden Ruin," new work by Bob Matthews. Through June 27.

Hosfelt Gallery 430 Clementina; 495-5454. Tues-Sat, 11am-5:30pm. "Cubic Drops," drawings and installation by Marco Maggi. Through June 27.

Italian Cultural Institute 425 Washington; 788-7142. Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm. "Giorgio Morandi: Works from the Estorick Collection," etchings and drawings. Through June 30.

Luggage Store 1007 Market; 255-5971. Call for hours. "Cultural Geometry," public art project by Rigo 23 and Fernando Cardoso. Ongoing.

Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art 49 Geary, second floor; 369-9404. Call for hours. Site-specific installation by James Sansing and paintings by Jared Walker. Through June 27.

Micaëla 49 Geary; 551-8118. Tues-Sat, 10:30am-5pm. "In Camera," photography by Douglass freed, Joshua Hershman, and Taliaferro Jones. Through June 27.

Modernism 685 Market; 541-0641. Tues-Sat, 10am-5:30pm. "The Murmur of the Innocents," work by Gottfried Helnwein. Through June 27.

*Oxenrose 448 Grove; 816-9530. Call for hours. "Nature’s Ladders," work by Tahiti Pehrson, sponsored by Arthur magazine. Through June 30.

Robert Koch Gallery 49 Geary, fifth floor; 421-0122. Tues-Sat, 10:30am-5:30pm. Photographs by Kenneth Josephson. Through June 27.

*Steven Wolf Fine Arts 49 Geary, suite 411; 263-3677. Tues-Sat, 11:30am-5:30pm. "You Feel Me?," work by Tim Sullivan. Through June 20.

*SFAC Gallery 401 Van Ness; 554-6080. Call for hours. "Trace Elements," group show curated by Meg Shiffler. Through July 3. *

Appetite: Hot pastrami, Little Feat, Omnivore books, Mizuna salad, and more

June 11, 2009

Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.

Nice pastrami! Katz comes to the Great American Food Fest

EVENTS

6/13 – Great American Food & Music Fest at Shoreline (Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Little Feat and food from around the country)
I’m already saving room in my stomach for a rare chance to roam the country in one day of eating! Sure, it’s down at Shoreline Amphitheatre, but this is a fun one, y’all: The Great American Food and Music Fest is a gorge and feed feast featuring sentimental, all-American food favorites, with performances from the likes of Little Feat, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Marshall Crenshaw.

Yes, on the food front, we have some of our best in the mix:
– Incanto’s (one of my top restaurants anywhere) chef and offal master, Chris Consentino, prepares homemade hot dogs
– Chuck Siegel, founder of Charles Chocolates, creates chocolate truffles
– June Taylor, of June Taylor Jams, makes her signature strawberry jam
– Boulevard’s Nancy Oakes gives us crab cakes
– Bruce Aidells, of Aidells’ Sausages, brings on the pork
– A16’s Nate Appleman cooks up a surprise
– Burger Meister and Bouchon Bakery serve their treats
– A “Best of Bay Area” showcase features local cheeses, meats, breads, chocolates, cherries, peaches, tomatoes
– West Coast wine tastings are curated by Best Cellars’ Josh Wesson and Gary Vaynerchuck, host of Wine Library TV

Take a deep breath. That’s just the Bay Area contingency.

None other than Bobby Flay is the event host, preparing his take on American staples: burgers, fries, milkshakes and, hooray, some Mesa Grill specialties, too. He’s judging a Burger Contest (starts at 4:45pm, with judging at 5:30), with SF’s Best Burger competitors being Mo’s, Burger Bistro, BurgerMeister and Pearl’s (like ’em all, but have to admit, I’m rooting for Pearl’s!) Other Food Network stars/guests are Guy Fieri (Diners, Drive-ins and Dives), Anne Burrell (Secrets of a Restaurant Chef; Mario Batali’s former chief lieutenant on Iron Chef), and Aida Mollenkamp (Ask Aida).

And, finally, the part I’m probably most excited about is eating from some our nation’s best all-American food joints, especially the ones I’m homesick for from NY (Junior’s cheesecake, here I come!): Katz’s Deli (NY), Pink’s Hot Dogs (LA), Barney Greengrass (NYC), Graeter’s Ice Cream (Cincinnati), Southside Market & Barbecue (Texas), Anchor Bar (Buffalo, NY; inventor of Buffalo wings), Junior’s (cheesecake; Brooklyn), Zingerman’s Deli (Michigan), and Tony Luke’s (cheesesteaks; Philadelphia).

Bring the pepto… it’ll be worth it.
June 13, noon-10pm
$35 (including first plate of food); kids under 6 free
For ticket info, visit: www.greatamericanfoodandmusicfest.com

Onmivore Books

6/11 – Nate Appleman, Chris Cosentino, and Traci des Jardins descend on Omnivore Books
I adore Noe Valley’s Omnivore Books – not only is it in my ‘hood and a bright, charming bookstore worthy of lingering, but the selection of new and used books on all things food and drink, from M.F.K. Fisher first editions (!) to Prohibition era cocktail recipe books, make it a rare and exciting place. They keep the calendar full with weekly visits from a "who’s who" in the food world, writers, chefs, sommeliers, brewers and the like. Check out Thursday’s line-up: Nate Appleman (A16; this year’s James Beard Rising Star Chef winner), Chris Cosentino (Incanto, Iron Chef America), and Traci des Jardins (Jardiniere), who’ll discuss the state of restaurants and cooking in our current climate. If you haven’t signed up for Omnivore’s email newsletter, what are you waiting for? You know you want to cram into a cozy bookstore with Alice Waters, Joyce Goldstein, and the aforementioned threesome!
6-7pm, free
3885A Ceasar Chavez Street
415-282-4712
www.omnivorebooks.com

————

NEW MARIN OPENING

Lark Creek Inn re-opens as Tavern at Lark Creek
Larkspur’s shining jewel is Lark Creek Inn, a gorgeous yellow and white 1880’s Victorian where the classic restaurant resided for 20 years. In keeping with the economy, the inn closed some months ago to make way for a more affordable, casual Tavern at Lark Creek, which debuted June 4th. Open nightly, with brunch on Sundays, the new menu has nothing over $15, a kindly move, especially when you’re getting the likes of Devil’s Gulch Ranch rabbit terrine, Mizuna salad with Medjool dates, Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese, almonds and rhubarb, or a veggie or beef Tavern burger (for only $7.95, plus add-ons, like Hobbs’ bacon). Bar bites (like Ratatouille stuffed egg) are a mere $2.25-$5.95. As is common these days, beer and wine aren’t the only drinks on the menu. Classic cocktails feature prominently, as do new creations like Tavern Cobbler: Maker’s Mark bourbon, maraschino, simple syrup, strawberries, orange. In a Victorian under giant, soothing trees, it sounds like an idyllic gastropub experience.
234 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur
415-924-7766
www.tavernatlarkcreek.com

Arm race

June 10, 2009

Bionic Commando

(GRIN/Capcom; PC, XBOX 360, PS3)

GAMER Reading faithfully from Hollywood’s remake-happy script, the game industry has learned to cannibalize its history. Bionic Commando is the first in an ever-expanding series of big-budget 8-bit retreads; Splatterhouse (Namco Bandai) is due out later this year, and more are sure to follow.

Bionic Commando slots you into the futuristic combat boots of Nathan Spencer, voiced ably if bombastically by Faith No More’s Mike Patton. Spencer is equipped with a bionic arm, a telescoping grappling hook of a limb that enables him to cling to his surroundings and swing, Tarzan-style, through the game’s various levels. The arm is the game’s defining feature, imbuing an otherwise unremarkable third-person action title with a giddy, kinetic thrill.

Physics-based acrobatics are a passable reason to resurrect a moldering NES franchise, and it’s too bad Swedish developers GRIN couldn’t revamp the production values as well. The game is rated "M," for mature, which means the characters curse like it’s going out of style, but the story is insulting to anyone with intelligence even approaching maturity, when it makes sense at all. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a scientifically-augmented super-soldier is released from prison in exigent circumstances, made hostage by withheld knowledge of his missing wife-slash-daughter-slash-favorite toy, and charged with saving the world by sinister higher-ups who are totally not going to stab him in the back at a crucial moment.

Despite its free-swinging promise, the game’s lushly designed levels are disappointingly linear. Wide-open areas are liberally slathered with "radiation," an ugly blue texture that acts as a wagging finger of disapproval every time you try to go somewhere the level designers didn’t want you to. Swing too high? Death by radiation. Too low? Radiation. Too far to the left? You get the idea.

Also frustrating is a profusion of tepid, gun-based combat, and when you’re not using your arm to throw cars at things, you’re frantically trying to put bullet-shaped holes in the helmeted henchmen of Gottfried Groeder, a cartoon fascist with a German accent that would make Major Toht blush all the way down to the Headpiece of Ra-shaped scar on his palm.

Given these drawbacks, multiplayer proved to be a refreshing pleasure. Radiation-free and adrenaline-heavy, the game’s death matches make you feel like Master Chief crossed with Spider-Man, and the bionic arm provides all sorts of invigorating possibilities. There are possibilities of a sequel too, judging from the post-credits teaser. If someone makes the rounds at GRIN headquarters installing bionic brains, I might be interested.

India Jones

June 10, 2009

Small may be beautiful, but so is big — especially if it is spelled "Bolshoi," Russian for big. The Moscow company’s current production, La Bayadère, a tale of love and revenge, is set in an India whose Orientalism will make politically correct viewers shudder but that called up paroxysms of delight from the balletomanes who packed the Bolshoi Ballet’s recent performances at Zellerbach Hall.

As a huge unwieldy spectacle, this Bayadère is a hoot and a wonder. Some of it — the flailing fakirs; the high-leaping "Indians" — could have come straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Everything is huge, from the extensions and leaps to the speed and elevations. The excess is impressive and fun to watch, although the show does drag.

In the wedding scene, divertissements spilled over each other: a fan dance, a children’s dance, a parrot dance, the water jug "Manu" (a sprightly Chinara Alizade), and a "Golden Idol" (Ivan Vasiliev) who sits in the air like Buddha. The packed stage left little room for the royal couple’s pas de deux except to dance in parallel — which they do. For the finale, the bride (Maria Alexandrva) topped off a pyramid of adoring bodies.

This Bayadère is probably the only ballet in which two ballerinas try to kill each other by launching themselves as missiles in grand jeté. The duel between the strong-willed Gamzatti (Alexandrova) and Nikiya (Svetlana Zakharova) injected a much-welcome sense of drama. The man they fight over is Solor (Nikolay Tsiskaridze), an Indian noble. Tsiskaridze is a little self-involved but a spectacular dancer in terms of speed, elevation, and ballon.

With beautiful comportment, Alexandrova’s nuanced Gamzatti evolves from young girl to a revengeful wife. With her arms interwined and her liquid torso, Zakharova’s Nikiya looked like a fragile flame. But there is steel in that spine and those feet. But Bayadère‘s heart beats in the 32 women in tutus who make their way down a ramp in long arabesques. Zellerbach’s stage was too shallow to carry it off, and the overlapping lines didn’t coalesce. But when, as if by magic, they melted into a block of shimmering white, it was heart-stopping.

Two entangled

June 10, 2009

kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Three is a magic number, but two is bliss. Two lovers, two wholly different, unholy kinds of fun, two great taste sensations in one. Koko Taylor’s passing and Exene Cervenka’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis saddens. The fluctuating news reports of the late David Carradine’s trussed member maddens. But it takes only two parcels of joy — one, Grizzly Bear, perched on the idealized yet full-bodied reaches of the Cali chamber pop; the other, Sonic Youth, reaching for awkwardly sensual slow jams tethered to a persistently urbane, urban art-school post-punk — to infuse my day with pure pleasure. And raise the stakes between musicmaker and listener.

Sex and death, eros and thanatos, are the breezy, almost feminized undercurrents rushing beneath Sonic Youth’s The Eternal (Matador), the band’s first independent release in more than 20 years since its classic Daydream Nation (Enigma/Blast First, 1988). Closer to the downbeat, Viagra-enhanced funk of Sonic Nurse (Geffen, 2004) than the spazz burst of Rather Ripped (Geffen, 2006), The Eternal rides an easygoing butterscotch stallion lightly packed with ’70s AM pop hooks ("Antenna"), diaristic complaints (Kim Gordon’s media grouse on "Sacred Trickster"), Gregory Corso and Bobby Pyn, a.k.a., Darby Crash, shout-outs, and archetypally nervy rockers ("What We Know" shows that the group still knows how to rise above "quiet meditation," as Lee Ranaldo sing-speaks "Oh, don’t you know, darkness makes the night more cold"). The faintly grunge-flavored "What We Know" makes the case for Ranaldo as late-period SY’s secret weapon: that tune and "Walkin Blue" with its anthemic "Everything we see is cleeeaaar!" refrain — L. Ron Hubbard calling? — are my cleeeaaar favorites. Coming down slowly and sexily with the acoustic guitar-sugared dissonant majesty of "Massage the History," coated with Kim Gordon’s hoarse, off-key gasps at "his … story," Sonic Youth seems to be clearing the libraries of rubble (or rock), intent on finding new expressways to the body, rather than simply settling for "yr. skull."

Enter Grizzly Bear. Based on the quiet-storm slouch and buzzing bottom end of "Southern Point," at first listen the group might now be aping the polyphonic euphoria of Animal Collective, though Tin Pin Alley and minimalist touchstones are hailed along the way, and side projects like Daniel Rossen’s dreamy Department of Eagles are given a respectful nod. Named after a small Massachusetts island, Veckatimest (Warp) revels in splendid isolation, relishing the angelic waves of vocal harmony on "Two Weeks" and the sluggish slow dance of "Cheerleader." Delicately nosing through the bucolic, classical-chamber rock quadrant of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, Grizzly Bear might be charting the trajectory of a relationship as it blossoms then withers ("All your useless pretensions are weighing on my time" is the crux of "While You Wait for the Others"). But you don’t need to listen too closely to decide that an album spilling with this much longing needs a cleeeaaar narrative shape, a visual or literary corollary to the rubbery rhythms of "Fine for Now," the life aquatic vocals of "Dory," and "Good Vibrations"-organ-washed tour de force "Ready. Able." No man is an island, but for a vulnerable Bear, perhaps directness is dangerous. No less sensuous than The Eternal — and undercut with judicious guitar slash and burn; punk and hardcore being less of a bedrock on this watery retreat — Veckatimest might as well be nicknamed "The Ravishing."

GRIZZLY BEAR

June 21–22, 9 p.m., $22.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

SONIC YOUTH

Aug. 2, 8 p.m., $35.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.apeconcerts.com

———–

SONGS IN THE KEYS OF LIFE

A project that started life as a "casual keyboard club" and took on a life its own, Au Revoir Simone tends to get led around by the quirks and whims of its instruments. For instance, one of the all-female trio’s most important keyboards upped and broke at the start of its current tour, adding an element of chance to music-making. "You plug into some room and it might start crackling and making noise," the group’s Erika Forster says good-naturedly while traveling through Tennessee. "It’s a good lesson in ‘Let’s see how you’re doing today …”" About 50 "feisty" keyboards were layered throughout the threesome’s new Still Night, Still Light (Our Secret Record Company). On the album, Forster says, "We talked a lot about the idea of distance and how that came into play in terms of distance from home and from the people we love and from your own heart." Now Au Revoir Simone is looking forward to making that distance between them and a certain keyboard sound shrink: the musicians found a replacement for their busted Casio MP70 in Santa Clara after scouring the country with the help of friends on Twitter and Facebook.

AU REVOIR SIMONE

With the Antlers, Findlay Brown, DJ Victoria Bergsman

Sat/13, 9 p.m., $16

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(415) 474-0365

www.bimbos365club.com 2

To Serge, with love

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June 10, 2009
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"Some people have their hang-ups about making music on a computer," opines tech house DJ and producer Serge Garcia, a.k.a. Greco Guggenheit. "Then again, some cinematographers during the silent era believed that the introduction of sound to films was fraudulent."

A relatively fresh face in the Bay Area, the 24-year-old Los Angeles native Garcia has more than a few bass monsters he’s itching to unleash. Wielding the Detroit techno scene and its forefathers as his beacon, he compounds elements from minimal house and peak-time techno into one banging track after another.

Garcia spent part of his youth in Mexico City, then Barcelona, where he played a lot of soccer (his "first love," he confesses). His introduction to electronic music began thanks to what he describes as "random CDs with the label ‘Techno/House Music’" that his older sister would mail to him. "Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Kerri Chandler, Derrick May," he incants, when asked about some of the DJs and producers who appeared on these CDs. "Basically, dance music that came out of Detroit and its surrounding areas in the 1980s and early ’90s."

In the last year, Garcia has split his time between San Francisco, Stockholm, and Berlin. He plans to make Berlin his home base later this summer, citing record label interest in and around Germany and an aversion to SF’s 2 a.m. curtain calls as motives for his move. "After visiting Berlin and experiencing places like Panorama Bar, Cookies Club, and Watergate, I remember coming home and feeling very alive and creative," he explains. "Here in the states, electronic music isn’t part of mainstream culture [the way] it is in many parts of Europe."

GRECO GUGGENHEIT

With Buttercream Gang, Magnanimous

Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

Domestic disturbance

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June 10, 2009
0

a&eletters@sfbg.com

Equal parts Antonio Gramsci and Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Dillinger is Dead (1969) is cultural critique masquerading as a one-man show. Michel Piccoli plays Glauco, with his forehead mostly: the fleeting pleasures of food and gadgetry are registered in satisfied wrinkles, though the slack glaze of boredom is never far off. The film opens with Glauco touring a factory using a gas mask of his design. In case we somehow miss this as a marker of alienation, the factory guide waxes Society of the Spectacle: "The introjections of these obsessive, hallucinatory needs do not produce an adaptation to reality, but mimesis, standardization: the cancellation of individuality."

Subtly may not be Italian auteur Marco Ferreri’s strong suit, but he achieves a weirdly frantic stasis once Dillinger settles in to Glauco’s chintzy bourgeois palace, a masterpiece of set design. Glauco tucks in his lolling girlfriend (Rolling Stones ingénue Anita Pallenberg, mostly naked here), snivels at the meal she’s left him and gets to cooking. Looking for something in the closet, he finds an old gun wrapped in a newspaper covering John Dillinger’s death. The film’s unforthcoming slowness reaches its apotheosis as he painstakingly cleans the revolver, keeping a close eye on the sauce.

Not satiated by his feast for one (Ferreri would later direct 1973’s La Grande Bouffe, a film about four men eating themselves to death), Glauco licks honey off the maid’s bare back, gives his firearm a Pop Art makeover, and finally endeavors to see if it still goes bang. Ferreri’s listless deadpan can’t help but pale after countless Coen brothers knockoffs, but Dillinger is saved from obsolescence by its prescient observations of technology’s ascendance in the domestic sphere. Glauco is ever fiddling with a machine, at one point documenting his sleeping wife with a tape recorder (this guy would be a nightmare with an iPhone).

All this mechanical action has a masturbatory quality to it, especially when Glauco watches his Super 8 home movies. He greedily reaches out for the breasts of a woman he’s filmed and tries to swim in a projection of the sea (a significant image given the film’s nautical conclusion). When a halved watermelon broaches sex, viewers may wonder if Tsai Ming-Liang knew of Dillinger before making The Wayward Cloud (2005). This fleshy interlude is the closest thing to life in Ferreri’s film; even murder, it seems, cannot bring these people back from the dead.

DILLINGER IS DEAD

Thurs/11–Sat/13, 7:30 p.m.; Sun/14, 2 p.m., $8–$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

When in roam

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June 10, 2009
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Involving no catatonic housewives, no mortally botched abortions, and no luminous pools of blood in the kitchen either, Sam Mendes’ latest film presents a somewhat happier tale of domesticity than 1999’s American Beauty or last year’s Revolutionary Road, if "tale of domesticity" is a fair description for a road movie in which the stated goal is a home.

In Away We Go — from a screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida — 30-something couple Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Burt (John Krasinski) find themselves unexpectedly ditched during Verona’s second trimester by the only set of theoretically adoring grandparents available, Burt’s flakily self-absorbed parents (Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels). Thus unsettled, the two set off in search of a place to provide their child with an "epic," "Huck Finn-y" childhood, as Burt wistfully envisions it. Some parents might quibble with this aim, given Huck’s epic stint as a runaway on a river, but some offspring, even grown ones, might find it pleasurable to imagine their parents dreaming for them a heroic, adventurous youth, rather than the anxious rigors preparatory to an Ivy education and a professional life.

In any case, away they go to visit friends in Phoenix, a sister in Tucson, a cousin in Madison, Wis., and so on — each stopover offering interludes with the film’s excellent ensemble cast and presenting Verona and Burt with various slices of parenting life to digest or spit out. We don’t see much of these places; Away We Go is, until the end, only vaguely concerned with geography, focusing its lens on private scenes even in public places. At a Phoenix dog track, Allison Janney provides hilariously, wildly inappropriate commentary on life with pre-postal husband (Jim Gaffigan) and silently resentful children. In Madison, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton ooze sanctimony as a noxiously evolved couple raising their children via the Continuum school.

During calmer, more sober moments, you may find yourself idly pondering your investment in the drama and domestic arrangements of this financially solvent, utterly in love, ideally suited pair. But the dialogue is clever enough, the protagonists engaging enough to patchily override such cynical thoughts. If you can handle the twee whimsy of a shot in which the itinerant couple’s plane is transformed into a leaping dolphin in the reflection of skyscraper windows, you’re more than halfway home.

AWAY WE GO opens Fri/12 in San Francisco.

The zone

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June 10, 2009
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I believe it’s called "garbage time." Can’t speak for soccer, but in American football it’s when the team in the lead runs the ball up the middle, again and again. The game is decided. It’s just a matter of letting the clock wind down.

That’s where we were at. In this case, my team, the good guys, had a big lead. The other team, the bad guys, had just scored but it was way too little, way too late, and we were going to win the championship. In 40 years of playing team sports, three different ones, three cities on two coasts and a cornfield, in two pretty different bodies, it would be my first championship. Well, second. My first since I was 11.

I’m 46. Just to give you some idea how great everyone else on my team is. To win it all, with me on your side, takes 35 years!

My team is an old team, the oldest in our league. We don’t have a lot of subs, none for the women, and it was our third game of the day. The other team had played three games too. You have to, in a tournament, if you keep winning. So everyone on the field was in a similar boat. Outcome decided. Garbage time. Tick. Tick.

I thought: if ever I was going to score a goal, now would be the time, while everyone else was sleeping. And as our goalie returned the ball to midfield, I sneaked myself from my usual position (fullback), right up there too, along the left sideline. I leaned in a slightly droolish way that let our forwards know exactly what I was thinking.

One tapped the ball to the other, and there was my pass, the pass, the one you wait for all your life, perfect and perfectly unexpected by everyone on the field but me. Nobody was there. The ball rolled like a lullaby on a green sea before me. Nobody, nothing, between me and it, and the net. Even the goalie seemed gone, as I hoofed and huffed and entered into "the zone." You know that zone where athletes go, where they are the ball, where the roar of the crowd, the elements, everything else just peels away and you can pretty much do whatever in the world you want?

This wasn’t that zone. It was a different, dreamier one, where everything peels away, including the ball and the goal. I realized in that moment what an intensely, insanely sociable creature I have become. I felt lonely. Actually lonely. Where was everyone? It just seemed all wrong all of a sudden.

What I did … I stopped running and stood there, and the ball just dribbled slowly away from me and over the end line. Then I turned to face my incredulous teammates and the whistle blew. Game over. Winners!

I didn’t know, though.

I touched hands with the other team and said, "Good game, good game," and they said so too. I posed for the team picture. I took off my uniform and put on my jeans and my new championship T-shirt. I checked my cell phone to see if President Obama was trying to call or anything. (He wasn’t.) And then I got in my car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Brewing Company, because that’s where the team was going to meet for pitchers of not-cold-enough beer and overdone, overpriced hamburgers.

It was three in the afternoon, and I had just played three soccer games on basically a bowl of oatmeal and some cherries. So you can imagine my hunger. Are you imagining? The reverberating weirdness of that breakaway loneliness moment, with all its psychological and philosophical implications — on an empty stomach!

And the guitar duo out on the patio, where we sat, played "Amy," and "Sweet Caroline," and worse.

Boasts the menu: "The Marin County Health Dept. is of the opinion that any meat cooked below medium-well (157 degrees) is undercooked. We proudly prepare your burger to any temperature you request."

"Rare," I said. (Are you still imagining my hunger? My excitement?)

It was one of the deadest burgers I ever ate. It was over well-done, gray, not a drop of moisture to it, save ketchup. Yet I was too insanely hungry, or nice, or sociable, to send it back.

Where would I be without this column?

MARIN BREWING COMPANY

Sun.–Thu. 11:30 a.m.–midnight;

Fri.–Sat. 11:30 a.m.–1 a.m.

1809 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur

(415) 461-4677

Beer & wine

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

It’s Cougartown, Jake

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June 10, 2009
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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m 19 and still a virgin. I’ve never been on a date, kissed a girl, held hands, hugged … you get the picture. I’ve never really had the time to take interest in girls, or the courage to ask one out. I’m now starting to feel pretty lonely, and tired of my lack of "experience." However, after talking with several different girls my age on different occasions, my question has come to this: are virgin guys really worthless for experienced women?

Most women I talk to say that’s the answer to the question. If this is true, I think I’m going to have serious nervous breakdown. Since this is apparently the case, and such a bad thing, I was wondering what I should do — if anything at all — to fix the problem?

Love,

Another Lonely Boy

Dear Boy:

In light of recent discussions of sexual opportunities found on craigslist, among the (barely) used fitness equipment and the remarkably ugly couches, I’m suddenly seeing your problem in a whole new light. In your usual fictional treatments of the "desperate male virgin seeks state-change" trope, you see the hapless hero attempt, unsuccessfully, to get age-mates interested, or to trick them with false-bottomed popcorn buckets or what-have-you. Then you have your prostitute scene, which never goes well. I have no compunctions about suggesting seeing a pro, actually — it may not be legal, but as far as I know I can recommend what I like as long as I don’t recommend whom I like, as in "See my friend Lavinia, she’ll fix you right up."*

In fact,I AM going to suggest you see a pro, since this has been going on way too long and I’m afraid you’re going to get what they used to call "a complex." But I do realize it’s not a solution that fits everyone’s tastes, morals, or pocketbook, and it isn’t much help if what you’re seeking is a boon companion and a chance to get your blank-blank-ed (I hate all those phrases and can’t even bring myself to type the one about cherries. Ick.

We’ll get back to craigslist, but first, no, I don’t think inexperienced men are "worthless" to women. I think very few people can truly be considered worthless (even the worst can be repurposed as mulch, for instance), and I’d hate for you to judge your own worth by what some chicks at a party said. Your "worth" is irreducible and inborn.

How useful you can be to other people may depend on things like skills and history, but probably not as much as you think. I think we’re having some confusion here about what question those girls thought they were answering. Would they really, at the advanced age of 19 or so, reject a serious and otherwise appealing suitor on the grounds of sexual inexperience? Or was it more a case of "I’d rather do it with guys who know what they’re doing"? The latter is understandable, the former a bit sad.

I really think young women of a slightly less hardened persuasion are your best bet, for many reasons, but there is that craigslist option (craigslist is in some senses sui generis, but it could also be considered to stand in here for any online meeting place where "casual encounters" ads are acceptable). I’m thinking that your chances of a cute 19-year-old picking up on your ad in a place like that and thinking, "Sweet! He doesn’t know a thing!" are virtually nil. But if there really is such a thing as a "cougar," then … mrowr.

I am personally still unconvinced that any such widespread social phenomenon of older, slightly stringy but glossily well-preserved ladies prowling for young man-meat yet exists, or ever will. You couldn’t prove it by the presence of the stereotype, though. Not only is there the SNL sketch and a number of ad campaigns featuring "cougars," there’s even an upcoming series staring the ancient and wizened Courteney Cox (I believe she’s 45) in something called Cougar Town. This is not good.

Reservations about the designation and the ugly light it casts on women over, say, 35 who still like sex aside, this could all be good news for you. Try running an ad that says "19-year-old virgin seeks cougar for important life lessons" and see how that works out for you. While it’s true that most female grown-ups are not seeking utterly inexperienced partners half their age, there are certainly some who would find you an interesting experiment.

All this nonsense about pros and ladies on the prowl aside, I do have two other suggestions, both of which seem to have escaped you. One, you can talk to girls and even ask them out without revealing a certain embarrassing biographical fact upfront and, two, you could date virgins.

Love,

Andrea

* No, I don’t know anyone named Lavinia.

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

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