Volume 43 [2008–09] Archives — Page 39 of 62 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Volume 43, Index 45

Serene dreams

February 4, 2009

Leeds, U.K., native and Ibiza, Spain, resident George Evelyn has recorded lush and laidback beats for two decades as Nightmares on Wax. As British tastemaker label Warp’s longest-serving artist, he’s shared space on their roster with Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher. But in stark contrast to his labelmates’ hectic, densely layered electronic productions, Evelyn’s music sonically embodies the phrase, "Let’s just chill a moment." And despite his scary moniker, most of what Evelyn creates will induce sweet daydreams.

String pad– and Rhodes-soaked numbers like "Calling," from his sixth and newest album, Thought So (Warp, 2008), unfold methodically, weaving rich synth layers together with jazzy loops before a slow-burning beat drops down without fanfare. The result is soothing, headphone-friendly songs that stand out among electronic music’s more conceited and bombastic projects.

Written mostly in an RV while moving from Leeds to Ibiza, Thought So rides on a broad variety of lazy beats and sumptuous songs that lounge comfortably at 84 beats per minute. "Moretime" is built on raw, funky loops that recall Cut Chemist or Quantic, while "Still? Yes?" meshes thick breakbeats and reggae snippets à la local beatmaster Romanowski. The aforementioned "Calling" also resembles Evelyn’s most notable track, "Nights Interlude," from Smokers Delight (Warp, 1995). The former follows an almost identically melodious composition trajectory but drifts dangerously towards wanky smooth jazz before Evelyn reels it back in. This quality of sonic consistency and balance has obviously bolstered NOW’s longevity.

Evelyn and Kevin Harper conceived NOW in 1988. Harper split a few years later before Smokers Delight became one of the most successful downtempo chill-out albums ever. Like other mid-1990s trip-hop material by Massive Attack, DJ Shadow, or Mighty Bop, NOW’s blueprint encompassed thick dub bass, hip-hop drum programming, soulful loops, samples, and velvety keyboard embellishments. So does it still sound as fresh 15 years later?

In Evelyn’s hands it does. He has evolved and enlisted great vocalists such as Chyna Brown, Ella May, Mozez, and Ricky Ranking, several of whom appear on the recent album’s best tracks. Evelyn and a full band including keyboardist Robin Taylor-Firth, guitarist Chris Dawkins, drummer Ize, and bassist Hamlet Luton touch down at the Independent Feb. 4 for a show that’ll remind folks that slow-mo music is good for the soul. Let’s hope they showcases gems such as "Damn" from 2006’s In a Space Outta Sound (Warp) and the Rankin’ toast "195 Lbs" from the latest full-length.

NIGHTMARES ON WAX

Wed/4, 9 p.m., $15

Independent

628 Divisadero

www.theindependentsf.com

Wave your hands in the air

February 4, 2009

Parisian hottie and Disco Death Tour headliner Arnaud Rebotini sports the slicked-back pompadour and vintage-shirted ensemblage of a primo rockabilly daddy — right down to the fifth of Jack Daniels he usually stashes behind his onstage equipment — augmented by the handlebar mustache of a ’70s porn star.

The music he makes, however, both as the vocalist with "frozen Balearic gay biker house" heroes Black Strobe and on his own as an analog electro-warrior in a laptop landscape, suggests more a canny backroom raver than a rhythm-and-blues or retro-disco traditionalist. Not to say that the rumble of souped-up engines and the salacious whir of Super-8 skin flicks don’t stream through his ancient electronics, but he’s definitely more about raising hands in the air than laying down steamy riffs.

Rebotini’s last solo release, Music Components (Citizen, 2008), was a valiant and largely successful attempt to build an solid dancefloor set around analog fanboy fetish instruments like the Korg Monopoly, Juno 60, and TRs 909 and 808 — no laptops or external sequencers allowed. What emerged was a MIDI wet dream that stomped the jambox and inverted the Valerie and Ghostly International camps’ Ableton-driven nostalgia formula — this man who looked like he walked right out of Can made actual music of the moment on his tinny machines.

Meanwhile, Black Strobe transformed from a witty electroclash-like DJ-vocalist duo into a full-blown live four-piece, which, confusingly, will be performing a DJ set on the tour. Also on hand will be earnest acid-disco hipsters In Flagranti — but my dream of dreams would be for Rebotini, French king of the analog 808, to someday team up with Alexander Robotnik, Italian king of the acid-generating 303, for a mind-blowing all-night session of laptopless hiptwisters. Rebotini and Robotnik in 2010!

DISCO DEATH TOUR

With Arnaud Rebotini, Black Strobe DJ set, and In Flagranti

Sat/7, 10 p.m., $10 advance

103 Harriet, SF

www.blasthaus.com

Speed Reading

February 4, 2009

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST HORROR COMICS

Edited by Peter Normanton

Running Press

448 pages

$17.95

It probably comes as no surprise that post–World War II Americans decided Hitler was a lot scarier than the Boogeyman. It’s a little more shocking to see that fear realized in their comic books. The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics contains its fair share of vampires, werewolves, and zombies, but those early years are dominated by ghostly stormtroopers, Nazi clones and — more often than not — the reanimated fuhrer himself. I’m particularly fond of "Terror of the Stolen Legs," which, I assure you, is creepier than the title suggests.

For this collection, editor Peter Normanton has culled prime examples from more than six decades of horror comics. The results are often fascinating: how else to see Nazi anxiety so aptly literalized? And, of course, they’re fun. Don’t forget these are comics, so for all of their time capsule–esque appeal, they retain that guilty pleasure quality. Imagine you’re a kid in the pre-"graphic novel" ’50s while reading the collection— it enhances the thrill.

For the most part, it’s these early offerings that prove the most delightful, if only for the camptastic writing. The best example comes from "The Game Keeper," which begins, "Run Avis Drood! Run as fast as your lovely legs can carry you, for the full moon burgeons beyond Drood Castle and the game is afoot!"

The only real downside to the collection is Normanton’s purple prose. He tends to ham it up in his introductions to each story, promising a life-changing experience on every page. But hey, feel free to skip those parts — they don’t have pictures, anyway.

All mod cons

February 4, 2009

› johnny@sfbg.com

How can any of us forget 1835, and the heady discovery of spherical amphibians, blue goats, and petite three-foot zebras frolicking on the moon? In Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders (New Press, 245 pages, $24.95), Paul Maliszewski relates that time, when the New York Sun brought news of lunar life to an increasingly large readership that craved delightful information during an economic drought. Maliszewski doesn’t have to work to make the story funny — he merely has to relate how the paper’s moon-discovery serial likened a typical blue goat to "a young lamb or kitten," and presented scientists pretending to tickle the creature’s beard as seen through a telescope, only to witness it "bound away into oblivion, as if conscious of earthly impertinence."

Within the context of Maliszewski’s sprawling look at fakery, the Sun saga is a light vacation, because of its relative datedness and good-natured imagination. Before and after, Fakers largely avoids such Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds–style nostalgia for more contemporary tales: the stories of Stephen Glass, James Frey, and JT Leroy, for example. It places Glass’s accounts under a microscope that highlights their pandering corniness. It relates the life and times of Leroy — and his feverish endorsement by the likes of Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon (more on him later), as well as his editorship of an installment in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing series — without losing sight of the fact that Leroy’s much-celebrated writing is mawkish.

Such targets and views might suggest that Maliszewski likes to wag his finger and tut-tut, but his viewpoint is much more variable — he isn’t out to condemn various literary liars, for example, so much as critique them. Early in the book, he relates one of his own adventures in the creation of phony identities, a Walter Mitty–scale satire somewhat akin to the letters that Joe Orton used to write to newspapers as "Edna Welthorpe," a make-believe housewife outraged by Orton’s plays. Here, and in other instances, such as a discussion of George W. Bush’s use of the word "confidence" when discussing economics, Fakers suggests that the Bush years have not just eroded but demolished the value of truth.

In a seeming act of first-person tit-for-tat, Maliszewski shares an example of an instance when he fell for a hoax, though the chosen subject — a tall tale that might qualify as an urban legend if it weren’t set in the wilderness — cops out in terms of allowing a truly personal and thus uncomfortable examination of the various aspects of being duped. The most curious of Maliszewski’s practices is the frequent weaving of e-mail interviews — a format that would seem to allow for flights of fancy — into his investigative text. A correspondence with former New York Times journalist Michael Finkel, for example, stays soft-focus when it could have questioned the presumptuous audacity of a middle-aged white man assuming the voice of a West African boy.

In a recent Bookforum review, Hua Hsu describes Fakers as vaguely paranoia-inducing, and indeed, at the very least, this reader — a journalist who has been duped — wonders if any of the facts or stories that the author relates might contain creative twists. In an extended conclusion about a fraudulent Michael Chabon essay, Maliszewski essentially asserts that to lie for the sake of lying is a cynical, selfish act. True. But Fakers is more interesting when it is ambivalent and discomfiting, or when Maliszewski’s examples and anecdotes prompt ideas about various permutations of truth and falsehood in the media landscape. (Take CNN’s Nancy Drew, I mean Nancy Grace, and the way she is currently using a compulsive liar — Caylee Anthony — to co-author cable news television’s version of a radio serial.) Blue goats are cute, but — as Fakers makes clear — white lies have many facets.

Dudes and don’ts

February 4, 2009

All right, I’m not gonna try and pretend The Achievers: The Story of the Lebowski Fans and Deadgirl have all that much in common, other than they’re both playing the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. But they do both focus on folks with peculiar obsessions, healthy and otherwise.

Camera in hand, television commercial director Eddie Chung descended upon the 2004 Lebowski Fest — since 2002, an annual gathering of fans of the Coen brothers’ 1998 cult phenom The Big Lebowski — and discovered a bona fide subculture. Who are these people? Why are they addicted to Lebowski? What makes ordinary working stiffs fiendishly create movie-inspired costumes (severed toe, Sioux City Sasparilla bottle, walrus, "camel fucker") as detailed as they are obscure?

At 66 brisk minutes, The Achievers can’t help being fun, although I imagine it would be difficult to enjoy the doc without having seen Lebowski. (If you haven’t seen Lebowski, or you saw it when it came out and — like most audiences and critics at the time — didn’t get it, you’re long overdue for a viewing.) Still, that’s probably not gonna be a problem for IndieFest attendees, considering the fest hosts an annual bowling-infused salute to the Dude. Dilettantes will appreciate The Achievers’ many Lebowski clips, which pop up to contextualize lesser-known references; diehards will thrill to the interviews with bit-part actors like "Saddam," the Hussein look-alike who hands the Dude bowling shoes during his dream sequence. Also featured are the real-life inspirations for the Dude, Walter Sobchak, and Little Larry Sellers (you know, the kid who steals the Dude’s car and leaves his D-grade homework paper behind — incredibly, a true story, more or less.) The Coens are absent, but bemused star Jeff Bridges does make an appearance.

As Chung discovers, the most hardcore of the Lebowski fans found each other over the Internet, becoming acquainted via a message board dedicated to the film and the fest. Many have become real-world friends above and beyond the organized Lebowski gatherings, which now attract thousands of White Russian–drenched revelers. Really, they’re no different than heavy metal fans, or Rocky Horror junkies, or Civil War reenactors, tapping shared interests to build a tribe whose activities (Maude Lebowski tattoo, anyone?) might be viewed by the mainstream as crossing the line into low-level insanity.

Far more wackjobby are the protagonists of IndieFest’s closing-night film, Deadgirl, which is described in the fest program as resembling the early films of David Cronenberg. Body horror? Yes! Disturbing? Indeed! The work of filmmakers (Marcel Sarmiento, Gadi Harel) with innovative, artistically daring careers ahead of them? I’m not yet convinced. Deadgirl starts off promisingly enough, as a pair of ne’er-do-well high schoolers (pretty boys Shiloh Fernandez and Noah Segan) stave off boredom by exploring an abandoned mental hospital. But this ain’t slow-burn creepiness like Session 9 (2001); the film’s most original twist — the boys find a zombielike woman chained in the basement — comes early, and the shocks soon revert to tired torture-porn gross-outs. Naturally, the friends are torn apart by the discovery, even as they both become consumed by it. One’s horny enough to declare the woman/monster do-able, while the other’s a tad more sensitive; it’s not long before an unbelievable mix of emo and necrophilia, and a li’l dab of misogyny, oozes to the surface. Queasy does it.

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 5–22, most shows $11

Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF; and Shattuck, 2230 Shattuck, Berk.

www.sfindie.com

Hot pink

February 4, 2009

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Filmmakers like Jonathan Demme who worked for Roger Corman in the early 1970s were delighted by their freedom to include just about anything — radical political issues, wild tonal shifts, etc. — as long as the basic drive-in requirements of gratuitous T&A and violence were shoehorned in. That moment was brief. But something similar has lasted decades in Japan’s "pink film" milieu, where often youthful talent cut teeth on low-budget softcore features typically an hour in length.

With genital display and graphic sex illegal — we’ve all seen Japanese private parts obscured by a digital fogblot — "pink" makers must exercise a little more imagination than Western pornmeisters. No doubt there’s been much unwatchable dross among the diminished but still-active genre’s thousands of titles to date. But there’s also been inspired, sometimes just-plain-weird stuff, like Godardian Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969), extreme nunsploitation School of the Holy Beast (1974) and 2003’s Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (a.k.a. Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice), which played the San Francisco International Film Festival.

In a rare moment of retrospection, this year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival sidebars "I am Curious (Pink): The Second Wave of Japanese Sex Cinema, 1986–Present." Offering two double bills at a sum length barely more than that of one bloated Hollywood prestige flick, this sampler ranges from the goofy to the gloomy. There are some constants — ironic use of Western classical music, variably consensual abuse of women, vigorously mimed sex acts — but these singular films aren’t much like each other, let alone most adult entertainment you’d see here. Even their misogyny often feels like an in-joke at men’s expense.

Not so in The Bedroom (also known, rather misleadingly, as Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture), a 1992 feature by Hisayasu Sato of gay "pink" Muscle — a dismemberment fantasia that set the gold standard for walkouts when bizarrely chosen as 1990’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival opening nighter. This cold, morbid, semi-abstract objet d’art queasily mixes identity blur, voyeurism, tranquilizer excess, marital ennui, homicide, and lewd consumption of chopped lettuce. It’s notorious for giving a small role to one Issei Sagawa, who’d committed real-life murder and cannibalism — only to be just briefly institutionalized before becoming a still-popular multimedia "celebrity" back home. Ick.

On a less appalling note, the other three IndieFest "pinks" take themselves less seriously. Osamu Sato’s New Tokyo Decadence: The Slave from 2007 is supposedly based on the experiences of star Rinako Hirasawa, who discovered early on that she was into masochism — though not averse to playing professional dominatrix. She finds fulfillment under the thumb of her eventual office boss, only to discover he’s a wuss in sadist’s clothing. Often funny, New Tokyo Decadence views its heroine not as victim but a sometimes ambivalent power bottom who actually pulls the strings.

For full-on silliness there’s Motosugu Watanabe’s 1986 Sexy Battle Girls, whose schoolgirl protagonist has an anatomical irregularity her father is hell-bent on using to avenge a long-ago wrong. "The Venus Crush is your secret weapon! Love is not an option!" he insists. Sent to a private school where "bad" students are sold to politicians as sex slaves and ballpoint pens are shot like deadly arrows, she combats perils including one highly exotic dildo you won’t find at Good Vibrations.

Shuji Kataoka’s same-year S+M Hunter features a titular character outfitted spaghetti western–style with cowboy boots, priest’s collar, a skull’s-head eyepatch, Morricone-type musical theme, and extraordinary erotic-lassoing abilities. But he and fellow "Pleasure Dungeon" habitués meet their match in the Bombers, a man-hating (and gay-man molesting) girl gang à la H.G. Lewis’ She-Devils on Wheels (1968). If you’ve yearned for a battle of the sexes encompassing gratuitous Nazi regalia and pervasive retro disco woo! woo! — well, prepare to be satiated.

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 5–22, most shows $11

Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF; and Shattuck, 2230 Shattuck, Berk.

www.sfindie.com

Trucker song

February 4, 2009

› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I dreamed a bear was after me, and it chased me into a craggy and impossible landscape from which, if I survived the bear, I would never find my way back to exactly alive, either.

These kinds of things don’t bother me anymore. I’m too busy being bugged by spiritually advanced, old-soul new-age dinks who think me visually and verbally attractive, then find out that in spite of their evolved, complicated mysticism and unflappable belief in reincarnation, they simply can’t wrap their brains around a funny and beautiful woman who used to be a dude.

I say, "Well, so what about your arms then?"

They laugh, but I’m serious. Whatever happened to a sense of adventure? A kiss? A touch? A taste? Finding out via the body? You know: the here-and-now incarnation, the one with spinach in its teeth. To me, good old-fashioned sensory perceptions are a gazillion times more valuable than extra-sensory ones, or energy fields or even Ouija boards. Meditation … prayer … thought itself can’t do what teeth and fingers can. So don’t pay too much attention to your dreams, books, guides, and all that other dumbass brainy bullshit, OK?

And if you think it’s bad in Berkeley …

Where I live, in the woods … well, the woods were lovely, dark, and deep until I came to crave less chickeny company and, a year or so ago, started venturing away from hearth and shack. And was horrified to find that my neighbors were not farmers and lumberjacks, but hippies. All of them! Even the farmers and the lumberjacks!

Yesterday evening, for example, I was killing time, half-pints, and fishes and chips down at my local neighborhood cider pub, when I was hit on by a big ol’ truck driver. Yay! A truck driver! I thought. Oh, and he was very sweet and forward, and was wearing a cowboy hat. I almost certainly would have gone home with him, except that I had accidentally left my chicken door open, on purpose … so farmerly duty called, eventually, and I excused myself from his embrace.

This proves, if my math serves me, that a bird in the hand is not worth four birds in the coop. With the door open. By the way, please think of the bird in the hand as me, and the hand as his. Personally, I don’t care, one way or the other, but I don’t think truck drivers like to be thought of as birds.

My point is that he gave me his business card, and I fully intended to use it some time, say, if I needed a cargo container full of corrugated tin roofing material hauled from here to Fresno, or a date. But when I took a look in the sobering light of morning, there was his name, his address, cell phone and e-mail, sure, but where it should have said "truck driver" instead it said, get this: "energy healer/poet."

And the foxes and skunks and tit-mice and deer that inhabit these lovely, dark, deep woods with me are still trying to shake the haunting wail of utter despair and frustration which emanated then from the Shack of the Nutty Girl With All Them Chickens — or SONGWATCH, as they call it for short. Because while I have no doubt that a trucker is 100-percent capable of seeing that a chicken farmer is a chicken farmer is a chicken farmer, no matter what else in the world she usedta be … my experience has been that these energy-addled new-age seer dinks are about as sightful as buttons on a sock monkey. Seriously, it’s happened more than once or twice. It’s happened three or four times now. Maybe five.

Belief in anything at all is kinda counteradventurous, innit? But as far as non-nonbelievers go, my funnest dates so far have been with fundamentalist Christians and Mennonites.

Of course I will give this guy and his cowboy hat a try. He doesn’t know yet the kind of girl I am. So it will be interesting to see if (as I can only hope), truck driver trumps energy healer.

Oh, and I do have a new favorite restaurant. Chinese joint goes by the wonderful name of Eat First, in case you want to look it up online. I’d a done it here but story trumps all, turns out. And anyway my Chinese New Year’s resolution is to renege on all my other ones, which were torturing me like a bear in a dream, so …

Maybe next time. Now I have to get going on a trucker song.

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

Fallout from the union clash

February 4, 2009

› steve@sfbg.com

Fallout from the power struggle between Service Employees International Union and its Oakland-based local, United Healthcare Workers, has been felt particularly strongly in the Bay Area since SEIU took over UHW and ousted its leaders Jan. 27 (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09).

After SEIU replaced UHW head Sal Rosselli and more than 70 elected leaders of that union for defying SEIU demands, Rosselli and his team formally resigned from SEIU Jan. 29 and formed a new union, National Union of Healthcare Workers, hoping to draw thousands of current SEIU members disgruntled with the top-down management style of SEIU head Andy Stern.

It took a few days for SEIU to take physical control of UHW’s Oakland offices, where Oakland police officers were called Jan. 30 to mediate a final showdown between UHW loyalists and the new SEIU management team, which is under the direction of two SEIU executive vice presidents that Stern appointed as trustees: Eliseo Medina and David Regan (see "SEIU seizes last holdout: UHW’s Oakland headquarters," Guardian Politics blog).

"It’s not about the building, it’s about the members," Regan told the Guardian Jan. 30, later adding, "At the end of the day, the members of the union get to decide if they want to be in the union or not be in the union."

And after a weekend when Rosselli said SEIU was aggressively trying to close outstanding contracts with many employers, a move that would make it difficult for members to disaffiliate from SEIU and join NUHW, he filed petitions showing that many members do indeed want to leave SEIU.

"We don’t trust them with our contracts and we don’t trust them with our dues," Shayne Silba, a psychiatric technician with Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, told reporters during a Feb. 2 teleconference announcing that about 9,000 workers at 62 medical facilities have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board asking to leave SEIU and join NUHW.

Rosselli said that more than 50 percent of workers at most of these facilities signed the petition, and he’s asking SEIU to honor the request and let them go.

The list of facilities includes some prominent Bay Area medical centers such as Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Alta Bates, and California Pacific Medical Center and other entities run by Sutter Health. Sutter has clashed with union members and community leaders over numerous issues, including the future of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission District.

"The Sutter Healths of the world are colluding with SEIU just like they did before the trusteeship," Rosselli told reporters, echoing his persistent theme that SEIU is too cozy with employers and doesn’t negotiate good contracts.

SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette disputed that characterization and the accusations that the union was trying to quickly sew up outstanding contracts with employers to forestall moves to NUHW. "There were an astonishing number of contracts left incomplete," she said. "It’s callous to leave contracts open for whatever purpose."

Regan said SEIU will challenge the NUHW petitions. "We are not going to let these discredited, deposed members weaken UHW," he said, adding that the petition drive "is incredibly cynical and reckless in this economic climate."

But the wheels are now set in motion for a protracted fight over who will lead UHW’s 150,000 members, as well as the question of whether Rosselli’s highly democratic management style might be attractive to members of other unions.

"We’re getting calls from other SEIU members from other locals about joining NUHW," Rosselli said, citing Alameda County Medical Center, whose employees are part of the San Francisco–based SEIU Local 1021, one of many locals that have been reformulated in recent years by Stern, who then appoints its leaders.

Rosselli plans to hold a founding convention for NUHW in March, when members would vote on bylaws and a constitution, and elect their leaders, while Regan said SEIU will work to win the confidence of its members: "We have to show people that we’re on their side and we care about the work we have to do together."

Tailpipe turnaround

February 4, 2009

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Word that automobile emissions standards may soon improve was good news, but Bay Area leaders and communities are demanding even more to offset the harm that comes from tailpipes.

President Barack Obama last month called for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to allow California and as many as 13 other states to employ their own emissions restrictions. "Our goal," said Obama at the White House, "is not to further burden an already struggling industry. It is to help America’s automakers prepare for the future."

A review of the request is now underway and manufacturers were reassured they would have enough time to rework their 2011 lines. By then, cars and trucks should have improved efficiency and better mileage, outpacing three-year-old national standards that have been in place since the EPA refused to grant a waiver from the federal Clean Air Act.

Locally, the city’s Transportation Authority is reworking the local Climate Action Plan to emphasize emissions reductions. But the problem is expected to get worse before it gets better. Researchers at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District expect greenhouse gas emissions from transportation to increase dramatically from 42.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide this year to 65.4 million in 2029 under "business as usual conditions."

That may be why Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed released a letter Jan. 23 opposing federal plans for an auto industry bailout unless there are more strings attached to the money and more progressive programs to develop low-emission vehicles regionally. The two mayors called for an auto bailout that would "not divert funds from innovative emerging transportation technologies."

Jan Lundberg, a former oil industry analyst turned activist and a former member of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force, calls for even bolder steps: "The kinds of amelioration being talked about and offered are woefully inadequate. We should just get rid of car dependency. Most of the pollution involved — into the air, from the car — is not from the tailpipe. It’s from the mining and the manufacturing associated with the car."

The real challenge for local governments is not in adapting their vehicles, but adapting policy to reflect progressive approaches like San Francisco’s "Precautionary Principle," adopted in 2003. The policy puts the burden of proof on advocates of new technology to show it is safe. Debbie Raphael, the Green Building Program Manager with San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, has been pushing for a change in how environmental codes are implemented. "Taxpayers have every right to know the risks," she said. "The burden then falls on industry to study possible negative consequences and to investigate safer alternatives."

Writer and activist Bill McKibben addressed the issue last fall when he spoke at Herbst Theatre, recognizing San Francisco as an environmental leader among cities. "This is clearly a community that is doing so many of the things right that need to be done. One community at a time is a very noble way to proceed. But in the end, it’s only half the battle. We’ve got to get the political movement going that allows us to do this everywhere, not just in the places that already understand it."

Without a net

February 4, 2009

› news@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors heard more than four hours of public comment at its Jan. 27 meeting, as hundreds of labor representatives, public-health workers, homeless advocates, hospital staffers, and others crowded into the board chambers to sound off on the deep budget cuts that many charged would leave they city’s critical-services safety net in shreds.

The message was chilling.

On the ground, the budget cuts Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing translate into staggering losses in services that segments of the city’s most disadvantaged populations rely on. Among those who will lose their jobs: some San Francisco General Hospital staffers who are trained to watch the cardiac monitors. "They are the first responders when someone goes into cardiac arrest," nurse Leslie Harrison told the board during public comment. "This is a life and death job — literally."

The Huckleberry House, which was established in 1967 and provides assistance to more than 7,000 homeless youth each year, may face closure.

Homeless shelters are already being forced to turn away two out of three clients seeking a bed due to lack of space, according to Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach.

Demand for hot meals from the St. James Infirmary, a clinic for uninsured sex workers, has tripled since the onset of the recession, Executive Director Naomi Akres told the Guardian. As a result of the cuts, the clinic will lose its ability to continue either the food program or an outreach program that aims to get people off the streets.

Other areas that face funding reductions, according to a tally of midyear reductions issued by the mayor’s office, include some programs that administer STD testing and HIV prevention services, the Adult Day Health programs at Laguna Honda Hospital, aid for foster care, and the Single Room Occupancy Collaborative (which assists low-income tenants living in dilapidated hotel rooms across the city). San Francisco’s Human Services Agency will lay off 67 staffers.

Of the $118 million in midyear cuts rolled out by the mayor’s office last December, some $46 million will be shed from health, human welfare, and neighborhood-development services.

The midyear reductions, which will begin to take effect Feb. 20, are aimed at addressing a steep drop-off in revenue for the 2008–09 fiscal year. Now, health and human services providers and others across the board are anxiously looking ahead to the next round of blows, which will be dealt to address a projected $576 million deficit for the 2009–10 fiscal year, which begins in July. That figure could be reduced to $461 million after budget cuts, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda.

Newsom has known about the gravity of the current budget problem since late October, when City Controller Ben Rosenfield issued a memo projecting fiscal disaster. "Since the adoption of the budget in July, the City’s economic outlook has significantly worsened, particularly since the onset of the global financial market upheavals that began in September," the memo states. It goes on to predict a worst-case scenario of $125 million in tax-revenue shortfalls for the 2008–09 fiscal year.

Cuts in frontline services don’t have to be the only answer. Supervisor Chris Daly has introduced an alternative budget proposal, which includes reductions in funding for management positions, cuts in the city’s subsidy to the symphony, and a reduction in the size of the mayor’s press office in an effort to free up funds that could then be diverted back to critical services. "I don’t think any of the choices are good. There’s really only the lesser of the evil," Daly noted at the meeting.

The choices the city faces were described in clear terms. "I’m sorry to say it, but you have some tough decisions in front of you," Friedenbach told supervisors when it was her turn at the podium during public comment. "You have to choose between abused children, or the symphony. You have to choose whether you want to decimate the mental-health treatment system — or do you want to get rid of the newly hired managers since the hiring freeze? You have to decide whether you want to cut half of the substance-abuse treatment system — or do you want to create a new community justice center that will have nowhere to refer its defendants?" Rather than choose, however, supervisors voted 6–5 to send Daly’s alternative package back to the Budget and Finance Committee for further consideration. The swing vote was Board President David Chiu, who was elected president with the support of the progressive bloc.

Had Chiu voted for Daly’s alternative, it wouldn’t have mattered much — the mayor would almost certainly have vetoed it.

Eight supervisors — enough to override a veto — did demonstrate a willingness to move forward with a June special election. With Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Carmen Chu dissenting, the board voted to waive deadlines that would have prevented new tax measures from being placed on a June 2 ballot.

Several different tax ideas are under discussion. According to a list of preliminary estimates calculated by the Office of the Controller, slight increases over the current rates of taxes levied on business registration, payroll, sales, hotel-room stays, commercial utility users, parking, property transfers, and Access Line fees together could bring the city an estimated $121.6 million per year.

Other proposals include creating parcel taxes for both residential and industrial property, gross-receipts taxes on rental income for commercial and residential properties, a local vehicle license fee, and a residential utility users tax. If all of those proposed new taxes were voted into effect, the city would have the potential to raise an additional $112.9 million.

The problem: under state law, unless the mayor and supervisors unanimously declare an emergency, any tax increase would require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Supervisor John Avalos voiced strong support for the special election. "I think that the people of this city are still grappling with the meaning of the crisis that we’re in," Avalos told his colleagues.

Avalos amended out the possible new parcel tax, increased parking tax, and utility-users taxes, and instead proposed two new revenue measures that could be added to the ballot: a vehicle-impact fee, and "a possible new tax to discourage the consumption of energy that produces a large carbon footprint."

It won’t be easy to pass any of these proposals. Business interests are mobilizing against the very idea of a special election. In an e-mail newsletter distributed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a "call to action" urged supporters to contact Supervisors and voice opposition to the emergency election.

The language in the Chamber of Commerce message closely resembled that of Small Business California, which put out a message to the small-business community warning that higher taxes "would be the straw that breaks the already strained back of our local businesses, resulting in more layoffs and acceleration of our downward spiral."

Labor organizer Robert Haaland asked supervisors why they would be afraid of allowing voters to decide on the tax-revenue measures. A poll commissioned by his union, SEIU Local 1021, demonstrated that a significant portion of voters would rather raise revenues than allow vital services to disintegrate.

Even if new revenue is raised, Haaland told us, no one is under the illusion that there won’t be painful cuts. "Everyone’s going to feel some pain," he said. "It’s a question of how much pain."

American Apparel battle heads for Planning Commission

February 4, 2009

Early Saturday morning, Jan. 31, about 40 protesters stood on the sidewalk near the corner of Valencia and 21st streets — the site of a proposed American Apparel store — holding up signs that read, "Your Mission — Not Theirs." An endless stream of honks — even one from a cop car — echoed support for the anti–American Apparel cause. The next day, protesters met at Ritual Roasters for a letter-writing party and on Feb. 2, they rallied and wrote letters at an anti–A.A. event hosted at Amnesia. The movement to block the chain store is gaining momentum in advance of a Feb. 5 Planning Commission hearing.

The overwhelming majority of independent businesses in the neighborhood — including Ritual Roasters, Modern Times Bookstore, Borderlands Books, and Aquarius Records — have taken a stand against the chain, which boasts 200 outlets in 19 countries worldwide. There are three AA stores in San Francisco, including one on nearby Haight Street.

A.A. spokesperson Ryan Holiday says the sentiment is misplaced. "People think we’re a big-box retailer, but that’s not true," he told the Guardian.

The company has been pushing a different image: "We don’t like the mall-ification of America any more than you," reads a sign on the empty storefront. "But that has never been what American Apparel is about."

Many store opponents claim the campaign is not a crusade against American Apparel, a Los Angeles company that has a progressive record on labor and immigration issues. It’s about formula retail, which is already banned in several San Francisco commercial districts.

"I’m wearing American apparel underwear right now," said Kent Howie, a longtime staffer for Artists’ Television Access, which is housed in the storefront next to the proposed clothing outlet. "Our street just doesn’t want chain stores. It’s about survival."

Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents the district where A.A. would be located, has not taken a public position. But several months back, he met with American Apparel representatives and suggested a number of ways to do outreach in the neighborhood.

"I have seen no such evidence," Dufty told us. "Major retailers often don’t make an active contribution to the neighborhood."

Holiday insists that it’s the community’s decision, although A.A. has signed a multiyear lease for the space. "We don’t need to dictate the conversation and we don’t need to trick the people into thinking they want an American Apparel."

>>View more of our American Apparel controversy coverage here.

A pox

February 4, 2009

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I went for a test and the nurse found a genital wart. I have had more than 20 sexual partners and enjoy casual sex occasionally, but I always use condoms (plus the pill, just in case). I feel embarrassed, like I’ve been irresponsible, but I thought I was protecting myself thoroughly. How can I get over this and feel OK about sex again? And are there ways to keep from getting another wart?

Love,

Dirtied

Dear Andrea:

I just found out I have a genital wart. It’s a really small bump that could have been there awhile without me noticing. I’ve had it treated with freezing and have cream to apply to it; but I’ve been doing research and I keep getting conflicting information about how long it will last, whether any kind of sex is safe while it’s still there, how infectious it is, and what to do if it doesn’t go away.

I feel gross and dirty about it. I always use condoms and I don’t know where I could have gotten it. To make matters worse, I have a new boyfriend who doesn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong. Now that I’ve found out about this, I am dreading telling him. Help!

Love,

Sullied

Dear Andrea:

I found out I have HPV and I don’t even know how I …

Dear Warty Readers:

OK! We have found some warts. Until someone claims to have acquired them on purpose, or to have been accidentally exposed but really stoked about it, I will assume that everyone is feeling kind of miserable and a little soiled and having a hard time coming to terms with it. This is completely understandable. Indeed, it is expected. Having an infectious disease which may affect your ability to find happiness with other human beings would certainly be harsh enough; the whole STD thing adds insult to injury.

Personally, I think STDs need an image makeover. Syphilis never seemed to shock anyone in Elizabethan literature, but everyone was poxy then anyway, not to mention smelly. We’ve had centuries of crass jokes and shame campaigns since, though: a kind of cumulative shaming which no public health department’s "it could happen to anyone" message is going to be able to alleviate. Of course you feel bad.

I would hope — I would wish, anyway — that normalization would help. This shit is everywhere! I usually go to the CDC’s site for STD statistics. Here are their latest on HPV:

Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and another 6.2 million people become newly infected each year. At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives.

That’s a lot of people feeling shamed and dirty. Maybe it’s time to just accept that the disease is out there, it’s easy to get, and even the most cautious (well, the second-most cautious; the first-most cautious stay home and order their groceries over the Internet) can contract it. Having HPV doesn’t say a thing about your self-respect, your hygiene, or anything much beyond your native level of luckiness. For the record, the CDC’s "how not to get HPV" advice is not all that helpful:

… even people with only one lifetime sex partner can get HPV, if their partner was infected with HPV. For those who are not in long-term, mutually monogamous relationships, limiting the number of sex partners and choosing a partner less likely to be infected may lower the risk of HPV. Partners less likely to be infected include those who have had no or few prior sex partners.

While safety-by-partner-choice really does work, it sure does limit the choice of potential partners, from amazing abundance (in the big cities, assuming minimum levels of datability) to one of those measly little prix-fixe menus which never have any desserts except crème brûlée. What if you don’t want inexperienced partners?

Here’s the deal: none of you was being irresponsible. The virus got transmitted not through but around the condom, which did reduce the likelihood of transmission. Your immune system may clear it (rendering you disease-free) or it may not, in which case you may always be contagious from the area of the wart. Treating the warts won’t cure you, but may lower the chance of transmission, which may in turn help to make you feel less leper-like and more like your old self. Oh, and lest we forget, visible warts are the good kind of HPV! The ones that cause cervical cancer are invisible, the bastards.

Now for the bad part — you do have to tell people. You have to tell potential sex partners. You may lose some, but people who are really interested are likely to stick around. You have to tell the boyfriend. Since you just found out, you can’t be accused of withholding important information. Normalize for him, and bring up the CDC’s statistics (50 percent! How’s that for company?). Get treated. Take deep breaths.

Love,

Andrea

Contact Andrea at andrea@altsexcolumn.com for more info.

Save the Rainy Day Fund

February 3, 2009

The scope of the economic challenges facing the country is overwhelming. We all hope that the new stimulus package proposed by the Obama administration, coupled with the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, will revive our economy. In California, the state is confronting an unprecedented $42 billion deficit; State Controller John Chiang has made clear that this could mean suspending tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants, and other payments owed to Californians unless a solution is found.
In San Francisco, with an estimated $560 million deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, the city is facing what may be the worst financial crisis in its history.

While the federal government can authorize deficit spending, essentially by printing more money, to address the crisis, the California Constitution and the San Francisco Charter both require the adoption of balanced budgets. Deficit spending is not an option to solve our local budget and economic problems.

Fortunately, in 2003, San Francisco voters adopted Proposition G establishing the Rainy Day Reserve Fund. After the lessons learned from the dot-com bust, Prop. G established an economic stabilization fund for San Francisco. The Rainy Day Fund employs a simple formula to save money for when it’s most needed: in any year when the city collects more than 5 percent more in tax revenue than it collected in the previous year, the city reserves half the extraordinary revenue growth for a "rainy day." The city can withdraw up to 50 percent of the funds from the Rainy Day Fund when an economic downturn yields less tax revenue to the city than the preceding year. The fund currently has $98 million in savings.

Last year, for example, the mayor and Board of Supervisors allocated $19 million from the Rainy Day Fund to the San Francisco Unified School District, which helped avoid 535 teacher layoffs in the face of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s education cuts. This year, it is likely that the mayor and the board will be able to withdraw some $45 million to offset the serious deficit.

These budget policies have helped preserve the city’s excellent credit rating, paving the way for low-cost debt issuance for critical projects like the rebuild of San Francisco General Hospital. However, it is important to understand that the city’s fiscal woes are a combination of cyclical and structural problems.

San Francisco’s structural imbalance between revenues collected and the cost of vital health, public safety, recreation, and social services needs to be addressed through revenue enhancements and comprehensive tax reform, not by spending the entire Rainy Day Fund as a quick fix. According to most forecasts, the recession is likely to continue through at least early next year, and San Francisco is likely to continue to experience fiscal problems.

Currently, there are discussions in City Hall about going back to the voters to revise the Rainy Day Fund to allow the fund to be fully depleted in a single year. I believe that would be a mistake. The Rainy Day Fund is an essential piece of the city’s overall financial strategy, and I strongly urge my former colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and the mayor to preserve the integrity of the fund. If used as originally intended, the fund will help maintain vital programs and help alleviate the impact of budgets cuts to our most vulnerable populations over the long-term as we work to right the ship in the face of this perfect economic storm. *

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 14 years and was the author of Proposition G, which created the city’s Rainy Day Fund.

Bad budget ideas

February 3, 2009

EDITORIAL There’s nothing easy about solving a half-billion-dollar budget shortfall, and most of the people involved in the grisly process of making the numbers add up at San Francisco City Hall know there will be blood on the floor. Labor unions representing city workers know there will be layoffs, salary concessions, or both. Community-based organizations handling critical front-line services know they’ll have to reduce staff and curtail their mission-driven operations. The supervisors know that a lot of good projects and great ideas won’t get funded this year.

The mayor, unfortunately, isn’t acting as if this were a crisis at all — he’s been out of town more than he’s been around the past few weeks. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and, sadly, some small business leaders, are refusing to accept the idea that taxes — some taxes, not enough to stave off deep cuts, but enough to prevent disaster — ought to be part of any budget package.

And along with the cuts — which, as Rebecca Bowe reports on page 11, will have far-reaching implications for San Franciscans — a number of really bad ideas have been floated, most of them quick fixes that would generate cash for now, but lead to serious problems later.

Among the worst ideas the mayor has put forward — in fact, it’s one of the worst budget ideas we’ve ever heard — is the notion of increasing the number of condominium conversion permits from 200 per year to 1,500 per year, and possibly allowing every property owner waiting for a conversion permit to get one, now, for a price.

It’s true that selling off condo conversion permits would bring in revenue. Raffling off building permits and planning code variances would bring in money, and so would selling development rights in city parks, and so would auctioning off appointments to boards and commissions. There are lots of stupid ways to generate cash, and the fact that a proposal would be lucrative is not by itself an argument in favor of it — even in times like these.

There’s a good reason the city limits condo conversions. Nearly every piece of property that becomes a condominium was once a rental unit, and the speculative pressure to take rent-controlled apartments and turn them into market-rate condos is immense. It’s bad enough that tenants — particularly those with relatively low rent — face eviction every day because of the state’s Ellis Act and the push by real-estate interests to create tenancies in common. Without conversion limits, the number of those evictions would soar; rent control would be eviscerated, the cost of housing would rise, and the economic cleansing of San Francisco would roll forward another few giant steps.

Newsom and his real-estate industry allies like to say that this sort of proposal is painless, since nobody has to pay higher taxes. Only people who want to convert their units, and are willing to pay a high fee for the right, would wind up paying. But that’s silly — the tenants of San Francisco would pay the cost — an immense cost — while the wealthier property owners made profits.

Selling off the taxi medallions (see "Don’t privatize the cab medallions, 1/21/09), another Newsom idea, fits in the same category. In the short term, it could bring millions into the city coffers. Long term, it would turn control of the taxi industry back to speculators and big companies, hurting the drivers and the public.

The mayor (and Sup. Sean Elsbernd) also like to talk about eliminating set-asides — those parts of the budget that voters have earmarked for particular purposes. But most of that money (the Children’s Fund, for example) goes to worthy programs: eliminating the "set-aside" protecting doesn’t save any money unless you cut those programs.

There are plenty of good budget ideas out there (see "Beyond the bloody cuts, 12/17/08). But the supervisors ought to make it clear that the bad ones are off the table.

PS: Where were all these anti-tax folks in the Chamber and the small business community, and supervisors like Elsbernd, when the city had a chance to bring in millions without any new taxes — by creating a public power system or raising utility franchise fees? They were siding with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. That’s part of the reason we’re in this fix.

Editor’s Notes

February 3, 2009

› Tredmond@sfbg.com

This is what happened in the office of the mayor of San Francisco last week:

1. One of the most highly respected members of the Newsom administration — quite possibly the only department head the mayor ever hired who has the unquestioned respect of every sector of the community she works with — was forced to resign, for reasons the mayor won’t explain. In fact, in a lame attempt at spin, the mayor’s press office put out a statement suggesting that Margaret Brodkin, who ran the Department of Children, Youth and Families, was leaving to take a new position.

Wrong, as Brodkin quickly (and predictably) pointed out in her own release, which hit my inbox at almost exactly the same time. Brodkin told the truth: the mayor, who has had nothing but praise for her in public, fired her, summarily.

2. Just a few weeks after vowing to begin a new era of mutual respect and a desire to work with the new Board of Supervisors, the mayor tried to override the board, quietly, and place his own unqualified ally on a key state commission.

The supervisors had voted 8-0 to nominate Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for a slot on the state Coastal Commission. That’s an important job: the commission regulates development all along the state’s coast, and the person who represents San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma counties needs to be a strong and reliable environmentalist. Mirkarimi, a Green Party member, has devoted much of his life to environmental causes; his colleagues on the board agreed he was the best candidate to forward to the state Senate Rules Committee, which has the final say on appointments.

Without informing Mirkarimi or Board President David Chiu, Newsom tried to pull a fast move: he forwarded the name of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to Senate Rules, hoping, perhaps, that as a Democrat, Alioto-Pier might get the nod. There’s a good reason the supervisors didn’t nominate her — her record on environmental issues is awful, she’s way too friendly to developers, and the last time she had an outside job, as a delegate to the Golden Gate Bridge board, she missed half the meetings. But Newsom wouldn’t trust the board, and wanted his own candidate.

Which was not only wrong, but stupid: turns out state law gives the supervisors, not the mayor, the exclusive right to nominate Coastal Commission candidates. Newsom’s office didn’t even check the regulations, and by the end of the week, his spinmeisters were pretending that they’d never really forwarded her name in the first place.

3. The mayor came out strongly against a June special election to raise taxes to cover some of the half-billion-dollar deficit — but offered absolutely no alternative. That left the supervisors, city employees, the press, and the public wondering what exactly the mayor has in mind — 1,000 layoffs? 2,000? Major service cuts? — and when he’s going to tell us about it.

Oh, and while all of this was happening, Himself was out of town, hobnobbing with the hip swells at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s asking — what the fuck is going on in Newsom-land, anyway? *

“Takako Yamaguchi”

February 3, 2009

REVIEW For anyone who has attempted to stare down one of Bridget Riley’s hypnogogic vortices or contemplated the point at which two color blocks mesh in a Rothko, Takako Yamaguchi’s recent set of paintings at Jancar Jones Gallery should produce some pleasantly familiar sensations. Upon entering the shoebox-size space, one sees five three-by-four-foot canvases that form a seemingly continuous horizontal vista of graduated lines and patterned strips done in earth tones and blues, with the occasional wink of metallic shimmer. (This panorama effect is offset when one realizes that an outlier has been sneakily hung in the back office area.)

Viewed individually, Yamaguchi’s warm bands of color and geometric repetition start to take on the cast of Southern Californian geography — oceanic expanse, suburban sprawl, and stretches of desert. Interlocking white donuts and intestinal curlicues suggest clouds; hills and waves roll ad infinitum; distant mountains have the repetitive crenulations of a side-scrolling video game; the faintest line of gold leaf could demarcate city lights twinkling midground, or a sliver of sunset. And yet your eyes never fully adjust to the precise play of blurred and crisp elements, which is especially forceful in the two halves of Strangely Familiar. What looks fuzzy in your peripheral vision sometimes stays that way when studied head-on, just as Yamaguchi’s palette toggles between subtle abstraction and figurative hooks. In this sense, her canvases are Magic Eyes in reverse: if you stare long enough, the geographic reference points start to flicker into the background, like unstable mirages. So meticulous and subtle are the gradations of color — so light is Yamaguchi’s brushwork — that at times you forget you are looking at a painting. (This is underscored by the way in which each landscape continues around the sides of the canvas, as if the image were sprayed onto it and then stretched onto a slightly too-small frame.). Jancar Jones may be the smallest gallery in the city, but from the vantage point of Yamaguchi’s landscapes, you can see for miles and miles.

TAKAKO YAMAGUCHI Through Feb. 28. Jancar Jones Gallery, 965 Mission, suite 120, SF. Thurs–Sat, noon–6 p.m. (415) 281-3770, www.jancarjones.com

Valentine’s Day events

February 3, 2009

Click here to see all Valentine’s Day listings on one page

PARTIES, EVENTS, AND BENEFITS

Black Valentine Masquerade Club Mighty, 119 Utah; www.mighty119.com. Feb. 13, 10pm-3am, $15. Sunset Promotions and Blasthaus present this all-out party extravaganza, featuring UNKLE’s leading man James Lavelle, Evil Nine, and revelers dressed in dastardly dark costumes.

Bootie — A Special Valentine’s Party DNA Lounge, 375 11th St.; www.bootiesf.com. Feb. 14, 10pm, $12. Celebrate the holiday mash-up style with DJ Freddy, King of Pants, twisted love songs by house band Smash-Up Derby, and a midnight mashup show by Valentine.

CockBlock Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, cockblocksf.com. Feb. 14, 10pm, $7 . Get your Valentine’s groove on at this queer dance party for lezzies, queers, lovers, and friends, featuring DJ Nuxx.

Date and Dash Noc Noc, 557 Haight; www.dateanddash.com. Feb. 14, 8pm, $35 (free to first 20 people). Speed-dating with a Lower Haight twist. RSVP for red drinks, trendy beats, and a faux auction.

I Heart the Utah Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St.; 546-6300, www.thehotelutahsaloon.com. Feb. 14, 9pm, $8. Celebrate the kind of love that lasts — that between a bar and 100 years’ worth of patrons — with oyster shooters, champagne, a costume contest, and live music by El Capitan and Let’s Make Something.

Love on Wheels Dating Game Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. Feb. 13, 6-9pm, free for SFBC members. Join this dating game exclusively for two-wheelers, where bike bachelors and bachelorettes quiz a panel of three cyclists to select their date — and then roll to hip local spots.

Milonga de Amor Ferry Building; 990-8135. Feb. 13, 5:30-8pm, free. Celebrate V-Day, sensuous tango, and slow food.

Sexy Tour of SF Strip Clubs for Singles or Couples (510) 291-9779, www.slinkyproductions.com. Feb. 13, 6-10pm, $99/person or $190/couple, includes entry to all clubs, two drinks, and full-course dinner. Peek into a world of fantasy, glamour, and intrigue with the safety of a fun group and a guide whose expertise is leading women and couples.

Shindig 69 Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. Thurs/12, 8:30pm, $10. Start your weekend off with a tribute to the sexy ’60s, featuring The Devil-Ettes, Kitten on the Keys, and DJs from Bardot a Go Go and Teenage Dance Craze — all to benefit the Keep a Breast Foundation.

Supperclub Suicide Girls Afterparty Supperclub, 657 Harrison; 348-0900, supperclub.com. Feb. 14, 7:30pm, $100 for dinner and party. Have someone you’re trying to get in bed? Invite them to share a four course menu, bottle of champagne, and special afterparty with Suicide Girls.

Thousand Faces Misera-Ball OmniCircus, 550 Natoma; 701-0686, omnicircus.com. Feb. 14, 8pm, $10. Celebrate the lovelorn with a multifaceted performance and afterparty. Special discounts for the lonely.

Valentine Art and Wine Tasting Party for Singles The Artists Alley, 863 Mission; winesocials.com. Feb. 13, 7:30pm, $20–$30. Sample appetizers and a fabulous selection of wines from California and around the world at one of SF’s premier art galleries, co-sponsored by the Society of Single Professionals.

Valentine’s Day BikeAbout San Francisco Zoo, Sloat at 47th St.; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Feb. 14, 8:30-11am, $25–$30. Woo at the Zoo too rich for your blood? Bring your bike and your sweetie for a leisurely, guided pedal around the zoo followed by a continental breakfast. Discount for tandem cyclists!

Valentine’s Day Poetry Luchadores Sub-mission, 2183 Mission; 863-6303, www.poormagazine.org. Feb. 14, 7pm, $20 to fight, $10 to watch. Your favorite revolutionary poets, poverty scholars, mediamakers, and cultural workers at POOR Magazine mash up poetry, gender, and wrestling for their second annual Battle of ALL of the sexes.

Valentine’s Eve for Singles Orson, 508 Fourth St.; 777-1508, www.orsonsf.com. Feb. 13, 5:45pm-closing, price varies. Choose your own adventure (and price range) at Orson by attending either the Cupid’s Arrow Dinner Party four-course meal or Aphrodisiac Dessert After Party, with dancing for all starting at 10pm.

Woo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo, Sloat at 47th St.; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Sat/7, 6pm; Sun/8, 12pm; Feb. 14, 12pm & 6pm; $75. Enjoy the 20th annual zoo sex tour with Jane Tollini, featuring new animals, new positions, and new kinky information — plus brunch or dinner.

BAY AREA

Charles Chocolates Tasting J Vineyards and Winery, 11447 Old Redwood Hwy, Healdsburg; (707) 431-3646, www.jwine.com. Sat/7, 12:30-3pm, $20. Join the premium artisan chocolatier for a special Valentine’s Day-themed chocolate and wine tasting at J Vineyards.

Family Valentine’s Play Party River of Light Massage & Healing Arts, 256 Shoreline, Mill Valley; (415) 846-8181, laughplayhug.com. Feb. 14, 10am-12pm, $10–<\d>$20. Enjoy heartfelt family fun, sensory games, movement, laughter, and drama with your extended family.

Progressive Dinner for Single Women and Men Ristorante Don Giovanni, 235 Castro, Mt. View; (510) 233-9700, www.meetinggame.com. Sat/7, 7pm, free for newcomers. Find your Valentine among the 20 other singles enjoying a three-course meal.

Sweetheart of the Year Dinner Point San Pablo Yacht Club, 700 W. Cutting, Richmond; (510) 232-1102, www.pointrichmond.com/methodist. Feb. 12, 6:30pm, $35. Honor Pat Dornan at the First United Methodist Church of Richmond’s fun-filled evening of memories and laughter.

Valentine’s Dance 707 W. Hornet, Pier 3, Alameda; (510) 521-8448, www.uss-hornet.org. Feb. 14, 8pm, $40–$75. Don your best ’40s or ’50s attire and dance to jazz and big-band classics aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

FILM, MUSIC, AND PERFORMANCE

Dating, Marriage, Dating Farley’s, 1315 18th St.; www.farleyscoffee.com. Feb. 14, 7:30pm, donations welcome. Get hopped up on coffee while previewing Liz Grant’s new love-and-romance themed stand-up comedy show.

Love Bites Pop Rocks: LGCSF Sings Top-40 Hits of Bitterness and Betrayal Women’s Building, 3543 18th St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.womensbuilding.org. Fri/6, Sat/7, adults-only show Feb. 13, 8pm, $15–$30. Cupid takes a well-deserved beating when the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco presents its sixth annual Valentine’s Day cabaret and musical extravaganza.

Mortified: Doomed Valentine’s Show Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St.; www.makeoutroom.com, www.getmortified.com. Feb. 12, Feb. 13, 8pm, $12–$15. Share the pain, awkwardness, and bad poetry associated with love as performers read from their teen-angst artifacts.

Origins of Love with John Cameron Mitchell Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St.; 863-0611, www.victoriatheatre.org. Fri/13-Sun/15, times vary, $25. Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron presents a romantic potpourri of song, prose, poetry, and film, including a rare chance to hear Mitchell sing selections from Hedwig.

Sexy Valentine’s Erotica Reading Good Vibrations Polk Street Gallery, 1620 Polk; 345-0400, events.goodvibes.com. Fri/6, 6:30pm, free. Enjoy a glass of wine while talented group of local writers read their sexy short stories, frisky flash fiction, passionate poems, and hot haikus.

Spookshow A Go-Go Kimo’s, 1351 Polk; 885-1535, www.kimosbarsf.com. It’s a Valentine’s Day massacre with performances by Dottie Lux, Alotta Boutte, Kitten on the Keys, Lady Satan, Ruby White, and DJ Miz Margo, and films by Val Killmore and Shadow Circus.

Sweet Cookbook Reading and Eating Red Hill Books, 401 Cortland; www.dogearedbooks/redhill. Feb. 13, 7pm, free. Red Hill welcomes chef Mani Niall to read from his new book Sweet!: From Agave Nectar to Turbinado, as well as share some of his treats.

BAY AREA

Hearts Gathering King Middle School Auditorium, 1781 Rose, Berk.; Feb. 14, 8pm, $15–$20. Enjoy an evening of poetry and music with Diane di Prima, Michael McClure, California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, and former Poet Laureate Al Young performing with bassist Dan Robbins.

ART/FASHION EVENTS

I Love You Because … Design Guild Gallery, 427 Bryant; www.ilyb.org. Feb. 14, 8pm, $10. Celebrate V-Day at the closing party for photographer and TransportedSF visionary Alexander Warnow’s collaborative photo project exploring why people love who they do. (You can also view the photos at the gallery Wed.-Sat., 12-6pm, starting Feb. 5.)

Love Sick II Muse Studios, 224 Sixth St.; www.lovesickfashion.com. Feb. 14, 7pm, $15–$20. Find flirty fashions and lascivious lingerie at this trunk-and-runway show featuring Hide & Seek Lingerie, Ape’ritif Lingerie, Miss Velvet Cream, and more. A portion of proceeds from tickets and kissing booth benefit The Riley Center, a local domestic violence shelter.

CLASSES, LECTURES, AND WORKSHOPS

Cooking Crush for Singles Crushpad Winery, 2573 Third St.; 1-888-907-2665, www.partiesthatcook.com. Feb. 12, 6:30-9pm, $95. Singles in their 30s and 40s are invited to mix and mingle as they tour the winery, share a nibble and a glass of wine, and pair up for cooking lessons.

The Origins of Love and Love’s Expression Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; 561-0360, www.exploratorium.edu. Feb. 14, 2pm, with museum admission. Dr. Thomas Lewis offers a Darwinian twist on modern romance, exploring the psychobiology behind human intimacy.

Valentine’s Aphrodisiac Chef Joe’s Culinary Salon, 16 a/b Sanchez; 626-4379, www.theculinarysalon.com. Feb. 14, 11am-1:30pm, $75. Join expert (and hilarious) Chef Joe for a course in cooking food that’ll get you in the mood, including oyster’s mignonette, asparagus in puff pastry, and chocolate fondue.

BAY AREA

Sound Healing for Relationships and Interpersonal Communication Tian Gong International Foundation, 830 Bancroft, Lotus Room 114, Berk.; (510) 883-1920, www.tiangong.org. Feb. 13, 7-8:30pm, $5–$10. Get ready for reutf8g at this qigong practice dedicated to energetically healing relationships, including Celestial Song and Love Activations for soul-to-soul communication.

Revolutionary Love Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, UC Berkeley campus, Berk.; ewocc.berkeley.edu. Explore the foundations of self-love with workshops, music, dancing, discussion, and a keynote address by Cherrie Moraga during the 24th Empowering Women of Color Conference.

Valentine’s Day at Habitot Children’s Museum 2065 Kittredge, Berk.; (510) 647-1111, www.habitot.org. Mon/9-Feb. 14, regular admission. Young children can create heart-themed art for loved ones. Visitors who bring craft supplies get free adult admission.

Wholeness Thru Relationship Center for Transformative Change, 2584 Martin Luther King Jr., Berk.; (510) 549-3733, transformativechange.org. Feb. 14, 7am-4pm, $35–$50. Invite a friend, ally, or someone with whom you’re having a hard time to this daylong workshop about developing relationships with yourself, your loved ones, and your community.

Check out more Valentine’s Day events listings on our SEX SF blog.

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

Isn’t it ironic?

February 3, 2009

› culture@sfbg.com

Under harsh, clinical lighting, with a background cloaked in darkness, a zaftig, heavily tattooed woman fellates an enormous and alarmingly hairless penis. The hairless penis ejaculates, and a ominous computer voice intones that dribbling cum stains resemble "writing in Arabic, or sometimes Sanskrit." As the woman stares at the cum, the voice dramatically pronounces that "if she could learn to read that writing, she would know her … entire … future." The penis writes a tiny bit more Sanskrit, and the scene fades to black.

What is this? It’s not Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1963). It’s the opening blow-job scene from a movie called Hospital, produced by Vivid Alt, an imprint of the mainstream porn production studio Vivid. Vivid Alt produces alternative pornography, or "subcultural erotica." Altporn is, on a basic level, porn that features models who are representatives of real-life subcultures like goth, punk, rave, emo, rockabilly, and hipster. Instead of buxom blondes who appear to have traipsed out of the Playboy Mansion on a cloud of pink boas, altporn features models who are often tattooed, pierced, and generous with the DIY Manic Panic hair dye. In a weird porn-imitating-life-imitating-porn switch, two big stars of altporn, Sasha Grey and Charlotte Stokely, currently star in campaigns for American Apparel.

Alternative porn is nothing new, at least not since the advent of the Internet. While magazines like Hustler and Playboy have formulated the aesthetic of mainstream print pornography, the Internet created a democratic space inside which divergent interpretations of sexuality could be easily presented. Blue Blood is generally credited as launching counterculture erotica in 1992 with the glossy, erotic zine that featured punks, goths, and erotic fiction. But Altporn did not take hold on a large scale until the late 1990s with Web sites like GothicSluts and EroticBPM. By the time alt-erotica site SuicideGirls appeared in 2001 (not quite full-blown porn, but a contributor to the altporn genre just the same), altporn was a full-fledged subset of porn. Today there are hundreds of altporn Web sites, with names like Crazybabes, Burning Angel, Broken Dollz, Razor Dolls, Supercult, and DeviantNation.

For Eon McKai, founder of Vivid Alt, porn is an intensely personal form of expression. "I’d say at no time — especially at Vivid Alt — no one is told to make a certain type of movie that isn’t coming from some place inside of them." McKai states that he and other altporn directors are merely "expressing the aesthetic that they find in their life, that they live in their life." In fact, many people involved in the altporn industry believe that what they are creating is a meaningful form of personal expression. Most people involved in altporn view their work as fundamentally different than mainstream pornography. Cutter, of AltPorn.net, explains, "AltPorn makes the trends and porn-porn tends to follow them. Traditional porn is conservative in a weird insular way. It tends to copy outside things." Cutter doesn’t think that altporn appropriates or copies from existing subcultures. He and others view altporn as being organic, DIY, independent, and fundamentally authentic.

All alternative subcultures are inherently interested in the notion of authenticity, and particularly in determining that which constitutes genuine membership into the group. Maintaining authenticity is a crucial part of how subcultures survive. Because subcultures are groups that are in part defined by their opposition to the mainstream, they are innately concerned with the "authentic" or original moment of resistance. Members of the altporn community are just as interested in the notion of genuine membership as the subcultures they depict. Eon McKai vehemently appeals, "We are a part of the subcultures that we represent, so if you look at the people who are behind it, I think you’ll find that they are pure to the street, and everything is authentic and this is who we are. We are just making porn about it, and this happens to be who we are. It’s really artist and filmmakers who make porn who are really expressing the aesthetic that they find in their life, that they live in their life." But what, really, is authentic porn? Isn’t a bona fide cumshot enough to prove authenticity? Eon McKai’s own name is a point toward the absurd, as his moniker is a play on the name Ian McKaye, the Fugazi and Minor Threat frontman who was a leader of the straight-edge movement that rejects alcohol, drugs, and casual sex.

From what I gathered from those in the altporn community, authenticity necessitates that creators of altporn be actual members of the subcultures they represent on camera. Smith elaborates, "All the originators in this genre were driven to create sexual media that appealed to their own community and their own communities’ aesthetics. So, the goths created goth erotica and the punks created punk erotica and the ravers created raver erotica. So, on an aesthetic level, altporn offers an alternative look, as well as the community interactivity, to prove it’s authenticity." Whether they are "true" punks, goths, or hipsters, shouldn’t really matter if the work speaks for itself, right?

It wasn’t until after I watched hipster porn videos like Sugar Town and Honey Bunny that I realized why altporn needs to paint itself as authentic. Smith puts it best when he says, "Without genuine subcultural attributes, it quickly becomes self parody." For porn that banks on its subcultural attributes, being perceived as inauthentic means dismissed as a joke. Of all forms of cinema, porn — with its skeletally thin plots, poverty of character development, and cheap production values — is most vulnerable to lampoon. For those who have ever watched porn, I am sure you know that embarrassed, cringey, oh-my-god-ew feeling of watching a particularly ludicrous moment in any scene. That feeling is magnified tenfold when watching a hipster porno that features stars discussing Sartre while wearing nothing but tube socks, such as in Honey Bunny.

While altporn might have originated under the auspice of DIY amateurism, it has proven to be lucrative and, as a result, has carved a niche for itself in the porn market. Because of the push to earn money, altporn has become less concerned with representing certain aesthetics than it is with latching on to new trends and then marketing them to get more customers. Annaliese of Gods Girls reflects, "I think that altporn will always be a representation of what is in-the-now for the customer that it is appealing to, the models that it features and the culture that it represents. The Y generation are furious followers of now trends in fashion, art, music, film, etc., and our site is a reflective of those nuances. Altporn will go where ever the models go and will evolve as the culture evolves. I personally see fewer and fewer applications from stereotypically ‘goth’ models, so perhaps that look has become less trendy." What’s the next big thing in altporn? Hipsters.

It seems like everything is getting hipstered out these days. From clothing to music to even the rebranding of the Pepsi logo, everything is getting a hipster makeover. Porn is no exception. If you look at the logo for Vivid Alt, you’ll notice that it’s tricked out to resemble an Urban Outfitters catalog. In the videos, the actresses are decked out in American Apparel. Hipster culture subsumes and dismantles the aesthetics of popular culture, appropriates its sincerity, and transforms it into a pastiche of irony. Likewise, hipster porn subsumes and dismantles the aesthetics of hipster culture, appropriates its irony, and transforms it into something utterly sincere: porn. For what can be more sincere than a cumshot? Is it possible to get ironic oral? Hipsters belong to a subculture that is incredibly concerned with image — and with defining, controlling, and protecting that image. They can now watch as their vaingloriously crafted personae are subsumed by the porn industry and transformed into fetish. How ironic.

Photos, video, and a full interview with altporn director Eon McKai on our new SEX SF blog

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

Letter your love

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February 3, 2009
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› culture@sfbg.com

We usually think of Valentine’s Day gifts in terms of decadent chocolates, lush roses, glittering jewelry, and luxurious lingerie — pretty much everything except, well, valentines. You remember … those cards made out of paper, usually in some shade of red or pink, crowded with hearts, kiss marks, and Xs and Os? People once used them tell their sweeties — or would-be sweeties — how much they cared, before the annual celebration of romance transformed into an expensive dating ritual that requires flowers, chocolates, and fancy dinners.

Now that the economic crisis makes such extravagance imprudent, if not impossible, why not focus on finding an actual valentine for your love this year? Even if your ever-slimming wallet can’t sustain a dozen red roses, a big heart-shaped box of chocolates, and dinner for two at Jardiniere, you can still express your affection with an actual paper note personalized with a sentimental message. But don’t run off to the drugstore and settle for Hallmark cliché — San Francisco has several local, independent retailers with an eye for cards that are stylish, sweet, sentimental, and sexy. You can find just the right valentine to suit whatever your romantic situation may be this year — from casual hook-up to longterm love — if you know where to look.

FINE PRINT

At crisp, cheerful Glen Park boutique Perch (654 Chenery, SF; 415-586-9000, www.perchsf.com), Zoel Fages has harvested a splendid variety of valentines, including a handful of cheeky cards from local letterpress company Old Tom Foolery. These delightful cards use footnotes to clue in that gorgeous, if somewhat dense, special someone you’ve been lusting over. For example: a missive with bright pink letters asking "Will you be my valentine?*" is underscored by slightly smaller letters noting "*FYI: I’m easy." If paper and envelopes aren’t your thing, check out other options, like Moontea Artwork’s plushy hemp cotton pillow, block-printed with a red heart and the words "Je t’aime." It even has a handy pocket on the back, perfect for a handwritten note or a handful of condoms — and for displaying year-round.

SCREEN DREAM

When Cupid shot an arrow through the heart of Matthew Grenby, he used his techie background and design sensibilities to create e-mailable floral love letters for long-distance sweetheart Irene Chen. "When I opened the letter, I was wowed," Chen fondly remembers. "It was a wonderful feeling, like receiving a handwritten note, but it was online." Grenby wooed Lafayette native Chen away from New York and back to the Bay Area, where the couple turned Grenby’s innovative communication idea into e-stationary business iomoi (www.iomoi.com). A one-year, $15 subscription lets users select design templates, colors, and scripty fonts for classy e-cards. Sure, the concept is not exactly groundbreaking, but e-stationery is certainly more aesthetically pleasing than your standard box of Gmail text. And the lucky recipient will appreciate that you put time and thought into your presentation as well as your words. Plus, e-valentines are eco-friendly. "When people send e-stationary, they aren’t having to buy paper and don’t need a postman to drive around and use up gas," notes Grenby. Best of all, each of this year’s English-garden inspired designs — ornate floral borders, pale pink bumblebees, and crowned hearts — will be available in iomoi’s send-for-free section.

VICTORIAN ELEGANCE

Antique European sentimental artifacts fill every worn wooden drawer and graceful glass countertop at whimsical curiosity shop Gypsy Honeymoon (3599 24th St., SF. 415-821-1713), where purveyor Gabrielle Ekedal has stocked up on the prettiest paperies from the past. Pluck a heartstring or two with a historical hand-tinted photocard from 1900s, where suited men with perfectly parted hair gaze at coiffed women in frilly frocks surrounded by a shower of pink flowers. Or pick out a pair of tiny paper hands, holding little cards inscribed with sweet sayings like "I live on love for thee." Our favorite? An embroidered souvenir postcard from the 1950’s which entices you to lift the billowing maroon skirt of a Spanish senorita standing on the seashore, under which you’ll find a little pair of lace panties. Scandalous!

MODERN AGE

If you’re searching for a more conventional card, an extensive selection of the classic heart-covered red and pink greetings can be found at Marina stationary shop Union Street Papery (2162 Union, SF. 415-563-0200, www.unionstreetpapery.com). But owner Stacey Bush has several modern valentines for less formal loves as well. A card whose cover says "I like hanging out with you" — and whose interior qualifies "naked" — will let your current casual hook-up partner know you’d like more of the same.

CUPID’S SECRET

Some emotions are so intense that they can be handled only by the eyes of your lover. Invest in the Secret Love Letters Box from Chronicle Books to secure your most sensuous sentiments. Complete with both regular and invisible ink, old-fashioned nibbed pens, thick cream stationary, and tales of star-crossed lovers to refer to, this correspondence kit is worthy of a Romeo and Juliet romance. Pick one up at Mission Street print shop Autumn Express (2071 Mission, SF. 415-824-2222, www.autumnexpress.com).

HOT FOR TEACHER

Peruse some of the tissue-thin vintage schoolhouse greetings resting among the delicate dishes and colorful aprons at Russian Hill’s old-new emporium Molte Cose (2044 Polk, SF. 415-921-5374). Retired San Francisco schoolteacher Ms. Bonar sold the lot of valentines that students had given her from 1920 to 1960 to proprietor Teresa Nittolo. One of the more suggestive selections shows a pudgy blonde boy, apple in hand, smiling and standing over the words "I may not be your teacher’s pet, but you’re my pet teacher." Another has a rosy-cheeked girl holding up the ruffle of her skirt, asking, "How can you resist my endearing young charms?" There is something irresistible — if not odd — about these sweet, simple valentines.

More Valentine’s shopping and style ideas, plus Laura Peach’s "Objects of Obsession" feature on our Pixel Vision blog

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

“Coraline”

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February 3, 2009
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REVIEW Coraline is a great film to take your kids to, provided you’re willing to let them sleep in your bed for a night. Like the Neil Gaiman novel it’s based on, this is a fairy tale with a dark side, an Alice in Wonderland–style fable that doesn’t dumb things down for its target audience. But then, neither did Alice. Dakota Fanning voices Coraline, a lonely, blue-haired little girl in search of adventure. She finds it, and them some, when she travels into bizarro world by way of a tiny door in her house. There she finds her Other Mother (Teri Hatcher), who seems nice enough — except that she wants to sew buttons into Coraline’s eyes. Soon the precocious girl has embarked on a mission to save her kidnapped parents, some old school ghosts, and, of course, herself. The animation style is an updated version of that found in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), also from director Henry Selick. There’s a richness and depth to Coraline‘s world, which is only emphasized by the nifty 3-D effects. Inevitably, this Coraline is softer than Gaiman’s source material, but it’s spooky enough to please both fans and newcomers. Despite the lack of big scares, it leaves you with a lingering unease. And possibly a fear of buttons.

CORALINE opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters.

Festival for Freedom

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February 3, 2009
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PREVIEW It doesn’t take six degrees of separation to link the new breed of local bands performing at the University of San Francisco’s Festival for Freedom benefit show. They’re an interwoven clan of West Coast outfits with garage rock tendencies and psychedelic leanings. And they’re just about all in each other’s MySpace top eight. If I had to label, I’d consider the term "flower punks" for ’em. I mean, c’mon, San Francisco has a huge Haight-Ashbury legacy to live up to. So, in the spirit of hippiedom and smiling on your brother, the undergrads from the university’s Erasmus Community has decided to take on the cause of fighting modern-day slavery and is planning an immersion trip to Uganda and Rwanda, where they will focus their efforts on rehabilitating child soldiers.

This benefit show for that trip is a culmination of the group’s efforts in social justice awareness and activism, combined with a dose of peacenik-punk rock. Taking the stage on campus: Ty Segall, Man/Miracle, and a very Birthday Party-era Nick Cave sounding Depth Charge Revolt, among others. The bands will bring the noise, so you should bring your bucks to help support this worthwhile cause for the marginalized children of Uganda.

FESTIVAL FOR FREEDOM: USF BENEFIT FOR THE REHABILITATION OF UGANDAN CHILD SOLDIERS With A Quantum Visionary, Depth Charge Revolt, Travis Hayes, Ghosttown Refugees, the Vox Jaguars, James Rabbit, Ty Segall, and Man/Miracle. Fri/6, 6:30 p.m., $5–$8. McClaren 250, Phelan Building, University of San Francisco campus, SF. (831) 588-3537

Love potion

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February 3, 2009
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› culture@sfbg.com

According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite emerged from the foaming sea bearing foods, drinks, and herbs that stimulated sexual desire. While at first this tale led to the belief in ocean-derived aphrodisiacs such as oysters, by now the net has been flung much wider, and it seems that anything remotely suggestive is touted as a love potion. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we consulted Bay Area sexologist Joy Nordenstrom, who specializes in aphrodisiac-based dinner parties, to help us sort through all of the chemical compounds thought to rev our engines. Here’s our guide to 10 love drugs that’ll put you in the mood.

ASPARAGUS

The law of likeness, or "sympathetic magic" as it’s sometimes called, goes something like this: if it looks like a sex organ, it’ll make you horny. Clearly phallic in shape, this sexy stalk is not only a psychological aphrodisiac, but also a chemical one. Asparagus — which you can get in season at Zuckerman’s Farm at Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market (1 Ferry Building, SF. 415-291-3276, www.ferryplazafarmersmarket.com), contains substantial amounts of aspartic acid, an amino acid that neutralizes excess amounts of ammonia, which makes us tired and sexually disinterested. This nutritious vegetable also contains asparagine, a diuretic that excites the urinary passages. For a truly erotic side dish, try serving creamed asparagus alongside an Italian sausage and a pair of Yukon Gold potatoes.

CAVIAR

Rare. Expensive. Mouth-watering. One of the essential food groups of czars and czarinas, "harlot’s eggs" contain a high level of phosphorous, a chemical that’s essential for the healthy production of love juice. Set the mood by serving this pickled delicacy in a silver caviar presentoir with chilled vodka or champagne. Better still, skip the presentoir and invite your paramour to Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Café (1 Ferry Building #12, SF. 415-288-8630, www.tsarnicoulai.com), the company that pioneered sustainable domestic sturgeon farming back in 1979.

CHILI PEPPERS

No doubt about it, a chili pepper will fire up your sex drive. Capsaicin, the chemical responsible for hotness, gets the heart pumping, the blood flowing, and the adrenaline coursing through your veins. For the very best of these sexy stimulants, head over to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building on Saturdays, where you’ll find a dazzling array of fresh peppers at the Tierra Vegetables stand (1 Ferry Building, SF. 707-837-8366; www.tierravegetables.com). For a highly concentrated dose, try their sizzling hot C. Chinese chili jam. Yow!

CHOCOLATE

Legend has it that Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, drank 50 cups of chocolate each day to better serve his harem of 600. Soon after Montezuma offered Cortés a cup, chocolate arrived in Spain, where it was sweetened with cane sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon — and promptly denounced by the Spanish clergy. Besides serving up a jolt of caffeine and a taste that everyone loves, chocolate also contains phenylethylamine (PEA), the molecule that makes you feel like you’re in love. For "obsessively good" chocolate with a social conscience, head over to TCHO (17 Pier 45, SF. 415-981-0189, www.tcho.com), where you can pair fruity, nutty, and earthy chocolates with a piping cup of Blue Bottle coffee.

GINSENG

If you’ve ever ventured into a Chinese medicine shop, you’ve probably passed a barrel or two of a fleshy, tan-colored, striated root called ginseng. This root, according to Chinese herbalists, aids the kidney and the liver, which are the organs responsible for fertility and sexual arousal. "The kidney is the body’s reservoir of energy," explained herbalist Efrem Korngold, Lac (Chinese Medicine Works , 1201 Noe, SF. 415-285-0931, www.chinese-medicine-works.com). "Under a great deal of stress, you have to dip into these reserves often, and the body goes into survival mode. When living to just survive, there’s not a lot of juice left over for sex or procreation." Brew a pot of ginseng and replenish your juices.

HORNY GOAT WEED

Horny Goat Weed — or Chinese Viagra, as it’s often called — is a time-tested aphrodisiac. According to legend, a Chinese goat herder first discovered it when he noticed his flock getting randy after grazing on the herb. The active ingredient, epicedium, increases the essential energy (ching) needed for sexual vitality. Although you can easily buy a box of Horny Goat Weed tea over the counter at places like Great China Herb Co. (857 Washington, SF; 415-982-2195), don’t take it without first consulting an herbalist like Tim Khang, Lac. (Tim J. Khang Acupuncture and Herbs, 4002 California, SF; 415-680-8620). Since the brew tastes rather bitter on its own, try mixing it with honey or agave nectar.

OUZO

For an impromptu lesson on love, head over to Greek Imports Inc (6524 Mission, Daly City. 650-994-3321, www.greekimportsinc.com), where charming shop owner Elias Tsiknis will tell you how to set the mood, Greek style. "In order to climb the ladder and go to the very top," he’ll explain, punctuating each word with a backhanded wave of his fingers, "you have to climb the steps one by one." The most important of these steps is taking a shot of ouzo, an anise-flavored liquor, which is the national drink of Greece and, according to Tsiknis, the world’s most potent love brew. But this is not just national pride speaking — it’s science, pure and simple: the anise flavor contains anethole, also known as a chemical precursor for paramethoxyamphetamine (PMA), a.k.a. ecstasy. While you’re there, take a moment to admire Tsiknis’ extensive collection of Aphrodite sculptures.

OYSTERS

Perhaps the most potent of all aphrodisiacs, oysters were the infallible recipe of Casanova, who famously seduced two women at once with this sensuous shellfish. Oysters are the world’s most concentrated natural source of zinc, the key ingredient to a healthy prostate and the production of sperm. Oysters come in various tastes and textures: if you like a clean, smooth flavor with a briny finish, try Evening Cove oysters; for a buttery texture with a sweet, slightly fruity flavor sample a Kumamoto; and for a sweet, fruity taste with a touch of watermelon and cantaloupe, try the mollusks from Point Reyes, our local oyster farm. Yabbies Coastal Kitchen (2237 Polk, SF. 415-474-4088, www.yabbiesrestaurant.com) serves these varieties, and many more.

SPANISH FLY

Remember "Brass Monkey," that Beastie Boys hit from Licensed to Ill: "Girl walked by, she gave me the eye / I reached in the locker, grabbed the Spanish Fly / I put it with the Monkey, mixed it in the cup / Went over to the girl, "Yo baby, what’s up?" What the Brooklyn boys’ lyrics refer to is a potentially deadly (and, in the U.S., illegal) aphrodisiac made from the ground-up bodies of tiny iridescent blister beetles. Although Spanish fly has a 5,000-year-old history as an aphrodisiac, both for humans and farm animals, it can cause permanent damage to the kidneys and genitals if taken in excess. Let the buyer beware!

ZZZS

Though it may seem counterintuitive, sleeping is one of the best aphrodisiacs around. Nordenstrom says if you’re not getting seven or eight hours of sleep nightly, it’s time to put aside the chocolate and oysters, and rekindle your passion for old Mr. Sandman.

More herbs and food to get you in the mood from Ann Sims on our SEX SF blog

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

“The Bird and the Bee”

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February 3, 2009
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PREVIEW For a band that has leased tracks to Grey’s Anatomy, Sex and the City: the Movie (2008), and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), the Bird and the Bee curiously still bear the burden of being just one buzz band among the ravenous, clamoring multitudes. Nonetheless, the duo’s brand of frothy pop has gained traction among various species of photosphere hipsters.

According to their nonchalant MySpace bio, Inara George and Greg Kurstin met, hit it off over jazz standards, played a few, and then never looked back. An established producer, Kurstin has collaborated with artists running the gamut from Beck to Britney Spears. The Bird and the Bee’s self-titled, 2007 Blue Note debut garnered attention for the pair, thanks to songs like "I Hate Camera," a capering, catchy track with glinting synths offset by playful electronic noodlings, The music, which the band itself has described as sounding like a futuristic 1960s American film set in Brazil, fuses Kurstin’s retro inclinations and suave jazz accents with George’s sweet sing-song to darling, almost uniformly excellent results. With George’s bold Cleopatra chop and the twosome’s taste for playfully kitschy promo pics, you can’t say the kids lack style, either.

With the musical intelligentsia stroking their graying beards over the pass/fail results of the second album’s litmus test, the consensus is that new record, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future (Blue Note), delivers its bubbly pop goods with minimal deviation from what’s already working. It’ll all be up for examination at the Independent.

THE BIRD AND THE BEE With Obi Best. Mon/2, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422, www.theindependentsf.com

Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes

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February 3, 2009
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PREVIEW What lengths will you go to for your art? If you’re a castrato it’s probably a sore point. For Mexico’s internationally renowned experimental theater company, Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes (Certain Inhabitants Theatre), it’s the beginning of a lush and lively investigation into the complexities and contradictions of cultural power and refinement. Drawing from a variety of theatrical styles and incorporating multidisciplinary performers, director Claudio Valdés Kuri and writer Jorge Kuri have crafted a time-tripping escapade across three centuries of culture and cruelty.

Siamese twins — a surgeon and opera columnist in a single ungainly suit and two Louis XIV wigs — lead a journey that begins in the decadent 18th century court society of the Old World, in the throes of a circle that fed ravenously on the castrated children of the poor and elevated them to superstardom by the preservation and cultivation of their fine prepubescent sopranos. With Monsters and Prodigies: A History of the Castrati, Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes the company makes its long-overdue Bay Area premiere, courtesy of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in what promises to be a resonant, dramatic outing whose operatic airs — in Spanish and Italian with English supertitles — hit an unfaltering high C for cutting, carnivalesque satire.

TEATRO DE CIERTOS HABITANTES Thurs/5–Sat/7, 8 p.m., $25–$30. Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

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