Volume 45 [2010–11]

Where the Magik happens

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Where the Magik happens

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Because of the rusty pieces of corrugated sheet metal crudely affixed to its exterior, I almost mistake Tiny Telephone, a recording studio, for a very large, dilapidated storage unit. But on a brick-red door, alphabet letter magnets spell out “tiny,” and only bits of dried glue and fragments of “telephone” remain. This must be it.

Through the door, a two-wall art installation made of reclaimed redwood (by resident artist Claire Mack) in the lounge/kitchen area catches my eye. I’ve seen pictures of it on the studio’s website. This is it. It’s easy to imagine Death Cab For Cutie or San Francisco songstress Thao drinking beer, shooting the shit, and jamming in this room.

Once I plop down on the couch, pop-folk icon John Vanderslice, owner and manager of Tiny Telephone, pulls up a chair. Minna Choi, the artistic director of Magik*Magik Orchestra, the studio’s official house orchestra, takes a seat on a tan area rug.

“It’s probably like how everyone feels when you’re from San Francisco and you move to the East Coast and there are no good taquerias,” Vanderslice says, laughing, when I ask him about the history of Tiny Telephone. “I was in a small local band,” he elaborates. “We wanted to make a record. We toured every local studio. It was like there were only either rehearsal places with garbage on the floor, or posh, unaffordable, hardwood-floor, uptight-owner situations. There was nothing in the middle.”

In September 1997, Vanderslice opened Tiny Telephone to give independent musicians the opportunity to make affordable hi-fi recordings. Magik*Magik Orchestra entered the picture in 2008. “We wanted to simplify the process of incorporating classically-trained musicians into a nonclassical environment,” Choi says. “So I e-mailed [John].”

“It was like genius!” Vanderslice blurts out.

Adding the orchestra to Tiny Telephone is in tandem with Vanderslice’s evolution as an artist. On 2004’s Cellar Door (Barsuk), he strayed from electric guitar and used acoustic guitar and keyboards. “[Electric guitars] really take up a lot of territory,” he explains. “It’s a little bit like a cock-block. [Keyboards] can sit in one area, and then you can put something directly above them and below them in the frequency spectrum, so there’s plenty of room for, like, a French horn.” This year’s White Wilderness (Dead Oceans), finds Vanderslice’s tenor accompanied by acoustic guitar and a 19-piece ensemble gleaned from Magik*Magik Orchestra’s roughly 180-person membership.

“It’s great to go in a different direction,” Vanderslice says. “It’s great to move on.”

We all stand to start the tour. As I walk across the aqua blue floor, my hand grazes Fender amps that line the walkway to the main recording room. Inside, it’s dimly lit. When Vanderslice flips a switch, a white deer head becomes illuminated — like a statue of an idol — by Christmas lights strung on a pump organ. In one breath, he enumerates some of the equipment that is available: 14 guitar amps, a Hammond b3, a grand piano, keyboards, an EMT reverb plate. The lexicon of music recording equipment is dizzying. Vanderslice points to the walls: “These are all untreated cedar panels. This is cotton batting.” As we leave the room, he pauses to mention that the studio has been booked for more than 400 days in a row.

We climb a few rickety stairs to enter the control room, where we’re joined by Ian Pellicci, Tiny Telephone’s house engineer. With its UV meters, faders, and colored knobs, the room’s Neve console, built in 1976 for the BBC in London, looks like a prop taken from the bridge of the original Star Trek‘s Enterprise. This is the tape machine,” says Choi. “I’m proud to say that I was here when they put all of the light bulbs in, then all of a sudden it came alive like Wall-E.”

To encourage analog recording, Tiny Telephone provides free two-inch tape to clients. “Not that digital is terrible. But the technology has a ways to go,” Pellicci says. “There’s a greater dimension to the sound [of analog].”

Next we shuffle into the isolation room. “We’re basically in an anechoic isolation room where people can do vocals, drums — ” Vanderslice begins to explain. But with the room’s door open, I can hear the raucous sounds of construction taking place down the hallway.

Next door, what once was an auto shop is being converted into a separate studio, a “B Room” Opening in June, the B Room will be set up as an arts nonprofit modeled after The Bay Bridged and 826 Valencia. Unlike Tiny Telephone, which costs $350 per day plus engineers, the B Room will cost $200 daily. “We wanted to give bands a low-cost option to record on a tape machine, on a real console with microphones, in a space where they can make as much noise as they want,” says Vanderslice.

“With this other price point, [Vanderslice] is tapping into another group of bands and artists,” Choi adds. “There are probably so many diamonds in the rough — crazy talent waiting to be discovered.”

As the tour winds down, Vanderslice shares his vision of Tiny Telephone and the B Room: “We’re going to put a picnic table outside, a basketball hoop — we’re going to build community. And that’s what it’s all about.”

Butch blooms

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Butch blooms

culture@sfbg.com

V-DAY So you want to buy a nice little floral arrangement for that hot JD Samson look-alike who works behind the butcher counter — or perhaps you’re having a hard time picking out a rose for the tall, dark flannel-clad bear you met on  Fuzzy4Fuzzy.com. Does ze even like flowers? Hell, it can even be rough finding the right bloom for your beloved bio male. Anyone who has ever been romantically involved with a masculine-presenting honey bun knows that carnations, lingerie, and other frilly V-Day accoutrement just ain’t cuttin’ it. So what kind of bouquet can you give a butch? Something spiky? Flowers made from aged leather? Pieces of wood? We asked the city’s florists for their best bets for the rough and tumble.

 

CHURCH STREET FLOWERS

Stephanie Foster is one of three owners at Church Street Flowers, a shop that does made-to-order arrangements featuring locally grown botanicals. “We do bouquets for masculine people all the time,” she tells us. “Guys love getting flowers too.” Foster recommends “brighter colors, like orange, yellow, green, or white.” And less is more when you want to impress a tough type. “As opposed to something very feminine and garden-y, we’d do something simpler. Plus, in our shop you’ll probably find things other places don’t carry, like seed pods that hold a structural quality instead of a flowery quality.”

212 Church, SF. (415) 553-7762, www.churchstflowers.com

 

PAXTON GATE

We were sure that this Mission gem — SF’s O.G. go-to for fanciful taxidermy, flora, and low maintenance landscape design — would have the goods for area hombres, and it didn’t disappoint. Come V-Day, Paxton Gate will be selling special holiday arrangements fit for a butch, each complete with a shiny preserved beetle garnish. “We wanted the arrangements to be long-lasting, so we’ll incorporate some rugged South African plants like proteas, maybe succulents, and some dried components,” says floral designer Sean Quigley. The store will be bundling its buggy blooms in advance for lovers on the go. At $38 a bunch, they’ll be a little pricey — but think of what you’ll save on your butcher bill.

824 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-1872, www.paxtongate.com

 

THE FRENCH TULIP

“I’m from Eastern Europe,” says owner Andre Abramov in a phone interview. When asked what flowers he would recommend for a dude, Abramov immediately recommended orchids. “In Greek, ‘orchid’ translates to ‘testicle.’ That would be perfect for a man.” If you’re not sold on highlighting your valentine’s testicles (or lack thereof), Abramov also stands by roses, cala lilies, and anthurium lilies for the butch in your life. “They’re strong, colorful, and they make a very big statement.” Just like your lumberjack love.

3903 24th St., SF. (415) 647-8661, www.frenchtulip.com

 

THE FLOWER GIRL

Mieko Takahashi Obermuller has owned and operated this Inner Sunset neighborhood floral shop since 1978. She understands the butch bloom conundrum: “First of all, tropical flowers are very bold,” she says. “Birds of paradise would look nice with some interesting greens, and I love proteas.” Obermuller, who specializes in Eastern floral design, says arrangement is crucial. “You have to know how to put it together. One, two, or three orchids with some greens — it’s simple but it makes a statement. I can take feminine flowers like tiger lilies, blue irises, or curly willows but still design the arrangement for a masculine look.” It’s not quite studded leather, but it sounds like something that’d look great on that meat counter.

1127 Irving, SF. (415) 731-0230, www.flowergirlsf.com

Delicious love

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Delicious love

V-DAY What if this year Valentine’s paired romance with a visit to one of SF’s best new restaurants? Here are new additions to the local dining scene in 2010 that will please food lovers (and who isn’t, in this city?) while offering a range of price points in love-worthy settings.

 

FOR AMOROUS EXPERIMENTALISTS: COMMONWEALTH

Anthony Myint and chef Jason Fox are reinventing fine dining. Your edgy foodie date will be impressed. Myint was a mastermind behind Mission Street Food and Mission Chinese Food. Here at Commonwealth with Chef Fox, he delves into deliciously experimental creations with a fresh, unpretentious approach. And shockingly, no dish costs more than $16. Dine on goat cooked in hay while sipping a liquid nitrogen aperitif, finish with porcini thyme churros with huckleberry jam. You may be packed in tight in the spare, modern space, but you’ll both leave glowing from stimulating flavors and presentation.

2224 Mission, SF. (415) 355-1500, www.commonwealthsf.com

 

FOR OLD WORLD ROMANTICS: COMSTOCK SALOON

The Barbary Coast comes alive in this bar-restaurant gem that feels like a timeless classic … and isn’t too taxing on the wallet. From Victorian wallpaper to restored dark woods, the spirit and history of the space entice. Filling up on rich beef shank and bone marrow potpie or bites like whiskey-cured gravlax on rye toast is happy respite on chilly nights. Pair with a perfect Martinez cocktail or a barkeep’s whimsy (bartender’s creation based on your preferences), and see if your date doesn’t cozy up with you next to that wood-burning stove. Comstock exemplifies the best of what a modern-day saloon with Old World sensibilities can be.

155 Columbus, SF. (415) 617-0071, www.comstocksaloon.com

 

FOR LOVING LOCAVORES: GATHER

Gather is the best thing to come along in Berkeley in ages, and ideal for your local or locavore-y date. It reads typical Bay Area yet goes further: local, sustainable, organic everything, including spirits, wine, and beer. A rounded room with open kitchen is holistically casual and urban. All the raves you’ve heard about the vegan “charcuterie” are true. Marvel at the artistic, affordable array of five different vegetable presentations on a wood slab, like roasted baby beets with fennel, dill, blood orange, horseradish almond puree, and pistachio. Executive chef Sean Baker and team do meat right, too, whether sausage/pork belly/chile pizza or house-cured ham topped with crescenza cheese. Gather displays an ethos and presentation one can only dream of becoming a standard everywhere.

2200 Oxford, Berk. (510) 809-0400, www.gatherrestaurant.com

 

FOR BEEF-LOVING BEAUS: THE SYCAMORE

Skip the Valentine’s Day’s hoopla and take your sweetie out for a night that will make you feel like kids again — to the Sycamore, which offers a delicious “famous” roast beef sandwich. A glorified Arby’s staple on grocery store-reminiscent sesame buns with BBQ sauce and mayo, the sandwich salutes the native Bostonian owners’ roots. But the roast beef sandwich isn’t the only item that shines at this humble Mission eatery, which doubles as a cozy beer and wine bar. Pork belly-stuffed donut holes in Maker’s Mark bourbon glaze are pretty near orgasmic. A slab of pan-fried Provolone cheese is enlivened by chimichurri sauce and roasted garlic bulb. I applaud its all-day hours and prices under $9.

2140 Mission, SF. (415) 252 7704, www.thesycamoresf.com

 

FOR PURIST PARAMOURS: HEIRLOOM CAFÉ

The menu (less than 10 starters and entrees) is so simple I almost got bored reading it. But each dish served in this Victorian-yet-modern dining room was so well executed that my skepticism vanished. More than a little Chez Panisse in its ethos, Heirloom will delight that special someone with a purist take on food, with ultra fresh, pristine ingredients, impeccably prepared. Savor a mountain of heirloom tomatoes piled over toasted bread with pickled fennel, cucumbers, and feta, or a flaky bacon onion tart loaded with caramelized onions. Heirloom’s added strength is owner Matt Straus’ thoughtfully chosen wine lists covering wines from Lebanon to Spain.

2500 Folsom, SF. (415) 821-2500, www.heirloom-sf.com

 

FOR SENTIMENTAL GOURMANDS: SONS & DAUGHTERS

Like Commonwealth, Sons and Daughters is another opening where young, visionary chefs create fine molecular fare at reasonable prices ($48 for four-course prix fixe, à la carte from $9-$24). But this space particularly lends itself to romance: intimate, black and white, with shimmering chandeliers and youthful, European edge. Dishes are inventive and ambitious, like the highly acclaimed eucalyptus herb salad of delicate curds and whey over quinoa, or the seared foie gras accompanied by a glass of tart yogurt and Concord grape granita. It’s a place to hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes while never neglecting your taste buds.

708 Bush St., SF. (415) 391-8311, www.sonsanddaughterssf.com

 

FOR NEW YORKER HEARTS: UNA PIZZA NAPOLETANA

Yes, this one’s casual, and you’ll have to wait outside in line. But if your sweetie has New York roots, she will thank you. Pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri closed his beloved New York City institution, Una Pizza, and moved west. As in NYC, Una Pizza is a one-man show with Mangieri single-handedly crafting each pie (which partly explains the no take-out policy and long waits; popularity accounts for the rest). All this may make it hard to frequent Una Pizza, but if you make the commitment, you will be rewarded with doughy heaven. With only five vegetarian pies, I dream of the Filetti: cherry tomatoes soaking in buffalo mozzarella, accented by garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, basil, and sea salt. On the plus side: all that waiting in line for a hand-made pie will give you and your sweetie pie plenty of time to talk.

210 11th St., SF. (415) 861-3444, www.unapizza.com/sf

 

FOR AMORE ITALIANO: BARBACCO

True, Barbacco can get obnoxiously noisy and crowded. But it’s a good alternative to its parent restaurant, Perbacco, offering the same outstanding quality at a great value ($3-$14 per dish). For a bustling Italian enoteca-style date, this is the place. Heartwarming food and a thoughtful wine list make it an ideal urban trattoria and a comfortably affordable night out. Order a glass of Lambrusco, the fried brussels sprouts, and raisin and pine nut-accented pork meatballs in a tomato sugo, then marvel at the minimalist bill.

220 California, SF. (415) 955-1919, www.barbaccosf.com

 

FOR YOUR SWEETIE PIE: BAKER AND BANKER

With dark brown walls and booths, the space exudes a warm elegance. Husband and wife team Jeff Banker and Lori Baker get it right from start to finish with his dishes (vadouvan curry cauliflower soup, brioche-stuffed quail in a bourbon-maple glaze) and her memorable desserts (XXX triple dark chocolate layer cake, pumpkin cobbler with candied pumpkin seed ice cream). Extra points if you buy him a box of pastries to go for the next morning from Baker and Banker bakery next door.

1701 Octavia, SF. (415) 351-2500, www.bakerandbanker.com

Local tokens

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Local tokens

V-DAY No need to go far for an anti-lame gift for the Feb. 14. C’mon hot child, live in the city — and snag your valentine a lil’ somethin’ from this list of SF-made gift ideas, sure to show your honey that you care about the local economy as well as that special something you guys have going on.

>> Rickshaw Bags’ precious Pipsqueak handlebar bag ($25) means an end to your valentine fumbling about in their messenger tote for Chapstick or a cell phone. Bike safety: so, so sexy.

Rickshaw Bags, 994 22nd St., SF; (877) 503-9542, www.rickshawbags.com

>> Your love’s got roots, but not without healthy soil. Get a pound of red wigglers ($20) for your favorite gardener from this vermi-composting stay-at-home-mom. Mama’s Worm Composting, available for pick-up in SF.

www.mamaswormcomposting.com

>> Blakely Bass, owner of RAG clothing gallery, makes Native American-inspired leather hair wraps ($15-20) with hides she buys at a SoMa tannery. Not only are the accessories uber local, but they’re beautiful and will be a hit with the long hairs who can’t be bothered with strands in their face.

RAG Residents’ Apparel Gallery, 541 Octavia, SF. (415) 621-7718, www.ragsf.com

>> Convinced your fates are intertwined? Have a batch of customized fortune cookies ($5 for a batch of 100) baked to reflect your bright future together, with a crunch. Same-day printing is available.

Golden Gate Fortune Cookies, 56 Ross, SF. (415) 781-3956

>> We get it: you wanna be original. But hey Juliet, sometimes the tested-and-true got to be that way for a reason, so spring for some chocolate. Sweeten ’em up with some Poco Dolce popcorn toffee squares ($16) — these ain’t your grandma’s box of brittle. Available in various SF grocery stores.

www.pocodolce.com

>> Your baby deserves a nice new ‘fit to step out in. We’re betting the sweet pleats dress ($110) from Noo Works — a chic company that sells its well-fitting, stylin’, yet casual clothes out of its Mission District storefront — will bring some spring to her strut.

Noo Works, 395 Valencia, SF. (415) 821-7623, www.nooworks.com

>> Blossom Organics Pure Pleasure Arousal Gel ($16) has amassed quite a following in the city — which shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, if you can’t make a lube to light up San Franciscans’ x’s and o’s, then we’re going about it all wrong.

Good Vibrations, Various SF locations. www.goodvibes.com

>> No sk8r boy (or boi) is gonna coast off from a love note accompanied by these Spitfire skateboard wheels ($24 for four) — a V-Day gift like these says “I’ll never bolt my ledges.”

DLX Skateboards, 1831 Market, SF. (415) 626-5588, www.dlxsf.com

>> Kitty-cats and doggies need love too! Jeffery’s Natural Pet Foods stocks great options for your four-legged friend — the foods come in raw varieties that go easy on their fuzzy tummies.

Jeffery’s Natural Pet Foods, 3809 18th St., SF. (415) 864-1414 and 1841 Powell, SF. (415) 402-0342, www.jefferysnaturalpetfood.com

>> Zine-and-crafteria Needles and Pens has all sorts of SF-made goodies that look swell wrapped up in red construction paper. Try Matt Furie and Sam Gaskin’s recently released zine Hot Topik ($5) for your boo-boo who is into stoner humor or vinyl heart earrings made from repurposed records ($20) for LP lovers.

Needles and Pens, 3253 16th St., SF. (415) 255-1534, www.needles-pens.com

>> But enough of the hearts and kitty-cats — when do we get to the dead bug gifts? Local jeweler Bug Under Glass makes a surprisingly sweet butterfly wing necklace that’ll give your little love bug ants in their pants — in a good way. Available at various SF stores.

www.bugunderglass.com

>> SF-made fetish wear: a real turn-on for City by the Bay pervs. Hook her with the heartbreaker pasties from Madame S — encourage her to give them a test drive and hey howdy! Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

Madame S, 385 Eighth St., SF. (415) 863-7734, www.madame-s.com

Meet-cute 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Meet-cute 2011

V-DAY Maybe your hands brushed while browsing the vinyl jazz bins at Amoeba. Maybe she caught up with you on the new Valencia Street bike lanes to compliment your ride. Or perhaps your kite strings got entangled on Marina Green one windy afternoon …

For this year’s Valentine’s Issue, we asked our readers in relationships to submit their “meet-cute” stories — the improbable, mystifying, funny, weird, or, yes, mushy ways they met their snuggle bunny. We received dozens of responses, from the heartwarming to the bizarre. It was incredibly hard to choose, but below are our 10 favorites.

We also chose one lucky entrant at random to win a date (dinner for two and a live show) at Yoshi’s San Francisco. Congratulations, Sam Dahan!

 

MISTAKEN MAKE-OUT

Friday the 13th. Full Moon. Make-Out Room in the Mission. I was supposed to meet my roommate’s cute single friends in the front booth, but they were long gone. So I accidentally introduced myself to this pretty lady, thinking she was one of them. Bought drinks. Flirted. “So how long have you worked with Dana?” “Who the heck is Dana?” “Ummm … wanna go out sometime?” Now we’ve been married for seven years.

 

CELL IT, SWEETIE

My cell phone just wouldn’t charge anymore, and I needed a replacement. I walked into my cell phone carrier’s local storefront and spotted a hot “must have” at the end of the counter, who just happened to be matched with me for support on the floor. Due to the nature of the transaction, he didn’t get a commission. But after giving me his card, he soon got a call. Thank goodness my battery was charged! Two years and at least four phones later, he’s still in my cell phone “top five” and he’s No. 1 in my heart.

 

CARNAVAL OF LOVE

There was a big Carnaval party in the Mission, and a friend promised to fix me up with a cute Brazilian musician. They arrived well past midnight, when the party was winding down. The musician was starving after playing a gig. His English was minimal, but so cute with the accent. “There is no food in this house,” he said. “I’ll cook you breakfast,” I said. “To have breakfast, I must sleep in your home,” he said — to which I replied, “I don’t think you’re gonna get much sleep.” Our 20th anniversary is June 21. And yes, I cooked him breakfast … eventually!

 

MORE THAN A-PEELING

He was a San Francisco native, and so was she. They went separately to see live music at the Edinburgh Castle. Sitting next to one another at the bar, they began to chat. In the first 10 minutes, they discovered they had the same favorite movie, Wings of Desire. Before leaving, she gave him her number written on the only thing she had handy — a banana. This March, 10 years later, they will celebrate their tenth “Banana Day”: the anniversary of the day they met.

 

TWO SNAPS UP

I was a nightlife photographer. He was a nightlife promoter and manager. One day, we found ourselves venting to each other about all the drunk people we had to baby-sit all the time. Just as our eyes met, someone threw up at the bar across from us. The rest is history!

 

BOOKED FOR LOVE

It was a normal Saturday afternoon as I took my post at the front desk of a library at Cal. A few hours into my shift, a guy passed me by on his way to the exit, tossing a small folded note onto my desk before quickly boarding the elevator. I looked up and said, “Thanks!” not really thinking. I opened the note to find, “Hey, you’re cute.” Blushing, I folded it up and, four days later, finally decided to go for it. Three years later, I couldn’t be any happier or more thankful that I did.

 

CORNY?

On the first Saturday of March Madness, my buddy hosts an annual Corn Dog Day party in Oakland. Although it’s an unlikely place for vegetarians to get together, I first met Kerry at CDD 2004. While other partygoers tried to score a triple-double of 10 dogs, 10 servings of tots, and 10 beers, I tried to score a glance from the adorable redhead. We chatted briefly while waiting for veggie dogs during halftime of the Stanford-Alabama game. I was smitten; she was mostly just hungry. But seven years later, we’re preparing to celebrate our first CDD as husband and wife!

 

SHACKED UP

I can say without much exaggeration that I met the man of my dreams in a dirty shack. My first October in San Francisco, a friend invited me over for Sukkoth, the Jewish harvest celebration involving a temporary structure made of branches and flora — a sukkah. On arrival, his roommate Carlton greeted me. We talked all night in that sukkah. I’ve been smitten since! In our four years, Carlton’s inspired me to song many times. As I wrote in a song for my band, My First Earthquake: “Starry night in a twig hut/ Man, did I have the pot’s luck!”

 

PORN AGAIN

My then-boyfriend and I filmed an artistic amateur porn as a birthday gift for a friend of mine. We wound up hooking up together with the director, an insanely cute and talented nightclub videographer. After my BF and I broke up and I moved overseas for a couple years, I came back and reconnected with the videographer over a camping trip. We’ve been cuddle bunnies ever since.

 

NEVER GIVE UP

“Cute Fat Girl Seeks Cute Fat Boy for Romance and Companionship” was the headline. I was ready to give up searching, but a friend talked me into placing a personal ad (probably my umpteenth at that point) on Craigslist. I met Dub on a Thursday night and I was smitten from the start. Two weeks later, he presented me with a beautiful handmade garnet necklace as a token of his affection. Seven years later, we are happily married, still cute and fat, and I’m just as smitten — if not more.

Psychic Dream Astrology

Andrew Lam
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0
Psychic Dream Astrology

Feb. 9-15

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Things are changing of their own volition — but if you step up and take an active role in the process, you’ll definitely prefer your outcomes. Let go of attachments that bind you, even if you are scared.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Soupy emotions and worried thinking threaten to screw up everything for you, pal. Pull “what if?” out of your thinking. Take responsibility for your present and plot your next steps based on your hopes, not your fears.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Take care of No. 1, Twin Star! Anxiety and insecurity may inspire you to take on more than you can handle and then freak you out. If you have no room in your heart take a pause; less is more this week.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Trying to make someone else feel something about you or a situation is a dubious enterprise (at best). Allow situations to unfold in their own sweet time, and take charge of what’s right for you along the way.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

You’re in a great place to make your ideals come alive, Leo. Invest all you’ve got in relationships this week, and make sure to speak your mind in as honestly and directly as you know how. Choose love, not fear.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Things have to play out and there is nothing you can do about it. Tend to the inner machinations of your heart as you struggle with what you don’t know, and be sure to communicate about what you can, as you can.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

It’s high time you learned a new way of engaging with the people you are close to, Libra. You are at the end of a situation that’s been stuck, and you alone can change it. Align with your emotional integrity and act from that place.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

This is an excellent time to sit back and figure out how you got where you are. Reflecting on the past will help you to set clear boundaries in the now that promote happiness — and you deserve a slice of happy, Scorpio!

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

No matter what you’re feeling, don’t repress your emotions. Find places you can bring your realness to, or carve out a little alone time. Go for authentic instead of perky, even if it’s socially inconvenient.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

Reach out to loved ones without loosing self-possession. Take emotional risks in the name of happiness and be bold and courageous as you do so.! Rise to the challenge of emotional bonds as a strong individual.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Pushing yourself to be somewhere you’re not will only confuse you and worsen matters. No matter how much you want to, you simply don’t know the future. Focus on how you feel now and fortify that.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

You have some major choices about what to invest in. Keep your heart wide open and fearlessly choose to let something new to enter your life. Breathe energy into your connections with others this week.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 16 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com.

 

Dirty business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Dirty business

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The owner of a certified minority-owned business in San Francisco is suing the city, charging that his telecommunications company went belly up after city officials falsely accused him of participating in a fraudulent kickback scheme within the city’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

The case and depositions of high-ranking officials offer a rare window into the inner workings of city government at a time when corruption was rife within DBI and regulations governing city contracting were considerably less strict. They also provide a glimpse at how city business was sometimes conducted under the administration of Mayor Willie Brown, a powerful figure who has resurfaced recently in San Francisco politics.

In addition, the case alleges inappropriate behavior by current Mayor Ed Lee when he was the city’s purchasing director. One of the depositions includes allegations that Lee, at Brown’s direction, approved a city contractor who was utterly unqualified and was later accused of being part of a criminal scam.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit — James Brady, CEO of Cobra Solutions — closed up shop years ago and moved to Sacramento with his wife and business partner, Debra. But he’s been locked in an ongoing legal battle against powerful forces in City Hall since 2003, when he claims the city stopped issuing payments to his company, terminated its contract, and declined to award it a new contract on suspicions of bribery.

“They want to make us look like we’re Bonnie and Clyde,” Brady told the Guardian. “We’ve never done a thing.”

Nancy Fineman, an attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing the city in the case, said the corruption allegations against Cobra still stand and she emphasized, “The city attorney was not involved in doing anything wrong.”

In a complaint filed Jan. 7, attorney G. Whitney Leigh — law partner of former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez — alleges that a host of city officials are responsible for precipitating Brady’s financial ruin.

According to Leigh’s version of events, Cobra was dragged into an overzealous campaign to hold someone accountable after a contractor the city alleged was corrupt vanished, leaving a number of subcontractors unpaid and the city “with egg on its face.”

Leigh subpoenaed Ed Harrington, former city controller and current head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda; former officials from the Office of Contract Administration, and others to testify out of court during discovery. Leigh describes the case as “a Shakespearean tragedy combined with a cartoon combined with a soap opera.”

For City Attorney Dennis Herrera, it might be more like a zombie flick. The city attorney is gaining momentum in his campaign for mayor and has taken an early lead in fundraising against his opponents. The Cobra Solutions saga might be one that he — and other top city officials — would rather forget.

 

CONFLICTS AND CRACKDOWNS

Appeals in the case have reached all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Herrera had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified his office from suing Cobra. Beginning in September 2000, before he was elected city attorney, Herrera provided legal representation to Cobra while working with a private firm called Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Due to the disqualification, Herrera could not discuss specifics in the case. But he did offer us a general comment. “I’ve made it very clear that me and my office are going to have zero tolerance for corruption and individuals who would violate the public trust,” he said. “This case, I think, represents that philosophy.”

When Herrera was campaigning for city attorney in the November 2001 race, he ran on a platform of cracking down on fraud and corruption. The DBI case began as a triumphant delivery of that campaign promise.

In 2003, following a yearlong investigation by a Public Integrity Task Force that Herrera had convened, a corrupt DBI official named Marcus Armstrong got busted by the feds. He’d allegedly falsified the qualifications on his resume and set up shell companies to funnel money out of city coffers for his own personal gain. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges brought by the U.S. Attorney, and spent time in prison for cheating the city out of about $500,000.

Herrera brought a civil suit against Armstrong and a DBI contractor, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), which allegedly partnered with Armstrong in a kickback scheme. Questions surrounded GCSI from the start. It only gained certification as a city contractor after being rejected multiple times by city staff as unqualified. Deborah Vincent-James, who directed the city’s Committee on Information Technology (COIT) at the time and has since died, testified in a 2008 deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent” and got the contract only because of ties to Mayor Brown.

Herrera hit a stumbling block when he amended the complaint to name Cobra Solutions and its management company, TeleCon Ltd., as another city contractor in on Armstrong’s kickback scheme. (Debra Brady was president of TeleCon, which predated Cobra. Although the Bradys insist the two entities were separate, Herrera named TeleCon in the suit as an alter ego of Cobra.)

Cobra struck back, claiming the City Attorney’s Office wasn’t entitled to file suit against the company because Herrera’s old firm had represented Brady. Herrera told us the whole thing came about “because of the 18 minutes that I billed to work for Cobra.”

Herrera’s office initially denied any conflict of interest. “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office,” according to a statement issued by the City Attorney’s Office.

But the Supreme Court disagreed in a 2006 ruling. “The possibility that the City Attorney’s former client might be prosecuted for civil fraud by the City Attorney’s office may test public faith in the integrity of the judicial system,” the ruling stated, “raising the specter of perceptions that the former client will be treated more leniently because of its connections, or more harshly because of leaked confidences.”

 

COBRA’S CASH

The city’s lawsuit alleged that Cobra paid Armstrong about $240,000 in bribes in exchange for $2.4 million worth of business with DBI from April 1999 through 2000. The allegation was based on checks Cobra sent to Monarch Enterprises, which the city said was an Armstrong front. The investigation found that GCSI paid Armstrong about 10 percent of the contract amount in a similar fashion.

“Armstrong used these and all other funds received from Cobra for his personal benefit and gain,” the suit claimed. The complaint also charges, “Cobra … knew that Monarch enterprises was wholly owned and controlled by Armstrong, and that any payment made by Cobra was in fact a payment to Armstrong.”

But Cobra’s suit claims an FBI investigation into Cobra’s involvement found no wrongdoing. Additionally, “We turned all of our records over to the U.S. Attorney,” Leigh noted, and that didn’t lead to a criminal prosecution.

Brady calls the corruption allegation “a big lie,” and says his company’s name has been wrongfully sullied. He says Armstrong led him to believe Monarch Enterprises was an Internet company performing training, support, and computer security upgrades as a subcontractor. The bills came in, and Cobra believed it was responsible for paying for the service, Brady said. “We mailed the checks, and never thought about it.”

Before the trouble started, Cobra Solutions was in a growth phase, having gone from four employees to 35 in just a few years. James and Debra Brady moved from Colorado to San Francisco in the late 1980s with nothing. James Brady worked as a manager in several SROs, became a member of the Tenderloin Merchant’s Association and helped establish a credit union serving low-income residents.

The couple established TeleCon Ltd. and started out as city subcontractors providing voicemail services. At first, they had very limited resources. “Prior to being able to afford an office, Debra frequently used the telephones in the women’s lounge at Nordstrom to conduct business,” according to her bio.

Cobra was established after Vincent-James urged the Bradys to submit a bid for an upcoming contract. The city had opened up a Request for Proposals (RFP) for vendors who wanted to be admitted to the Computer Store, an entity created to speed up municipal orders for technical services.

Before then, it could take six months for the city to purchase so much as a desktop computer. A Human Rights Commission vetting process, designed to ensure that city contractors adhered to environmental and social justice criteria, caused long delays. Then-City Purchaser Ed Lee created the Computer Store to solve this logistical challenge. Vendors who applied for membership were vetted in the RFP (minority-owned businesses were given preference), admitted as certified contractors, and granted preference by city departments in need of IT services.

Cobra’s first departmental contract through the Computer Store was a $1.3 million agreement to provide technical services for DBI, working with Armstrong. Things got off to a rough start.

“We could never find the guy, he would never be at work, and when we did see him, he was complaining,” Brady recounted. According to Cobra’s complaint, “it ran into a series of disputes with DBI and Armstrong over the scope of work and particular payment issues,” and Cobra was eventually awarded a settlement reflecting services it provided after Armstrong changed the scope of the work.

Brady says he sought city help in dealing with Armstrong. According to Cobra’s complaint, he appealed for assistance to COIT, which oversaw the Computer Store. Cobra’s relationship with Armstrong soon soured, and the DBI deal dissolved.

According to the description of Vincent-James, “The relationship between James Brady … and Marcus got worse … Marcus got another company involved because James Brady would not do what Marcus wanted to do.”

The other company was GCSI.

 

NEW PHASE

Things got better for the Bradys before they got worse. Cobra became one of the city’s largest technology services providers, netting $14.5 million in contracts with various city agencies by 2003. They relocated to a nicer, more spacious office in the Financial District.

A partnership with IBM granted them access to higher credit limits than ever. The couple had a home custom-built in El Sobrante. When GCSI vanished without a trace, Vincent-James called on Cobra to hire some of the GCSI subcontractors who had gotten burned in the process, according to a deposition from former city purchaser Judith Blackwell.

By 2003, the Public Integrity Task Force’s DBI investigation was in full swing, but Brady didn’t know it. He says he started experiencing problems getting paid, yet couldn’t get an explanation from city agencies.

According to Cobra’s complaint, “The city intentionally frustrated payments to Cobra and TeleCon because investigators hastily and incorrectly concluded that the companies had conspired with Armstrong in a GCSI-type scheme to defraud the city.”

Fineman, the city’s attorney, said she strongly disagrees with “the idea that we just stopped and left them in the lurch,” emphasizing that there had been a whole separate legal proceeding arising out of the fact that “Cobra was not paying its subcontractors,” in violation of its contract.

The city defended its decision to delay Cobra’s payments by pointing to the GCSI scandal, which had left city agencies high and dry. “By the time the City discovered GCSI’s fraud and stopped making payments to GCSI, GCSI had already received millions of dollars in city payments that were not then passed on to the subcontractors,” a letter from the City Attorney’s Office to Brady’s attorneys explained. “Once the city started investigating the payments to GCSI that Marcus Armstrong authorized, GCSI’s assets, officers and staff disappeared. … The city has an obligation to its taxpayers to prevent the GCSI scenario from unfolding with regard to Cobra / TeleCon.”

Brady insists that because Cobra couldn’t get paid, it couldn’t pay its subcontractors, or its creditors, either — and the financial holdup triggered a cascade of losses. “I’ve got IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, and American Express breathing down on me like a dragon,” he said. “Everybody wants to get paid. We owed folks after we couldn’t collect our receivables.”

The bills were piling up. “We were sinking fast,” said Debra Brady, “so we sold our house in El Sobrante.”

Brady said he was stunned to learn that Cobra had been named in Herrera’s suit.

“I have 37 employees, and I had to go in and tell them. I was all choked up and the phone was ringing, and it was my attorney on the line telling me that the FBI was coming. I could not believe that after everything we had achieved in the last three years, my former attorney was filing a lawsuit against me.”

 

CLEARING THEIR NAMES

After filing the complaint against Cobra, the City Attorney’s Office called on the company to submit to an audit — but Cobra refused on the basis that Herrera’s firm had represented it in the past. “The City Attorney’s assumption of the role of auditor seems calculated to exacerbate and expand the existing conflict of interest,” Cobra attorney Ethan Balogh wrote in an April 2003 letter. “This problem could easily be solved by allowing an agency other than the City Attorney to conduct the audit.”

In a lengthy back-and-forth, Herrera’s office responded: “You have never explained why your client, having been caught sending over $240,000 in cash to a San Francisco IT manager who authorized over $2.4 million in payments to Cobra/TeleCon during the period of time which he received those payments, has elected not to immediately … open its books and records to the city. Instead … you have raised a host of constantly-shifting objections and arguments as to why the city’s demand was inappropriate.”

Cobra’s lawsuit charges that the City Attorney’s Office never informed the Controller’s Office that Cobra would have allowed an audit by another party. At the same time, it charges, city attorneys weren’t allowing Cobra to communicate with the controller directly, due to the legal dispute.

“The question of who would do the audit and whether or not the City Attorney was doing the audit was not something that I was aware of or certainly had not agreed to,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said during her deposition.

Meanwhile, Cobra had received the highest Human Rights Commission score of any bidder for a renewal on the Computer Store contract, an HRC document shows. Brady received a letter stating that his company would be awarded a new Computer Store contract — but shortly after, he got a second letter reversing that award.

Judith Blackwell, who oversaw city purchasing under Brown’s administration, explained why during her deposition with Leigh. After Cobra’s bid evaluation, Blackwell testified, her office moved to award the contract — but the controller intervened, saying Cobra shouldn’t be awarded a new contract because of the Armstrong scandal. Blackwell wasn’t willing to throw Cobra out, however.

“I learned from watching politics that I cannot afford to bend the rules,” Blackwell testified. “If I step outside the precise boundaries in any way, or if any African American administrator does, they are probably not going to be interpreted in the same way as if anyone else did it. Based on the … procurement code, there is no way that I could, as the purchasing director, just throw them out.”

Blackwell testified that Zmuda requested that she sign paperwork denying Cobra the contract, and Blackwell received a warning when she refused. “She told me that I needed to remember that when [Mayor Brown] was gone that they, the Controller’s Office, and [Chief of Staff Steve Kawa] — I knew that is what she was implying — were in charge,” Blackwell said. Once Mayor Gavin Newsom replaced Brown, Blackwell was let go. She now lives in New York City.

Blackwell testified that losing her job came as a surprise, since she’d worked on Newsom’s campaign and expected to keep her position. “I had asked him something about why it happened and he said … he knew nothing about it and people were acting without, you know, basically not at his direction,” Blackwell testified. “I said, well, Mayor Newsom, you are in charge. And his response was, oh, I wish that were so.” 

 

ED LEE APPROVED UNQUALIFIED CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

GCSI — a company accused of defrauding the city after improperly being given a city contract by Ed Lee, allegedly at the urging of then-Mayor Willie Brown — is long gone.

“I don’t think they’re around,” Nancy Fineman, an attorney representing the city, told the Guardian. “We’ve just been focused on Cobra and TeleCon.”

The story of how GCSI came to be a city contractor may be the most fascinating part of this case, one that could have repercussions today, even though it happened in the late-1990s.

Like Cobra Solutions, GCSI was a contractor with the city’s Computer Store — gaining admission after being repeatedly rejected by city staff, according to a 2008 deposition with former COIT director Deborah Vincent-James, who has died.

Vincent-James testified that GCSI didn’t meet the minimum qualifications and recounted how, during an interview with city officials about the bid, a member of the City Attorney’s Office noticed a wire peeking out from the suit of a GCSI representative who had been surreptitiously taping the meeting.

“San Francisco was not aware of GCSI’s wrongful conduct, financial problems, or legal difficulties at the time it hired GCSI to work on the DBI projects,” a city lawsuit claimed. Nor had the city realized that, “GCSI’s president and owner had been arrested and imprisoned by a federal judge for contempt of court and for disbursing funds in an effort to avoid …efforts to collect its loan.”

GCSI principal Robert Fowler resided in both Washington, D.C., and California, was believed to be a citizen of Sweden, and was also the director and owner of a bank located on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, according to Herrera’s complaint.

“From day one, I knew that they were not qualified,” Vincent-James’ deposition transcript reads. She went on to say that the official city process for evaluating contractors was “totally bypassed.” Nonetheless, “We had to admit them to the Computer Store.”

“Who told you, you had to admit them to the Computer Store?” attorney Whitney Leigh asked.

“The director of purchasing,” states Vincent-James’ deposition transcript. “Ed Lee.”

She went on to testify that Lee had been acting under the direction of Mayor Brown. According to her deposition, “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.” She also testified, “Principals of GCSI hired an attorney who had been in the State Legislature with Mayor Brown and … GCSI had felt that because we were asking intrusive questions during the oral interview, such as ‘Why do you have that wire hanging out of your coat?’ … They felt that biased the committee toward … not hiring them.”

Neither Brown nor Mayor Lee’s office responded to requests for comment.

GCSI is still a codefendant in the complaint, but the principals of the defunct company seem to be off the hook. A 2008 story from the Anchorage Daily News noted that Fowler had emerged as the head of a natural gas company in Alaska. The Bradys, meanwhile, are getting ready for another court date in March. “We keep going to court,” Debra Brady said. “I’m kind of like, when is the end coming?”

Appetite: A tale of two (French) bistros

Andrew Lam
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Appetite: A tale of two (French) bistros

On a cozy winter’s night (admittedly not forefront in anyone’s mind given the weekend we just had), French bistro fare becomes supreme comfort food. Whether it’s a cassoulet of duck confit, white beans, and sausage or a steaming bowl of les moules with a side of frites, the French are masters of satiation. While my favorite bistros in the city remain Chapeau and L’Ardoise, recent visits to two provided gourmet sustenance with authentic French cheer. P.S. They are both taking Valentine’s Day reservations…

 

CHEZ PAPA BISTROT

On a corner space atop Potrero Hill, with views of our fair city twinkling below, the French bistro vibe here borders on magical when the friendly staff and owner welcome you in. I used to dine here years back when my then-to-be husband lived in the neighborhood. We especially enjoyed going for mussels ($14) and frites ($5) with a glass of wine, even if general dishes were not overly memorable. I’d still say the highlight of the place is its French joie de vivre. With new chef Shawn Paul on board – veteran of everywhere from The French Laundry to 1300 on Fillmore ), French classics and Chez Papa stand-bys remain strong. Les moules come in four classic interpretations, including garlic, parsley, and white wine, or perked up by Spanish chorizo with roasted bell pepper and parsley. Chef Paul sweetens seared Sonoma foie gras ($17) with blackberry-ginger compote and blackberry gastrique. Where I best witnessed his promise was in an amuse bouche of plump shrimp on celery root puree. Pesto, tomato, and truffle oil imbued it with a spirit reminiscent of classic shrimp remoulade in New Orleans.

1401 18th St., SF. (415) 824-8205, www.chezpapasf.com


BISTRO CENTRAL PARC

Bistro Central Parc opened at the beginning of 2010 and swiftly became NoPa and Western Addition’s favorite French bistro. Owner Jacques Manuera transports the relaxed spirit of his home in Strasbourg, France (on the Eastern border of the country) to this straightforward space — he also ran the kitchen in SF’s Baker Street Bistro for 18 years. Bistro Central Parc maintains a similar feel with classic French menu of escargots, French onion soup, mussels, cassoulet, and duck confit. Chef de cuisine Nicolas Jardin experiments with entrees like risotto in a lobster sauce ($19), which he forms into a circle with four seared scallops on top. A beef tournedos rossini special ($28), high-priced for a neighborhood bistro, is decadantly rich layered with foie gras and crispy parsnips atop potato gratin, swimming in a dessert-like port wine sauce. But not every dish is high on the fat quotient. Salads are full of fresh greens — or in the case of the frisee, housing a poached egg. Pair with a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé and call it a night.

560 Central, SF. (415) 931-7272, www.bistrocentralparc.com

 

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Love, Gainsbarre

Andrew Lam
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Love, Gainsbarre

FILM/INDIEFEST “Oh, it’s a problem with women,” Serge Gainsbourg says in an interview clip only a few seconds into Pascal Forneri’s entertaining and energetic made-for-TV documentary Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women. For Gainsbourg, the problem was a rewarding one — women were the vehicle by which he moved from a brooding writer of chanson into a national and international provocateur and icon. On an artistic front, Gainsbourg arranged and delivered one musical bouquet after another for a multitude of female singers, to a degree that Forneri’s movie has to adopt a breakneck pace just to include some of his best songs. As time goes on, his accomplishment seems equal to, if not greater than, that of the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, and other English-language rock icons.

Opening with over-the-top Gallic narration and arranged into a series of commercial-ready chapters, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women isn’t pretentious, and it takes care to deliver some of Gainsbourg’s most infamous televised moments, such as a talk show where he — by that time fully and fatalistically given over to his messy, dissolute Gainsbarre mode — informed a young and imperial Whitney Houston he’d like to fuck her. We also get to enjoy young France Gall naively telling an amused and appreciative Gainsbourg that his latest hit song for her, “Les sucettes,” is about “a young girl named Annie who loves lollipops.”

But Forneri’s movie also reveals the sensitivity beneath Gainsbourg the provocative “women’s tailor” of French songwriting. After all, it was Gainsbourg who had Gall sing of herself as “a lonely singing doll.” In one interview excerpt, Gainsbourg says that he prefers writing songs for actresses because they are “more spontaneous than your typical moron,” then criticizes a market that celebrates and throws away young starlets as inherently “fucked.” “It’s very hard to find work, and they don’t do it for the money,” he says bluntly.

Aside from the bombastic narration, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women‘s primary commentary comes from the women who worked with and knew Gainsbourg, an illustrious group that includes Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Juliette Greco, Francoise Hardy, and Vanessa Paradis. One of Forneri’s chief stylistic gambits is to leave these interviews off-screen — aside from appearances within archival footage, Gainsbourg’s women are present only as voices. In one sense this sharpens a critical view of Gainsbourg the man, but it also masks the individuality of the women’s perspectives, turning them all into a single femme.

Nonetheless, there are numerous moments where the likes of Birkin assert their personality. Hardy states that writing for women allowed Gainsbourg to express his “sensitivity” and “sentimentality,” an idea that might not be as true when applied to the partnership of Christopher Wallace and Lil’ Kim half a decade after Gainsbourg’s death. Hip-hop’s Bonnie and Clyde duos only follow in the footsteps of Gainsbourg and Bardot, even if Bardot would rather think of herself as George Sand to his Chopin.

Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women is a story that tells itself. There’s an epic’s worth of turbulent romanticism in the still photos of a blissful and radiant Gainsbourg and Bardot recording the original, suppressed version of “Je t’aime … moi non plus,” and the television footage of a cynical Gainsbourg and a brash, irrepressibly coltish Birkin discussing their version of the song. The man himself says that he came up with both “Je t’aime” and “Bonnie and Clyde” in a single night after Bardot said (commanded?), “Write me the most beautiful song you can imagine.” Thanks to “Je t’aime,” Gainsbourg’s name is irrevocably associated with sex. But as anecdotes from Greco and Birkin make clear, he’d just as soon stay up all night talking and drinking with a woman. Instead of orgiastic pleasures, Gainsbourg and Birkin’s first night in a hotel concluded with her gifting a 45 of Ohio Express’ “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (as in “I got love in my tummy”) to Gainsbourg as he slept.

In focusing on Gainsbourg’s relationships with female singers, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women ignores his musical partnerships with men, most notably Jean-Claude Vannier, with whom he composed and arranged many of his greatest works. But Forneri’s movie arrives at a time when another wave of interest in Gainsbourg is growing in the U.S. and other countries outside France. The past few years have seen Light in the Attic reissue some of Gainsbourg’s greatest recordings, such as 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, the 1969 album version of Je t’aime (which contains Birkin’s “Jane B,” the model for vocals by Blonde Redhead, Deerhoof, and countless others), and Birkin’s 1973 solo debut, Di Doo Dah. This month, a new compilation of Gainsbourg’s pre-starlet compositions, Discograph’s Le claquer de mots, shines light on the big-eared outsider right before he hit the pop jackpot. If the 1990s saw a surface-level revival of Gainsbourg the cult icon, today, his eternal return runs deeper.

GAINSBOURG, THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN

Sat/5, 2:30 p.m., Roxie;

Sun/6, 9:15 p.m., Roxie

www.sfindie.com

 

Two’s a crowd?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Two’s a crowd?

The Companion Piece is a charmingly inventive new work of devised theater conceived by actor Beth Wilmurt and directed by Mark Jackson for Z Space. It unfolds as a series of arch “meta” vaudevillian routines by a frustrated long-time duo (played with uncommon chemistry and comedic finesse by Wilmurt and Christopher Kuckenbaker).

Companion is less a narrative-driven tale than a clever, frequently hilarious, and gently moving set of variations on certain themes. These include the need for companionship, the nature of artistic creation, and the fragile balance between egos desperate to assert themselves yet just as desperately bound to the support and sympathy of others. Wilmurt’s initial inspiration for the show was a scientific treatise on the nature of human connection, the 2000 bestseller A General Theory of Love, by psychiatrists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. It’s appropriate that this world premiere runs to the very cusp of dreaded Valentine’s Day.

As often as not, Companion‘s themes develop through telling contrasts. The central one juxtaposes the two needy, half-bumbling performers — as they set about trying to forge their second-string act — with the deft, supremely self-confident solo headliner (played with a flawless, period-flavored, almost animatronic showbiz intensity by Jake Rodriguez). The headliner lives with a manic force exclusively for the few minutes he’s onstage — in a bizarre and well-honed routine delivered at the outset of the play and again at the end — shutting down into an enervated, shell-shocked state in between. The duo, whose high jinx account for the bulk of what we see, meanwhile remains most alive in the give-and-take of their zany, agonized creative process. That process may be forever incomplete, but it produces one captivating scene after another, often with the simplest of means: a sly sock-and-shoe puppet show inside a giant trunk is just one of many winning moments.

All this takes place on a cavernous, shadow-filled stage (courtesy of scenic designer Nina Ball), largely bare but for a grab bag of props — trampolines, musical instruments, toilet plungers, rubber chickens, and the like — and a large olio drop featuring a magnificent vintage-style portrait of the headliner, “the sensation of the stage.” There are also a set of doors in the far wall at the back of the stage, one conspicuously set about 10 feet off the ground, sort of Winchester Mystery House style, with a gold star painted on it. This door, it turns out, is accessible by one of two rolling metal staircases, which both become the inspiration for a gorgeously solemn, oddball waltz between the couple. The deceptively spare environment comes filled with other small surprises, as when Wilmurt’s character swings out from the wing on an industrial crane that slowly glides over the front rows of the audience.

There’s an eerie beauty to this theatrical undress, and the capacious sense of possibility mingling there in the shuffle and tussle of the performers. As they tirelessly ply their shtick and clamber for turf in the enveloping darkness (moodily broken up by Gabe Maxson’s lighting and poignantly underscored by Rodriguez’s evocative sound design), it comes to seem like their environment is no less than the muffling expanse of time and space itself.

In the end, the bracketing of the play’s action with a precise repetition of the headliner’s act does not diminish this impression of infinite negotiation. The headliner himself boasts, paradoxically, “I don’t open no shows, I don’t close no shows.” The lack of a strong narrative works to advantage here, as a way of further demystifying the theatrical conceit itself. As director Jackson suggests in his program note, the arc of a storyline is far too neat a device to contain all the indeterminacy and subtleties of this slipstream existence. The show goes on, as the headliner quips, “one night only — every night,” even if, as my companion that night suggested, we all ultimately “open” and “close” alone. 

THE COMPANION PIECE

Through Feb. 13; $20–$40

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.zspace.org

 

Fried

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Fried

I don’t have a lot of pet peeves — that would break my lease. Other than, say, invading a country for no reason, making fun of people with mental illnesses and addictions, refusing to pay taxes because you think people of color are moochers, or ordering Uggs online, still, not much reliably gets my goat, ties it down with friendship bracelets and Danish dreadlocks, and forces it to listen to Ke$ha remixed by Tiësto while wearing Juicy Couture or Pink by Victoria’s Secret.  

Baaa.

I do however have an eensy beensy problem with fried food in bars. It may be because I recently quit smoking — farewell, dear Marlboro Man, please moisturize — but lately the combined and pungent waft of cheese-smothered freedom fries, bleachy bar-cleaning solution, and, heaven forfend, deep fried pickles (they have these at Truck in SoMa, they’re frickin’ delicious) makes me want to hurl rainbow Santorum. Could it be that I’m finally pregnant? We’ve tried so hard!

Alas, clouds of steamy trans fat, the unerotic kind, are what one must brave to enjoy Buck Tavern on Market Street, notorious for its new owner, former supervisor and mercurial rabble-rouser Chris Daly. It offers a full menu of yummily evil things whose scent can overpower the atmosphere. But other than that, and perhaps a slight overbrightness of lighting, I have no beef with the place. I’d been there before, when it was a sparsely occupied pool haunt (population: one large drag queen with a pool cue and a frightened-looking bartender) which served only beer and soju cocktails. Now, crowded with cute, diverse folks deep in interesting conversations, full call liquor bottles lining the wall, and the sound of cheerleaders screeching on the flatscreens, it feels downright cozy.

Others may fear clouds of a different sort — and yes this is a progressive wonk’s paradise. Daly can be found behind the bar many nights, and you’ll usually see some political player like John Avalos or Ross Mirkarimi or David Campos or “who the hell knows cuz they’re all slightly brown dudes with the same goatee-hair-tiny glasses thing going on” downing a well-priced pint. There’s even a spread-eagle copy of the Guardian to read over the urinal. (Aim high, haters.) But don’t worry, there’s no ideological purity check at the door, just a friendly sense of come-what-may. In fact, I think we may be witnessing the sudden materialization of some boisterous and idyllic parallel universe City Hall. With cheeseburgers, even!

BUCK TAVERN 1655 Market, SF. (415) 874-9183

 

PUPPY PILE

With newish monthly parties like Beatpig, Chickenbear, and OH! the Powerhouse is rapidly erasing its rep among queer youth as a bland haven for desperate cruisers into carnival techno and so-so blowjobs. This special benefit for Pets Are Wonderful Support brings together two of those parties, Chickenbear and OH! for a night of flying feathers (i.e., a bachelor auction) and rock ‘n’ roll hijinx.

Sat/5, 10 p.m., $5. Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom, SF. www.powerhouse-sf.com

 

PINK MAMMOTH SEVEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

I smell Burning Man! And it smells expensive. Luckily, I can enjoy some of the nuttier crews right now, for less than the price of one of the actual mammoths that scientists are hoping to clone this summer. (Imagine riding an actual mammoth onto the Playa. Imagine it with your mind!) So much glitch-funk, chunky techno, zen dubstep fun galore at the fuzzy pink tribe’s seventh hootenanny. Oh goddess, they have their own iPhone app and a hot dog bar. Nothing can stop them now.

Sat/5, 9 p.m.-late, $10–$15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.pinkmammoth.org

 

EGYPTIAN LOVER

I don’t know if this is timely or not? Current events electro, people. The pioneer of electronic funk puts on one hell of a show, and has been jamming the box and rocking Planet Rock for like three decades now. He’ll be joined by Jaime Jupiter for a journey through the Electric Kingdom.

Sat/5, 10 p.m.-late, $20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

MISS HONEY

Fashion-addict club kids, runway voguing, hip-hop DJs in the stripper pole room, and NYC’s Miss Honey Dijon on the main turntables. Work it out.

Sat/5, 10 p.m., $10. Supperclub, 647 Harrison, SF. www.supperclub.com

Saving Lyon-Martin

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Saving Lyon-Martin

rebeccab@sfbg.com

When word got out that the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinic faced imminent closure, Luette Chavez’s cell phone started ringing off the hook. Her friends were going into panic mode.

“It’s shocking to think that something that’s so important to so many people could just be lost so easily,” Chavez told us. The clinic serves nearly 2,500 patients, regardless of their ability to pay for health care. It offers specialized services for queer women and transgender people, providing everything from primary care to mental health services to hormone treatment. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, medical school student, and part-time sex worker, Chavez volunteers at the clinic and relies on it for health care. Her dream is to someday start a free clinic in New Orleans that is cast in the mold of Lyon-Martin. But for now, all of her energy is consumed with the widespread effort to raise enough money to keep the clinic afloat. To survive, Lyon-Martin must pay off a $250,000 debt immediately.

 

CASH FLOW PROBLEM

As one volunteer among many, Chavez has adopted the mindset that failure is not an option. “I have absolutely every confidence that we will be able to save it ourselves because we’re running ourselves into the ground doing it,” she said.

Lyon-Martin’s board of directors initially voted to shut down the clinic at the close of business Jan. 27, citing insurmountable financial problems. That decision was rescinded, however, following an emergency meeting held at the LGBT Center shortly after news of its pending closure went viral. By Jan. 28, an emergency fund drive had netted close to $100,000 in pledges and cash donations. A fundraiser held Jan. 30 at El Rio drew nearly 700 supporters and roped in another $28,000.

Despite the outpouring of support, the long-term future of the 30-year-old clinic remains uncertain. Lyon-Martin can restructure and avoid shutdown if it manages to clear the $250,000 urgently owed, but it must find $500,000 to continue operating in the same capacity as it has. It has stopped accepting new patients, but will likely be able to serve current patients until at least the end of February.

“Without Lyon-Martin, a community that is historically marginalized won’t have anywhere to turn,” stated an open letter to supporters from Board Chair Lauren Winter, who was unavailable for comment.

A combination of state funding cuts, increased demand, and poor financial management created a perfect storm for Lyon-Martin. A key source of the trouble was that the clinic had not been keeping up with its billing, and after a certain amount of time, it could no longer claim reimbursements from Medi-Cal. Yet external factors such as state and local budget cuts contributed to the problem, too, and Lyon-Martin is not alone in that respect.

All across San Francisco, community clinics that serve low-income and uninsured people are struggling to do more with less. Jim Illig, president of the San Francisco Health Commission, told us that he knows of several other clinics in dire financial straits.

“There are a lot of clinics on the edge because they have dedicated their mission to serving the uninsured,” he said. “Any nonprofit clinic that you see — they’re struggling.” The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, another nonprofit healthcare organization serving the uninsured, recently announced a merger with Walden House, a substance-abuse treatment center. The merger allowed the venerable health-care nonprofit to continue offering services after its budget was slashed by 50 percent due to reduced support from the city’s General Fund. Even as the cuts took effect, demand for the free clinic’s services rose 10 percent from 2009 to 2010.

“Every time I look into the waiting room, it’s full,” said Jeff Schindler, chief development officer.

If Lyon-Martin closes, its patients will have to be transferred to other clinics, but there’s high demand everywhere. Such an outcome might evoke a sense of dèjá vu for some. Last fall, when an LGBT-focused clinic called New Leaf shut down due to crippling financial problems, many of its clients were transferred to Lyon-Martin.

 

COMMUNITY SURPRISED, UPSET

The front office manager at Lyon-Martin, who wished to be identified only as Braz, said she’d had no warning that closure was imminent. “Just closing down like that seemed impossible. We couldn’t ethically do that,” she said. “Our patients are freaking out right now.”

Once people became aware that the clinic was on the brink of closure, some aired the criticism that the board should have been more forthright about financial troubles. The Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco publication covering LGBT issues, published an editorial calling for the resignation of the six-member board, and several sources told the Guardian they expected the board members to step down.

Meanwhile, health officials and elected representatives have stepped into the mix, but no promises of governmental financial assistance had been secured by the time the Guardian went to press.

Department of Public Health Director Barbara Garcia was unavailable for comment, but released a prepared statement: “The Department of Public Health has been in close discussions with Lyon-Martin and the pressing need to make immediate changes to the way they conduct their financial affairs. We value the important health care services they deliver and will continue to work with them to find the best long-term outcome for the clinic and the patients.”

Sup. Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he’d been in discussions about Lyon-Martin with Garcia and Sup. David Campos. Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim also attended the emergency meeting, and California Sen. Mark Leno was said to be attempting to secure some state funding for the clinic. As the push to save the clinic continues, a parallel effort is moving forward to craft a contingency plan for how Lyon-Martin’s nearly 2,500 patients can access care in the event that it doesn’t survive.

 

COMPETENT CARE

Lyon-Martin patients and others familiar with its services stressed that the women’s clinic is a critical resource for lesbians and the transgender population, because medical staff are trained in that specialized area of care.

“The service there is incredible,” noted Cheryl Simas, who has been a patient there for three years. “They explain everything to you, you’re listened to, and you’re treated with care and respect.” Simas said it was a dramatic difference from an experience she’d had in the mid-1990s, when her healthcare provider was barely comfortable pronouncing the word “lesbian.”

Lyon-Martin medical staffers receive training on transgender patient care, and it even offers training in that realm for medical professionals from cities throughout the United States. “They are internationally renowned as a model for what it means to offer transgender care,” noted labor organizer Gabriel Haaland, who said he was once denied health care due to his transgender identity. “The healthcare system is a fairly traumatic experience for most transgender people,” he added.

If Lyon-Martin closed, “it’d be pretty tragic,” noted Carlina Hansen, executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic, which works closely with Lyon-Martin. When it comes to health care, “We live in an unusual city, in that there is a lot of need among low-income people, due in part to a high cost of living. “Every clinic in San Francisco provides an integral part of that network,” and each clinic fills a specific need, Hansen noted. “The diversity of the clinics matches the diversity of our community.”

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

You want a really bleak picture of the politics of California today? Check out the recent comments of Dan Schnur, GOP political consultant and director of the Jesse Unrush Institute for Politics at the University of Southern California.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Schnur discussed the disconnect between image and reality in this state: "Cut $1 billion out of Medi-Cal and most voters won’t notice," he said. "Take away some cell phones and make legislators sit on a picnic bench, and they pay attention."

Yeah, he’s a Republican who worked for the likes of George W. Bush and John McCain, but his point, while politically sick and wrong, is also sadly accurate. How much money will the state save by getting rid of 48,000 cell phones? About $20 million a year. That’s 0.08 percent of the state’s budget shortfall. What did Brown save by replacing a boardroom-style conference table in his office with a glorified picnic table? Probably a few thousand dollars. How much does the state continue to lose every year to the utter waste of corporate tax breaks? How much could we bring in with an oil-severance tax? Well into the multiple billions.

What got all the press? Jerry’s picnic table and cell phone crackdown.

I’m not against either of those moves. In tough times, it’s important to set the standards at the top, and living cheap and avoiding the imperial trappings of public office is a great way to instill voter confidence. And anything Brown can do to convince the voters that he’s serious about cutting waste — and that they can trust him enough with their money that they should vote yes on his tax plan — can only be good.

But it all seems so silly and shallow.

The truth is, when you cut Medi-Cal, people die. You can’t prove that any specific cut killed any individual, and most of them are poor anyway and the major media don’t make a big fuss every time a poor person dies. It’s not as sexy as some Caltrans worker having to give up a cell phone.

I think I’m going to throw up now.

Division of labor

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Division of labor

sarah@sfbg.com


In the wake of a three-day protest by unemployed workers outside UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital construction site — and under pressure from city leaders — UC officials have announced voluntary local hiring targets at the $1.5 billion complex.


Targets start at hiring 20 percent of the project’s workers in San Francisco during 2011 and increase that by 5 percent each year until the hospital complex is completed, UCSF news director Amy Pyle told us. But she denies that UC was pressured into its decision. UC is a state agency that is exempt from local rules when it builds facilities for UCSF and other campuses.


“Our voluntary goals are not a result of their protest,” Pyle insisted. “We have been aware of the local hire concerns since before they were protesting.”


The protests have focused on the need to hire workers for southeast San Francisco, where unemployment rates are the highest in the city, particularly among the city’s African American population.


“Of course we are looking to be good neighbors and hire people from an area we know has been hard hit,” Pyle said, clarifying that under the University of California’s hiring program, “local residents mean people who live in San Francisco generally.”


Mission Bay Hospitals Projects executive director Cindy Lima said uproar at the site stemmed in part from perceptions that lots of work is available now, but she said that isn’t true.


“Job opportunities should ramp up in May, but right now, they are installing structural piles,” Lima said. “So if there is an opportunity for a carpenter or a laborer to get decks built, we call the union.” UC’s voluntary local hire announcement came after Mayor Ed Lee urged UC officials to formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay, and Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU) president James Richards agreed to call off his group’s protest outside UC’s Mission Bay hospital complex, at least for now.


ABU member Fred Green, an unemployed construction worker who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five children, said the protesters tried to remain peaceful. “But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths?”


Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity. “Here at the front gates, we are visible. But we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.


Michelle Carrington is a 58-year-old flagger and operating engineer from the Bayview who has been unemployed for 10 years. She said Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office and helped her graduate from Young Community Developers, was “working to try and get us jobs.”


Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors as a consultant to DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at its Mission Bay site, put in an appearance on day three of ABU’s protest. But he said his work with DPR had nothing to do with the ABU protest.


“UC is very committed to maximizing local hire where we can,” Lima told the Guardian. “It’s unfortunate there is a protest because it gives the sense we haven’t been working with the community when in fact we have been working with the Mayor’s Office, CityBuild, and every stakeholder interested in this project, including ABU.”


Richards said ABU mounted its protest to challenge UC’s claims that it has hired more local residents at the site. They were also angry over a flyer that encouraged residents interested in working at the site to sign up with the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative, in partnership with Rev. Arelious Walker’s BayView Hope Community Development Corporation, feeling as if the UC was trying to divide their community. Walker did not return our calls for comment.


“We were with Walker when he was fighting the Nation of Islam’s attempt to stop development at the shipyard, so it hurts so bad to see this,” Richards said. “Never again will we stand by and let people come into the southeast community and take our jobs. We’re going to fight until the end. If the community doesn’t work, no one works.”


But even as UC announced its voluntary Mission Bay goals, community advocates pressed UCSF to set higher targets, citing the city’s failure to attain 50 percent local hire goals under San Francisco’s decade-long policy of seeking to hit that goal.


Joshua Arce of the Brightline Defense Project said he is glad Lee expressed support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, “but we are waiting to see if he implements the law as written or a watered-down version.”


Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed Avalos’ legislation to become law without signing it, bowing to the veto-proof 8-3 majority that approved it. But in a 12/23/10 letter explaining his position, Newsom recommended modifications to accommodate the concerns of the building trades, whose members come from across the Bay Area.


“I know the passage of this policy has created high expectations among some residents of San Francisco,” Newsom wrote. “The city owes it to them to implement this policy in a way that will result in a successful program that is fiscally responsible and reflects the best thinking of the many stakeholders invested in San Francisco.”


But with Newsom moving to Sacramento, California Assembly member Tom Ammiano and Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee are urging legislators to support San Francisco’s newly approved local hire law as approved.


In a Jan. 25 letter that Leno and Yee signed, Ammiano encouraged Bay Area officials to work with the city to explore mutually beneficial “reciprocity agreements” in which local cities would support one another’s programs “aimed at providing disadvantaged job seekers opportunities in the construction sector.”


“In neighborhoods like the Bayview, the Mission, and the Western Addition, the promise of jobs — particularly living wage construction jobs — has been an unfulfilled promise for generations,” Ammiano wrote.


But in a Jan. 28 press release, UC officials clarified that “as one of 10 campuses of a statewide constitutional corporation and public trust,” UCSF is not subject to Avalos’ mandatory requirement and is prohibited from adopting mandatory requirements based upon residency.


Instead, UC promised to do more community outreach and try to carve out financial incentives to encourage contractors to hit UC’s targets at Mission Bay.


Lima said the hospital complex is a historic opportunity to put as many San Franciscans to work as possible. “We have set an ambitious hiring target but we recognize that the economic activity generated by the project can significantly benefit our neighbors and local residents,” she said


After his Jan. 27 meeting with UC, Richards told ABU members that “when DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know. There are hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that 10 carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it.”


Lima said UC’s meeting with Richards was “positive”.


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said, noting that work at the site will become increasingly available starting in May. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. We are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process.”


Lima vowed to work closely with DPR Construction and major subcontractors to ensure qualified local residents — including those from neighborhoods closest to the site — can access the construction jobs. And she promised that results will be reported regularly and the size of the workforce will increase steadily, peaking with 1,000 workers in 2012.


“We are mindful that while these goals challenge us, they are also within reach,” Lima said, noting that UCSF has been engaged in creating job opportunities in the construction trades for San Franciscans since 1993. “Our success will depend on the participation and commitment of the broader community and the trade unions.”


UC’s move comes less than two weeks after Lee announced at the annual San Francisco Labor Council Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast that one of his top priorities is implementing Avalos’ mandatory local hire policy.


Lee’s comments suggest a different approach from Newsom’s, but it’s still not clear whether Lee intends to follow the “critical steps” that Newsom felt the city should take “to ensure the responsible and successful implementation of Avalos’ legislation.”


Arce said he was happy to see Lee address the issue at the MLK Day event. “Lee said that if we are using local dollars to create local jobs, those jobs should go to local workers,” Arce recalled, noting that the following week Lee started to coordinate with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and CityBuild to engage community stakeholders and lay out a road map to implement Avalos’ legislation.


“They set a deadline of March 25 as the target date by which the language of Avalos’ mandatory legislation must be included in all public bids and contracts,” Arce said. “And it’s our understanding that Mayor Lee called UC Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann directly on the morning of Jan. 27 [before ABU’s Richards met with UC officials] to ask that UCSF formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay as soon as possible.”


Avalos said he was “very encouraged” by Lee’s remarks. “To say that at the Martin Luther King Labor Breakfast was a big deal,” Avalos said, noting that the building trades were also in the room. “I feel Ed Lee wants to implement the legislation how it is written. He needs help doing that. He needs to create a process to make it happen, and I believe the folks who helped draft the legislation will be ready to do that. That’s not to say that this couldn’t go wrong, but I feel pretty confident that he will implement as strong a local hire model as possible.”

The price of mental health cuts

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The price of mental health cuts

By Hetty Beth Eisenberg

OPINION The massacre in Tucson is a tragic wake-up call for the public mental health system of our own county. Among the many pressing angles to the story, it is vital to consider the severe cuts to mental health services in Pima County last year.

Although only a small fraction of the mentally ill commit acts of violence, we must contemplate the larger issue of what happens when a community fails to prioritize mental health. Acute mental health services are such an essential tool for caring for the severely mentally ill that one is staggered by the low priority they’ve been given by our forward-thinking community in San Francisco.

Throughout the nation, the mentally ill are among our most disenfranchised constituents. In San Francisco, a considerable fraction of our severely mentally ill populations are indigent, homeless, and without health insurance. Acute care services for the mentally ill therefore lose money. In these hard financial times, city officials, like those in Pima County, are making painful decisions. Over the past three years, mental health services in San Francisco have been cut to austerity levels.

To see the short-sightedness of these cuts, one must consider not only the most drastic scenarios. For every Jared Loughner, there are thousands of individuals whose profound burdens could be alleviated with the help of these services. Inpatient psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital provides the highest level of mental health care in our county. Unlike private hospitals, SFGH takes all patients, regardless of their insurance, and regardless of the risk of violence. The inpatient service at SFGH provides the only safety net for those patients who are the most extreme danger to themselves and others.

From 2008 to 2010, the number of acute psychiatry beds at SFGH was cut from 84 to 42. The consequences of the cuts were palpable. They led to the disintegration of the Cultural Focus Program, a nationally-recognized model of ethical inpatient psychiatric care. The most ill patients were crowded onto two remaining acute units. The staff was then put in the position of having to move patients to understaffed units, so-called subacute, before they were clinically ready.

In January, one of two remaining acute psychiatry units at SFGH was cut. This leaves 21 acute beds available to the entire city. It’s now impossible to separate the most violent patients. The unit has become hyperacute, with an increasingly agitated population amplifying itself. Staff feel unsafe and cannot provide adequate care for their patients. As they grapple with understaffing, many cite what happened at Napa State Hospital recently when a psychiatric worker was murdered — an incident attributed to understaffing.

Meanwhile, there is considerable pressure to discharge these patients quickly. A vast number end up on the streets, in jails, overwhelming outpatient programs, or bouncing back to the emergency room — racking up even higher costs.

Due to budgetary pressures, the Department of Public Health insists that our unstable patients should be funneled into outpatient services. While outpatient programs provide vital means for supporting the chronically mentally ill when they are stable, they are also being cut — and are insufficient to protect acute patients.

These budget cuts make it plain that we are dealing with a clumsy model of mental health — one that lacks essential mechanisms. Such a model reflects a poor understanding of mental illness.

Arizona provides a clarion call to California: we must hear the implicit warning. These cuts to acute mental health services in San Francisco, a city with a large mentally ill population, must be reversed. Each day that they persist heightens the very real tragedy for our patients, our healthcare workers, and our entire community. *

Hetty Beth Eisenberg, MD, MPH, is a resident physician in psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital.

Early indicators

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Early indicators

Land use politics and the way development decisions are made at City Hall fed San Francisco’s ascendant progressive movement over the last decade. So in the wake of a still-unfolding political realignment, an early key vote is making some preservationists and developer foes nervous.

At the center of that concern is Sup. Jane Kim, who broke with her progressive colleagues Jan. 25 to be the swing vote in the board’s 6-5 approval of attorney Richard Johns to the historian’s seat on the Historic Preservation Commission. Progressives and preservationists opposed the nomination on the grounds that Johns isn’t a historian and that he has close ties to former Mayor Willie Brown, a friend of developers whose longtime chief of staff was Johns’ wife, Eleanor.

And they’re suspicious of Brown’s support – both overt and stealthy – for Kim’s supervisorial campaign (see “Willie Brown and the accusations of machine politics in D6,” 10/16/10, Guardian Politics blog).

Kim didn’t explain her vote at the full board meeting, and her comments at the Rules Committee (which she chairs) and to the Guardian that Johns “was qualified” and she could “see no reason not to support his nomination” irked many of her progressive supporters who consider development the big issue.

Feeding concerns about the potential blunting of historic preservation and other tools used to scrutinize development projects was the Jan. 25 announcement by Sup. Scott Wiener that he is calling for hearings into whether the commission is improperly hindering development and other policy priorities.

“The Historic Preservation Commission — and I supported the creation of the Historic Preservation Commission — has become an increasingly powerful commission reaching into a lot of different areas of policy in the city,” Wiener said during the discussion of Johns’ nomination, citing housing, parks, and libraries as areas the commission has affected. “It’s important to have a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints on this commission, and if we’re going to have a committee made up exclusively of advocates for historic preservation, only advocates, that is a problem.”

Former board President Aaron Peskin, who led the effort to create the commission through the voter-approved Proposition J in 2008, disputes the allegation that the commission has become too powerful, as well as the claim that Johns is qualified to serve in the historian’s seat, one of six seats on the commission that now requires professional qualifications.

“The facts do not support Sup. Wiener’s allegations,” Peskin told us, noting that the Board of Supervisors and the mayor retain the authority to decide what is and isn’t historically significant. Yet Wiener said that even commission- and staff-level actions affect other city goals. “The conducting of a survey does have legal impact,” Wiener told us.

But Peskin said San Francisco has very few protected buildings compared with other major U.S. cities, something voters sought to change through Prop. J, and Peskin said he was disappointed that Kim didn’t support the law’s dictates. “This is the second time in 2011 when the slim alleged progressive majority has not stayed together,” he said, referring also to the election of David Chiu as board president.

Peskin and others who fight land-use battles say they don’t yet want to jump to the conclusion that developers might have an easier time with this board. “It’s my profound hope is that this is a learning experience,” Peskin said of Kim’s vote.

Veteran land use attorney Sue Hestor noted that neither Kim nor Wiener has a record on land use issues by which to judge them and she didn’t want to make a big deal of their Jan. 25 actions. Yet she said that development is a huge issue in the Tenderloin, SoMa, and Rincon Hill areas that Kim represents, so there are major tests of her progressive values coming soon.

“In District 6, it’s the defining issue because it’s the most explosive district in terms of growth,” Hestor said. “Land use is about who gets to live in the city.”

 

WHOSE CITY?

While most of the discussion about the Johns nomination focused on his qualifications as a historian — indeed, that was the basis of most of the opposition to his nomination, by both activists and progressive supervisors — there was some telling subtext focused on Hestor’s point that land use is the most fundamental progressive issue.

At the Jan. 20 Rules Committee meeting, Kim even asked Johns about his “vision for affordable housing as it related to preservation.” But the answer she received wasn’t terribly reassuring to those who see the lack of affordable housing for low-income city residents as a serious problem that the city is failing to address (see “Dollars or sense?” 9/29/10).

“San Francisco is made up of lots of different groups of people with lots of different backgrounds,” Johns said at the hearing, noting that it is important to “preserve the culture and the past that have brought us to where we are. But part of that past is the ability to grow.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Johns expanded on the point, sounding a more pro-growth point-of-view than many of his colleagues on the commission are likely to share. “Development and preservation can go hand-in-hand,” Johns said. “Maybe it’s the development that allows what might be a slowly deteriorating building to be fixed up properly.”

As an example, he cited his 20 years of work on preserving the Old Mint Building — his main claim to expertise as a historian — which was ultimately accomplished as part of the development project that included office and commercial development and the Mint Plaza public space.

“People of all income levels have a right to live in San Francisco,” Johns said, adding, “The real need some people would say is the need for middle class housing.” When we noted that it’s often the low-income residents who are ousted when old buildings get modernized, he said, “You have to think about the desirability of people to live in crummy housing.”

Chiu and Kim both downplayed the importance of the Johns vote. “People are trying to read too much into this,” Chiu said, explaining that he opposed the nomination because he simply felt Johns didn’t meet the criteria as a historian. “What was relevant is what city law says.”

Kim told us that it wasn’t until the full board meeting that she learned how her progressive colleagues felt about the matter, and that she didn’t want to change how she voted in committee. “It was not important enough for me to change my vote based on my verbal commitments,” Kim said later.

Yet on the evening of the vote, Kim told the Guardian that she felt “pressure” to support Johns, although she wouldn’t say from whom. “I was put in a bad position on this issue,” she said. Many progressives have speculated that pressure came from Brown, which Kim denies. “We didn’t talk about this, not once,” she said.

But in his Jan. 30 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown crowed about the victory by “my friend Richard Johns” and called Chiu’s opposition to him “a mistake that could haunt him for some time,” saying Chiu has set up Sups. Malia Cohen and Kim “to be the swing votes on every issue where moderates and progressives split.”

Rebecca Bowe contributed to this report.

Panabay rising

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Panabay rising

MUSIC Last year was a big one for Los Rakas. The Oakland-by-way-of-Panama duo, Raka Rich and Raka Dun, have been hustling their frenetic Panabay stylings since they banded together as high school students in 2005. But on the cusp of their second mixtape, La Tanda Del Bus, the arresting diversity of their influences and musical ideas began to coalesce. The far reaches of the blogosphere and the streets took notice.

Los Rakas’ “Abrazame” — a song reworked from Gyptian’s crossover hit “Hold You” and remixed into sure shot form by Brooklyn producer Uproot Andy — overcrowded year-end lists as the pinnacle summer jam of 2010. In the video, parallel love stories unfold and collapse over the backdrop of San Francisco’s Carnaval Festival. Shuffling polyrhythms swarm underneath simple Casio chords as Raka Rich moves effortlessly from trading syrupy verses with guest songstress Faviola to bursts of rapid-fire lyricism.

Meanwhile, the video for Los Rakas’ “Soy Raka” — a youthful ode to turfin’ in the streets of Oakland — has surpassed 250,000 hits on YouTube. What other rap groups spit a chorus like “Tengo mi pistola y diente de oro” on the same playlist as a sweltering love ballad? The video not only helped spawn the syncopated dance movement in Panama, but also inspired kids to prefix their names with Raka — “you know, like Raka Miguel” — Dun tells me excitedly in a thick Spanish accent. “In Panama, ‘That’s raka’ or ‘We’re from raka’ means ‘that’s ghetto’ or ‘we’re from the ghetto.’ But it’s an empowering term. It means that we’re proud of who we are and where we come from.”

This sort of community-centered spirit has inspired Los Rakas since the beginning of its rhapsodic ventures. In 2006, Rich and Dun released their first Panabay Twist mixtape with the help and studio support of local outreach organizations Youth Uprising, BUMP (Bay Unity Music Project), and Youth Movement Records. Its single, “Mi Barrio,” in many ways a precursor to the anthemic “Soy Raka,” is driven by the standard hip-hop commandment to represent where you’re from. But the song also honors a more difficult and subtle hip-hop ideal: one love. Los Rakas might boast about Oakland and Panama stomping grounds, but the duo also calls out for us to be “orgulloso and put your flag in the air.” Which flag, exactly?

“Oakland influenced us,” says Dun, who moved to the Bay when he was 14. “It didn’t just shape our instrumentals and lyrical style, from Zion I to E-40—Oakland has the history of the Black Panthers and politicism, so we naturally put that content in our music too.”

Los Rakas sound a bit different from, say, any other Bay Area rapper, because Rich and Dun’s music is informed by the infectious rhythms and punctuated Spanish flows heard in Panama’s pop music of the day, plena. A sprawling folk genre that originated in the Caribbean and related regions of Central America, plena has recently been digitized for a new generation, becoming a Panamanian spin on reggaeton.

But the influences don’t stop there. “In Panama we listen to all types of music: reggae, dancehall, salsa, meringue,” says Dun. “When I met Rico, he was listening to Tupac and we traded music. Hip-hop caught my attention fast. I found out about Tribe [Called Quest], Lil Kim, Nas. I researched where it came from, and how it evolved, and just fell in love with it.” Although the connections aren’t obvious at first, hip-hop and plena have a lot in common. They’re both hybrid genres, forms of pastiche that draw from a wide range of sonic traditions and background, computerizing folk and funk for the bass-hungry children of the always-evolving soundsystem.

Unsurprisingly, Los Rakas garnered attention from an emerging scene of enthusiasts, producers, DJs, writers, and musicians concerned with the musical diaspora of the Afro-Caribbean, or more acutely, what British sociologist Paul Gilroy has called the Black Atlantic. The term denotes the webbed network of the African diaspora culture that is not so much organized by a clear conception of roots but by a rhizomatic set of exchanges and networks: migrations, ships, trade, Creole, European miscegenation, flights, origin myths, stories of repatriation, and now the most diffusive cross-cultural exchange device of them all, the Internet.

Keep in mind that 2010 was the year that Diplo and Switch’s over-the-top dancehall project, Major Lazer, took clubs by storm, and even Rihanna finally started reppin’ roots, rhythm, and wires with “Rude Boy” and multicolored neon booty shorts. Even if MIA’s third full-length was lackluster, something of her world-town swagger has penetrated our times, while her “Bird Flu” call to arms has circulated through our quickly multiplying musical economies. Check the formula: add world genre to rap and uptempo dancehall/Bmore/house/techno; reconfigure percussion patterns in a drum machine; loop melodic fragments of a regional instrument; add inner-city noise, gunshots, chants, or field recordings of aggressive animal life; manipulate with a swill of static, fuzz, and a heavy dose of low end. Bump loud. Call it third world democracy.

Los Rakas, without even asking for it, has popped up in countless mixes and blog posts loosely labeled under the category of tropical bass. Rich and Dun contributed the steady banger “Afro Latino” to the recent Banana Clipz EP, produced by tropical harbingers Chief Boima and Ora 11 of Bersa Discos, and released on their Ghetto Bassquake blog and upstart. Speaking of Bersa, it hosts the crazy monthly Tormenta Tropical, which spotlights new sounds of electro-cumbia and related frontiers arising from the Black Atlantic. “That movement, I’m not sure what to call it, embraced us,” says Dun. It only makes sense that Los Rakas — navigating Oakland and Panama, turfin’ and plena, hiphop and digital polyrhythms, the new and the old — has returned the favor.

AUDYSSEY PRESENTS THE NEIGHBORHOOD: LOS RAKAS

with Roach Gigz

Wed/2, 9 p.m.–-2 a.m.; free

111 Minna Gallery

111 Minna, SF

(415) 974-1719

www.111minnagallery.com

alt.sex.column: Flash dance

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
alt.sex.column: Flash dance

Dear Readers:

In the high and far off times, there were these smeary newsprint tabloid “lifestyle” papers that had a few columns in the front and then the rest was nothing but tiny, poorly-printed personals ads looking, for kinky sex, right now, very few questions asked. Most were illustrated with what might have been part of a cartoon of an elephant, shot head on, but were actually close-ups of the advertiser’s no longer private private parts.

No matter how ready and eager to go RIGHT NOW you might be feeling some particular evening, would you pick a sex partner based entirely upon a blurry photo of his junk? No? I mean, even while looking for, say, a penis, don’t you need more than a picture of a penis on which to base your decision?

Let’s say you’re not looking for a penis. I mean, you are, but you’re hoping it arrives attached to a person. So you place or answer an ad (online this time) and eagerly open the e-mail that arrives in response and — SURPRISE — out jumps … the weenus. You shriek and hit, appropriately, the “junk” button and remove the person from your list of possible persons of interest, and maybe are a little less keen to open the next one.

This may have been the right response — if what they’re looking for is the same reaction your old-fashioned dark-alley flasher is usually after: shock and fear. Most purveyors of nonconsensual exhibition are seeking a sense of power over their startled (almost invariably female)witnesses. It’s an act of (small, pathetic) aggression, penis mightier than the sword, that sort of thing. If it happens to you, remember to laugh.

But what of those who are not hoping to frighten, but to woo? On the odd chance that anyone’s reading this who actually has sent out an unsolicited dick-shot while trying to get girl to like him, I offer a friend’s description of how she reacts when she would like to be your friend and then you go do something stupid like send her a big unsolicited picture of your wang: “I was chatting with someone from OKCupid and he asked if I wanted a more recent picture and I said sure and bam! full-frontal nudity.

My feeling when this first happened was gross-out. Other feelings I’ve had other times: anger, jadedness, shame-on-me-they-got-me-again-ness, and finally, “Hey, well, maybe that turns them on to send nakey pics to a stranger, so I hope they got something out of it because I certainly didn’t. I don’t walk up to someone in a pub and introduce myself just so he can whip his cock out right there and then, and so that same thing turns me off when it happens online.”

This has been a public service announcement.

Love,

Andrea

Got a sex question? Email Andrea at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Po’ girl

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Po’ girl

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS It was minus two in Boston when I got on the airplane. I was all bundled up in borrowed and stolen clothing, trying to tap what was left of the warmth from our show there. Between 200 and 300 bodies, and, no, I didn’t get laid, but on the other hand I never felt more loved. There may have been one or two dry eyes in the house, but there were not a lot of dry pairs of underpants. Myself, I was completely creamed by the whole thing. I’m still a little shaken.

At the airport, on the weather on the news on TV, they showed a live shot of San Francisco, just before dawn, and said that it was 60 there, that San Franciscans would wake up to a clear, beautiful day.

But that wasn’t where I was going. I was going to New Orleans. New Orleans is where I am, and I intend to have a lot to say about the food scene here. Crawdad de la Cooter, who grew up in this neck of the swamp, thinks I’m not going to want to come home. I think it’s going to take more than red beans and rice and gumbo to change my life at this point.

Now Kayday, she gave us all a scare. After nine months of not finding a job in San Francisco, she found a job in L.A., and on the day before the big move, she got a call from her new employer saying that she’d been, in effect, laid off. Talk about cutting it close! She called me right afterward.

“I have good news,” she said. Then she told me the bad news.

“How are you feeling about this?” I asked.

She was shocked, she said, and also euphoric.

I said, “I’m sorry.” I said, “Congratulations!”

This was, unequivocally, bacon for my own musical future. When I come home now, my new band will be all in one piece and place, which is important for things like bands and chandeliers.

Last night while I was sleeping, a curtain rod did not fall on my head. However, almost the whole rest of my household here was of the opinion that one had. New Orleans is like that. It’s a haunted city. Things go bump in the night, and clang and crack and “Ow! Goddamn it!”

So far I am charmed. My first meal was a fried oyster po’ boy, and the first thing I saw when I left the house this morning was three giraffes — real, live, leafy-toothed giraffes that were not in any way a figment of my imagination, because it turns out there’s a zoo just across the park.

Tell you why I’m here: one of the families whose cute little nine-month-old childern I care for just moved from Berkeley to New Orleans, just for the semester. This childern, both his moms are perfessers, one at State, and one — uh oh — at Tulane. I’m here to help, but also to eat myself silly and have scary adventures to write home to you and/or Earl Butter about.

Since the fried oyster po’ boy I imbibed last night was, as the saying goes, nothing to write home to you and/or Earl Butter about, I will instead regale you with misinformation about a meal I ate with Kayday before I even left San Fran.

On a cold, cold and windy, windy night, the likes of which you haven’t seen and are not likely to see in some time, according to The Weather Channel, Kayday and I ventured our way over to Bernal Heights around dinner time. We were going to squeeze in one last practice at Bambam’s house before Kayday moved to the city of Angels and I to the city of Saints.

It all seemed like Not A Bad Idea at the time. To get something to eat first. So we wound up at Blue Elephant on Cortland Avenue. And we ordered imperial rolls, duck curry, and something else that I have forgotten. But the imperial rolls were not forgettable. They were great. And the duck curry, which is of course a red coconut milk curry with tomato, pineapple, and roasted duck, was fantastic.

Kayday told me she was going to make a blog about living in L.A. called “My Year of Living Los Angelesly,” and I thought that that was a fairly brilliant idea.

I still think so, but now someone else is going to have to do it.

BLUE ELEPHANT

Daily, Lunch: 10:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Dinner: 5 p.m.–10 p.m.

803 Cortland, SF

(415) 642-9900

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

Viva Goa

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Viva Goa

DINE In a nondescript space on Lombard Street — itself one of the more nondescript of the city’s thoroughfares, a faded remnant of 1950s automotive delirium — a succession of south Asian restaurants has come and gone over the past decade or so. The latest arrival is Viva Goa, which opened late last summer and, as the name reveals, features the cooking of Goa, a region on India’s west coast south of Mumbai where once there was a colony of Portuguese.

The best-known contribution of Goa to the world’s experience of Indian food is almost certainly vindaloo, a spicy sauce of garlic, chilis, and vinegar — vinegar being derived from wine and wine pointing in the direction of the Portuguese. The Portuguese also, according to actress and cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey, “introduced chiles to India” — having brought them from their New World colonies — “in the late 15th century. Indians, already familiar with their own black pepper, took to them with a passion.” Jaffrey’s recent book, At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (Knopf, $35, 320 pages) is a trove of straightforward recipes, many of them Goan, that rely on a few readily available ingredients to produce stunning results. If you have space on your shelves for only one Indian cookbook, let it be this one.

Viva Goa offers vindaloo in a number of guises, along with dishes that tend to turn up in Indian restaurants of every stripe, including saag paneer ($8.99), ground spinach mixed with spices and cooked with cubes of fresh white cheese. Due to a circumstance beyond my control, this old standby seems to get ordered every time I find myself in an Indian restaurant, and, despite the utter predictability of the pattern, it never disappoints — and didn’t here.

Viva Goa’s vindaloos are made with ginger, garlic, potatoes, cardamom, fenugreek, cinnamon, black peppercorns, chilies, and vinegar, along with some form of flesh — beef, pork, lamb, chicken, shrimp — or no flesh. Lamb ($10.99) was fine, though the distinctive gaminess of the meat vanished in the fragrant blaze of the sauce. The sauce had a reddish thickness I would have guessed was the result of stewed or reduced tomatoes, but the menu made no mention of tomatoes. So perhaps this effect was achieved through some combination of the vinegar, chilies, and potato.

Although most of the Goan recipes in Madhur Jaffrey’s book are rich in chili peppers, black peppercorns, cayenne, turmeric, and ginger, the evidence flowing from Viva Goa’s kitchen suggests that Goan cuisine has a mild-mannered side too. A nice example would be the vegetable caldin ($8.99), with bits of broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, and zucchini stewed in coconut milk with coriander, turmeric, garlic, and cumin seeds. The coconut milk brought an element of buffering creaminess, and although the seasonings were formidable, it was as if someone had discreetly dimmed some harsh overhead lighting.

And at least one item from the menu is neither spicy nor mild: the chicken cafreal ($11.99), a half-bird slathered with a pesto-looking sauce of fresh cilantro and green chilies then simmered in a pot. No complaints about the meat, which was juicy and tender, but the coating did not quite convince. Because the bird wasn’t cooked in the tandoor, the enveloping sauce neither reduced itself to a glaze nor firmed up into a crust or shell. Instead, it remained gloppy, like slowly melting spring snow. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as tandoori chicken ($10.99), but, with its African heritage, it was different enough to justify a place on the menu.

Did I say Madhur Jaffrey’s recipes rely on easily-got ingredients? They do, with one exception: fresh curry leaves. These are not easy to find (she recommends basil or kaffir lime leaves as substitutes), but they somehow turned up in Viva Goa’s malabar jinga ($7.99), an arrangement of shelled, sautéed prawns napped with a spicy red sauce that looked like caponata but with a much stronger kick, aromatic and exotic.

To round out the proceedings, starch-wise, are many of the usual suspects, from basmati rice to naan ($1.99, made with whole-wheat flour) and paratha ($2.50, basically buttered naan). There are also (for $1.50) fine pappadum. These would be excellent for cleaning up any leftover sauce, except they lose so much of their magic when cool. Luckily, they’re almost sure to be gone long before then.

VIVA GOA

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sun., noon–3 p.m.

2420 Lombard, SF

(415) 440-2600

www.vivagoaindiancuisine.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Bless this mess

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Bless this mess

arts@sfbg.com

FILM One of the most famous Korean films of its era — and notorious for its near-horror catalog of shocking behaviors — Kim Ki-young’s original 1960 The Housemaid took a caustic view of the new middle class emerging in a nation still crawling out from under the wreckage of war.

Its titular figure is not the sole but the third in a series of young women who bedevil an imperious yet apparently irresistible music professor, this one a smoker (gasp!) and thief hired as a domestic. When she succeeds where the others failed by seducing her employer, all further hell breaks loose. This lurid, recently restored wonder can’t quite make up its mind which is worse: the coldly exploitative bourgeoisie (even their children are obnoxious), or the specimens of youthful femininity who forever seem a heartbeat away from romantic hysteria manifesting itself in blackmail or stab wounds.

By contrast, Im Sang-soo’s extremely loose new remake — more of a complete rethink — has no doubt which side to blame. Its sole titular figure Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon) is pure innocent victim, a simple soul who can’t believe her luck at first in finding employment at what might easily be mistaken for a royal palace. But it’s just the humble home for Hoon (Lee Jung-jae), hard-bodied captain of politics and industry, and trophy wife Hera (Seo Woo), who is heavily pregnant with their second child. This job is not unlike being asked to dust at the Louvre, but our awed heroine is relieved to discover that her bosses are cultured and kind; their first child is a little angel; and even the stern chief housekeeper (Yun Yeo-jong, who gets a hilarious drunk scene) is made of softer stuff than she initially lets on.

But all this changes when Eun-yi lets herself be seduced by the master and gets pregnant. This triggers a series of acts (encouraged by Hoon’s particularly fearsome mother-in-law) that grow to encompass near-fatal “accidents,” poisonings, and lines like “How could that bastard do this to me? With the bitch who washes my underwear?!?”

Even farther from genre horror that its predecessor, this Housemaid is a glacially reserved black comedy that regards its characters as figures in a gorgeously expensive Architectural Digest landscape. As such it’s witty and entertaining until the very end, when the urge to go overboard can no longer be resisted (apparently), and an unconvincing final atrocity is followed by some sort of dream sequence that simply, ham-fistedly underlines what we already knew: the filthy rich are, well, in need of a moral wash. *

THE HOUSEMAID opens Fri/2 in Bay Area theaters.

 

Love, Gainsbarre

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Love, Gainsbarre

FILM/INDIEFEST “Oh, it’s a problem with women,” Serge Gainsbourg says in an interview clip only a few seconds into Pascal Forneri’s entertaining and energetic made-for-TV documentary Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women. For Gainsbourg, the problem was a rewarding one — women were the vehicle by which he moved from a brooding writer of chanson into a national and international provocateur and icon. On an artistic front, Gainsbourg arranged and delivered one musical bouquet after another for a multitude of female singers, to a degree that Forneri’s movie has to adopt a breakneck pace just to include some of his best songs. As time goes on, his accomplishment seems equal to, if not greater than, that of the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, and other English-language rock icons.

Opening with over-the-top Gallic narration and arranged into a series of commercial-ready chapters, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women isn’t pretentious, and it takes care to deliver some of Gainsbourg’s most infamous televised moments, such as a talk show where he — by that time fully and fatalistically given over to his messy, dissolute evil “Gainsbarre” mode — informed a young and imperial Whitney Houston he’d like to fuck her. We also get to enjoy young France Gall naively telling an amused and appreciative Gainsbourg that his latest hit song for her, “Les sucettes,” is about “a young girl named Annie who loves lollipops.”

But Forneri’s movie also reveals the sensitivity beneath Gainsbourg the provocative “women’s tailor” of French songwriting. After all, it was Gainsbourg who had Gall sing of herself as “a lonely singing doll.” In one interview excerpt, Gainsbourg says that he prefers writing songs for actresses because they are “more spontaneous than your typical moron,” then criticizes a market that celebrates and throws away young starlets as inherently “fucked.” “It’s very hard to find work, and they don’t do it for the money,” he says bluntly.

Aside from the bombastic narration, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women‘s primary commentary comes from the women who worked with and knew Gainsbourg, an illustrious group that includes Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Juliette Greco, Francoise Hardy, and Vanessa Paradis. One of Forneri’s chief stylistic gambits is to leave these interviews off-screen — aside from appearances within archival footage, Gainsbourg’s women are present only as voices. In one sense this sharpens a critical view of Gainsbourg the man, but it also masks the individuality of the women’s perspectives, turning them all into a single femme.

Nonetheless, there are numerous moments where the likes of Birkin assert their personality. Hardy states that writing for women allowed Gainsbourg to express his “sensitivity” and “sentimentality,” an idea that might not be as true when applied to the partnership of Christopher Wallace and Lil’ Kim half a decade after Gainsbourg’s death. Hip-hop’s Bonnie and Clyde duos only follow in the footsteps of Gainsbourg and Bardot, even if Bardot would rather think of herself as George Sand to his Chopin.

Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women is a story that tells itself. There’s an epic’s worth of turbulent romanticism in the still photos of a blissful and radiant Gainsbourg and Bardot recording the original, suppressed version of “Je t’aime … moi non plus,” and the television footage of a cynical Gainsbourg and a brash, irrepressibly coltish Birkin discussing their version of the song. The man himself says that he came up with both “Je t’aime” and “Bonnie and Clyde” in a single night after Bardot said (commanded?), “Write me the most beautiful song you can imagine.” Thanks to “Je t’aime,” Gainsbourg’s name is irrevocably associated with sex. But as anecdotes from Greco and Birkin make clear, he’d just as soon stay up all night talking and drinking with a woman. Instead of orgiastic pleasures, Gainsbourg and Birkin’s first night in a hotel concluded with her gifting a 45 of Ohio Express’ “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (as in “I got love in my tummy”) to Gainsbourg as he slept.

In focusing on Gainsbourg’s relationships with female singers, Gainsbourg, The Man Who Loved Women ignores his musical partnerships with men, most notably Jean-Claude Vannier, with whom he composed and arranged many of his greatest works. But Forneri’s movie arrives at a time when another wave of interest in Gainsbourg is growing in the U.S. and other countries outside France. The past few years have seen Light in the Attic reissue some of Gainsbourg’s greatest recordings, such as 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, the 1969 album version of Je t’aime (which contains Birkin’s “Jane B,” the model for vocals by Blonde Redhead, Deerhoof, and countless others), and Birkin’s 1973 solo debut, Di Doo Dah. This month, a new compilation of Gainsbourg’s pre-starlet compositions, Discograph’s Le claquer de mots, shines light on the big-eared outsider right before he hit the pop jackpot. If the 1990s saw a surface-level revival of Gainsbourg the cult icon, today, his eternal return runs deeper.

GAINSBOURG, THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN

Sat/5, 2:30 p.m., Roxie;

Sun/6, 9:15 p.m., Roxie

www.sfindie.com

 

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