Volume 45 [2010–11]

Citizen’s Band

Andrew Lam
-
0
Citizen’s Band

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE One of the revelations in Peter Mayles’ cycle of enchanting memoirs about life in Provence (A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, Encore Provence) is that some of the best food in France is to be found at truck stops. This stands to reason, since truckers are a migratory species whose survival depends on knowing where to eat — and French truckers spend their days zooming around France, a land where food and wine are as much a part of the national identity as the language itself.

Citizen’s Band (which opened in August on a semi-sketchy stretch of Folsom St. in SoMa) isn’t quite a truck stop and it certainly isn’t in France, but it does have, stashed above the door, a collection of vintage CB radios, the kind whose tinny crackle helped drive C.W. McCall’s 1975 truckers’ anthem, “Convoy.” And it is, in its hipster-city way, a convincing contemporary version of a roadside diner: it has a long counter, zinc-topped tables, harsh lighting, and plenty of din, all at the edge of an insanely busy street.

But the place doesn’t serve Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, despite a plethora of hipsters, and the staff all seem to be relations of Flo, the cheeky woman from the Progressive Insurance TV ads. Indeed, beer places a distant second as a libation to wine, which is offered in a variety of interesting pours listed on the huge chalkboard that backs the counter. So maybe we’re not so far from France after all. Or somewhere in Europe. Lately I’ve noticed a small but definite bloom on wine lists of reds produced in German-speaking lands, and Citizen’s Band offers a glass of Blaufränkisch, an Austrian red, for $7.50. Our (female) server described it as “feminine,” not a customary description for wine. To me, the wine was light and spicy, like a nero d’avola after some heavy core training. Could this be what she meant?

If a convoy of hungry, discerning French truckers came rolling up to Citizen’s Band, what would they find, apart from trouble in parking? American food, subtly reimagined and cooked to the highest standard. Chef Chris Beerman’s menu includes elements of what we might call comfort cuisine, including macaroni and cheese and a burger with fries, but it also soars into the higher airs of the gastronomic ether — and even the homey stuff is enriched by a close attention to detail.

The mac ‘n’cheese ($8) was made with fontina and a Sonoma dry-jack fonduta, which helped permeate the pasta tubes. I didn’t like the fried onion rings on top; they were crunchy but discordant. A plate of humble franks and beans ($8) was stylishly reinvented with grilled sweet Italian sausage from Paul Bertolli’s Fra’ Mani in Berkeley, surrounded by butter beans (from Iacopi Farms) in a rich sauce of oregano, pecorino romano, and (to judge from the glossiness) butter. And how many diners, or truck stops, would toss a salad of baby arugula leaves ($8) with diced peaches (for deep sweetness), almond brittle (for sweet crunch), Point Reyes blue cheese (for rich bite), and a huckleberry vinaigrette for a final fillip of piquancy and (deep purple) color?

The burger ($13, plus $2 for cheese) was quite a production. The beef was kobe, from Snake River Farms; the bun, challah (which is pretty much brioche, for purposes of richness). Also aioli and house-made burger pickles and — better than either of those items, good as they were — no raw onion. Best of all, the kitchen actually grilled the meat as ordered, to medium rare, as recommended by Flo. A medium-rare burger means a juicy burger, and juiciness makes all the difference. A dry burger is a dead burger. The stack of fries on the side was excellent, still warm and crisp from the deep fryer.

The roasted red trout ($20) looked like a pair of cantaloupe slices slipped atop an heirloom-tomato panzanella, with a scattering of garlicky Monterey Bay calamari and some uncredited braised greens. The fish was lovely, but it was the panzanella that commanded our attention: it was colored by several shades of cherry tomatoes and made crunchy by croutons toasted gold. Panzanella is summer on a plate, but it’s also, at least traditionally, frugality on a plate, a way of rejuvenating bread that’s past its prime. To find it deployed with such elegant discipline here was a delight. Encore!

CITIZEN’S BAND

Dinner: Tues.–-Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.

Brunch: Sat., 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

1198 Folsom, SF

(415) 556-4901

www.citizensbandsf.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Paradise lost

Andrew Lam
-
0
Paradise lost

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Expanding like a landscape, the view into ODC’s theater from its narrow hallway entrance has become a theatrical experience. Passing through, you can’t help but be in a good mood. For the site’s official opening program, ODC Theater Director Rob Bailis invited two local choreographers of quite different temperament to create their own scenery. Planned or not, Yannis Adoniou and Ben Levy explored similar territories — the debt that each of them owes to his heritage as an artist and human being. Adoniou is of Greek and Levy of Jewish Persian descent. Neither lapsed into sentimentality; the two pieces were fierce and dark, and each connected like a powerful punch.

Adoniou based Kunst-Stoff’s Rebetiko on the underground music that Greek emigrants brought with them when they were forcefully expelled from Turkey in the early part of the 20th century. It’s a work in which haunting memories and contemporary pain flow through choreography that whimpers, rebels, and howls yet finishes on a note of peace, or at least resignation. At 45 minutes, Rebetiko is a stretch for its material. Nonetheless, it is perhaps Adoniou’s most integrated and finest work to date. Marina Fukushima, Chin-chin Hsu, Daniel Howerton, Daiane Lopes da Silva, and Julia Stiefel were the ferocious dancers; Catherine Clambanevea the excellent singer.

Adoniou plunges his refugees into a sea of darkness (fabulous lighting by Lisa Pinkham) and ominous city sounds (music and songs by Minos Matsas). They struggle, hide, escape, and survive — barely. Whips lash, ropes imprison, bodies are pulled to ground. Lopez da Silva whirls herself into a fury like a goddess of revenge and Howerton runs, hunted by invisible pursuers. Hsu seems stunned, frozen in deep plié or doubled over. Yet out of the darkness emerges a ray of hope, a tentative Greek folk dance duet for Howerton and Fukushima. Still, at the end he collapses — a man overcome, a culture destroyed.

Setting off the gloom is a luminous banner that spills onto the stage. Under Pinkham’s masterful lighting, it variously suggests turbulent memories, a place of safety, a paradise lost. It also pays fine tribute to rebetiko’s culture of shadow puppetry.

In Our Body Remembers, LEVYdance strips away the layers that have accumulated in our bodies, sending us back into an inchoate state of being. If I understood choreographer Levy correctly, he looks at this unspooling with a mix of trepidation, bemusement, and awe. Sarah Phykitt’s lighting and set divides the stage into various areas of activity, making fine use of ODC’s new space. Kardash (Marty Huerta and Murat Bayhan) create the aural landscape.

Initially Our Body uses an epigrammatic, quasi-narrative structure, out of which bursts an increasingly physical flood of energy that borders on the violent. Drawing turbulent emotion and motion from Persian dance’s curvy lines and gentle undulations seems like an act of foolish bravado. Yet Levy succeeds admirably. A charming dance for hands pays tribute to Middle Eastern and Asian traditions of using fingers as something more than the end of an arm.

The dancers (Aline Wachsmuth, Ali Schechter, Morgelyn Tenbeth Ward, and Bianca Cabrera) are credited with movement. Levy provides the direction and — no doubt — the drive. My one reservation about Our Body pertains to the writing scene in which Wachsmuth gives and denies written cues about her body’s function. It didn’t add enough to the piece’s thrust.

The tempest starts slowly. Little tremors shake these women as they pass snippets of paper — gossip? memory? — to Wachsmuth, who becomes increasingly agitated. Putting heels on the barefoot dancers, Our Body hits high gear, sending the dancers down the runway, primping and posing, but with a decidedly aggressive note. When they begin tearing clothes off of each other, this is no mere catfight. It’s anger, chaos, and violence at its most extreme, and it’s frightening. Finally, stripped down with feathery snowflakes falling on them, the dancers awaken into a dream state. I couldn’t decide whether Levy was sarcastic or lyrical.

KUNST-STOFF AND LEVYDANCE

Thurs/28–Sat/30, 8 p.m.; $15–$18

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odcdance.org

 

 

The mad hatter

Andrew Lam
-
0
The mad hatter

 

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I had a coffee date after work in Alameda. He wasn’t feeling well and wondered about chicken soup. I knew exactly what to tell him, and he invited me to come along, but got it to go.

“Do you want a drink?” he said, while we were waiting.

I liked the guy alright, but don’t drink before dinner.

When his soup came, he walked me to my bike and gave me a hug.

“Let me know what you think of the soup,” I said. The place was La Piñata, but it said something else on it. It still said La Piñata, but it just also said I-forget-what. Some other name. So maybe it was La Piñata, and maybe not. But, hey, I get sick too, and what if my favorite bowl of chicken soup in Alameda is not what it used to be?

These were the thoughts I was thinking. Honestly, I knew I wasn’t going to see the guy again, datewise. I just wanted to know about the soup. In retrospect, of course I should have just ordered a bowl, to stay, and sent him packing.

I remember why I didn’t. I had to get to Deevee’s house in downtown Oakland to pick up/borrow my/her pink cowboy hat before she went to sleep. This was important because I was going camping the next day, and Deevee goes to sleep early. So no matter how hungry I was (very very), I had to suck it up, bike to BART, BART to downtown Oakland, bike to Deevee’s, and bike back toward BART on an empty stomach.

All for the sake of a pink cowboy hat. What can I say? I have a huge fucking head, and this is one of only two hats I have found in my life that fits it. It’s good to have a cowboy hat when you go camping. Keeps the sun off your ears, the rain out of your eyes, and the pine needles out of your hair — and if it’s pink it might even make you popular with park rangers.

Just a thought.

Thinking which, I forsook a bowl of sit-down soup to get to Deevee’s before bedtime (hers). Then, on my way back to BART, I thought I would duck into the first restaurant I saw for a quick little bite of something-or-other.

Binh Minh Quan. Vietnamese. Downtown Oakland just a couple blocks shy of BART on 12th Street. It was after 9 p.m. so the place was more than half-empty.

Me, I rarely want to eat in a hurry, but I do, on occasion, have low blood sugar meltdowns that — as many of my friends will attest — can get a little dicey. Usually I manage to keep the dice in my head. I just quietly go crazy, lose my sense of self and direction, then, glazed and psychotic, stagger to the nearest refrigerator and eat every single thing in it in 30 seconds or less. Blink, everything’s okay again, give or take a little heartburn.

I’ve learned to stave off these attacks by eating five meals a day and snacking in between. But sometimes when I’m at work, dating over coffee, or on an urgent hat-related mission — not to mention all three back-to-back — shit happens.

Wouldn’t you know it? The cute little staff of Binh Minh Quan, on this particular evening, was entirely overwhelmed by a party of seven. It took them almost 15 minutes to take my order, and another 20 or so to bring me my bun. Meanwhile, I tried to distract myself by talking local politics to my hat in a Cookie Monster voice, but under my breath.

Finally! The bun was of course great, but no way is this my New Favorite Restaurant. No. My New Favorite Restaurant is the guy at El Rio who makes fry bread, or Indian tacos, on Monday nights. His name is Rocky, he recently transplanted himself here from Arizona, and I think he might be Apache or else maybe I got that wrong.

Any case, I’ve run into him twice, once on the sidewalk and once on the El Rio patio, and both times he made my day. His savory fry bread, stacked with beans, cheese, and onions, transports me back to Delta’s Depression Dough, and breakfast.

And that’s a great place to start. 

ROCKY THE FRY BREAD GUY @ EL RIO

Mon. 8 p.m. until he runs out of dough

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

Cash only

Full bar

 

 

alt.sex.column: Straitlaced

Andrew Lam
-
0
alt.sex.column: Straitlaced

Dear Readers:

We were lately discussing objects and outfits that make you feel sexier and more attractive, as opposed to fetish items, inanimate stuff you’re attracted to.

I don’t have too much faith in the power of random dress-up to recharge a flagging relationship’s batteries, but I do believe you can tap into your own image of an ideal sexual self and recharge from there. This is not at all the same thing as “If I were thinner (bustier, better hung, had nicer ears …), I’d be able to have the kind of sex I actually want.” That sort of self-judging will just hold you back. And since hardly anyone ever achieves anything like their ideal body, it’s basically just a way to keep yourself from ever enjoying anything.

Donning a costume (sexy underwear or whatever) that you hope will interest a partner is nice, but dressing for yourself will always be more reliable, just as the masturbater needn’t waste time telling him/herself to do it a little harder or to spend a bit more time on foreplay.

It’s about finding a mode of dressing or grooming that expresses — to you — a way you want to be perceived, yes, but most of all the way you want to feel and behave. I’m most intrigued by the way that dress outside the bedroom can cross-pollinate, to positive effect, with sexual self-image. It’s entirely possible to go out dressed, quite respectably, as your secret sexual self. And doing so, not necessarily even on a date, can bring considerable zing back home with you. Think butch or flirty shoes/boots, garter belts and stockings, leather jackets. And corsets.

Corsets, you say? Are people really wearing corsets — again? — and isn’t compressing your internal organs like that kind of unhealthy? People are, and no it isn’t.

And no, ladies of yore did not used to have a rib removed (without, you will recall, anesthesia or antibiotics). Neither are you likely, now or then, to crack ribs, faint, or die of the vapors.

But you can hurt yourself, usually while “tight-lacing” — pulling the thing as tight as you can all at once — rather than “waist-training,” gradually reshaping your body through steady compression. Don’t.

As a visual, the appeal is hardly obscure, harking back as it (presumably) does to the savannah and the instinctual and apparently universal appeal of the small waist.

Do I fear that sometimes wearing a corset (or boots or items generally meant for another gender, or any other signifier you care to name) will have a negative, rebound-y affect on the wearer when not wearing it? No more, I suppose, than I worry that using a vibrator will make it impossible to orgasm without. Rather, I think that conceiving of oneself as the sort of person who would wear a signifier of sexual self-image gives a boost that can carry over easily until the next time one has the opportunity.

And yes, you can do it with the corset on. Can you ever.

Love,

Andrea

 

Email Andrea at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

PG&E fast and loose on repairs, tight-lipped on info

Andrew Lam
-
0
PG&E fast and loose on repairs, tight-lipped on info

It was clear at several times during the Oct. 19 Senate committee hearing that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. had done a poor job of communicating with those affected by the pipeline explosion that brought catastrophe to San Bruno, a practice that is in keeping with its longstanding pattern of secrecy.

Kathy DeRenzi, a survivor who testified at the hearing, noted that she had written several letters to PG&E since the event, addressed to Vice President of Gas Operations Kirk Johnson. “I haven’t heard back from anyone,” she said. DeRenzi also noted that she has been in close contact with many affected residents since the blaze, and very few had received notification that the hearing would be held. “There would’ve been a lot more people here” had they known, she said.

San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane also complained of the utility’s lack of communication. In the weeks following the blaze, he said, the company started a repurchasing program for residents whose homes had been damaged — but never mentioned it to city officials. “The city was never informed,” Ruane said. “It’s kind of a mixed message when we find out from the media about this program.”

Weeks earlier, the company continued to hide crucial information about its top 100 priority repairs until intense public pressure forced it to release the list. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that two key PG&E employees who were on duty the night of the explosion declined to be interviewed by federal investigators about the pressure spike in the gas pipeline, saying they were “too traumatized” to talk.

PG&E also ignores the inquiries of certain media outlets. When a Guardian reporter attempted to approach Johnson to ask a question, media relations representative Joe Molica stood in the way and insisted that Johnson didn’t have time to talk. Asked for contact information so that an interview could be set up later, Molica appeared to search for a business card but came up empty-handed.

He then refused outright to provide his phone number or e-mail address. Asked why a media relations representative could not share his e-mail address with a reporter, Molica scoffed. “Because it will end up on some blog,” he snapped. 

 

No good answers

Andrew Lam
-
1
No good answers

rebeccab@sfbg.com

There was lots of anger from victims and legislators but very few substantive answers from regulators or Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials during an Oct. 19 hearing at the state capitol on the Sept. 9 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people, injured at least 50 others, and destroyed 37 homes in San Bruno.

State senators grilled PG&E executives and officials from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), demanding to know why an aging segment of the San Bruno pipeline had been neglected despite having been flagged several years ago as high-risk and in need of repair.

Residents from San Bruno, including some who lost loved ones in the catastrophic incident, recounted their terrifying experiences of that night. Five San Bruno residents filed suit Oct. 19 against PG&E in San Mateo County Superior Court.

The complaints allege that the utility didn’t do enough to maintain the pipeline: “Investigation has revealed that the pipeline that exploded was a ticking time bomb,” one of the complaints states. “The San Bruno pipeline explosion was completely preventable.”

WHAT IS “SAFE”?

A central focus of the California Senate committee hearing was Line 132, the gas line that ruptured. PG&E installed the 30-inch, high-pressure steel pipeline in San Bruno some 50 years ago.

In 2007, the company approached the CPUC as part of an annual rate-setting process and asked for higher rates, justifying its request with a list of repairs that needed funding. A segment of Line 132, several miles from the epicenter of the explosion, was on the list. The CPUC granted a $5 million rate increase to complete the upgrade, but the work was never done. The money presumably went toward a different project deemed a higher priority.

In 2009, PG&E was back at the CPUC again with a second request for additional funding and a new project list in hand. Line 132 was included again, coupled with a document noting, “The risk of a failure at this location [is] unacceptably high.”

But even though the upgrade was never scheduled and the project never completed, Line 132 vanished from the repair list by the time PG&E returned to the CPUC as part of the rate-setting process in 2010. By then, an engineer had determined it would not have to be replaced for several more years.

“Our engineers looked at that piece of pipe and deemed it was safe until 2013, at which time we should continue to look forward to its construction,” Kirk Johnson, vice president of gas operations at PG&E, said during the hearing.

That assertion prompted Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) to ask Johnson how PG&E defines “safe.” Reading aloud from the project summary included in the second request for funding, Hill noted, “‘The likelihood of failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high.’ Are you saying that that description is a ‘safe’ condition?”

In response, Johnson launched into a detailed description of what factors are considered when calculating risk, but Hill cut him off. “Would that be considered a safe pipe?” he repeated.

“I think for a pipeline to be deemed safe, it needs to go through an analysis to ensure that it’s safe, and that line was deemed safe,” Johnson responded.

Essentially, PG&E reached different conclusions about the integrity of the same section of pipeline over the course of several years, and no one at the hearing seemed able to explain why. The utility flagged the pipeline stretch as being in need of replacement in 2007, received millions of dollars in the form of higher utility rates to do it, spent the money on a different repair instead, went back and requested more money citing the same repair, and then decided that the pipe would remain intact until 2013.

For all the inconsistency, that particular segment of Line 132 was not actually the same section that blew apart. CPUC Executive Director Paul Clanon emphasized this point. “The discussion that alarms me the most,” he said, “is the part that blew wasn’t on that list.”

Meanwhile, the San Bruno pipeline wasn’t the only utility infrastructure PG&E never fixed, even though ratepayers forked over the cost of the repair. A list released by The Utility Reform Network (TURN) focused on the electric side of the gas-and-electric company’s vast system, noting that the utility received millions in 2007 for a slew of reliability and safety-related projects, but never quite got around to completing them. Among the neglected projects were transformer replacements, gas meter protection upgrades, reliability and safety equipment, and inspections that can help identify deficiencies.

“Consumers are shocked to realize that when PG&E is authorized to raise rates, it gets the money with no strings attached,” said Mindy Spatt, a spokesperson for TURN. “PG&E is the only entity responsible for those pipelines, and the CPUC is the only entity that regulates PG&E. So between the two of them, the buck’s got to stop somewhere.”

THE WATCHDOG

A federal investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine the cause of the blast has yet to reach any definitive conclusions. A preliminary NTSB report noted that just before the explosion, a system malfunction occurred when PG&E was working on a power-supply terminal in Milpitas, triggering a surge in the gas-line pressure.

Until the whole mystery is unraveled, regulators can’t accurately determine how to safeguard against such a tragedy in the future. “I have no idea how this could’ve been prevented,” Richard Clark, director of the consumer protection and safety division of the CPUC, said when asked what the agency could have done differently.

Legislators fired pointed questions about why this issue hadn’t been more closely scrutinized by the CPUC. “Did the PUC do any accounting when you gave them $5 million?” Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) queried Clark. “Do we just give them money and cross our fingers and hope they fix it? Is that what we do? Until some terrible tragedy occurs?”

Clark’s response was that the CPUC does not manage on the level of individual projects — all the upkeep, maintenance, testing, and replacement of pipeline infrastructure is up to PG&E. The utility maintains its own list of needed repairs, and the company has license to prioritize repairs and funnel money from one project to another without seeking prior approval from the regulatory body. It conducts its own audits, and the regulatory agency looks over the paperwork.

“We can’t run the company for them,” Clark said. “We don’t take a microscopic look, if you will, at what it is they’re doing.”

A team of nine inspectors for the entire state of California is tasked with auditing PG&E’s infrastructure improvements. For the first time in years, the CPUC has submitted a request to hire a few more, Executive Director Paul Clanon noted. This small staff physically inspects about 1 percent of the state’s entire gas pipeline infrastructure. PG&E has about 5,700 miles of natural gas transmission lines, with about 1,000 miles in densely populated regions classified as “high consequence areas.”

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) suggested that the CPUC should exercise more hands-on oversight. “Might it make sense to look at a different way of working with them?” Leno asked. He noted that the San Bruno explosion wasn’t the first time a PG&E pipeline failure had resulted in a loss of life or significant property damage. “We’ve got a pattern here,” Leno said. “And we’re not doing anything differently. In fact, we’re not even fining them.”

In 2008, a PG&E gas leak in Rancho Cordova led to a pipeline explosion, killing one person and injuring a few others. Leno reminded the CPUC of this tragedy, demanding to know if the agency had fined PG&E after finding the utility was at fault. It hadn’t yet, Clanon responded.

When Leno pressed for an explanation, Clanon said, “We were slow, and we should’ve been quicker.” The utility can be fined up to $20,000 for each violation, Clanon explained — and as things stand, there are no additional penalties for violations resulting in injury or death.

A HARD LOOK

Since the San Bruno pipeline explosion occurred, the CPUC has convened an independent panel of technical experts to assess the disaster, a parallel effort to the NTSB investigation. The committee will issue a set of recommendations on how PG&E should change its design, operation, construction, maintenance, or management practices to improve safety.

“We’ll be examining whether there may be systemic management problems at the utility,” Clark noted. The CPUC panel may also recommend new legislative changes to allow the state to clamp down on PG&E’s activities. “We’re taking a hard look at ourselves, and we’re taking a hard look at PG&E,” Clark said.

One point that’s abundantly clear is that the utility does not lack the money to address its system deficiencies. PG&E revenue was $13.4 billion in 2009, its rates are 30 percent higher than the national average, and its shareholders receive a cool 11.35 percent return on equity.

The utility came under fire this past spring for sinking $40 million into Proposition 16 — a ballot measure that would have effectively eliminated competition for the monopolistic utility by snuffing out municipal power programs. Now that its unaddressed repairs in San Bruno and elsewhere have come to light, the company’s profits and substantial executive bonuses may come under closer scrutiny.

Yet whatever regulatory changes come into play will hardly matter for those San Bruno residents whose lives were permanently altered by the loss of family members. James Ruigomez, a resident who testified at the hearing, told legislators that his son’s girlfriend, Jessica Morales, had just settled down to watch a football game with his son Joe Ruigomez on the night of the explosion. Morales died in the blaze and Joe is still recovering in the hospital.

The tragedy filled James Ruigomez with guilt and sorrow, he said — but also anger. “Extreme anger,” he added, “knowing that this possibly could’ve been prevented.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
-
0
Editor’s notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

At a certain point, you have to stop trying to project what’s going to happen and just wait for the election results. Because what matters now isn’t the $140 million Meg Whitman has spent or Carly Fiorina’s record at Hewlett-Packard or which aide to Jerry Brown called Whitman a whore. It’s who shows up to vote.

If I were Meg Whitman’s campaign manager, I’d stop spending money. Go into hiding. Pretend there’s nothing going on here, no big deal next Tuesday morning — and then pray for rain. Because the way Whitman wins — possibly the only way she wins — is if huge numbers of Californians don’t bother to vote.

If the turnout is reasonable — that is, if enough Democrats realize the danger posed by of the GOP candidate and go to the polls — then Jerry Brown is in. And if that happens, chances are good that the rest of the Democratic ticket — including Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris — squeaks in, too. And then we can all start to have fun figuring out the future of San Francisco politics.

That, of course, depends on the same factor: Who’s going to show up to vote? Will all the tenants in District 8 — many of them unexcited about Jerry Brown — take the time to vote for Rafael Mandelman for supervisor? Will the progressive voters who have lived in District 6 for a while get to the polls in greater numbers than the conservative newcomers in the pricey condos? Will the next Board of Supervisors — which could be choosing the next mayor — be as progressive as the current board (which also might wind up choosing the next mayor?)

And who’s even on the mayoral short list?

At the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council forum Oct. 14, former Supervisor (and potential mayoral contender) Aaron Peskin noted that the person in Room 200 year “is going to have to take out the garbage.” The city’s going to face another awful budget deficit and a progressive interim mayor will have to make a lot of enemies. Who wants to face the voters in November 2011 after making more cuts and raising taxes?

Well, somebody needs to — because the “caretaker” mayor some people are pushing for won’t have the clout to make tough decisions. And frankly, a progressive with the power of incumbency might actually be able to win a full term, even up against a huge downtown war chest.

Fun stuff. Go out and vote.

 

Controlling big money campaigns

Andrew Lam
-
0
Controlling big money campaigns

Big money moved into the district supervisorial races this fall. Downtown forces, working with landlords and a labor union that wants a giant new hospital on Van Ness Avenue, are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into races in Districts 6, 8, and 10, trying to alter the direction of the board by electing more conservative candidates. And while district races allow grassroots candidates without huge war chests a decent shot at winning, all this cash is going to have an impact — and might prove to be decisive in some races.

A lot of the money hasn’t been raised directly by candidates, either — it’s in the form of so-called independent expenditure committees, outside operations that, in theory, have no direct connection to any candidate. These committees can raise money without limits, spend it however they like, and ignore the limits that candidates face. And thanks to the U. S. Supreme Court, it’s almost impossible to regulate the committees. So the IEs, as they’re known, can put out attack ads, make scurrilous accusations, even lie outright — and have no accountability.

But San Francisco, which led the nation in using ranked-choice voting and has an impressive system for public financing of elections and disclosure, ought to be working to control this flood of sleaze. There are two major steps the supervisors should be looking at.

1. Respond to the money. San Francisco currently gives matching public funds to candidates who raise enough on their own to meet a threshold. That gives underfunded candidates at least a fighting chance to stay competitive. But it doesn’t address what happens when an outside group comes in and drops, say, $50,000 to promote or attack a candidate.

Unfortunately, federal law and court decisions limit the city’s ability to cap or restrict that spending. But the current system of matching public funds offers a potential alternative.

Suppose, for example, the city offered matching funds not just on the basis of what a candidate has raised — but also on the basis of what his or her opponents (including IEs) are spending. For example, if an IE spends $50,000 attacking a candidate, the city could give that candidate $50,000 (or, better, $100,000) to fight back.

That sounds like a lot of taxpayer dollars — but if the system is designed right, much of it will never be spent. Because the independent expenditure committees are only effective if the money is one-sided. Once these operators realize that all they’ve be doing by spending money against a candidate is increasing that candidate’s own resources, they’re far less likely to mount these campaigns.

The disclosure laws can be tightened too. Campaign ads and mailers have to say where the money’s coming from — but only in tiny type or in rushed voiceovers that few people notice. The federal government’s mandate that cigarette packages and ads have big, prominent statements about the health risks of smoking has been very effective. Requiring campaigns, particularly independent expenditure groups, to identify their major donors in large, visible type in prominent places on printed material and in clear language on radio or TV ads would help the voters understand the players — and the motivations — behind the campaign material.

2. Deal with the legal violations — promptly. A lot of these big-money campaigns have a tendency to skirt — or sometimes flagrantly violate — the city’s campaign law. And by the time the ethics Commission gets around to investigating (if that even happens) the election is over and it’s too late.

The supervisors ought to mandate that all credible allegations of election-law violations be investigated — and resolved if at all possible before Election Day. And if that means Ethics needs more staff, that’s a small price to pay for honest elections. 

 

Dia de los San Franciscanos

Andrew Lam
-
0
Dia de los San Franciscanos

 

caitlin@sfbg.com

ARTS AND CULTURE Rene Yañez, the godfather of San Francisco’s Dia de los Muertos, is showing off the art for his new 3-D altar. The artist is hardly one to adhere to traditions, though he played a large role in creating one of the city’s most distinctive and popular interpretations of another country’s cultural celebrations.

Yañez’s elastic sense of the holiday’s expression mirrors the way his city has interpreted the Mexican holiday. Traditionally, Dia de los Muertos marks the time of year when the boundaries of the dead and living blur. Towns south of the border celebrate the day (which was synced with All Saint’s Day by the Catholic Church to capitalize on the cultural resonance of an indigenous celebration) by decorating the graves of loved ones with favorite treats and trinkets of those who’ve passed on.

But kicking the bucket doesn’t preclude your party pass on Dia de los Muertos. “The whole point of Day of the Dead is that we’re honoring death but mocking it,” says Martha Rodriguez, a Mexico City musician who curates the Dia de los Muertos San Francisco Symphony family concert that celebrates this year’s centennial of the Mexican Revolution.

“Through all the uprisings and death, there’s always space for fun,” Rodriguez says. “That’s kind of how Mexicans survive — we do not stop celebrating.”

Perhaps it’s the mix of spiritual connection, gravity, and levity — not to mention the stylin’ calaveras and brightly-colored floral iconography — that has made the celebration resonate here. The city hosts what is arguably the largest Muertos festivities in the country, featuring altar displays at SOMArts, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and Garfield Park, as well as a procession that organizers expect to attract 100,000 participants.

Yañez and son Rio are the curators of the SOMArts’ epic yearly altar installation — an atmospheric production that transforms SOMArts’ drafty main hall into a series of reflective spaces that pay homage to fallen family members, casualties of natural disasters, manmade conflict, and even beloved gatos who have gone to that litter box in the sky.

The elder Yañez’s involvement with SF Dia-ing goes back to the early 1970s when he was artistic director at Mission’s Galeria de la Raza, a time when the neighborhood was absorbing political exiles from political strife in South and Central America. A way to observe the day of remembrance was needed. “We talked about creating a ritual, a ceremonial exhibit,” he says.

At first it was people from the neighborhoods who came to see the altars put together by the de la Raza artists. But eventually, word spread. “The exhibit proved very popular and the schools started coming around,” Yañez remembers.

The altars were a way of talking about Mexican culture and the Galeria started to print lesson plans for teachers. Eventually Yañez organized a procession through the neighborhood, like the ones held in Mexico. The first year, which current procession organizer Juan Pablo tells me was 1978, attracted somewhere between 75 to a few hundred people. But that was going to change.

“It’s the one thing that unites us, the cycle of life and death,” Pablo said in a phone interview. The thousands who attend these days see far more than traditional Mexican spirituality, Pablo said, with Wiccans marching in the parade, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence granting indulgences, and tributes being paid to issues worse than old age and mortality. Last year, for example, a walking altar called attention to the 5,000 unsolved assassinations of women in the Mexican border town Juarez.

Any description of SF’s festivities would be remiss if it didn’t mention the influx of Burning Man culture, with its preponderance of elaborately-costumed young people, the stilters, and the skeletons.

They make for a visually stunning event but produce ambivalent cultural connotations. Local blogs have facetiously proclaimed that with the entrenched multiculturalism of SF’s Dia, the holiday celebrations can be more appropriately titled “Day of the Dead Gringos.”

Rio Yañez grew up during this evolution. “The neighborhood’s changed so much, the parade is a reflection of that,” he says. “It’s a way of sharing culture. Even with all the drunk hipsters just having a good time marching, there’s still a good community spirit.”

That’s not to say there isn’t disagreement over how the holiday should be celebrated here. A dispute over who is the source of police complaints about overcrowding and public drunkenness led to a split between Juan Pablo’s collective’s march and the Marigold Project’s altar installations in Garfield Park. “They want to create a party atmosphere, and that’s not what it’s about,” Pablo said. “It’s about honoring the dead.

“The procession is a moving target without any of the hassles of a fixed location,” replies Kevin Mathieu, Marigold Project organizer.

Maybe nothing is ever completely at rest in a San Francisco — even the dead are caught in the winds of our city’s ongoing envisioning of the our culture’s true nature.

 

 

Kim chichi

Andrew Lam
-
0
Kim chichi

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS It was the weekend and my kitten and me were dancing to the Ramones in our pajamas. Coffee sloshing all over the place. Kibble clattering. The phone rang and we let it ring. I already had lunch plans and dinner plans. Why answer the phone?

I answered the phone. Knowing me, it was either my lunch plan or my dinner plan, calling to cancel. So I stopped the music.

Stoplight kept dancing.

On the phone was one of my three-year-old pals. She was upset and wanted to talk, so we talked. Once she had collected herself and was breathing normally I asked, “How’s your mommy?”

“Good,” she said, in her normal little voice. “How’s Stoplight?”

“Good. We were dancing,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Ramones.”

If she had an opinion about them, she didn’t say. For the moment, her favorite bands are ABBA and Harry Belafonte — who isn’t, strictly speaking, a band. We made plans to get a burrito between lunch and dinner, and then she put her mom on. Coincidentally, we too made plans to get a burrito between lunch and dinner.

For lunch, I had a burrito. You will be relieved to learn that it was not the conventional kind. It was another one of those Korean-style kimchi burritos, such as had bewitched, bothered, and bewildered me a few months back at John’s Snack & Deli, downtown.

I haven’t slept well ever since. And I wanted to repay the kind then-stranger who ruined my circadian rhythm, if not life, by introducing me to the kimchi burrito. Interestingly, he’s never had one himself. Just saw the sign at John’s and thought I should know, bless him.

John’s is not in my opinion open on weekends. Nor is it open past six on weekdays, meaning most working stiffs who aren’t lucky enough to work in the Financial District will never know. A moment of silence, for them.

The good news is that the HRD Coffee House, South of Market, also has a kimchi burrito, and is open Saturdays. The bad news is it’s pork, not beef, and it ain’t even a third as juicy as John’s sleep disorder was, as I recall. By comparison, HRD’s kimchi burrito is underspicy and over-ricy. But, come to think of it, underpricey too. It’s only $5.50, and that’s good news all over again. Plus you don’t have to eat it on your bike (or at your desk, I guess) because HRD is an actual place. You know, with tables, chairs, counters, a very fluorescent back room, and college football on TV.

We sat at the window counter, me and my new friend Mr. Wong — not to be confused with Mr. Wrong (my old friend). And we talked about movies, food, and movies about food. He’s a film writer and, I gather, a collector. But he’s in over his head. He’s attended and collected so many movies that he hasn’t had time, in 51 years, to learn how to cook, not even pasta. Check it out, this cat owns copies of my two favorite movies — which are both very, very obscure, and, Jesus, pretty old — but he hasn’t seen either one!

Yet.

In exchange for teaching Mr. Wong how to cook, I think he’s going to share his collection with me. First thing I’m going to show him how to make: popcorn.

We will work our way up to kimchi, and then bulgogi, and then kimchi burritos because, sad to say, my Mr. Wong still hasn’t exactly had an exactly brilliant and/or life-altering one. As much as we both liked HRD, the place.

And the people.

He finished his. I gave the second half of mine to a homeless person on Market Street.

“It’s a burrito,” I said, “but, get this: it’s Korean!”

The dude, apparently not a foodie, was underplussed.

“So you know,” I said. “A Korean burrito.”

“I’ll think about that,” he said, “while I’m eating it.”

HRD COFFEE SHOP

Mon.–Fri. 7 a.m.–3 p.m.; Sat. 9 a.m.–3 a.m.

521 Third St.

(415) 543-2355

Cash only

No alcohol

War — what is it good for? Video games!

Andrew Lam
-
0
War — what is it good for? Video games!

Medal Of Honor

Danger Close, Electronic Arts

(Xbox360, PS3, PC)

GAMER Though it arrives a few years behind its contemporaries in updating the mechanics of the original World War II series, Medal of Honor follows Call of Duty and Battlefield into the modern age of warfare. The most memorable aspect of this reboot’s PR muttering was that it was going to be authentic. Game developers working closely with members of the military is nothing new, but developer Danger Close wanted its take to be relevant to today’s war by setting the fight in Afghanistan and making the villains the Taliban. The game’s professed intent is to honor the soldiers who die every day in the conflict but, while the locations lend the game a sort of theoretical accuracy, Medal of Honor mostly just feels like War Games 101.

You won’t have any problems jumping into the action. From the first moments, Medal of Honor‘s game play, pacing, and button layout recall Modern Warfare‘s winning formula. The story is a tad more down to earth, but not without thrills and chills, and a good chunk of the game is devoted to sniper missions that do more than pay homage to the iconic Modern Warfare level “Ghillies in the Mist.” There are a few new twists (I will say, it’s been a while since a war game has made suppressive fire a mandatory game play element) but for the most part Medal of Honor emulates Modern Warfare‘s “shooting gallery” experience, which makes it fine, if not terribly inspired.

First-person shooters now ship with split personalities: single-player and multiplayer. The experiences are so divided (literally, with completely separate title screens) at this point that they might as well be two different games. Many developers have begun to send multiplayer development out-of-house, with the intention of focusing all their strength on the single-player experience. It’s probably a good idea — if one team is spread too thin, both experiences suffer.

Medal of Honor seems to have taken the stance “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” enlisting Battlefield developers DICE in creating its multiplayer experience. As such, Medal of Honor‘s multiplayer emulates the tight feel and style of Battlefield 2 fairly well, but lacks the balance of the different classes. Limiting the choice to assault, spec-ops, or sniper doesn’t encourage teamwork in the same way that including a medic or engineer does.

I suppose Danger Close deserves some kudos for even attempting to engage with a real, contemporary war, but it’s also the sort of thing that needs to be done right. If you’re going to talk the big talk, you better walk the long walk, and Medal of Honor doesn’t really offer much that you can’t find in either of its competitors’ more refined products. Nonetheless, it remains an engaging, well-made war game that delights adequately enough and could indicate a better game to come. 

Empire strikes back

Andrew Lam
-
0
Empire strikes back

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE Speaking to more immediate concerns, Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart turned England’s 17th-century battle royal between rising Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and imprisoned Catholic challenger Mary Queen of Scots into a fleet drama of intimate conflicts internal and external. In Shotgun Players’ current production, director-adapter Mark Jackson recasts Schiller’s 1800 play to his own purposes, slimming its five acts down to a fairly taut two and setting it in a vividly contemporary, American-looking world of power politics, religious fanaticism, and imperial hubris. Jackson’s Mary Stuart retains the emphasis on the personal drama, but it may hold less interest in the end than the political world containing it.

As the play opens, the Scottish queen (Stephanie Gularte) languishes in an English prison (a private castle, actually), her face projected onto three video screens above the stage, as her cousin on the throne, Elizabeth (Beth Wilmurt), weighs what to do with her. The execution order will come sooner or later, history tells us, but meanwhile we get a paralleling of two very different yet intimately linked personalities and the machinations they and others put into play around them, culminating in an unhistorical but highly dramatic meeting between the two women. In the end, both appear prisoners of the power structure that they battle each other, and those around them, to dominate.

As Elizabeth, Wilmurt is a nicely arranged set of contradictions. Projecting an array of subtle gestures and meaningful silences, her Elizabeth works to maintain a carapace of authority and willpower over a youthful and vulnerable heart. Wilmurt instinctively humanizes the character with delicate humor and a barely cloaked shyness. But her Elizabeth is also, and ultimately, a ruthlessly cunning power player. If there is a soul, Elizabeth loses hers long before she’s lost her ballyhooed virginity.

As Elizabeth’s cousin and nemesis, Gularte’s Mary is an overt storm of emotion and feminine potency. Jackson keeps her onstage for the entire play, in a section of Nina Ball’s excellent set that recedes at one point to disturbingly suggest a stark execution chamber, while also revealing a small patch of grass in a sunken prison yard, the site of Mary’s one brief visit with a regained sense of freedom. Gularte’s performance suffers from too self-conscious a take on her character’s understandable anguish, but she conveys some of the terrible contradictions that haunt a young woman facing imminent death.

Around the “female kings” swarm an assortment of men, some who still seem to be wrestling with the gender upset at the top of the power hierarchy. But the real divisions among them are over ideology, strategy, self-interest — and all hitch their concerns to one or the other of these two women. Mortimer (Ryan Tasker), for instance, is the cool-eyed fanatic, a secret convert to Catholicism who devotes himself to saving the imprisoned Mary at the cost of his own life. His counterpart is Burleigh (Peter Ruocco), equally committed and sure on behalf of the Protestant state, and determined to see Mary executed.

This is a time of deep civil strife, when “national security” seems paramount, as well as a convenient excuse for advancing momentary interests against the usual restraints of law and custom. At the same time, the actions of rulers are self-consciously squared against public appearances and the fickle, manipulated prejudices and opinions of Elizabeth’s subjects, the people at large.

It all should sound familiar. The present is present everywhere in this production. The sleek minimalist set shrewdly blends bland corporate meeting rooms with the two-way mirrors and closed-circuit cameras of a modern, bureaucratic Panopticon. The contemporary costumes include de rigueur flag pins in the men’s lapels and the cast speaks unreservedly in American accents. Moreover, against the stark gravity of the scenic design and Schiller’s lively but heightened language, Jackson’s actors indulge in a fair amount of vernacular humor.

Still, there’s fidelity to the text and its dramatic core. Only once is there a very noticeable bit of updating — an irresistible one — when Burleigh responds to Mary’s accusation that the testimony gathered against her includes physically coerced slanders. “We do not torture,” corrects the spin-savvy Burleigh. “Nobody here was tortured.”

Elizabeth’s loyal minister Shrewsbury (a compellingly impassioned John Mercer) meanwhile argues restrain and the rule of law. “England is not the world,” he cautions his queen. But his eloquence falls on deaf ears. The tide of history moves inexorably in the other direction.

Other memorable performances here include the Scott Coopwood’s dexterous and patently charming take on the dashing but cowardly Leicester, who in getting up close and personal with each royal contender, plays a dangerous and amusingly macho game.

Jackson’s last effort with Shotgun Players, 2009’s Faust: Part 1, engaged another pillar of German Romanticism in a strikingly reimagined staging of Goethe’s masterwork. Both productions demonstrate a bold blending of voices and visions that, while sometimes discordant on the surface (and usually intentionally, productively so) are still in sync underneath. Jackson clearly shares Schiller’s enthusiasm for the opportunities afforded drama by history, an enthusiasm that forgoes strict fidelity to the factual record to offer deeper truths and more visceral connections.

But the political lesson, if there is one, is just this: rule is a matter of style. It’s always geared to the same ends. This is the import of the production’s own style, which at times feels like West Wing: The Obama Years. What we watch — on stage or in D.C. — is the revolving door of personalities bringing their own manner and virtues, such as they are, to the operation of the imperial machine. To offer the insight that the machine has each one of them in its grasp as much as anyone else obfuscates the point that it’s a machine designed to benefit a few at the expense of everyone and everything else making up life on the planet. That’s why it’s hard not to agree with the Sex Pistols when they doubt the very species similarity between the Queen and the rest of us. God save the Queen? “She ain’t no human being.” 

MARY STUART

Through Nov. 6, $17–$30 (and pay-what-you-can performances)

Ashby Stage

1901 Ashby, Berk.

(510) 841-6500

www.shotgunplayers.org

Dream, dream, dream

Andrew Lam
-
0
Dream, dream, dream

MUSIC Deerhunter’s new album is the most cohesive in the group’s young career. Compared to the booming opening seconds of 2008’s Microcastle, the lead-in to Halcyon Digest (4AD) is downright mousy. A simple drum machine sputters in and out like a robot clinging to life before a dreamy guitar line sets the scene for five minutes of textured feedback and a distorted vocal melody from lead singer Bradford Cox. It’s a pretty start to what is often a stunningly beautiful album.

Gone (for the most part) are the more brawny, driving moments of Microcastle and the My Bloody Valentine-style shoegaze tracks from its accompaniment, Weird Era Cont. The new material has more in common with the mellower, head-in-the-clouds style of Atlas Sound, Cox’s solo project. But perhaps the biggest stride comes in the full embracement of hooks and melodies that were often buried in previous efforts. This is a pop album through and through, in the best sense of the word.

Tracks like “Don’t Cry” and “Basement Scene” evoke squeaky-clean 1950s artists like Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers if they’d been doped up on morphine. Elsewhere, the sparse five minutes of “Sailing” drift by on little other than Cox’s bare vocals, largely stripped of the megaphone distortion and short-echo slapback found throughout most of the album.

Fans will most certainly also notice the band’s expanded sonic palette. Self-recording in its home base of Athens, Ga., Deerhunter enlisted the Midas-touch mixing help of Ben Allen, known for his glossy stamps on Gnarls Barkley recording and Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Thrown into the band’s customary psychedelic haze is everything from banjo (“Revival”) and saxophone (“Coronado”) to what sounds like a harpsichord on “Helicopter.”

It should be interesting to see how this new album plays out onstage. So much discussion over the past few years has mentioned the ferocity of Deerhunter’s live show — Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs once referred to it as a near-“religious experience” in the NME. The band will have to find a bridge between its known intensity and the more hushed attention to songwriting found on Halcyon Digest. Considering these guys have yet to take a single misstep, I’m thinking it won’t be a problem. 

DEERHUNTER

With Real Estate, Casino vs. Japan Fri/29, 9 p.m.; $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(800) 225-2277

www.gamh.com

 

Also Sat/30, 9 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(800) 225-2277

www.slims-sf.com

(All Night Long)

Andrew Lam
-
0
(All Night Long)

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Of course they want to listen to T.Rex into the night. I’ve done it myself many times, and I’m sure plenty of you have devoted late-night marathons to Marc Bolan’s musical mysticism. His lyrics, and his ridiculously long album titles from the early days of Tyrannosaurus Rex, always had a flair for weird wordplay, leaving the listener equally captivated and confused by lush, descriptive imagery. Bolan and his Tolkien-named percussionist Steve Peregrine Took started out playing the part of an enchanted underground acoustic duo, catering to fried-out hippies and London’s latter-day mods at the notorious Middle Earth Club. But I have a feeling that when San Francisco’s own Burnt Ones pledge “Gonna Listen To T. Rex (All Night Long),” they’re referring to Bolan’s full-blown boogie period during the heyday of T. Rex-tasy. The song’s opening guitar lick sears every bit as much as the one in “Buick Mackane,” but of course it’s not nearly as recognizable.

This isn’t to say Burt Ones don’t borrow from Bolan’s early days of drone-zone bliss. “Burnt to Lose” closes the A-side of their debut album Black Teeth & Golden Tongues (Roaring Colonel Records) on a slow note. The track is full of chant-like vocals and finger-symbol sounds that a yoga instructor might use to commence a class. The tune hints at the atmospheric qualities of “The Children of Rarn” off the 1970 album T. Rex, where Bolan had by then calculated an abbreviated name for his band and added a full rhythm section, including new drummer Mickey Finn.

“Sunset Hill” is every bit as upbeat and fuzz-tone driven as its Visconti-produced predecessor, “Metal Guru” from 1972’s critically acclaimed Slider, and “Bury Me in Smoke” is straight out of the ’70s with its use of ooh-la-la backing vocals. Let’s face it, lead singer Mark Tester sometimes sets out to duplicate Bolan’s trademark warbled and often shaky vocal technique. But while the four-piece psych outfit, who found their way to the Bay Area by way of Indianapolis, has a glam-rock shtick that would make Gary Glitter proud, Burnt Ones also draw from other sources of inspiration.

“Bring You All My Love” gives a nod to the girl groups of the early ’60s and is reminiscent of the Shangri-Las’ 1964 hit “The Leader of the Pack”, where an echoed “down, down” response vocal is employed. Though “Famous Shakes” song should not be confused with a Wall of Sound production, the influence of Phil Spector and his layers of instrumentation is clear. Lyrically, the group revisits the nonsensical chorus of the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron”, and even explores territory commonly conquered by soul troopers, most notably Wilson Pickett’s “Land of A Thousand Dances”, where a catalog of past dance crazes (i.e. the mashed potato, the twist, and the alligator) are shouted out in remembrance and paid tribute.

Simple in design, the packaging of Black Teeth & Golden Tongues is consistent with Burnt Ones’ sound, in that it dips into the past while incorporating contemporary art. The pastel-colored cover is adorned with a cartoon of a cracked skull drawn by William Keihn, who some may recognize as the artist from Thee Oh Sees’ album covers. On the back side we’re reminded of two iconic Stones’ albums, Exile on Main Street and Some Girls, which perhaps coincidentally sandwiched the glam era, with release dates of 1972 and 1978. “Spins” even has a bluesy Keith Richards riff.

As much as Burnt Ones rely on the past, it’s easy to forget that this band is pretty much new and likely aims to be part of the pantheon of Bay Area lo-fi, psych, and garage rockers. The group’s contemporaries include Hunx and His Punx, who updates the tried and true androgyny and gender-bending nature of glam by updating it to serve his own homoerotic needs. Burnt Ones’ “Soft City” is a well-produced number that displays a kinship with Hunx’s teased vocals as it confronts topics such as saved souls and the cold outdoors. 

BURNT ONES

With Pierced Arrows, Bare Wires

Fri/22, 8:30 p.m., $12 (all ages)

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Love of sound

Andrew Lam
-
0
Love of sound

MUSIC It’s a typical music-loving day at Aquarius Records when I call up the store’s Irwin Swirnoff to talk about its 40th birthday and accompanying celebration. “There’s always been some confusion about when the store started,” says Swirnoff, after ringing up a few purchases, as the translucent sounds of Washed Out swirl from the AQ stereo. “There original owners were awesome, but stoned a lot, so they weren’t sure if it was 1969 or 1970. Once we realized it was 1970, we decided to put on a birthday party, and we thought it would be great to have bands that reflect the passions of the store, from pop to heavier sounds and drone.”

Aquarius rightly has a reputation for introducing musicians to wider audiences, so it’s no surprise to hear that a variety of bands — Cali rockers the Mantles; purveyors of heavy Djenghis Khan and Pigs; space rockers Lumerians; Root Strata dream drifters Date Palms; and special Cali pop headliner Best Coast — answered the call. “It’s one of those shows where you’re not seeing five bands that sound alike, but five different ones that fall under the same roof,” says Swirnoff. “Next year we hope to throw a benefit show because it is a hard time for record stores. Maybe it’ll become an Aquarius tradition.”

In the days when Windy Chien guided the ship, and in ever-flowering ways today, the diverse and innovative sounds at Aquarius have been generated by the musical passions of those who work there — and those who shop there. “We’re blown away by our customers and their eclectic and wide-ranging tastes,” says Swirnoff. “They might buy a disco comp, an esoteric album, and a girl group reissue all at the same time. There’s a communal enthusiasm from the staff in the reviews that we write, and we’re lucky to have customers who share that same kind of enthusiasm We live in a culture that likes to compartmentalize. But at the end of the day, good music is good music.”

AQUARIUS RECORDS’ 40THE BIRTHDAY SHOW

With Best Coast, the Mantles, Lumerians, Djenghis Khan, Date Palms, Pigs

Mon/25, 8 p.m.; $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

Summer in the fall

Andrew Lam
-
0
Summer in the fall

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC As I sit sipping some morning coffee, Elizabeth Morris of Allo Darlin’ is wrapping up an unseasonably sunny London afternoon. “I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s really warm weather,” she says over the phone. “The last week was really cold and miserable, and then the last two days have been absolutely beautiful.”

It seems fitting to be discussing Allo Darlin’s self-titled album with Morris on a day when the sun won’t be denied. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect “summer” album released in October. Full of shimmery electric guitar, tambourine shakes, and bass lines that would sound at home on lost Motown cuts, the group’s music oozes charm, occupying some sort of space between Belle & Sebastian and a modern, garage-y spin on the Shangri-Las. Out at the forefront of it all is Morris with her ukulele and enchanting vocals.

Originally born and raised in Australia, Morris moved to London five years ago, shortly after finishing school in Brisbane, hoping to do something with the songs she’d begun writing. In Brisbane, Morris doubted her talents and ability to fit in, but London’s music scene proved to be a much more fertile ground for her. “Brisbane at the time was really grunge-y, noise rock, avant-garde kinda stuff — which is cool, but I felt really out of place and would never have felt confident playing little pop songs,” she explains. “I’d definitely written a bunch of songs, but I thought they were all pretty much rubbish. I didn’t feel like I’d written anything good until I moved to London.”

Once settled in London, Morris fronted the Darlings, a group made up of coworkers from the TV and film sound production facility she worked at. After that group dissolved, she began playing solo before winding up with a backing band made up of friends of friends, brothers of friends, and members of some of her favorite local bands. It all came together with a little help from the Boss.

“I was asked to do a Bruce Springsteen song for this tribute compilation and I knew Paul (Rains, Allo Darlin’ guitarist-keyboardist) was really into him. So I asked if he wanted to do this song with me, and that’s kinda how I got started playing with these guys. So we were brought together by Springsteen,” Morris says with a laugh.

In the interview, Morris talks excitedly about some of her musical loves: Jonathan Richman, Steve Martin’s banjo playing, the Go-Betweens, old reggae. She and her bandmates share an affection for Yo La Tengo and their parents’ old Beach Boys’ records. Her earnest and enthusiastic admiration mirrors the tone of her lyrics, which play a major role in making Allo Darlin’ fun. One minute she’s combining lines about love and chili, the next she’s breaking into a verse from Weezer’s “El Scorcho” or singing what’s gotta be the first pop song ever written about Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957). Her lyrical style is clever and unique — by turns romantic, silly, pensive, or yearning.

“I kind of always write from emotion or feeling rather than anything else. I never really sit and write things in a notebook or compose words,” Morris says. “I’ve tried to write story-songs or songs about characters, but it just never really works. I’m not very poetic, I guess. I’m better at seeing things how they are, trying to put them into words with a nice melody and seeing what happens.”

Allo Darlin’s upcoming tour marks the group’s third trip to the U.S., but it’s their first time in California. Despite the impersonal nature of a phone conversation, Morris’ excitement is palpable. She’s even picking up some American slang. “All the bookers say ‘psyched’ — like ‘We’re psyched that you’re coming.’ It’s really cute,” she says, laughing.

“So yeah, we’re psyched to be doing the West Coast.”

ALLO DARLIN’

with Eux Autres, Terry Malts

Wed/27, 8 p.m.; $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Mirrors and masks

Andrew Lam
-
0
Mirrors and masks

arts@sfbg.com

LIT/VISUAL ART At a time when everyone is bemoaning the death of the book from either Kindle or just plain old lack of interest, I stand up for our old friend and former conveyance. There’s something about it — the smell of fresh ink, the feel of the yellowed-pages of a well-worn paperback, that gentle “crack” of the spine of a new volume — that can never be replaced by some black-matte gadget. As a writer and lover of all things book, I’ve been impressed by a few this year that may reignite your love for what’s laying between the covers, just waiting for your return.

Julian Bell’s Mirror of the World: A New History of Art (Thames and Hudson, 496 pages, $34.95) is an unassuming tome. Clocking in at just under 500 pages, this softcover textbook-looking marvel has become a mainstay on my research shelf and bathroom magazine rack. Gathering full-color plates of some of the most lush (Delacroix’s Death of Sarandapulus), confrontational (Donatello’s David), and demanding (Jane Alexander’s Vissershok) images in Western art over the last 500 years, Bell has managed to do what so often seems like the impossible in the art world: he’s included damn near everybody. To Bell, Nok terracotta, Chinese Master Guo Xi, and Dogon carvings have as much influence on contemporary art as Warhol, Pollack, and Manet. “I want to believe,” he says in the introduction, “that works of art can reveal realities that had otherwise lain unseen, that they can act as frames for truth.” Mirror to the World does just that, framing a more-true, inclusive history of art while providing a nifty little timeline in the back to play catch-up.

Speaking of timelines, I’m grateful that Simone Werle’s 50 Fashion Designers You Should Know (Prestel, 160 pages, $19.95) has one! As a latecomer to the world of fashion, I know what I like, but sometimes have no idea why, or where it came from. The designers profiled in this book are given full- color spreads featuring their most signature pieces. Armani, Prada, and Dolce and Gabbana are explored at length, while conceptualists such as Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kubokawa are not overlooked. From early-20th century designers like Coco Chanel and Andre Courreges to contemporaries such as Vivienne Westwood and Tom Ford, this guidebook is handy and dandy.

One of the most beautiful books I’ve gotten my hands on this year is also one of the most challenging and provocative. Martin Eder’s Der Blasse Tanz/The Pale Dance (Prestel, 320 pages, $64.95) is a formidably luscious soft-focus bomb waiting to go off in the reader’s psyche. The German painter walks the thin line between fantasy and reality, nightmare and saccharine dream, child-like infatuation and barely-legal obsession. With a technical prowess to rival Renoir and Botticelli, Eder uses watercolors to draw us into this uncomfortable in-between, turning us into admirers and voyeurs at the same time. From the plush feel of the slightly weathered cover-stock, to Isabel Azoulay’s introduction and its insights regarding feminism and erotic art, everything works together, making Der Blasse Tanz an artifact that tells our oh-so modern story in a way that only a well-made book can.

But if there is any book out there right now that truly justifies why art and photo books still exist, it’s got to be Phyllis Galembo’s Maske (Chris Boot, 208 pages, $46). I love this book! In it, ordinary people turn into mythic figures and magicians, tricksters, and gods through fantastic costumes in African and Caribbean rituals and celebrations. Striped bodysuits that cover the entire body, including the face, conjure both Sesame Street and Freddy Kruger. Outfits are made entirely of bunched greenery. A lacquered wooden mask topped with a headdress and a full-body model doubles and then triples a small boy’s mass. The images themselves are striking, statements on both fashion and fetish. Knowing that there are 180 of them, and explanations for each one, makes the imagination take off on plywood wings.

Wall Street hold ’em

Andrew Lam
-
0
Wall Street hold ’em

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets).

The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. Even apparent detours prove narrowly targeted. The subject of Wall Street’s venal appetites for drugs and prostitutes, for instance, is introduced first as farce and second as potential traction for broader criminal investigations. Presumably a junior partner might give up valuable information so as not to be made into another Eliot Spitzer, who, incidentally, comes off quite well in Inside Man.

While the fat cats only show up thanks to the CSPAN archive, several free market economists do sit for interviews with Ferguson. They probably regret doing so now — he reserves special scorn for the academic class of boosters. Frederic Mishkin is a typical case. Formerly a member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, he quickly becomes a muttering mess under Ferguson’s questioning. Mishkin quit the Treasury in August 2008, at the height of the crisis, to return to Columbia University to finish more pressing work: a textbook. In 2006, Mishkin coauthored a rosy report on Iceland’s doomed markets, pocketing a nice commission from the country’s Chamber of Commerce. Mysteriously, the title of the report changed from “Financial Stability in Iceland” to “Financial Instability in Iceland” on Mishkin’s CV — confronted with the discrepancy, he croaks something about a typo.

Ferguson’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof. Tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. To take just one example, China figures into the film only as laborers losing their jobs due to market volatility — part of the story, certainly, but so is that government’s devaluation of its currency.

Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. Americans on the right and left may well share disgust at the bailouts, but they’re drawing very different conclusions from the government’s cash infusions. Ferguson builds something of a false consensus between his talking heads, never asking them, for example, whether they think Fannie Mae or Countrywide was a bigger boogeyman (politically, the answer says a lot). In this regard, a general assessment in a recent article by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells holds for Inside Job: “Books on the Great Recession are still pouring off the presses … but they don’t offer much guidance on the most pressing problem at hand, which is how to deal with the continuing consequences of the last [bubble].” 

INSIDE JOB opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters.

Docs and robbers

Andrew Lam
-
0
Docs and robbers

arts@sfbg.com

FILM What are they putting in the water in Germany these days? Seems like gritty crime dramas are at the forefront of young filmmaker’s creative output, several of which have made it onto the 15th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival lineup. Also in great supply are a number of slice-of-life documentaries, many of which revolve around the topic of aging. Call it the Cloud 9 effect: after the success of the critically-acclaimed 2008 drama about a love affair between senior citizens, the desire to follow up with more tales of not going gently into the good night must have been irresistible. Three of the featured documentaries have elderly protagonists engaged in atypical post-retirement behavior.

Autumn Gold follows five athletes between 80 and 100 to the World Masters Athletics Championships in Lahti, Finland, where they compete in discus, shot put, high jump, and sprinting. The Woman with the Five Elephants pays a visit to Swetlana Geier, Germany’s premiere translator of Russian to German, who recently completed her masterpiece: a new translation of all five of Dostoyevsky’s major works. And my personal favorite, Silver Girls, a completely matter-of-fact portrayal of three professional prostitutes, ages 49, 59, and 64.

Just one of the three, Paula, has been a prostitute since young adulthood, and now runs a brothel of her own. Both the sweetly eccentric Christel, and the eiskalt Karolina, took up the trade in their 50s. In between clients, they lead rather unremarkable lives. Paula surfs the Internet. Christel hangs out with her lovable-oaf boyfriend Bernd and tends to her houseplants. Karolina heads out to a carnival with a grandkid, dressed to kill in shiny leather boots.

The boldest of the three, Karolina certainly looks the part of a sexagenarian dominatrix, with jet-black hair, an impenetrable demeanor, and several visible yet tasteful tattoos. She entertains at Christmas in a revealing, fallen-angel costume, and takes her slave shoe-shopping in a nice department store, kicking him as he kneels before her and telling him she doesn’t care whether or not he likes the fit. The other two may be less provocative in public, but as Christel assures us with a roguish grin, there’s a larger demand for “mature” services than you might think. Given the state of Social Security at the moment, it’s actually comforting to realize you’re never too old for a career change.

On the gritty crime front, two films stand out: The Silence, directed by Baran bo Odar, and The Robber, directed by Benjamin Heisenberg. In The Robber, Andreas Lust (previously seen at Berlin and Beyond in last year’s compelling Revanche), stars as Johann Rettenberger, a man driven mercilessly by his twin ambitions to win marathons and rob banks. Rather mechanistic in his approach to life, Rettenberger certainly doesn’t seem to derive any particular pleasure from his adrenaline-fueled exploits. He casually stuffs his loot under his bed and trains obsessively.

Any redemptive grace he might have found in the arms of old friend-new love interest Erika (Franziska Weisz) is shot after she (understandably) kicks him out of her home. And any sympathy the Austrian public might have for his resolve to remain free is pretty much spent after he murders his parole officer with a running trophy. Indeed, his perpetual cold-fish exterior is almost enough to kill the audience’s sympathy for him too — but something about his predicament is also fascinating. Like a junkie, Rettenberger must run and rob banks, not out of love or desire but joyless addiction. This apparent helplessness to stop the wheels of his own destruction turn The Robber into an existential antihero of sorts rather than just an unconscionable jerk making poor life choices. 

BERLIN AND BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL

Oct 22–28, most shows $11.50

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

Oct. 30

Camera 12 Cinema

201 S. Second St., San Jose

www.berlinandbeyond.com

Epic Bush crawl, part one

Andrew Lam
-
5
Epic Bush crawl, part one

ruggy@yelp.com

SUPER EGO Marke B.’s off getting hitched to Hunky Beau, so we asked the raffishly cute Ruggy, senior community manager at Yelp.com, to fill in as nightlife correspondent. Part two comes out Nov. 3.

What does your average Friday night look like? Does it involve catching up with old college friends over a 2007 Chateau Montelena Bordeaux blend? Maybe you’d rather snuggle up next to your boo on an EQ3 chaise longue with the remote in one hand and a Shake Weight in the other.

If you’re anything like me and my ragtag group of degenerate colleagues, nothing quite spells F-U-N like a bar crawl spanning seven different locations in less than five hours, complete with gratuitous heavy petting, nacho cheese Doritos, and warm Miller High Life. Now, what if I told you there was an unheralded bar route in the city that’s chock-full of sticky floors, intoxicated curmudgeons, and more bottom shelf liquor than you can shake a Polaroid at?

The stretch of self-reproach I reference is Bush Street between Stockton and Taylor. But beware — this challenge isn’t for the faint of heart. Being the altruist I am, I decided to document this fantastic, drunken journey on your behalf, to ensure you avoid a colossal case of bottle flu the following morning. You can thank me later.

Tunnel Top (601 Bush): From Union Square, take the stairs north at the entrance to the Stockton Tunnel (after a salacious afternoon romp at the Green Door if you want to up the ante), turn about face, and gallop roughly 10 paces west. Perfect for guest registration on a Bush Street crawl, since the T-Top offers a nifty happy hour with $3 drafts and $2.75 bottled beers as well as a slew of aging hipsters and law school dropouts (a.k.a. real estate brokers) enjoying glasses of Chimay and a hip playlist. Plenty of complicated haircuts at 6:30 p.m., but not a single raccoon tail in sight.

Chelsea Place (641 Bush): If you’re expecting skyline views of Manhattan and metrosexuals out the wazoo, you most certainly have the wrong Chelsea in mind. This is a cozy nook for true alcoholics, where one drink is too many, and 1,000 is never enough. A tiny push through the saloon-style wooden doors grants you access to the Emerald City of unglamorous horizons. One of the few bars in San Francisco that will still let you smoke inside (but the first of many we encountered this Friday night), the immediate rush of second-hand smoke is enough to give you flashbacks to the first time you choked on a Marlboro Red in your junior high bathroom stall. If you’re sensitive to environmental tobacco, you’ll just have to suck it up and enjoy those delightful, toxic fumes.

As is usually the case with these sorts of establishments, the bar was packed with nothing but men over 50 (plus us) cooing over the female Asian staff, who all looked like they were auditioning for a Britney Spears music video. Laissez-faire seems to be in full effect: cigars, graffiti, dice games, whiskey shots out of plastic bottles that just say “whiskey” on the label, cheap beer, snuff pipes, and free bags of Orville Redenbacher. ‘Nuff said.

RJ’s Sports Bar (701 Geary): Korean women behind the bar (it seems to be Bush corridor de rigueur) who speak excellent Spanish and have incredible dance moves (don’t ask me how I know, but this was the biggest surprise of all). Another bar that allows indoor smoking, despite a sticker, in plain sight, that contradicts such actions. A man came in and requested that the bartender fill up his empty Gatorade bottle with Anchor Steam for $5, and without a second thought, that call was answered.

High Tide Lounge (600 Geary): Free food ranging from kimchi, chicken wings, and sushi rolls to stuffed peppers, pad Thai, chow mein, and something that resembled an egg roll but looked more like a snuffed out cigar. I didn’t ask questions. In the midst of our revels, we happened upon a petite woman taking a little catnap in the corner of the bar. Despite sleeping on a cold linoleum floor, she looked quite peaceful. Definitely not dead, though … we checked her pulse.

Uptown Joe’s

Andrew Lam
-
0
Uptown Joe’s

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Use of the word “downtown” in the American vernacular has always faintly troubled me. It’s a term that should be used only with respect to Manhattan, which really does have a downtown, along with a midtown and an uptown. The better phrase for the rest of us is “city center,” which is what you tend to see in European cities — signs reading “centrum” or (in German-speaking lands) “zentrum,” with a big arrow pointing you in the right direction.

Of course, in a city as hilly as San Francisco, “up” and “down” have meanings independent of any two-dimensional map. Uptown Joe’s, the successor to Café Majestic, might not be in any actual uptown anyone here would actually refer to, but the restaurant is pretty far up the southern face of Pacific Heights. So it can claim some real elevation, if not a view. It’s the “Joe” part of the name, interestingly, that’s been the occasion for some legal tussling in the past year between Uptown Joe’s and Original Joe’s, which burned down three years ago.

What’s most striking to me about the restaurant’s name is how inapposite it is. It sounds a diner-ish, Seinfeldian note — you can almost see Uncle Leo carping and gesturing in a booth over a bowl of chicken noodle soup — but the restaurant is in fact an elegant, high-ceilinged, cream-colored vault, almost fin de siècle Viennese in its quiet dignity. If you thought that the quiet restaurant was a thing of the past here, where the dominant trend in restaurant design is a noisy urban minimalism with concrete accents and patrons texting away because they can’t hear one another, you’ll find Uptown Joe’s to be a welcome surprise. It’s the sort of place that encourages that most retro of human practices, conversation.

In keeping with the vast dining room’s old world graciousness, the kitchen turns out a menu that might have been described as “continental” a generation ago. Many dishes have Italian roots — there are a number of pastas and several veal possibilities, including piccata and parmagiana — but many others seem generically occidental, such as charbroiled filet mignon or pork chops.

A nice touch on the antipasto platter ($14.95 for two) was the red-wine vinaigrette drizzled over everything. It lent a glamorous and inviting sheen. “Everything” meant ham, salami, and pepperoni, slices of white cheese, tomato quarters, black olives (pitted — thank you!), and red-onion rings atop chopped spears of romaine lettuce.

Minestrone ($5) was served in a tureen whose shape probably helped hold in heat but made access tricky. The soup itself had a sickly, gray-green color, perhaps because of a bounty of cabbage, and was dotted with kidney beans and macaroni tubes. Its flavor was dominated by the earthy bite of the stock (roasted vegetable?) and the heap of grated Parmesan our server spooned over the top, to give it a cap almost like that of French onion soup.

Fried chicken ($18.95 for a half-bird) had a crisp, brownish-bronze crust that was lovely to look at but, being gravely underseasoned, not much to taste. Some CPR administered via salt shaker did restore a faint heartbeat, and the meat itself was juicy. The real redeemer of the plate was the slew of vegetables — broccoli and cauliflower florets, zucchini, sheets of Swiss chard, chunks of baby carrot — apparently braised in stock, to judge by their flavorfulness. Steamed mixed vegetables so often taste like hospital food, but not these.

Calamari steak ($18.95) is sometimes said to be the poor man’s abalone, but it can be splendid in its own right if not overcooked to toughness. Uptown Joe’s batter-fried version was tender with just a hint of chewiness (can we say al dente in this context?) and doused with lemon butter for a fillip of decadence. On the side: a mound of rigatoni tossed with marinara sauce.

Uptown Joe’s prices strike me on the whole as not bargain-basement despite the restaurant’s folksy name. Neither are they through the roof, especially considering the ambiance, although the desserts did leaving me wondering. The chocolate mousse cake ($7.75) was light as whipped cream and not much else, while the apple pie ($7.50, with a pat of vanilla ice cream) was almost too hot to eat in spots despite a creditable crust. In a word: middling. 

UPTOWN JOE’S

Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 5–10:30 p.m.

Brunch: 9 a.m.–2 p.m.

1500 Sutter, SF

(415) 441-1280

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Delicate power

Andrew Lam
-
0
Delicate power

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE When Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes premiered Mikhael Fokine’s Scheherazade in June 1910, Paris exploded. Not only had the choreographer forsaken the hallowed halls of classicism, he had put on stage the most sensually explicit ballet ever seen in that city’s stage. Its orientalism and Leon Bakst’s exquisitely lush design influenced fashions and design for years.

None of this impressed Alonzo King when it came to his commission from the Monaco Dance Forum for its Ballets Russes centenary in 2009. King drew upon versions of One Thousand and One Nights that have floated around the Middle East and India for centuries. What he has picked up is the delicacy of the storytelling, in which one fable spins out of another. King’s Scheherazade feels as evanescent and shimmery as a spider’s web; yet its resilience comes from the way he deploys his dancers. The skewed balances, fractured lines, and abrupt transitions are intended to open doors to deeper perception of the potential that King sees in everything, dancers included. Here — until the flattish ending — they were enveloped in a transparent lucidity, no doubt much enhanced by Axel Morgenthaler’s sophisticated lightening.

King kept traces of the Arabian Nights narrative in which Scheherazade ultimately wins her life and marries the King. Anchoring the choreography is an extended “Pas de Deux for Scheherazade” (Laurel Keen) and Sharyar (David Harvey) that aspires toward myth. It is physically fierce as well as lyrical, passionate yet also impersonal. These dancers could be lovers, male/female principles, or natural forces. They reject entanglement even as they acknowledge its inevitability. When Keen grabs Harvey’s head with both hands, you don’t know whether she is about to tear it off or embrace it. Hanging onto limbs, crawling between legs and swimming on arms, these two equals struggle to keep apart until the tender resolution. Expressively complex, Harvey has finally stepped into his own as a King dancer; longterm company member Keen seems to become stronger the longer she keeps dancing.

A potent presence was Corey Scott Gilbert who, in his long red robe, flowed through Scheherazade as perhaps a guiding spirit. In Fokine’s version, the sultan’s wife fell in love with a Nubian slave, danced by Nijinsky in black face. The racism of that portrait has rendered the ballet unperformable. Tall, strong, with a reach that seems limitless and an ability to hone in on the smallest detail and be vulnerable, Scott Gilbert seemed a tribute to and vindication of that slave.

Scheherazade opens on a note of intimacy. Keen is surrounded by three attendants (Meredith Webster, Ashley Jackson and newcomer Jeannette Diaz-Barbuda) who introduce themselves in personalized solos as she, stretched in a classic oriental divan pose, watches them from the sidelines. This gentle woman-centeredness set the tone for the rest of the ballet. Jackson became the first among equals, exquisite in her phrasing, and drawing strength from who knows where.

Not that King shortchanged his men. Ricardo Zayas shot through his variations like a rocket. Following Keelan Whitmore as he wove himself in and out of ensemble work was one of the evening’s great pleasures. The work also gave showy opportunities to new apprentices Michael Montgomery and Christopher Bordenave.

Composer/percussionist Zakir Hussain incorporated elements of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade into a rich mellifluous score of world and electronic music—performed live — that immeasurably contributed to King’s choreography. As did the opulent but ever so restrained designs for set and costumes by Robert Rosenwasser and the fabulous Colleen Quen. By following Diaghilev’s dictum that music, design, and dance need to support each other for a unified theatrical experience, King paid the master impresario his most appropriate tribute.

Unfortunately, Scheherazade ended on a flat note. A free-for-all involving the company and assorted additional dancers flooded the stage with, judging from the music, what was supposed to be an atomistic hymn to joy. A great ensemble choreographer King is not.

SCHEHERAZADE

Thurs/21–Sun/24, $25–$75

Novellus Theatre

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Understory

Andrew Lam
-
0
Understory

Dear Andrea:

We’ve been trying to sex up our sex life (we have been married 10 years and yes, things can get a little boring) and among other things I went to Victoria’s Secret and bought some not too slutty but certainly sexy underwear, and … nothing. He just wanted to get them off so we could get down to business. Isn’t this the kind of thing men are supposed to like? Now I feel kind of silly for wasting the money and time.

Love,

Not In The Mood

Dear Mood:

I’m convinced that fancy underwear, in particular, is vastly over-rated. Males are reputed to be visual responders, while women are said to respond more to words, emotional states, and even smells than to raw visual input. But if you ask men what they really want to see women wearing, most of them say nothing. Or rather, “Nothing, thanks.”

So what will reignite a long-banked fire? In a word, teamwork. Don’t stand there by the bed throwing what amounts to metaphorical sexual spaghetti strands at the wall until one sticks. You want to make a mutual effort to reconnect, which takes time. Skip the last TV show. Prioritize. Let the new sexy emerge organically, and then when (if) you discover that some sort of shopping trip is in order, try going (or leaning over the laptop) together.

At the same time, I would never discount the power of feeling sexy. It could be new underwear or new muscles or a new haircut or new boots (hello). But I’m all about the doing something for yourself that reaffirms your hottitude in your own eyes. And — if you don something that makes you feel that way and then act on it with him, I can pretty well guarantee he’ll notice.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:I like the way boxers look. But I get jock itch and need to keep out moisture and I think briefs work better for that. Therefore, I usually wear briefs or sling-type underwear. I feel kind of silly in the little tight things, but anything’s better than crazy crotch itch.

Love,

Funny Pants

Dear Pants:

Did you know that “it’s pants” is a very British way of saying “stupid” or “lame” but much funnier? I want to call things “pants!” But meanwhile, I am happy not to be in yours.

Not that we women don’t get our own mortifying crotch complaints — have you never noticed that we get an entire aisle at the big chain drugstores?

One thing I can say for men and their jockular issues is that they rarely go on about them in public. The thing is, women are universally instructed to avoid anything tight and plasticy, so if I were you (so glad I’m not!) I’d want to be very sure what is causing that itch and follow a doctor’s sartorial recommendations. Maybe you’ll hit it lucky and she’ll let you wear boxers, as a man was intended to.

Love,

Andrea

Addicted to the beat

Andrew Lam
-
0
Addicted to the beat

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC I’m bugging out. The evening has somehow melted into the early hours of the purple morning. Civilization II has sucked me into an imperialist warp zone on the buzzing computer screen. Pizza boxes litter the room. I’ve just started high school in Los Angeles and discovered the psychedelic powers of a magical herb that grew in Ziploc bags. My little spatio-temporal world has shifted.

On the radio, J.Rocc mixes Mos Def’s “Universal Magnetic” into Quasimoto’s “Come On Feet,” an otherworldly meditation on paranoia and the endlessly running human spirit. Come on feet/Cruise for me, wheezes a disembodied voice from Planet Helium. On the screen, my Egyptian chariots slaughter the Greeks. I don’t yet know that Madlib’s hypnotic sample for the Quas cut comes from the score of René Laloux’s 1973 animated film, Le Planete Sauvage — a story about tiny, heartfelt humanoids who wage a revolution against an oppressive, hyperrational alien species. The vocals trace back to 1971, when Melvin Van Peebles shattered sterile genre lines with his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, in which a charismatic black male protagonist tries to escape from the forces of parasitic white authority. History reinvents itself. I feel dizzy. One of my chariots lost in battle; I click undo. J.Rocc blurts out: The World Famous Beat Junkiiiiieeees. Was everyone some sort of addict gone ballistic?

“The radio programs Friday Night Flavas and the Wake Up Show were influenced by KDAY,” Rhettmatic — one of the original members of the Junkies — tells me 10 years later, over the phone. “They were the ancestors of KDAY.” During the mid-1980s, Los Angeles youth (perhaps adults too), across the far reaches of the monstrous city, would climb their roofs and position radio antennas to catch the fuzzy frequency of 1580AM. It was the only dial on the West Coast championing hip-hop. The KDAY mixmasters, from Dr. Dre to Joe Cooley, would get down for extended traffic jam mixes, showing off their skills by scratching and blending poly-percussive electro jams with vintage soul and new school raps. A new generation of multilayered street style and consciousness was born.

By the late ’80s AM radio gave way to the stronger frequency modulation (FM), and the MC slowly pushed the DJ into the background. KDAY disappeared and N.W.A. introduced the world to a hyperbolic Compton. “When KDAY went off the air and the mixmasters disbanded, there was no all-star DJ crew,” says Rhettmatic. “J.Rocc wanted a crew of all-star cats, and we were all already friends, so that’s how it came about.” The year was 1992, and the World Famous Beat Junkies, not so famous yet, emerged from the backwaters of Orange County, the fairy tale hotbed of conservatism, known to most for Disneyland and surfing more so than the avant-garde.

For the next decade, the Junkies combined forces with Bay Area mix wizards, giving the group more members to push the craft of DJing over and beyond. They competed on the battle circuit and helped carve out the aesthetics of turntablism, the technical art of DJ battling. “We combined styles,” Rhettmatic says. “The East Coast’s X-Ecutioners had a funky style with beat juggles and body tricks. San Francisco, with the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, was doing crazy fast scratches. We took both of them and created our own hybrid style.” The Junkies also pivoted the DJ back to the center of the hip-hop group: Rhettmatic DJed and produced head-nodding beats for the Visionaries, while Babu anchored Dilated Peoples. Sales of Ziploc bags skyrocketed. And the Junkies helped shape, in turn, a unique underground style of California hip-hop, where street smarts did windmills around a surreal tableau of cosmic imagery.

Every Californian obsessed with hip-hop of the age remembers when the three volumes of Beat Junkie mixes dropped in the late ’90s. Minds were blown. Heads got knocked. Boomboxes short-circuited. And so on. Each volume mirrors a radio show, influenced by KDAY programming as much as New York Mister Magic broadcasts and Red Alert tapes. “The mixes were done on analog cassette four-tracks,” Rhettmatic says. “They have that pop and hiss feel.” The radio program format glued together the off-the-cuff style of the underground to a decidedly patchwork narrative structure. Dirty drums carried spontaneous flows while blunted bass pushed intoxicating rhyme schemes. When the lyrics faded away, the beat would kill it.

The Junkies took on the role of hosts as much as curators — placing new artists like Slum Village and Jurassic 5 within the momentum of the tradition. All the while, they stamped the mixes with individuating styles, and reconfigured the tradition through a cipher approach to blending and scratching records, samples, vocals cuts, and loops. “We come from a generation where you have to be original and stand out,” Rhettmatic says. What emerged was frenetic and unbounded, both a testament to the creativity of the collage and the groundwork for the instrumental hip-hop, and its mutated progeny, popularized today.

The Junkies have since focused on numerous individual projects — from Rhettmatic’s duo record with Michigan-based MC Buff1 to J.Rocc’s much-anticipated solo debut on Stones Throw — which make the opportunity to see them collaborate together on six turntables and four mixers this Saturday at Mighty a truly rare one. “A lot of people know us as turntablists, but we are all around DJs,” Rhemttmatic says. “For us, DJs had to do everything.” You can call DJ love a habit. But I’ll leave it to Lord Zen from the Visionaries to close with a verse from “Blessings”: You can’t get this dope without a prescription/Over-the-counter versions fell prey to addiction. 

FREQUENCY: A BEAT JUNKIE TAKEOVER

Rhettmatic, J.Rocc, Babu, and Shortkut with Mr. E

Sat/23, 10 p.m., $10

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.mighty119.com

1...42434445Page 43 of 45

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org