Volumes

The crime of being homeless

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› amanda@sfbg.com

Sleeping in the park, urinating in public, blocking the sidewalk, trespassing, drinking in public — these and about 10 other infractions are commonly and collectively known as "quality of life" crimes because they affect the condition of the common spaces we all share in San Francisco.

For a homeless individual, they’re also called "status" crimes, committed in the commons because there is no private place to sleep, go to the bathroom, or crack a beer. For years the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t bothered to allocate time or resources to prosecute these petty crimes, and advocates for the rights of homeless people have contended that to do so results in unfair persecution of those who have no place to call home.

Elisa Della-Piana is an attorney with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and has spent much of the past three years in traffic court arguing against fines for homeless people who have received quality-of-life citations. As of this summer, Della-Piana said things have changed down at the Hall of Justice.

Now every time she stands up to represent a homeless person in traffic court, someone from the DA’s Office gets up too, fighting for the other side. Though there’s no way to tell from the traffic court calendar if the defendant is homeless, Della-Piana and Christina Brown, another attorney who represents through the Lawyer’s Committee, have witnessed prosecutors ignore quality-of-life citations that didn’t appear to have been collected by homeless people.

"When the person is homeless and the DA stands up and prosecutes, that’s selective prosecution. They’ve done that in the past with other populations in San Francisco," Jenny Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness said, citing historic crackdowns on queers and Asians.

Deputy district attorney Paul Henderson denied the DA’s Office is selectively prosecuting only quality-of-life citations received by homeless individuals. "We’re prosecuting all of them," he told the Guardian, confirming this is a new task for the office. "In the past the DA’s Office wasn’t staffed to have people in the courtroom. I think we’re there every day now." He said more staff has been hired, and a team he heads is now devoted to the issue.

When asked why this was a new priority for the DA’s Office, Henderson said, "We felt that people weren’t getting the help they needed. The public’s interest wasn’t being served. [These issues] were not getting addressed in the traffic court without the DA being there. Neighborhoods and communities have been complaining about the lack of responsiveness, and so we’re trying to address that."

Henderson called the day in court an open door for a homeless person to walk through and access services. "We want to handle them responsibly to make sure there’s some accountability for breaking the law, but try to do it in a way that’s an intervention."

But advocates for homeless rights say that’s not what happens.

"They’ll tell you we’re there to offer services to homeless individuals," Della-Piana said. "Which is a piece of paper. In fact, what they have is the same list of services the police pass out. They’re not actually doing anything to connect people to the services. They’re just offering the list. They could offer those services in the street. There’s no reason to go through the court system."

This list of homeless resources is updated every six months by the San Francisco Police Department’s Operation Outreach and is offered on the street, according to Lt. David Lazar, leader of the 20-officer branch of the SFPD that interfaces directly with the homeless population.

"The accountability is a problem, and the process they go through is not working," Lazar said. "There’s a large population we’re seeing that doesn’t want services." He listed three reasons: inadequacies in the shelter system, a desire to be left alone, and a mental health or substance abuse problem that impairs judgment. "If we could house absolutely everyone, what would they do during the daytime?" he asked. "You need intensive case management, job support, substance abuse support."

But homeless-rights advocates say the stability of housing is the first step toward improving the quality of life for the homeless. Della-Piana said, "Ninety-five percent of my clients come to me and say, ‘I’m getting social services.’ They point to something on the list and say, ‘I’m doing this.’ They’re doing everything they’re supposed to be doing, but they don’t have housing yet. That’s why people are still sleeping in the park."

Henderson said critics of the new tack "aren’t recognizing that laws are being broken. People’s qualities of life are being dragged down by these violations. If it’s your street, your door, and there’s feces on it every day, that affects your quality of life."

Ticketing the homeless is not a new thing. Two homeless-rights groups — Religious Witness with Homeless People and the Coalition on Homelessness — have a standing Freedom of Information Act request with San Francisco Superior Court that provides a monthly tally of the infractions likely committed primarily by homeless people. According to their data, for the past 15 years the SFPD has averaged about 13,000 quality-of-life citations per year. Last year Religious Witness released a study showing that more than 31,000 citations had been issued during Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration.

"For the police, the sheriff, and the court cost, we estimated it cost almost $6 million for those 31,000 citations," said Sister Bernie Galvin, executive director of Religious Witness. Galvin said a new study, to be released at City Hall on Oct. 4, shows that citations and costs have skyrocketed in the past 14 months. "Now we’re putting in the dramatic new expense of the DA," she said, adding, "Everyone wants to prosecute a greater number. It’s like it makes it justifiable to issue these 31,000 tickets if we can prosecute them. Actually, it makes it crueler and more expensive."

Media reports have characterized the tickets as empty pieces of paper, issued and then metaphorically shredded when a homeless individual fails to pay the $50 to $500 fine. In a recent San Francisco Chronicle story, Heather Knight reported that "all quality of life citations are getting dismissed." Yet when they don’t — and violators either don’t show up in court or can’t pay the fine — infractions become misdemeanors or an arrest warrant is issued, both of which become problems for people trying to access services.

"It backfires," said Christina Brown, an associate at O’Melveny and Myers who volunteers time in traffic court representing homeless people through the Lawyer’s Committee. "When people are served with warrants, they’re precluded from services." Even if the person cuts a deal with the DA to access services in lieu of paying a fine, they still have to return to court to prove they’ve done that. If they can’t get the paperwork or can’t make it to the court in time, it becomes a misdemeanor.

"The criminal justice system is actually making it harder if they want to find somewhere else to sleep," said Della-Piana, who related an anecdote of a client who had a few open-container infractions. The client was afraid to go to court when she couldn’t pay the fines, so a warrant was issued. She’d spent the past seven years on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s waiting list for public housing and got kicked off because of the misdemeanor.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi expressed concern that a dragnet is being created for arresting homeless people committing status crimes they have no control over. "We have to be very careful we’re not trying to legislate services through the criminal justice system. We do too much of that already," he said. "This approach assumes that if a person is in trouble, they’re more likely to accept the services. I haven’t seen that is true."

Henderson doesn’t necessarily agree that the criminal justice system shouldn’t play a role in assisting homeless people: "I want this citation to serve as a wake-up call for you." He thinks people need to be held accountable and would like to see the city adopt the plan for a Community Justice Center, modeled after New York City’s, a vision that his boss, District Attorney Kamala Harris, and Newsom also share.

"We believe San Francisco has a unique infrastructure and need for the Community Justice Center. That’s why we are proposing to pilot this initiative in the Tenderloin and South of Market area, where more than a third of the city’s quality of life offenses occur," Harris and Newsom wrote in a May 13 editorial in the Chronicle. "The center promises to give relief to the neighborhoods most affected by quality of life crimes."

During an Oct. 1 endorsement interview with the Guardian, Newsom said he hoped to open the new center by December. Lazar, who sits on the committee that’s still hammering out the details for how exactly the center would work, agreed with Henderson that it’s the next step in more direct connection with services: "We’re trying to put the criminal justice system and the social justice system together."

Della-Piana said this still ignores the black marks that misdemeanors leave, which become good reasons for some service providers to save their limited resources for people with clean records. "The two ideologies don’t mesh," Della-Piana said. "My homeless clients want housing. There currently is not enough of it to go around. Arresting them instead of citing them for sleeping and other basic life activities will not change the availability of the most needed services."

Green City: PG&E’s two faces

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY If Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is really working to become "the nation’s greenest utility," as it claims, why is it opposing more renewable energy in California? Pending legislation — which PG&E opposes — would require a larger percentage of the state’s energy to be produced from renewable resources by 2020.

The fact that PG&E is against Senate Bill 411 doesn’t jibe with its self-proclaimed goal of going green. Current law — established as the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) — requires investor-owned utilities like PG&E to procure at least 20 percent of their energy from renewable resources by the end of 2010. SB 411 would increase the amount of required renewable energy to 33 percent by 2020. It makes sense that a green-aspiring company would want to support renewable-energy generation, right?

Yet PG&E is struggling to meet the current deadline of 20 percent by 2010, as the Guardian reported in "Green Isn’t PG&E" (4/18/07) and San Francisco Chronicle business reporter David R. Baker wrote Sept. 27. By way of explanation, Baker wrote, "California currently doesn’t have enough windmills, solar panels, and geothermal fields to do the job."

Jim Metropulos, legislative representative for Sierra Club California, told us the issue is one not of resources but of priorities. "PG&E has continued to make investments in fossil-fuel generation while not investing as much as they should in renewables." In other words, PG&E is in danger of not meeting the RPS deadline — and actively opposing more renewable energy generation in our state — because it’s been choosing to put its money elsewhere (such as front-page "Green is …" ads in the Chronicle and other campaigns to greenwash its image and fight public power).

PG&E did not return our phone calls seeking comment, but the "opposition argument" against SB 411 listed on the California Senate Web site reads, in part, "Opponents argue the bill … eliminates opportunities for utilities to identify potentially less costly means of meeting requirements."

This is a seemingly innocuous sentence, but it brings to mind another piece of pending legislation, Assembly Bill 809, that is currently on the governor’s desk, awaiting his signature. This bill would enable utilities to meet the current requirement of 20 percent by 2010 by changing the legal definition of renewable energy. AB 809 would effectively dilute the definition of renewable and give investor-owned utilities renewable credit for power generated by environmentally destructive large dams.

Under current law, hydroelectric plants that produce fewer than 30 megawatts meet the standards of renewable. AB 809 would extend the definition of renewable to include larger hydro plants that implement "efficiency improvements."

Instead of investing in legitimately sustainable means of producing energy, PG&E seeks to water down the standards and gain RPS credit for already existing hydroelectric plants. Nice way to cut costs, eh? As Metropulos puts it, "PG&E supports AB 809 since they get a lot of power from hydro."

Again, the question at hand is: if PG&E is seeking the title of "the nation’s greenest utility," why is it working against green energy in California?

Aliza Wasserman of Green Guerrillas Against Green Washing said the answer is simple: "Their actions are blatantly hypocritical." She sees PG&E as a duplicitous entity, pandering to the public with its "Let’s green this city" marketing blitz while simultaneously lobbying against renewable energy.

Wasserman notes that while PG&E is touting itself as a friend of the environment and sponsoring "every environmental event and organization in town to appear green," it only generates 1 percent of its energy from solar and less than 2 percent from wind. Comparatively, 24 percent of its energy is from nuclear generation, an energy source that produces toxic by-products and harms aquatic ecosystems.

SB 411 comes up for vote again in January 2008, pending a feasibility report by the California Energy Commission. "This is a critical moment in history," Wasserman says. "Are our legislators going to sell out or step up?"

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

Injunction dysfunction

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When seven people were shot in the span of 12 hours in June at the Friendship Village and Yerba Buena Plaza East housing complexes in the Western Addition, city and community leaders decided immediate action was necessary to remedy the increasing level of gang violence.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who represents the area, demanded 24-hour police patrols as a temporary measure. Rev. Regnaldo Woods of Bethel AME had a broader vision — get the gangs to call a truce. But City Attorney Dennis Herrera already had his own plan well in the works, a controversial approach that has nonetheless been embraced at City Hall by leaders desperate for solutions to the intractable and escautf8g problem of gun violence.

Herrera and his staff in July announced they were seeking civil gang injunctions in the Western Addition and the Mission District modeled on a similar effort last year against the Oakdale Mob in Bayview–Hunters Point. He went after alleged members of the Norteña gang in the Mission and targeted three gangs in the Western Addition, all centered on Eddy Street and the public housing complexes that stretch from Gough to Divisadero: Eddy Rock, Chopper City, and Knock Out Posse.

Two Superior Court judges, Patrick Mahoney and Peter Busch, heard arguments for and against the injunctions Sept. 18 and are expected to issue rulings at any time. The injunctions would prevent the alleged gang members they name from associating with one another within a prescribed area, among other restrictions.

The injunctions have pitted Herrera and his allies against Public Defender Jeff Adachi, civil liberties advocates, and some community groups, who have rallied to stop the injunctions and criticize them as a "criminalization of people of color," a charge Herrera stridently rejects and has publicly condemned as "race-baiting."

But beyond the emotional politics of this controversial tactic, there are some practical problems with the injunctions, particularly in the Western Addition, where they may stifle community-based solutions to the problem of gang violence.

"[The injunctions] slowed us down considerably," Woods, a life-long Fillmore resident, told the Guardian. "It’s going to impact the movement if it stays as it is. I think there needs to be changes."

Woods and other leaders from Bethel and from his nonprofit, Up from Darkness, met with the gang members a total of 43 times throughout the summer. When word of the injunctions spread, Woods said he had to restart from square one. Rather than bring people together for a dialogue, he had to explain why this was happening, what the injunctions meant, and how the injunctions would affect those included.

Woods planned to hold a summit, which "shot callers" from each of the gangs would attend and at which they would call a truce as well as receive access to employment guidance and mental health services. The summit never happened, but gang violence in the Western Addition nevertheless decreased rapidly in the following months. Northern Police District Capt. Croce Casciato said there hasn’t been a gang-related homicide in the district since May.

The American Civil Liberties Union says the injunctions will strip alleged gang members of due-process rights and give police a roving warrant to harass whomever they deem a gang member. Adachi and Kendra Fox-Davis, of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, said their offices have received numerous complaints from youths in the Mission and the Western Addition that police are already using the injunctions to hassle people even before they’ve been approved.

"There’s been a tremendous amount of misinformation about the injunctions," Adachi said. He questions the effectiveness of injunctions and said these give police carte blanche to harass anyone they suspect of being affiliated with gangs. His biggest issue, though, is the fact that the alleged members don’t have the necessary resources to contest the label.

Herrera derided the racial implications levied by Adachi, and in an e-mail to us, press secretary Matt Dorsey wrote, "The fact is, the debate over these proposed injunctions — most especially the one in the Mission — has been characterized by increasingly dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric. This isn’t just someone’s innocent misunderstanding, either: ‘the criminalization of people of color’ is wildly misrepresentative, and it’s deliberate."

Herrera acknowledges people’s concerns, but he stands by his decision.

"I really wish it wasn’t necessary that it has come to this point where I say, ‘Hey, this is a tool we have to pursue,’" Herrera told us. "But the facts are the facts. We have a gang problem in San Francisco. I think I’d be neglecting my responsibility if I didn’t bring another tool to the table to help address the issue."

Woods doesn’t raise the same racial concerns that Adachi does, and he isn’t too animated about the civil liberties issues. To him, the injunctions are just too broad and counterproductive to the community-based approaches that have the best chance of addressing the problem. He thinks the gang members themselves must help solve the problems they’ve created.

"It’s us getting together every day and doing something positive," said Steve Johnson, a 27-year-old targeted member of Eddy Rock, which claims the Plaza East housing complex as its turf. "It has nothing to do with the injunction. We’re trying to get all the different complexes in the Western Addition together."

Paris Moffet, the alleged leader of Eddy Rock, added, "We’re the only ones stopping the violence. We needed to. We are going to stop this."

It may come as a surprise that reputed gang members might be helping to stop the violence that was once a part of their daily lives, and several members of Eddy Rock acknowledged they have a long way to go in reshaping their images.

But, they say, they are committed to reforming themselves, and they recently held a barbecue at the complex parking lot to display some of their positive work. In the small community center at Plaza East — locally known as the OC, for "Outta Control" — Eddy Rock, with the help of Woods and others, has created Open Arms, a nonprofit geared toward educating the younger kids in the complex about staying in school and computer literacy.

Asked about the sudden turnabout by Eddy Rock, Marquez Shaw, a 26-year-old alleged member of the gang, explained that the level of violence at Plaza East had taken its toll on everyone, not just uninvolved residents. "[The violence] affected me, very much so," he said. "There’s been more bloodshed here than anywhere else in the community. We’re the only ones man enough to do something."

But Herrera said the recent relative quiet in the area doesn’t make up for more than five years of chaos. "Has there been a lull? Yeah," he said. "But earlier in the summer there were some brazen shootings. June isn’t that long ago."

Woods acknowledged that the members shouldn’t be given a free pass, considering their troubled past. "They’re not angels," he said. "But let’s try to help them before they go to prison. That way you might save the old lady’s life. You might save a youngster’s life. If they had something to do, they wouldn’t do the shootings."

At the Aug. 14 Eddy Rock barbecue, about 50 or so people from the Plaza East complex snacked on ribs, chicken, hot links, and spaghetti. Two beat officers from the Northern Station stood in the distance and oversaw an impromptu football game between juveniles and alleged gang members.

A clipping of a newspaper article hangs on the wall in the community center; it’s about how director Spike Lee is urging inner-city youths to make films about their experience growing up with violence and to use the Internet to broadcast them to others.

Given a camera, Shaw has done just that. During a recent visit to Plaza East, he was using iMovie to edit a video that he planned to post on YouTube. On the video, an older black man says, "Now it’s time to look at what’s going on, not what’s happened in the past."

Nas’s "I Know I Can" plays on Hannibal Thompson’s video as he flatly explains how the area is deprived of proper resources and lacks preventative measures. Thompson, a 20-year-old named in one of the injunctions as a member of Eddy Rock, says six of his friends have been murdered since 2005 — three of them less than a block away, at Eddy and Laguna, where cameras affixed to streetlights are meant to deter criminal activity. He said increased police presence and the work of Woods have led to the decrease in violence, something he embraces.

"The best thing that ever happened to this community was the 24-hour police patrol. That’s way better than the injunction," he said. "They should have done that years ago."

Casciato doesn’t doubt that Eddy Rock, which has terrorized residents for years, might have turned the corner. But he calls the injunctions one additional tool to fight the long-term battle against gang violence. Casciato said it was too soon to tell how an injunction would affect regular police procedure. Like others in the community, though, he emphasized the effectiveness of outreach work.

"There has been a great collaborative effort on the community’s part," Casciato said. On gang members reforming themselves, he said, "I’m sure they did. Success is going to come from within, not from the outside. All our efforts are for naught if there’s no buy-in."

Under the current terms of the injunctions, the aforementioned barbecue would be prohibited, since it involved literally the whole gang. The targeted individuals could freely associate with one another inside the community center but would need to go in and out separately, which critics say is not a realistic scenario. If targeted members violate the injunctions, they can be charged with misdemeanors and put in jail for up to five days.

The injunction tactic "undermines antiviolence efforts of community advocates and organizations working in the Western Addition, like Woods, by effectively preventing the individuals most in need of support services from participating in them," Fox-Davis wrote in an e-mail.

Herrera and his deputies submitted more than 4,000 pages of evidence, including expert declarations from the gang task force, which detailed the reign of terror of the three gangs. He said they’ve been careful to name only shot callers in the injunctions and to carefully detail the case against them.

Fox-Davis and other critics contend the Western Addition injunction is too broad, unlike the first one in Oakdale, which only covered four square blocks. A total of 15 blocks are designated as the "safety zone" in the Western Addition, stretching from Eddy and Gough in the east to Eddy and Webster in the west, bordered by Turk and Ellis to the north and south, for Eddy Rock.

For Chopper City and KOP — which had in the past aligned themselves against Eddy Rock — the safety zone is a six-block area north of Turk to Ellis, between Divisadero and Steiner, which includes the Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King housing complexes. In Bayview, only one of 22 targeted members lived in the housing complex, whereas a total of seven of 19 identified members of Eddy Rock live within that purposed safety zone, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

"The restrictions that are proposed in this injunction go far beyond what is necessary to address the nuisance the city attorney claims is being caused by gang violence," Fox-Davis said.

But Herrera says the "nuisance" amounts to communities being terrorized by violence and his office would be remiss to not address the problem. A total of 11 homicides in three years have been linked to the three Western Addition gangs, according to court documents.

"I’ve never been one to say we should be dissuading communities from being involved and trying find solutions and making contributions to solving the problem. To me it’s not mutually exclusive. It’s not an either-or proposition. I think it’s important that we get the community to be a vital stakeholder in trying to stem the tide of violence," Herrera said. "But there has to be accountability."

To quell critics’ concerns, Herrera said his office has included numerous safeguards, including training cops to properly enforce the injunctions. Targeted members also have a "buyout option," meaning if they can prove that they are no longer involved in gang activity, they can appeal to have their names removed from the list.

Herrera points to the perceived success of the injunction in Bayview as proof that the tactic is effective in restoring calm and peace to neighborhoods once plagued with murder. Herrera also notes that the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution almost unanimously that supported injunctions by the city attorney.

Mirkarimi, however, said his support of the current injunctions being sought was "tentative at best" and said he considered them "an act of desperation." He too said community work and traditional police enforcement — like the 24-hour patrols — are better ways of addressing the root causes of gang violence.

The alleged members of Eddy Rock agree.

"We just need something to do," said Maurice Carter, 32. "We did the crime, we did the time. Now we just want a second chance."

Endorsements: Local offices

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@@http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2007/11/endorsements_local_offices.html@@

Endorsements: Local ballot measures

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Proposition A (transit reform)

YES


This omnibus measure would finally put San Francisco in a position to create the world-class transportation system that the city needs to handle a growing population and to address environmental problems ranging from climate change to air pollution. And in the short term it would help end the Muni meltdown by giving the system a much-needed infusion of cash, about $26 million per year, and more authority to manage its myriad problems.

The measure isn’t perfect. It would give a tremendous amount of power to the unelected Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a semiautonomous agency created in 1999 to reform Muni. But we also understand the arguments of Sup. Aaron Peskin — who wrote the measure in collaboration with labor and other groups — that the MTA is free to make tough decisions that someone facing reelection might avoid. And the measure still would give the Board of Supervisors authority to block the MTA’s budget, fare increases, and route changes with seven votes.

We’re also a little worried about provisions that could place the Taxicab Commission under the MTA’s purview and allow the agency to tinker with the medallion system and undermine Proposition K, the 1978 law that gives operating permits to working drivers, not corporations. Peskin promised us, on tape, that he will ensure, with legislation if necessary, that no such thing happens, and we’ll hold him to it.

Ultimately, the benefits of this measure outweigh our concerns. The fact that the labor movement has signed off on expanded management powers for the MTA shows how important this compromise is. The MTA would have the power to fully implement the impending recommendations in the city’s Transit Improvement Project study and would be held accountable for improvements to Muni’s on-time performance. New bonding authority under the measure would also give the MTA the ability to quickly pursue capital projects that would allow more people to comfortably use public transit.

The measure would also create an integrated transportation system combining everything from parking to cabs to bike lanes under one agency, which would then be mandated to find ways to roll back greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2012. And to do that, the agency would get to keep all of the revenue generated by its new programs. As a side benefit — and another important reason to vote for Prop. A — approval of this measure would nullify the disastrous Proposition H on the same ballot.

San Francisco faces lots of tough choices if we’re going to minimize climate change and maximize the free flow of people through our landlocked city. Measure A is an important start. Vote yes.

Proposition B (commission holdovers)

YES


Proposition B is a simple good-government measure that ends a practice then-mayor Willie Brown developed into a science — allowing commissioners to continue serving after their terms expire, turning them into at-will appointments and assuring their loyalty.

Members of some of the most powerful commissions in town serve set four-year terms. The idea is to give the members, many appointed by the mayor, some degree of independence: they can’t be fired summarily for voting against the interests (or demands) of the chief executive.

But once their terms expire, the mayor can simply choose not to reappoint or replace them, leaving them in limbo for months, even years — and while they still sit on the commissions and vote, these holdover commissioners can be fired at any time. So their jobs depend, day by day, on the whims of the mayor.

Prop. B, sponsored by the progressives on the Board of Supervisors, simply would limit to 60 days the amount of time a commissioner can serve as a holdover. After that period, the person’s term would end, and he or she would have to step down. That would force the mayor to either reappoint or replace commissioners in a timely manner — and help give these powerful posts at least a chance at independence. Vote yes.

Proposition C (public hearings on proposed measures)

NO


Proposition C sure sounds good: it would mandate that the supervisors hold a hearing 45 days in advance before putting any measure on the ballot. The mayor would have to submit proposed ballot measures for hearings too. That would end the practice of last-minute legislation; since four supervisors can place any ordinance on the ballot (and the mayor can do the same), proposals that have never been vetted by the public and never subjected to any prior discussion often wind up before the voters. Sometimes that means the measures are poorly written and have unintended consequences.

But this really isn’t a good-government measure; it’s a move by the Chamber of Commerce and downtown to reduce the power of the district-elected supervisors.

The 1932 City Charter gave the supervisors the power to place items before the voters as a check on corruption. In San Francisco it’s been used as a check on downtown power. In 1986, for example, activists gathered enough voter signatures to place Proposition M, a landmark measure controlling downtown development, on the ballot. But then–city attorney Louise Renne, acting on behalf of downtown developers, used a ridiculous technicality to invalidate it. At the last minute, the activists were able to get four supervisors to sign on — and Prop. M, one of the most important pieces of progressive planning legislation in the history of San Francisco, ultimately won voter approval. Under Prop. C, that couldn’t have happened.

In theory, most of the time, anything that goes on the ballot should be subject to public hearings. Sometimes, as in the case of Prop. M, that’s not possible.

We recognize the frustration some groups (particularly small businesses) feel when legislation gets passed without any meaningful input from the people directly affected. But it doesn’t require a strict ballot measure like Prop. C to solve the problem. The supervisors should adopt rules mandating public hearings on propositions, but with a more flexible deadline and exemptions for emergencies. Meanwhile, vote no on Prop. C.

Proposition D (library preservation fund)

YES


In the 1980s and early 1990s, San Francisco mayors loved to cut the budget of the public library. Every time money was short — and money was chronically short — the library took a hit. It was an easy target. If you cut other departments (say, police or fire or Muni or public health), people would howl and say lives were in danger. Reducing the hours at a few neighborhood branch libraries didn’t seem nearly as dire.

So activists who argued that libraries were an essential public service put a measure on the ballot in 1994 that guaranteed at least a modest level of library funding. The improvements have been dramatic: branch library hours have increased more than 50 percent, library use is way up, there are more librarians around in the afternoons to help kids with their homework…. In that sense, the Library Preservation Fund has been a great success. The program is scheduled to sunset next year; Proposition D would extend it another 15 years.

If the current management of the public library system were a bit more trustworthy, this would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the library commission and staff have been resisting accountability; ironically, the library — a font of public information — makes it difficult to get basic records about library operations. The library is terrible about sunshine; in fact, activists have had to sue this year to get the library to respond to a simple public-records request (for nonconfidential information on repetitive stress injuries among library staff). And we’re not thrilled that a significant part of the library’s operating budget is raised (and controlled) by a private group, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, which decides, with no oversight by an elected official, how as much as 10 percent of library money is spent.

But libraries are too valuable and too easy a budget target to allow the Library Preservation Fund to expire. And the way to fend off creeping privatization is hardly by starving a public institution for funds. So we’ll support Prop. D.

Proposition E (mayoral attendance at Board of Supervisors meetings)

YES, YES, YES


If it feels as though you’ve already voted on this, you have: last November, by a strong majority, San Franciscans approved a policy statement calling on the mayor to attend at least one Board of Supervisors meeting each month to answer questions and discuss policy. It’s a great idea, modeled on the very successful Question Time in the United Kingdom, under which the British prime minister appears before Parliament regularly and submits to questions from all political parties. Proposition E would force the mayor to comply. Newsom, despite his constant statements about respecting the will of the voters, has never once complied with the existing policy statement. Instead, he’s set up a series of phony neighborhood meetings at which he controls the agenda and personally selects which questions he’s going to answer.

We recognize that some supervisors would use the occasion of the mayor’s appearance to grandstand — but the mayor does that almost every day. Appearing before the board once a month isn’t an undue burden; in fact, it would probably help Newsom in the long run. If he’s going to seek higher office, he’s going to have to get used to tough questioning and learn to deal with critics in a forum he doesn’t control.

Beyond all the politics, this idea is good for the city. The mayor claims he already meets regularly with members of the board, but those meetings are private, behind closed doors. Hearing the mayor and the board argue about policy in public would be informative and educational and help frame serious policy debates. Besides, as Sup. Chris Daly says, with Newsom a lock for reelection, this is the only thing on the ballot that would help hold him accountable. Vote yes on Prop. E.

Proposition F (police pensions)

YES


We really didn’t want to endorse this measure. We’re sick and tired of the San Francisco Police Officers Association — which opposed violence-prevention funding, opposed foot patrols, opposes every new revenue measure, and bitterly, often viciously, opposes police accountability — coming around, tin cup in hand, every single election and asking progressives to vote to give the cops more money. San Francisco police officers deserve decent pay — it’s a tough, dangerous job — but the starting salary for a rookie cop in this town exceeds $60,000, the benefits are extraordinarily generous, and the San Francisco Police Department is well on its way to setting a record as the highest-paid police force in the country.

Now it wants more.

But in fact, Proposition F is pretty minor — it would affect only about 60 officers who were airport cops before the airport police were merged into the SFPD in 1997. Those cops have a different retirement system, which isn’t quite as good as what they would get with full SFPD benefits. We’re talking about $30,000 a year; in the end, it’s a simple labor issue, and we hate to blame a small group of officers in one division for the serious sins of their union and its leadership. So we’ll endorse Prop. F. But we have a message for the SFPOA’s president: if you want to beat up the progressives, reject new tax plans, promote secrecy, and fight accountability, don’t come down here again asking for big, expensive benefit improvements.

Proposition G (Golden Gate Park stables)

YES


This is an odd one: Proposition G, sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, would create a special fund for the renovation of the historic (and dilapidated) horse stables in Golden Gate Park. The city would match every $3 in private donations with $1 in public money, up to a total of $750,000. The city would leverage that money with $1.2 million in state funds available for the project and fix up the stables.

Supporters, including most of the progressive supervisors, say that the stables are a historic gem and that horseback riding in the park would provide "after-school, summer and weekend activities for families and youth." That might be a bit of a stretch — keeping horses is expensive, and riding almost certainly won’t be a free activity for anyone. But the stables have been the target of privatization efforts in the past and, under Newsom, almost certainly would be again in the future; this is exactly the sort of operation that the mayor would like to turn over to a private contractor. So for a modest $750,000, Prop. G would keep the stables in public hands. Sounds like a good deal to us. Vote yes.

Proposition H (reguutf8g parking spaces)

NO, NO, NO


It’s hard to overstate just how bad this measure is or to condemn strongly enough the sleazy and deceptive tactics that led Don Fisher, Webcor, and other downtown power brokers to buy the signatures that placed what they call "Parking for the Neighborhoods" on the ballot. That’s why Proposition H has been almost universally condemned, even by downtown’s allies in City Hall, and why Proposition A includes a provision that would negate Proposition H if both are approved.

Basically, this measure would wipe out three decades’ worth of environmentally sound planning policies in favor of giving every developer and homeowner the absolute right to build a parking space for every housing unit (or two spaces for every three units in the downtown core). While that basic idea might have some appeal to drivers with parking frustrations, even they should consider the disastrous implications of this greedy and shortsighted power grab.

The city has very little leverage to force developers to offer community benefits like open space or more affordable housing, or to design buildings that are attractive and environmentally friendly. But parking spots make housing more valuable (and expensive), so developers will help the city meet its needs in order to get them. That would end with this measure, just as the absolute right to parking would eliminate things like Muni stops and street trees while creating more driveways, which are dangerous to bicyclists and pedestrians. It would flip the equation to place developers’ desires over the public interest.

Worst of all, it would reverse the city’s transit-first policies in a way that ultimately would hurt drivers and property owners, the very people it is appealing to. If we don’t limit the number of parking spots that can be built with the 10,000 housing units slated for the downtown core, it will result in traffic gridlock that will lower property values and kill any chance of creating a world-class transit system.

But by then, the developers will be off counting our money, leaving us to clean up their mess. Don’t be fooled. Vote no.

Proposition I (Office of Small Business)

YES


Proposition I got on the ballot after small-business leaders tried unsuccessfully to get the supervisors to fund a modest program to create staff for the Small Business Commission and create a one-stop shop for small-business assistance and permitting. We don’t typically support this sort of after-the-fact ballot-box budgeting request, but we’re making an exception here.

San Francisco demands a lot from small businesses. It’s an expensive place to set up shop, and city taxes discriminate against them. We supported the new rules mandating that even small operations give paid days off and in many cases pay for health insurance, but we recognize that they put a burden on small businesses. And in the end, the little operators don’t get a whole lot back from City Hall.

This is a pretty minor request: it would allocate $750,000 to set up an Office of Small Business under the Small Business Commission. The funding would be for the first year only; after that the advocates would have to convince the supervisors that it was worth continuing. Small businesses are the economic and job-generation engines of San Francisco, and this one-time request for money that amounts to less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the city budget is worthy of support. Vote yes on Prop. I.

Proposition J (wireless Internet network)

NO


It’s going to be hard to convince people to vote against this measure; as one blogger put it, the mayor of San Francisco is offering free ice cream. Anyone want to decline?

Well, yes — decline is exactly what the voters should do. Because Proposition J’s promise of free and universal wireless Internet service is simply a fraud. And the way it’s worded would ensure that our local Internet infrastructure is handed over to a private company — a terrible idea.

For starters, San Francisco has already been down this road. Newsom worked out a deal a year ago with EarthLink and Google to provide free wi-fi. But the contract had all sorts of problems: the free access would have been too slow for a lot of uses, faster access wouldn’t have been free, there weren’t good privacy protections, and the network wouldn’t have been anything close to universal. Wi-fi signals don’t penetrate walls very well, and the signals in this plan wouldn’t have reached much above the second floor of a building — so anyone who lived in an interior space above the second floor (and that’s a lot of people) wouldn’t have gotten access at all.

So the supervisors asked a few questions and slowed things down — and it’s good they did, because EarthLink suddenly had a change in its business strategy and pulled out of citywide wi-fi altogether. That’s one of the problems with using a private partner for this sort of project: the city is subject to the marketing whims of tech companies that are constantly changing their strategies as the economic and technical issues of wi-fi evolve.

San Francisco needs a municipal Internet system; it ought to be part of the city’s public infrastructure, just like the streets, the buses, and the water and sewer lines. It shouldn’t rely just on a fickle technology like wi-fi either; it should be based on fiber-optic cables. Creating that network wouldn’t be all that expensive; EarthLink was going to do it for $10 million.

Prop. J is just a policy statement and would have no immediate impact. Still, it’s annoying and wrongheaded for the mayor to try to get San Franciscans to give a vote of confidence to a project that has already crashed and burned, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, the cosponsor, should never have put his name on it. Vote no.

Proposition K (ads on street furniture)

YES


San Francisco is awash in commercialism. With all of the billboards and ads, the city is starting to feel like a giant NASCAR racer. And a lot of them come from Clear Channel Communications, the giant, monopolistic broadcast outfit that controls radio stations, billboards, and now the contract to build new bus shelters in the city with even more ads on them.

Proposition K is a policy statement, sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, that seeks to bar any further expansion of street-furniture advertising in the city. That would mean no more deals with the likes of Clear Channel to allow more lighted kiosks with ads on them — and no more new bus shelter ads. That’s got Clear Channel agitated — the company just won the 15-year bid to rebuild the city’s existing 1,200 Muni shelters, and now it wants to add 380 more. Clear Channel argues that the city would get badly needed revenue for Muni from the expanded shelters; actually, the contract already guarantees Muni a large chunk of additional funding. And nothing in Prop. K would block Clear Channel from upgrading the existing shelters and plastering ads all over them.

On a basic philosophical level, we don’t support the idea of funding Muni by selling ads on the street, any more than we would support the idea of funding the Recreation and Park Department by selling the naming rights to the Hall of Flowers or the Japanese Tea Garden or the golf courses. On a practical level, the Clear Channel deal is dubious anyway: the company, which runs 10 mostly lousy radio stations in town and gives almost nothing of value to the community, refuses to provide the public with any information on its projected profits and losses, so there’s no way to tell if the income the city would get from the expanded shelters would be a fair share of the overall revenue.

Vote yes on K.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The mayor of San Francisco stopped by Oct. 1 to tell us why we should endorse his reelection, and I walked away with a lot of information. For starters, the mayor is unhappy about a lot of things: he’s unhappy about the murder rate, he’s unhappy about Muni, he’s unhappy about the Housing Authority … he’s even unhappy about his mayoral ride (the Town Car ought to be running on alternative fuel). In the hour-long interview, he must have said he was "not satisfied" a dozen different times.

Which at least shows that he recognizes that the city has a few problems. And there’s no doubt that Gavin Newsom has come a long way in four years. He’s much more self-assured and confident in his positions.

In fact, he was argumentative a lot of the time; he kept saying he wasn’t going to accept the premises of our questions, most of which had to do with major areas in which he’s falling down on the job — Muni, violent crime, housing, open government, public power, and overall leadership, among other things. You can listen to the entire interview, unedited, here. But let me talk a bit about housing, since that’s the biggest issue in the city — and Newsom’s comments were a perfect explanation of why things are getting worse.

I asked the mayor if we are moving in the right direction on housing, since most of what the city is building is housing for the very rich, the city’s General Plan says that 64 percent of all new housing should be below market rate, and there’s absolutely no city plan to get there.

"I’m not going to accept the frame of your question," Newsom said (although he didn’t explain why).

He talked about the money (much of it federal and state) that he’s spent on affordable housing, then went on to say, "Since I’ve become mayor, we have permitted more housing than we have literally in a generation…. We’ve also been building as a consequence of that more-affordable housing. Is it 67 percent? I’m not sure it is in Chicago, New York, or LA. Maybe it is in Belgrade, [Serbia,] but I’m not sure it is in the United States, and I’m not sure any city can achieve that ambitious goal overall."

Me: "What you’re building is expensive, for-sale condos … virtually no rental, virtually no families with kids…. You’re bragging about building 6,000 new units of market-rate housing [per year], but it’s not doing anything for the city."

Newsom: "I’m not bragging about it. I’m saying we can do better and we can do more…. [But] we are not a socialist society. We cannot come in and say we are just going to build this housing without the ability to fund it."

Allow me to translate: Newsom thinks a large part of the answer to the housing crisis is to build more condos and be happy that the developers give the city a few morsels. In other words, he’s OK with a city where 80 percent of the new housing is only for the rich. And he thinks that in capitalist America, we have no other choice.

But no developer has a divine right to build anything in this town, and there are all sorts of ways to raise money for affordable housing, and blaming it all on capitalism won’t fly. I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I’m just not satisfied.

Filling Ed Jew’s seat

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EDITORIAL It took a while for Mayor Gavin Newsom to make the obvious move and suspend Sup. Ed Jew, but here are much deeper politics here than just the dubious future of an elected official who should have resigned long ago and will almost certainly be forced out of office.

The mayor has appointed Carmen Chu, a political unknown, to fill Jew’s seat — for now. Technically, it’s an interim appointment; if and when the supervisors vote to remove Jew from office, after what could be a lengthy process, Newsom will be able to name someone to take over the District 4 seat until the next election. And since the mayor won’t say who will get that post, the future of the board is in limbo.

There are plenty of scenarios floating around at City Hall. The way some rumors have it, Newsom will try to pick up not just one but two seats in this play.

Jew, for all his conservatism, was not a loyal Newsom ally, and the mayor couldn’t count on his vote. Replacing him will presumably give the mayor another loyalist to join Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and (sometimes) Bevan Dufty. Political observers have been specuutf8g that Newsom may try to find a job that would entice Sup. Gerardo Sandoval — whose final term is winding down — to leave the board early; the obvious way to do that would be to convince Assessor Phil Ting to move into Jew’s seat as a permanent replacement, then give Sandoval the assessor’s job, which he ran for unsuccessfully in 2005.

In the end, under that sort of scenario, the mayor could wind up with as many as five allies on the board — nearly a majority. That would be a dramatic change in local politics and could raise the prospect of the progressives completely losing control of the board in 2008.

It also means that Newsom will in effect be asking the supervisors in the next few weeks to vote on removing Jew without giving them any idea who will replace him.

The politics shouldn’t directly influence the Jew vote; if the suspended supervisor is, in fact, guilty of misconduct (and the evidence looks pretty damning), then the board should remove him from office. But Newsom has a responsibility to play fair too; the mayor needs to tell the public, before the final vote on Jew’s fate, whom he plans to appoint to that seat.

In an interview in the Guardian office on Oct. 1, Newsom strongly implied that he has no plans to try to free up another seat on the board, that there’s no political deal or backroom move in the works. But he also refused to commit to telling the public whom his final choice will be for that seat and said he reserves the right to make any moves that he legally can under the City Charter.

If Newsom isn’t playing games here, fine: what’s the harm in saying, now, what his intentions are? It would defuse the rumors, end the political speculation, and allow the board vote to be exactly what it should be — an up-or-down vote on removing Ed Jew.

No bus shelter secrecy

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EDITORIAL Clear Channel Communications, the notorious national media conglomerate that has been monopolizing (and dumbing down) radio for years, is poised to take over the contract to rebuild the city’s bus shelters. The deal gives the company, which also dominates the local billboard market, the right to sell ads on the shelters for 15 years. It’s worth a lot of money — and it’s not at all clear that the city is getting its fair share. That’s because Clear Channel refuses to open its books and allow the public to see what sort of profits it expects to rake in through the program.

Keeping that information secret is probably illegal under the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. It’s certainly bad public policy. The supervisors should block this deal until the financial figures come to light.

The bus shelter program is a classic example of the city using a private partnership to provide a service that ought to be paid for with tax money. The deal requires the vendor to build and maintain shelters at more than 1,000 bus stops, something the city, which hasn’t been aggressive about raising new revenue, can’t afford to do. In exchange, the vendor gets to sell ads all over the shelters, turning Muni stops across the city into commercial marketing devices.

It’s too late to stop that train altogether (although Proposition K would slow it down a bit). Clear Channel has won, in a competitive bidding process, the right to negotiate a final contract with Muni. But the deal will have to go before the supervisors eventually, and when it does they should demand that Clear Channel release its financial projections.

That’s already the intent of city law. The Sunshine Ordinance, passed by the voters in 1999 as Proposition G, includes language specifically tailored to this kind of circumstance. Section 67.32 states, in part, "The city shall give no subsidy in money, tax abatements, land, or services to any private entity unless that entity agrees in writing to provide the city with financial projections (including profit and loss figures), and annual audited financial statements for the project thereafter, for the project upon which the subsidy is based and all such projections and financial statements shall be public records that must be disclosed."

It’s pretty hard to argue that allowing Clear Channel to build advertising structures on city land, as a part of the city’s bus system, with millions of captive customers who are city transit users, is anything but a subsidy within the meaning of Prop. G. City Attorney Dennis Herrera should look into that, and if necessary the supervisors should ask for a specific opinion on whether the city can legally do any business with Clear Channel on this deal before the company releases its finances. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force should hold a hearing on the deal and advise the mayor and supervisors on whether it complies with the Sunshine Ordinance.

But lawyers can wriggle around words like subsidy, and even if Herrera and the Clear Channel legal team come up with some strange argument allowing the contract to move forward, the supervisors should have none of it. If a giant media monolith wants an exclusive right to sell ads on city property, then the city ought to know how much money is involved so that city officials, in full view of the public, can determine if the contract is a good deal. Clear Channel argues that it’s a private company, and that’s true — but the contract is exclusive, so there are no competitive issues. And if Clear Channel doesn’t want to comply with the city’s sunshine requirements, Muni should put the contract back out to bid and find someone who does.

Silver Griffin

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LOCAL LIVE Silver Griffin is composed of three extremely competent musicians, the kind who turn toward one another and half-smile after the execution of a particularly tricky harmony or a successful groove. The band traffics in a muscular, half-danceable brand of indie rock that’s notable mostly for the meticulous slickness of its composition — airtight, but not quite suffocating.

The trio took the stage Sept. 22 at the Rockit Room, breezing through a note-perfect set of songs alternately slinky and strutting. The gig served as a CD release party for the band’s self-released debut, a collaboration with veteran producer Sylvia Massy (Tool, Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers) titled Here in the Night. The tunes are mostly built off frontperson Liam McCormick’s lilting lyrics and lithe leads, which culminate in chiming eighth-note chorus chords and the vocalist’s wistful, high-register crooning.

Silver Griffin’s songs occasionally evince jazz underpinnings, which might explain the well-honed musicianship that makes the group such a satisfying live act. On record, however, otherwise taut tracks are plagued by meandering horn solos and swells that recall a horrific combination of smooth jazz and Maroon 5’s discarded ideas, convincing at least this reviewer that collusion between indie and fusion is not in anyone’s best interest. McCormick is also a thoroughgoing abuser of the falsetto "Ooo-ooo" vocal technique, often choosing to deploy such dolphin-language scat antics at precisely the point in the song when a memorable lyric would be a bonus.

These caveats aside, Silver Griffin has its fair share of moments, especially when the songs play to the strengths of the talented rhythm section duo, Greg Black and Seabrien Arata. Set standouts included "Taste My Kiss" and "Goldfinger," a shaken-not-stirred homage to the classic Shirley Bassey James Bond theme.

SILVER GRIFFIN Sat/6, 9 p.m., $7, Time Out Bar and Patio, 1822 Grant, Concord. (925) 798-1811, www.timeoutconcord.com

“You Should Stop Editing”

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REVIEW I should stop editing? Well, an unedited issue of the Guardian has sprung to my wild or tired mind more than once, whether it be rated X or composed entirely of photocopied press releases. In the case of Ema Harris-Sintamarian’s show at Jack Fischer Gallery, the phrase "You Should Stop Editing" might function as a creative credo — one that allows the artist to range freely within works and between mediums. To put it bluntly, what the exhibit lacks in posturing, it more than makes up for in intricate intensity. These metalandscapes of ink and gouache on velum bloom from a technique that verges on digital design or ancient lithograph in its exactitude yet maintains a hand-drawn, idiosyncratic charm.

Nostalgia and science-fiction dystopia tangle and tango in idiosyncratic ways within Harris-Sintamarian’s mazes, grids, and matrices. Upside Down: The Story of Air suggests the skeleton of a spacecraft — and are those construction workers suspended above a roller coaster made of city halls? Elsewhere the cellular and the architectural entwine, sometimes in disturbing, dead-end fashion. Spaghetti, intestines, musculature, bridges, canoes, eggbeaters, machine guns, movie projectors, vaulted hallways, and decorated ceilings ricochet elastically through time and space. At times, as in Lullaby on C, the carefully open-ended result suggests a page from a sophisticated coloring book before its spaces have been completely filled. Gertrude Stein seems to peek from the background of one piece, and Eugène Delacroix is invoked in another, but for the most part the artist’s cosmology is her own. As she has hinted in statements about her work, she’s remaking Alice or trying to find her in the wicked wonderlands of a life that has spanned from Romanian Communism to Californian capitalism. Just as filmmakers such as Cristi Puiu herald a new wave of Romanian cinema, Harris-Sintamarian shows that acute dreaming can be born abroad.

YOU SHOULD STOP EDITING Through Oct. 25. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Jack Fischer Gallery, 49 Geary, SF. (415) 956-1178, www.jackfischergallery.com

The Guardian 2007 Endorsements

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There’s nothing on the state or national ballot, and there’s not much of a contest in any of the three races in San Francisco. That might spell a low-turnout election. But don’t toss your absentee ballot yet or make plans to be out of town Nov. 6: the mayor’s race has some interesting challengers, and there are a number of important ballot initiatives that could change the direction of the city, particularly on transportation, for years to come.

Click below for our endorsements:

>> Local offices
Mecke, Sumchai, and Chicken John for mayor

>> Local ballot measures
YES on Prop. A, NO on Prop. H, more …..

>> Our unedited interview with Gavin Newsom

>> The Guardian 2007 Election Center
Interviews with and information about the candidates, including Quintin Mecke, Ahimsa Sumchai, Harold Hoogasian, and more. PLUS: Interviews with Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, Jake McGoldrick and others about the issues at stake in the November 6, 2007, election.

>> Who’s endorsing whom?
Endorsements by other local political bodies

Gavin Newsom: The Guardian Interview

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Reading is fundamental

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Made Man

(Aspyr; PlayStation2, Windows)

A couple of weeks ago I was facing a stretch without the possibility of any money besides what I had in my pocket. I have experienced this before, and the way I have learned to deal with it is to stay in my apartment, sleep a lot, and eat very little, counting the days. At my age and with my diet of cigarettes and coffee, Internet porn will only go so far. So I have found that the best way to kill the hours when I am conscious has been to play video games. With my meager budget, I set aside what I needed to buy some games and hit the mall. I came home with two, neither of which was a new release, but they were cheap. One, Made Man, has a gun on the cover, so I bought it. The other shares its theme with one of my favorite movies of all time, Jaws. I settled into my apartment with a stock of food, water, and my new video games.

Made Man tells the story of a Vietnam vet who gets mixed up with the Mafia after his tour of duty. This could easily be an amazing game. The story could have been pretty good if its makers had put it together with some semblance of caring; without warning, you jump from the city to the jungle and back, and apparently you are trying to find some gold. Finding gold? This is stupid, right? But the game has slimy feds and two-faced friends stabbing you in the back — can’t miss there.

Early on, however, you realize that whoever made this game had either never played video games or heard there was a lot of money to be made and, like the guy in Field of Dreams, figured, "If we make it, they will buy." I can enjoy almost any game if I play it long enough. Throw in parts that take place in Vietnam, with an actual "The End" rip serving as the soundtrack, and you would be hard-pressed not to make me happy. I love Vietnam War games, shooting guns, and Mafia cutaway scenes. But holy lord, Made Man sucks. Every weapon you fire is so clunky and inaccurate, in terms of killing people, that it’s actually unfun. This was a first for me. Your enemies, however, shoot like gods. They never, never, never fucking miss. Their bullets also often defy physics. I hate this game. Even though I still had weeks to kill, I tossed it and took a nice 16-hour nap.

Jaws Unleashed (Majesco; PlayStation2, Xbox, Windows) would save me. How bad could it be? Even if it was awful, it’d be good for some laughs. You get to play as the shark. This had to be fun. And maybe there’s a Quint minigame. I love Quint.

Perhaps the copy I bought was pirated — hence cheap — because it didn’t work. No magic could make this game work. No matter how many times I blew on the disc, blew inside the PlayStation2 unit, inserted and reinserted the game, tap-tap-tapped — I still got that "No Disc" screen. I even tried winging the disc across the room, screaming, crying, and stomping on the console. No dice.

I was looking at an endless line of empty days spent staring at my walls. As a last resort I played God of War 2 (Sony; PlayStation2) on Titan mode, which is the hardest setting and possibly not actually meant to be played by humans. For anyone bothering to try this, when you get to the fight with Zeus at the end, you might as well just go ahead and kill yourself, because the shit can’t be done.

With 10 days of no money left, I gave up on PlayStation killing time for me. I gave up on porn, YouTube, everything. I even gave up on cigarettes. I read a book.

Cell mates

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Dance theater remains a thriving genre in Bay Area performance. To call it a subgenre of one or the other just doesn’t allow due respect for offerings by the likes of Jess Curtis, Joe Goode, inkBoat, Rebecca Salzer, and Deborah Slater. Erika Chong Shuch’s ESP Project, the resident company at Intersection for the Arts, is among the leaders in this field. Playful and romantic, with an irresistible urge to investigate the darker regions of inner and outer space, Shuch’s work partakes freely and idiosyncratically of all that the bare stage might offer in the way of strategy, including dramatic action, unconventional movement (often incorporating nonprofessional dancers), voice-over narration, taped interviews, singing, video installations, and puppetry — all of which went into the alternately eerie and euphoric poetry of 2006’s Orbit (Notes from the Edge of Forever).

Shuch’s latest work moves still further away from dance-centered performance, using movement as only one element in (an almost subordinate) relation to others, especially text and song. But perhaps because of the especially personal nature of 51802, which bares a real-life love story in veiled disguise to interrogate the mixed feelings and existential crises arising from a lover’s incarceration, this latest piece sometimes feels weighed down by a too concrete need to voice some definitive explanation or conclusion.

Nonetheless, Shuch and her ensemble (Dwayne Calizo, Jennifer Chien, Tommy Shepherd, and Danny Wolohan) create some memorable moments, and the mise-en-scène conveys flashes of real inspiration. Moreover, there’s a poetic and pertinent irony in the bitter symmetry offered by the central story, which can be said to begin and end on opposite sides of a wall. The first one divides the apartments of two urban strangers but not the music they create in their seemingly separate worlds, setting up a flirtation in sound that starts as a competitive call-and-response and ends in literal harmony, all before any physical meeting. Composer Allen Willner’s score and original, acoustic guitar–based songs — soulful, bluesy, and romantic — serve as a kind of reincarnated version of this elemental discourse as music becomes the primary medium for connection on a stage inhabited by otherwise lonely bodies, often captured (courtesy of the elegant lighting design, also by Willner) in isolated spots of soft, almost burnished light.

The second wall is, of course, that of the prison. Also literal and figurative at once, it intrudes into an intense love affair whose history is by now fraught with emotional dissonance and even psychological abuse. But love — albeit a more complex and ambivalent version — breaches this wall too, mediated by letters, memories, and imagination. This imagery remains suggestive though underdeveloped (Shuch relates the beginning of the love affair in a few lines about midway through the 60-minute performance). For the most part, the story comes to us more obliquely, through the songs and fanciful scenes and characters deployed to plumb the depths of the isolation gripping both parties to the separation. In one memorable sequence, a man (Wolohan) stranded at the bottom of a well befriends a blind mouse to whom he confesses a childhood act of violence. In other sequences Shuch or Shepherd play stir-crazy shut-ins desperately coaxing a lover’s ghost to haunt the room.

These scenes and others we understand to be inventions of the lover left behind on the outside, walled in by her involved and evolving connection to the incarcerated other. But if 51802 is about absence, its emphatic drive to fill theatrical space with a superfluity of words and dramatic gestures to that effect can end by pushing that absence just out of reach. Words, to a significant degree, have taken the place of movement here, as if furnishing their own jail cell that allows little space for the body.

When raised in song (as when Shuch softly sings the refrain, "I ain’t wavin’ babe — I’m drowning"), they can still seem liberating in their (physical) evocations. But even the more suggestive lines in Shuch’s interspersed text can feel incomplete. A refrain is heard in both dialogue and song states: "There is no perfect good-bye"; this key piece of wisdom sounds true enough. But as Shuch notes with a flowing sweep of the arms, good ones require one person to remain still while the other moves off in a rush of motion. This — a dancer’s insight — sounds like the germ of a larger idea, the opening of some larger movement. But when it comes along, near the end of the 60-minute performance, there is little room or time for much more.

51802

Extended through Oct. 12

Thurs.–Sun., 8 p.m., $10–$25

Intersection for the Arts

446 Valencia, SF

(415) 626-3311

www.theintersection.org

Mad chatter

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER What flying snacks do not kill me only make me harder, better, faster, stronger — come all ye children of Kanye West and Friedrich Nietzsche. I love San Francisco. Where else can you catch hell and come this close to getting brained by a pupusa hurled by a nattering, nutty nutbag in orangey pink stretch pants? I’m all the rage, ready for the crème de la Salvadoran vittle missiles.

I’m just cranked on shady luck like that, and was oozing my everyday allotment of pure, untrammeled harassability on a recent Sunday, just minding my own bad bidness strolling through the Mission District. Plenty of lukewarm trade in cell chargers and black velvet paintings of howling wolves and solemn American Indians with ghostly hands emerging from over their maws. Fresh-faced, black-eyed kids in Sunday finery toddled by as I finally landed in Las Palmeras to sample yuca frita con chicharrón. The familias around me were busy cracking crab when an elderly lady with an extremely fashion-damaged Phyllis Diller fright wig cruised alongside me and started in with "You better understand …" before launching into a diatribe en espagnol. Oh, to be the object of so much obsession — as she hobbled outside in royal snit, returning only to yell at me further through the restaurant window. Later, when the good folks at Las Palmeras handed her a conciliatory pupusa — balm to all that ails ya — she flung it, as hard as she could, at my offending, chomping image. Oh, but I don’t understand — I really, really don’t.

Ah Ess-Eff, as if you could ever stop providing safe harbor — or serving up mucho psychotic triggers — for so many mad men and women. You needn’t throw a pupusa far to find classic only-in-SF, Emperor Norton–<\d>style eccentrics or lunatics everywhere you wander. Yet my favorite inspired obsessive this week has to be Chicago’s Galactic Zoo Dossier zine impresario and psych king in his own write-right Steve "Plastic Crimewave" Krakow (least beloved: food-fighter lady marma-lardbutt).

Now out in all its hard-to-read yet lovely-to-behold DIY hand-drawn glory, Galactic‘s issue no. seven, published by Drag City, discharges a wealth of info — and interviews with the Incredible String Band’s Clive Palmer, Gary Panter, Ed Askew, the Strawbs, and Kevin Coyne — for all of us acid- and otherwise damaged lysergic eminencies. Ravin’ spot-on spotlights on dark psych creators like Sam Gopal and Crushed Butler make you wanna bolt out the door — or start up the eBay eye strain — to acquire these jewels. Krakow does give you a taste of the mind expansion under way with the included hot-rockin’ double CD of aged rarities like the Ukuleles of Halifax (a more than 30-strong, all-teen-girl ’70s Canadian uke orchestra) and contempo freak-beaters headed up by Bay Area locals like Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Charalambides, and the Stooges’ Steve MacKay and his Radon Ensemble. Shoving in a track by his wondrous Plastic Crimewave Sound and sprinkling his writing with more wells and OKs than a high school speech class, Krakow coughs up 100-plus pages for this issue — making it more booklike than zine-ish.

Still, Galactic foregrounds the fan in fanzine and hews more closely to the spirit of an obsessively handwritten letter than to that of a more sterile blog. And Krakow’s sincerity, knowledge, and breadth of taste — dude delves into Giorgio Moroder and the Banana Splits, revisits overplayed hit makers like the Bee Gees, and resuscitates faded pharaohs like Edwin Starr — inspire you to penetrate his dense scrawl. Also beyond cool: sheets of Astral Folk Goddesses and Damaged Guitar Gods trading cards — collect ’em all, from Jacqui McShee and Erica Pomerance to Jukka Tolonen and Keith Cross, shop hobbits! So this is new reading material for those wondering where to take their Windowpaned stares post–<\d>Ptolemaic Terrascope (now under the editorial leadership of Oakland drummer Pat Thomas of Mushroom and Runt/Water) and Arthur.

Being a lamezoid at crucial moments, I missed the previous six installments of Galactic, but you can catch the first four 300-run issues in the Galactic Zoo Dossier Compendium book-CD (Drag City). Don’t pooh-pooh, sir — you’re as likely to learn about Santa Cruz supergroup Druids as vanguard blues distortion peddler Pat Hare. And you just might like the way your mind feels, blown.

GET THE ROCK OUTTA HERE

N. LANNON


The dreamy former Film Schooler taps a new CD, Pressure (Badman). With Pancho Sanza and the Matinees. Wed/26, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

BONDE DO ROLE


Office boys and girls come out for the baile funk cuties’ armed and dangerous With Lasers (Domino). With JuiceBoxxx and Magic Bullets. Fri/28, 9 p.m., $13. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

LADYTRON


When you’re 21 you’re no fun, but then you can get in to see a rare live performance by the English combo. With Great Northern. Sat/29, 10 p.m., $25 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

REMEMBERING NICK DRAKE


Nick’s sis, Gabrielle Drake; producer Joe Boyd; and songwriter Jolie Holland talk about the late artist. Tues/2, 8 p.m., $19. Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg., 401 Van Ness, SF. www.cityboxoffice.com

The long day closes

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While, over the years, I privately deplored the food-obsessive practice of giving dogs such names as Mocha, Latte, and Basil — even Matzoh — I was hardly in a position to deplore, for we had named one of our dogs after a pizzeria. The pizzeria, Due, was in Chicago, where we once lived, but the dog Due knew nothing of Chicago, having been born near Petaluma in the summer of 1991, nor of pizza, beyond enjoying leftover crust. She preferred the white corn kernels that sometimes fell to the floor when I cut them from cobs. But due means two in Italian, and as Due was our second chow, and then our only chow, after her longtime mate died five years ago, the name seemed to suit.

A dog is an education, and for an omnivore, not all the lessons are easy ones. For a dog, in commanding your love and returning it to you as eager licks and whimpers, in searching your eyes for clues just as you are searching hers, reminds you countless times every day that other animals’ lives may not be all that different from our own. And why would we think otherwise, since we are animals too, peerers into the eyes around us?

Sharing our lives with dogs did not make us give up meat, quite, but as the years passed, we increasingly found occasion to wonder, and to make or order something meatless for dinner. There is probably no way to live on this earth without getting at least a little blood on your hands, but the less blood, the better. To keep the suffering of sentient creatures to a minimum: is this not the basis of a moral life? Do we not begin with these small creatures for whom we are everything — gods, in fact, shapers of the world?

How bitterly ironic that such loving and conscientious gods should find themselves in the position of having to decide when a beloved’s life must end. Due, who had come to her gods as an eight-week-old puppy on the day of the great Oakland hills fire, lived to see her 16th birthday in August, but by then she was stiff and skeletal, and the long light in her eyes had dimmed. A van came to the house on a September afternoon, and the gods wept when she died.

Paul Reidinger

› paulr@sfbg.com

Moving out …

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Imagine this: You’re enrolled in an educational program that requires you to move around from city to city, taking short-term jobs related to your field. Within a span of two years, you bump around between New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and San Francisco, subletting rooms and taking on bizarro living arrangements, never staying in one place long enough ever to feel settled in. Due to these circumstances, you rarely have a moment’s peace. Amid all the bustling, your number-one goal remains the same: record an entire album by yourself at home — wherever that may be. And while you’re at it, how about making sure it sounds like a fully realized studio creation?

Impossible, you say? Not so, says Joe Williams, the twentysomething visionary behind the White Williams moniker. The ’70s- and ’80s-flavored one-man band recorded the entirety of the forthcoming debut Smoke — out Nov. 6 on Tigerbeat6 — in exactly those conditions, digitally laying down tracks whenever he had an empty apartment. "Because of the situation, I’d say probably 80 percent of the material was done quite quickly and decisively," Williams explains over the phone from a New York City coffeehouse. "It had to be. The remaining 20 percent was where I had a chance to be more objective, to look at what I’d done."

A heap of credit should be given to that 20 percent. Williams’s aim was to deliver a studio-as-instrument aesthetic — similar to the spirit of David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy and the early Iggy Pop solo albums — and Smoke is a rousing success, especially given the absence of a traditional recording studio. Many of the vocals and guitars have been repitched or drastically edited, and the odd whirs and blips of synths bring to mind a modern take on his heroes’ fertile mid- to late-’70s period. If this sounds like damaged art pop to you, you’re right. "Danger" wobbles with a mind-altering tang of 3 a.m. funk, while "Fleetwood Crack" is the less-troubled cousin to Pop’s "Nightclubbing," opting for similar sparse atmospherics but sparkled with warmer keyboards and the faintest hint of rockabilly guitar. Then there’s my favorite, "In the Club," which answers the question "What would have happened if T.Rex had teamed up with Brian Eno?" Laptop swagger rock, that’s what.

In the end, the limitations of such an itinerant lifestyle proved to be a blessing in disguise. "I discovered that I really enjoy having to solve things entirely by myself … just my mind and the computer," Williams confesses. "And despite the bit-by-bit nature of recording, I’d say it was pretty smooth sailing from start to finish."

WHITE WILLIAMS

With Girl Talk and Dan Deacon

Sat/29, 9 p.m., $19.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary Blvd., SF

(415) 346-6000

www.ticketmaster.com

Right place, blues time

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

There are two performers, among others, you really need to see at the San Francisco Blues Festival this time around. The first, headliner Robert Randolph, along with his Family Band, has been blowing minds since his debut, Live at the Wetlands (Dare/Warner Bros.), came out in 2002. Critics proceeded to freak out, big shots like Eric Clapton started taking him on tour, and Randolph began freeing the minds of white pothead kids with jam-blues purveyors the North Mississippi All-Stars. Randolph plays the sacred steel, a form of pedal steel guitar normally found in African American church services — where he got his start, namely at the Church of God in Maplewood, N.J. On record, the group behind him lays down a punchy soul-funk foundation while Randolph positively shreds over the top. Clearly influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, and Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel, Randolph’s strafing leads range from ornately beautiful asides to far-out psychedelic explosions of color.

Randolph and his ensemble are universally renowned for the live show they put on, and one listen to Live at the Wetlands is all one needs to hear to understand why. This band does not miss notes. And it sets things on fire. The ecstatic vibe starts at level 10 and goes from there. Randolph and the Family Band are the embodiment of the biblical term "joyful noise." Effortlessly crossing from gospel to jam rock to soul-blues, Randolph is simply one of the most exciting semiknown artists to come down the pipe in a long, long time.

The second guy you’ve gotta see is Allen Toussaint. For anyone who doesn’t know — and everybody should — Toussaint basically invented New Orleans soul, producing sessions, writing songs, and playing piano on just about everything that came out of New Orleans throughout the 1960s and ’70s. He wrote "Waitin’ For My Ya-Ya" for Lee Dorsey, "Right Place, Wrong Time" for Dr. John, and "Southern Nights," which was a major hit for Glen Campbell in 1977. Toussaint also had a hand in "Lady Marmalade," "Working in a Coalmine," and "Pain in My Heart" — monumental songs. Besides accruing a laundry list of cowriter and producer–session ninja credits, Toussaint regularly records his own material, and anyone unfamiliar with his ’70s soul classics "Last Train" and "Whisper to a Scream" needs to go buy The Allen Toussaint Collection (Rhino, 1991), which I personally have stolen from at least two people over the years.

Toussaint’s latest offering, The River in Reverse (Verve Forecast), is a collaboration with bad-hat lover Elvis Costello and is way better than the time Costello got together with Hall and Oates. Anyway, who knows — maybe Costello will turn up onstage with Toussaint. You know he’ll be there. Anyone with even the slightest interest in true soul music will not miss the opportunity to hear Toussaint’s incredibly distinctive piano playing in person.

There are other artists at the fest, but these are two, blues fan or no, you don’t want to miss.

SAN FRANCISCO BLUES FESTIVAL

Sat/29–Sun/30, 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m., $35–$80

Great Meadow, Fort Mason, Bay and Laguna, SF

(415) 421-TIXS

www.sfblues.com

Hotpants wildfires

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PART-TIME PUNKS


Honey Soundsystem rocks out, hosting an appearance by Los Angeles’s current DJ queens of the no wave revival. Fri/28, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $5. Transfer, 198 Church, SF. (415) 861-7499, www.honeysoundsystem.com

CHARLIE HORSE KICKS FOLSOM OFF


A special trash-punk, leather-and-lace "Fuck you" from this weekly drag club as the world’s biggest fetish weekend launches. Fridays, 10 p.m.–2 a.m., free. Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF. (415) 776-4162, www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch

MANQUAKE!


DJ Bus Station John delivers hankie-flying bathhouse cruising tracks for the indiscriminate homosexual. Sat/29, 10 p.m.–2 a.m., $5. Gangway, 841 Larkin, SF. (415) 776-6828

BEARDED GIRLIE BOY


Limitless drag goddess Juanita More! offers Italo disco, glitch techno, and free mustache rides all night long. Sat/29, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $8. Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 863-6623, www.juanitamore.com

FOLSOM STREET FAIR


This leather and fetish mega-event break ranks with its all-circuit past to highlight indie dance sets by Imperial Teen, Cazwell, and the Ladytron DJ Tour. Sun/30, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., donation requested. Folsom between Seventh and 12th streets, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org

TRANS AM


DJ Dirty Knees and Bill Picture spill the queer metal tea monthly at their club Trans Am. Freaking the scene live: naughty glam duo the Passionistas. Oct. 6, 10 p.m.–late, $5. Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF. (415) 461-1151, www.myspace.com/transamtheclub

REMEMBER THE PARTY


A sizzling hot, 30th-anniversary tribute to the legendary Trocadero Transfer, with disco, Hi-NRG, and old-school scene queens galore. Oct. 7, 6 p.m.–3 a.m., $25. Glas Kat, 520 Fourth St., SF. (415) 495-6620, www.remembertheparty.com (Marke B.)

Scary Larry

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Nature enjoyed rebelling against arrogant, polluting humankind in the paranoid ecosploitation cinema of the 1970s: Prophecy, Phase IV, Frogs, Sssssss, The Food of the Gods, and even the Oscar-winning fake documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle all suggested Mother Nature was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Back then, though, nature was just bitching within safe fantasy confines. Who could have guessed something as nonfictionally apocalyptic as global warming would be a coming attraction by millennium’s end? Where prior generations only suffered nightmares of an unplugged Earth, ours might actually witness the beginning of the self-inflicted end. Kind of makes you feel special, doesn’t it?

Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter isn’t the first global-warming horror film, and it surely won’t be the last, but it’s unlikely there will be a better one anytime soon — or a better horror movie this fall. After Rob Zombie’s lamentable Halloween and at least three major Toronto disappointments (the lesser-sung The Devil’s Chair, George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, and Dario Argento’s howlingly bad Mother of Tears), it’s a relief to be reminded the genre isn’t innately allergic to intelligence and nuance.

Actually, those qualities are probably why nobody’s handed Fessenden a remake of some ’70s drive-in classic or Japanese hairy-ghost flick — he can’t be trusted to make a film obvious enough that it will lure the usual suspects to umpteen mall screens on opening weekend. (All the justified bitching about Halloween didn’t stop ’em from lining up like sheep, if only to sound the first Monday-morning complaints behind the Starbucks counter.)

Fessenden’s movies are creepy rather than stab crazed, with genuinely interesting characters and recognizable human emotions. Habit (1997) is about a loser guy (played by the director) who’s seeing a mysterious woman who just might be a vampire — or maybe that’s just his cover for some serious denial issues. Wendigo (2001) involves a man-deer beast, but more disturbing is its dead-on portrait of a crumbling marriage and poor parenting skills. The Last Winter is a comparatively epic endeavor. It boasts a cast of several! It features wide-screen sunset vistas! It includes helicopter shots! But once again, it’s a story in which the peril might be supernatural or might simply be the result of people losing their grip.

In arctic Alaska (played by Iceland — go figure), an advance team preps a multinational oil company’s projected new drill in a hitherto protected national wildlife refuge. Because lip service must be paid to the environment, North Industry is hosting an impact study before drilling begins. As far as North Industry team leader Pollack (Ron Perlman) is concerned, the study is just a useless formality, but eco watchdog James Hoffman (James LeGros) begs to differ. Pollack meets this unwelcome new coworker after a five-week absence dealing with the suits back in civilization, and his homecoming is further soured by the discovery that another change has occurred: where he used to be the designated bed warmer for second in command Abby (Connie Britton), the sensitive Hoffman now enjoys that role.

Dumped, horny, and ornery, the macho Pollack is not receptive to Hoffman’s foreboding statements about the great white flatness outside. Unseasonably warm temperatures are creating logistical problems, and there are signs the permafrost might be melting, yet Pollack greets such news like a Marine boot-camp instructor handed a sachet of patchouli. As in: fuck you, hippie. Then things start going haywire at the station, from unexplained power outages to personnel wig-outs. An intern vanishes, then returns nearly catatonic. What’s going on out there? Whatever it is, it’s as intent on whittling down the North crew’s number as your standard masked dude with machete at a girls’ school. Except The Last Winter isn’t that kind of horror movie.

It’s the kind, rather, that builds an atmosphere of dread from disorientation and psychological fragility instead of things jumping out from behind doors. In fact, as with Wendigo, the least effective elements in The Last Winter are its most literally minded fantastical. Fessenden does ambiguity with such skill that when monster thingies finally arrive, it’s a bit of a tacky letdown. The most harrowing moments in this beautifully crafted film are contrastingly realistic, such as a sudden plunge through thin ice into freezing waters.

Movies like The Last Winter don’t win awards, and sometimes they don’t get distributed. (It’s taken this movie more than a year to reach US theaters; elsewhere, it’s been shunted directly to DVD.) But I can’t think of a genre film I’ve enjoyed more in 2007, let alone another one that has rewarded repeat viewings. Even if The Last Winter weren’t scary, funny, surprising, and gorgeously shot, Fessenden would still warrant all kinds of gratitude for letting the terminally underappreciated and invariably excellent James LeGros carry a movie. He’s so good here that if there were any justice in the world … ah, forget it. There isn’t.

THE LAST WINTER

Opens Fri/28 in Bay Area theaters

The sound of success

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What does every rock doc tell us? Success in the music biz comes at a price, paid in any manner of ways — from the brawling egos of Dig! to the therapy sessions in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Inevitably, every film in the genre’s gonna have certain similarities (drama, heartbreak, testimonials as to the subject’s tune-tastic genius); the best of the bunch also feature a compelling story, aided by access that opens up a little corner on a world that makes millionaires of a few while viciously stomping on the dreams of many.

Jeroen Berkvens’s A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake is barely feature length at 48 minutes, which makes sense when you learn that the singer-songwriter was only 26 when he died, leaving behind precious few photos and zero films of his all-too-rare gigs. The talent of the enigmatic Drake — now known as "that guy who sang that song on that Volkswagon ad" — is discussed in worshipful tones by Paul Weller and others; his hushed, folky songs are played over footage of city- and landscapes, with the suggestion that Drake’s music must be the chief means of unlocking his mystique. Other valuable insights are provided by Drake’s sister, Gabrielle, who reads his letters and points out that despite coming from a privileged, supportive family, he was depressed for almost all of his life. "I think he had rejected the world," Drake’s mother recalls on an audio recording made after the musician’s fatal overdose. "Nothing made him happy."

Bummed out yet? Why not? Fortunately, Chris Suchorsky’s Golden Days injects some hope into its tale of Brooklyn band the Damnwell’s long, hard road to discovering that signing with a major label can be more trouble than it’s worth. Technically slick, Golden Days is an engaging tale, even if you don’t care for the Damnwell’s brand of upbeat pop rock — which exactly matches their nice-guy personalities. As two band members are listed among the film’s producers, I can’t help wondering if there were any ugly scenes left on the cutting-room floor. Fistfights? Drug binges? Brawling egos? Not behind this music, apparently.

GOLDEN DAYS

Sat/29, 7 p.m.; Oct. 3, 9:15 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

A SKIN TOO FEW

Oct. 3, 7 p.m.; Oct. 9, 5 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

Gayest. Music. Ever.

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› marke@sfbg.com

Something horrible happened.

The promo package, marked Special, arrived on my desk in May from Ultra Records in New York City. Hastily, I tore the envelope open and yanked out the CD within, letting squiggles of packing confetti fall where they may. A bronze and glistening, near-naked, possibly underage Brazilian boy stared fiercely from the cover. His bulging genitalia were not quite stuffed into a Gummi-red Speedo. His hair dripped with viscous product. Posed stiffly against a seaside shack the color of processed cheddar, he looked like he was about to either blow me or feast on my liver. The text across his sculpted, slightly veiny torso read DJ Ricardo! Presents Out Anthems 2.

Oh, good lord. If there’s anything that turns me off more than DJs with exclamation points appended to their monikers — OMG! The ’90s! Low carb! Wow! — it’s some gay fool from Ultra Records in New York City trying to tell me what my "out anthems" are. Sorry, but tin-eared "Don’t Want No Short Dick Man" remixes, spacey-diva "Deeper Love" covers, mindless melodramatic thumpers, and obnoxious washes of sizzle and screech don’t quite sum up my raggedy, faggoty lifestyle or speak to my proud, if occasionally morally compromised, experience.

I adore dance music — it’s my life. Any packed dance floor is a good thing in my book. But I also have some taste, and this was the apogee of cheesiness. The presumption that these bland corporate farts are the tunes of my loony-queer times crosses a clear homo-to-homo line in the shimmering sands. (For the record, Ultra Records, my current personal out anthems are the Cinematics’ "Keep Forgetting," Shazzy’s "Giggahoe," and Gladys Knight and the Pips’ "Love Is Always on Your Mind." Go mix that.)

Listen, I can ride with the tsunami of cheap and sleazy DJ dance compilations that has flooded various music stores, in-boxes, and jittery Wal-Marts for the past decade or so, featuring tightly clenched glutes, toxic tans, and spandex-stretching silicone explosions. (And that’s just the music. Someone should really publish a picture book of all of the blindingly awful, grinding-Barbie-in-headphones cover designs. Title suggestion: Writhe the Ibiza Abysmal. Or how about just Champagne and Crap?) There’s definitely a market out there for pulsating pabulum, and I dug my own grave with two coke spoons and a mirror ball when I became a nightlife critic. I was even OK with the knowledge that because I had Out Anthems 2 grasped shakily in my hot little palm, it meant that somewhere out there an Out Anthems 1 must exist. You go, DJ Ricardo!! Work it however you can. No, that wasn’t the horrible part.

SPLICING THE MONOLITH

The horrible part was this: I actually kind of liked it.

Bursting with a weird glee that’s unique to our media-saturated moment — "Holy shit, you’ve got to hear-see-watch this, it’s the most horrifying thing ever!" — I had rushed the CD over to my boyfriend Hunky Beau’s house before listening to it, eager for us to put it on and tear it a new one together. That’s our modern gay love.

Yet once I’d slipped the disc into Hunky’s Mac and readied myself a hot shot of schadenfreude, I realized I don’t hear this sort of heinous stuff when I’m out and about as much as I used to. The once-omnipresent, thousand-nostriled behemoth of overbearing, poorly produced circuit and "progressive house" music has been somewhat tamed. Sure, much of the CD was atrocious, but now that this cookie-cutter hokum is no longer forced on me at every gay turn I take, pouring forth from restaurant patios and flashy video bars, after-hours megaclubs and fisting pornos, open gym windows and passing Miata convertibles, I could listen to it not as some soulless dominant paradigm that was threatening to rob gay culture of every last ounce of scruff and sparkle, but as mere tacky noodling: harmless fun in an ironic way, if you’re into irony anymore. (Not poor Hunky Beau, though. A die-hard devotee of skinhead mosh and East Bay punk, he dived beneath the covers as soon as the first few high-hat sprays had rung in the air, moaning like he had aural hepatitis.)

What happened that night — a night that found me wriggling around in my Underoos and torturing my man with shouts of "Look at me! I’m a tweaked-out fan dancer!" — sparked the more masochistic aspects of my curiosity.

Ever since the supastar DJ scene of the late ’90s and early ’00s became economically impossible to sustain — the Sisyphean task of convincing thousands of people to spend $40 to hear a scrawny dude from Manchester, UK, or Miami spin yet again burned many promoters out — the dance floor playing field has blown wide open. Megaclubs, with their monolithic sounds, gave way to smaller venues where independent promoters could experiment with fresh ideas and vent their wacky stylistic impulses, minus hefty cover charges and pat-down security. Clubs became more like house parties: the kid with the most friends or the biggest iTunes collection could plug into the DJ booth and let ‘er rip.

Gay clubs, especially, had followed the newfound freedom from big-time pressure and flight-booking budgets in myriad zany directions. Today’s gay club scene is more diverse than it’s ever been. Almost every night of the week there are options.

So maybe it was time for me to reappraise a style that I’d grown to hate, now that it was fading from mainstream gay scene ubiquity in favor of sleek hip-pop and ’80s hair bands. Maybe I could stare into the numb, drooling jaws of circuit and progressive terror and dance, dance, dance. Could it really be as bad as I remembered? Was I ready to let go of my bitterness toward a music so insidious that even my grandmother thought my life was one big party scene from — gag — Queer as Folk?

Was it possible for me to tune into KNGY, 92.7 FM (Energy), the aggressively gay-friendly "pure dance" local radio station that had become synonymous with such music — and had recent hosted a party spotlighting, yes, DJ Ricardo! — without retching uncontrollably at the first few modulated wails?

Perhaps. I dug out the hand-crank radio from my earthquake emergency kit because, like, transmission radio — who still listens to that? I reacquainted myself with how to adjust a dial. Then I turned the volume up.

DOWNSIZE QUEENS

Mention Energy 92.7 to most gay men, and curious things happen to their bodies. The shoulders pop, the eyes roll, the hands begin to gesticulate wildly. Those are the gay men who love the station. The others absolutely loathe it. Their bodies convulse in a spasm of disgust. Their faces twist into ghoulish grimaces. Spittle flies from their lips. The hatred is palpable. There’s no middle ground when it comes to Energy. I’ve been in cars where people have fought over it until blood spurted.

Such reactions may be the legacy of the circuit party scene. Fifteen years ago, if you asked the average straight person to close their eyes and think about "gay music," the image that would first leap to his or her mind would be a turtlenecked show-tune queen clipping pink rosebuds in her garden while whistling something from Les Miz. Or, if the hetero were more contemporary, the archetype called up would be a sweat-dripping, mustachioed disco nymph collapsing into a pile of Studio 54 fairy dust or a bleached and tragic Madonna fan in an oversize cable-knit sweater with a regrettable yen for cheap eyeliner. Many gay club kids today would gladly take those images over what replaced them in the mid-’90s: buffed-out ‘roid heads in sailor caps and tighty whiteys frantically tooting whistles while some faceless diva yelped them into an aerobic frenzy.

The colossal circuit scene had its strengths: with its world-conquering voraciousness, it served as an accessible entry point for the vast numbers of gay men who came out at the time. Clattering circuit beats and ecstatic progressive swells and breaks — the natural evolution of corporate rave music in a mainstream gay environment — pushed many HIV-positive men through despair in the time before effective AIDS meds became available, and served as an all-purpose celebration template afterward. But circuit parties also marginalized queers with no taste for militaristic conformity, gratingly regurgitated tunes, or the alphabet soup of designer drugs then in vogue. The fact that the circuit had once been a credible, if snobbish and expensive, underground movement held no sway when it hatched into a gargantuan space tarantula from Planet GHB that swallowed all semblance of queer individuality. It was the Will and Grace of clubland, and most of us got jacked.

But that was then, this is neu. Dissing the circuit scene for gay club music’s discouraging popular image is like nail-gunning a dead, glitter-freckled horse. "The scene has really downsized, along with the whole megaclub thing in general," a popular San Francisco circuit DJ confided to me recently. "The energy we’re riding on is nostalgia."

Michael Williams, co-owner of Medium Rare Records in the Castro, the go-to store for dance mix compilations, told me, "We still sell a lot of that music, but people aren’t asking for it as they once did. I think the market got oversaturated and quality became a real factor. People began asking, ‘Where’s the talent?’ Our biggest sellers now are more complex artists like Shirley Bassey, Thelma Houston, and Pink Martini, or DJs who really work to have an interesting sound, like Dimitri from Paris." Even the odiously corporate Out magazine declared the circuit party over in its current issue, so you know it must be true.

Still, the sour taste of the circuit era in many alternaqueers’ mouths has proved hard to wash out. And the stereotype of awful gay club music still reigns supreme in the straight world. Even though Energy 92.7’s been around for less than three years and is in truth, as I found out after tuning in, more prone to playing Billboard Hot 100 pop remixes than actual circuit music, it’s had to bear the backlash brunt. As the most visible mainstream gay dance music giant of the moment, it’s become guilty by association.

CREEPIN’ LIKE BOUGAINVILLEA

Greg: "Oh my god, he is such a freakin’ moron."

Fernando: "Thirty-six percent approval ratings is far too high for this president."

Greg: "The only way my gay ass would be impressed by [George W.] Bush is if he put a VJ in the Oval Office. Bitch, please — how many more troops have to die?!"

Fernando: "You’re listening to Energy, 92.7 FM. Here’s Rihanna with ‘Don’t Stop the Music.’"

—Fernando and Greg in the Morning

This is how gay Energy 92.7 is: when I first visited the station recently, the station’s party promoter, Juan Garcia, recognized my hair product from 50 paces. "Little orange can, girl?" he called out to greet me.

This is how gay Energy 92.7 is: when I sat in on the morning show with hosts Fernando Ventura and Greg Sherrell, they agonized during songs over the fact that something called the "smart-fat diet" forbade them to eat nuts for a week. "You can write anything you want," Sherrell, a high-voiced, blond spitfire who frequently informs listeners that he’s wearing his most expensive jeans, told me. "But if you don’t say I’m thin, I finna kill you."

Fernando and Greg in the Morning, on air weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m., is one of the most popular shows on Energy, which has a potential reach of 3.2 million listeners. The show could be accused of a lot of things — gay minstrelsy, pandering to stereotypes, making me get up at 4 a.m. to sit in — but it could never be accused of being unexciting. It’s the only openly gay morning show on commercial radio, and some of the live quips traded by DJ Fernando, Greg "the Gay Sportscaster," and their "straight man" producer Jason are dizzy scandal. Vaginal pubic hair "creeps up like bougainvillea," poppers are bad on first dates "because they’ll make your throat sore," and Kylie Minogue gets the verbal knockdown but "Oh, we love her: she had breast cancer!" Interspersed with segments like "Homo vs. Hetero," during which one caller of each orientation is quizzed about the other’s lifestyle, are Kelly Clarkson and the Killers remixes, "Vintage Beats" by Blondie and Michael Jackson, and current dance-chart toppers by Bananarama, David Guetta, and the Sunlovers.

It’s a thing of wonder in a society still riddled with homophobia — I dare you to find a YouTube video with more than 5,000 views that doesn’t have the word fag in the comments — to have such an unequivocally queeny experience, with a strong straight following, sail through the airwaves each morning. The tunes take a backseat to the dish. "At 9:30 in the morning you can only get so adventurous with your music selections," Ventura, an easygoing, bearish guy, told me. "I mostly stick with the hits."

The station, located in a murky green downtown office building, is a buzzing hive of fluid sexuality and good-natured candidness. The hyperdrive strains of DJ Tiesto and Deepface fill the air. As the only independently owned and operated commercial radio station in San Francisco, Energy’s done well. As a suitor of the gay audience, it’s done spectacularly. Even though its press materials emphasize its appeal to a broad variety of dance music fans, Energy’s known as "the gay dance station" to most San Franciscans. (That’s not so much the case across the bay, where Energy has gained a lot of traction in the Latino and Asian communities.)

Balancing a constant need for revenue with gay political intricacies can get tricky. A chill shot through me when I saw "Energy 92.7 owns the gay community" printed in bold and underlined in the station’s media kit — apparently we’re all slaves to remixed Cher. And even though the station is a major sponsor of most large gay charity events, there have been a few controversies. The gay media has fussed that Energy is co-owned and run by a straight man, Joe Bayliss, and the station has been blamed for dumbing down gay culture to grasp the pink dollar (although that’s like saying Britney Spears’s performance sucked because her heel broke). And last year Energy released a branded compilation mix CD — with an Army recruitment ad slipped into the packaging.

"We made a mistake. It was just stupid and insensitive on our part," Bayliss, a frank, handsome man with a ready smile, said when I asked him about the Army debacle. "This institution offered us a lot of money, and hey, we’re a struggling, independent business. We answered every complaint personally to apologize. We learned our lesson." (A new, military-free compilation comes out next month, to be carried by Best Buy, with proceeds going to local AIDS charities.)

PROGRAMMED RAINBOWS

That’s the politics, but what about the music? "I’m starting to build up a dance music collection," said Bayliss, who’s been working in radio since he was a kid. "This particular format tested through the roof in this market when we were looking to buy the station. I had no idea who Paul Oakenfold or Kaskade was when we started. I used to run a country station, and I didn’t know Merle Haggard from a hole in the ground either. But we’re 100 percent committed to this music and its audience. We have to be — our listeners are very dedicated."

Rabid may be a better word. The phone lines were jammed while I was there, and according to programming manager John Peake, the in-boxes are full every morning with e-mails from gaga enthusiasts. Good portions of Energy listeners stream the station online, and employees interact continuously with members of Energy’s E-Club virtual community. Even the afternoon DJs were leaping up and down in the booth while I was there, pumping their fists heavenward.

"Often we’ll get these enormously long e-mails from people listing every song we played that night, going into intense detail about each one and exactly why it was so important to them," Peake told me. "We get a lot of e-mails at six in the morning."

Looking compact in a lavender oxford, faded jeans, and a kicky Italian snakeskin belt, Peake took me through the music selection process. Each week he and music programmer Trevor Simpson go through new releases, recently submitted remixes, and requests from the station’s fans. They form a playlist based on what they think will most appeal to listeners and then program their picks into a hilariously retro MS-DOS program called Selector with, I shit you not, a rainbow-colored interface. "It’s tacky, but it’s bulletproof," Peake said, laughing. DJs either punch up the tracks automatically or refer to the playlist to make their own mixes using Serato software. Zero vinyl’s involved.

Peake and I talked about the criteria for choosing songs. "It’s a moving target. There’s definitely a ton of music out there that falls within our brand, and our nighttime and weekend DJs get to play a huge variety of mix music from around the world, so there’s a lot of latitude. I think our biggest challenge right now is figuring out the role of hip-hop. Our younger listeners demand it, but a lot of our demographic is still afraid of it. If we play something with rapping in it, we get flooded with angry callers screaming, ‘How dare you play this! Don’t you know it’s homophobic?’"

Later I spoke with Energy’s promotions director, Tim Kwong, about the backlash against the station. "We get it from both sides," Kwong, a young Bay Area native with impressively gelled hair, said. "Trance and progressive fans say, ‘Why don’t you play more harder, locally produced records?’ Rock and hip-hop fans want us to play fewer remixes of their favorite songs. We try to strike a balance, but the truth is what we do works for our audience."

"I can totally understand the frustration people feel when a certain image is projected that doesn’t fit them," he continued, addressing the gay question. "As an Asian American with a punk and indie background, I have a lot of experience with stereotypes, believe me. But we try to be as broad as possible in our appeal and acknowledge differences. And we’re not bribing people to listen to us."

(OTHER)

To their credit, the folks at Energy also acknowledge that their programming may not be in sync with what’s going on in the gay club scene now. "It’s apparent when you listen to the morning show that I don’t go out to clubs very much," DJ Fernando told me. "But when I do, I notice there is so much more choice these days. In the past there were a bunch of huge nights or clubs, and everybody went. Now there’s a night or a bar for everybody."

"Ick! I think it’s total crap. It’s like the dance music equivalent of Weird Al," said Bill Picture, who, along with his partner, DJ Dirty Knees, is the city’s biggest gay rock club promoter, when I asked him his opinion of Energy. "We’re much more into visceral rock energy and seeing live, local queer punk. But a lot of gay people do like that kind of music. And I’m glad that there’s a radio station that they can tune in to. How boring would it be if all gay people liked the same things? We’re happy to be an alternative."

The alternatives have arrived aplenty. In addition to Picture’s metal events, there’s DJ Bus Station John’s bathhouse disco revival scene, which fetishizes pre-AIDS vinyl like the smell of polished leather. There’s DJ David Harness’s Super Soul Sundayz, which focuses on atmospheric Chicago house sounds. There’s Charlie Horse, drag queen Anna Conda’s carnivalesque trash-rock drag club that often — gasp! — includes live singing. Queer-oriented parties with old-school show tunes, square dancing, tango, hula, Asian Hi-NRG, hyphy, mashups, Mexican banda, country line dancing, and a bonanza of other styles have found popularity in the past few years. The night’s a sissy smorgasbord of sound.

There’s even a bit of a backlash to all of this wacky fracturation and, especially, the iTunes DJ mentality. A segment of gay club music makers is starting to look back to the early techno and house days for inspiration, yearning for a time when seamless mixing and meticulously produced four-on-the-floor tunes — not sheer musical novelty — propelled masses onto dance floors.

Honey Soundsystem, a gay DJ collective formed by DJs Ken Vulsion and Pee Play and including a rotating membership of local vinyl enthusiasts, attempts to distill Italo disco, Euro dance, acid house, neominimal techno, and other cosmic sounds of the past three decades into smooth, ahistorical sets spanning the musical spectrum from DAF’s 1983 robo-homo hit "Brothers" to Kevin Aviance’s 1998 vogue-nostalgic "Din Da Da" to the Mahala Rai Banda’s 2006 technoklezmer conflagration "Mahalageasca (Felix B Jaxxhouz Dub)."

"Girl, that shit must be pumped out by a computer with a beard somewhere," the 21-year-old Pee Play opined of Energy 92.7’s music. I didn’t tell him how close to the truth he was as he continued, "But I’m over most of the goofy alternashit too. I never lived though circuit, but the music is fucked-up. I’m just really into quality. I want to play records that every time you hear them, they just get better."

PLAY LIKE BROTHERS DO

I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as gay music. If there were, its representative incarnation would probably be closer to experimental duo Matmos’s homophilic soundscapes, like those on their 2006 album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast (Matador) — each track named for a gay community hero and composed of poetically related sampled objects ("Sequins and Steam for Larry Levan," "Rag for William S. Burroughs") — than anything that ever soared from Donna Summers’s throat. As far as gay dance goes, the epochal choreography of the uncompromisingly out Mark Morris, currently the hottest dance maker in the country, may prove more historically resilient than the image of semiclothed bears raving on a cruise ship.

Yet despite the Internet drain, clubs are still where homos meet to get sweaty, and the music they get sweaty to has a big impact on the culture at large. Dance music is ephemeral in the best sense: how good it sounds has everything to do with how and where you experience it and what and who you experience it with. Energy’s playlist was perfectly amusing in a broadcast booth full of campy, happy people or while twirling half naked in my BF’s bedroom. But in a club setting, maybe not so much — it all depends on who my been-there, done-that ass is dancing next to, no?

I recently spoke with Steve Fabus, one of the original DJs at San Francisco’s legendary Trocadero Transfer gay disco, launched in 1977. He’s been spinning continuously for 30 years and has pretty much seen it all. "Dance music is magic — it’s what gay people are," he explained. "It brought us together and kept us going through some incredibly hard times. Disco gathered everyone under one roof, and then house came along and did the same. Circuit was fun in the beginning, but it got too aggressive, and people of color or people into other things didn’t feel welcome. It took over everything, and, of course, it burned out."

"I love that kids are expressing themselves in smaller clubs, with different kinds of playing. It’s encouraging," he continued. "But it’s a shame that circuit took the big clubs down with it, where everyone could share in this experience together. Of course, there are other factors involved — crystal meth, the Internet, economics. You have to be very clever to be gay and live here now. It’s just so damned expensive."

"But oh well," he said with a laugh. "Everything comes in cycles."

Extra! Click here for the Gayest. Videos. Ever.

Click here for a list of upcoming alternaqueer dance events

The works

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0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Some films glean artful pleasure from the pains of labor. One flourishing subgenre or strain of documentary tackles working conditions in countries across the world, highlighting the plight of the marginalized to make ends meet and maintain dignity in the face of unjust or extreme conditions. In a sense, Ghosts and Numbers and Luchando, two features at this year’s San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, belong to this group, but they are most interesting for the ways that they differ from it, in content and style. Both movies highlight the precariousness of labor and favor a less direct and centralized consideration of employment’s role in shaping an individual’s existence.

Ghosts and Numbers and Luchando are like distant cousins; they are blood-bound by an integral interest in the working class, but they reside in different lands and possess divergent personalities. In fact, the title of each film suggests something about its filmmaker’s approach to theme.

Alan Klima’s Ghosts and Numbers is a bit cryptic, with a penchant for interweaving ostensibly unrelated elements. One may wonder what the relationship is between ghosts and numbers, but the more relevant inquiry relates to that between labor and modernity. Convictions and a critique can be discerned amid Klima’s clever array of images and concerns, but no easy conclusions are reached.

Noelle Stout’s Luchando, on the other hand, is more up-front and focused in its presentation of the titular subject matter. Of course, the title’s meaning is obscure for non-Spanish speakers, and, even in Spanish, the term is slang instead of a standard word for people who get paid for having sex. But once the slang is understood (it is explained onscreen by one of the subjects), there is no uncertainty that Luchando is a clear and determined depiction of the lives of Cuban hustlers, without any overt class analysis.

These films share a relatively subtle sense of subversion. Klima’s Thailand-set documentary presents the quagmires of modernization and shows compassion for its victims at a time when the more popular sentiment is to rally patriotically around the Asian country’s entrance into the global community (and thus celebrate a preference for glistening urbania over a bucolic tradition). Klima observes lottery-ticket sellers as they discuss the vulnerable state of their occupation in the face of human-replacing technology and governmental limitations. Their earnest and desperate presence contrasts powerfully with other more reflective components and is part of an almost unsettling mixture of elements. Shots of unfinished Bangkok skyscrapers are matched with a voice-over concerning the Thai economy. Abstracted imagery is paired with stories of encounters with ghosts. Vérité-style footage is used for political protest and for a visit to a fortune-teller. At worst, these methods are a bit desultory, with some scenes in need of truncation. But aside from those moments, Ghosts and Numbers glimmers with a rare blend of mystery and humanity.

The humanity of Luchando is more intimate. Whereas Klima’s film uses cinepoetic musings to break up its direct human engagement, Stout’s presents pure portraiture — though it is difficult not to succumb to awe before Havana’s photogenic splendor. Stout surreptitiously captures the daily lives of four prostitutes, hesitantly heeding the warning of subjects when cops appear on the scene. These moments and bits of testimony give the sense that her subjects exist on the outskirts of safety, perpetually in a danger zone because of their gay identity or association. This is most poignant in the case of the transgender woman who is verbally assaulted as the film opens and later talks about being forced to dress as a man. Perhaps Luchando would be enhanced by a look outside the immediate scope of its subjects, in order to get a larger sense of the social conditions in which they are struggling. But there is also satisfaction to be found in its tightly focused account of lives that are both ordinary and foreign.

The sixth SF DocFest runs Sept. 28–Oct. 10 at the Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., SF. Information about tickets ($10) and a complete schedule can be obtained by calling (415) 820-3907 or visiting www.sfindie.com.


GHOSTS AND NUMBERS

Tues/2, 7 p.m.; Oct. 7, 2:45 p.m.; $10

LUCHANDO

Sat/29 and Oct. 5, 9:15 p.m.; Oct. 6, 7 p.m.; $10

For an interview with Luchando director Noelle Stout, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

Hayes and Kebab and Stacks’

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› paulr@sfbg.com

On a warm late summer afternoon a few weeks ago, a friend and I stood in front of a shuttered market on Hayes Street, marveling at the shutters themselves. These really weren’t shutters but a kind of corrugated-steel fortification, the sort of thing people in hurricane country buy at Sears so high winds don’t blow out all the windows. Here the danger would not have been hurricanes but vandalism and perhaps an occasional touch of civil unrest — but during our momentary vigil we saw nothing of the kind, not a possibility nor even a hint. Just a dowdy old market that had come to seem out of place, slightly scruffy and paranoid, on what has become, in the past 15 years or so, one of the city’s most transformed stretches of culture and commerce.

Although Hayes Street’s darkest days probably fell in the mid-1990s — when a long symphony strike turned the western precincts of the Civic Center into a ghost town — the neighborhood’s prospects were already brightening even then. True, the idling of the symphony meant that the area’s restaurants had fewer people to serve preperformance dinners or postperformance desserts to, and things were already bad enough with the earthquake-related closures of government buildings near City Hall and the dislocation of the people who worked in them and made up a reliable lunch crowd. But the elevated Central Freeway, the malignant tendril of concrete that cut the neighborhood in two, was succumbing, bit by bit, to ballot initiatives, and removal of that blight meant that there was nowhere to go but up.

When the sun shines in Hayes Valley these days, it’s difficult to remember that dank structure and its scary shadows, or how unsettling it could be to walk along Hayes west of Gough in the evening. Today the scene is one of quirky, pricey boutiques, the wonderful village green, which is full of lunchtime people and romping dogs and whizzing bicycles — and of course restaurants.

There are some excellent restaurants in the vicinity: Jardinière, Hayes Street Grill, Indigo, Absinthe. Although Essencia is too new to put firmly in this category, its bona fides are impressive. But all these places are east of or on Gough. West of Gough, there’s still surprisingly little beyond various sorts of cantinas that cater to the lunch folk.

Suppenküche, with its au courant German cooking, is interesting and worthy in an oddball sort of way, but it’s held down its far corner for more than a decade. Modern Tea, across the street, is also interesting and worthy, but its food service, while estimable, is circumscribed. Frjtz has fabulous frites and sandwiches, Patxi some excellent pizzas, but you’re in and out of those places.

For a time there seemed the possibility of something notable opening in the glassy new building at the corner of Octavia. The restaurant space was large and commanded views of the green, but the first occupant was Café Grillades, which was essentially a creperie. Some months ago the place reopened as Stacks’ — as in stacks of pancakes, as in we deal in breakfast and lunch and, like West Coast stockbrokers, are done by midafternoon.

The restricted hours appear to have heightened the restaurant’s allure. Grillades served dinner but was often emptyish in the after-dark hours. Stacks’, by contrast, actually seems to have people waiting at the host’s station for tables. I would like to say the public’s renewed enthusiasm has to do with the food, but Stacks’ menu doesn’t seem too different from Grillades’ and even includes a wide selection of crepes, along with Belgian waffles, omelets, soups, and sandwiches.

The food is good rather than memorable, except for the prices, which reflect the chichification of Hayes Street. Soup and sandwich (the combination changes daily) will run you $8.69. For that you get a pretty-good-size bowl of, say, chicken noodle soup (with plenty of wide, fettucelike noodles) and a turkey and cheese sandwich on soft whole wheat bread. This is just the sort of lunch your nutrition-involved mother would make you eat, if she could still make you do anything.

A plaudit too for the turkey burger ($8.89), which was cooked through — as is essential with poultry — but not dry. Turkey burgers need a secret ingredient; I use an egg yolk, which helps keep the meat moist and also provides a binding effect. Could this be the Stacks’ technique? I couldn’t tell, but the kitchen knows what it’s doing here.

For years a noontime stalwart was Sage, one of those Chinese restaurants that seemed as if it had always been there and always would be. Then, one day last fall, it wasn’t. Now it is a Middle Eastern place called Hayes and Kebab. Not much has changed except the cuisine, and the fact that there is no longer full table service: you order at the counter, take a numbered placard, and wait for the food to be brought to you.

The falafel ($5.95) is served burrito-style, wrapped in lavash instead of the usual pita bread, and this is an improvement. There is also, squirting gently from the cylinder, a tasty sauce of yogurt spiked with paprika — a nice touch, since falafel can be dry. We liked the charcoal-grilled chicken shish kebab ($9.95), in part because the marinated meat remained juicy and because it was presented with tasty little salads of bulgur wheat and rice pilaf dotted with green peas, raisins, and slivered almonds.

Hayes and Kebab serves dinner, if you can’t get into Essencia next door or you overlooked Stacks’ daylight-only policy. Said King Théoden as he led the Rohirrim into battle before the walls of Minas Tirith, "Fear no darkness!"

HAYES AND KEBAB

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

406 Hayes, SF

(415) 552-3440

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

STACKS’

Daily, 7 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

501 Hayes, SF

(415) 241-9011

www.stacksrestaurant.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

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