At least 41 emails obtained by the city of San Bruno reveal an intimate, friendly arrangement between the monopolistic power company and the regulators that are supposed to keep them in line. Where the public would expect a separation as hard and fast as church and state, the emails reveal a buddy-buddy relationship.
This is of no surprise to long-time Guardianistas, who may remember Rebecca Bowe’s cover story three years ago “The secret life of Michael Peevey, [5/11]” chronicling the CPUC president’s extravagant trips to Madrid, Spain and Germany with top energy officials, as well as other activities that may seem strange for an official who’s supposed to be a watchdog against PG&E malfeasance.
In an April 2013 email, Carol Brown, chief of staff for Commissioner Peevey, wrote to PG&E executive [Laura] Doll and offered advice about how to handle one of the proceedings related to the San Bruno explosion. In the email, Brown said she had talked to one of the PUC administrative law judges about the matter.
“Send back a sweet note” to the PUC about the matter “and then wait for them to throw a fit” was part of Brown’s advice. Brown also said she was “happy to chat” about the matter with PG&E to help guide company officials through the PUC process.
Doll replied to Brown, “Love you. Thanks.”
Even Peevey himself emailed PG&E, offering them public relations advice. It’s like an umpire sneaking around between innings to coach a first-baseman — unseemly, and totally strange.
All of this should ring alarm bells in The City. The city of San Bruno obtained the emails through settlement of a lawsuit, which are now revealing potential corruption at top levels of the CPUC. But here in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee flouts public records laws and, as we revealed, drafted a policy allowing him to delete his own emails.
There’s no way we can check what Lee is saying to PG&E in emails, making exposing any alleged “cozy relationship” much more difficult than PG&E’s alleged romance with the CPUC.
And the consequences for The City are very real, as well as potentially fatal. As we’ve covered before, there are PG&E pipelines aplenty in San Francisco (including one right along Bernal Hill). When San Bruno’s pipeline exploded, eight lives were lost and many more homes destroyed.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last month (and as we’ve said for years), Lee already has suspiciously close ties with PG&E.
However, multiple city officials say that Lee’s administration has consistently, and quietly, raised objections about legislation and policies that PG&E opposes. They also point to the utility’s charitable giving to the city and some of Lee’s pet projects as an example of how PG&E tries to exert its influence.
…
Critics of Lee’s relationship with PG&E extend from the political left to at least five current and former high-level city officials. In some cases, several of the sources said, that relationship appeared to be inappropriate. PG&E officials regularly went to the mayor’s office when they were unhappy with city staff members, said the sources, who requested anonymity because of their relationship with the mayor.
“They were in his office all the time, meeting with either the mayor or his staff, and seemed to directly intervene in city decisions,” said one official. “It isn’t normal for most businesses in the city to always have meetings with the mayor.”
Lee, in several interviews, dismissed the idea that he was doing PG&E’s bidding as “a little off base.”
“I look at PG&E like any other company in the city,” Lee said. “I don’t think I have any special relationship with them.”
But in the case of the mayor, we may never know how close he is with the utility, as long as his off-kilter public record laws allow him to delete any paper trail. The CPUC is discovering what Lee long ago learned from former-Mayor Willie Brown: The “E” in e-mail stands for “evidence.”
Just in case you’ve been living under a rockslightly behind on your local music coverage for the past couple weeks, allow us to remind you of a crazy little 48-hour contest called the Music Video Race, which saw yours truly judging some rather impressive entries from 16 different local band/filmmaker posses, and which culminated with a premiere party at The Independent on July 20.
In honor of the teams’ hasty, ambitious efforts — and in honor of this amazing time-suck/curated exercise in pop culture history — we’ve decided to spend the rest of the day watching music videos. It’ll be kind of like coming home from school and zoning out in front of TRL, only you don’t have to look at Carson Daly. Join us, won’t you?
First, here are a few of the winning videos from the competition:
The Tropics‘ “Sons and Daughters” took home Best Video, with this otherwordly feast for the eyes that looks like it took way longer than 48 hours:
…while the ever-ingenious/usually pretty insane Bill Baird was the runner-up with “Soggy Soul,” featuring this kaleidascopic naked-cartwheel-on-the-beach party.
And Mission-based man-about-town Doctor Popular won hearts and Best On-Screen Performance with “Rumspringa,” a song crafted using a GameBoy Advance.
Still with us? Good. Here are a few new videos from local bands (not part of the MVR) that did take longer than 24 hours, that are still very worth your eyes and ears:
There’s this trippy orange business for “Always,” by SF’s Melted Toys, off their new release:
Then there’s this dreamy, unabashed love letter to our home state in “I Love California,” from Be Calm Honcho:
And this hypnotic offering for “No Werewolf,” by LA hooligans the Allah-Las, off their upcoming full-length:
Finally, there’s this adrenaline-fueled sprint for “Story 2” from clipping., a three-man rap crew also based in LA, but we have it on good authority that two out of three of ’em grew up in the East Bay.
EDITORIAL Under the misleading guise of encouraging the development of more affordable housing in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim have sponsored a pair of fall ballot measures that actually weaken existing housing policy in San Francisco. It’s a ruse that shouldn’t fool politically savvy San Franciscans.
Lee has the authority to place his Build Housing Now measure on the ballot, although he may withdraw it under his backroom deal with Kim. But the Board of Supervisors should reject Kim’s City Housing Balance measure, a once-promising proposal that she last week made toothless and counterproductive. What she called a “compromise” was actually a capitulation to developers and the Mayor’s Office [Editor’s Note: The board was scheduled to consider Kim’s measure on July 29 after Guardian press time, which is why we posted this editorial early at sfbg.com, where print readers can check for an update].[UPDATE: The board unanimously approved the amended measure.]
Kim’s original measure called for market-rate housing developers to get conditional use permits and perform additional economic studies on their projects when affordable housing production falls below 30 percent of total production. She then weakened it with several exemptions, yet it was still a check against runaway development of luxury housing.
But her new measure, much like Lee’s, is little more than a wishful policy statement calling for the city to seek the goal of 33 percent of housing affordable by moderate income San Franciscans and below (usually defined as those making 120 percent of area median income or less) and 50 percent by the more vaguely defined “working middle class.”
While neither measure includes any enforcement or funding mechanism to help reach that goal, it’s noteworthy that the goals themselves weaken those the city set for itself in the Housing Element of the General Plan, which call for 60 percent of new housing construction to be affordable to those with moderate incomes and below. The board adopted an amended version of this Housing Element just last month.
This is politics at its very worst: Politicians claiming to be doing one thing in order to score points with voters and appear responsive to their concerns, while they actually do just the opposite and try to disguise that fact with disingenuous rhetoric.
Kim’s allies in the labor and progressive political communities tell us they’re disappointed in her capitulation at such a crucial moment in determining whether San Francisco becomes a city of the rich or whether it can retain its socioeconomic diversity.
We were also disappointed, although we weren’t surprised. There’s an ugly, money-driven brand of politics being practiced at City Hall these days, and Kim has repeatedly shown herself to be more concerned with her future political prospects than living up to the progressive values she has long espoused.
As the San Francisco Planning Commission prepares for an Aug. 7 hearing on Sup. David Chiu’s widely watched legislation to legalize and regulate short-term apartment rentals through Airbnb and similar companies, the San Francisco Tenants Union tomorrow [Tues/29] launches a “citizen enforcement” campaign against these currently illegal rentals.
Seeking to highlight the fact that “hundreds of tenants have been evicted and thousands of rent-controlled apartments in San Francisco have been illegally converted to hotel rooms in violation of two San Francisco laws,” SFTU announced it will begin posting signs on illegally converted buildings to warn tourists that the rentals are displacing city residents.
The campaign starts tomorrow at noon at 1937 Mason Street, a three-unit building where SFTU says all tenants were evicted under the Ellis Act so the units could be rented out through Airbnb and other online rental services. It’s the latest step in SFTU’s campaign to highlight illegal conversions, filing more than 50 complaints with the city and threatening further legal action. [UPDATE: A senior Airbnb official told the Guardian that no Airbnb hosts have rented out units at this address. Gullicksen said the units were rented out through VRBO.com, an Airbnb competitor].
“San Francisco is facing a severe housing crisis with soaring rents and evictions,” said SFTU Director Ted Gullicksen said in a press release. “It’s intolerable that the City is tolerating thousands of illegal conversions and thus facilitating hundreds of evictions.”
Apartment rentals of less than 30 days have long been illegal under city laws, including Administrative Code 41A, in order to protect the city’s rental stock for permanent residents. SFTU worked with Chiu’s office in crafting legislation that would legalize short-term rentals in residential areas but set a number of conditions, including a requirement for hosts to register with the city and limit rentals to no more than 90 days per year.
Airbnb is headquartered in San Francisco, but it has long defied city law and refused to collect required transient occupancy taxes on its rentals even after the city definitely ruled they were owed. The company pledged to finally start collecting the taxes sometime this summer and it has sought to make over its scofflaw public image with new branding and outreach efforts.
But with the company facing similar criticisms of its business model in New York City, Berlin, and other cities with strong housing demand, San Francisco’s regulatory effort is expected to be a high-stakes and high-profile struggle that will ultimately be decided by the Board of Supervisors, probably sometime this fall.
There are at least 1,900 child refugees in the Bay Area from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, according to federal immigration data. These teens and young children are fleeing gang violence, kidnapping, and countries that have the highest murder rates in the world.
“We need to keep in mind the reason why these children left,” Clarisa Sanchez, a legal representative at Catholic Charities CYO told us. “They didn’t want to leave their pueblos and small cities, they’re coming here by force.”
But this is not about the problem (which we covered in last week’s paper), this is about solutions. Though President Obama recently said he may create a refugee center in Central American countries, the kids who are here now still need help. When ICE holds refugees in Bay Area detention centers, nonprofit organizations offer legal support for these children and teenagers. Unfortunately, now the nonprofits are stretched to capacity.
Only 71 of the 800 new child refugees in San Francisco immigration court had an attorney, according to data from Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration project.
The nonprofits needs are threefold, Sanchez and other nonprofit representatives told us: They need competent volunteer attorneys, funding to hire new attorneys, and counseling services for the children. Supervisor David Campos recently passed legislation to raise the funding for these needs, but still, volunteers and donations are needed.
Counseling is a luxury some of these nonprofits have been unable to provide, as they focus on legal support to keep the kids in the US.
“[The kids] have been subjected to gang violence and drug cartels,” Sanchez said. “They’ve been hunted down by gangs threatening to kill their family. They’ve been beaten bloody in the streets.”
“They need social workers, counselors,” she said, “who can treat them emotionally.”
Some of these kids and teens will find homes with relatives here in the Bay Area, but wait a year or longer for the legal process that may keep them here or send them back to violent home countries. Sometimes these kids flee specific threats, and going home means death.
Maria Viarta with the Central American Resource Center told us one of those stories.
“So there’s a young man, he came in about three or four weeks ago. He’s 17 years old,” she said. This teenager was from El Salvador. “He was kidnapped while he was trying to sell a snow cone, off the side of a freeway, by a bridge. They beat him pretty badly. He was able to escape, but they showed up at his house and threatened his grandmother because he was living with her. If she didn’t pay them the money they would kill him.”
He then crossed the border and was caught.
“He’s a kid, a scared kid,” she said. “Being in a country riddled with violence, your innocence gets taken away.”
Seeing children and teens fleeing violence every day, hearing their stories, and facing an ever-increasing caseload, many of the legal representatives helping these children are burning out.
“When you’re confronted by someone with compassion who holds your hand with a scary process most kids end up breaking down and asking for help,” Viarta said. When she asked the 17-year-old if he could go back home safely, she said, “He was very cold… all the kids say, ‘I don’t want to go back, if I go back I am sure I am going to die.’”
Sanchez said legal representatives and children needed counseling. “I’m not a therapist, I’m not a psychologist, I’m a legal representative,” she said. “I can help him on the legal side, and we’ll do everything we can, but I don’t have the tools to treat his trauma.”
Sometimes of these crucial providers don’t come back.
“I think often times in the legal immigration community we don’t talk about the burnout rate,” Sanchez told us. “It’s high.”
What’s needed:
Funding
Pro bono attorneys (preferably with grounding in immigration law)
San Francisco landlord attorneys filed a lawsuit on Thursday against San Francisco and five tenants in an effort to overturn Sup. David Campos’ new law requiring higher relocation assistance payments to tenants evicted under the Ellis Act, but the main plaintiff in the case may not be the helpless victim the suit purports him to be.
Under the recently implemented measure, landlords must now pay the difference between their tenants’ current rent and the cost of “comparable” units for two years, as determined by the City Controller’s Office. Though many property owners haven’t been deterred by the measure, as evidenced by the Ellis Act evictions that continue to sweep the city, a group of landlords and their attorneys filed a lawsuit (Jerrold Jacoby et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, et al.) claiming the new law is unjust.
“The city has tried to change the rules on them,” said attorney Andrew Zacks, who represents the plaintiffs. “We don’t think that is allowed under the law.”
Jacoby, the lawsuit’s main plaintiff, is an 80-year-old property owner who, according to tenant attorney Joseph Tobener, is a “slumlord” who has mistreated his tenants and failed to adequately maintain his valuable rental property.
“He is in the business of landlording. That is all he does,” Tobener, who represents three of the five tenants being sued in the lawsuit, told the Guardian. “The lawsuit against the City only used Jacoby as plaintiff because he is a senior…They think this guy Jacoby, a slumlord, is a perfect plaintiff, but they misrepresent this story in their complaint.”
One of Tobener’s clients, Judith Barrett, is a 62-year-old single mother who teaches English at Galileo High School in San Francisco. She has lived in her current unit for 25 years, and she lives paycheck-to-paycheck.
Barrett, who Jacoby recently evicted using the Ellis Act, has been involved in protracted legal proceedings with her landlord in the past. Tobener said Jacoby and unit co-owner Jeanmarie Hryshko (Jacoby’s ex-wife) have collected more than $22,500 in illegal rent since October 2009, according to a ruling by the San Francisco Rent Board. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to Tobener, who said there was “much more prior” but that it extends beyond the statute of limitations.
Using a clause in the San Francisco Rent Board’s regulations, Jacoby claimed “financial hardship” when sued by Barrett over the illegal rent collection. “He tried to file a hardship exemption for the $22,500 at the Rent Board and he lost,” said Tobener, who also noted that Jacoby and Hryshko still owe Barrett an additional $8,000 because they executed the eviction before the reduced rent could cover the landlord’s debt to his tenants.
Barrett’s eviction, according to Tobener, was prompted by a lawsuit filed by tenants that claimed the landlords wouldn’t make “even the most basic repairs to the subject unit.” The lawsuit, which is still pending, claims that Jacoby and Hryshko have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, though they have an equity of $1.8 million on the two-unit property.
“That’s flat out untrue. There is a chronology that completely undercuts Mr. Tobener’s statement,” Zacks said, noting that aggressive moves by the tenants—specifically ”legal threats” from Tobener—ultimately resulted in the Ellis evictions. “This is exactly why we have the Ellis Act and why it’s an important right for property owners. The notion that [Jacoby] should have to pay $100,000 to stop being a landlord is not only unfair, it’s illegal by state law.”
The “aggressive moves” in question are chronicled in Tobener’s letter to David Wasserman, an attorney involved in the case. Tobener believes Jacoby and Hryshko have no intention of living together, and that they instead hope to rid their debt by evicting their rent-controlled tenants.
“If we are successful in proving that your clients have ulterior motives or are retaliating against the tenants, we will then file a wrongful eviction action against your clients,” Tobener wrote. “By now, I am sure your clients have wrongful eviction insurance. Perhaps they take comfort in the protections this insurance will provide them should they lose their unlawful detainer bid. But, what your clients may not know is that their insurance policy will not cover our largest seam of gold — the treble-damages penalties under the San Francisco Rent Ordinance for wrongful eviction.”
In the event of an unfavorable ruling, Zacks said he and his client don’t plan to remain complacent. “If the local judge agrees with the city,” he said. “We will appeal.”
Indeed, could be just the beginning of epic court battles between landlord and tenants advocates in San Francisco, where the hot housing market has triggered an eviction epidemic. The November ballot includes a tax on real estate speculation, which landlord groups have already threatened a lawsuit to challenge.
“Ellising a two-unit building is a real estate speculation play,” Tobener told the Guardian. “They are going to remodel and sell as TICs [tenants-in-common] to wealthy new owners. They cannot re-let the units, so they have to remodel and sell.”
Anti-war activists will gather tomorrow at 1pm in Justin Herman Plaza (Market and Embarcadero) for a rally and march organized by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition and other groups, including Arab Resource Organizing Center, Arab Youth Organization, and American Muslims for Palestine. The march will go up Market Street and circle around Union Square before returning to the starting point.
“Israel receives $4 billion in ‘aid’ from the United States each year. This money is being used to commit war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza. We are demanding that all U.S aid to Israel be ended now! More than 200 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 1,500 have been wounded from Israeli bombs and missiles. This has to end!” ANSWER wrote in its call-to-protest, although The New York Times reports the Palestinian death toll is now at least 800, compared to 38 Israeli deaths.
During yesterday’s daily protest outside the Israeli consulate, from 4-5pm at 456 Montgomery Street, a Palestinian woman named Jaclyn told the Guardian that the US media is to blame for the relatively small number of protesters on the streets. Recent protests have been small compared to massive demonstrations lduring the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“The problem is the media, they don’t’ have the correct information. People are being brainwashed, frankly,” she told us.
Protester Russell Bates, who was holding a Palestinian flag that he says he’s been flying for the last 10 year in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli occupation, noted that Gaza has been invaded by Israel three times in the last seven years, with lopsided death tolls in each conflict and yet continuing US financial aid.
“The US government Israel-occupied territory, for sure,” he said. “It’s unimaginable to me how people can remain quiet.”
Recently, the California Legislature approved a nonbinding question that would allow California voters to show their thoughts – mainly, their disdain – for the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that allowed corporations to make unlimited campaign contributions.
But on Tuesday, opponents filed a lawsuit seeking to remove the question from the November ballot. They say the ballot should be reserved for laws, not the measurement of non-binding feelings. Meanwhile, advocates say putting the question on the ballot provides California voters with the very voice often quieted and underfunded compared to the corporations that the court decision empowered.
The advisory measure, which would appear as Proposition 49, is threatened by a lawsuit filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an advocacy group for taxpayers’ rights. Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t a massive cheerleader for the advisory measure, either. He opted not to sign it, pointing out that the Legislature had already approved a resolution asking Congress to convene a constitutional convention to overturn the decision.
He added that the state should not “make it a habit to clutter our ballots with non-binding measures as citizens rightfully assume that their votes are meant to have legal effect.” The HJTA claim the measure is an attempt to increase voter participation in a a mostly mundane statewide election.
“It is very disappointing that the majority in the Legislature views the elections process as their personal plaything,” HJTA President Jon Coupal wrote in a biting statement.
Similarly, the Sacramento Bee wrote that the proposed ballot measure is “designed to lure more Democrats to the polls when legislators are trying to keep their seats.”
But the initiative’s supporters argue that it’s important to bring voters to the polls because citizens could use more of a voice. This argument is not so different than those who think political protests matter because they help voice public opposition and attract political attention. This measure just has a more legislative flavor than the typical street protest, and involves more taxpayers’ cash. But according to Michael Sutter, volunteer organizer for The Money Out Voters In Coalition, it would only cost voters two pennies at most.
“This is one of those issues where Californians know that this is wrong, want to do something about it, and feel that this is a very good way to have the national conversational in an unavoidable way,” Sutter said. “We can make big noise here in California.”
Since the Citizens United decision, cities around California have found comfort in voicing their disapproval through non-binding resolutions at the local level. In 2010, Richmond voted unanimously to support a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood, and two years later, San Franciscans followed suite, passing Proposition G with 81 percent of the vote.
Yet the Citizens United decision still stands, and the usefulness of such non-binding resolutions remains to be seen.
John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech for the People, launched a national campaign opposing Citizens United right after the decision was made. Since then, 11 states have passed some kind of resolution announcing their support for overturning Citizens United.
“It was not a waste to have Montana voters vote on this kind of measure in 2012, nor to have Colorado voters vote on this measure in 2012,” Bonifaz told the Guardian. “This is a critically important measure for the future of our democracy. Are we going to become a nation where only the big money interests and corporations are able to be heard, or are we in fact going to reclaim a basic fundamental promise of government by and for the people?”
Non-binding measures rarely make an appearance on the California ballot. According to Sutter, the last time to come close was in 2007 when the State Senate passed a non-binding ballot measure asking voters if they supported withdrawal of troops in Iraq. “We only use these kinds of measures when national policy is directly at odds with the will of the California people,” Sutter said.
The Iraq ballot measure was promptly vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics condemned its usefulness; after all, how could California opposition bring the troops home? And now, how can opposition in California to outrageous campaign contribution help level the political playing field?
The truth is that maybe it won’t.
“By allowing SB 1272 to become law without my signature, it is my intention to signal that I am not inclined to repeat this practice of seeking advisory opinions from the voters,” Brown stated.
But Sutter thinks his attitude is the problem, and that maybe political figures should consider seeking voter feedback more often. “Jerry Brown has a problem with the concept of the people advising their representatives, and that’s an attitude I have a problem with,” she said.
Prop. 49 might not change the Citizens United Decision, but — if it survives the lawsuit — it will make it apparent that a whole lot of California voters want the court decision overturned. The question is whether or not those in power care what people think.
Tonight’s game starts at 7:05, at which point Biz Markie, the “clown prince of hip-hop,” most famous for his hit sing-songy single “Just a Friend,” off the 1989 album The Biz Never Sleeps, will be throwing out the first pitch against the Houston Astros.
This particular game, the evening of July 23, also falls on the A’s 15th annual Root Beer Float Day, a beloved tradition that raises money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation by having A’s players, coaches, announcers, the staffs of several radio stations, and celebs of various stature (Real World cast members) scoop and serve root beer floats at $2 each for two hours before the first pitch.
As for how it came to be that a diabetes-related charity event revolves around a soda and ice cream-based dessert — surely there’s an explanation. Resolve to look into this later.
This annual dessert appreciation is normally scheduled for a day game and takes place outside. Tonight’s, by contrast, is held in a long, balloon-strewn indoor corridor, and by 6pm, navigating the packed, echoing concrete space has become difficult, especially near the most coveted root beer float stations: Jose Canseco and Biz Markie.
Biz Markie is here in an official capacity as a spokesperson for Zevia, a “zero-calorie soda” made with stevia, which explains why he’s posing for photos and signing autographs in front of a Zevia banner, while staffers (plus A’s pitcher Jeff Samardzija) scoop ice cream and pour cans of Zevia, in addition to root beer, behind him. Zevia has joined A&W as an official soda donor for the evening. A small sampling of Zevia flavors: Cream Soda, Mountain Zevia, Dr. Zevia.
Biz Markie, dressed in a personalized A’s jersey and A’s cap with a heavy-looking gold chain around his neck that reads “Biz,” seems a little overwhelmed by it all. He turned 50 in April. He’s been on his feet all day; there was some promotional KPIX event in the city before this. The line to pose with him — made up of everyone from small children who know Biz Markie from his stints on the feverishly popular Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba! (he toured with the live stage version in 2013) to dudes who are also in their 50s — snakes around a metal barrier, with no end in sight. The decision is made that the line should be cut off at some point. You were supposed to grab him for 10 minutes during this portion of the evening, but instead suggest that maybe it would be better if you met up during the game, after this is over and he can relax a little?
At 6:30, the entire event has run out of cups. Plenty of ice cream and root beer left on almost all the tables, but the pseudo-celeb scoopers can’t give you any unless you bring your own receptacle. Witness one man scooping ice cream carefully into a plastic water bottle.
At 7:05 Biz Markie takes the mound for the first pitch. It is not good. It’s not 50 Cent-bad — the ball makes it to the plate — but it’s not good either, veering upward, slowly, in a high arc. At the view reserve-level bar inside the stadium, there’s a low, wincing “oooh,” from several patrons.
Sometime during the third inning, one of the Zevia people, who have flown up from LA to manage Biz’s appearances and who are all unfailingly fresh-faced and friendly, texts you that it’d be a good time to come to the suite. Two innings and one and a half beers later, you make it there. The suite is filled with Zevia people and their kids and wives, plus Biz and his cousin, the producer and DJ Cool-V, who co-produced several of Biz’s albums. There’s pizza and popcorn and beer and Zevia. You are encouraged to sit down next to Biz. He has just finished eating.
“Do we have those toothpicks?” he asks Cool-V. “Nah, we left them back at the hotel,” Cool-V replies. Biz starts going at his teeth with a silver-colored plastic fork. Someone comes by to check his wireless mic; he’ll be singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch. Biz checks his phone and has an email about his flight to San Diego tomorrow.
You: What’s happening in San Diego?
Biz: Comic Con. I have a song in the movie The Book of Life. So I’m singing “Just a Friend.” With Channing Tatum.
You: You’re singing “Just a Friend” with Channing Tatum?
Biz: (Nods.)
You: Is it funny to you that there’s this age gap, where little kids know you from being on children’s television, and people over a certain age know you from being, you know, you?
Biz: (Laughs.) I mean…I’ve always liked to do stuff with kids, play with little kids. Not in the Michael Jackson way, though. The normal way.
The way he met up with the Zevia people is as follows: He was on the Yo Gabba Gabba! set and got thirsty and didn’t want a regular soda, nor a diet soda. His co-star DJ Lance Rock handed him a Zevia, and he liked it. So he hooked up with them as a spokesperson. He’s been trying to live a healthier lifestyle in general; he’s lost more than 100 pounds since 2011.
You: So you actually really like it?
Biz: Oh yeah. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it. I don’t do anything I don’t like.
You: Who’s your baseball team, normally? You’re from Long Island, yeah?
Biz: Yankees. A’s, Cincinnati Reds.
Zevia person: Could you wear that [A’s jersey] in New York?
Biz, suddenly animated: I wear whatever I want in New York. I can walk down the street wearing a dress and a wig in New York, if I want.
Cool-V: He did! He did an album cover with a dress and a wig.
Biz: I did. Like Madea, only I did that before Madea.
You: So you should get royalties from Tyler Perry, basically?
Biz: (Silence.)
A few minutes pass.
Biz, to no one in particular, gesturing at the glass panel through which we are viewing the game: Do you think I would hurt myself if I jumped from here?
Several people in the room: Yes.
It has come time for the 7th inning stretch. You are suddenly part of an entourage following Biz down to field level, where everyone waits while these terrifying new acid-trippy A’s All-Star “big head” mascots do their thing. “Is he leaving after this?” one of the Zevia people asks. “Yeah, he is,” confirms another Zevia person, also maybe confirming why Biz looks so amped for this part of the evening to take place.
You are going to be annoying now, but there’s no choice. He has three minutes of standing here left to kill and he’s not talking to anyone. In three minutes they’ll start blasting “Just a Friend” — which came out 25 years ago this October, and peaked at #9 on the Billboard charts — over the PA, as his entrance music, for the second time this evening. What must it be like, you wonder, to be a working entertainer, on the road half the time for 30 years, but still be introduced, always, with one kinda-jokey thing you did 25 years ago? Weird Al, whose career began in the early ’80s and who’s a regular on the county fair circuit, had an album hit #1 on the Billboard charts this week for the first time. How are their lives similar? How are they different? You realize you still haven’t tried any Zevia.
“So,” you say. “Do you have anything planned for the 25th anniversary of —”
“Of The Biz Never Sleeps?” he says, eyes on the field, then darting quickly over to you for half a second, then back to the field. “Yeah. I can’t say what it is. But you wait and see.”
Then he’s off to sing. He leaves, quickly, out a side door, after that — hopefully, contrary to his hit album title, to get some sleep.
But, as per his instructions, you’ll be waiting. We’ll be waiting, Biz. We will wait and see.
If frog doesn’t sound like your thing, consider that we don’t always know we like something until we try it. Or consider the way this surveillance state being forced down your throat goes right to your ass. Or consider that Dalton Trumbo (following Emile Zola) once referred to his time (the time of McCarthy and other manifestations of totalitarian creep) as the Time of the Toad — an era in which maintaining indifference to the injustice and horror around you was tantamount to learning how to swallow a whole wet one each and every day.
The dough and the rolling pin! Julia is breaking it down. And Annie Danger — one of the city’s most fearless and unusual leavening agents — is cooking up a storm.
In case you missed the cover of this week’s paper, the 34th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival kicked off last night and runs through Aug. 10 at an array of Bay Area venues. Get the whole schedule and info on tickets here; check out our commentary here and here.
And So It GoesIt’s not hard to scope out what the draw might be here for gray foxes like Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas when it comes to this Rob Reiner effort. The woman who so winningly wrapped her vocal cords around “Seems Like Old Times” in Annie Hall (1977) was obviously diverted from her Pinterest duties by the opportunity to sing her heart out on screen again (accompanied on piano by Reiner, a sad comic side dish). Meanwhile, Douglas gets to play a self-absorbed boomer who’s making up for neglecting the next generation — namely his son, an incarcerated addict — in a role that gives off a strong whiff of autobiography. Douglas’s Oren is doing his half-assed penance by caring for his stranger of a granddaughter Sarah (Sterling Jerins), a chore that he not-so-nicely foists onto the Keaton’s Leah. His character and turnaround of sorts, burnished by the triumph of a successful real estate transaction, is as mundane and unconvincing as a half-hour sitcom pivot. The colorless characterization and lame dialogue can probably be primarily attributed to As Good as It Gets (1997) writer Mark Andrus, who seems to be recycling bits of the latter’s title as well as stale chunks from sundry romantic comedies — though considering the missed opportunities and overall weak soup of And So It Goes, Reiner also appears to be chipping away at whatever reputation he has acquired. Is this really the same Reiner who made This Is Spinal Tap back in 1984? (1:35) (Kimberly Chun)
The Fluffy MovieConcert movie starring stand-up sensation Gabriel Iglesias. (1:41)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUM3V8Yh1EU
HerculesDwayne Johnson is imposingly large indeed as the demigod of fabled strength. Going the Lone Ranger (2013) route of being winky-wink cynical about “the legend” while eventually buying into it anyway, here Herc is really just a 4th-century BC mercenary probably fathered by some random dude (as opposed to god-of-gods Zeus), and who with his merry band of sidekicks goes around fighting against pirates, pillagers, and such. These gigs are taken “for the gold,” but you know this Hercules wouldn’t be down fighting good people on behalf of bad people. When he’s hired to lead the citizens of Lord Cotys (John Hurt) against marauding hordes of alleged centaurs and extreme-wrestling-type beardos with green makeup led by Rhesus (Tobias Santelmann), the plot advances toward the expected training montages and battle sequences. But the plot thickens only when our don’t-call-us-heroes heroes begin to suspect they might have been misled into playing for the wrong team. Relegating a mythology-based tale’s magical aspects to dream sequences and trickery (spoiler: those aren’t real centaurs!), this adaptation of Steve Moore’s graphic novel is way less Clash of the Titans (1981/2010) and much more in the straightforward action realm of Troy (2004) and 300 (2006). It’s big and handsome, like its star, though not so debonair — the pedestrian screenplay doesn’t let him have much fun, while the supporting players allowed to smirk and deliver generally lame quips aren’t much compensation. Directed by Brett Ratner, Hercules is not the campfest of unintentional hilarity some may have hoped for. Neither does it have the content originality or stylistic personality to be memorable. Instead, it’s just pretty decent late-summer entertainment: Probably worth it if you’re craving 98 painless air-conditioned minutes, possibly not if you could really use those 12 bucks or so elsewhere in your life. (1:39) (Dennis Harvey)
I Origins Sci-fi film about a heartbroken biologist (Michael Pitt) whose research leads him to some deeply metaphysical places. (1:53)
Land Ho! “Ex-brothers-in-law set off on a road trip through Iceland, hoping to reclaim their youth” — that’s the studio-supplied elevator description that does accurately describe Land Ho!, but the film is about so much more than that. Jocular Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) is fond of inappropriate jokes, smoking weed, and pushing boundaries, while more reserved Colin (Paul Eenhoorn of 2013’s This is Martin Bonner) is dealing with a recent divorce after enduring the death of his first wife. A spontaneous trip to Iceland, funded by Mitch (who’s going through a senior-life crisis of sorts), takes the pair to Reykjavik dance clubs, spectacular geysers, hot springs, and lonely rolling moors, all the while bantering about life and love (and getting into more than one stupid argument, as old friends do). Without really innovating on the road-movie genre, writer-directors Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz manage to avoid any cute-geezer clichés (for those interested, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2 comes out next year) in this low-key, personality-driven tale, which aims to please with vintage American-indie charm. (1:35) (Cheryl Eddy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kqq2eBvGTY
LucyEurotrash auteur Luc Besson’s latest is a mostly fun action fantasy about a party girl (Scarlett Johansson) who runs afoul of gangsters in Taipei and ends up with a leaking packet of futuristic drugs sewn into her shapely stomach. Side effects include super strength and supernatural intelligence — insert pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo about tapping into 100 percent of one’s woefully underused brainpower, etc. etc. — which leads to some satisfying scenes in which Johansson’s Lucy flattens a hallway of cops with a single gesture, or filters through every phone conversation in the Paris metro area to find the one guy she needs to eavesdrop on. She’s also able to beam herself into electronic devices, a nifty trick that convinces kindly scientist Morgan Freeman to help download her magnificently advanced intelligence into a kind of living computer (shades of 2013’s Her and Under the Skin, except this time ScarJo’s wearing a really great dress). South Korean weirdo/superstar Choi Min-sik (2003’s Oldboy; 2010’s I Saw the Devil) is an inspired choice to play the vengeful kingpin intent on tracking down his runaway mule, and Besson adds some arty flair via nature-show footage and Cosmos-esque clips from beyond the infinite — though the film’s Big Ideas wobble precariously amid its other, mostly silly elements. (1:29) (Cheryl Eddy)
Magic in the MoonlightWoody Allen’s latest — after last year’s vodka-drenched Cate Blanchett showcase Blue Jasmine — offers a return to period romance á la 2011 smash Midnight in Paris. Instead of Owen Wilson time-traveling through the artsy 1920s, we get winsome 1920s clairvoyant Sophie (Emma Stone, 25 years old) falling for the skeptic who’s sent to debunk her, played by Colin Firth (who’s 53). Firth’s performance is easily the best part of Magic in the Moonlight; his Stanley Crawford is a theatrical conjurer famed for his yellowface act, in which he solemnly makes elephants disappear. Off-stage, he’s a self-proclaimed genius regarded by most who meet him as a pompous jerkface. When he’s summoned to the South of France to help a longtime friend and fellow magician (Simon McBurney) prove that Sophie — from humble origins, she’s grown fond of high-society living — is hoodwinking the fancy American family that’s taken her in, nothing unfolds as he expects. The whole exercise is lighter than meringue; it’d be passable as lesser Allen except for that obvious, comically huge age gap between the leads. He knows we disapprove, and he does not care. Are you trolling us, Woody? (1:40) (Cheryl Eddy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYORzJ3e-Og
A Most Wanted ManDirector Anton Corbijn’s film may not be the greatest John le Carré adaptation in recent years (see: 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), but it’s still a solid thriller, anchored by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s turn as Günther Bachmann, the once-bitten-but-not-yet-shy head of an top-secret branch of Germany’s FBI/CIA equivalent. Its task: spying on Hamburg’s Islamic groups, where the 9/11 attacks were planned, though the enemies that Bachmann faces come mostly from within the greater intelligence community, including his superiors. Never before has the phrase “the Americans have taken an interest” been so chilling, especially to a guy who is just trying to do his job, if only everyone else (including Robin Wright as one of those meddling Americans) would keep their sticky mitts off his delicately planned surveillance operations. There’s a forward-moving plot, of course, about a Chechen-Russian illegal immigrant with a huge inheritance who might be a terrorist (Rachel McAdams plays his human-rights lawyer), but could also serve a greater purpose by helping bring down an even bigger target. And while A Most Wanted Man‘s twists and turns, involving Willem Dafoe as a banker who becomes a reluctant player in Bachmann’s scheme, are suspenseful, Hoffman’s portrayal of a man trapped in a constant maze of frustration — good intentions cut off at every turn, dumping booze into his morning coffee, breaking up a bar fight, ruefully admitting “I am a cave dweller,” visibly haunted by past errors — is the total package, a worthy final entry in a career that ended way too early. (2:02) (Cheryl Eddy)
A citizens’ initiative that would block the project this week qualified for the ballot after turning in more than 16,000 signatures, collected by the Coalition to Save Golden Gate Park. Yet city officials and supporters of the project — including the City Fields Foundation, which has been installing artificial turf on playing fields around the city in recent years — aren’t taking any chances, creating a rival measure sponsored by six members of the Board of Supervisors.
Not only would the supervisors’ measure invalidate the citizens’ initiative if it gets more votes — it contains a so-called poison pill, an increasingly common electoral tactic — but it would make it more difficult to challenge future trail, playground, and playing field projects that would increase the number of users by 50 percent or more. “We think it’s a terrible measure that disenfranchises voters all over the city,” Jean Barish, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Protect Golden Gate Park, told the Guardian. “It would give the Recreation and Park Department a lot more authority than they have now.”
Patrick Hannan, a spokesperson for the City Fields Foundation, worked with supervisors on the rival measure and he denies that it would limit citizens’ rights to challenge future projects.
“The legislation in no way curtails any kind of appeals process,” Hannan said. “It says you can’t pass a law to stop projects from going forward after they’ve been approved.”
But Hannan couldn’t cite any examples of approved projects being later stopped by legislation, and the vaguely worded measure doesn’t make clear whether it would preclude citizens from challenging approved projects by initiative or referendum.
Mike Murphy, the official proponent behind the iniative that seeks to stop the Beach Chalet project, said the intent of the supervisors’ measure seems to be to limit the public’s right to challenge artificial turf projects, which the city measure explicitly said city bodies “shall approve” if they increase playing time and have an approved environmental impact report.
He called on the supervisors sponsoring the measure — Sups. David Chiu, Eric Mar, Mark Farrell, Katy Tang, Scott Wiener, and London Breed — to remove their names before next week’s electoral deadline.
“This is a highly politicized issue and it always has been,” Murphy said. “We need to refocus the debate not on why [the city needs more playing fields] but on what’s being done at this site.”
Opponents of the Beach Chalet project say articificial turf can be toxic and unhealthy and that it shouldn’t replace natural grass. But supporters of this and other artificial turf projects say that they substantially increase the available playing time on fields that are desperately need to keep up with demand, particularly by youth sports.
“Artificial turf is safe and this project is cleared to proceed,” Hannan said. “The question is whether the city wants to give more kids more fields they can use.”
He cited studies showing that because the artificial turf his group has installed on city-owned fields since 2011, available playing time on fields has increased by 30 percent: “That’s a direct result of our project.”
And now, voters will get their chance to weigh in on this ongoing, highly charged turf war.
As a child, you imagine your toys come to life whenever your back is turned. As an adult in the Bay Area, you imagine that every night you choose to stay in, the bars are all packed with experimental underground DJs, food carts, live visual artists and the kind of freaky electronic jazz you would see in a Blade Runner spinoff series. And yet when you do turn around — at either age — your dreams often fall short (if your toys ever did come to life, please let us know).
This is not the case at Smart Bomb, a bi-monthly multimedia showcase at the Legionnaire Saloon in downtown Oakland; the next edition is this Saturday, July 26. Centered on the East Bay beat scene, the night is a multi-layered affair in every sense: local food outside, fringe producers, controllerists, and DJs downstairs, out-of-the-box grooving live acts upstairs. Here you might find a homemade synthesizer or heavily effected saxophone wailing the night away while a painter furiously creates an accompanying visual spectacle. It’s a creative assault on every sensory input, in the best possible way.
Smart Bomb is the brainchild of the band Secret Sidewalk, which is itself a microcosm of the Smart Bomb smorgasbord: a collection of electronic and acoustic musicians arranged around beat music with backgrounds in turntablism, hip hop, DIY synthesis, and jazz.
“We’re a band, yes, but we’re a collective,” says saxophonist Marcus Stephens, of the collaborative artistic community the band has built. Any night might feature a solo performance or duo experimentation as well as the full group’s mainstay set. (This weekend’s event coincides with and celebrates the release of Secret Sidewalk’s new 7” vinyl single “Cholo Curls” on CB Records.)
In addition to the ever-changing cast of local performers, Smart Bomb regularly features guests from both the local and national scene, including heavy-hitters such as the Broun Felinis, rapper Kool A.D. (from Das Racist), and Dibia$e. “We wanted to invite other performers and artists as well — MCs and a few live bands that are on our same wavelength in terms of progressive music,” says Stephens. At their last event, Phesto Dee — from the seminal Oakland hip-hop groups Heiroglyphics and Souls of Mischief — performed a solo set with Secret Sidewalk as the backing band, an arrangement of MC and experimental beat ensemble that neither had ever explored before.
Even with the event’s avant-garde leanings, the experience is decidedly unpretentious; Stephens says they reliably get a positive response from a super diverse room full of people. “We always seem to get a warm crowd — a lot of musicians, a lot of artists, a lot of curious mofos who want to see what the buzz is about.”
SMART BOMB (w/ record release for Secret Sidewalk)
Surprise, shock, flabbergasting awe — these are all completely invalid responses to Twitter’s revelation of its diversity figures, which the disruptive San Francisco tech company released today (in a tweet, of course).
Twitter divided its diversity statistics into three categories: tech, non-tech, and leadership. Guess which area had the most white folks? If you guessed tech, you get a (vanilla) cookie.
Twitter’s tech employees are 90 percent male. Its ethnic figures are more diverse: their tech employees are 58 percent white and 34 percent Asian. Just 1 percent of Twitter’s tech-oriented employees are African American, and 3 percent are Latino.
…we are joining some peer companies by sharing our ethnic and gender diversity data. And like our peers, we have a lot of work to do.”
“It makes good business sense that Twitter employees are representative of the vast and varied backgrounds of our users around the world. We also know that it makes good business sense to be more diverse as a workforce – research shows that more diverse teams make better decisions, and companies with women in leadership roles produce better financial results. But we want to be more than a good business; we want to be a business that we are proud of.
We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity — and we are no exception.
By becoming more transparent with our employee data, open in dialogue throughout the company and rigorous in our recruiting, hiring and promotion practices, we are making diversity an important business issue for ourselves.
Twitter is not the only tech company to struggle with its diversity, and it joins Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo in self-reporting its diversity data. In her blog post, Van Huysse points to many efforts made by Twitter to help build a better education pipeline to the tech industry. The number of women and underrepresented (African American and Latino) minorities obtaining Computer Science degrees pales in comparison to their white and male counterparts, a widely recognized problem.
“If they partnered with SFUSD and other local school districts… in a serious, strategic way, we could go a long way in immediately expanding acccess and diversity in their workforce,” Haney said. “I’d love to see the numbers on how many of their workers are SF public school graduates.”
The education pipeline is oft-mentioned in diversity discussions. But less talked about is Silicon Valley’s pervasive “bro” culture, rife with subtle racism and misogyny that pushes out the small number of minorities who make it in. A study of start-ups by an East Bay nonprofit, the Level Playing Field Institute, addressed this head on.
As we reported in our cover story last week “The Age of the Brogrammer,” LPFI surveyed more than 645 engineers, and found underrepresented people of color (Latinos and African Americans), and women were more likely to encounter exclusionary cliques, unwanted sexual teasing, bullying, and homophobic jokes.
Twitter’s diversity figures, by ethnicity. Graphic via Twitter.
The study’s authors also found that white men were the most likely to believe that diversity was not a problem that needed addressing in the tech sector.
LPFI isn’t the only one to point this out. In this article on Slate, an Asian tech worker talks about reverse-bias: people assumed, since he was Asian, that he knew how to program (spoiler: he didn’t). And in this article, an African American man recounts the racism he faced at a tech company. And in this piece, a tech engineer explains how bias pervades the hiring process at many startups.
Yes, the education pipeline to Silicon Valley needs fixing. But as many have shown, Silicon Valley itself needs fixing too.
Building a Twitter we can be proud of – here’s our diversity data to date. https://t.co/Xw2ktU5QQk
Not long after I sat down with Randy Walker, the male, non-performing ego of one of San Francisco’s most undefinable musical acts, vocal powerhouse Carletta Sue Kay (who performs at The Chapel this Fri/25), we talked a bit about college. Walker asked me the prerequisite questions about the social scene and my major, perking up at the sound of a humanities-centric discipline. I asked if he’d done the whole college thing. Walker chuckled, a glint in his eye, and said he had. “I went to Redlands College but didn’t graduate. Started out in Theater Arts, ended up switching over to English…but what are you really going to do with an English degree?”
As the conversation continued, however, Walker’s dismissal of the formal literary arts became increasingly incongruous with his mastery of language, the modern canon (from David Foster Wallace to Elizabeth McCracken), and allusion in his performances. The singer, whose music is a deft blend of Joplin-esque blues and far more cerebral and melodic existential examination, is anything but simplistic. As Walker’s mind opened up, we twisted and turned through a deliciously intellectual and sordid discourse about strip clubs, eccentric cousins, and the Swiss conceptual artist Thomas Hirschhorn. By the time we left the coffee shop, me with Carletta Sue Kay’s debut album Incongruent in hand, it was clear that Walker and his alter ego were far more complex (and hilarious) than the average wigged, pastichy, four octave-ranged singer-songwriter.
Carletta is a real person, says Walker. So was Walker’s last singing character, a plastic surgery-obsessed Belgian who Walker often presented with a variety of gauze pads and other bandages preferred by convalescents of cosmetic procedures. Both Carletta and the Belgian are Walker’s cousins (his last project was called Mon Cousin Belge). “While I was doing Mon Cousin Belge, I was writing songs at home that I thought needed to be sung by a girl. I thought, ‘I’m going to find some great female singers to record this stuff.’ But then I thought, ‘Hold on…’”
Carletta Sue Kay, Walker’s eccentric, ex-criminal cousin, was an ideal persona that he could put on to present his new works. “Carletta is a very troubled girl. She was involved with a guy and became very obsessed with him. She found out that this guy was sleeping with another girl and constructed a pipe bomb with the intent of killing him in his apartment.” Walker, clearly embracing the macabre underpinnings of the story, smiled and spoke with a bounce in his tone as he recounted her his cousin’s homicidal urges. “Well, they busted her and she went to prison. So the band became Carletta Sue Kay.” The more sorrowful of the band’s songs, which often focus on lost love and sadness, evoke the woeful tale. Now a free woman, the real Carletta has never agreed to see a performance by the band. “She’s completely chill with it. She’s a funny girl.”
The band’s inaugural performance is just as legendary as its naming. Mon Cousin Belge needed an opening act for a headlining gig at Bottom of the Hill, so Walker decided to unveil his new group. He crafted a Grecian arch, covered it in autumn leaves, sprayed it with glitter, and enlisted his friend, artist Greg Gardner, to create a cartoon rendering of his burgeoning alter ego on a piece of fabric curtain that hung down from the arch. “He drew a big fat naked girl. Her nipples were painted with pink glitter. They do the intro music (strum, strum) and I pull the curtain up to reveal myself standing there. The birth of Carletta!”
Throughout his contextualization of Carletta, Walker dropped hilarious one-liners and unexpected anecdotes about culture. I wasn’t surprised to hear The Magnetic Fields’ frontman Stephin Merritt’s name come up a few times, as Carletta Sue Kay has provided back-up vocals for several songs by the group. More surprising, however, was Walker’s invocation of Stephen Sondheim as a primary influence. And when a shirtless, seemingly inebriated man with an unruly mullet danced by in the front window of the café, Walker looked up and, without missing a beat, said, in questionably PC fashion, “It’s a character out of a James Fenimore Cooper book!”
While Walker sprinkled our conversation with bands, authors, and artists, his charisma was not so much in his prolific knowledge of and interaction with the art world, but rather how he used his experiences as a means of telling remarkably funny and compelling stories. In one such story, Walker told of his love for Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation “Utopia, Utopia = One World, One War, One Army, One Dress.”
The exhibit, which showed at the CCA Wattis Instiute of Art a few years back, included juxtapositions of camouflage wear in fashion and the military alongside globes with small camo-tinged tumors growing on them. “After the exhibition ended, they were tossing 80 percent of the work into the trash. So we’re like…dumpster dive!” After snatching nine of the globes used in the exhibition, Walker began to sell them off. “It’s ephemeral,” Walker retorted when I suggested that he was dealing in the conceptual art black market.
Walker informs his new songs, which he’s collecting for an upcoming record called Monsters (much of which he will sing on Friday), with a similarly diverse range of artistic interests as his stories. “It’s influenced by Hammer classic horror films — Creature from the Black Lagoon — anywhere from comical to kitschy, but always with a dark theme. But then it’s going to mixed with a lot of genuine sadness.” Stylistically, Carletta Sue Kay continues to move towards more piano-heavy, lyrical wandering in comparison to the high-octane blues of its initial incarnation. Walker is seemingly aiming, both in his tales and his music, for the intersection between poking fun at cultural elements and emotionally engaging with their deeper messages.
How we ended up talking about strip clubs I may never know (and I have a complete recording of the conversation). Seemingly, it branched out of a conversation about Walker’s boyhood home, Fontana, Calif., which he cited for its high methamphetamine rates and large Pentacostal population. Before we knew it, however, we were talking about a wide range of California strip clubs, from the sketchier SoCal ones that he saw as a younger man and more upscale ones like Mitchell Brothers. Walker, who is gay and has been with his partner for more than 20 years, goes with his straight friends seemingly as a means of understanding the culture and to have fun. His stories, however, soon entered surreal realms of aggressive strippers, extreme money-spending binges by his friends, and abstract deconstruction of the vibes inside various clubs.
Whatever the reason for the digression, it perfectly captured Walker’s unabashedly entertaining form of communication — simultaneously intellectual, pulpy, and laugh-out-loud funny. For a man with such powerful personae, Randy Walker is wholly himself.
Beating up on Muni and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is a perennial pastime for many San Franciscans, who will be given the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are this November. Will they be willing to give Muni the money it needs to serve its growing ridership, even at the cost of other city programs and priorities?
The Board of Supervisors yesterday [Tues/22] voted narrowly to place Sup. Scott Wiener’s Muni funding measure on the fall ballot. It would increase General Fund contributions to the SFMTA as the city population increase, retroactive back to 2003 when the current rate was set, giving the agency an immediate $20-25 million boost to serve the roughly 85,000 new residents the city has added since then.
“For too long City Hall has been slow to prioritize transit funding,” Wiener said in a press release. “We are a growing city, and we need to take firm steps to ensure that our transportation system keeps up with that growth. Improving transit reliability and capacity and making our streets safer are key to that goal.”
While everyone says they support Muni — even David Looman, the proponent behind the Restore Transportation Balance initiative that seeks more SFMTA funding for cars, which will also appear on that ballot — Wiener has been the rare strong advocate locally for actually giving the agency more money.
A $500 million general obligation bond transportation measure backed by Lee and the full Board of Supervisors will also appear on the November ballot, but it will go mostly to cover Muni’s capital needs, not the growing demands on its operating budget.
Wiener’s Muni funding measure yesterday barely got the six votes this charter amendment needed to qualify for the ballot: those of Wiener and Sups. London Breed, David Campos, David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Jane Kim (Sup. John Avalos was absent).
In recent years, there’s been a rift in the city’s progressive coalition between environmental and transportation activists on one side and affordable housing advocates on the other, who sometimes battle over city funding they see as a zero sum game. So it will be interesting to watch how the politics surrounding this measure shape up going into the fall campaign season.
If Instagram is anything to go by (read: it’s not), anyone can make a short film — just slap a filter on it and call it a day! Thankfully, the protagonists in Anywhere Else and Swim Little Fish Swim, two films featured in the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, work on creative projects that can pull their own weight — sans filters — even if the length exceeds 15 seconds from the sidelines. Short DIY clips, not integral to the plotlines, are interspersed throughout of each film and are a breath of fresh air, even if the overall film itself is a hit or a miss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynif8W-sto8
If you’re lucky enough to call yourself multilingual, you may have noticed that your personality seems to change when you speak in a different language (level of inebriation aside). With all these factors in mind, the odds of being misunderstood by others increase. This very notion permeates Anywhere Else, Ester Amrami’s first film — literally, as Noa (Neta Riskin), an Israeli graduate student in Berlin, gets her video project (documenting explanations of rich, untranslatable words in foreign languages) shot down by her advisor.
Viewers, intrigued by linguistics or not, will have no trouble following the intricacies that accompany dialogue in the film, whether it’s in German, Hebrew, Yiddish, or English. At the same time, Noa unsuccessfully yearns for the security of “home” in both Germany and Israel. An impromptu trip back to Israel doesn’t help much, especially when her boyfriend Jörg (Golo Euler) visits. The film also tackles weighty issues such as disapproval of Noa and Jörg’s relationship (Noa’s grandmother lost her entire family in the Holocaust) and Noa’s brother’s unease about being a member of the Israeli army.
Contrary to what Noa’s advisor thinks, untranslatable words are perfectly fine — who’s to say that the simple word “home” is sufficient enough to express the complex feeling of belonging? Anywhere Else ultimately and sentimentally proves that complicated problems don’t need complicated solutions.
At first glance, it’s a bit comforting to see that neither Swim Little Fish Swim‘sLeeward (Dustin Guy Defa) nor Lilas (Lola Bessis) have been hardened by the cynical realities of adult life. Leeward is a stay-at-home dad who entertains himself by jamming out on his toddler’s toys, while Lilas is a budding French artist on the brink of her twenties who crashes on Leeward’s couch in the dwindling days before her visa expires. While it initially seems as though Leeward still looks at the world in childlike wonder, the rose-colored glasses quickly shatter, and he becomes a hopelessly useless, naïve man and by far, the most annoying character in the film. The only thing his wife Mary (Brooke Bloom) can count on him to do is shirk his financial responsibilities.
All in all, the sickeningly saccharine film is far too twee, distracting the viewer when Leeward and Lilas finally encounter adult life’s setbacks head-on. It’s stereotypically cute: The film is set in New York, Leeward insists on the hipster kid name “Rainbow” for his daughter instead of “Maggie,” Lilas totes around an old film camera that must be twice her age to record her new friends’ seemingly profound confessions, and Leeward struggles to avoid selling out as a musician. However, if you can muster through all of that, the Swim‘s ending is moderately satisfying, even if it is somewhat predictable.
Normally the sound of 20 or so artists rattling and spraying aerosol cans would be quickly followed by the sound of sirens. But Sat/19 the fades went up with gusto.
Artists tagged free standing art boards at Precita Park for the Urban Youth Arts Festival, an event that brings the ultimate underground art into a safe space. Attendees munched on burgers and listened to some good tunes at the festival, which is now in its 18th year.
Many of the street style murals paid homage to the Bay Area, from SF to Oakland. “We’re showing our love to the aesthetic of the community,” Xavier Schmidt, a 25-year-old organizer of the event and SF native, told us. One muralist hand painted a robot adorned in SF Giants and 49ers gear punching out a Google Glass-wearing Godzilla.
“We’ve been doing this since 1987,” Schmidt said, speaking to the event’s roots. Even the event’s hosts, the Precita Eyes Muralists Association, have deep SF bonafides: they’ve been around since 1977.
“This is for solidarity, for community,” he said. “It’s a family event.”
Kids sprayed paint and played, adults kicked back and kvetched about youngsters, SF natives complained about tech employees, and many chowed down on burgers, hot dogs, and veggies donated by the local YMCA. Local musicians A-1 and Hazel Rose came out to play too, adding the head-banging element to the day. We’ve embedded one of A-1’s tracks below. Consider it your photo gallery soundtrack.
Names of the artists have been withheld because callin’ them out on the internet would be wack. All photos by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKpwI4aRAzM
This dude’s head was bangin’ as he sprayed. We’re not sure how he managed to make it look so good.
This kid was super into it, which was hilarious.
A San Francisco robot takes down a Google Glass wearing tech-zilla.
Hazel Rose performed a bombastic set that the crowd, below, felt all sorts of love for.
Oakland got plenty of love too.
Xavier Schmidt, one of the event’s organizers, said this high schooler is a real up and comer in the graffiti scene.
Some of the art boards were for everyone to paint, leading to some dooby-ous results. (Get it? Ha!)
The name “Beach Boys” can refer to either of two bands. The first is the happy-go-lucky surf rock band that does songs about cars and California, led by the conservative Mike Love; the second is one of the most audacious and avant-garde bands of the psychedelic era, led by the mad Zen master Brian Wilson. Though most of the music-listening world knows them primarily as the former, the latter has proven far more influential, pushing the Beatles’ creativity to breaking point out of rivalry as well as serving as a major touchstone for the last decade or so of indie rock.
This latter influence, coinciding with Wilson’s 2004 solo revival of his aborted 1967 album Smile, has allowed the psychedelic Beach Boys to enjoy a greater cultural standing among a younger, hipper generation. Wilson’s reunion with Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks on 2008’s That Lucky Old Sun was much-hyped by the music press; their previous collaboration, 1995’s Orange Crate Art, was barely even noticed by critics or audiences. Audiences want another psychedelic masterwork from Brian Wilson. And I would be unsurprised if he made one — in fact, I would be surprised if he didn’t.
There’s no doubt he still has the capacity to make music every bit as beautiful and daring as the pocket symphonies that graced Pet Sounds and Smile. The Wilson-written suite that ends the 2012 Beach Boys album That’s Why God Made The Radio is nearly as good as the one that ended Surf’s Up more than 40 years prior. And the version of “Live Let Live” Wilson recorded for the post-March Of The Penguins cash-in An Arctic Tale contains some of the most gorgeous backing vocals I’ve heard on any song, Wilson-penned or otherwise.
Since the 2004 solo Smile, Brian’s released a Christmas album, two covers albums, and That Lucky Old Sun. The latter is the only true Wilson album among these, and its song-cycle structure and bursts of experimental caprice make it undoubtedly the progeny of Smile. But its flaws are common to many, if not most, latter-day albums by aging rock stars. His vocals haven’t aged well; the production is sterile; he makes a lot of ill-advised tributes to the music and culture of his childhood (sample line: “Every girl’s the next Marilyn/every guy Errol Flynn”). There’s a strong sense he’s pandering to the crowd who grew up on “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (or God help us, “Kokomo”), and he tempers his far-out tendencies accordingly.
But two events have happened since the release that should encourage Wilson to let his creative energy loose. The first is the 2011 release of The Smile Sessions, a collection of incomplete Smile takes that’s the closest we’ll likely ever get to hearing the finished album. The second is the release of That’s Why God Made The Radio, purportedly the final Beach Boys album and universally acclaimed for the Wilson songs but nothing else. Without the commitment of The Beach Boys, Wilson never needs to write another song about cars and girls again; if he does, it’s up to choice. His fanbase is shifting from older nostalgics to younger music nerds, and it would be advisable for him to target that audience.
Wilson’s currently working on his first new album since the release of The Smile Sessions. It appears to be a collaborative effort; Lana Del Rey, Kacey Musgraves, Zooey Deschanel, and Frank Ocean are all slated to appear on it. All of these artists but Musgraves are Los Angelenos, and Del Rey and Ocean explicitly tap into L.A. mythology in their music. The melancholy those latter two artists bring to their portrayal of the City of Angels is very much in line with the wistful nostalgia of Wilson’s best recent work.
They’re also artists more in line with the indie world — the world that eats up Wilson’s poignant Pet Sounds-era work and disavows anything with even the most casual reference to surfing. They’ve more likely signed on to work with the man who made those great Sixties albums. And if they end up having any influence beyond merely contributing vocals, they’ll likely skew the album in that direction. If not, it’s still promising that Wilson would choose to work with these artists in the first place. It would be his first attempt to market himself to a younger audience since he loaded up Love You with synths back in 1977. And so far, he’s looking in the right place.
The current incarnation of the Beach Boys (sans Wilson, Al Jardine, and David Marks) play the Mountain Winery on August 1. Wilson’s new album does not yet have a release date, but much of it is complete according to Rolling Stone.
THE WEEKNIGHTER There’s a series of photos of me at Mad Dog in the Fog (530 Haight St, SF. 415-626-7279) where I am an absolute monster. I’m dressed in a wretched, beer-stained Santa suit, I have Mickey Mouse ears on, and there’s also some kind of sparkly garland thing adorning my head. In most of the pictures I’m flipping off the camera and making ridiculous faces that usually include an Elvis type lip curl. I look unhinged. I look subhuman. Goddamn, I look like I’m having fun. It was SantaCon 2011.
One of the few things I remember about our pit stop at the Mad Dog was gurgling, “I didn’t know they had a backyard here!” as we stumbled out into it. Apparently they do have one. I feel like I may have found out where the bar’s name came from as well, but that was lost, just like my sense of personhood that day. There is nothing noble about being Oscar the Grouch-level trashed. The only thing you get out of it is a bunch of photos where you look like somebody Shrek wouldn’t even fuck.
Luckily for us, Mad Dog is used to having stark, raving lunatics, in colorful garb, wasted there in the middle of the day. In fact the Lower Haight pub just had a full month of it. Mad Dog in the Fog has long been a staple for any soccer fan in San Francisco. Whether it’s the World Cup or The English Premier League or even a Las Chivas game, Mad Dog lives and breathes soccer. The doors open at 7am every Saturday and Sunday, so people can come watch their favorite team shoot goals and take flops.
I was lucky that day in 2011 that Mad Dog doesn’t serve hard alcohol. I was in a state of saying “hell yes” to pretty much everything, and who knows what would’ve happened. This lack of hard alcohol is also a blessing to serious beer drinkers: It allows Mad Dog to serve more than 150 different kinds of beer from around the world, some of which are rare and hard to get.
In fact, Mad Dog is so supportive of your beer problem that it even lets you pour your own. Yes, you read that right. A few years ago the proprietors installed a TableTender, a system of two taps that stick out of the middle of a table. You and your pals then pour all the beer you’d like from said taps and a display keeps track of how much you drink. Afterwards you settle your tab with the bar staff. I’m pretty sure they were hiding the TableTender from me and my friends that day. I would’ve if I were them.
I’d like to say that after behaving like a Garbage Pail Kid at Mad Dog in the Fog I went home and slept it off, but that would be a lie. Just like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, I was a tenacious bastard and led my party of holiday revelers to a number of other bars after that. I eventually lost them all, of course, and ended up at a house party… I think. Honestly nothing else I did later that night exists because nobody, to my knowledge, took any more photos.
But to this day, every time I walk by Mad Dog in the Fog, even when there’s a line of 50 people waiting to get in to watch a sports game, I mutter to myself, “I didn’t know they had a backyard here!” and smile thinking about that weird day back in 2011.
Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com
THEATER If you were milling around the Asian Art Museum last Thursday evening, you might have seen a woman tumble — ever so slowly — down the Beaux-Arts building’s elegant flight of central stairs. Ringed by a crowd of onlookers and the second floor’s imposing colonnade, her limber form caressed the marble steps luxuriously as she cascaded beneath the elegant arched ceiling, entirely at her own pace, leaving behind her the unraveling, impossibly long train of her white and lavender gown.
Bystanders ruminated silently or chatted quietly, sipping cocktails, for the duration of Fauxnique’s 20-minute high-art pratfall, Beautility, as house music reverberated from DJ Hoku Mama Swamp’s station in the nearby lobby. Passing through the lobby, you would have seen mercurial artist Dia Dear offering free makeovers, while members of TopCoat Nail Art Studio applied lacquer to willing hands, in designs inspired by pieces in the museum’s current show, Gorgeous, built from the permanent collections of both the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Having at last landed on the first floor, in front of the shiny red and white speed demon parked there — German designer Hartmut Esslinger’s Prototype for Frog 750motorcycle (1985), from the SFMOMA collection — Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson) gathered up her enormous train and rushed up the stairs and out of sight.
Back in the lobby, you might also have caught sight of Nude Laughing, a peripatetic work by La Chica Boom (Xandra Ibarra), and followed the nude figure as she went by, dragging behind her a large nylon stocking filled with what appears to be hair and plastic breasts. You’d have ended up in an alcove on the first floor between several incongruent sculptures — including British artist Tracey Emin’s hot pink neon phrase-sculpture, Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again (1997); a voluptuous, powerful, and headless stone torso of a female deity from southern India (1400–1600); and American Dan Flavin’s horizontal row of fluorescent colored beams, untitled (in honor of Leo at the 50th anniversary of his gallery) (1987).
In the company of these disparate pieces, the performer slips inside the giant nylon pouch — a Marilyn Monroe wig over her dark hair and atop her painted face, fake furs and sundry toy boobs pressed against her brown body — as she stretches the sheer fabric enveloping her, writhing in coquettish spasms, emitting artificial squeals of pleasure. A puissant abstraction, seriously unsettling and completely mesmerizing in her vaguely menacing flirtation with her audience, the figure eventually sheds her gauzy cocoon and, with a confident stride, disappears down a hallway, leaving behind some flotsam of costume pearls, wigs, and fur.
Headlining this promiscuous night of performance making — part of the museum’s seasonal Thursday night programming, which also featured work from queer punk drag artist Phatima Rude and drag duo Mona G. Hawd and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE — was art-band collective Nicole Kidman Is Fucking Gorgeous (John Foster Cartwright, Maryam Rostami, and Mica Sigourney). At about 8pm, NKIFG took over the regal upstairs chamber with its show, Fuck Gorgeous, a 45-minute incantation, exultation, and rumination on the elusive properties of art, celebrity, fashion, and existence — Nicole Kidman, for short — by three Goth punks with microphones and boundless insouciance.
With enormous projections of full moons looming over a small stage, John, Mike, and Mary engaged in welcoming speeches, banter among themselves, victory laps with streamers, occasional howling, extended ferocious lip-synched roaring, and worshipful mouthing of one truly insipid Oscar acceptance speech. Sound rose and fell, a cacophony of noise gave way to mumbled quips, focus blurred and shifted, bodies went slack, writhed on the dance floor, or bounded around the room. At one point, Mike’s address from the podium slipped from a kind of self-actualization seminar into an outright stab at mass hypnosis as he charged us all to “be Nicole!”
Nicole Kidman, their vessel, “both everything and nothing,” was not quite an object and not quite a projection. Like the other performances enlivening the spaces of the museum and the strange harmony of the artworks on display, Fuck Gorgeous was deeply ambivalent but committed to being in-between, both a come-on and a refusal. *
Sometimes you read about an event so cool and artsy and smart that you have to say, “Hell to the yes, more of this please.”
It turns out Quince is closing for two months of renovations (July 25 to Sept. 19). In the meantime, the Quince folks will host a very chic series of pop-up dinners called curATE at Hedge Gallery (501 Pacific Ave., SF, www.hedgegallery.com), just across the street. You know it’s going to be cute, because Stanlee Gatti is producing the events. Every week (Wednesday through Saturday, July 30 through Aug. 30), there will be a different gallery installation by contemporary curators, and chef Michael Tusk will be making a five-course menu to accompany the theme. Guest programmers include Jeffrey Fraenkel, Anthony Meier, Jessica Silverman, John Berggruen, and Iwona Tenzing. The one I’m eyeballing: Jessica Silverman’s exhibition, titled “White Is the Warmest Color,” will be paired with an all-white menu. How can you say no?
Even if you can’t pony up for the dinner, you might opt for the gallery reception of wine and canapés 6:30pm–7:30pm ($50 per person, inclusive of tax and service charge). The gallery reception and five-course tasting menu is $199 per person, inclusive of tax and service charge. Wine pairings will be offered ($110, including tax and tip), along with select items from the bar and access to the full Quince wine cellar. Going solo? There will be a communal table. Or you can purchase an individual table (with seating for up to 10 guests). Tickets and more info at www.sfcurate.com.
DATE NIGHT
Looking for a good spot for a date night? Head on up to Russian Hill to visit two places that are practically built for a date (and the neighborhood is a fun one to walk through after dinner).
If you’re a fan of handmade pasta, you’ll want to reserve a table at Seven Hills (1550 Hyde St., SF. www.sevenhillssf.com), which has a new-ish chef who came on at the end of last year, Anthony Florian, whose résumé includes Quince, Cotogna, and most recently, Pizzalina. Florian brings an update to the popular raviolo with an egg inside, plus a hearty bowl of pappardelle with braised lamb sugo. And then there’s the fusilli neri (black from squid ink) with tender cuttlefish, tomato, chile, and bread crumbs. The owner is very passionate about wine and happy to make some pairings. Cin cin.
Another great spot to couple up along Hyde Street: Stones Throw (1896 Hyde St., SF. www.stonesthrowsf.com), which opened last November, and is really hitting its stride. Chef Jason Halverson offers a menu of Cal-American dishes with a strong seasonal bent, and lots of tableside flourishes.
Start with the pork belly and peaches (and crispy pig ears!), and the squid ink conchiglie pasta is a spicy hit. The dish I can’t stop thinking about is the grilled octopus “okonomiyaki,” a Japanese-inspired pancake, with bacon dashi, spicy turnips, and marinated mushrooms. Don’t miss it. Stones Throw may only have a beer and wine license, but there are some clever low-alcohol cocktails and some quality beers that will get your attention. Ditto the wine list: You’ll find unique, ever-rotating selections. The vibe here is a bit more urban and fun, so it would be great for date number one or two. (Even if you’re on your own, come in for a warm bite at the bar and a glass or two of something good).
Marcia Gagliardi is the founder of the weekly tablehopper e-column; subscribe for more at www.tablehopper.com. Get her app: Tablehopper’s Top Late-Night Eats. On Twitter: @tablehopper.
Auburn, Ala.’s Man or Astro-Man? has spent decades perfecting their sprawling surf-rock. Incredibly imaginative and extremely prolific, the group has recorded and toured tirelessly since early 1990s. Drawing diverse influences from the likes of Dick Dale and Link Wray, punk and new wave, and science fiction and a fascination with space and extraterrestrial life, Man or Astro-Man? take surf rock in directions and galaxies previously uncharted. Largely instrumental and entirely captivating, the band’s nine-album catalog is a musically-stunning journey through sound and space. Known for their high-energy live sets, often performed in space-suits complete with astronaut helmets with intricate sci-fi set pieces, musicians Star Crunch and Birdstuff will shred their way into your hearts. (Haley Zaremba)
The cooler-than-thou French monologue on UK band Cymbals’s single “The End” might have you in the dark, but the intro’s melancholy melody should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent too many hours in a club. The faint, ringing tone stuck in ear the next day (or week), bringing back memories: “It’s the end of the night, you’ve been dancing too much. They’ve got to turn on the lights.” Smartly placed on a stellar album (The Age of Fracture) of arty synth-pop that’s in line with Metronomy, Passion Pit, and David Byrne, it’s a reminder that, for better or worse, some things don’t last as long as you want. (Ryan Prendiville)
Once a high school theater kid, always a high school theater kid. After receiving their hard-earned diplomas from San Francisco’s School of the Arts, some of the city’s most talented teens realized they couldn’t abandon the pool of talent at the school. So instead of embracing the idea of a deadbeat summer before college, the members created their own production company. Their conception of Spring Awakening is financed through an online fundraiser they created, and is completely driven by efforts from School of the Arts family members. Support up-and-coming youth theater while wondering why you couldn’t be as cool as them when you were 18. (Amy Char)
With a decade of distinguished work behind the company, RAWdance has every reason to celebrate. Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein collaborations draw you in with the integrity of a highly structural approach that yet yields works that resonate emotionally. Their newest piece seems tailor-made to the kind of intelligence that they bring to their work. Turing’s Apple explores both the genius of the British scientist Alan Turing and his tragedy when he came out as a gay man. It will be joined by the final version of Burns that the choreographers describe as Rorschach-test driven, and film-noir inspired. RAWdance will be joined by a guest artists Gretchen Garnett + Dancers in a trio, and a grief-exploring sextet, Nawala (“Lost”) by Tany Bello’s Project B. (Rita Felciano)
This Must Be the Place: The End of the Underground 1991- 2012
Named for an excellent Talking Heads song, This Must Be the Place is an annual summer celebration of rock docs, exploring the birth, life, death, and (depending on whom you ask) near-constant rebirth of punk rock through iconic moments captured on film. This third installment, curator Mike Keegan has announced, will sadly be the Roxie’s last, so get to it. Friday’s ’90s-tastic triple bill sounds too fun to miss, with 1991: The Year Punk Broke (featuring live performances from Sonic Youth and their then-opener, Nirvana), Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies (featuring the never sober, always charming GG Allin, who was dead before the film finished shooting), and What’s Up, Matador? (featuring three-minute bursts of rarely seen excellence from labelmates Guided By Voices, Pavement, Yo La Tengo and more). Don’t forget your flannel. (Emma Silvers)
Cursed with the personality of an ogre if you skip your morning coffee? Once you’ve gotten a head start on your caffeine fix Saturday morning, head over to this art gallery — for one day only, it houses an interactive latte art exhibit (arguably just as creatively esteemed as postmodern paintings). The coffee festival features a plethora of other hands-on lessons, including one titled “How to Review Coffee,” and unlimited coffee samples, so you can sound like a pretentious — but educated — coffee snob while you pine over an obscure roast when you’re with your friends at Starbucks. Local bands perform live to simulate a hipster coffeehouse vibe. (Amy Char)
The spike in blues-rock appreciation that came with The Black Keys and their various contemporaries may be losing its luster — the Keys’ newest LP, Turn Blue, hardly lived up to their previous releases. But Fritz Montana shows that the blues are alive and well in San Francisco. A blistering three-piece band fronted by high-octane vocalist and guitarist David Marshall, won Live 105’s local band contest last October, which led to them opening for Kings of Leon, Queens of the Stone Age, and Vampire Weekend at the station’s Not So Silent Night. Fritz Montana’s first album, Scaredy Cat, is ready to drop, and the group has chosen the Rickshaw Stop as the spot for their release party. The group will play their new release, along with their celebrated 2013 EPs, and sell copies of their debut full-length hot off the presses. Fritz Montana may not be reinventing the wheel, but the band’s songs pulse with an energy and technical grace that bodes very well for their dreams of airwave domination. (David Kurlander)
One of the biggest surprises in Dave Grohl’s 2013 doc Sound City — about the legendary SoCal recording studio where Nirvana’s Nevermind and other iconic works were recorded — was the inclusion of 1980s hunk Rick Springfield, the General Hospital star turned pop singer. Turns out he recorded the 1981 album Working Class Dog there, thus gifting the world with Grammy-winning radio jam “Jessie’s Girl.” Springfield’s kept busy since his teen-dream days; aside from offering up Sound City memories, he wrote a memoir (2010’s Late, Late at Night) and now, a novel: Magnificent Vibration, about a curious man’s unconventional spiritual journey. Book Passage touts his appearance as “featuring a live musical performance,” so get those lighters ready. (Cheryl Eddy)
Waffle Opera, founded by a group of young local singers in 2012, has altered the glitzy opera house aesthetic using an unexpected prop: succulent, syrup-covered Belgian waffles. The company, which serves the treats after each of its shows, embraces a remarkably unpretentious approach to legendary works, using minimalistic sets and small houses to bring out the lyrical and musical subtlety of centuries-old classics. The group is presenting a concert version of Cosi fan tutte, the 1789 Mozart opera whose title translates roughly to “Women are like that.” An uproarious comedy about two Neapolitan officers who don disguises and try to woo each others’ fiancées to prove the inconstency of female affection. While still a archaic by the standards of contemporary gender politics, the women (spoiler alert) are presented as smart and capable; they quickly pick up their lovers’ plot, leading to a madcap phantasmagoria of mistaken identities and partially-broken hearts. Waffle’s semi-staged version highlights the soaring arias, clever quips, and intricate plot of Mozart’s funniest work. (Kurlander)
In my mind, Phoenix’s Andrew Jackson Jihad is both the quintessential and the essential folk-punk band. With bitingly clever lyrics that toe the line between hilarious and heartbreaking, an unflinching confrontation of social justice issues and a willingness to examine and sing about their own privilege, Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty have created some of the most important and tenderly earnest albums in the folk-punk canon. The band’s unsteady, cracking vocals and mediocre musicianship lend a charming naivete, emotional sincerity, and accessibility to their music. The band’s frenetic energy and the fierce dedication of their fan-base make Andrew Jackson Jihad’s live shows a powerful experience. (Zaremba)
Wolfmother came roaring out of Australia in the mid-aughts with its self-titled debut, which went five times platinum in the band’s home country and did well enough abroad to secure them a position as one of the Anglophone world’s most formidable touring acts. Combining a shameless love for ’70s hard rock (Led Zeppelin in particular) with the sharp hooks of stoner rock, the trio struck a chord with both the classic-rock and alt-rock crowds, and just about any guitarist born in the mid-’90s can likely remember learning one of their songs early on. Though the band only records sparsely, Wolfmother has remained a regular on the international touring and festival scene — a position that this year’s New Crown should secure. (Bromfield)
Hundred Waters are signed to Skrillex’s OWSLA label, but don’t expect big bass drops from this Florida crew. Rather, they trade in a “digital folk” style that offers an intriguing rural perspective to the retro-futuristic conversation currently taking place in underground electronic circles. Birds chirp in unison with drum machines; Blade Runner synths support Tolkienesque fantasias. At the front of it all is Nicole Miglis, a one-woman choir whose voice seems as perpetually omnipresent as the sun and the sky. Though this year’s The Moon Rang Like A Bell suggests pop ambitions lurking beneath their idiosyncratic exterior, the band is still one of the most unique and fascinating bands in the electronic universe — as well as one of the few that can truly claim to sound like nothing else. (Bromfield)
