Bay Guardian Archives Archives — Page 62 of 1098 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Watch: Lia Rose’s “Trainwreck Tuesday”

Steven T. Jones

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February 11, 2014

“You ever been in that place where you really want to be in love, deep down you know you deserve love, but some part of you manages to mess every good thing up?” That’s what SF indie-folk songstress Lia Rose says when asked what inspired the song “Trainwreck Tuesday.” (Answer: Duh.) “So, that’s where I was at when I wrote that song.”

Rose is one of those rare, lucky songwriters who can sing about dark places in a jaunty way without it seeming forced, thanks in no small part to the singularly sweet, lilting clarity of her voice — she always sounds like she’s been there, and she can report that it’s all going to be OK. Her live shows don’t disappoint, but you also kind of just wish she were your summer camp counselor that year you got poison oak.

In honor of Tuesday, which has been scientifically proven to be most miserable day of the week, check out her new video for the track, which was shot in her hometown of Long Beach, featuring Mike Wolf on the guitar and Kyle Caprista (the Joel Streeter Band, Megan Slankard, others) on the drums.

If you want to catch Rose’s next show, it’s a super-intimate March 6 living room gig that will be streamed online. Happy Tuesday, kids.

Sole-searching: get to know local shoe designers Freda Salvador

Sue Vaughan

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February 11, 2014

2

Freda is mysterious and anonymous.

She walks the hills of San Francisco with purpose. Her style is classic, a bit androgynous, with flair for edginess. She’s always up for new adventures. She marches to the beat of her own drum. She’s fashion-forward but she values comfort, veering away from the misconception that beauty is pain. She loves rock ‘n’ roll. She’s a San Francisco chick through and through.

Freda Salvador is the creation of San Francisco residents Cristina Palomo-Nelson and Megan Papay. Combining their mutual obsession for Frida Kalho (“more like her badass persona than her folkloric art”) and Palomo-Nelson’s El Salvadorian origins, the duo created footwear brand Freda Salvador. They launched the company two years ago with the intention of bringing contemporary artisan shoes to Bay Area Fredas.

“We wanted to create a fictional character that’s bigger than us,” explains Palomo-Nelson in the company’s Union Street design studio and flagship store.

The Freda Salvador store is a combination of the pair’s personal styles: Palomo-Nelson sticks to the classics with an edge, wearing an oversized blazer, a simple white blouse, ripped jeans and the line’s popular black “Star” Jodhpur ankle boots. She comes from a shoe-making family in Central America; her studies in fashion and footwear design brought her to Milan and then San Francisco, where she’s lived for 13 years.

Her blonde counterpart, Papay, veers toward a simple bohemian look with paint-stained jeans, a boxy sweater, a chunky statement necklace, and her favorite “Roam” lace-up combat boots with studded welt. Papay hails from the East Coast, via Delaware, Virginia, and New York City, where she began her fashion career in celebrity styling for Calvin Klein, then at top fashion public relations firms. Her husband’s job moved her to San Francisco, where she began working at a comfort footwear company. The soft-spoken designers met there, working together for a year.

“The chemistry was really great,” says Papay. “Our desire to create the same aesthetic of shoe was there so we decided to do our own thing and launch Freda.”

With Palomo-Nelson’s background in footwear construction and Papay’s experience in fashion trends, the footwear brand has become a household name in the industry. Seen on the heels of fashion bloggers, in magazine editorials, and on fashion must-have lists, Freda shoes balance high fashion aesthetics with no-fuss comfort.

“A big source of our inspiration comes from men’s shoes,” says Palomo-Nelson. “Easy, classic, concentration on lines and materials.”

“And wearable details,” adds Papay. “In ladies’ fashion, the details are a little bit bizarre to the point where they’re not wearable or understandable. In men’s shoes the flair is always wearable because no boy is going to sacrifice anything for style.”

The designers prefer to stick to classic shapes like Jodhpur boots, oxfords, and loafers and incorporate some sort of edgy detail: removable bracelets and harnesses, mixed leathers, haircalf accents, and studded soles.

With San Francisco consumers in mind, the designs rely heavily on comfort. Each shoe is entirely made of leather with padded footbeds. “They’re made to be put on at 7 o’clock in the morning and taken off at 11 o’clock at night,” says Papay. “Our shoes are perfect for the city, walkable and urban.”

The beauty of the shoes also lies in the craftsmanship. Palomo-Nelson and Papay travel to Italy twice a year to pick out leathers for the next season. They then design the shoes in San Francisco based on trend watching and trips to New York Fashion Week. After that, they travel to Spain for production. The shoes are handmade in a small family-run factory in Elda, Spain.

“We truly are blessed. We live in one of the best cities in the world. We travel to New York for shows all the time and then Italy and Spain for our production,” says Palomo-Nelson.

The San Francisco flagship store is the company’s only retail location and doubles as the pair’s design studio. With wood paneling and staircase, the store mixes a rustic, comfort atmosphere with modern simplicity. The shoes are aligned on metal shelves and vintage bookcases in the first room. A small Dia de los Muertos-inspired shrine to Frida Khalo sits on a shelf in the corner. On the walls of the second room are framed old black and white photos. In the third room — the design studio — a giant mood board with color swatches, fashion editorials and a large painting of Frida Kahlo hangs above a large wooden table.

“It was in our five year plan,” says Palomo-Nelson about setting up a retail location. “But I think it’s the best thing we could have done. We really built a presence and a brand point with our physical location where people can experience not just the shoes but also the aesthetic of who we are and our designs.”

At the store, the designers will occasionally get phone calls asking for Freda. They also sell T-shirts with the question “Who is Freda Salvador” printed. But there is no answer: This mysterious woman was created so that women could build their own idea of Freda based on their personal style and inspirations.

“We’re like, ‘No, there actually is no Freda,’” says Papay. “But it’s good. It’s meant to be that way.”

Leno introduces bill to bolster City College funding, draws fire to Special Trustee

Erica Hanna

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February 10, 2014

27

Leno introduces bill to bolster City College funding, draws fire to Special Trustee

First City College of San Francisco’s accreditation was provisionally revoked, then students left in droves. Teachers soon started leaving too. Two interim chancellors were hired, then left.

Through it all, many thought, “won’t someone cut the school a break?” Now someone significant is trying to.

State Sen. Mark Leno today [Mon/10] announced a bill that would provide extra cash for City College as it struggles to maintain its accreditation, which is critical considering state funding is tied to student enrollment.

“The bill has an urgency clause, because we can’t wait for January of next year for it to take effect,” Leno said at the press conference, flanked by Mayor Ed Lee, City College Chancellor Art Tyler, and a bevy of city college officials.

When news of City College’s potential closure hit, the school’s enrollment dropped like a brick in water. Enrollment is 16 percent lower than last spring, translating to a $23-26 million drop in funding for the next school year. Further years would mean an “extraordinary amount of income” lost at the college, Chancellor Art Tyler told media at a press conference today.

“City College needs to be there to sustain the workforce of San Francisco,” Tyler said. This year’s funding shortfall will be covered by the one year of stabilization provided by law right now. Leno’s bill would extend this stabilization fund to four years, ending in the 2017-2018 school year.

“It’s going to take time for the students to have confidence to come back to school,” Tyler told the media. This funding will slow a hemorrhaging of classes that already is taking place. As students left the school, City College decided to cut classes, a controversial move we covered just last week.

Worse still, like Compton College’s closure in 2005, the data shows that students aren’t necessarily opting to go to other colleges. They’re simply leaving school altogether.

“They’re not going anywhere, they’re sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what happens to us,” Tyler said.

The bill isn’t all roses, however. Controversial language in the bill would tie the stabilization funds to the school having a state-appointed trustee. The state community college chancellor appointed Bob Agrella to be City College’s “special trustee,” who replaced the college’s duly elected board to right the ship and save the school.

He makes decisions with no public meetings, no public input, with consensus an afterthought rather than a necessity. The state chancellor’s office thinks he is necessary to save the college.

But so far his decisions have been controversial within the City College community. He maintained a fiscal relationship with Wells Fargo despite the board’s vote drop them as their bank, and he also cancelled the construction of a new arts building tied to voter approved bond funds.

The latest controversy is what City College teachers are now calling “salary-gate,” where it was revealed administrators were hired at higher salaries than the school had previously approved.

“Look at what happened under his watch. We have the scandal of the administrator pay scales after he made the faculty take a 4 percent pay cut,” said Wendy Kaufman, an engineering instructor at City College and leader in the protest organization Save CCSF. She’s referring to Agrella’s hard bargaining with the teacher’s union, resulting in their salaries dropping to their lowest levels since 2007.

Suffice to say, Special Trustee Bob Agrella is not a popular guy in all sectors of the school right now.

Leno said he would remove language tying funding to the special trustee, but it was submitted on Friday and it has not been removed yet. The Guardian asked him why the language was included in the first place.

“Given as my name is on the front bill as its author I have to take full responsibility for the special trustee being in the bill right now,” he said. “The reason I believe and my sponsor believes it doesn’t belong in the bill because it would attract all the questions like you asked. This is not about the special trustee.”

The change was ushered in over the weekend after pressure from the San Francisco Labor Council and City College’s teacher union, the AFT 2121.

“Not everyone agrees with the state chancellor’s office that it’s appropriate to have a special trustee for the next four years,” Alisa Messer, president of the AFT 2121, told the Guardian. “With the trampling over of the democratically board of trustees, we all agreed it shouldn’t muddy the waters of a consensus measure.”

Sup. David Campos is proposing a resolution at the Board of Supervisors meeting tomorrow to call for the restoration of the Board of Trustees, and the removal of the special trustee, by July 2014.

“I can’t answer that now,” #CCSF Chancellor Art Tyler ducks this question: When will city college get its board back? pic.twitter.com/2HpwIgQ2TY

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 10, 2014

Still, amid the controversy around Agrella, this is a win for City College. More funding means classes saved from cancellation, and more opportunity for students.

“We continue to make progress and work hard, but without the stabilization funding we face a financial cliff,” Agrella said. The bill, SB 965, will be heard in policy committee meetings this spring. As an emergency measure it requires two thirds approval to pass.

The college’s new chancellor, Art Tyler, put a point on one message that seems to get lost in media coverage of the schools’ woes.

“City College is still open and still accredited,” he said. “It’s not too big to fail, it’s too important to fail.”

A radical proposal: Squat Airbnb hosts’ homes to create affordable housing

Sasha Cuttler

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February 10, 2014

139

A radical proposal: Squat Airbnb hosts’ homes to create affordable housing

When I interviewed attorney Joseph Tobener for the story in our current issue on Airbnb being used to take affordable housing units off of the apartment market, he had a interestingly radical idea for get the attention of this scofflaw company and its political supporters, striking a blow for housing justice in the process.

What if hundreds of people, including many who are now homeless, rented out apartments in San Francisco for a night or two and then simply refused to leave?

Under tenant laws in San Francisco, renters have rights from the very beginning, and legally getting rid of someone who paid for just one night through Airbnb could require a long, difficult, and costly eviction process. Hundreds at once would overwhelm the courts and the deputies who carry out evictions for the Sheriff’s Department.

“That tenancy on day one law to me as a radical seems like a great way to address homelessness,” said Tobener, who got a call for advice from a doctor who sometimes hosts guests through Airbnb and faced that precise problem.

He isn’t the only one, as we at the Guardian learned and reported last summer, when San Francisco Rent Board spokesperson Robert Collins confirmed Tobener’s interpretation of the law and said the agency has already seen several such cases.

As I wrote in “Into Thin Air” on Aug. 6, “Tenants who rent out their apartments for a few days can even lose their rights to reclaim their homes. Collins cited multiple cases where subletters refused to leave and returning tenants had little legal recourse because ‘they would not have a just cause to evict the subtenant because, if they’ve rented the entire unit, they aren’t themselves a resident in the unit.’”

Even in cases where landlords rent out units they own, San Francisco’s 1979 rent control ordinance gives tenants rights to due process from the very beginning, making it difficult to get rid of Airbnb guests who decide to become squatters.

Sure, such a radical response to Airbnb’s impacts on the city may be breaking a few rules and hurting the credit records of those involved — but is that really any worse than the whole host of laws that Airbnb and its customers are violating in San Francisco everyday? It’s at least interesting food for thought.

UPDATE 2/11: Just to clarify, Tobener isn’t actually advocating or organizing a campaign to squat in Airbnb apartments. This idea was, as I wrote, “food for thought,” something to ponder, a little thought experiment as we try to address Airbnb’s illegal business model and the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Sundance, part eight: a quickie, for Leos Carax lovers

Sue Vaughan

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February 10, 2014

1

Sundance, part eight: a quickie, for Leos Carax lovers

Tessa Louise-Salame’s ode to France’s punk-rock filmmaker Mr. leos caraX (France), or simply Mr. X, traces his 30 year career while also showcasing Denis Lavant, who stars in all five of his feature films.

Carax seems to have affected more than a few around the world, most recently with his surreal romanticism in Holy Motors (2012).

This artful documentary will inspire you to head straight to your queue and add Mauvais Sang (1986),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA3Xu7Jdyc4

Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4R56VQDkqw

and Pola X (1999).

Live Shots: Lucius sells out the Independent on a rainy Friday

Steven T. Jones

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February 10, 2014

0

Live Shots: Lucius sells out the Independent on a rainy Friday

by Avi Vinocur

1:53am. Just got home.

Ok so listen. Tonight I saw this band at the Independent. Two girls. Super cute. All hip in matching red dresses. They sang together like they were related. Don’t think they were though.

The shorter one was totally flirting with the drummer. Bet they’re dating. Or worse: Married.

My buddy in New York has raved about them for years. And then I saw the Shook Twins cover their song at Cafe Du Nord a few months back. “This is a Lucius song,” they said. All of that means they must be legit, I thought. Definitely were. Holy schnikes the songs. Not to mention their guitar player crowdsurfed.

Apparently the girls in the band (Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig) met where most young confused musicians meet on the East Coast: Berklee in Boston. But then they fled the frigid northland for warm tropical Brooklyn, New York where they are now based. To give you an idea: they both stand facing each other in the middle of the stage, dwarfed and mirrored by their new but quickly iconic backdrop, playing a smattering of keyboards and tom drums. They have three dudes backing them up (Peter Lallish, Dan Molad and Andrew Burri) on two guitars and a strange but advanced kick-drumless drum set.

They encored the show by going in the middle of the crowd around one mic and singing two songs — like all singers should be able to do (but most can’t). “Two of Us on the Run” was a fantastic one. I’ll play that later tonight on the record I bought. Reminds me I need to move my record player from the living room into my bedroom. For that song.

The opening band was better than great. Seriously. They were called You Won’t. I bet they’ll headline this place in their own right in like three months. They came out in wigs dressed like Lucius. Brilliant. Who does stuff like that these days. A few songs in the singer goes, “You guys smell great…hint of lavender here, whiff of thyme there. I like a tidy cohort and San Francisco, you’ve really delivered.” Sold.

Raky Sastri and Josh Arnoudse are it. Just two guys. I could see them as supporting characters in a college movie with Tom Green. On stage, the pair aren’t beholden to specific instruments but they tend toward drums and a Telecaster respectively. But they also tickled and blew a harmonium, harmonica, and musical saw as well as other stuff I’ve never seen. They are self-described “Massholes,” which is both a testament to their sense of humor and a great way to figure out where they are from: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

They covered some familiar songs — “Two of Us” and also “Can’t Help Falling in Love” sung through some sort of car hose or pool toy. It was awesome. Their originals were the best part though. “Television” and “Who Knew” are on their record. And then they did some new stuff that I didn’t recognize from the album I legally downloaded. But I liked it all a lot.

Long story short, Lucius and You Won’t were both phenomenal, drew a sold-out crowd of outlandishly attractive girls, and are the reason I accidentally had a couple more beers than I planned to. Otherwise I’d be in bed by now, sad and songless.

I have work in the morning I think.

Advocates for higher minimum wage celebrate past success and look ahead

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 7, 2014

56

Advocates for higher minimum wage celebrate past success and look ahead

Balloons, snacks, cake, live music, an open wine bar and nearly 100 guests marked a Thu/6 celebration at the Women’s Building in San Francisco’s Mission district. You might never guess a party this fun would be held to celebrate the birthday of a city ordinance.

February marks the 10-year anniversary of San Francisco’s minimum wage ordinance, passed by voters in 2003 with Proposition L. The landmark initiative not only raised the minimum wage in San Francisco to $8.50 per hour, but stipulated that the amount would rise every year to reflect inflation. Thanks to Prop. L, San Francisco now boasts the highest minimum wage in the nation, at $10.74.

But being the nation’s highest still isn’t enough.

“Who thinks living in San Francisco is really expensive?” asked one of the event organizers and staff member of the Chinese Progressive Association, Shaw San Liu. All hands in the room shot up before the Spanish and Mandarin translators even had a chance to repeat the question.

Raising the minimum wage in San Francisco has been a hot topic recently, and Mayor Ed Lee even endorsed a significant increase back in December. The number that keeps floating around is $15 per hour, but nothing has been set in stone.

In addition to celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the minimum wage ordinance, Thursday’s event was also the official launch of the Campaign for a Fair Economy, a push to support the city’s lowest-paid workers and close the ever-growing wealth gap.

Raising the minimum wage is only part of the campaign, and advocates are also fighting for accountability from large chain businesses, stricter enforcement of existing labor standards, and expanding access to jobs for disadvantaged workers.

“San Francisco has led the way for employment policies in the past,” said Kung Feng, lead organizer for Jobs With Justice, a group that fights for workers’ rights. “We need to continue that.”

To say that San Francisco is leading the way is no understatement. In addition to having the highest minimum wage in the country, SF was also the first place in the U.S. to mandate paid sick leave, and the Health Care Security Ordinance works to guarantee medical benefits for all workers in the city.

Despite San Francisco’s long legacy of championing workers’ rights, there is still a tough battle ahead. Currently, minimum wage in the city automatically goes up every year to match inflation (on Jan. 1, 2014, it rose from $10.55 to $10.74). Any further increase requires voter approval.

While it seems a higher minimum wage does have strong support and has already been endorsed by major political figures, there’s still a powerful lobby against it from some businesses and restaurant associations. Despite the upcoming battle, advocates seemed optimistic.

“Who in here can tell me the significance of the Year of the Horse?” Liu of CPA asked the audience, referring to the ongoing Lunar New Year. A small woman sitting in the front row excitedly responded, “Maa dou gung sing!”

“Success comes in the horse year,” Liu explained. “And this will be a year of success and accomplishments for workers rights in San Francisco.”

Google ferry’s last ride is today

Erica Hanna

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February 7, 2014

13

The Google-hired ferries skimming Bay Area waves are coming to the end of their pilot period, with their last scheduled rides running today, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Amidst the ire of San Francisco protesters fuming over Google buses, the company opted to experiment with alternatives to the buses: ferries. Two ferries from San Francisco and one from Alameda scooped up Google employees day by day for the month of January.

A Google spokesperson confirmed with the Bay Guardian that the pilot was ending. A source close to Google confirmed that they would “evaluate the results and viability of ferries as a more permanent solution.”

No word from the protesters yet on if they’d block Google ferries via kayak, rowboat, or sloop.

For the full story, check out the Contra Costa Times piece, here.

Sundance, part seven: What is a BABADOOK?

Sue Vaughan

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February 7, 2014

0

Sundance, part seven: What is a BABADOOK?

A quick tip for today’s entry: make sure not to miss Jennifer Kent’s hair-raising, toe-squinching, and all-around terrifying Australian horror film, The Babadook.

The first screening for the midnight crowd at Park City’s Egyptian Theatre had people shrieking and gasping throughout. Kent’s psychological terror film is steeped in silent-era imagery; she was clearly inspired by films like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Tod Browning’s lost masterpiece London After Midnight (1927).

Star Essie Davis’ performance is downright hypnotic. She plays a single mom doing what she can to protect her little boy — no thanks to the film’s sound design, which offers a masterful blend that ranges from nuanced manipulation to bone-shattering shocks. (I’m betting that upon multiple viewings, the soundtrack will prove even more disturbing due to Kent’s methodical madness.)

What’s all the more exciting about this low-budget creepfest is Kent’s insistence on using stop-motion special effects instead of CGI. In a post-film Q&A, she mentioned 1920s German animator Lotte Reiniger, whose pioneering “cutout” animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is the oldest surviving animated feature in the world. (Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs didn’t come out until 1937.)

The results are immensely refreshing and quite thought-provoking — in fact, I got into a few lively discussions (ok, arguments) with some other critics who were confused by some of the film’s philosophical choices. I think that’s exactly how IFC Midnight Distribution is hoping audiences will react, since they picked up the US theatrical rights halfway through the festival. Boo yeah!

New movies: Clooney, vampires, stellar imports, and more!

Sue Vaughan

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February 7, 2014

0

New movies: Clooney, vampires, stellar imports, and more!

This week’s big release, George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, is a dud. So what else should you see instead? Options include a pair of well-received foreign imports (Gloria and Stranger by the Lake), as well as a tribute to a 1980s comedy classic courtesy of SF Sketchfest. Read on!

Gloria The titular figure in Sebastian Lelio’s film is a Santiago divorcee and white collar worker (Paulina Garcia) pushing 60, living alone in a condo apartment — well, almost alone, since like Inside Llewyn Davis, this movie involves the frequent, unwanted company of somebody else’s cat. (That somebody is an upstairs neighbor whose solo wailings against cruel fate disturb her sleep.) Her two children are grown up and preoccupied with their adult lives. Not quite ready for the glue factory yet, Gloria often goes to a disco for the “older crowd,” dancing by herself if she has to, but still hoping for some romantic prospects. She gets them in the form of Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), who’s more recently divorced but gratifyingly infatuated with her. Unfortunately, he’s also let his daughters and ex-wife remain ominously dependent on him, not just financially but in every emotional crisis that affects their apparently crisis-filled lives. The extent to which Gloria lets him into her life is not reciprocated, and she becomes increasingly aware how distant her second-place priority status is whenever Rodolfo’s other loved ones snap their fingers. There’s not a lot of plot but plenty of incident and insight to this character study, a portrait of a “spinster” that neither slathers on the sentimental uplift or piles on melodramatic victimizations. Instead, Gloria is memorably, satisfyingly just right. (1:50) (Dennis Harvey)

The Lego Movie The toy becomes a movie. Fun fact: Nick Offerman gives voice to a character named “Metalbeard,” a revenge-seeking pirate. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice. (1:41)

The Monuments Men The phrase “never judge a book by its cover” goes both ways. On paper, The Monuments Men — inspired by the men who recovered art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and directed by George Clooney, who co-wrote and stars alongside a sparkling ensemble cast (Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh “Earl of Grantham” Bonneville, and Bill Fucking Murray) — rules. Onscreen, not so much. After they’re recruited to join the cause, the characters fan out across France and Germany following various leads, a structural choice that results in the film’s number one problem: it can’t settle on a tone. Men can’t decide if it wants to be a sentimental war movie (as in an overlong sequence in which Murray’s character weeps at the sound of his daughter’s recorded voice singing “White Christmas”); a tragic war movie (some of those marquee names die, y’all); a suspenseful war movie (as the men sneak into dangerous territory with Michelangelo on their minds); or a slapstick war comedy (look out for that land mine!) The only consistent element is that the villains are all one-note — and didn’t Inglourious Basterds (2009) teach us that nothing elevates a 21st century-made World War II flick like an eccentric bad guy? There’s one perfectly executed scene, when reluctant partners Balaban and Murray discover a trove of priceless paintings hidden in plain sight. One scene, out of a two-hour movie, that really works. The rest is a stitched-together pile of earnest intentions that suggests a complete lack of coherent vision. Still love you, Clooney, but you can do better — and this incredible true story deserved way better. (1:58) (Cheryl Eddy)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Documentary” This year, the Oscar-nominated docs are presented in two separate feature-length programs. Program A contains The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, about a Holocaust survivor; Karama Has No Walls, about protestors in Yemen during the Arab Spring; and Facing Fear, about a gay man who encounters the neo-Nazi who terrorized him 25 years prior. Program B contains Cavedigger, about environmental sculptor Ra Paulette; and Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, about a dying prisoner being cared for by other prisoners.

Stranger by the Lake Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is an attractive young French guy spending his summer days hanging at the local gay beach, where he strikes up a platonic friendship with chunky older loner Henri (Patrick d’Assumcao). Still, the latter is obviously hurt when Franck practically gets whiplash neck swiveling at the sight of Michel (Christophe Paou), an old-school gay fantasy figure — think Sam Elliott in 1976’s Lifeguard, complete with Marlboro Man ‘stache and twinkling baby blues. No one else seems to be paying attention when Franck sees his lust object frolicking in the surf with an apparent boyfriend, one that doesn’t surface again after some playful “dunking” gets rather less playful. Eventually the police come around in the form of Inspector Damroder (Jerome Chappatte), but Franck stays mum — he isn’t sure what exactly he saw. Or maybe it’s that he’s quite sure he’s happy how things turned out, now that sex-on-wheels Michel is his sorta kinda boyfriend. You have to suspend considerable disbelief to accept that our protagonist would risk potentially serious danger for what seems pretty much a glorified fuck-buddy situation. But Alain Guiraudie’s meticulously schematic thriller- which limits all action to the terrain between parking lot and shore, keeping us almost wholly ignorant of the characters’ regular lives — repays that leap with an absorbing, ingenious structural rigor. Stranger is Hitchcockian, all right, even if the “Master of Suspense” might applaud its technique while blushing at its blunt homoeroticism. (1:37) (Dennis Harvey)

Top Secret! After the sleeper smash of 1980’s Airplane! (and the TV failure of 1982’s Police Squad! series, which nonetheless led directly to the later, successful Naked Gun movies), the Madison, Wisc.-spawned comedy trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker had one more exclamation point up their collective sleeves. That resulted in this hit 1984 parody of Cold War spy movies (and Elvis Presley musicals) starring Val Kilmer (in his perpetually open-mouthed film debut) as hip-swiveling American rock star Nick Rivers, who is dispatched to East Germany on a diplomatic entertainment mission. Instead, he gets yanked into major intrigue that includes kidnapped scientists, Omar Sharif, an elaborate Blue Lagoon (1980) spoof, and of course extremely realistic cow disguises. It also features this immortal exchange between Nazi-Commies, as they’re torturing captured Nick: “Do you vant me to bring out ze LeRoy Neiman paintings?” “No — ve cannot risk violating ze Geneva Convention!” Herrs Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker will reunite on the Castro stage to screen and discuss their incisive political classic as it enters its fourth decade of cultdom. The 30th anniversary afternoon program Sat/8 is co-presented by SF Sketchfest (www.sfsketchfest.com), Midnites for Maniacs, Noise Pop, and the Jewish Film Festival. Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

Vampire Academy Bloodsuckers go to high school in this adaptation of the YA series directed by Mark Waters (2004’s Mean Girls). (1:45)

Happy Friday from Happy Diving

Steven T. Jones

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February 7, 2014

3

Feeling ’90s-tastic this morning? (Okay let’s be real, that is my baseline state of being.) SF’s grungy power-pop four-piece Happy Diving helped today, though, with this new video for “Never Been,” off the wholly excellent self-titled EP they released last month. It sounds like Pinkerton-era Weezer meets Sugar meets Dinosaur Jr. meets, er, 2014.

Check it out, and look for them next month at both SXSW (March 13) and the Rickshaw Stop (March 21).

Sundance, part six: superlatives

Sue Vaughan

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February 6, 2014

0

More Sundance right here on Pixel Vision.

My biggest excitement of Sundance 2014 was the random email I received asking if I would be able to attend a “super-secret screening of a highly anticipated film by a major filmmaker.” (Answer: DUH.) The packed house at Park City’s defining Main Street theater, the Egyptian, had no clue what film was to be screened, though many thought it might be Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

In fact, turned out to be the premiere of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Part One (Denmark/Germany/France) which is rated NC-17 (look for its theatrical release on March 21, or catch it On Demand starting March 6). Nymphomaniac: Part Two will follow shortly afterward, with a VOD debut on April 3 and a theatrical release on April 18.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMnJDyv2a1Y

As regular readers of my festival reports know, I am not here to spoil films. What I attempt to do is entice you to watch movies that are shaping our cinematic landscapes — and this is one you cannot miss. Avoid any and all plot overviews giving away any specific details about this two-part extravaganza exploring the taboo subject of nymphomania. Suffice to say Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, and the other cast members go the distance for our generation’s most controversial auteur. For true von Trier-ites, the uncut, five-and-a-half-hour European version of Nymphomaniac (compared to the four-hour American version) is being shown at the Berlinale next month.

My favorite film at this year’s Sundance was another controversial event: Tim Sutton’s polarizing Memphis (US). I’ve never needed to watch a film three times at Sundance before, but Sutton’s unique “observational journey” (a style he first executed, wondrously, with his 2011 debut Pavilion), which explores the “real” city of Memphis, and its frustrated main character’s own trek to find his own private transcendence kept me coming back for more and more and more.

Musician Willis Earl Beal, signed to the independent UK label XL Recording, plays himself (he’s sort of a Kool Keith meets Woody Guthrie) on a search to not only find and create a mystical music, but — through sorcery — achieve the next level of existential bliss which may or may not be attainable by any means necessary. Director Sutton said at one post-film Q&A, “All you need to make a movie is a camera, Willis, and a broom.”

I cannot prepare you for the intense experience you will have when watching this visionary film. At a press screening, 20 of the 30 audience members walked out. At the final public screening I was approached by a family who couldn’t believe I had been able to watch the film more than once. My response: Memphis is an audacious, poetic puzzle, and it requires audiences to put time and energy into finding the method to its madness. Like the path traveled by the lead character in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Beal’s journey is a long, dark, and winding one that many are rightfully terrified to take.

Uber neighborhood pricing surge charges Marina most

Erica Hanna

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February 6, 2014

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Uber neighborhood pricing surge charges Marina most

Uber charges the Marina and Pacific Heights districts up to three times as much for a ride as the rest of the city in its new “neighborhood surge” program, according to leaked emails and screen captures.

The surges happen during rush hour, weekend night bar crawls, and also around concerts and other events that would draw riders to Uber’s app.

Uber has caught a lot of flak for its New Year’s Eve “surge pricing,” a practice where the company raised rates during peak hours. Hell, it even looks like they’ve been raising rates when it rains. Just last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Uber would spike rates in neighborhoods of cities with the most demand, a practice called geo-surging.

The rates seem to go at least as high as $4 per mile in surge times, drivers told us, while SF taxis generally charge about $2.25 per mile.

A driver sent a screenshot of a 9am morning surge. This particular morning the Richmond and Mission districts seemed to get a spike in pricing as well.

“If they’re upset about the price they accepted, that’s a different conversation than, say, a driver took a wrong turn,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told the Wall Street Journal, about neighborhood pricing in general. “The price must go up for these rides to happen. If surge pricing doesn’t happening, there’s no availability. You can’t get a ride.”

We emailed Uber but did not get a response.

In San Francisco, that demand is apparently highest in the Marina. In the leaked emails, Uber wrote to drivers to explain its reasoning behind the neighborhood pricing:

“Instead of rates being the same everywhere in SF, surge rates will be higher in busier parts of the city.

…

Typically, the most demand comes from the Marina (and surge pricing is the highest), with some demand in the Mission neighborhood.

We’re excited about this change, since this means surge pricing will happen in the areas that need it most.”

A look at their “typical morning rush hour surge pattern” has Uber labeling the Marina “high surge,” the Mission “low surge” and no mention for the rest of the city. Maybe the Outer Sunset and Excelsior folks just don’t use Uber? (Or maybe they’re bigger fans of pink mustaches.)

After we obtained the emails, we verified them with Uber driver Zach Hudson, who’s employed with a private limo company but uses the Uber app to find his riders.

“The morning rush is in the Marina,” he said. “It’ll be near up to three times the normal rate. I don’t think there’s a limit. But near New Year’s Eve it’s been known to go up to 500 percent.”

In this screencap of an Uber email, the company advises goign to the “outer” neighborhoods. From the context of the rest of the email, it seems “outer” is anywhere not downtown.

Uber seems to want to lure more drivers to in-demand areas, but it’s not a total loss for the western and southern neighborhoods, Hudson said.

“The avenues are pretty dead most of the time,” he explained.

And besides, can’t the Marina dwellers afford it? Though the surge pricing may not be great for consumers, Hudson said it was good for drivers.

“After Uber cut fares and essentially our commission by 20 percemt, surge pricing is the only way we can survive,” he said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvRuaNr5DKY

Locals Only: Steep Ravine

Steven T. Jones

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February 6, 2014

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There’s something in Steep Ravine’s music that sounds older than their (fresh-out-of-college) years: It’s a calmness, a soulfulness, a complete lack of pretention — which is not something that can be said for many bands of young dudes who hope to be the Next Big Thing in bluegrass and Americana. These Bay Area natives (Berkeley, Mill Valley, Menlo Park, and Watsonville, to be specific) are far from over-serious, but they take this music and its history seriously, and the result is pretty sweet. Ahead of their album release show at the Starry Plough this Friday, Feb. 7, we caught up with guitarist and vocalist Simon Linsteadt to hear about their influences, burrito preferences, and the difficulties of starting a band while getting hassled by UCSC security officers.

SF Bay Guardian: How did you all meet and when did the band form?

Simon Linsteadt: [Violinist] Jan Purat and I met in high school, where we first began playing music together. We played Django Reinhardt songs like “Daphne” and “After You’ve Gone,” among other things. It was always acoustic. Then Jan went to UC Santa Cruz, and I followed a couple years later after I graduated high school. By then Jan had already established himself as the go-to fiddle player in Santa Cruz and had a band with Alex, our bass player. We would jam at parties and out in the Porter Quad, which was the big courtyard outside of my dorm where all Porter students would hang out. Sometimes we would play way too late at night and the security officers would have to boot us.

It was at the end of that year that we met Andy, a UCSC graduate who lived in town working as a farmer. He was clearly the most slammin’ mandolinist we had ever met, and it was immediately obvious that he had a rare pair of golden ears. We immediately became friends and started to busk down on Pacific Avenue, and we gained a little bit of recognition among the eclectic group of locals and UCSC students. It was around Christmas of 2012 that Alex started playing with us; we had him join us for a holiday show at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. Alex is one of those few individuals who has an extremely “deep pocket” as we like to say, meaning his sense of time is crystal clear and just perfectly on point. We started playing as a quartet around the Bay Area performing original tunes, our spin on traditional bluegrass, and some gypsy jazz songs. After a year, we all at once recorded our debut album, embarked on a 40-day tour across the US, and in October 2013 we all moved into a house together in Richmond.

SFBG: Where does the band name come from?

SL: The name Steep Ravine comes from an amazing spot on Mt. Tamalpais. I personally always liked the name of the Steep Ravine trail, and always saw it as a cool potential band name. A lot of lyrics on our album are inspired by the many excursions I have taken on Mt. Tam. Near the top of the trail is an area called Ridgecrest. When we first got together as a band, we went up there one day to play some music. It is an amazing lookout about 1000 feet up from the ocean and it looks out over the whole Bay Area, out to sea as far as the Farallon islands, and on clear days, all the way north to the lighthouse on the bottom of the Point Reyes Peninsula. Pretty astounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lILi3ldsM_g#t=58

SFBG: How would you describe your sound? What did you grow up listening to/playing, and who are some of your mentors?

SL: We’re all uniquely inspired by different musical styles, but it’s safe to say that we all come together around the genre of “bluegrass,” and we all love it very much. It’s some of the most energetic, soulful, expressive music out there. It is interesting though how we all found ourselves there. Jan Purat was classically trained from an early age, and can sight-read crazy classical pieces that look like chicken scratch at most to the rest of us. He has also studied his share of jazz. I picked up the guitar around the age of 10 after listening to Neil Young, who is my all-time hero as a songwriter and musical force, and I have studied my share of jazz as well. Andy O’Brien is a fabulous mandolinist who can play solos with the same sheer power and technicality as the greats in traditional bluegrass. He also has a very unique capability of bringing that energy and classic sound into the songs we compose, with very colorful melodic and rhythmic ideas. As I call to him downstairs asking him what his musical influences were growing up, he responds “Jerry, and The Beatles.” Alex grew up playing the drums, and was inspired by the bands like The Meters and the greats of Afrobeat. He also grew up with bluegrass and folk music in his family. He is a rock solid bassist with an explosive rhythmic feel. In terms of our sound as a band, I don’t really know how to answer that. What we write is not really bluegrass, or jazz, or singer-songwriter, or folk, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe somewhere in between those.

In terms of influences…the obvious ones that come to mind are Bill Monroe, Frank Wakefield, Kenny Baker, Doc Watson, Norman Blake. This is just a small list, but it represents the folks who were true musical forces back in the day, and who inspired many, many musicans through out the years. But just as we came to bluegrass from a range of genres, when we arrange and write music, all of these genres filter though the genre of bluegrass, and we are left with something that is entirely our own. I was personally turned onto bluegrass by Jacob Groopman, who is a fabulous guitarist, mandolinist, and vocalist. He plays with Front Country and Melody Walker, two really hot bluegrass Americana acts from the Bay Area. He taught me to flatpick and showed me the album Manzanita by Tony Rice when I was 16 or 17, and that was the beginning of the end. Andy O’Brien studied mandolin with Jeremy Lampel in Santa Cruz, and Jan has studied with Chad Manning and Evan Price, to name a couple. We are also very fortunate to live down the road from Bill Evans, banjoist extraordinaire, who has been something of a mentor to us over the past half year or so. There is a rich bluegrass, folk, and jazz scene throughout the Bay Area, and many of these people live right here in the East Bay. We feel very fortunate to be surrounded by such a friendly and talented community of driven musicians.

SFBG: What’s on tap for the band this year?

SL: We have some exciting touring coming up, from spring to fall. We will be playing at the Parkfield Bluegrass Festival, Four Corner Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, The Redwood Ramble in Mendocino, Pickamania in New Mexico, The Fathers Day bluegrass festival in Nevada City on the Vern Stage, the Folklife Festival in Seattle, and the Cloverdale Fiddle Festival. And we’re always writing new songs and compiling compositional idea for our next album, which we predict that we hope to start recording in the fall of 2014.

SFBG: Bay Area food item you couldn’t live without?

SL: Jeez, Jan and I would probably say Gordo’s Taqueria or the Cheeseboard. And I think we all could agree upon the fact that there are some amazing grocery stores especially in Berkeley that have great, fresh produce, such as Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. We keep our fridge stocked. Also, Andy and Alex are both very experienced gardeners, farmers, and landscapers, and they have planted a very lush garden at our house in Richmond, which is filled with mustard greens, kale, beets, herbs, and some very heady cacti.

Steep Ravine (CD release party), Fri/7
With McCoy Tyler Band and Windy Hill
8pm, $6
Starry Plough
www.thestarryplough.com

San Francisco landlords targeted for elder abuse

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 5, 2014

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San Francisco landlords targeted for elder abuse

Lisa Gray-Garcia, aka “Tiny,” led a press conference outside the San Francisco Hall of Justice Feb. 5 to announce that she and fellow activists were filing elder abuse charges against San Francisco landlords.

Clad in a gray pantsuit and flanked by activists and senior citizens who were facing eviction or had lost housing in San Francisco, the Poor News Network founder condemned landlords who’ve invoked the Ellis Act as “dangerous criminals.”

Gray-Garcia said criminal charges were being filed against the landlords in accordance with California Penal Code 368, which creates a special category for crimes – such as infliction of pain, injury or endangerment – committed against elders and dependent adults.

The theory is that carrying out an Ellis Act eviction against a senior citizen qualifies as a criminal act under that law, since an elder can suffer physical harm as a result of being turned out of his or her home.

The targeted landlords were taken from a list compiled by the San Francisco Anti Eviction Mapping Project, a volunteer-led group that published names, property ownership, and identifying information of 12 landlords who had repeatedly invoked the Ellis Act in San Francisco. Garcia read out their names as part of the press event.

Beyond that, however, the announcement was short on specifics. Gray-Garcia told the Bay Guardian she did not want to share the names of the affected seniors because she did not feel comfortable exposing the elderly tenants to potential backlash.

Joining the group of activists was an 82-year-old woman who used a walker and declined to share her name. She told the Bay Guardian she had lived in her Richmond District flat for more than 30 years, and had recently received a verbal warning from her landlord that if she did not move out, he would invoke the Ellis Act.

When Gray-Garcia and others filed into the San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon’s office inside the Hall of Justice, however, Chief Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo first told them that they should complain to the police department, then scheduled a meeting with them at a later date.

Here’s how it went:

Guardian video by Rebecca Bowe

In order of appearance, speakers include Erin McElroy, a tenants’ rights advocate; Gray-Garcia; a District Attorney staff person whose name we didn’t catch; Woo, and Anthony Prince (there because he is campaign manager to Green Party gubernatorial candidate Luis Rodriguez, who spoke at the press conference).

Board of Education president calls out thousands of “invisible suspensions”

Erica Hanna

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February 5, 2014

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Board of Education president calls out thousands of “invisible suspensions”

K-12 student advocates have suspensions in their crosshairs.

At last night’s (Tue/4) Board of Education meeting, young students rallied against suspensions they see as unfair. Advocates negotiated rule changes. San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education commissioners shook their fists at injustice.

“Willful defiance” suspensions are cited nationwide as a problematic category of suspension because of their subjective nature. Wearing a backwards cap, having a bad day, talking back, all of those fall under the umbrella of willful defiance.

The suspension ban is monumental, SFUSD Superintendent Richard Carranza told the board.

“We’re talking about culture change. A culture where it’s not okay for an adult to say ‘get out,’” Carranza said.

The point of the Board of Ed’s meeting last night was to discuss banning suspensions for willfully defiant behavior, and to refocus SFUSD resources on improving student-teacher relationships instead.

But new data shows that a different form of punishment, which was previously unrecorded, may cause almost as much harm as suspensions.

Ever been sent to the principal’s office? That’s a form of referral, and in California it’s enshrined in state education code. Students can be sent to a counselor, principal, or even another classroom. But President Sandra Lee Fewer said the numbers of referrals are getting out of hand, and must be addressed.

Fewer made an amendment to the controversial resolution to ban suspensions at last night’s meeting, calling for it to also require a reduction of in-school referrals.

The punishment, she said, deprives students of needed classroom time — and is ineffective.

“We can’t pass a resolution like this without including referrals,” Fewer said. “These are in the thousands. Some schools have three times the amount of black children with referrals.”

She called them “invisible suspensions,” because this school year is the first time they’ve been thoroughly tracked, thanks to a new system called the Counselor Online Referral Form.

The new data shows thousands of middle school students (high school data is still being collected), mostly black and Latino, were sent out of the classroom for “non-compliance” referrals since the last school semester alone. “Non-compliance” referrals are nebulous, advocates allege, a subjective catch-all category for bad behavior.

SFUSD referral data. This is incomplete data collected from the first semester and portion of the second semester of all SFUSD middle schools, but only a few high schools. Completed multi-year data of SFUSD high school suspensions show similar disparities in enforcement of punishments, however.

The board will vote on the proposed amendment and willful defiance resolution at their Feb. 25 meeting.

Fewer’s amendment would not go so far as to eliminate referrals entirely. That would be legally problematic, United Educators of San Francisco President Dennis Kelly said.

“The teachers have a right under law to send a child to the office if there is a disruption in the classroom,” he said in a phone interview.

“There is a concern that an awful lot is being dumped on teachers and counselors,” Kelly added. “More and more people are having very good ideas and saying ‘you do it now.’”

Reforms need to be backed by resources that help a teacher enact needed changes, he said. “Without those supplements, this is only so much talk.”

But in the meantime, students are suffering. Many students took to the podium at last night’s meeting, decrying policies they said were detrimental to their education.

Alexandria Berliner, now 22, said suspensions and referrals as a high schooler derailed her education. “I’ve been suspended so many times, I ended up dropping out of high school.”

A lot of kids at board of education, likely from Coleman Advocates, for discussion of Restorative Practices… https://t.co/JRAMEsv7p7

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 5, 2014

Laura Faer is an attorney and director of the statewide education rights at the nonprofit Public Counsel. Faer told the Bay Guardian that though referrals could be problematic, it was less clear cut of an issue than suspensions.

“The question is: what is happening to the child who is referred?” she said. “If a referral goes to counseling and it’s productive, that could be a good thing.”

But the non-compliance category of referrals was a red flag for Faer.

“Noncompliance is not specific, and I would say that’s a huge problem” she said. “It’s entirely subjective, from what we’re looking at right now. It could lead to a child losing instructional time.”

That was commissioner Fewer’s concern as well. At the meeting, she said she’s talked to kids as young as third-grade level who felt school administrators and teachers did not want them there in the schools. She blames policies that send kids out of the classroom.

“We have a school-to-prison pipeline here, (while) we pat ourselves for our good work,” she said at the end of the meeting.

“The impact these suspensions have is social isolation. We break spirit, and we are very good at breaking spirit.”

Live Shots: WATERS is stormier than expected at Brick & Mortar

Steven T. Jones

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February 5, 2014

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Live shows are an opportunity for musicians and music lovers to share an experience together. After all, you’re standing in the same room. Brick & Mortar Music Hall is a treasure trove for musicians. The small space offers an intimate setting that gives musicians the chance to embrace their audience.

I stood five feet away from WATERS’ lead singer and frontman Van Pierszalowski Monday night and not once did I feel embraced.

Skip the foreplay. WATERS jumped right into a distinctly scruffier and rowdier sound, playing brand-new music from its upcoming album set to be released in April. When two beardy, flannel-sporting men in the audience started running into each other within the first minute of WATERS’ set, I was afraid that this wasn’t my scene. But the two human pinballs quickly stopped before the end of the first song, after fellow audience members ignored the unwelcome cavorting.

“Thank you everybody. The name is WATERS and we’re from San Francisco,” Van said apathetically. After the dissolution of indie rock-folk band Port O’Brien, Van created WATERS. But similarities between the two start and end with the vague nautical allusion. Where Port O’Brien sailed toward hazy folk, WATERS capsized into rowdy rock.

The first half of the rambunctious set consisted of unheard songs off the band’s noisy sophomore LP while the second half was dedicated to the slightly less loud songs from Out In The Light, the band’s debut album; all of it was heavy guitar riffs and booming drums. A somewhat out-of-place female keyboardist played quietly in a dark corner, offering sweet harmonies that added a much-needed contrast to the harshness in Van’s voice.

Bangs calculatingly side-swept over his right eye, Van lightly rocked onto his toes when he sang. It was in those moments that I felt the disconnect melt away. But rather than building on that passion, Van would often sever the mood by rocking out alone on stage— creating an awkward feeling of detachment between the band and the crowd. Seemingly unaware of his relatively mellow audience, Van built up on boisterous vocals and turbulent beats as girls wearing black lipstick and acid-wash jeans swayed in the front row and cute boys with beards and suede jackets bobbed their heads up and down.

“I’m in love with every single one of you people,” Van admitted mid-set. The false grab at intimacy made me feel like a high school girl cornered at her locker by a boy professing his unrequited love. The singer asked if anyone would be coming to the next shows during his month-long Brick & Mortar residency. A few hands flew up, several pathetic howls echoed in the room. He asked again (“Just put your hands up to make me feel better.”) Several additional hands shot into the air.

The best part of the WATERS set was the last song, not only because it indicated the end of a generally lackluster show, but also because the acoustic version of “Mickey Mantle” was Van’s first demonstration of genuine emotion. The final song on Out In The Light is a soft, acoustic guitar-driven tune.

Van attempted to quiet the audience and urged us to huddle close to the stage so that he could play without amplification. Welcome to the Van Pierszalowski Show. The other band members sunk into the background as Van balanced on the edge of the stage.

Imploring the audience to shout rather than sing the chorus with him, Van commandeered the audience into enjoying the final song. The lovely female keyboardist chimed in at the chorus and the bassist occasionally strummed his unplugged instrument — two welcome breaks from the shouting. But even Van’s attempt at connecting with the audience was interrupted by accidental microphone feedback mid-song.

I promise I wasn’t in a bad mood before heading to Brick & Mortar. On the contrary, I was rather excited about WATERS. As a fan of Port O’Brien, I had a lot of hope for the local band. The story of how WATERS was born, in particular, intrigued me: Post-breakup and in search of inspiration, Van traveled the world to decidedly graceful landscapes — the ethereal Alaskan coast, the frigid Norwegian fjords, and his seaside hometown in California. With a beautiful name like WATERS, it’s difficult to grasp how such a harsh sound comes out of solitary travels to exquisite coastal settings. Unlike the graceful flow of rushing rivers and crashing waves, WATERS remained detached throughout its first show at Brick & Mortar. Despite the attempt to connect with nature and music, Van just seemed out of place.

Psychic Dream Astrology: February 5-11, 2014

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February 5, 2014

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Mercury goes Retrograde on the 6th through the 28th of February. Prepare to feel unprepared my friends.

ARIES
March 21-April 19
Focus your thoughts on how far you’ve come, no matter how much farther you’ve got to go, Aries. Feel good about the changes you’ve made no matter how small they are. Transitions take time to assimilate, and if you feel good about the work you’ve done it’ll buoy you for the work ahead (which appears to be formidable).

TAURUS
April 20-May 20
You aren’t perfect and that shouldn’t get you down, Taurus. Us humans are messy beasts and we often learn best through trial and error. Let go of your dogged attachment to flawlessness! You will succeed this week by boldly acting, despite your fears. Making mistakes is an essential part of learning, pal.

GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Get caught up with your life, Twin Star. This week it would be unwise to start anything new, no matter how bad you want to. Sometimes the biggest risk you can take is to pause and let things develop on their own. It’s a courageous act that requires faith, patience, and a healthy helping of impulse control.

CANCER
June 22-July 22
The world may be going to hell in a hand basket but you are only responsible for yourself, Moonchild. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pursue acts of kindness, only that you needn’t take on others’ feelings or dramas, especially if you want to help them out. Self-care helps you and helps the people.

LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
You may not think you’re picking fights, but if you’re not in the right frame of mind to be around people and you do it anyways, you’re just asking for trouble. Pursue solo pleasures this week to better manage your moods and whims, Leo. Your relationships can wait, and they’ll be better off for it.

VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
How you cope with your feelings is of the utmost importance this week. Challenge yourself to find balance in the face of whatever chaotic situations you are confronted with so that you can handle them with grace and flexibility. Don’t repress your feelings; be intentional with how you express them, Virgo.

LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
There is no thing greater than love. Romantic love is wonderful of course, but it often takes up more air space than self-love, or the love of work, friendship and life in general. Don’t let your desire for passionate love obscure your need for all others expressions of ardor this week.

SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Be forthright, Scorpio. Your sign has a reputation for being sketchy because of your tendency to hold back the truth- the rest of the zodiac tends to interpret this as “lying”. This is the week to be honest and direct in your relationships, even when it’s uncomfortable. Let others show up (or not), as they will.

SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
It’s your turn, Sag! Mercury goes retrograde this week and many astrologers will tell you to leave the heart-to-hearts for another time, but not I, dear friend. This is the right time to clear up miscommunications or to at least take first steps to clear the air. The truth will set you free, so don’t hold back.

CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Major change is afoot and you do not need to fix a thing. This week the Universe wants you to stay grounded in your goals and to have faith in the stability and support you have cultivated in your life. Your self-esteem may be at risk, but not your integrity. Do what’s right even when you’re tempted otherwise.

AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Your vision is a good one, Aquarius, but the way you’re going about things is not making your life any easier. Instead of doing everything all at once, how’s about you slow down this week? You need a minute to figure out what you’re feeling and why before you can offer anything in a clean and clear way.

PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Defeat and uncertainty threaten to scramble your thoughts and deaden your feelings this week. There’s a reason for everything and opportunity in each of your struggles; you only need to look for it. Don’t let negativity inhibit you, Pisces. Stay focused on your goals and have confidence in your path.

Want more in-depth, intuitive or astrological advice from Jessica? Schedule a one-one-one reading that can be done in person or by phone. Visit www.lovelanyadoo.com

Sundance, part five: Swanberg + Ross Perry

Sue Vaughan

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February 5, 2014

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Sundance, part five: Swanberg + Ross Perry

Missed a previous Sundance post? Check out Pixel Vision for more.

Director and sometimes actor Joe Swanberg is a household name among South by Southwest fest-goers (and mumblecore fans everywhere), with such gems as Nights and Weekends (2009), Marriage Material (2012), All the Light in the Sky (2012), and his segment in V/H/S (2012) entitled “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger.”

More recently, he’s been embraced by the Sundance community with the hilariously sexual Uncle Kent (2011) and last year’s Drinking Buddies, the latter showcasing mainstream stars Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, and Anna Kendrick. But now that he has hit parenthood, it seems that Swanberg is maturing into crossover material, and Happy Christmas (US) will make you one happy cinematic camper. Giving Kendrick the most complicated character of her career — as well as memorable roles for Melanie Lynskey and Girls‘ Lena Dunham — Swanberg may be aligning himself with Noah Baumbach and Alex Ross Perry to grab the title of this generation’s Woody Allen. Note: the scenes with Swanberg’s two-year-old baby Jude are worth the admission alone.

Speaking of Alex Ross Perry, he also had a new film at Sundance, and it rivaled Swanberg’s for “most enjoyably unlikable characters:” Listen Up Philip (US). Jason Schwartzman gives a tour-de-force performance in this follow-up to Perry’s debut feature, 2011’s The Color Wheel, helping Philip fulfill the promise hinted at in that earlier film.

Philip explores three sides of an incorrigible coin, embodied by Schwartzman, Mad Men‘s Elisabeth Moss, and the greatest grumpy old man of the year (so far), Jonathan Pryce. The end result exposes the uncomfortable truths of New York neuroses to such a degree that you may feel dirty just to be a human as you leave the theater — it’s both excruciatingly hilarious and unstoppably ruthless.

Sue Hestor’s 70th birthday party: “We Shall Overcome.”

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February 5, 2014

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Plus: Tim Redmond reports on Sue Hestor and her environmental legacy on his new local website 48 Hills.org.

How do you say happy birthday to a San Francisco icon like Sue Hestor?

Some 200 of her friends, allies, pro bono legal clients, political heavies, and fellow warriors against big developers and their pals in City Hall gathered Saturday at Delancey Street for a surprise party to celebrate Sue’s 70th birthday.

When she arrived, she was obviously surprised to find a band playing “We shall overcome” and her friends standing, clapping, cheering, and singing in admiration for a woman who has spent more than four decades as a citizen activist and attorney fighting for one good cause after another, usually at bad odds against the big guys, often for clients without pay. It was truly a historic moment in the history of San Francisco politics.

I first knew Sue when she popped up as a feisty volunteer in the Alvin Duskin anti-high rise campaign of the the early 1970s. The Bay Guardian was doing an investigative book, “The Ultimate HIghrise,” on the impact of highrises on the city. She pitched in on the project and was in the book’s staff photo, jauntily wearing her trademark straw hat, standing next to the hole in the ground for the Yerba Buena Center development.

We billed a central feature of the book as “the world’s first comprehensive study of the true cost of skyscrapers.” Our research group demonstrated that highrises cost much more in services than they bring back in revenue, a finding that infuriated the Chamber of Commerce because they could never effectively refute it. We also laid out in detail for the first time the power structure behind pellmell Manhattanizaton, how destructive those policies are, how they shift the tax burden from dowotown to neighborhoods and small business, who profits from them, why there are more muckmakers than muckrakers. Our talented art director Louis Dunn provided brilliant graphics that drove home the damaging points about highrises.

Our conclusion was most prophetic: “The most disturbing finding can’t be quantified–but it should be shouted to the heavens. It is this: unless the city of San Francisco reverses past practice and immediately enacts an ironclad land-use policy such as Duskin’s proposed height limit, the long scoffed at ‘Manhattanization’ of the entire city is a surefire, 100%-guaranteed inevitability.”

I like to think this project and its results were a fitting start to Sue’s career in land use litigation and terrorizing big developers, City Hall enablers, and their ever more virulent forms of Manhattanization.

In the early l990s, I called on Sue again, this time to be the founding chair of the spanking new Sunshine Task Force. It was a new task force formed to enforce the Sunshine Ordinance, which gave citizens the right to make complaints about government secrecy and its tradition of keeping City Hall safe for PG&E, big landlords, and developers etal. The task force would, I knew, drive the bureaucrats nuts and it thus needed a strong attorney as chair who would be smart enough and tough enough to go up against the city attorney and the crocodiles in the back bays of City Hall.

The neat thing was that nobody could kick Sue off the task force. She was one of two members who were “grandfathered” in by the ordinance–an attorney (Sue) and a media rep (B3) –who were selected by the Northern Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, not the supervisors. She performed admirably and got the task force on a firm footing as the first and still the best local open government task force in the country, if not the world.

Through the years of development battles, it was often Sue and Calvin, Calvin and Sue. Calvin being Calvin Welch, a crafty environmental and neighborhood strategist who worked with Sue and others in developing counters and initiatives and all kinds of hellish moves to beat or slow down and mitigate development. He said Sue’s career could be summed up in two words: “cumulative impacts.” The good thing was that we all knew, when the developers brought up their heavy artillery or their sneaky back alley maneuvers, Sue and Calvin would be there to blow the whistle and take on the fight. Call Sue, call Calvin was the watchword but they usually called us first at the Bay Guardian.

Let me call now on Tim Redmond, a Guardian reporter who covered Sue and Calvin and the highrise battles from 1982 on, to explain what Calvin meant. Tim laid out the political points in his piece, “Sue Hestor’s birthday and a lesson in SF environmental history,” on his new local website “48 Hills.org.” Read Tim’s first paragraphs for the fun stuff on Sue and the last paragraphs for the really important contributions she has made to the city and urban planning, as explained by Calvin.

As Tim concludes, “In 1964, Hestor, representing San Franciscans for Reasonable Growth, sued and won a stunning decision in the California Court of Appeal mandating that the city start studying the cumulative impacts of development. As Welch noted, ‘there was an obligation for developers to prioritize mitigations.’ That’s where the affordable housing program, the transit-impact fees–and the entire concept of analyzing development on the macro, not the micro level emerged. That was the idea behind the 1986 measure Prop. M, which included no height limits at all–but did include programs and policies designed to protect neighborhoods from the effects of unlimited growth.”

Well, the Hestor faithful may not have “overcome” the big developers and their latest monstrous Manhattanization plans. But they have come pretty damn close. On Sunday, the day after Sue’s party, the Warriors caved on its waterfront project and Matier and Ross did a Chronicle column with the head, “Warriors call for timeout on Waterfront arena plan.” And on Monday, the waterfront warriors marched triumphantly into City Hall and, as the Chronicle’s John Cote reported, “turned in more than double the number of signatures needed to qualify a measure for the June 3 ballot that would require voter approval for any development on the San Francisco waterfront to exceed existing height limits.”

That could kill the massively inappropriate project. “If passed,” the Chronicle continued, “the measure would put a check on high-rise hotels and condo towers along the bay and require voter approval for height increases for three major waterfront development plans, the Golden State Warriors’ proposal for an 18,000-seat arena complex, the San Francisco Giants’ plan for an urban neighborhood on what is their main parking lot and the development of the industrial Pier 70 area.”

Whew! That’s what I call a nifty bit of Hestoring and Calvinizing. b3

If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own. (Wes “Scoop” Nisker on KSAN radio during the dark days of the Vietnam War.)

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the Bay Guardian. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, from 1966 to 2012.)

The trouble with compromise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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February 4, 2014

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“It takes no compromise to give people their rights… It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.” — Harvey Milk

OPINION As I sat in the audience at the Jan. 23 San Francisco Young Democrats meeting and watched the first debate between David Campos and David Chiu in their race to represent San Francisco’s 17th Assembly District, I was disturbed to hear the words “compromise” and “consensus” come out of David Chiu’s mouth more often than the words “eviction” and “displacement.”

During the debate, a line in the sand was drawn by the two candidates: Campos was on the side of the underdog, a voice to the voiceless; and Chiu, by his own admission, was all about compromise and “getting things done.”

Don’t get me wrong. True compromise can be a good thing. Unfortunately, what has been coming out of City Hall, from both President Chiu’s Board of Supervisors chamber and the Mayor’s Office, hasn’t been real compromise. It’s been a wholesale selling of our city to the highest bidder. The only thing that our leadership’s compromises have yielded is a compromised San Francisco.

Compromise gave corporations millions of dollars in tax breaks and it has forced nonprofits and small businesses out of our neighborhoods. Compromise has not resulted in any substantive action to curb Ellis Act evictions, instead serving to green light the building of luxury condo towers throughout the city. Compromise has allowed queer youth shelters and our parks to be closed to the people who need them as a last resort, as our bus stops have been opened up to billionaires for little more than pennies.

Chiu’s compromises have cost this city dearly. His compromise with developers on Parkmerced will lead to the demolition of 1,500 units of rent-controlled housing. His compromise on Healthy San Francisco allowed restaurant owners to continue to defraud consumers and to pocket money that should have gone to health care for their employees. His compromise on Muni killed a much-needed ballot initiative that would have resulted in an additional $40 million for the agency — a ballot initiative that he originally co-authored.

Please forgive me if I am fed up with compromise and am demanding actual leadership from my representatives.

Now is the time to stand with people of color, with members of the LGBTQ community, with our youth and elders, with artists and with small businesses, all of whom are being forced out of our city.

Thankfully, we have another choice. Sup. David Campos has shown that real change comes not from compromising your values but standing up for your principles. His legislative accomplishments include providing free Muni for low-income youth, protecting women’s right to choose at the Planned Parenthood Clinic, and preventing teacher layoffs at our public schools.

Campos has demonstrated that he, not Chiu, is the right choice to follow Tom Ammiano’s footsteps to Sacramento. Ammiano, who had 13 of his 13 bills signed into law this past year, is the perfect example of the success that can come from leading with your principles and not compromising your integrity.

San Francisco needs a leader representing us in the capital. Successful victories in reforming the Ellis Act and closing the Prop. 13 tax loophole will take a leader who can stand up to landlords and corporations, not a compromiser who will sit down at the table in a backroom with them.

That is why I will give my all to make sure that David Campos is our next representative in Sacramento. Pardon me if I refuse to compromise.

Tom Temprano is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

Richmond’s sugary beverage tax lost big, how’s SF different?

Erica Hanna

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February 4, 2014

41

Richmond’s sugary beverage tax lost big, how’s SF different?

What’s old is new again, the saying goes.

And the saying definitely applies to the hotly followed sugary beverage tax resolution, introduced at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

The two cents per-ounce tax on sugary beverages would be levied at the point of distribution, with the ultimate goal of reducing the consumption of sodas and other sugary drinks to combat obesity in San Francisco. The tax, sponsored by Supervisors Scott Wiener, Eric Mar, Malia Cohen John Avalos and David Chiu, is similar to a resolution made two years ago in Richmond, CA.

But Richmond ultimately voted down Measure N by 66 percent, the voters overwhelmingly saying “no” to the tax increase.

Some of the players in San Francisco’s sugar war are the same as those in Richmond.

In 2012, the American Beverage Association hired Chuck Finnie of San Francisco public relations group BMWL and Partners. The association funded the “Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes,” which reached out to Latino communities and others, saying it was a tax on the poor.

Now Finnie is back as spokesperson for Stop Unfair Beverage Taxes — Coalition for an Affordable City, here in San Francisco. Its website is strewn with exclamations, sounding the warning knell of doom: “A 2 cent per-ounce tax… would add $0.40 to the cost of bottle of soda and nearly $3.00 to the cost of a 12-pack!”

One of the taxes’ sponsors, Supervisor Malia Cohen, disagrees with that rationale.

“It’s a shallow argument, that it’s a regressive tax on poor people. At first blush yes you could say that,” she said. “But a true cost benefit analysis, what is it costing poor people? Literally it’s costing them their lives.”

Bayview resident w/ diabetes says “you can find soda at any liquor store… finding an apple is hard.” @ericmar415 pic.twitter.com/f37iR1lo2E

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 1, 2014

Some of the articles on the coalition’s media page have little to do with beverages, with one discussing San Francisco as one of “America’s 5 Last-Affordable Housing Markets.”

Go figure: they’re playing off of our fears.

Finnie sent a PDF highlighting a coalition of 720 businesses, playing up the local angle. But on the bottom of their website is the tagline “Paid for by the American Beverage Association.”

“They’ve started early with bogus community groups,” Sup. Mar told us. And this wouldn’t be their first rodeo.

In Richmond the beverage association spent $2.6 million to combat Measure N, according to campaign filings. That’s driven Sups. Wiener and Mar to get into hustle-mode to raise more money.

“The were the canary, they went first,” Wiener told the Guardian, in a visit to our offices to speak about the measure. “We’ve learned you can’t do a $40,000 campaign against an opponent like the beverage industry.”

Jeff Ritterman, a cardiologist and former Richmond City Council member, was a lead proponent of the Measure N campaign in 2012. He’s another actor from that campaign that’s back now too, helping the supervisors craft their new strategy.

Last time around they were outspent, Ritterman admits. But campaign money is only one way San Francisco is taking a different tack in the upcoming sugar battle.

Cardiologist and former Richmond City Council member Jeff Ritterman, at the San Francisco sugary beverage tax campaign kickoff party Saturday.

The supervisors are also proposing to dedicate the estimated $30 million in revenue that the tax will generate to a specific purpose. The funding would be divided between the SFUSD, the Department of Public Health and the Recreation and Park Department for a mix of outdoor activities and nutrition education. In contrast, Measure N left allocation of new funding open-ended.

Ritterman told us that not identifying what the taxes on sugar would be used for was one of Richmond’s major missteps. Opponents honed in on it like an open wound and hammered away.

In Richmond, “they told people on the telephone I’d use it for trips around the world. It got as crazy as that,” Ritterman said. “You get more support when you show you’ll use it for children’s health and physical activity.”

Well hey, since the use of tax funds collected were a major concern for Finnie’s group last time around, now that it’s fixed he should be happy, right?

“No,” he told the Guardian, flatly. “We disagree that singling out sugar sweetened beverages for special taxation has any merit whatsoever.”

Listen to an audio interview with Jeff Ritterman, as he answers the question “what’s different about San Francisco’s sugary beverage tax campaign?”

We went on a bit of a tangent, asking the next obvious question — should government have a role in pricing for sugary beverages at all? No, Finnie said. But what about corn subsidies, leading to cheaply produced high-fructose corn syrup and even cheaper sugary drinks in the first place?

“I’m happy to talk about the proposed tax here in San Francisco,” Finnie said. “You’re getting into a realm that I don’t know anything about.”

Dr. Maa says weight control surgery boomed from when he started as a surgeon to now #sugarybeveragetax https://t.co/6DUa4V3DWp

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 1, 2014

What Finnie does know about is creating a public relations maelstrom, and he won in Richmond on the beverage association’s behalf.

But San Francisco supervisors are seeking to be more strategic than Richmond in this year’s sugar war, raising more money, crafting the legislation more specifically, and building a broader coalition. So far, faith-based groups, pediatricians, nurses, the teachers union, the school district and others have backed the tax measure.

We’ll see if the supervisors can win the day in November.

Hit the road

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

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culture@sfbg.com

TABLEHOPPING Sometimes you just need to get out of town, and look at that, we have wine country right in our backyard. Winter and early spring are an ideal time to visit: there are fewer crowds and better room rates, and it’s easier to make reservations. I’ll be writing a few upcoming columns with ideas for swell overnight getaways, whether you want to escape with your sweetie or your best pal.

When exactly was the last time you stayed in downtown Napa? Exactly. Things are a-changin’. Check in to the Andaz Napa (1450 First St, Napa. napa.andaz.hyatt.com), which has a great central location, and while it’s a bit on the larger side, the hotel is aiming for boutique style. Go for one of the loft or terrace rooms if the price is right, and ask for a room that’s back-facing and not on First Street (it’ll be quieter). Plan on getting some sleep, because the beds are a pillowy dream. When warm summer temperatures are back, the terrace (complete with fire pits!) will be open for drinks and hanging out.

Book a reservation for dinner at the recently opened Torc (1140 Main, Napa. www.torcnapa.com) in the former Ubuntu. The handsome, spacious dining room contains 90 seats, with 17 at the bar. Chef-owner Sean O’Toole (Quince, Cotogna, Bardessono) is one hell of a cook: his menu spans both the inventive and the traditional, ranging from Bengali sweet potato pakoras with yogurt-truffle dip to a violet artichoke soup. The free-range chicken for two is a standout, and there are also some housemade pastas ($14–$19) you should strongly consider (remember, he has that Quince pedigree). Dessert is a must. The pastry chef, Elizabeth Gentry, is so talented (try the citrus-praline tart with lemon curd and smoked ganache).

If you desire a nightcap, you can head to Morimoto (610 Main St., Napa. www.morimotonapa.com) for what is usually a lively scene in the lounge and bar, or enjoy a digestivo or grappa at the small bar inside Oenotri (1425 First St, Napa. www.oenotri.com), conveniently within stumbling distance of the Andaz.

The next day, if you’re a biscuit lover, you’ll want to hit up the popular Napa Valley Biscuits (1502 Main, Napa. www.napavalleybiscuits.com), a Southern diner serving biscuit-y breakfasts that will hold you until dinner (and help soak up any extended wine tastings later in the day). There’s also fried chicken and waffles, or you can go for the Yardbird — fried chicken, bacon, and gravy sandwiched inside a biscuit. Uh huh.

The Thomas at Fagiani’s (813 Main, Napa. www.thethomas-napa.com) has a tasty, casual brunch — think corn pancakes, good egg dishes, and a quality Bloody Mary — and if the weather is nice, the rooftop terrace is where you want to be. When tomato season is back, the BLAT (bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato sandwich) is tops.

Another option is to visit the Oxbow Public Market (644 First St, Napa

www.oxbowpublicmarket.com). Start the day with at the Ritual Coffee stand, and then take a seat at Ca’ Momi (www.camomi.com), an enoteca featuring dishes from all over Italy. Order the Ca’ Momi Ca’ Rosa Frizzante to go with the flatbread with lardo di Colonnata, a rare treat. Piadine (flatbread sandwiches) also rule, especially one with radicchio, prosciutto cotto, and creamy stracchino cheese filling.

Ca’ Momi’s blazing pizza oven cranks out about 20 kinds of pizza, from a classic (and certified) margherita to the Momi, with porchetta, taleggio, and caramelized onion. If the carbonara with egg and pancetta isn’t a perfect brunch pizza, I don’t know what is. Plus there are nine kinds of vegetarian pies for those on a healthier tip. If you’re in a lunchy mood, the pastas rock, like a northern Italian dish of spatzle allo speck with cream, or the decidedly Roman rigatoni con coda alla vaccinara (with oxtail, pinenuts, and soffrito). For dessert, get the bigné — cream puffs with a variety of fillings.

From there? Check out wine tasting rooms like Vintner’s Collective, 1313 Main, and Carpe Diem. The Culinary Institute of America is offering new Napa wine education classes at the CIA Wine Studies Annex in the former Copia, listed on www.localwineevents.com. Oh yeah, and there are always the Napa Premium Outlets if you’re in a shopping frame of mind. (Dangerous after wine tasting, btw).

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.

This Week’s Picks: February 5 – 11, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

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WEDNESDAY/5

Action Bronson

Action Bronson lives life large. Imposing both physically and lyrically, the Queens native and former gourmet chef draws upon his joys in life — food, drugs, and women — to construct poetically intricate and technically impressive rhymes. His mix tapes are full of love songs, both highly eloquent and frequently offensive, written about the grit of urban life and the beauty of a great meal. Lines about “pissing through your fishnets” are sprinkled among odes to “bone marrow roasted/spread it on the rosemary bread/lightly toasted,” all delivered with Bronson’s sure, sharp-tongued talent. At his live shows, Bronson is extremely interactive with his (extremely devoted) fans, passing back and forth joints, liquor, and jokes from the stage to the audience. With the brand-new addition of Odd Future thrash punks Trash Talk to the lineup, this show is sure to be insane. (Haley Zaremba)

With Trash Talk

9pm, $25

Slim’s

333 11th Ave, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

Alejandro Murguia

In a city overflowing with Google bussers and tech transplants, San Francisco’s newest poet laureate, Alejandro Murguía, seeks to revive a marginalized community through the written word. He’ll be honored at City Lights Bookstore with a reading from his new book, Stray Poems. The bilingual poet is the first Latino laureate, paving the way for the city’s poesía en español revival — not only through his poems but also through his activism. Marguía is the voice of the city’s forgotten residents, the voice of “the waitresses the norteños trios the flowers sellers / the blind guitarist wailing boleros at a purple sky / the shirtless vagrant vagabond ranting at a parking meter / the spray paint visionary setting fire to the word” (from the laureate’s poem “16th and Valencia”). (Laura B. Childs)

7pm, free

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com

SF Bicycle Coalition’s Dating Game: Love On Wheels

This year’s Love on Wheels fundraiser is back with a ’90s twist. In a modern-day version of MTV’s dating show, Singled Out, bike-lovers looking for a mate will get paired up and sent off to a first date in time for the big V-day. Be sure to look the part — ’90s attire is encouraged. Find love in fellow midriff-bearing, flannel-sporting cyclists, or show off your best Tootsee Roll on the dance floor. Proceeds benefit the SF Bicycle Coalition’s work to make the city more bicycle-friendly. (Childs)

6:30pm, $10

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

www.dnalounge.com

THURSDAY/6

Academy of Sciences Lunar New Year Celebration

Saddle up and celebrate the Year of the Horse at the California Academy of Sciences Lunar New Year Nightlife. The contemporary museum will be decked out with traditional occidental activities and performances. Let your inner wildcat out on the dance floor or watch an authentic lion dance routine. For a little wisdom, participate in a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and if you believe in making your own luck, check out the customized fortune cookie booth. Workshops will teach the lion dance or martial arts moves, but leave most of it to the pros. Throughout the night, live shows will feature authentic lion dance, a martial art demonstration and an ancient Chinese mask performance. (Childs)

6pm, $12

Academy of Sciences

55 Music Concourse

www.calacademy.org

Throwing Shade Live

Throwing Shade is a weekly podcast by LA comedians Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson in which the pair address queer and feminist issues in the news. Though the topics are often heavy, Gibson and Safi’s goofy back-and-forths, impressions, and gimmicks strike the perfect balance. Both hilarious and extremely insightful, Throwing Shade is the ideal way to hear about important and often under-reported topics without getting too blue — although your sides may ache by the end of the segment. Putting their show on the road for SF Sketchfest, the duo will be recording the show at the Punchline for the podcast. Endorsed by both Maximum Fun and Funny or Die, Throwing Shade is a serious laughing matter. Don’t miss this rare live appearance. (Zaremba)

8pm, $20

Punch Line

444 Battery, SF

(415) 397-7573

punchlinecomedyclub.com

Oneohtrix Point Never

Picking up on the ’90s era abstract, contemplative side of Warp Records, recent signee Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus Seven is thoroughly brain busting. The elements are disparate: vocals that begin without reference and depart without finishing, gamelan reminiscent rhythms seemingly performed on the Cosmic Key, and an ever-present effect best described as the stuttering sound of audio on an overburdened CPU. Partly playful, with New Age and stereotypically “world” music samples ripped off of Pirate Bay (where, to be fair, R Plus Seven gets the “plunderphonics” genre tag), the album still manages to sound wholly reverent. To what? Let me get back to you on that. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Holly Herndon (Live A/V), Marco de la Vega, DJ Will, Chad Salty

10pm-3am, $17.50-20

1015 Folsom

1015 Folsom St., SF

www.1015.com

FRIDAY/7

ASKEW

Performance art, visual art, and experimental film collide with boundary-pushing results at ASKEW, a Festival of Film and Performance Art, presented by the similarly edgy, female-focused Femina Potens Art Gallery. Three nights of themed events spotlight a variety of unique, fearlessly curious talents; tonight’s “We All Live Here: Primal Expressionism” includes SF Fringe Festival hit Fish Girl, by Siouxsie Q with Sean Andries. Tomorrow, it’s “Breaking Stones: Defining New Roles of Masculinity,” with a performance and screening by fest curator Madison Young, among others. Saturday’s “The Sacred and the Profane” features an appearance by sex-positive icon Annie Sprinkle, plus I Am Lady Samar, a work that mixes dance with “flesh hooks” — an act not for the faint-hearted, or close-minded. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sat/8, 7pm, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

Liquid Hymn

Feast your eyes! First Amendment Gallery presents the opening of Liquid Hymn, a solo exhibition of kaleidoscopic multimedia ink paintings by Oakland-based artist J.S. Weis. With wild animals pouring out of splashes of color, Weis’ projects seem like a 1970s acid trip — see: purple elephant, two-headed tiger, and a sea of crab legs; the artist uses ink, pencil, and intricately stacked paper to create a detailed 3D effect on his multimedia creations. Multicolored plants and ethereal animals roam through the psychedelic ink paintings, creating a fantastical symphony where nature and art become one. (Childs)

6:30pm, free

1AM SF

1000 Howard, SF

www.1amsf.com

SATURDAY/8

Top Secret

Continuing in the same zany and hilarious vein of comedy as seen in their earlier films Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!, writers and directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker decided to spoof both 1960s cold war/spy movies as well as rock n’ roll musicals with 1984’s Top Secret! Featuring Val Kilmer (in one of his very first starring roles) as fictional American rocker Nick Rivers battling the evil empire of East Germany, the flick parodies a host of genre clichés and plays on pun after side-splitting pun. Join Abrahams and the Zucker brothers for what promises to be an unpredictable 30th anniversary screening, audience discussion and Q&A. (Sean McCourt)

1pm, $20

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.sfsketchfest.com

Aszure Barton

When Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hells Kitchen Dance troupe performed at the Zellerbach Play House in 2006, he looked fabulous — at 58, a self-effacing, masterful dancer. He also brought works by two barely known choreographers. Benjamin Millepied, at the time a dancer with New York City Ballet, now runs the Paris Opera Ballet; the Canadian Aszure Barton’s two pieces immediately marked her as someone with chops to burn and a fascinating individual voice. She hasn’t stopped working — all over the world. Now SF Performances is bringing her back with Awáa, a piece inspired by an underwater dream, in which Barton, apparently, explores the masculine and feminine traits we all have. I’ll take her word for it — anytime. (Rita Felciano)

Feb. 7/8. 7:30pm. $35-50

Aszure Barton + Artists

Lam Research Center, YBCA

700 Howard St. SF

415-978-2787

www.sfperformances.org

Thu/6-Sat/8

SUNDAY/9

Shakes The Clown Live

Although it was critically panned and considered a financial flop when it was first released, the 1991 movie Shakes The Clown has gone on to achieve a loyal cult following over the years. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait wrote, directed, and starred in the dark comedy that follows the life of an alcoholic and depressed clown that shows up for kids’ parties drunk, sees his career going down the toilet, and even eventually gets framed for murder. Join Goldthwait, along with original film cast members Julie Brown, Tom Kenny, and Florence Henderson as they bring the under-appreciated story back to life in all its debaucherous glory, live on stage! (Sean McCourt)

4pm, $25

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

www.sfsketchfest.com

TUESDAY/11

Kid Congo

Helping form the influential roots-rock/punk band The Gun Club when he was still a teenager, Kid Congo Powers was quickly persuaded by the Cramps to join as their second guitar player in 1980 before he eventually went on to play with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for a time. Continuing to harness the power of American roots music and twist it into a warped web of perverse sounds over the ensuing years with his latest band, The Pink Monkey Birds, Kid Congo ventures further down the deliciously demented path on his latest record, Haunted Head (In The Red).

With Wax Idols, Dancer. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

Hospitality

This trio’s debut S/T album was essentially a collection of undeniable indie-pop hooks matched by songwriting that combined Belle and Sebastian’s wittiness with the urban social unease of a Shirley Jackson story. Still it didn’t quite capture the appeal as a live band, where I found them to be most endearing. On its freshly minted second album, Trouble, Hospitality has set out to prove their mettle as simply a rock (drop the indie, drop the twee) group as well. While Amber Papini’s voice is still endlessly charming — listen to the way her double esses fill in some hissing hi-hat on The Who-styled percussion on “I Miss Your Bones” — but the band seems in less of a hurry, giving the guitar and bass its due. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Air Waves, Matt Kivel

8pm, $10-12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

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