Nobody is quite sure what will happen in the Castro for the supposedly canceled Halloween tomorrow night, but some of those who resent the city’s Grinch attitude plan to protest or show up anyway, just for the helluva it. Meanwhile, Sup. Chris Daly and BART director Tom Radulovich have jointly authored a letter strongly condemning the heavy-handed unilateralism that caused BART and Muni to cancel transit service to the area.
Boo!
- No categories
SF Blog
Tracking the Joneses’ rent
We all know there’s a housing crisis in our city. But that’s one of those big, overarching, culture/society issues that’s hard to wrap your mind around.
How about considering your own, personal housing crisis? Ever wondered if you’re getting gouged on rent as much as your neighbor? Or if there’s actually anyone in this town who pays no more than a third of their income for a closetless room? Well, with www.rentometer.com, you can find out. All you have to do is enter your address, your monthly rent, the number of bedrooms in the unit, and the number of units in the building, and the site will calculate how you measure up to other similar buildings in your area.
Freedom in your genitals
Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.
Nicole Halpern lives and works at the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, an organization/community dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. She teaches naked yoga, regular yoga, and a class called “The Man Course.” I have seen her naked.
SFBG: So what’s your story? How did you find yourself working at One Taste as a naked yoga instructor?
Nicole Halpern: Well, all my life I’ve had these experiences where I would feel really really connected to everything -to all the people and everything around — and then I just hit a point in my life where I realized I wanted more.
SFBG: Um, what exactly do you mean by that?
Halpern: I just wanted more connection to everything and I kept trying to find it in different ways, but it wasn’t until I moved to One Taste that I finally found it.
SFBG: OK … so where are you from?
Halpern: I grew up in Manhattan. I went to high school in Westchester and lived in a traditional family. It was really traditional. I mean, I went to college. I worked at ABC news for 2.5 years. I worked in marketing. I worked in advertising. I have a very traditional background. But I quit my job in 2000 to travel because I had this deep desire to see more than just the east coast of the United States.
SFBG: Cool. Where did you go?
Halpern: Oh, I went on a long backpacking trip through Nepal, and when I came back I just knew my life had to be different. I couldn’t go back to the way I was before. Then I thought traveling was my purpose, but then I came here and realized my purpose was to teach classes around sex. I want to teach people how to have the life that they want, the sex that they want, and to feel freedom in who they are.
SFBG: So how did you find this place? Was sex the main attraction?
What to do on Wednesday
Still not done getting your Halloween party on? Pissed the party in the Castro is officially canceled? Not buying the
recommendation to stay home on Wednesday? Then check out the list of Halloween night events on our website , or stop by one of the fetes after the jump. At the very least, we promise you’ll have a place to potty while you party.
Superfriends for world peace
Get your tights in a twist for peace with the cwaaazy kids of Sugar Valley this Saturday before the UN Anniversary and Peace Parade! Oh — and don’t forget that the event (that includes a die-in at Dolores Park) will coincide with the world’s attempted biggest “Thriller” dance-a-thon!
Join Sugar Valley artists on United Nations Day at the San Francisco Parade for World Peace
Sat. Oct 27
UN Plaza, 7th Street and Market, SF
Event at 1pm, parade starts at 2pm
At 4:15, 67 doves released — plus formation of a human peace sign
Superhero attire encouraged — look for others underneath the big red ballon!
More info: www.sugarvalley.org
Unipumpkorn madness
Intrepid man-on-the-streets Justin Juul discovers the joys of dropping the Pabst and carving a damn pumpkin for once.
The magic, the mystery of …. the unipumpkorn. Fly, Starfire, fly!
Have you ever seen those professionally carved pumpkins on TV and wondered, how the hell did they do that? Well, I figured it out. Here are the step by step instructions to creating the most awesome pumpkins ever.
1. Go down to Half Moon Bay for some really cheap pumpkins.
2. Find a stencil on the internet. If you have time you should look for an image you really like and then create your own stencil in Photoshop. If you don’t have time you should just search for stencils someone else has already made.
3. Print the stencil out and tape it to your pumpkin.
4. Take a regular pen and trace the image, pressing just hard enough to make an indention without ripping through the paper.
5. Remove the paper.
Step 1 (wheelbarrow provided, scruffy hipster not included)
6. Go back over the grooves you just made with a permanent pen or marker so that you can see them.
7. Take an Exacto knife and cut the lines out. This is the hardest part and will probably take about two hours. Remember, you’re not cutting all the way through the pumpkin. You’re goal is to remove the skin. Have a paper towel ready because pumpkins are juicy.
8. When you have the skin removed, cut a hole in the top and remove all the shit.
9. Take a large spoon and scrape the wall behind your stencil until you can see light coming though. Just be sure not to pierce the skin.
10. Pop a candle in that son of a bitch and put it on your stoop.
This one says “fucking awesome” — and it is!
Britney + Darfur = Johnny Cash
Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.
If you’ve ever been to Chaya, the Japanese restaurant on Valencia and 19th streets, then you’ve seen Omer (last name withheld). He’s the little short guy with the crusty Joe-Dirt mullet who pops out of the shadows with a guitar and scares tourists. Omer’s confrontational approach to panhandling seems counterintuitive, but he has found success with Mission-district locals who get off on watching tourists shit their pants when he attacks them with his vicious renditions of classic rock hits.
I tried to do a regular interview with Omer, but he refused to directly answer most of my questions. That said, I did manage to get some valuable information out of him, and was happy to leave the interview without getting spit on or mauled, which is what I always thought would happen if I ever got close enough to shake Omer’s hand. He’s a pretty funny dude actually… and not mean at all.
SFBG: Hey what’s up man, can I interview you for a magazine?
Omer: Raaaaargh!
SFBG: Was that a yes?
Omer: Yeah sure, why the fuck not? My name’s Omer.
SFBG: Nice to meet you Omer, I’m Justin. So… how’d you find yourself here in the city?
Omer: Well, I don’t know. It’s like… what I’m doing is so perfect for Frisco. I’m just like a guy in a doorway. Britney Spears sells a million records.
SFBG: Fuck that bitch.
Omer: Exactly! Britney Spears sells a million records, and I’m just a guy in a doorway. But the good news is… I’d rather be me than her.
SFBG: Hell yeah, man. So would I.
Omer: I mean… let’s think about the children in Darfur for a minute.
SFBG: Okay….
Omer: Now don’t you feel sorry for Britney Spears?
SFBG: Yeah, I guess.
Omer: No! The answer is no! Now here, buy a cd!
After the jump: Watch Omer in action!
Sex cakes for you
Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.
Jerry Carson, the proud owner of The Cake Gallery in SOMA, which specializes in erotic cakes, is one of the nicest dudes you will ever meet. It wouldn’t be so weird if you bumped into him on the street or saw him at the grocery store, but when you’re standing in his tiny den of cock-cakes and pussy-pops, his demeanor seems a little out of place. Carson serves as a walking, breathing challenge to our stereotypical assumptions about x-rated bakers. He doesn’t wear chaps — at least not to work — and he doesn’t have a handle-bar mustache. In fact, he actually looks and dresses a lot like my high school history teacher back in Michigan. Hmmm.
SFBG: So what’s your deal? How’d you find yourself in San Francisco?
Jerry Carson: Well…when I got out of the Army in 1972, I decided I didn’t want to live in Pittsburgh anymore, and I had always loved San Francisco, so I just sort of packed up and moved. I’ve been here ever since.
SFBG: And that’s when you decided to fulfill your lifelong dream of owning an x-rated cake store?
Carson: Yeah…well, I bought this shop from a gay couple about twenty years ago. They used to run a normal cake-shop, but when I got a hold of it, I looked around at the neighborhood and thought these people need something different. I also wanted to have an excuse to talk dirty to girls on the phone.
SFBG: When you say “something different,” are you referring to the gigantic cock/ass cake with spunk-icing in the glass case over there?
After the jump: Safe for eating, but NSFW!
Influential fashion designer dies
Clothing designer Tiffa Novoa — whose neo-tribal aesthetic transformed the fashion sense of the Burning Man world, starting with the El Circo tribe that she was a part of, and trickled out into the larger Bay Area urban culture — has died at the age of 32. Unconfirmed reports indicate that she had a fatal drug reaction in Bali, Indonesia, where she was staying recently. You can read remembrances of Novoa here and here, and I’ll update this post in the comments section if I hear of any local memorials. Novoa’s Onda Designs influenced a generation of San Francisco clothing designers and had just started to push from the margins into the mainstream with stores like Five and Diamond in the Mission District.
Three years ago, while I was working on a series about Burning Man and in particular one article on how it influenced nightlife in San Francisco, local members of El Circo (which formed in Ashland, Oregon and largely transplanted itself in San Francisco) sang Novoa’s praises and credited her with not just their fashion sense, but in part, their entire culture.
Making naked pretzels
By Justin Juul
I heard about this Naked Yoga thing via my part-time gig at going.com where I have to scan websites and magazines looking for quirky festivals, art openings, open-bars, etc. When I find a good event, I do a little write up, find a good image to accompany the text, and then I post the whole thing on the site. It sounds like a pretty easy job, I know, but it’s always hard to find things that haven’t already been posted by another stringer. So when I found the catalog for One Taste in SoMa, I was thrilled.
Upward kitty?
Their mission statement claims that “One Taste is an urban retreat center dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. They embrace all levels of being; our bodies, our emotions, our minds and our spirits — while promoting a healthy balance between them.” It sounds kinda corny, but I had a hunch that all the new-age rhetoric was a just a gloss the organization was using to put a positive spin on their obsession with sex. The catalog’s cover featured a huge black and white shot of a naked woman and the calendar inside, which I was going to suck dry for material, was full of classes like “naked yoga,” “exploring our lust,” and “prostate massage w/ live demonstration.”
Normally I would have just picked a few events, written a few blurbs, and cashed my check, but as fate would have it, the editor at another one of my freelance gigs sent out a query to see if anyone knew anything about naked yoga. I do, I said. And with that, my fate was sealed. At nine o clock the very next morning I was pedaling toward SoMa, yoga mat in hand, mentally preparing myself to be naked in front of strangers.
As I approached the corner of Folsom and Seventh my mind grew heavy with doubt. Am I packing enough heat? I wondered. Is my belly too big? Are my poor arms too thin?
Come out, come out!
In honor of National Coming Out Day today — and all the beautiful people, young and old, who’ve stormed out of the closets in an explosion of sequins and feathers — this one goes OUT to all the Idaho senators, MySpace bisexuals, bearded dictators, and four-star generals who could learn a thing or two about taking themselves so seriously. It’s just love, baby!
Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live, “Iran So Far Away”
Sports: How green is that Cup?
Baseball season has wound down, football season’s revving up, and in my hometowns of Detroit, MI, and Zurich, Ontario, people are practically kicking their own nuts off over the upcoming hockey season. In that spirit, Brendan I. Koerner of Slate published this nifty little breakdown yesterday of the amount of energy spectator sports consume.
Good thing we have public transport, but what’s blowing into the Bay?
Given that PG&E totally greenfucked AT&T park over earlier this year by claiming to charitably install massive solar panels that would save the park millions (which turned out only to provide enough energy for 40 homes) and then announced that rate-payers would actually foot the bill, it’s interesting to note that, as Koerner points out, the energy consumption required to keep those Jumbotrons flashing and that nacho cheese melted in many major stadiums is relatively little (about 1.35 pounds of carbon emission per fan per game — the average American is responsible for around 65 pounds a day). The REAL energy burn comes with people driving to and from the stadium for games. A typical 78,000-person football stadium requires the emission of 232.84 metric tons of carbon dioxide just for people to get there and back home. Eek!
Koerner says that hockey and basketball are the lowest energy hogs, because those sports have shorter seasons, that football is slightly worse because it, too, has relatively infrequent games — but that baseball is the biggest hog over the long haul because it puts on the most games (and, I would argue, does it over the summer, when people are more prone to drive to see a game.)
Wasted!
Koerner won’t even consider NASCAR for, as he writes, “any sport that centers around vehicles that get four to six miles per gallon is obviously pretty far from green.” Are you listening, Nextel Cup?
Hurray for Sugar Valley!
This Sunday’s the Castro Street Fair, and that means it’s time for Sugar Valley!
Why, yes — I’d love one!
Sugar Valley is a group of alternative vendors and organizations — kind of on the alternaqueer and Gay Shame end of the homo spectrum — who hawk their mostly DIY fares with flair on 18th Street between Noe and Hartford. There’s tons of great, local-made art and clothing as well as some of the weirdest-wonderfullest items, entertainment, and carnival-like shenanigans you’ll see all year. Also, there’s some pretty neato places to sit and chill out — especially for those of us who feel faint after weathering the onslaught of rainbow windchimes and travartine nude wall-sculptures on offer at the rest of the fair.
Artist Ms. Vera jumps ship — to swim to Sugar Valley!
Girl power – with goodies!
By Soo Oh
Every year in September, Girls Incorporated holds its Women of Taste event at the terraced gardens of Oakland Museum to support young girls in Alameda County, encouraging them to be “strong, smart, and bold.” It doesn’t hurt to be a patron (matron?) to the cause when it involves three levels of catered food from Bay Area restaurants on a slightly breezy Saturday night in the East Bay.
Pic o’ the day: Leather Barbra
Folsom Street Fair gives rise to oh-so-many surreal experiences — nightmares made real, for some, perhaps. Fantasy dreamscapes for others. And yet: Barbra Streisand crowding toward the Eagle piss trough? File under “What the fuck for fabulous.”
So it wasn’t my mary-joe-wanna truffle kicking in after all ….
PARKed in our hearts
So PARKing day is over and the city’s metered spots all belong to cars (and cigarette butts, and urine, and unidentifiable slimy objects) once again. But thanks to the good folks over at Rebar, we can all bask in the memories of last Friday’s adventure in creating our own urban spaces: the arts collective has updated the website www.parkingday.org, with photos from PARKing Days across the world, an interactive map of SF’s version, and a trailer for their just-finished documentary on this fabulous new phenomenon.
Though much of the PARKing Day activity was centered around downtown, my friends and I strolled past nearly five parks in the Mission just on Valencia between 16th and 22nd streets. The best, by far, was outside Ritual. The strangest interpretation of the day’s purpose? An outdoor massage and chiropractic demonstration.
And in case you were wondering why we’re still talking about PARKing Day, it’s because we love every single thing about it: engaging in guerrilla art; inspiring people to manifest their own realities; drawing attention to the need for more green space; questioning our reliance on cars (and where to put them when we’re not driving them); finding solutions to problems with legal irreverence; and just being goddamned cool.
Onion photos: True or Farce?
From artice: 14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid
By Paula Connelly
Ever wonder what you’re out of work actor and artist friends have been up to? On the cover of this week’s Onion is a picture of one of my dear friends from college! And no, she’s not unemployed. She works for the Onion.
Well played, Onion. American Apparel ads and the sub-culture that they infer are disturbing. (Like the ones with girls spread eagle in the back of a taxi cab, for example.) My favorite line from the article would have to be:
“Before I knew it, I was squatting on the floor in this humid room with a camera pointed at my crotch,” said model Gabrielle, whose image can be found on the back page of this newspaper.
A day in the park
Who said the only thing you can park at a meter is a car? How about an actual park? That’s the idea behind PARK(ing) Day, a one-day global event centered (and founded) in San Francisco, during which individuals and groups construct temporary parks in metered parking spaces all over their cities. The idea? To challenge the way we think about streets and how they’re used, as well as to advocate for more urban open space. This year’s event, which will be held tomorrow, promises to be bigger and better than ever, featuring more than 40 parks as well as Rebar’s PARKcycle, a human-powered mobile park.
Check out the Parking Day website www.parkingday.org for maps and more information.
Illegal bike behavior
In my opposition to this blog’s recent attack on bicyclists, I should probably muscle up and address the most sensitive point of attack: illegal behavior by cyclists.
I am guilty of such behavior. I blow through stop signs, run red lights, and gleefully take part in Critical Mass as often as possible (and, like many of us, I’m particularly excited about the 15th anniversary ride coming up on Sept. 28). And you know what, I don’t apologize for the vast majority of my behavior because, like many of us, I ride according to a morally defensible code of conduct.
I try to never take the right of way from another vehicle, which means I’ll stop at stop signs when another vehicle arrives first in order to let it proceed, but not at signs where my ignoring the sign doesn’t impede anyone’s flow or usurp their rights. On a bike, where momentum is important, that’s a logical way to behave and how most bicyclist behave every day in this city and others. It’s so logical that Idaho has laws that reflect that reality (bicyclists there must treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs). We should adopt that law in California (along with drug law reform and other changes that comport with common, victimless practices) if we are ever going to foster a healthy respect for the law and convince motorists that they must share the road.
Bikes are traffic too
OK, so I’ll admit that my main reason for this blog post is to shove a certain irrational, poorly written, anti-bike intern’s post off our front page, where it will hopefully become just a bad distant memory (BTW, said intern, who goes by the pseudonym Lotto Chancellor, also goes by Chris Demento and can be contacted at cdemento@gmail.com). He’s a kid who’s still learning how to transform a petty, ill-informed rant into legitimate commentary, but after re-reading his piece and talking to him this morning, I do want to address a serious problem raised by his perspective and the flawed points he tried to make.
As one commenter noted, bicycles are traffic, as entitled under state law and local policies to that lane as cars are. We also occasionally take entire lanes because that’s what safety dictates — it’s just not safe to ride in the door zone of parked cars — not because we’re simply idiots or assholes. Our intern tells me that he’s scared to ride bikes, so he doesn’t understand these realities, and he’s not alone. That’s why so many of us feel a need to assert our rights, sometimes aggressively, because attitudes like his, and the driver impatience and aggression that flows from this attitude, threatens not only our lives, but also the attractiveness and viability of a form of transportation that — whether or not this kid thinks we’re being sanctimonious — really is one of the most environmentally beneficial simple choices that any of us can make.
Walk, don’t ride
Intrepid intern Lotto Chancellor rants about city bicyclists who should ride better — or get off the road.
To the Idiot (not meaning every, just the Idiot) Bicyclist:
Congratulations. You’re blowing it.
You strike fear into the very heart of me when I have to watch you sucking around on that thing like an ignoramus, cutting off cars at intersection, drawling down 16th Street in the center of the lane, following whatever rules of the road seem useful at the time, because it’s all about you and your sustainable-coma commute—not about me or my post-wreck PTSD or my rented Malibu exploding your situation. The second-degree embarrassment I feel for you is also profound. Yes, like the public service announcements around town declare, your decision to buck the highway and cruise the green way saves us power, and proves you’re a great and verdant guy. It’s almost as bad as having to see some poor 27-year-old quarter-life crisis springing himself toward his death, the Financial District, “carving it up,” a yuck-yuck Tofurkey on a longboard named Brock.
Awesome!
New blog in town
The Thrillist is the latest national “ist” franchise blog to set up shop in San Francisco, debuting here today after establishing itself first in New York and Los Angeles (Chicago is supposedly next). But judging by its lame sole entry — praising a brunch and football spot in the Marina called Jones, which it covers using language that sounds like a bad advertorial plug — I don’t think the SFist (which has a plethora of local items everyday, compared to the Thrillist’s sole offering) has much to fear. In fact, SF’s average blogger in bunny slippers offers more and better content than these guys. Next.
Addis on “American Dream” on acid
Burning Man graphic by Rod Garrett
Like most reactions I’ve heard to next year’s Burning Man theme, “American Dream,” mine has been one of dismay and disgust. BM founder Larry Harvey may be trying to reclaim America from the red state yahoos, which is a fine goal, but to overtly make this countercultural event about American patriotism seems to me to be an unforgivable mistake and severe misreading of the sensibilities of his core audience. Personally, I tend toward Tolstoy’s view that patriotism is a vice that implies racism and causes warfare, and the sooner we can recognize it for the evil it is, the sooner we evolve.
But yesterday I discovered an unlikely supporter for Larry’s new theme: Paul Addis, the man accused of prematurely torching the Man on Aug. 27. We spoke by phone yesterday in a long and rambling conversation, in which he generally reinforced his disgust with the state of Burning Man and American society in general. But when I asked about the theme, he said that he thinks nationalism and patriotism are good things worth celebrating: “People have a right to be proud of where they’re from.”
Addis mug shot by Pershing County Sheriff’s Department
Summer of Love: the pix
Sunday was a great day for lighting up and reminiscin’ — and grooving with tens of thousands of other tuned in, turned on, and dropped out minds at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary gathering at Golden Gate Park. Guardian writer/photographer Justin Juul was on the scene — here’s a few choice pics of the rockin’ celebration. Check out more of Justin’s Summer of Love pix here. (And look for his review of the event in tomorrow’s issue of the Guardian!)
Good morning, Gaia!
Ah, the Magic Bus
Lunch with Wavy Gravy
An orgy of love