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Style Paige: h.Naoto’s Gothic glam (finally) makes it to the States

Andrew Lam
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Style Paige: h.Naoto’s Gothic glam (finally) makes it to the States

For Nikki Azuma, Japanese fashion is a lifestyle. The 28-year-old  has been obsessing over Japanese fashion for years, admiring the clothing through fashion magazines and crafting outfits of her own. “It’s my identity,” Azuma said, dressed in a red and black striped tutu dress. 

It was Saturday and Azuma was attending the store opening of one of her favorite designer’s first U.S. store, in Japantown’s New People mall. Naoto Hirooka’s avant garde line h.Naoto is the leading Gothic brand for men and women in Tokyo. It’s worn by Japanese and American pop culture icons like X-Japan and Evanescence. The opening coincided with the brand’s 10th anniversary.

Azuma compared Hirooka’s brand to a good meal, one in which each bite works together to form a transcendent whole. “Everything about each piece [in his line] compliments each other. They’re not overworked,” she said.   

h.Naoto is a blend between Gothic, Lolita, and punk styles, mixing leather, lace, and chains. It’s a combination of hard and soft that might seem strange with those unacquainted with Japanese couture — but deeper inspection reveals a cohesive, original line. 

More blackness from the h.Naoto New People stock. Guardian photo by Paige A. Ricks

To commemorate the store opening on the second level of the New People mall – the space previously occupied by another Burton-esque line, Black Peace Now — there was an exhibit showcasing Hirooka designs once sported by celebrities. Mannequins were dressed quite strikingly; floor-length coats with large collars, pants held together with safety pins. 

Hirooka said he hopes San Franciscans feel inspired by his clothing. 

“When you wear my clothing, you can transform into someone else,” he said in the midst of his opening. “Each piece is unique and you can play a different character.” 

His designs do tend to encourage playacting – they’re structured and tailored, but splashed with white, pink, and turquoise, reflecting the current military and biker trends in Japan. Almost every piece in the store is black, but this colored edginess seems to most appeal to the designer’s young customers. 

Another of Hirooka’s admirers Susan Noh marveled at how the designer’s ability to take existing styles and subvert them into his own ideals. Noh used to order h.Naoto online, even traveling to Japan buy the clothing on occasion.

But now that there is a store in her backyard she’s excited to leave her suitcase empty. “I absolutely love everything,” she said of the New People collection.  

It’s cheaper than a ticket to Tokyo, but still not cheap. Because of the distinctiveness of h.Naoto, the clothing ranges from $100 to $300 for jackets, dresses, and blouses. (The store does sell less expensive items like t-shirts and tank tops.)

 

H.Naoto store

New People, second floor

1747 Post, SF 

www.newpeopleworld.com

 

The Performant: They Might be Giants

Andrew Lam
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Stagewerx and SF Olympians Festival go big

It’s been a turbulent year for independent theatre and its venues. In truth, every year is. But there have been some notable successes too. Boxcar Theatre’s addition of a new studio space on Hyde Street. Bindlestiff Theatre’s move into a new permanent space. Pianofight’s acquisition of the old Original Joe’s in order to create a hybrid performance space-kitchen-bar right on the cutting edge of the downtown theatre district. 

And just in case you’d missed it, this is the month that Stagewerx, which has been occupying the literal theatrical underground in the basement of 533 Sutter since 2007, has opened the doors of its community-supported digs at 446 Valencia — the old Intersection for the Arts space. 

Following a big-ticket Kickstarter campaign* and months of hard labor, rebuilding one venue from scratch while running another, the Stagewerx crew’s labor of love has finally put down its expansive roots in the Mission District.

It was a low-key but convivial christening, a bevy of Stagewerx supporters and performers (and supporter-performers) poking around the nooks and crannies of the strangely familiar, yet revitalized space. The evening’s emcee, Mikl-em, presided over a variety show of musicians and comedians (and musician-comedians), including a special guest appearance from Carol Channing, as well as one by Sean Owens, who mysteriously often appears on the same bill as Channing. (It’s rumored they share a booking agent.) 

Other acts included Circus Finelli, Tom Sway from Undergroud Sound, Joe Klocek from Previously Secret Information, Tom Jonesing, Don Seaver, and Gerri Lawlor. No sooner was the party over, Stagewerx hit the ground running with a Monday performance of the Picklewater Clown Cabaret and a four-weekend whirlwind of sketch comedy dubbed PanderFest 2011, co-starring Pianofight’s Mission CTRL and Crisis Hopkins. 

Meanwhile downtown, another theatre festival of quietly epic proportions. The SF Olympians Festival, opened with staged readings of new full-length plays by Thunderbird Theatre Company and Megan Cohen and a veritable constellation of shorts, kicking off a four-weekend run of its own on the EXIT Theatre mainstage. 

In its second year, the SF Olympians Festival uniquely fuses ancient Greek mythology with modern-day theatre-making, with each play featuring a different mythological figure—from Andromeda to Zephyrus—and a different local playwright (there are 29 represented in this festival of 32 plays). 

On Friday, a three-play bill of two shorts and one full-length work debuted, thematically clustered around Orion, one of the most recognizable of all constellations. Claire Rice’s very short, “Dog Day”, starred Benji Cooper as Canis, who morphed into the narrator of stage directions for Megan Cohen’s full-length “Hunter and Hunted,” which turned the Orion myth into an updated crime noir. 

Starring Matt Gunnison as the beleaguered “Joe Ryan,” an old-school detective on the trail of the Scorpio gang, Cohen’s often humorous play turned the otherwise familiar streets of San Francisco, from North Beach to the Panhandle, into a giant playground for the infamous Scorpio gang. 

Rounding out the evening with a case of constellation envy was “Scorpio,” a short penned by Seanan Palermo, starring an exasperated John Lennon Harrison as the titular character, fruitlessly pursuing Orion across the deserts of Arizona. There’re still three weekends left of the festival, each night more ambitious than the last, and at just ten bucks a pop, repeat visits are not only possible, but recommended.   

*Full disclosure, the author of this piece made a kickstarter donation to the Stagewerx campaign.


PanderFest 2011

Through Oct. 29

Various times, $20

Stagewerx

446 Valencia, SF

www.stagewerx.org/446.html

www.panderexpress.com

 

SF Olympians Festival

Through Oct. 29

 Various times, $10

Exit Theatre

156 Eddy, SF

www.sffringe.org

www.sfolympians.com

 

 

Really living at the Life is Living Festival (and now there’s a stage show too!)

Andrew Lam
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Every once in awhile, an festival comes along that seems so seamless, so positive, and so needed that it’s like it sprang from the Bay Area gods. Such an event is the Life is Living Festival, which took over West Oakland’s De Fremery Park last Sat/8 in big, happy puppy pile of art and kids and music. “We began this, but as you can see, it’s expanded so that it’s kind of everyone’s thing now,” says Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the founder of the Life is Living organization which has overseen the event’s growth into yearly happenings in Harlem, Houston, and Harlem. Bamuthi, who helped start the Bay’s pioneering spoken word nonprofit Youth Speaks, seemed as gleeful to be out in the Oakland sunshine as the kids flipping head over heels at the padded beginner’s parkour course set up in one side of the park.

In another corner, a spoken word stage pedal-powered by the velo-minded geniuses of Rock the Bike. In another, a simple floor set up on the grass where drummers pounded away for an all-are-welcome dance show-and-tell. A woman in her forties gyrated joyously in precisely free African patterns. A kid that didn’t go up to my waist breakdanced to thunderous applause, finally sitting down in a folding chair just offstage, rubbing the spot on the back of his head that had just been supporting his entire body in an upside-down spin. 

In between stellar sets by Panamanian-cum-Oaklanders Los Rakas and Questlove, a man took the stage to vocalize what it seemed like many in the crowd were already feeling — that this day, with its serenity and family-friendly vibes, was a big deal for West Oakland. He talked about how we were all standing on a corridor of public land. Across the street was a senior citizen’s center. It was a Saturday and its doors were locked. Was this, the man asked the crowd, acceptable? He encouraged us all to utilize public land as something that could nurture community, not to let it lie fallow. 

Such was the overall message of Life is Living — doing stuff with what we have, while we strengthen our voices to ask for more. What we had wasn’t too shabby — a food justice information area, a health and wellness zone that offered free HIV testing, shows from local hip-hop duo the Coup and Haitian dance troupe Ra Ra Loumen. 

Not to mention another of the festival’s major draws: the Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle. Around the country, Bay Area graff legend Estria Miyashiro has been organizing themed graffiiti contests. Competitors hear the word of the day’s showdown (Saturday’s was “proud”) and create vivid works of aerosol cleverness in an alloted time. When the panel of expert street artist-judges had tallied up their impressions Los Angeles artist Vyal received the day’s top honors for the second year in a row. 

The feel-good event of the year, I’m calling it. And community organizers are in luck: Life is Living directors and artists have come together to produce a performance piece about the festival that will combine its environmental agency, a call to arms for members of underserved communities across the country, and the festival’s graffiti art for visual punch. It starts on Thursday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Especially if you missed the message on Saturday, it’s a production that demands attention. 

 

“Red Black and Green: A Blues”

Thu/13-Sat/15 and Thu/20-Sat/22 7:30 p.m., $25 ($5 on Thursdays)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

 

City Lights celebrates a vital, veteran publisher

Sue Vaughan
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The avant-garde publisher New Directions was founded in 1936, but the idea was borne two years earlier when Ezra Pound gave some fairly harsh advice to James Laughlin, a 22-year-old aspiring poet and Harvard undergrad. In 1934, Laughlin was ambitious enough to travel to Rapallo, Italy, to meet and study under Pound, who was by that time a fascist and outspoken anti-Semite, but still respected by young writers as the force behind Eliot, Joyce, and Hemingway, as well as Imagism, the movement he helped shape. After two months, though, Pound didn’t think Laughlin possessed enough talent, and told him to return to the states and “do something useful.”
 
Three quarters of a century later, “useful” hardly describes New Directions (which will be celebrated Tues/11 at City Lights Books) and its dedication to publishing eccentric and groundbreaking work, beginning with the likes of Dylan Thomas, Denise Levertov, Tennessee Williams, and Marianne Moore, and continuing today with contemporaries like László Krasznahorkai and Javier Marías.

Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems from New Directions (New Directions Publishing, 191 pages, $14.95) testifies to that dedication. Published to commemorate its 75th anniversary this year, and edited by the poetry editor, Jeffrey Yang, the anthology draws from the New Directions’ exhaustive archive, piling together over 140 poets of every nationality, period, and style into a handsome little book. Arranged chronologically by date of birth, and spanning from antiquity to the present, the anthology explores the vastly different ways poets have responded to nature: worshipping it, vilifying it, and bemoaning its loss. As luck would have it, four contributors to the anthology will read at City Lights to commemorate New Directions’ anniversary: Michael Palmer, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Nathaniel Tarn.
 
As conventional or even dry as an anthology of nature poems may sound, Birds, Beasts, and Seas is impressive simply because New Directions’ specialty has always been renegades, rejects, and intransigents. It’s an anthology of nature poems, of course, but the poems are by no means characteristic of the genre. They are, however, characteristic of New Directions. Several of the poets here are rarely anthologized at all, and stumbling onto them is like bumping into old friends suddenly back from oblivion. William Bronk, for instance, whose poem “Aspects of the World Like Coral Reefs” dismantles science and asserts “It is absurd to describe the world in sensible terms;” or French poet Saint John Perse, Chilean poet Vincente Huidobro, and some of the very poets reading at City Lights on Tuesday, like Nathaniel Tarn whose brooding poem from “The Fire Season” wouldn’t appear in your typical nature anthology:
 
Our pines continue to die and continue to die—
funeral carpets of needles around their base.
You could sleep there, you could suffocate
soundly and be in harmony with all of nature.
 
Editor Yang writes in the preface that nature poems could change our way of thinking about the environment, and while Yang’s faith in the poem is admirable (however naive), the most anyone can really expect from Birds, Beasts, and Seas is an anthology that, at its finest moments, is new and invigorating.

New Directions Publishing 75th Anniversary
Tues/11, 7 p.m., free
City Lights
261 Columbus, SF
www.citylights.com

The Performant: Cinéma contradictoire

Andrew Lam
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The Performant: Cinéma contradictoire

While I spent a good deal of time out of doors last weekend taking in, among other things, an obligatory pilgrimage to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a jaunt on the historic schooner Alma with the WE Players, the 30-year anniversary of the Sea Chantey Sing, and Chicken John’s book release party, it was the introspective medium of the cinema that captured my attentions most of all. From the Star of Tyche at ATA, to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Lost Weekend’s “Offline In-Store” Film Festival, I devoured a sumptuous visual feast the satiating effects of which still linger days after.

The expertly-crafted, surrealistic films of Nara Denning have a decidedly ephemeral quality about them. Soaked in sepia tone and fantasia, they appear to be both of this world but adamantly not tied to it, flitting around the edges of stark reality like moths ready to plunge into a deadly yet strangely compelling fire. Her deeply-compelling yet minimal storylines tend to feature quixotic protagonists who have somehow lost their way, treading unworn paths through incongruous scenery, from jungle islands to funhouse rides to oceanic squalls, while trapped in the dubious limbo between waking and dreaming.

Scored by Stoo Odom, and featuring a slew of talented guest musicians, the films sound as good as they look-which is to say, exquisite. Over the weekend at ATA Denning presented five new films, each more haunting than the next, collected together on one DVD entitled Under the Pavement. 

The first film of the new series, The Pendulum Heart, starring Christine Bonansea and Christopher Comparini, is set in a tangled, wooded area where a masked Bonansea dances, struggling, against a backdrop of branches and darkness before encountering a hybrid tree-man (Comparini) with whom she makes a connection. The tormented and hilarious Dogmatique, starring Will Franken, opens with a Monty Python-esque sequence of feet walking in place on a treadmill of giant gears accompanied by an effervescent Allison Lovejoy composition: “Dog Rag”.

Surrounded with a city full of men who have turned into dogs (literally), Franken struggles to retain his humanity, a battle he is increasingly in danger of losing. Sentenced in court to “the bone mine,” forced into a ring to face off against a suited canine opponent (one “Peter Bones”), Franken eventually gives himself over to the soothing jazz of the full moon (sung by the Blue Fairy, Momo Cheeskos). 

Two nightmare-tinged vignettes Narcissus and The Nun (presented together as Still Life), starring Nirmala Nataraj and Emi Stanley respectively, plumb the depths of violence and regret shrouded in Denning’s characteristic sepia tones and billowing fabrics and featuring an especially mournful sax solo played by Willy the Mailman.

The last film of the evening, the Odyssey-inspired Star of Tyche, floats on an ocean of unease, as Julia Zeffiro steers her fragile craft on an increasingly treacherous voyage. Encountering goddesses (Margaret Belton), mercenaries (Wylie Huey), and spirits of the dead, Zeffiro never makes it to shore, exiled to endless navigation of the unsympathetic waters and other-worldly obstacles. An ending one suspects is occasionally entertained by Denning herself, but if the quality of this latest batch of films is an indicator, it is a fate she will handily avoid.

 

Fire it up: Checking out works at this weekend’s Ceramics Annual of America

Andrew Lam
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Clay is one of the most expressive forms of art. It can be pushed and pulled and molded into any sort of creation — given that the artist knows what they are doing, since clay can turn finicky in a flash. This weekend (Fri/7-Sun/9), the gigantic festival pavilion at Fort Mason will open its doors for the Ceramics Annual of America, which will be filled with a smorgasbord of wonderfully creative and delicate pieces of art, all hailing from the mediums of mud, fire, and glaze. I wandered around for almost two hours last night sucking on eye candy that ranged from intricate sculptures to modified pots that reminded me of sea creatures.

Two artists were especially memorable. If you end up at the show this weekend, make sure to scout them out. The first was Carmen Lang, whose sculptures ranged from doggies chilling on a mini couch to lovers wrapped up in a rather intimate embrace. Her choice in glazes was reminiscent of colors used in the 1960’s, giving the pieces a vintage flair. The were cute, a bit silly, and I wanted to take one home.

And then there was the work by Gail Ritchie. Her pieces bring together birds and chairs and are pure whimsy — they take you to a dream world. There, a girl holding an acorn is perched on the back of a docile pelican. An origami bird, stretching it’s neck, sits on a chair made of “recycled materials” (it’s all made of clay!). Ritchie’s work is truly beautiful, and paired with her incredible talent as an artist, her pieces really got me fired up. 

 

Ceramics Annual of America

Fri/7-Sun/9, $10 one day/$20 weekend pass

Festival Hall, Fort Mason

Buchanan and Marina, SF

www.ceramicsannual.org

 

“Victorian Visions” at Vesuvio Cafe

Sue Vaughan
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“Victorian Visions” at Vesuvio Cafe

Somewhere between a dollhouse and a photo portrait are the works of Brent Johnson and Jo Cyrus. Now on display (through Oct. 15) at North Beach’s Vesuvio Café, the artists create 3-D renderings of the facades of San Francisco’s trademark Victorian homes.


With meticulous attention to detail (as anyone who lives around here knows, no two Victorians are alike, with unique paint jobs, doorways, windows, ornamental additions, and architectural florishes), the pieces are made using reclaimed wood sourced from remodeling and restoration projects on actual, life-sized local Victorians. Swing by legendary beat haunt Vesuvio to check out the exhibit for a latte bowl-sized dose of San Francisco history, in miniature.


“Victorian Visions of San Francisco by Brent Johnson and Jo Cyrus”
Through Oct. 15
Vesuvio Café
255 Columbus, SF
www.vesuvio.com

Appetite: Two tastings to watch for

Andrew Lam
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Two excellent yearly reasons to wet your whistle are coming to town this week. Whiskey and wine, anyone?

WhiskyFest

WhiskyFest happens tomorrow, a whisk(e)y university, extravaganza, and shit show rolled into one. Though the Marriott ballroom settings feel corporate, most of the world’s best distillers, brand ambassadors, and whisk(e)y experts are on hand with classes, offering pours and chatting with guests. I go every year to taste untasted whiskies, revisit favorites, and meet the world’s great whisk(e)y makers.

Fri/7 6:30 – 9:30 p.m., sold out

San Francisco Marriott Marquis

55 Fourth St., SF

www.maltadvocate.com

 

Wine and Spirits Top 100

Every year Wine and Spirits Magazine throws an annual large tasting honoring the 100 wineries that had the best showing in the publication. I’ve gone the last few years, finding it to be an event that’s more focused on sampling a honed list of wines from around the globe — including sparkling — than most tastings. There will also be bites from favorites like Dosa, Piccino, and Txoko, and historically there’s live jazz. I will miss the event being in the striking SF Design Center Galleria this year, but the City View space is dramatically engulfed by downtown high rises and should be memorable.

Wed/12 6:30 p.m., $105

City View at Metreon

101 Fourth St., SF

www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com/top100 

— Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Period Piece: Life and death at the Columbarium

Andrew Lam
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“This place scared the crap out of me,” says Emmitt Watson, caretaker, historian, and tour guide at the San Francisco Columbarium, the only nondenominational spot in San Francisco to be laid to rest. “When I opened the doors, the first thing I saw were two raccoons.”

The Columbarium is a remnant of an earlier era in San Francisco, an era when everything west of Laurel Heights was pretty much a huge graveyard. Built in 1898, the building with a stone rotunda was a landmark in a sea of headstones. 

As San Francisco expanded in physical size and population, the Western cemeteries became a contentious issue. Smell, crime, homeless encampments, and something referred to vaguely as the “putrefactive germ” in newspaper articles were all reasons that were cited to move the dead elsewhere and make room for the living.

So elsewhere it was. Colma, home to 16 cemeteries, became the destination for many a deceased San Franciscan. 

The large-scale digging-up and hauling-out took place over the course of the 1930s. Headstones were refashioned into Buena Vista Park’s gutters and a sea wall at Ocean Beach. Remains not claimed and paid for by family members were reburied in mass graves. No new cemeteries could be built within city limits, and in the midst of the literal upheaval, the Columbarium housed the cremated remains that were to stay. 

The building is endowed with a cathedral’s glory – all gleaming copper, huge archways, and light filtering down from a domed top. But the Columbarium spent almost half a century in utter neglect and abandonment before 1979. That’s when Watson’s employer, the Neptune Society (a cremation and funeral planning company), bought the property. Watson, responsible for this gleaming cache of human remains, struggled with cobwebs as big as his arm, broken stained glass windows, and feral animals. Now, the place is spotless, and smells faintly like a florist’s refrigerated stockroom.

The building sits abruptly at the end of a residential cul-de-sac. Emmitt Watson lives right next door. In a sense, his neighbors include Harvey Milk and Chet Helms, as well as at least 30,000 others (many stashed in the same urn). 

“Evidently it was meant for me,” says Watson of the Columbarium, and many San Franciscans apparently feel the same way. Glass cases along all three floors of the building display yellow “Reserved” signs. “Your niche in history,” reads a Neptune Society brochure. 

 

 

San Francisco Columbarium

Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat-Sun, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

One Loraine, SF

(415) 752-7891

www.neptune-society.com

 

 

Trash Lit: Robert Ludlum is (really) dead

Zelda Bronstein
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Trash Lit: Robert Ludlum is (really) dead

The Ares Decision
By Kyle Mills
Grand Central Publishing, 410 pp $27.99

The official title of this particular work of literary art, as it were, is “Robert Ludlum’s (TM) The Ares Decision.” That because the name Robert Ludlum sells — still, long after he left for the Great Bestseller List In The Sky. See, Ludlum — by many accounts the modern master of the international spy/thriller genre — died in 2001. But they made movies and they’ve made sequels and they’ve made more sequels and they’ve made movies out of stuff Ludlum never wrote. Jason Bourne is almost the new James Bond — a character who far outlives the guy who created him.

So they’ve found other writers to pretend they’re Ludlum and write stuff that maybe the Late Great might have done if he had lived forever (TM).

And as long as people keep making money on this shit, the producers are going to keep producing it.

In fact, there’s a whole lotta James Bond going on in this latest “Robert Ludlum’s (TM)” book. I can tell you this: It reads sometimes like a script for a Bond movie (which is embarassing). It reads sometimes like a Tom Clancy novel (which is not all bad). It hardly ever reads like something that Robert Ludlum would have written.

Here’s the deal:

There’s some nasty parasite that turns people into living zombies — they feel no pain, just anger, and fight and kill until their bodies are so hacked up that they can’t move any more. Of course, the little bug is very fatal; the living zombies only last a few hours before they die almost as horribly as the people they killed along the way.

Perfect bio-weapon, no?

Well, the Iranians (of course) think so, and they’re trying to force a young biologist who just wants to study ant parasites into turning this thing into a weapon. (The ant girl, Sarie Van Keuren, is the best character in the book, a gin-driniking scientist who is excellent with guns, a first-rate mechanic and a total space cadet. She has more depth than any of the rest of the sterotypes who people the sordid tale.)

Naturally, the CIA is involved, and naturally, it’s trouble: The director really wants the Iranians to use the zombie weapon so he’ll have an excuse to get the president to nuke the whole country back to the stone age. He doesn’t want too many people to die though; just a few million Americans, enough to create the political climate for mushroom clouds over the Middle East.

And he’s a bad guy, the CIA director, a nasty dude who puts secret paralysis death drugs in the General Tso’s Chicken.

There’s a looney Kurtz-style African strongman who has something of a cult. He is in the employ of Iran, and has an undergound fortress lab in Central Uganda, where the kidnapped Dr. Van Keuren is put to work. The only one who can save her is a super-secret operative who works directly for the president in an off-the-books op called Covert-One (how imaginative).

Along the way, there’s more living zombie attacks, crazed infected monkey attacks, machete attacks, a severed-head-in-the-back-of-a-pickup scene and a little bit of conventional warfare.

I read the whole thing. I liked Sarie enough to keep going. And it’s got an interesting plot, in a sick Clancy-ish way. But don’t name this stuff after Robert Ludlum; he had a lot more class.   

The novelty doughnut grows up

Andrew Lam
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The novelty doughnut grows up

Having come of age in Portland at a time that coincided with the rise of Voodoo Doughnut, the novelty doughnut trend has had ample time to lose its luster for me. It is easy to be jaded when you grew up with 2 a.m. Nyquil-glazed treats. But today I had a rhubarb doughnut from Dynamo and my essential understanding of the fancy doughnut meme has shifted forever.

Acquaint yourself with this one. I know that Dynamo is all the rage right now, and its essential yuppie-ness makes its location on 24th Street… well one of the many things on 24th Street that harbinge ethnic, class, and culture sea changes. But on days like today, when you don’t want to get to work so quick, the darling awning and clever curbside coffee line has a way of just enveloping you. 

A rhubarb doughnut?

This was a new concept to me — the doughnuts in my life have been of the maple bar sort, and then of the shaped-like-a-joint sort at Voodoo, and then more recently, from the shaped-like-a-person-in-a-straightjacket school of thought that birthed the South Bay’s Psycho Donuts. But Dynamo’s rhubard had no gimmicky, arranged sprinkles. Nor is this doughnut a mere vehicle for the numbing consumption of empty calories. 

It had style. A sweetness, yes (don’t worry I’m still all jacked up on refined sugars), but also taste. A fully conceived dessert, and yes I was eating it at 10 in the morning. I wanted to give into Dynamo’s lemon-pistachio and coconut varieties, but I resolutely walked off down the road. 

Just like the doughnut, we are growing up. 

 

Dynamo Donuts

Open Tues.-Sat., 7 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 

2760 24th St., SF

(415) 920-1978

www.dynamodonut.com

Style Paige: Tie-dye your hair

Andrew Lam
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Style Paige: Tie-dye your hair

It’s temporary, it’s original, and it’s a fly summer style that can transition into fall. Even better, you probably learned how to do it during summer camp: tie-dye your hair, why don’t you?

Pictured is a woman in the Haight Ashbury who used blue and purple dye. For fall, you can use darker tones like rust or burgundy.

First, highlight the tips of the hair using hair bleach. Don’t fret, if you use the correct amount of bleach, you won’t damage your hair. Fold the hair into a piece of foil to let the bleach process. After shampooing and conditioning the hair, blow-dry — if it’s wet it will absorb less color. Then, using whatever hair dye you chose (blue, teal, pink, purple, etc.) begin painting the tips of the hair with a color brush. Using a brush will help the colors blend together.

For more details check The Beauty Department’s gorgeous pictorial how-to

 

Period Piece: Mission Creek houseboat community rocks with the tides

Andrew Lam
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3

Period Piece is Lucy Schiller’s recurring feature on the hidden histories of San Francisco. Give her a shout at culture@sfbg.com if you know of some hot dirt on olden times in the city

Few wander into Mission Creek’s small houseboat community. It’s hard to find, unless you live in the luxury condos across the channel or are tailgating in a nearby parking lot for a Giants game. But tucked under the I-280 ramp floats a tiny neighborhood, an undiscovered fixture of San Francisco.

On a recent visit, I am shown a residence festooned with skulls and racks of antlers, another with windowboxes full of carnivorous plants, and another with a ghoulishly grinning blowfish decorating the front door. Neighbors here include stingrays, anchovies, pelicans, seals, and – according to one resident – an on-again-off-again sea lion visitor of rather large proportions.  During the small-scale tsunami in March, the floating community felt their homes rise up by about three feet. When asked if any families lived in the boats, one resident responded sharply, “Yes. We’re all a family.” It couldn’t get any quainter, really. 

The short waterway has a long history. Before the white settlement of San Francisco, Ohlone Indians lived and boated along Mission Creek’s course, which was then much wider and longer, stretching almost from Twin Peaks to the Bay. Fast-forward some years and butchers were sending unwanted guts downstream, railroad companies were slowly paving it over to make way for new transportation networks, and Del Monte was setting up shop, using cheap labor to offload and can fruit in massive volume.

Today, a few of the creek’s residents are descendents of the dockworkers who worked to unload shipment after shipment of bananas. The houseboat community first began taking form in the early 1960s, with many of the original members moving from neighborhoods only a stone’s throw away. 

Now, the small settlement seems comprised of individuals filling strangely specific roles – I met and heard of the caretaker, the doctor, the weaver, the ex-taxi driver-current waterway historian. A small but productive community garden grows on a nearby bank. Needless to say, all who live here hold their patch of water very dear.

And it has changed considerably. In the still-recent past, San Francisco’s skyline gleamed through the boats’ kitchen windows; façades of the Berry Street condos have replaced that view. Mission Creek Park, a winding green space running parallel to the creek, is also a recent development. The inherent charm of living on a houseboat in the middle of the city is pretty obvious to outsiders, and residents worry about being slowly bought out by folks less devoted to the existing community. After recently renewing a lease with the Port Authority, however, the boaters should be sitting pretty till at least 2043, to the nightly sounds of shrieking egrets and Giants fans alike.

 

Your Sunday meal plan: Sweet treats, Latino eats at this weekend’s food events

Andrew Lam
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Your Sunday meal plan: Sweet treats, Latino eats at this weekend’s food events

After the demise of the Underground Market, a bit of a streetside, downlow foodie vacuum has developed in SF. Sure, we’ve still got Off the Grid, Mission Community Market, and for the moment at least, the Free Farm Stand — but it’s not enough food-themed events for a town that rejoices in innovation and knowing what to eat before one’s coworker does. Hot! New! More! Luckily this Sunday there’s ample opportunity to get your locally-sourced snack on, in style.

Street Sweets

A bright-faced gentleman with a messenger bag arrived at our office to drop off samples of the SF-made snacks that will be sold at this pop-up underground dessert market. That clandestine terminology perhaps best described the reasoning behind the “bacon crack” from chocolatiers Nosh This (which also produces homemade limoncello, soups, and Frito pies). Our meat-eating staffers found it “delicious, really delicious,” but give those people salt and pig fat and they’ll eat anything, really.

Also on the menu: raw milk ice cream from Jilli’s. This arrived in darling little jam jars that you can peep on the website, stuffed with the brand’s super-creamy blackberry flavor. Jacky Hayward, owner of Jilli’s, says that she’ll be serving it Sunday with a hot crumble on top and whipped cream. Surely your brain will collapse from all the refined sugar (ours did!) after sampling these PLUS mango blueberry white chocolate masala cookies from baker-blogger Irvin Lin, a.k.a. Eat the Love, the third partner in this secretive sweetfest. 

Sign up on the website and you’ll find out where it is on Sat/1. Just don’t tell the New York Times about it, mmkay?

Sun/2 1-6 p.m., free

Undisclosed location, SF

www.sfstreetsweets.com

 

El Mercado

No need to keep this one on the DL: this Latin American-themed food fair is comprised of vendors on the up and up with the Health Department – most notably El Taco Bike, which serves steamed tacos de canasta from the back of a three-wheeled, pedal-powered, self-made contraption, as we reported in our interview with creator and restaurant owner Alfonso Dominguez (vegans take note, a similar operation has been spotted in the Mission). 

But it’s not all buche and carnitas. Cerveza and tragos will be available for passers-by, as well as Latin American crafts, live music onstage by DJ Wonway Posibul of the Latin Soul Brothers, Vanessa Ayala, and an acoustic set by badass electro-hip-hop-Latin beatmaker Bang Data. Even an on-site curandera? I mean, tell the New York Times about it already. 

Sun/2 noon-6 p.m., free

Era Art Bar and Lounge

19 Grand, SF

Facebook: El Mercado 

 

The Performant: Weekend in Wonderland

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4

ALICE and Folsom Street Fair fall down different holes

From North Beach to South of Market, clowning to carousing, the weekend offered up a veritable smorgasbord of sensory overload and playful edge. First off, a debut performance of a quirky bit of deconstruction in new kid venue on the North Beach block, The Emerald Tablet. Written and conceptualized by two spirited performers (Edna Miroslava Barrón and Karen Anne Light), “ALICE: Down the Rwong Wrabbit Whole” offered a welcome introduction to both the space and the still-fresh faces of the presenting duo.

Billed as a version of Alice in Wonderland in which the two performers play “all 359 characters” (they don’t quite make it) the performance quickly becomes more of an exploration of the creative life rather than a linear narrative based on that classic tome. In a schizophrenic, sometimes mimed, frenzy, Barrón and Light assume and discard a handful of roles in rapid-fire sequence—Alice, Dinah the cat, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar—but the characters that wind up with the most stage time are themselves as they jostle each other for center stage. Light launching into a series of poker-faced monologues regarding the importance of art and professionalism in theatre; Barrón undermining her pedantic pomposity at every turn with unscheduled pee breaks and incandescent bursts of childish enthusiasm.

“We’re like a pear and an orange,” she confides, referring to her and Light’s working relationship. “Totally different…but we still taste good together.”

“Actually we’re more like a pineapple and a quasar,” retorts Light, re-entering the scene after a brief jaunt into Salvador Dali territory. Supported throughout the performance by Barrón’s idiosyncratic sound design (she moonlights as DJ Nobody of KUSF/KUSF-in-Exile), and punctuated by moments of brilliance (a water-logged Mad Hatter’s Tea Party scene, for example), “Rwong Wrabbit Whole” plays for the most part like a string of firecrackers. Plenty of bang, despite lacking a particular climactic epiphany.

Sunday dawned damp, but fortunately by the afternoon it was downright balmy, just perfect for the parade of fantasy and flesh that is the Folsom Street Fair. Though it’s safe to say no-one really heads down to the Fair for the music, every year there’s always at least one standout act, and this year that act was the sultry electro-soul chanteuse Billie Ray Martin. Although late in the day, the sweet pulse of the music infused the worn and torn crowd with blissed-out euphoria. Although perhaps best known by the club kids for her stint in 90’s house music ensemble Electribe 101, Martin’s husky, powerful vocals would not be out of place shimmering on the soundtrack for the next James Bond flick, or tucked into a Gladys Knight tribute album. And the buoyant electro-clash of songs such as “Sold Life,” “Undisco Me,” and Hard Ton duet “Fantasy Girl,” juxtaposed against her rough diamond voice and Kit Kat Klub cabaret style offer a compelling combination you wouldn’t want to miss no matter the occasion.

“ALICE: Down the Rwong Wrabbit Whole”
through October 15
The Emerald Tablet
80 Fresno, SF
(415) 500-2323
RwongWrabbitWhole.webs.com

Style Paige: Welcome Stranger rides the Hayes Valley range

Andrew Lam
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0

Follow Paige A. Ricks as she paws through local designers, boutiques, and street trends. Her first SFBG feature focuses on high end Western wear in a Hayes Valley boutique

Inimitably structured leather wallets by Maxx and Unicorn Co., paisley bow ties, old Americana: these are the style cues at Welcome Stranger.

Upon entering the store, you’re greeted with a welcome mat, of course. Before even touching a wool-blend shirt or a pair of dark denim jeans, take in the vintage pieces that decorate the room: picture-less picture frames, rifles, a deer head hanging on the wall, large old trunks and fake novels with wallpaper covers. 

The boutique is inspired by the outdoors, carrying brands like A.P.C Jeans, Burkman Bros, and Pendleton — all Western-style brands that mix plaids, denim, and suede fabrics in their pieces. But store mannequins are dressed San Francisco-appropriate with leather messenger bags and army green military jackets. From corduroy blazers to rainbow socks one could imagine wearing with Oxford shoes, there’s enough variety in the boutique to create an outfit from head to toe. An amazing pair of sunglasses made from bamboo by Waiting for the Sun would pair nicely with most of the outdoorsy, chic designs.

The store is owners Catherine Chow and Corina Nurimba second project on Gough Street – the two also own Azalea Boutique, located across the street from Welcome Stranger. 

As America enters into its fifth year of the recession, a high-end men’s clothing boutique seems like the dubious financial investment. But for these two stores financial worries haven’t been an issue — although there are few items under $100, a diverse clientele seems undeterred from shopping. Welcome Stranger attracts the hipsters, the hip-hop heads, the mountain men, and the well-established businessmen. 

Lesley Tanaka, Welcome Stranger general manager, said soon the store would begin selling their own Welcome Stranger clothing collection. The store already sells a few items under the Welcome Stranger brand – especially eye-catching are the cow skin satchels, which are reconstructed from vintage army sacks.

They epitomize the shop’s rugged flair. This is the kind of place that can make a man really feel at home. 

 

Welcome Stranger

Open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. daily

46 Gough, SF

(415) 864-2079

www.welcomestranger.com

 

Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Today’s Look: Eleonore, Yse, and Phoebe, Octavia and Hayes

Describe your look:

Eleonore: “Paris”

Yse: “Not my own clothes”

Phoebe: “Fun!”

 

Live Shots: Smuin Ballet in rehearsal at Palace of Fine Arts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

The stage was sheathed in a cloak of purple smoke, that coated the dancer’s skin as they whirled their way across the black floor. Smuin Ballet was doing a final run through of their piece Tango Palace at the Palace of Fine Arts last week, in preparation for opening night, and I was there to snap a few photos of those final moments of rehearsal on 9/23/2011.


The dance piece, which is supposed to invoke “the brothel, the barrio, and the barroom,” mixed classic tango with hints of ballet, just along the fringes of the dancer’s dresses. The dancer’s strong, sculpted bodies moved with each beat to create a theatrical sense of old-time tango, whose Argentinian roots were brimming with passion and romance, and quite a bit of naughtiness.

Here’s a video from earlier this year of the company in rehearsal:

 

SMUIN BALLET

Through Oct 1, various times and prices

Palace of Fine Arts

www.smuinballet.org

 

28 films in six days: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (part three)

Sue Vaughan
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28 films in six days: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (part three)

Check out parts one (here) and two (here).

21) Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, UK) Adapting Emily Brontë’s novel from 1847 is a perfect project for the stark realist Andrea Arnold. Her previous films Fish Tank (2009) and Red Road (2006) have captured audiences with their brutal honesty and inspired storytelling. With perhaps the most visually poetic atmosphere since Lynne Ramsey and Claire Denis, Arnold manages to emphasize every snowflake in this austere tale of lost love without a single lazy hint of narration. Do not miss this for the world.

22) The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy) Can these Belgian brothers make a bad film? Seriously? Like their Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), and L’enfant (2005), this is yet another hypnotic neo-realist journey portraying modern-day youth like no other in cinema. Every character makes unexpected and inevitable decisions. No moment is false. The Dardennes create movies that make life feel more real.

23) God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait, USA) Of all the films at Toronto this year, though it may not be as fully realized or neatly trimmed as others, Bobcat Goldthwait’s low-budget quickie has the most immediacy. Blending Todd Solondz and Oliver Stone, the fiery God Bless America follows a couple of frustrated and nihilistic characters as they rant and rave their way across the country, incessantly exposing every annoying detail about this past decade. The film takes out everything from American Apparel to American Idol; in the Q&A following the film’s midnight screening, Goldthwait shocked audiences when he called out Kevin Smith and referred to Oprah Winfrey as the devil.

Even though Goldthwait’s constant, unmuzzled, reactionary explosions may ultimately overstay their welcome by the last act, God Bless America does something unlike any comedy I’ve seen this year: it cares enough about our country to get mad as hell and not want to take it anymore.

24) Trishna (Michael Winterbottom, UK) Deconstructing the Bollywood genre by simply removing the gloss from the top, Winterbottom has crafted a Thomas Hardy-inspired (yet modern) tale of life in the big city (in this case, Rajasthan). As a young woman (Freida Pinto of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire) attempts to transcend her family’s poverty, she meets hip young tourist Jay (Riz Ahmed, 2006’s The Road to Guantanamo Bay) who falls for her beauty. What follows is a Robert Bresson-esque tale with spectacularly nuanced acting and editing that has the possibility of leaving you absolutely breathless.

25) Shame (Steve McQueen, UK) Gasps fluttered through the air as Michael Fassbender wandered around his apartment naked in the opening sequence of Steve McQueen’s sophomore output (after 2008’s Hunger, also with Fassbender). Shame explores the concept that the desire for sex consumes many of our lives; it’s a mesmerizing film that plumbs darker depths than anyone in the theater was prepared for. Containing hands-down one of the greatest and bravest roles of the decade (Fassbender took the acting award in Venice) — Shame also features a heart-wrenching Carey Mulligan performance, as Fassbender’s seriously self-destructive sister. Bearing the imminent scarlet letter of NC-17 (which most US movie chains won’t screen), Shame is still a movie not to be missed.

26) Your Sister’s Sister (Lynn Shelton, USA) The sleeper of TIFF 2011, Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to her genre-defining bromance Humpday (2009) is a pitch-perfect indie flick. Depressed and confused 30-something Jack (played by Mark Duplass, master of casual awkwardness) heads off to a remote island to figure out his life. The only trouble: his best friend (a mesmerizing Emily Blunt) also has a lesbian sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) who is already there doing her own soul searching. With this contemplative, honest, and hilarious film, Shelton is turning out to be quite a splendid voice for our current generation of progressive pitfallers.

27) Melancholia (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany) Lars von Trier’s infamous press conference at Cannes (in which he compared himself to Hitler among other things) should not dissuade any cinephiles from seeing his evocatively profound latest film. In fact, this sci-fi (by way of John Cassavetes) entry proves that the auteur not only dares to explore panic attack-inducing subject matters (comparing the anxiety towards marrying the wrong person with, say … the end of the world), but he’s able to do it with horrific beauty. As a result, Melancholia might be his most accessible and most traumatizing film to date.

28) We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsey, UK/USA) There are some films that need to be seen more than once. There are are some filmmakers who need to make more than one movie every eight years. Enter Lynne Ramsey. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s book of the same title, Ramsey’s epic descent into the difficult relationship between a mother and son doesn’t just beautifully weave through the universal moments of familial love and hate (similar to Terrence Malick’s 2010 Tree of Life), it teleports you visually without relying on a single shred of narration, explanatory dialogue, or without ever condescending to the audience.

Kevin boasts stunning performances by Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller as the mother and son; what could’ve been a tossed-off husband role is made hauntingly sweet by the almighty John C. Reilly. Here’s hoping the success of this film will insure the kind of industry (and financial) attention that’ll allow Ramsey to shorten the gaps between her films. We Need to Talk About Kevin, but more importantly, we need to talk about Lynne Ramsey!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks teaches full time as the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University; he also curates the film series Midnites for Maniacs, which celebrates dismissed, underrated, and overlooked films.

Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Today’s Look: Maki, Linden and Octavia

“I’m from Japan.”

Fighting displacement in Fiji, San Antonio’s community gardens

Andrew Lam
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Last Saturday, the website 350.org encouraged people met up to protest dependence on fossil fuels and celebrate community-based activism. The result was 2,000 events across the world for a day of action called Moving Planet Day, a dispersed mix that illustrated how climate change is affecting and being worked on in different parts of the world. We checked in with organizers in San Francisco and Buenos Aires last week (check shots from the celebration in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza here) and will round out the series with news from activists in San Antonio, Tex. and Suva, Fiji. Their answers spoke to the breadth of the day’s significance.

Mobi Warren, founder of 350SanAntonio.org and Moving Planet volunteer coordinator, helped organize two events in her city — one at a community garden and one at a repurposed brewery, at the same time as a farmers market. 

SFBG: What was the goal of Moving Planet Day in your town?

MW: Increased awareness among citizens; expanded partnerships and new alliances between environmental, civic, non-profit, and local governmental organizations who engage with the issue of climate change from different perspectives; momentum and inspiration for all the hard work that lies ahead.  

 

SFBG: How did people mark the day? What was going on in San Antonio?

MW: We had [Moving Planet Day] events at two venues. One was sponsored by the Health Collaborative, a non-profit that works in local schools and that has a beautiful community garden (next door to the school where I am a fifth grade math teacher — the Roots and Shoots Environmental Club I sponsor at my school partners with the garden) — they offered several family-friendly, hands-on activities that explored community gardens and local food as one of the solutions to climate change. They also had two huge pinatas in the shape of Hummers filled with green surprises that children broke open as a symbolic way of breaking an addiction to fossil fuel.

The second event was a larger awareness fair that took place at a popular San Antonio gathering place — the historical Pearl Brewery — a completely solar-powered space that has been repurposed and that holds a popular farmer’s market every Saturday that draws a good crowd. Twenty groups set up tables with hands-on activities and info related to climate change solutions: green building, alternative transportation, recycling, community gardening, etc. Sierra Club members took on the task of inviting an impressive slate of speakers for the Pearl event. We had state representative Mike Villareal, two Texas  Climate Scientists, Gunnar Schade and Gerald North who gave terrific and informative presentations, and Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a strong advocate of 350.org. There was even a poetry reading as part of Moving Planet in the local bookstore at the Pearl, The Twig. Poets read poems on the theme of climate change and environmental issues.


SFBG: Your favorite part of the day?

MW: The entire event was pretty amazing. We estimate 800 to 1000 people passed through the awareness fair and there was a lot of engagement and conversation going on the whole time. Seeing citizens stay after the speakers’ presentations to ask questions and discuss with them how we can better work together on the urgent issue of climate change made me feel that awareness and momentum is growing here in the heart of Texas. But maybe the most inspiring moment was seeing the face of one of my students who came to both venues with her mom and siblings (and this is a low income family that gets everywhere by bus or foot) — explaining to her family what 350.org means.   

 

Ewan Cameron celebrated two Moving Planet Days — roughly the first and last ones in the world. The coordinator for the Pacific chapter of Moving Planet Day and part of the organizing committee for Moving Planet Samoa, he participated in a Suva, Fiji walk-bike-canoe-run event. We caught up with him via email before he flew the 719 miles — and 22 hour time difference — to Samoa to participate in festivities there. 

SFBG: What is your role in your city’s Moving Planet Day events?

Ewan Cameron: I am the Pacific coordinator for Moving Planet as well as a part of the Samoa Moving Planet organizing committee.

 

SFBG: What inspired you to get involved?

EC: The problems that small islands face, the interactiveness of 350.org, the friendship and inspiration of others, and the passion.

 

SFBG: What did Suva get up to on Saturday?

EC: We paddled a six-person canoe, sailed, walked, ran, and cycled from Suva Point to Suva’s grammar school and back.

 

SFBG: What, for you, was the most inspiring moment?

EC: Sharing this moment with fellow Pacific Islanders, and with the rest of the entire world, in addition the fact that the Pacific officially began the campaign with in Tonga, and we in Samoa will be the last country to close the campaign. I am fortunate at this moment to be in Fiji participating in the Moving Planet event in Suva, I was here attending a 2 week training, and then I fly out tonight back to Samoa where I live to celebrate our event in Samoa which is the last event on the planet. So I will be in two different time zone.

 

SFBG: How many people attended the event?

EC: Over 50 people participated.

 

SFBG: Why was this such a big deal?

EC: Because the climatic impacts are already being felt, people, and communities within the Pacific are being forced to relocate and are being displaced. These problems are not being exaggerated, Coastal areas are eroding, saltwater from king tides are damaging staple foods that people rely on, climate change is a real issue. The science is there, it can be proven, and on top of that major emitters are violating people rights!


SFBG: What do you hope that Saturday’s activities achieve?

EC: Major public pressure on governments to commit to a emissions reduction target that will bring the planet down below the safety level of 350ppm, and a serious, rapid display of movement towards the use of cleaner energy sources.  


SFBG: How did you transport yourself to the festivities?

EC: I walked.


SFBG: Complete this sentence: We can reverse the causes of man-made climate change if we… 

EC: … stop burning coal, and not allow the burning of tar sands. 

Been There: Autumnal Equinox Gathering at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1

On the purposefully unmarked road heading into Bolinas, there is a very wonderful spot you don’t want to miss. The Gospel Flat Farm is a family-run organic edible haven, with an honor-based farm stand that is open 24 hours a day.

Sam Love and I were introduced to the farm when we met a couple of wonderful free spirits, Kalie and Scott, while hiking in Samuel P. Taylor Park a few weeks back. Scott is the resident bread baker at the farm’s wood powered oven, and he and Kalie invited us to a photography show and autumnal equinox gathering down at the farm. So last Friday, after a sun-soaked hike on Mt. Tam, we wended our way down the hill to Bolinas to explore the farm.


By the time we got there, the stone oven was already working away, roasting a huge platter of fresh farm veggies, and while he gave the vegetables a turn, Scott told us about the relationship he has formed with the ancient-looking oven. Baking bread becomes a two-day process, starting the night before, when he loads the oven with wood, lights it, and then comes back the next morning to remove the embers. The oven reaches almost 1000 degrees, which then cools throughout the day, and the heat gets used to bake and then, later on, to roast our dinner.

Inside the farm stand, Kalie showed us her beautiful photographs, that document the wood fire baking process. The images are evocative and also mysterious, capturing the beauty and power of traditional breadmaking.

We sat and drank fresh peppermint tea with other guests, and helped make a batch of guacamole, while we waited for the veggies to finish roasting. Before we left, we picked out some precious artichokes from the farm stand and a bunch of flowers. Sam Love and I were so relaxed and contented, having escaped the rush of the city and made new friends — with our bellies full with farm delights. Hugs all around and then it was time to leave.

A coyote watched us from the side of the road as we slowly wiggled our way along Stinson Beach, back home to San Francisco.

Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Hayes Valley Edition

Today’s Look: Pedro and Natalia, Gough and Grove

Describe your look:

Pedro: “Casual”

Natalia: “Estilo de turista”

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