SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Linda, Union and Stockton
Tell us about your look: “My belt and boots go together.”
- No categories
Pixel Vision
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Joel, Powell and Ellis
Tell us about your look: “I’m going to work. This outfit is very laid back cuz of the weather today.”
Twinkle, twinkle, Bianca Starr
By Kimberly Chun
It’s been months, but I’m still reeling from the loss of the Built by Wendy boutique on 20th Street. Yeah, yeah, I know – who could afford any of those cute lil’ indie-rocker outfits? A gal can dream…
But now a few doors down from the old space, a fab mutant lovely has moved in: Bianca Starr. The brand new girl on the block – all of six weeks old – combines Painted Bird thrifty cool with a major dollop of Krystle Carrington ’80s glam. The store motto: “A women’s boutique where you leave your inhibitions at the door.”
Lighting bolt-emblazoned heels, jewel-tone silky frocks, Ferragamo pumps with baby pyramid heels, and the works, all with a distinctively Reagan-era club-kid edge. And the vintage wares are rather reasonably priced to boot – so all those pennies saved with the loss of Built by Wendy can go straight to Starr. Zoom.
BIANCA STARR
3552 20th St., SF
(415) 341-1020
www.biancastarr.com
Duty calls: In line for Call of Duty
By Kimberly Chun
Just what are these courageous souls queuing up for on a late Monday night on Powell Street, right outside GameStop? The new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game, that’s what. Looks like the first-person shooter is indeed locked and loaded and poised to become one of the biggest- and fastest-selling games in history (though this string of dudes – and they were mostly dudes – was shorter than the crowd bunked down for, say, PS2.
Appetite: Food for Thought helps Mission grads, Frescobaldi gets Luce
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Digging into some Food for Thought
11/11-11/23 of the Mission’s best restaurants participate in "Food for Thought" to help Mission grads get to college
Do nothing but eat out at one of your favorite Mission restaurants this Wednesday night and you’ll be helping some of the neediest Mission high school grads get to college. With 23 of the ‘hood’s best restaurants participating, a portion of all dinner sales (restaurants have committed anywhere from 25-100% of that night’s sales) go to Food for Thought. In it for the long haul, Food for Thought offers, among other things, tutoring centers for elementary school kids, academic support groups in junior high, and college prep programs for high school students, working with them through each phase of schooling. There’s even raffle prizes at each restaurant, like a trip for two to Mexico. You don’t have to be told twice to eat out at Range, Mission Beach Cafe, Little Star Pizza, or Bar Bambino, do you?
11/11 regular hours at 23 Mission restaurants
List of participating restaurants: www.missiongraduates.org/foodforthought
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A Luce interior
11/11 – Luce celebrates its Michelin Star with the Frescobaldi family
It’s an honor for a chef to receive a Michelin star, especially a French chef like our own Dominique Crenn at Luce in the Intercontinental Hotel (she’s also on this season of The Next Iron Chef). Luce celebrates in a big way by cooking a 6-course Tuscan feast, Inspirations of Tuscany, with Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi’s wine estates’ executive chef, Donatella Zampoli. Frescobaldi, the legendary Italian family who even traded their wines with Michelangelo back in the day, will, naturally, be pairing their wines with dinner. Not only is this a rare, special night, but $10 of every 6-course dinner benefits CUESA, so the focus remains local as it is international. Courses include Thomas Family Farms potato gnocchi with bone marrow and lobster paired with a glass of 2006 Attems Cicinis, or sweetbread and beef tongue with potato espuma (foam to you), slow cooked egg and pancetta jus partnered with a 2005 Nipozzano Riserva Chianti Classico. Can’t make it out Wednesday? The party rolls on all month until November 21, with a 4-course Michelin Star prix-fixe menu available any night for $60 per person.
$75; $30 for wine pairings
11/11 – make a reservation during regular hours, 5-11pm
888 Howard Street
415-616-6566
www.lucewinerestaurant.com
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Janice, Columbus and Union
Tell us about your look: “It’s a combo of Nordstrom’s and Chico’s. My style is comfortable and sleek.”
Goldies Extra: Thrillpeddlers spread devilish joy
By Cheryl Eddy
Russell Blackwood as the Empress of Colma in Hypnodrome Head Trips
If you dare! Venture down a dark, spooky stretch of Tenth Street to the Hypnodrome, home of San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers. Before the show even starts, you’ll notice one or two or ten wonderful oddities. Like, what’s that head doing in that box behind the bar? (It’s a “cephalic vivarium,” a prop from a past production, Hypnodrome Head Trips.) What’s the story with that old-timey player piano? (It’s a family heirloom belonging to Thrillpeddlers director Russell Blackwood.) And yikes — is that box seat on the far right decorated to look like a padded cell? (Yes.)
Of course, this instant intrigue is exactly what Blackwood — who founded the company in 1991 with childhood pal Daniel Zilber — wants his audiences to feel. Thrillpeddlers are America’s preeminent producer of plays from the Grand Guignol, the infamous Parisian theater that peddled thrills (if you will) from 1897-1962.
“To get to the Grand Guignol, you would take the Metro to Montemartre, and walk past brothels and the Moulin Rouge, and turn down this dead-end alley to the [theater] at the very end. Going there was a whole experience on its own,” Blackwood explains. “I knew that [the Hypnodrome is] not in the best neighborhood here. But that’s part of the unusual experience, just getting to our theater.”
The company has had the Hypnodrome, which seats 45, for five years. One defining characteristic is the array of “shock boxes” that line the theater’s last row. Blackwood’s father, who is the Thrillpeddler’s set designer, recently redesigned the boxes to incorporate a variety of themes (Egyptian tomb, heaven and hell, the above-mentioned padded cell, etc.) Each box is tricked out with devices designed to lend an extra-sensational experience, with “spandex panels, compressed air, all kinds of glow-in-the-dark things, vibrator pads, and several different buzzers,” Blackwood discloses with devilish joy.
Still from Thrillpeddlers’ Titus Andronicus, 2006
There’s history involved here, and it goes back further than William Castle. “The Grand Guignol and many other Parisian theaters had private boxes with grillwork fronts, so you could see out, but you had to really look in to see in. The Grand Guignol was the last Parisian theater to still have those in the 1960s,” Blackwood says. “The idea of there being a theater where a housewife could have a midday tryst with a lover was just too charming for me. So all of the boxes have curtains that close, and as long as it’s brighter onstage than it is in the box, we can’t see in, but they can see out. And we have had things go on!”
Goldies Extra: Luke Butler goes there
By Matt Sussman
Take one look at Luke Butler’s “Leaders of Men” series, and the “walk softly, but carry a big stick” jokes would seem to write themselves. But Butler’s aim is less satirical. And while they humorously resonate with the recent eroticization of the body politic (think of those shirtless pics of Obama swimming or Putin fishing), Butler’s jarring juxtapositions are strangely generous, offering that most sheltered, scripted, and paranoid of creatures –the politician — the chance to literally let it all hang out, by providing the likes of Nixon and Ford with what Mother Nature never gave them.
Luke Butler, Batman and Robin, collage, 2008
“It was no big deal to show Saddam Hussein being hung to death, but if his cock had popped out that would have been a real crisis,” Butler explains, expounding on our culture’s double standard towards depictions of violence versus male nudity. “It’s such an awful contradiction. My collages don’t solve this problem but run into it head on.”
That problem, at the larger level, would be the restrictions on what is permissible to show (erections, but then again, only metonymically) versus what must be hidden (real emotional vulnerability) that regulate normative displays of masculinity. Whether telegraphing a quivering, emotional inner life or proudly waving around their throbbing members, Butler’s leaders of men aren’t afraid to cry out with their cocks out. In a way, they are distant relations of Mike Kuchar’s paintings of gay heartthrobs, lovingly described by Eileen Myles as “pushing through fountains of testosterone.”
Luke Butler, Encounter, acrylic on canvas, 2009
In one of Butler’s “Enterprise” canvases, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk lies supine, as a large, Yeti-like creature hovers above him. It’s safe to guess that within the context of the episode Kirk was in danger, and suspense came from whether or not he would rouse in time to save himself. And yet, in Butler’s canvas, what comes across is tenderness. Kirk’s facial expression and body language seem to anticipate a lover rather than a threat, echoing innumerable art historical precedents of Cupid approaching Psyche as she slumbers, or even depictions of the Annunciation. He is free to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Get rich or smell good (?) tryin’
50 Cent: man, rapper, actor, multi-gunshot wound survivor, Eminem pal, Ja Rule foe, G-Unit mastermind, sneaker designer, video game character, Vitamin Water pusher, weight-lifting enthusiast, philanthropist, condom endorser, memoirist, novelist, occupier of mansions, bajillionaire, father, and probably several more descriptors his Wikipedia entry has left off due to sheer hyphenate overload. (Can you blame ’em?) Fiddy’s new album, Before I Self Destruct (Aftermath/Interscope/Shady), drops Nov 16 — but the man who seemingly never sleeps has yet another project underway:
Bang! Bang! Power in a bottle.
Yep — look out Diddy and Usher, ’cause “Power by fifty cent” is crashing the hip-hop fragrance market. According to the press release, Power “captures the icon’s unparalleled confidence, street savvy, and limitless power.” Notes include lemon leaves, black pepper, and Artemisia (kinda sage-y), plus dark woods, coriander, nutmeg, patchouli, musk, and oak moss. In other words, this is probably not the perfume your Juicy Couture-loving little sister wants for Christmas.
We sampled the scent here at the office. (My favorite reaction: “Hmm. Smells like the ’90s.”) Get a whiff for yourself — and meet the man with all the Power — Tues/10 at Macy’s. 50 Cent be on hand to greet and take pictures with fragrance customers from 5-7pm in Union Square.
Bonjour, “French Cinema Now”!
By Jana Hsu
The San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series screened Oct. 29-Nov. 4 in San Francisco.
Axelle Ropert’s The Wolberg Family poses all the existential fly flap of post-modern family life wrought with a full spectrum of visual vignettes surrounding the topic of irreconcilable differences between the all-too-assuming, brutish father Simon (Francois Damiens) and his newly menopausal spouse, Marianne (Valerie Benguigui).
The story unfolds in a rather well-put together way, without railing off into obscurity. Charming bohemian uncle Alexandre (Serge Bozon) lives in a small redwood cabin adjacent to the main house; he shares an endearing relationship with the couple’s two children, Benjamin (Valentin Vigourt) and Delphine (Leopoldine Serre). One arresting segment depicts a winsome game between Alexandre and Benjamin in the cabin: uncle and nephew race each other in a foot trounce of hopping alternating feet over the threshold of an open door. The elder figure, who serves as a near messianic shaman for the young impressionable lad, explains to the small boy that the line right outside the door represents the “real world,” and the one right inside is the “dream world” — causing the little boy to grow increasingly frantic at having to stop the hopping by choosing which world he’d rather land on.
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Jacob, Grant and Union
Tell us about your look: “I found this hat at a bar and I’m wearing my belt to the side because it’s too big.”
Jungle book: Monthly Rumpus gets all wild on us
by Caitlin Donohue
It’s that time! Monthly Rumpus time! This coming Monday, The Rumpus, a go-to website for procrasting at work in a literate manner, is teaming up once again with Wholphin to bring us a big, author-y romp around. I just saw ‘Where The Wild Things’ are, so I know that ‘rumpus’ means jumping up on things and wrestling. Wear comfortable pants.
Given a choice of wrestling partner at this month’s “Hate To Be Alone” rumpus, I would most certainly opt for young Chelsea Martin of Oakland, who has a new poetry tome out, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever (Future Tense). Martin’s poems veer from the touchingly personal (from her video entitled Let’s Get Deeply Moved: “I want to die quietly in my sleep in the back room at work with liquor bottles all around and concrete evidence I was trying to steal the fax machine,”) to philosophy (“I had a thought the other day. It wasn’t a thought actually, it was more like a burrito. I had a really good burrito.”)
Sweet Tooth: Old school pie’s big-time comeback
By Megan Gordon
This week I’m going to make a bold statement: pie just may be the new cupcake. A friend recently got married in Nashville at an old, Southern plantation. They hung lanterns, had big communal tables with homemade barbeque, made their musical guests jam together as a wedding gift — and had pie instead of wedding cake. Of course, Julie’s wedding is no indicator of current trends. But in San Francisco, we do slices of old-fashioned pie showing up on restaurant menus across the city, not to mention the Bike Basket Pie lady.
So what’s the draw? Pie is certainly nothing new. And my favorite, banana cream pie, has been around for ages. One New York Times article traces the history of the beloved pie, citing an early example that appeared in a 1901 cookbook, calling for sliced bananas and powdered sugar plopped into a pie shell, baked and topped with whipped cream. And in 1951, banana cream pie was voted the favorite dessert of the U.S. Armed services.
Goldies Extra — Cary Cronenwett’s revolution now
By Cheryl Eddy
Still from Maggots and Men
“It was schoolboys sitting in the classroom, having daydreams,” Cary Cronenwett explains, describing Phineas Slipped, his 2003 debut as a director. “The classroom was in video, and the daydreams that the boys had were little Super 8 [films]. It was bullies, and bullies being bullied, and it was sexy and violent and stuff like that.”
Five years in the making — including time spent studying filmmaking at City College of San Francisco with director of photography Ilona Berger — Cronenwett’s follow-up effort Maggots and Men was first seen by Bay Area audiences as a short film (“sort of an overgrown trailer,” as Cronenwett calls it)
trailer for Maggots and Men
Maggots and Men | MySpace Video
“The structure of the film is kind of expandable and contractable. It’s broken up into discrete stories, or segments. More of those could be added, or taken away,” Cronenwett says. “I did the same thing with my first film: the idea was to get three quarters of the way through it, and then see what’s needed. I always wanted to lean towards the side of making it shorter and really dense. But I also thought, we’ll see how it works out and maybe it needs to become longer.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Irma, Washington Square Park
Tell us about your look: This skirt is ’50s style and the top is from a thrift store. These shoes are Coach, but I got them from Crossroads.”
Dive In: It’s 20 to 11 o’clock somewhere
Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.
Almost hidden next to Bar Johnny’s, Cresta’s Twenty Two Eleven Club is a welcome dive in an area populated by lounges, wine bars and cafes. There’s no pretense, just kind-hearted bartenders, straightforward drinks and regulars who look like they’ve contributed to their fair share of empty alcohol bottles.
Cresta’s is the reason why the phrase “no frills” was invented. You basically have a choice of one of the few bar stools lined up across the narrow bar, or you can try and snag one of the two tables in the back. The décor is bare bones, and a solitary tiny T.V quietly flickers a broadcast of whatever local sports team happens to be playing. The clock, always set at 10:40 (in homage to the bar’s address and name), can be disconcerting if you don’t have your own timepiece.
On my visit, the amicable bartender, outfitted with a leg brace after a recent injury, thumped around the bar without letting it hinder her bartending or general demeanor.
Trash Lit: Wild times in ‘Rough Country’
Editors note: Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond has a bad 30-year addiction to mystery/crime/thriller books. He’s decided that he might as well put this terrible habit to productive use by writing about these sometimes awful, sometimes entertaining and — on rare occasion — significant works of mass-market literature. Read his last installment here.
Rough Country
John Sandford
(Putnam, 388 pages $26.95)
By Tim Redmond
Let us stipulate: It’s difficult for a male writer who specializes in straight male lead characters (and in this case, in a straight male lead character who spends a significant portion of his waking hours trying to get women into bed) to write a credible novel that centers around a lesbian resort. James Patterson, a white guy, has a wonderful black lead character named Alex Cross who works, perfectly, but that’s the exception; most people screw up when they try to reach like that.
And at the beginning of Rough Country, I had to wonder. I love John Sandford, but after the first chapter…well, you’ve got a straight girl getting hot watching lesbian lip-lock, you’ve got sordid lesbian drama that turns into a lesbian bar fight, you’ve got a weird business going on with really young men working at the women-only resort who may be on-the-side fuck-candy for bisexual girls (or may be underage hotties fucking older women for money)…and a little too much talk about “rug munchers.”
But by the middle of the book, it’s pretty clear that this is not just a great Sandford novel, but a wonderful portrayal of a fictional Northern Minnesota town where nobody gives a shit who fucks who. The owner of the resort is a respected local businessperson. The old straight guys who run bars and work as fishing guides treat the women just like any other (money-carrying) tourists. An old lady who’s part of a horticultural preservation group wonders aloud why anyone would care about another person’s sexuality, save for “a bunch of stuffy old men.”
Goldies Extra: Veronica De Jesus scores
By Brandon Bussolini
Veronica De Jesus, It’s a Battle, pen and marker on watercolor paper, 9″ x 12″, 2008
Sports and business figure heavily in the drawings of Veronica De Jesus. Her art doesn’t have the broad shoulders or spectacles of an ex-jock like Matthew Barney, but the biggest pieces in De Jesus’ recent solo show at Michael Rosenthal, “Do The Waive,” were of sports players, and smaller drawings incorporate hand-drawn, hurt-looking corporate logos. Awkwardly caught mid-evasion, the extra leg on the football player captured in Breadwinner is a happy accident that makes the drawing equal parts action shot and portrait. San Francisco artist Colter Jacobsen shares De Jesus’ attraction to drawing and memory, though the two have very distinct styles. When I ask him via e-mail what he takes away from his friend’s art, he replies that in De Jesus’s work, “there is really no erasure to a mark, even a mess-up, all the lines are additive.”
Veronica De Jesus, Breadwinner, watercolor, ink, conte on paper, 72″ x 36″, 2008
Goldies Extra: Nol Simonse reaches for discovery
By Rita Felciano
Nol Simonse
For Nol Simonse, it all started with that most popular of all ballets and most common breeding place of American dance. The oldest of five children growing up in College Park, MD, Simonse had seen Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker on TV and “thought it awesome.” So he asked his parents whether he could do that. At age nine they enrolled him in a “tiny little ballet school above a pizza parlor. He’s still in touch with the teacher-owner.
Compulsory education was not exactly a good experience, particularly for a boy “who came out very early” and didn’t like to deal with linear logic: “As long as I could learn with a diorama, I was OK”. It took Simonse a while to find his own way of learning, through his body.
Nol Simonse, How Fortunate the Man With None
Janice Garrett, who had never seen Simonse dance, took a chance on him when she added male dancers to her heretofore all-female company for Ostinato in 2002. “He has worked out beautifully,” says Garrett. “What I admire is his ability to express what is deep inside. He has such humanity as both a person and a performer. In the studio, he is incredibly generous and brings his whole heart and mind to the creative process. He doesn’t need to be in control, and his sense of discovery is such that I can go wherever I want with him.”
The admiration is mutual. Simonse seems to be getting as much as giving in the artistic relationship, because Garrett manages to contextualize direction so it is not just technical but respects the dancer as a full person. “She told me once,” he remembers, “to push my lower ribs out, because being vulnerable doesn’t mean you are weak. She also once said that I had ‘emotional shoulders’.”
Pics: Dia de los Muertos raises spirits
Photos by Rebecca Bowe
A few images from San Francisco’s well-attended and festive celebration of Dia de los Muertos, on Nov. 2 in the Mission.
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Paula, 18th Street and Mission
Tell us about your look: “It’s a clash of two cultures: Spain and rock! I just got back from a trip to Spain.”
Street Art Comes Up: Mission Muralismo at the de Young
By Caitlin Donohue
So I’m sitting there chatting with some old school San Francisco anti-gentrification activists on the back patio of a Bernal Heights café and we’re excitedly leafing through a coffee table book. Wha-wha-whaat? Yes I know, anachronistic isn’t it?
This is the book (and please memorize the jpeg below because if you buy a “San Francisco” book this month/year/ever, it needs to be this one):
Great blue heads of people’s art, coming soon to a coffee table near you
This is Mission Muralismo, a book edited by Annice Jacoby. Its got hundreds of pages of big, glossy photos of all the best of Mission street art sprinkled with thoughtful essays. Its contributors include Mission barrio luminaries like R.Crumb, Shepard Fairey, las Mujeres Muralistas, Neckface and Rigo.
Where does one purchase said volume, you ask? Well I just happen to know that the DeYoung is seizing upon the book’s release to kick off a yearlong program of events hooting and hollering about Mission neighborhood creativity (“a rising star on the global art map” says the museum. But then, they also say the dress code for the event is “Mission festive,” so I mean, whatever).
Appetite: Tanks to Tractors, Gingerbread Wishes — food with a purpose
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Members of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition will speak at Toby’s Feed Farm
11/8 – Tanks to Tractors free farmers and veterans event
For a Sunday countryside excursion with purpose, Tanks to Tractors is a special event at Toby’s Feed Barn in Pt. Reyes Station, honoring veterans who have returned home to work on America’s farms. Veterans have incredible stories to share about what led them to this meaningful work post-service – work all the more needed as US farmers are retiring in droves. The wonderful Marin Organic with the Farmer Veteran Coalition put on this event with story telling from Amy Fairweather (Swords to Plowshares, Iraq Veteran Project Director), Nadia McCaffrey (Gold Star mother and founder, Patrick McCaffrey Foundation), Wendy Johnson (educator, author, co-founder of Green Gulch Garden), Michael O’Gorman (project director of Farmer Veteran Coalition), and others. On top of that, there’s free light snacks and drink. A unique way to honor Veterans Day…
Sun/8; 5-7pm, free
Toby’s Feed Barn
11250 Highway One, Pt. Reyes Station
www.farmvetco.org
www.marinorganic.org
Decorate the dickens out of your cookies at One Market
11/7 – Make-A-Wish Gingerbread Wishes event at One Market
Venerable Make-A-Wish Foundation throws a cookie decorating party at One Market, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish. With striking Bay views before you, bring kids (both young and old) to the luncheon, with finger sandwiches and drinks served by One Market, where everyone works with their own cookie decorating kit designed by pastry chef, Patti Dellamonica-Bauler, including three Gingerbread Wishes cookies and embellishment goods like icing, sprinkles and candies. Decorating cookies was never sweeter.
Sat/7, 11am-1pm, $20
1 Market
415-777-5577
www.makewish.org
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Vi, 19th Street and Valencia
Tell us about your look: “This is casual Monday outfit.”