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On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Soojin Chang. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 15

Radical Directing Lecture Series: Shari Frilot San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. (415) 771-7020, www.sfai.edu. 7:30 p.m., free. Shari Frilot is the curator of the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier Program. In this lecture, she will discuss the cinematic works that are being created at the crossroads where art, film, and new media technology meet.

THURSDAY 16

“Coloring Outside the Lines: Black Cartoonists As Social Commentators” panel discussion City College of San Francisco John Adams Campus, 1835 Hayes, SF. (415) 239-3580, www.ccsf.edu. 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., free. Cartoonists are like modern jesters — they poke fun and offer criticism, but we can’t help but love them. Nowhere is this more apparent than in funnies that deal with race in our society. Join curator Kheven LaGrone and guests in a discussion of how black cartoonists have brought in a wide range of perspectives to racial issues and social prejudices.

“Project Censored with Mickey Huff” book release event Modern Times Bookstore Collective, 2919 24th St, SF. (415) 282-9246, www.mtbs.com. 7 p.m., free. Mainstream media seems to air more stories about cats running onto soccer pitches and M.I.A.’s middle finger than relevant news. Author Mickey Huff presents the top 25 underreported news stories you may have missed, and delves in to censorship issues in the relentless fight against Big Media.

“Beyond Cage-Free” panel discussion Port Commission Hearing Room, Ferry Building, 1 Embarcadero, SF. (415) 291-3276, www.cuesa.org. 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation. The cage-free label promises eggs from unpenned hens, but can belie farm environments that are much more tragic than the happy picture on cartons would lead us to believe. Join the Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture in a panel discussion with Lexicon of Sustainability founder Douglas Gayeton, Ferry Plaza farmers, and local ranch owners.

San Francisco Childhood: Memories of a Great City Seen Through the Eyes of Its Children author discussion Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. (415) 431-6800, www.thegreenarcade.com. 7 p.m., free. This city has always been a hoot. Editor and author John van der Zee has put together writings dedicated to the magic of San Francisco by figures like Joe DiMaggio, Jerry Garcia, Margaret Cho, and Carol Channing. Come hear about how the city felt to them, and reflect on whether it’s the same for you today.

FRIDAY 17

SF Beer Olympics Impala, 501 Broadway, SF. (415) 982-5299, www.impalasf.com. 8:30 p.m., $10. To start the night, compete in a game of flip cup, beer pong, and relays with strangers, friends, and soon-to-be friends. Afterwards, Olympic champions and losers are welcome to meander upstairs for free admission to the Impala night club.

A night with photographer Robert Altman Wix Lounge, 3169 22nd St, SF. (415) 329-4609, www.wixloungesf.com. 7-10 p.m., free. Robert Altman not only survived the 1960’s but photographed some of the best parts of it. He will be talking about his work for Rolling Stone and his experiences photographing icons like Mick Jagger and Bill Graham. Come hang out with this all-around cool dude.

SATURDAY 18

“A Love Supreme” Harlem Renaissance art celebration First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St, Oakl. (510) 893-6129, www.uuoakland.org. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., donations accepted. The Harlem Renaissance brought on an explosion of culture and redefined music, art, and literature in American history. Join local queer poets of color in a delicious potluck dinner and music-poetry session to celebrate how cultural richness and literary splendor have not stopped growing.

The Dark Wave book release party Fecal Face Dot Gallery, 2277 Mission, SF. (415) 500-2166, www.ffdg.net. 6-9 p.m., free. You may know Jay Howell from his zine Punks Git Cut! where he sketched out an assortment of naked people, dogs, and boners. Howell is now bringing his majestic artwork as the backdrop of his new book — a literary tale of a black metal band’s disenchanted lead singer.

SUNDAY 19

Art Beat Bazaar music, poetry, and pop-up indie-mart Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck, Berk. (519) 841-2082, www.starryploughpub.com. 3-7 p.m., free. This is the first of the monthly community event Art Beat Foundation will be hosting as a way to showcase local musicians, spoken word artists, comedians, and visual artists. Let folk-rock band Upstairs Downstairs be the musical soundtrack to your trip to the quirky pop-up store, where you will find handmade treasures by artists like Cori Crooks and Brownie 510

Yiddish sing-along with Sharon Bernstein Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. 5-6:30 p.m., free. This musical event is one part of KlezCalifornia’s Yiddish Culture Festival, a three-day event for anyone who is interested in Yiddish literature, interactions between musical cultures, klezmer music, and/or Eastern European Jewish history. Lyric books will be provided.

MONDAY 20

Open mic night with Les Gottesman and Bill Crossman Bird and Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery, SF. (415) 586-3733, www.birdbeckett.com. 7 p.m., free. Les Gottesman and Bill Crossman are poets, activists, and professors who are coming to share their latest and favorite works in this literary night. Gottesman’s words are said to be goosebump-invoking and Crossman’s smooth piano skills are not to be missed.

TUESDAY 21

“Laissez les bons temps rouler” Mardis Gras party Jazz Heritage Center, 1320 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-5299, www.thefillmoredistrict.com. 5 p.m., $5 for wristbands. Make it a merry Fat Tuesday this year by going out to the Fillmore District for a neighborhood party of stilt walkers, jugglers, and face painters. 10 Fillmore Street venues will have live music and Mardi Gras-themed drinks and treats for under 10 dollars.

“Youthquake: High Style in the Swinging Sixties” American Decorative Arts forum and exhibit Koret Auditorium at de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF. (415) 750-3600, www.deyoung.famsf.org. 7 p.m., $15. Long hair and bellbottoms marked the fashion and music scene during the 1960’s, and a similarly defiant idiosyncrasy took over home décor. Join Mitchell Owens of Architectural Digest in a lecture on the bold and innovative interior style moves that were made during the exuberance of the youthquake.

“Feast of Words: A Literary Potluck” SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 552-1770, www.feastofwords.somarts.org. 7-9 p.m., $10 in advance; $5 with a potluck dish; $12 at door. Writers are often thought of as caffeine junkies who survive off of coffee and cigarettes. But hey, we eat just like any other Joe Schmo. At this literary event, foodies and writers unite to share (both food and literature) and learn about local cultures and flavors.

Symmetry

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February 14, 2012

1

arts@sfbg.com

NOISE POP It’s been a few months since I’ve seen Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and while many have dedicated countless hours selflessly contributing to the Ryan Gosling meme, which continues to grow and mutate like an uncontained bacterial infection, I’m still utterly and helplessly seduced by the score.

Allow me to draw a rash conclusion in the limited space allotted: Few films have coalesced around a form of sound as succinctly as Drive. On the one hand, the melancholy synth-pop music magnetizes the sense of nostalgia that saturates the film in a mythically neon Los Angeles of the 1980s, or the sprawl imagined in ’50s noir. On the other hand, the score motivates the emotional awakening of a lonely Gosling stricken by an unfolding love for his neighbor of angelic innocence.

What emerges from this tension between loss and erotics parallels none other than Vangelis’ extraordinary dystopian soundtrack for Bladerunner (1982). Through some kind of alchemical dissimulation, currents of machine generated sonic particles make visceral a disturbance within the dream distributed by Hollywood — a disturbance that nevertheless satisfies waves of desire as much as it unsettles.

Although Drive‘s score owes much to Cliff Martinez’s stark drum programming and warm synthetic melodies, some of the most arresting moments are due to Desire’s “Under Your Spell” and the Chromatics’ “Tick of the Clock.” Both songs belong to the musical vision of Johnny Jewel, a tireless producer also behind the Portland group of night stalkers, Glass Candy, and in general, much of the output from the Euro disco revivalist imprint, Italians Do It Better.

If you’re like me, and fiended for more Jewel after stumbling out of the theater under the spell, then you might have come across a few online interviews regarding his own mysteriously scrapped soundtrack for the film, encrypted with announcements for an unspecified future release date.

Then, just at the end of last year, 37 songs comprising nearly two hours of cinematic music quietly appeared like a gift from the void, under the appropriately vague title Symmetry / Themes for an Imaginary Film. The official statement in the press blurb insists, however, that this is not the allegedly trashed Drive score. Instead, it consists of a series of abstract experiments culled over the past three years from Jewel and partner Nat Walker on tone, mood, and structure, stripped of the lyrical motifs and pop formulas that tend to mark their signature work.

I have to admit I’m not entirely convinced by this back-story, but for all listening purposes, it doesn’t much matter. Symmetry draws on the same affective narrative underpinning Drive: As soon as a sense of artificial enclosure reaches the limit of relentless claustrophobia, a rupture slowly deflates from within, without any grand arrival or explosion. And while we may feel the euphoria of its release, the anticipation of an event ever more devastating to come, still crawls wonderfully under our flesh. *

GLASS CANDY, AND THE CHROMATICS

With Soft Metals, Omar and BT Magnum (DJ)

Feb. 24, 8 p.m., $19

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

NOISE POP CULTURE CLUB

Johnny Jewel on scoring, Glass Candy, and more

Feb. 25, 2:30 p.m., $10

Public Works 161 Erie, SF

2012.noisepop.com

The bubble is back

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

55

steve@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s future is in the process of being written, once again using lines of computer code and blips on the screens of electronic gadgets, the same as during the last dot-com boom. Its proponents insist it will be different this time — that Boom 2.0 won’t displace the working class, that the bubble won’t burst — but critics have their doubts.

After all, the city completely screwed up the last boom by favoring flashy tech development and growth over the needs of existing, often vulnerable residents. There are already signs that displacement is creeping back, rents are soaring, housing prices are driving people out of town — and even the city’s own economist admits that nobody knows whether the tax-cut driven development will pay for itself.

In many ways, Zendesk, which recently moved to the area, is a poster child for the main obsession of Mayor Ed Lee and other city leaders, who are pushing policies that will make San Francisco the center of a new high-tech expansion. They hope to use that economic growth to create good jobs and address challenges such as revitalizing the mid-Market area.

Lee and Sups. David Chiu and Jane Kim a year ago led the creation of a business-tax exclusion zone intended to keep Twitter from leaving town. The company’s planned growth and relocation to mid-Market, they argued, would be a magnet for more tech companies. The city would give up payroll taxes on the new jobs and provide other taxpayer-financed incentives — but big companies in the zone would be required to enter into community benefits agreements that would help low-income residents and small businesses benefit from the influx of well-paid tech workers.

In fact, a Guardian review of documents (“Behind the tweets,” 3/15/11) found that Twitter resisted the city’s efforts to get a substantial community benefits package, and that deal was pushed back to a later time. The agreement isn’t actually due until the company occupies the new site, and Twitter officials are upbeat about their interactions. Twitter spokesperson Robert Weeks told us by email that the company is working with others to improve mid-Market: “Based on early meetings we’re having with various entities, it’s clear there’s great collective energy that can bring positive change to the neighborhood.”

But Zendesk — a Danish company that makes help-desk support software from an airy third floor office near Market and Sixth streets — seems to be offering a lot to the gritty neighborhood where it opened up shop last year. In January, Zendesk became the first company to take advantage of the tax break and sign a community benefits agreement with the city.

“This is about forming a longstanding relationship with the neighborhood,” said Tiffany Maleshefski, the company’s community benefits manager who negotiated with the city.

The agreement has both general goals and a number of specific requirements. The company will contribute $5,000 to mid-Market community gardens, use local businesses for at least 40 percent of its events, hire two paid interns from the neighborhood, donate equipment to local groups, coordinate several specific outreach events a year, help staff the Tenderloin Tech Lab, and participate in local nonprofit organizations and ventures.

Avoiding payroll taxes on the 66 new employees it’s hired will save the company about $30,000 in its first year, Maleshefski said, and the company plans to grow from about 110 employees in San Francisco now up to about 200 employees by the end of the year.

But CEO Mikkel Svane told us the tax break wasn’t a big factor in choosing this location. He knew they wanted to be in San Francisco and he just liked the space. “The people here want to be a part of a dynamic culture and not on a big campus in Silicon Valley,” he said. “For a technology company, being here where everything is happening is important.”

And even though the new bubble has yet to reach its full proportions, small businesses and nonprofits in the area are already finding landlords jacking up rents in anticipation of the well-heeled new arrivals.

As with the last dot-com boom, some people are going to make a lot of money and spend it around town, and some of it will probably trickle down to the rest of us. But what price will the city and its residents pay for that bump, and what kind of city will this become? Have we really learned anything from the disaster of the first tech boom?

DUELING ECONOMISTS

The question of whether this tech bubble — and Mayor Lee’s focus on jobs — is good for San Francisco involves many realms, but at its center is a question of economics. Does it make economic sense to offer public subsidies and other incentives to boost the tech sector?

We consulted three San Francisco economists with expertise on the situation and a range of perspectives: Tapan Munroe, a business-oriented economist and the author of Dot-Com to Dot-Bomb: Understanding the Dot-Com Boom, Bust, and Resurgence; Peter Donohue, a longtime consultant to cities and unions and principal of PBI Associates; and Ted Egan, the city’s economist.

“I think San Francisco is sitting pretty right now,” Munroe said, noting that tech companies and employees are naturally drawn to this vibrant, culturally rich city. “Young people like to be in San Francisco more than the Silicon Valley…It’s such a unique place, we are so fortunate to live here.”

Monroe said San Francisco is in a league of its own and it doesn’t really have any direct competitors in the region, so tax breaks and other incentives to lure businesses here don’t make much of a difference. High rents and living costs are a factor, he said, but “the main thing the city can provide is quality of life.”

He also doesn’t believe this current tech bubble is going to burst like last time, when the Internet was still new and venture capitalists were throwing money at every kid with a good idea or cool URL. “We’re not seeing anything like that this time,” he said. “Last time, people went crazy.”

This time around, the seemingly crazy stock valuations on tech companies might make more sense: “The global economy is very much being guided by mobile technology. The world is moving to mobility so the valuations have some justification,” he said.

But he added: “The market will speak. If they can’t make money in the next five years, they’ll be gone.”

That’s precisely the concern that many people have voiced, that Twitter will avoid paying taxes to the city as it beefs up and goes public — creating another litter of young millionaires in the process — and that it may fold before its six-year tax holiday ends, leaving little in city coffers. And along the way, the bubble will raise rents and displace the working class.

“Rising prices displace people, that’s just a fact of life,” Monroe said. “That’s the way the market works, but it has social impacts.”

More progressive thinkers dispute that kind of fatalism, saying it isn’t some all-powerful “market forces” that are threatening to remake San Francisco but a certain brand of speculative, monopolistic capitalism that is being aggressively pushed by a handful of wealthy investors and their political partners.

In the latest Harper’s Magazine cover story, “Killing the Competition: How the new monopolies are destroying open markets,” writer Barry Lynn argues that the consolidation of wealth and dismantling of fair trade and pro-labor laws has allowed the Bay Area tech industry to unfairly dominate small competitors and control the labor market.

That trend has been masked by political euphemisms that fool the public. “Corporate monopoly? Let’s just call that the ‘free market.’ The political ravages of corporate power? Those could be recast as the essentially benign workings of ‘market forces,'” Lynn wrote.

Donohue has been calling out such rhetoric for decades. He told us the city’s economic development policies are mostly a boon to politically connected landlords and investors, and there’s been remarkably little discussion at City Hall about gentrification, increased demand for city services, or other problems created by economic bubbles.

“People say it’s different this time, but they say that every time. It’s not different,” Donohue told us. He said economic bubbles usually hurt the poor and working class by driving up the cost of living. And he also said, “Even the most conservative economists don’t like the idea of subsidizing businesses because they think it’s a distortion of the market.”

Yet the “jobs” rhetoric and assumption that government should actively promote and subsidize the private sector has broad support in City Hall these days, even though Donohue said few people are stopping to ask whether a new tech bubble is actually good for the city.

“When you bring a lot of people into an area, you’re going to create a demand for public services,” Donohue said. “I don’t think anyone has done a very good assessment of what this will cost the city.”

Donohue worked on a political campaign in the mid-’80s to require a study of the costs to the city of serving commercial growth that was occurring in the Financial District at the time, but he said it was bitterly opposed by then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein and her downtown allies. “Nobody seems to want to know what that figure is,” Donohue said. “Nobody at City Hall is even asking the question.”

City Economist Ted Egan confirmed that his analysis of the mid-Market tax break and other economic development schemes doesn’t include the cost of increased demands on city services. “I’ve never dealt directly with that argument,” Egan told us.

Based on his assumption that Twitter’s move to the SF Mart building (owned by the politically connected Shorenstein family) on Market between Ninth and 10th Streets will fill up commercial vacancies throughout the area and generate increased sales, property, and payroll taxes, Egan concluded the city will more than make up for the lost business tax revenue over the long run.

He minimized the importance of costs to the city, such as increased police or sanitation services, and impacts to city infrastructure from water and sewer to roads and public transit. “It can’t be that running more transit is bad in a transit-first city,” Egan said, noting the relatively fixed cost of operating a Muni station.

Yet Donohue and others say the fact that the city and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency have huge budget deficits to close every year, even after years of cutting services and raising fees, indicates the city has a structural budget deficit that will only get worse as growth places more demands on government.

“I don’t think these things are well-thought-through, ever,” Donohue said.

Lee, Kim, and representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development didn’t return our calls, but Chiu did and he said he believes in actively courting the tech industry with public incentives: “My support for these policies is a belief that it will broadly benefit San Franciscans.”

Yet when asked why the city doesn’t consider its costs or the impacts of rising rents and living costs, Chiu spoke only in generalities, saying that he’s been engaged in many recent meetings “to make sure we do heed the lessons of the last tech boom and make sure a rising tide lifts all boats.”

RISING TIDE

One of the most obvious negative impacts of the last tech boom was residents, nonprofits, and small businesses being hurt by rising rents and other costs, and there are some indications that’s already happening again.

The director of a venerable local nonprofit in the mid-Market area that is in the process of renewing its office lease told us their landlord is trying to nearly double the rent of $18 a square foot. “There’s all this venture capital now and people are willing to pay $33 per square foot, so landlords are just seeing green,” said the director, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are ongoing. “The speculation is hitting us big time. The neighborhood is all aTwitter, and they’re treating us like junk mail.”

Egan said he predicted those rising rents, but he didn’t think they would happen so quickly. “In principle, it doesn’t surprise me, but it does surprise me that it’s happened that far and that fast,” Egan said. “The idea was to create employment, rather than rising rents.”

Chiu said he was also surprised. “Jane Kim and I very much want to monitor the situation. We will look into city policies that will mitigate this trend,” he said. When asked what the city can do, he made several vague statements before saying, “If we’re serious about diversity, we may want to talk about rent subsidies at some point.”

That would be one more cost to the city, adding to a toll that Donohue and others say is being ignored. Chiu, Egan, and other city officials seem to think growth is the only way forward. As Egan said, “If we don’t do development in a city like San Francisco, what happens?”

But others say San Francisco should take care of its own first to maintain the city’s diversity. Asked what the city’s approach to economic development should be, Donohue said, “I’d presume you want to serve the people who live here already.”

It was an idea echoed by Chris Daly, who was a housing activist during the last dot-com bubble before being part of wave of progressive politicians its backlash propelled onto the Board of Supervisors. He is now political director for SEIU Local 1021, which represents city workers.

“If your priority is to care for the fabric of the city as it’s been built, you invest in what’s here now,” Daly told us. “My view is when the city courts the high-tech industry to try to jumpstart the city’s economy, there are significant ramifications to what kind of city you’re building.”

Local progressive activists, people who often work to counter the impacts of those who see San Francisco as simply a place to make money, agree that there is a perverse logic at play these days.

“We already have more jobs than people,” said Marc Salomon, a computer programmer and longtime community activist, noting that the city has about 800,000 residents and about 1.3 million people who work here. “And we have lots of unemployed San Franciscans, and we have a budget deficit.”

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, said the simplistic rhetoric coming out of City Hall masks the more complex realities that the city faces. “When they say ‘jobs,’ everyone’s critical thinking sensibilities are supposed to shut off,” Radulovich said

Rather than focusing solely on whether a proposal creates private sector jobs, he said that a more complete analysis involves what he calls the “three Es: equity, environment, and economy.” In other words, does the proposal have broad, leveling benefits (equity), what are its impacts to the natural and built worlds (environment), and what are its fiscal implications (economy).

“But,” he said, “we’ve been privileging that third ‘e’.”

Mayor Lee’s vanishing bike lanes

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

77

By Morgan Fitzgibbons

OPINION When Mayor Ed Lee announced in February 2011 that he understood both the critical importance and the severe dangers inherent in the current bicycle infrastructure along the dual three-block stretches of Fell and Oak between Scott and Baker, a shot went through the community of people who had worked for so long to bring awareness to this troubled path.

Finally, it seemed, we had a mayor who understood that if San Francisco was serious about living up to its own nearly 40-year-old pledge to be a transit-first city, a narrow bike lane sandwiched between parked cars and fast-moving traffic on Fell Street and a complete absence of any bicycle infrastructure on Oak simply wouldn’t do.

Finally, we had a mayor who wouldn’t be satisfied with mere words on a page, who had the courage to carve out one single safe bike route from the east side of town to the west, to create a viable alternative to automobile transportation, to prepare our city for the inevitable challenges presented by climate change, peak oil, and economic collapse, and to do it in the face of the predictable objections from a few small-picture citizens who couldn’t look at the 60 square feet of a parking spot and imagine anything other than a privately owned two-ton pile of steel taking up precious public space.

The community of people who had waited nearly 40 years for the city to live up to its own word kept on waiting throughout 2011, patiently allowing the Municipal Transportation Agency to perform its due diligence, attending multiple public meetings in the hundreds, and delivering a resounding verdict: bring us our separated bike lanes. Make this neighborhood a better place to live. Begin the long work of preparing our city for a way of living that doesn’t center around the automobile.

With the public process complete and the calendar turning to nearly one year since Lee called for the MTA to “move quickly” to create separated bike lanes on Fell and Oak, the MTA handed down a jarring announcement. The Fell and Oak Bikeways were being delayed because the agency needed to take extra time to do all that could be done to find nearby replacements for the 80 parking spots set to be removed for the bike lanes.

That’s right — in a city that has for 40 years had an explicit policy of giving preference to transit options that weren’t the automobile, in a city that, nevertheless, has over 440,000 public parking spots and zero safe, accessible bike routes from the east side of town to the west, the creation of a separated bikeway that the vast majority of the community wants, and that the mayor’s own newly appointed District Supervisor, Christina Olague, is in support of, was being delayed by nearly a year so that the loss of private automobile parking would be as small as possible.

How does this happen? In a word: fear. The mayor and MTA are afraid of ruffling a few feathers to do what they know is right.

Cities like New York, Portland, and Minneapolis are leapfrogging us in building the cities of tomorrow. Chicago is creating 100 miles of separated bike lanes in the next four years. Don’t call us America’s Greenest City — you’re thinking of the San Francisco of 40 years ago.

Morgan Fitzgibbons is co-founder of the Wigg Party, a Western Addition neighborhood sustainability group

Bounce with me

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February 14, 2012

0

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately this show has been cancelled due to Big Freedia’s health. We wish her well and hope to see her again soon! Please read this revealing interview with her multi-talented DJ and producer, Rusty Lazer.

arts@sfbg.com

NOISE POP Despite its continual popularity in New Orleans for the last 20 odd years, it’s been a while since the regional, uptempo, call and response driven style of dance music known as bounce has appeared on a national level. The Juvenile (featuring an adorably young Lil Wayne) track “Back That Azz Up” may be the most recognizable hit, but not the most representative of the genre, especially the rising queer-friendly subsection that Big Freedia rules as “Queen Diva.”

Appearing in her nationwide debut performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last month, Big Freedia, born Freddie Ross, possibly brought bounce back into the lives and sets of people outside of NOLA, but they may not have been getting the whole picture. “I get a lot dirtier when it’s a club performance, and I can really get raw,” Big Freedia said in a phone interview last week, “but that was for TV so it was a little more PG.” Freedia, who answers most questions with Southern politeness and a “Yes, sir,” is nothing but grateful for the experience in which her dancers worked with “one of Beyonce’s choreographers,” Frank Gatson, for the segment, but to an observer at all familiar with her reputation for wild live performances, it was pretty tame.

In part it was just a matter of skin. One of Big Freedia’s signature songs at this point is “Azz Everywhere” and it’s the scantily clad dancers in particular that bring the idea to life, making moves and taking positions not unlike a 2 Live Crew show (or the Kama Sutra). We’re talking booty bumping, full splits floor humping, upside down synchronized air thrusting, and other gyrations typically reserved for strip clubs near airports and really great office Christmas parties.

For Big Freedia, who comes with her own crew of male and female dancers, call and response isn’t just lyrical — meaning that when she yells “I got that gin in my system” you should probably retort “somebody gonna be my victim” — but also that people might get called out for not getting down on the dance floor. At her shows, “everyone is involved.” Big Freedia said. “Whoever wants to get onstage can get a chance to come on stage. I’m very connected with the audience so I try to make everyone involved.” This interaction with her audience was the other thing missing from the Jimmy Kimmel performance, where a crowd looked on more as spectators than participants. For her part, Freedia tries to meet people at her shows halfway, saying “I can’t put them all on stage so I have to put myself on the floor with them.”

Effort means a lot for Big Freedia, who has long been known for doing shows at least six nights a week in New Orleans and continues to run a successful decorating company. She considers it part of her message that one can “Make the impossible happen being gay. Working really hard at things you have dreams behind and succeeding no matter what color, creed, walk of life.” Idealistic as that is, it also explains in part her egalitarian approach to dancing. Unlike some artists (::cough:: Sir Mix-A-Lot ::cough) it’s not about a certain type of butt; everyone’s got one, you just have to know how to bounce it. And if you don’t know that, well, she also offers classes.

WITH HARD FRENCH DJS, VOGUE & TONE, DOUBLE DUCHESS

Feb. 25, 9 p.m., $16; Culture Club bounce session, 11:30 a.m., $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

2012.noisepop.com

How business was done

Andrew Lam

-

February 14, 2012

8

news@sfbg.com

A complicated civil lawsuit alleging corruption and fraud and involving several prominent current and former city officials — including Mayor Ed Lee, who took the witness stand to discuss actions he took as city purchaser a decade ago — could end up costing city taxpayers as much as $10 million.

City and County of San Francisco vs. Cobra Solutions and Telecon was being deliberated by jurors in Superior Court at press time. It centers on a fraud and kickback scheme engineered by convicted felon Marcus Armstrong, a former Department of Building Inspection information technology manager who bilked the city out of at least $482,000 between 1999 and 2001 (see “Dirty Business,” 2/8/11). His scheme was exposed by an FBI investigation following a whistleblower’s complaints in September 2001 that sub-contractors were not being paid.

The City Attorney’s Office accused Cobra Solutions of participating in Armstrong’s fraud, but Cobra’s owners denied being part of the scheme and they say their business was wrongfully damaged when their contracts were frozen by city officials.

Armstrong created two phony companies, Monarch Enterprises and Mindstorm Technologies, and ordered master contractor Cobra Solutions to use the phony sub-contractor companies to provide technology services to the city’s Computer Store (a list of approved contractors) under an agreement awarded to Cobra by the Committee on Information Technology (COIT). It also partnered with another company alleged by the city to be fraudulent, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), whose principals fled and whose whereabouts are unknown.

Cobra Solutions founder and president James Brady had raised questions about Armstrong as early as 2000, questions that triggered an unfruitful investigation by the city. Brady maintained in court testimony that Cobra, unaware of Armstrong’s fraud, relied on him to sign off on work services that Armstrong’s phony companies were supposed to have supplied to the city.

The Computer Store was set up by then-Purchaser Ed Lee under the administration of then-Mayor Willie Brown to centralize technology procurement across departments. Now-Mayor Lee was deposed in the case and called to the witness stand on Feb. 6, where he said he awarded Cobra Solutions the highest-rated ranking among several vendors being evaluated by COIT for master contract award status. Each of the other city evaluators, including Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda, also ranked Cobra the top service provider.

According to Armstrong’s guilty plea agreement, GCSI partnered with Armstrong to defraud the City out of $240,000. Deborah Vincent James — then-director of COIT and now deceased — testified in a pre-trial deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent,” that city staffers recommended against certifying the company, and that it was only awarded master contract status because of its political ties to Brown, who directed Lee to overrule the staff recommendation. In his deposition, Lee claimed he could not remember GCSI.

Vincent-James and former Purchasing Directory Judith Blackwell forwarded whistleblower complaints about GCSI to the City Attorney’s Office in early 2001, but neither that office nor the Controller’s Office acted on the complaints until GCSI had gone bankrupt and GCSI’s owners, two foreign nationals, had disappeared.

Of note, Lee was not questioned about his and Brown’s involvement in awarding GCSI its master contract status in 1998. Time restrictions placed on attorneys by Judge James McBride limited the scope of witness examinations, so the most politically explosive charges went largely unexplored in court.

The city completed a subsequent investigation in January 2003 that resulted in stopped payments to Cobra, contract termination, and the city’s civil lawsuit filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera against Cobra in April 2003. Following Herrera’s filing against Cobra, Herrera demanded an audit of Cobra which Cobra refused, citing a conflict of interest. Herrera had previously represented Cobra in private practice before he was elected City Attorney in 2001.

A trial court ruled in that Herrera had a conflict of interest, disqualifying Herrera and his office from participating in the Cobra case, a ruling later upheld by the California Supreme Court. Yet the suit alleges Herrera and his office continued to supply work to various City agencies and to effectively prevent Cobra from doing further business with city. By withholding the $2 million Cobra was owed by the City, COIT was able to disbar Cobra from entering into master contract agreements with the city, claiming Cobra was fiscally “non-responsible,” according to court testimony.

Blackwell, in her testimony at trial, said the determination of Cobra’s non-responsibility was used as a “pretext” for Cobra’s disbarment, a procedure that should have triggered a hearing to allow Cobra to defend itself against debarment. That never happened.

An FBI investigation into Armstrong’s kickback scheme resulted in Armstrong pleading guilty to mail fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice in July 2003. No criminal charges were ever brought against Cobra Solutions or Telecon and yet the city’s outside law firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP, which tried the case on behalf of the city, held on to the city’s allegation of fraud committed by Cobra and Telecon throughout the case and trial until closing arguments on Feb. 9.

In his closing arguments, attorney Ara Jabagchourian made no mention of Telecon, effectively dropping the city’s claims against Telecon, and constricted the city’s damage claims against Cobra. He asked the jury to award the city up to $266,000, money paid to Cobra for work authorized and signed-off by the city, via Armstrong, for breaching a provision in the contract agreement between the city and Cobra that requires the master contractor to “supervise” sub-contractors.

But Cobra’s lawyers — the firm of Gonzalez & Leigh, which includes former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, who took a leave from his current job as deputy public defender to consult on the case — says it is the city that should pay for fatally harming a business without just cause.

“The City and City Attorney’s office falsely accused Cobra and Telecon of stealing $2.4 million dollars from the City, destroying these companies and ruining the lives of good, decent people who were the victims of a city tech official who should not have been hired in the first place,” said attorney Whitney Leigh. “Then the City Attorney made it worse, flatly defying an order disqualifying the City Attorney’s Office and instead driving efforts to run Cobra and Telecon out of business just because Cobra raised the issue of the conflict of interest. I’ve been unable to find any case in which an attorney has so flagrantly ignored a disqualification order.”

Herrera can’t comment on the case, but his office previously told the Guardian, “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office.”

The-City Controller Ed Harrington, who exerted significant influence over contract awards and debarment proceedings as chair of COIT, conceded in court testimony that internal controls failed to detect Armstrong’s scheme.

“In the case of Marcus Armstrong, the control within the city failed and the control within Cobra failed,” Harrington, now head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, told the court. “We had both controls in place. If they had worked, the city would have been protected. Both failed.”

Cobra is seeking damages for breach of contract (the city’s failure to pay monies owed Cobra), and civil rights due process violations in connection with the city’s apparent conspiracy to bar Cobra from doing further business with the city.

A business valuation expert testified Cobra Solutions was valued between $5.2 million and $8.8 million based on future lost profits from the city’s debarment. With attorney fees and court costs, the city could be on the hook for as much as $10 million.

The city has subsequently established more stringent controls as it relates to the authorization of work assigned to master contractors and sub-contractors. The jury was expected to resume deliberations on Feb. 14 and deliver its verdict by week’s end. Check the SFBG.com Politics blog for the latest.

Saving money on sunshine

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

9

EDITORIAL We hate to pick on Scott Wiener, who is a polite guy who always takes our calls and takes public policy seriously. He’s got an extensive legislative agenda — good for him — and he’s effective at getting bills passed. We’re with him on nightlife, and even on nudity towels in the Castro.

But he’s been taking on some more disturbing causes of late — he’s managed to tighten the rules for the use of Harvey Milk Plaza and now he’s asking for an audit of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force that looks at how much each city department spends responding to sunshine requests. We’re not against audits or government efficiency, but this could lead to a lot of mischief.

There are plenty of problems with the task force, which hears complaints against city agencies that are denying the public access to documents. The biggest problem is that the task force has no enforcement authority — when the members find an agency or official to have willfully defied the law, the best they can do is turn those findings over to the Ethics Commission, which simply drops the case. Nobody ever gets charged with anything or gets in any trouble for refusing to follow what every public official in town piously insists is an excellent law.

And yeah, the meetings run long, and sometimes city employees have to sit around for hours waiting for their cases to come up. (Activists who testify before city commissions are used to that, but city employees are on the clock, and Wiener’s worried that it’s running up a large bill.)

But nobody’s talking about the money that the city has saved by those annoying government watchdogs keeping an eye on public spending — through the use of the Sunshine Ordinance. Nor is anyone talking about the immense amount of time activists and journalists have to spend fighting over records that should have been public in the first place — or how much money the Task Force has saved the city by creating a forum for resolving these issues out of court.

We can see the outcome here: The audit will show some large number, some cash amount with a bunch of zeros behind it, and the Chronicle will run a big headline about the high cost of this sunshine bureaucracy — and someone will suggest we find ways to streamline the process by clipping the task force’s wings.

That’s the wrong approach — particularly when there’s a much easier answer. Why not do what sunshine activists have suggested for years — make electronic copies of every document created by any city agency and post them in a database on the web? No more secrecy, no more hassle. It’s easy — if anyone at City Hall is serious about saving money on sunshine requests.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

11

tredmond@sfbg.com

Sometimes I love my Internet trolls. Not very often — mostly, the anonymous folks who call me a success-hating commie who’s just jealous because he wasn’t smart enough to start Facebook seem to come from somewhere far to the right of San Francisco. And they’re rude. And they won’t give their names. And fuck all of you, ya know?

But someone came along the other day and made a comment that so perfectly summarizes everything that’s wrong with American political economics today that I just wanted to wave it around like a flag and tell everyone:

This is it. This is the problem we’re facing. Wrapped up in two perfect sentences.

I had written a blog about how little tax Mark Zuckerberg will pay on his massive wealth when Facebook goes public.

According to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zuckerberg intends to exercise $5 billion worth of stock options (out of $28 billion he will own). If he does that, he’ll pay almost 40 percent in state and federal taxes — that’s $2 billion — making him perhaps the single largest taxpayer in US history.

But he may never pay a penny of tax on the other $23 billion. So his actual effective tax rate is about 7 percent — far less than even low-income Americans typically pay.

Now, my trolls complain that I hate America and all that, and they say taxes are too high anyway. Then came this, from someone named DanO:

“I can’t get too upset about a guy’s tax rate when he has already dedicated the bulk of his fortune to worthwhile causes. In this case, I have more faith in Z getting his money into beneficial hands than I do the State of CA.”

There — right there. That’s the Republican mantra, going back to Ronald Reagan: American families know what to do with their money better than the government (that’s gummint to you) does. Better to let the rich give their money to charity than to tax it and let the corrupt politicians give it away.

I feel as if I’m being transported back to the Middle Ages, when the noble king, the monarch of the realm, would upon occasion grant a boon to his loyal subjects — maybe free some peasant farmer of his debts, or hand out a few extra barrels of mead. Drink up, commoners, then kneel and bow to your lord.

Representative democracy sucks, and tax money is wasted and decisions by elected officials are often wrong. But it’s still better than living under economic monarchy, no matter how bountiful is the grace of our masters.

We’re trying to buy a condo in SF

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

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marke@sfbg.com

Somehow, we thought we’d timed it perfectly. We’d saved up for decades (or at least my husband had — I’m a writer). We’ve lived in San Francisco for close to 20 years, sometimes holding down three jobs at a time and spending every available hour enmeshing ourselves in the cultural fabric of the city. Mortgage rates are insanely low; credit is loosening up again. We’re not looking for anything extra-fancy, just somewhere with a little charm to finally set down financial roots and maybe even have enough room to start a family.

So boring! And yet, in the era of Zynga and Facebook … so seemingly impossible.

Hunky Beau and I have spent the last year looking for a two-bedroom condo, and it has been hilarious. Sometimes Three Stooges hilarious, like when open houses are so mobbed you almost catch a flying checkbook in the eye. Sometimes Saturday Night Live hilarious, like the broker who introduced himself with, “If you know what gentrification means, then you’ll know the rapidly gentrifying Bayview neighborhood might be for you!” But mostly The Office hilarious, like the time we excitedly put in a bid on a place right after the open house, only to be told there were seven bids already in, three of them $50,000-plus above asking, two all cash. Sad honk.

Of course, we’re being a little fussy. If my husband and I are going to spend more than half a million for somewhere to live in San Francisco — and $500K is pretty much the base price here for a non-studio condo — then we want it to be situated somewhere we can bike to work in less than 30 minutes, easily accessible by Muni or within stumbling distance of the clubs, and built before 1940 with some charm intact. We may not be rich but, dammit, we’re still gay. (Dear quickie-flip contractors: whoever told you all to slap horrid sandstone travertine tile into every bathroom and kitchen was wrong in the 1990s, and still is.)

And yes, we’re small potatoes, too, and definitely more fortunate than most: I moved here when a tragic confluence of AIDS, earthquake, recession, and urban population incarceration made San Francisco real estate cheap, and it’s only by virtue of a rent controlled apartment, one I’ve been basically trapped in since the first Internet Boom raised rents sky-high, that I’ve been able to stay in the city I love. Yet it’s become especially obvious in the past three or four months — since Zynga went public in fact, and Facebook announced its IPO — that the market has become almost absurdly competitive.

Paula Gold-Nocella, managing broker at Vanguard Properties, confirmed my observations. “On top of the notoriously low inventory that’s part of the winter season here, we’re seeing an incredible interest due to recent technology developments,” she said in a phone interview. “With Twitter moving in downtown, Saleforce, the Facebook IPO announcement … the seller’s market is especially hot right now. I have a broker down the Peninsula who’s fielding offers where they’re waiving the inspection contingency. And some sellers are most likely waiting to see what happens with Facebook. It’s kind of a perfect storm that’s brewing.”

I don’t think we’ve missed the buyers boat just yet — and for my friends who are renters I know the situation is getting far worse. But Oakland and the Outer Avenues are looking more and more attractive, even if that means remaking our lives from scratch to buy into the current economy. At least we may meet other artsy types there.

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

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yael@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 15

Which way forward?

Four panelists will speak on their approach to creating progressive change in the United States. Speakers include Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City and presidential candidate with the Justice Party; Margaret Flowers of Physicians for National Health Program and organizer with Occupy DC; Tom Gallagher, former state legislator in Massachusetts; and Dave Welsh of the San Francisco Labor Council. With moderator Rose Aguilar of KALW’s Your Call radio. A forum organized by the 99% Coalition, a group focused on anti-war and non-violence activism working alongside Occupy San Francisco.

7 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Unitarian Universalist Church

1187 Franklin, SF

(415) 710-7464

www.sf99percent.org

Black history film and discussion

A screening of Freedom Riders, the film detailing the story of 400 groundbreaking Civil Rights Movement activists that rode on integrated buses throughout the South despite violent resistance everywhere they turned.

7pm, $5 suggested donation

2969 Mission, SF

415-821-6545

answer@answersf.org

FRIDAY 17

Join the Un-Conference

Reverend Billy Talen, the performance artist pastor of the anti-consumerist Church of Life After Shopping, will give a sermon Friday evening. That part is $10, and all proceeds go to whistleblower Bradley Manning’s defense. But that’s just the first night of a free, three-day “un-conference.” Participants will set their own agenda, and range from experts and stars like Daniel Ellsberg, Annie Sprinkle, and Colonel Ann Wright to your run-of-the-mill folks interested in justice for whistleblowers.

6 p.m., $10

UC Berkeley International House

2299 Piedmont, Berk

www.freshjuiceparty.com

MONDAY 20

Stand with prisoners

A demonstration to protest racism and economic injustice perpetuated by mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex and to stand in solidarity with prisoners and their families. This event is called by prisoners and sponsored by Occupy Oakland, reminding us that “there are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than there were enslaved in 1850.” It will feature speakers and musical performances.

10 a.m., free

1540 Market, SF for bus and carpool

www.occupuy4prisoners.org

Occupying elders

The Gray Panthers present a discussion with participants in Occupy Bernal and the Wild Old Women, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy San Francisco. How can elders contribute to Occupy? Come find out from the people on the ground, including Ginny Jordan of the Wild Old Women, who have shut down more banks than any other Bay Area Occupy group, and Tova Fry of Occupy Oakland.

1 p.m., free

Unitarian Universalist Center

1187 Franklin, SF

graypanther-sf@sbcglobal.net

Meet the new supervisor

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February 10, 2012

10

Christina Olague, the newest member of the Board of Supervisors, faces a difficult balancing act. She was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee, whom she supported as co-chair of the controversial “Run Ed Run” campaign, to fill the vacancy in District 5, an ultra-progressive district whose voters rejected Lee in favor of John Avalos by a 2-1 margin.

So now Olague faces the challenge of keeping her district happy while staying on good terms with the Mayor’s Office, all while running in her first campaign for elected office against what could be a large field of challengers scrutinizing her every vote and statement.

Olague has strong progressive activist credentials, from working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition to protect low-income renters during the last dot-com boom to her more recent community organizing for the Senior Action Network. She co-chaired the 2003 campaign that established the city’s minimum wage and has been actively involved in such progressive organizations as the Milk Club, Transit Riders Union, and the short-lived San Francisco People’s Organization.

“One of the reasons many of us are so supportive of Christina is she is grounded in the issues of low-income San Franciscans,” said Gabriel Haaland, who works with SEIU Local 1021 and accompanied Olague to a recent interview at the Guardian office.

She also served two terms on the Planning Commission — appointed by Board of Supervisors then-President Matt Gonzalez in 2004 and reappointed by then-President Aaron Peskin in 2008 — where she was known for doing her homework on complicated land use issues and usually landing on the progressive side of divided votes.

“Coming from the Planning Commission, she can do a lot of good,” said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City and a supporter who has worked with Olague for 15 years. “We lost a lot of collective memory on land use issues,” he said, citing the expertise of Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin. “We do need that on the board. There is so much at stake in land use.”

Olague disappointed many progressives by co-chairing Progress for All, which was created by Chinatown power broker Rose Pak to push the deceptive “Run Ed Run” campaign that was widely criticized for its secrecy and other ethical violations. At the time, Olague told us she appreciated how Lee was willing to consider community input and she thought it was important for progressives to support him to maintain that open door policy.

In announcing his appointment of Olague, Lee said, “This is not about counting votes, it’s about what’s best for San Francisco and her district.” Olague also sounded that post-partisan theme, telling the crowd at her swearing-in, “I think this is an incredible time for our city and a time when we are coming together and moving past old political pigeonholes.”

With some big projects coming to the board and the working class being rapidly driven out of the city, progressives are hoping Olague will be a committed ally. There’s some concern, though, about her connections to Progress For All campaign’s secretive political consultant, Enrique Pearce.

Pearce has become a bit of a pariah in progressive circles for his shady campaign tactics on behalf of powerful players. In 2010, his Left Coast Communications got caught running an independent expenditure campaign partly funded by Willie Brown out of Pearce’s office, even though Sup. Jane Kim was both its beneficiary and his client — and that level of coordination is illegal. Last year, Pearce was hired by Pak to create the “Run Ed Run” campaign and write the hagiographic book, The Ed Lee Story, which also seemed to have some connections with Lee’s campaign. The Ethics Commission hasn’t fined Pearce for either incident, and he didn’t return a Guardian call for comment.

Olague told us not to worry. “He’s a friend…and I think it’s an exaggerated concern,” she said, confirming but minimizing his role so far. Yet she hired one of Pearce’s former employees, Jen Low, as one of her board aide. Olague’s other aides are Chris Durazo from South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) and Dominica Henderson, formerly of the SF Housing Authority.

Debra Walker, a progressive activist who served on the Building Inspection Commission and has worked with Olague for decades, said she’s a reliable ally: “She’s from the progressive community and I have no equivocation about that.”

Olague makes no apologies for her alliances, saying that she is both independent and progressive and that she should be judged by her actions as a supervisor. “People will have to decide who I am based on how I vote,” she said, later adding, “I support the mayor and I’m not going to apologize for that.”

OLAGUE’S PRIORITIES

Olague was born in Merced in 1961 to a Mexican immigrant father who fixed farming equipment and a stay-at-home mother. She went to high school in Fresno and moved to the Bay Area in 1982. She attended San Francisco State University but had to drop out to help support her family, working at various stock brokerage firms in the Financial District. She later got a degree in liberal studies from California Institute of Integral Studies.

In 1992, Olague’s mother was in serious car accident that left her a quadriplegic, so Olague spent the next seven years caring for her. After her mother died, Olague left the financial services industry and became a community organizer for the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, battling the forces of gentrification and then-Mayor Brown and becoming an active player in the ascendant progressive movement.

But Olague never abided progressive orthodoxy. She backed Mark Leno over the more progressive Harry Britt in their 2002 Assembly race and backed Leno again in 2007 when he ran for state Senate against Carole Migden. She also voted for the Home Depot project on Bayshore Boulevard despite a progressive campaign against the project.

Olague worked with then-Sup. Chris Daly to win more community benefits and other concessions from developers of the Trinity Plaza and Rincon Tower projects, but now she is critical of Daly’s confrontational tactics. “Daly’s style isn’t what I agree with anymore,” Olague said, criticizing the deals that were cut on those projects to approve them with larger than required community benefits packages. “I think we romanticized what we got.”

So how does Olague plan to approach big development proposals, and is she willing to practice the brinksmanship that many progressives believe is necessary to win concessions? While she says her approach will be more conciliatory than Daly’s, she says the answer is still yes. “You push back, you make demands, and if you don’t think it’s going to benefit the city holistically, you just fucking say no,” Olague said.

Walker said Olague has proven she can stand up to pressure. “I think she’ll do as well as she did on the Planning Commission. She served as president and there is an enormous amount of pressure that is applied behind the scenes,” Walker said. “She’s already stood up to mayoral pressure on some issues.”

Yet even some of Olague’s strongest supporters say her dual — and perhaps dueling — loyalties to the Mayor’s Office and her progressive district are likely to be tested this year.

“It’ll be challenging for her to navigate,” Radulovich said. “The Mayor’s Office is going to say I want you to do X and Y, and it won’t always be progressive stuff, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.”

But he said Olague’s land use expertise and progressive background will likely count for more than any bitter pills that she’s asked to swallow. “Sometimes, as a policy maker, you have to push the envelope and say we can get more,” he said. “It helps if you’re willing to say no to things and set boundaries.”

When we asked Olague to lay out her philosophy on dealing with land-use issues, she said that her approach will vary: “I have a very gray approach, project by project and neighborhood by neighborhood.”

Only a couple weeks into her new role, Olague said that she’s still getting a lay of the land: “I’m in information gathering mode, meeting with neighborhood groups to try to figure out what their issues are.”

But Olague said she understands that part of her job is making decisions that will disappoint some groups. For example, after Mayor Lee pledged to install bike lanes on Fell and Oak streets to connect the Panhandle to The Wiggle and lessen the danger to bicyclists, he recently stalled the project after motorists opposed the idea.

“I’m a transit-first person, for sure. I don’t even drive,” Olague said of her approach to that issue, which she has now begun to work on. “We’ll try to craft a solution, but then at some point you have to fall on one side or the other.”

THE “JOBS” FOCUS

One issue on which Olague’s core loyalities are likely to be tested is on the so-called “jobs” issue, which both Lee and Olague call their top priority. “Jobs and economic revitalization are very important,” she told us.

Progressives have begun to push back on Lee for valuing private sector job creation over all other priorities, such as workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, and public services. That came to a head on Jan. 26 at the Rules Committee hearing on Lee’s proposed charter amendment to delay legislation that might cost private sector jobs and require extra hearings before the Small Business Commission. Progressives and labor leaders slammed the proposal as unfair, divisive, unnecessary, and reminiscent of right-wing political tactics.

But when we interviewed Olague the next day, she was reluctant to criticize the measure on the record, even though it seemed so dead-on-arrival at the Board of Supervisors that Mayor Lee voluntarily withdrew it the next week.

Olague told us job creation is important, but she said it can’t squeeze out other priorities, such as protecting affordable rental housing.

“We always have to look at how the community will benefit from things. So if we want to incentivize for businesses, how do we also make it work for neighborhoods and for people so that we don’t end up with where we were in the Mission District in the ’90s?” she said.

Olague also said that she didn’t share Lee’s focus on jobs in the technology sector. “There’s a lot of talk of technology, and that’s fine and I’m not against that, and we can see how it works in the city. But at the same time, I’m concerned about folks who aren’t interested necessarily in working in technology. We need other types of jobs, so I think we shouldn’t let go of the small scale manufacturing idea.”

Loveless?

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February 9, 2012

2

SUPER EGO The last time I tried to make out with a cute boy who wasn’t my husband, he actually said, “OK, I’m going to stand over there now. But you’re a great dancer.” Smooth save, Cornelius J. McRejector. I mean, if I had any pride left to be wounded do you think I’d be standing here wearing pink Baby Phat bedazzled cutoff jeans, a sequined visor that reads “Party Bottom,” possum-brown Keds, and some totally offensive, insensitively appropriated Native American item, possibly a dreamcatcher nose ring? I don’t need you! I’m busy re-embracing irony.

Anyway, that whole tackiness is over, and the point is this: dancing. If it seems there are more wild Valentine’s themed parties than ever this year (check out our roundup in this issue), there are also, well, more parties in general, including choice ones such as below. Just like Lana del Ray’s top lip, there’s always enough nightlife to go around. So don’t let some piddly fear of rejection lock you in the closet with zombie Mitt Romney. Be the great dancer you are.

LIGHT ASYLUM

Wide-ranging party players Marco de la Vega, Gary Riviera, and Brian Furstman have launched the new Future Perfect weekly at Monarch with the intent to obliterate whatever few genre boundaries remain in dance music — no central feel, “just good, forward thinking, contemporary” music, de la Vega told me. That’s a tough trick: without a definable flavor for a crowd to hold onto, you need to sustain a wholly unique energy (drink specials help!) or rely on big guest names to draw people back. Future Perfect seems to be succeeding at both strategies. The party’s already hosted Cold Cave, Jokers of the Scene, and Nguzunguzu; the latest big name is beguilingly dark live duo Light Asylum, anchored by singer Shannon Funchess’ throaty vocals. Considering Light Asylum’s justifiable reputation as one of the most riveting live acts around, this party’s energy will keep building.

Thu/9, 9 p.m., $10–$15. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

BACK2BACK SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY

SF’s cosmic jam legends Jeno and Garth brought down club Mighty’s roof when they played at their original party Wicked’s 20th anniversary last year. Now they’re celebrating the lucky seventh of the party that sees them both on decks at the same time, finishing each others’ musical sentences. Poetry for your feet, child, and not to be missed for anyone interested in DJ sets that color outside the lines. (I’m so excited, I’m mixing my metaphors.)

Fri/10, 8 p.m.-4 a.m., free before 11 p.m., $7 after. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

NON STOP BHANGRA

Rad dance sounds from India seemed in danger of fading from the SF club scene recently. The lively Bollyhood Cafe in the Mission closed. (The space was taken over by expanding Senegalese restaurant-nightclub Bissap Baobab, so all is not lost worldwise). Forward-thinking global bass collective Surya Dub had faded from local DJ decks, although member Kush Arora continued to release ass-kicking riddim tracks at a furious pace. And when I heard long-running monthly dance extravaganza Non Stop Bhangra was looking for a new home I totally got a Punjab sad. Luckily, Non Stop has now landed on second Saturdays at Public Works — last month’s launch included the return of the Surya Dub crew, even. Whirl away with the expert Dholrhythms dance crew to DJ Jimmy Love’s bhangra bangers and a truly diverse Bay Area crowd, now going afterhours. This month, DJ Rekha of NYCs raucous Basement Bhangra guests. (Check out my interview with her — full of some amazing tunes — here.)

Sat/11 and second Saturdays, 9 p.m.-3 a.m., $10 advance, $15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.nonstopbhangra.com

OPEL 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, PART ONE

A part of our nightlife so huge, its decade celebration had to be split in two. Opel usually blows up the underground with tech house and drum and bass glory — founding member Syd Gris is responsible for the massive Lovevolution festival. But this above-board extravaganza at Mezzanine boasts Opel stalwart DJs Meat Katie, Dylan Rhymes, Syd, and Melyss downstairs, and a “looking back” room upstairs with longtime spinners Kramer, Ethan Miller, Dutch, and Spesh.

Sat/11, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

DROOG

Some tasty undergroundish events have been popping up at 46 Minna lately — raising a few eyebrows, since 46 Minna is otherwise known to the mainstream bottle-service crowd as Harlot. A recent chat with one of my favorite DJs, Adnan Sharif of the Forward SF house collective, cleared up the mystery: the Harlot peeps want to draw a more adventurous crowd to their lovely space on non-weekend days. Rebranding’s fine with me, especially if it brings a four-hour set by Droog, the LA trio of expert house deconstructionists who fill their funky mindtrips with all kinds of electronic Easter eggs. This is the launch of Forward SF’s weekly Forward Sundays Sessions (with a fresh fruit buffet!). Adnan himself is opening up.

Sun/12, $10–$20, 6 p.m.-midnight. 46 Minna, SF. www.forwardsf.com

New year

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February 9, 2012

1

MUSIC Waiting for his coffee at Cafe Divis, Ezra Furman (who performs Sat/11 at Hotel Utah) flips through the latest issue of the Guardian. “I’ve been meaning to do more drugs,” he says, pointing to the cannabis column, Herbwise. The wheels in Furman’s head seem to always be in motion; there’s a constant mischievous look in his eyes. We’ve met here to discuss the most recent product of his overactive imagination — his solo debut, The Year of No Returning, released on Tuesday through Furman’s own Kinetic Family Records.

Making records is by no means unfamiliar territory for this San Francisco-via-Chicago transplant. After Furman’s band Ezra Furman & the Harpoons formed in the dorms of Tufts University in 2006, they released three studio albums and completed several tours throughout the United States and Europe. As the title suggests, however, The Year of No Returning is in many ways a departure for the 25-year-old musician.

Abandoning the comfort of recording live with the band in lieu of endless “tinkering” at Studio Ballistico — which is in a Chicago attic above his old apartment — Furman lovingly assembled these songs piece by piece. “It’s more like a Russian doll,” he explains, “cause you can find the first piece that was there.” Though a guitar remains his primary songwriting instrument, for his solo effort Furman often swapped the Harpoons’ standard rock’n’roll set up for instruments like an upright bass, cello, violin, clarinet, and saxophone.

“Bad Man” features a brooding Furman backed by piano reminiscent of early Tom Waits, and the rollicking chorus on “Sinking Slow” is Beatles-esque. These nods to great songwriters of decades gone by are no coincidence. Some of his first memories are “running around” to the Beatles, and howling along to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Now all grown up, Furman can be heard howling and snarling on the retro power pop track “That’s When It Hit Me.”

Furman began emulating his heroes long before he picked up a guitar. “When I was 10 or 11 I used to just, like, make whole albums,” he says. “I would make [them] up in my head and write on a Microsoft Word document. I knew how they all went and I would go through the lyrics when I was alone with the door closed, and just kind of sing them to myself. They’re all Beatles and Billy Joel rip-offs.”

Although it’s not uncommon to catch glimpses of Bob Dylan or the Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano in Furman’s songs, he has different tools at his disposal than his predecessors. “I don’t need the Internet / I don’t need TV,” he declares on the sunny album closer “Queen of Hearts,” but in 2009 Furman took full advantage of modern day accessibility for a special project. Each copy of the bootleg Harpoons album Moon Face came with a personalized track for its recipient. “I was just writing so many songs at the time that I didn’t know what to write them about anymore,” he says. “So I asked people what they wanted songs about. And they had some good ideas.”

For Furman, The Year of No Returning isn’t just a title, it’s a way of life. “I’ve been doing a lot of things just ’cause [they] seem risky,” he tells me. “And that just becomes enough reason to do it.” These risks include leaving Chicago behind to make a new home in San Francisco, and taking a solo tour of Europe last November. “[I] was like, I can fucking do this,” he says. “I can just be a force of nature on my own.”

“It gives a feeling, that phrase Year of No Returning, of changing your life,” Furman says. “You know, having a year when you do everything differently. I guess I’ve had a year like that.”

The Year of No Returning is available at www.ezrafurman.com

EZRA FURMAN

With Clouds & Mountains, and Debbie Neigher

Sat/11, 9 p.m., $10

Hotel Utah

500 4th St., SF.

(415) 546-6300

www.hotelutah.com

Right about now

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February 8, 2012

0

THEATER It’s a rare thing, really too rare, to find an audience eagerly erupting into political discussions between acts of a play. But that’s what Little Brother inspires, and in an unaffected way, without pretension or unwelcome goading. It’s too cool, confident, and contemporary for that. After all, the night I saw the play — adapted by director Josh Costello from the 2008 teen novel by Canadian sci-fi author and activist (and co-editor of Boing Boing) Cory Doctorow — was just one night after Occupy Oakland tried to convert a vacant building into a much-needed community center for the needier of the 99 percent. That didn’t go too well. The street clashes with shock-trooping Oakland police forces led to something like 400 arrests before the night was over.

That latest incident, in an ongoing resistance to systemic and overweening injustice, resonated effortlessly with the proceedings onstage at Custom Made Theatre. There, on an intimate thrust stage, three sharp young actors (Daniel Petzold, Marissa Keltie, and Cory Censoprano) smoothly embodied a fleet series of characters in a story pitting a group of Mission District high school teens against the Department of Homeland Security. The battle takes place in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that levels the Bay Bridge and unleashes an all-out totalitarian crackdown by the federal government. It’s a dramatic, humorous, irreverent, and urgent story all at once. While far from a perfect play (dramatic consistency and verisimilitude are stretched a bit thin by the end), Little Brother is probably the most exciting thing on stage just now, alive like few other productions in its response to the present moment.

Behind the dynamic trio onstage stands a patchwork wall-projection screen (courtesy of set designer Sarah Phykitt, video designer Pauline Luppert, and video engineer Darl Andrew Packard) papered over with pages seemingly torn from radical histories and revolutionary tracts (it was easy enough to make out Emma Goldman’s visage among the repeated black-and-white pages), and periodically set aglow with live video feed, scene-setting photo montage, text messages, and hacker scrawl across computer and videogame screens.

While DHS is synonymous with Big Brother throughout, and for good reason — the agency is at the forefront of a total invasion of American private life and the Gitmo’ing of American teens — it can also be understood at times as a synonym for the state at large, from high school vice principals on up. As main character Marcus Yallow (a bright, engaging Petzold) explains in an early address to the audience, he’s a senior at a San Francisco public high school. Even before the Bay Bridge attack, “that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.”

Before being transformed into an all-out revolutionary by his violent, extra-constitutional encounter with DHS, Marcus and buddy Darryl (a sharp and versatile Censoprano) are fun-loving rebel hackers and gamers often on the receiving end of unwanted attention by the usual authorities. In an early scene, an inept school administrator interrogates Marcus, believing him, correctly, to be the hacker menace “w1n5t0n” (though, hilariously, pronouncing the handle literally instead of the intended “Winston”). Marcus outwits him, and the administrator loses his grip on the free-roaming online hooligan who, among other things, has handily derailed the “snitch tags” the school plants in library books to track the students.

At this point, Little Brother bears a striking similarity to The North Pool, Rajiv Joseph’s psychological two-hander set in a vice principal’s office after school, which had its premiere last year at Palo Alto’s TheatreWorks. But Joseph’s battle, while resonating with a larger political and historical context, ultimately remains more personal than political. Little Brother moves via the next terrorist attack into the realm of all-out political crisis, as short a distance from here as that may seem, and in this way resists reducing its themes to merely personal terms, highlights a tension with the personal throughout — even as it cleaves to a familiar coming-of-age narrative involving Marcus and girlfriend-coconspirator Ange (played compellingly by Keltie).

Costello shrewdly emphasizes this tension in his staging, which begins with the three principal characters recreating the story for a video cam so that it can be posted online. As Marcus begins a first-person account, his cohorts interrupt him almost immediately. “Dude, you can’t make it all about you,” says Darryl, with good-humored conviction. “It’s too big.”

LITTLE BROTHER

Through Feb. 25

Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m., $25-$32

Gough Street Playhouse

1620 Gough, SF

www.custommade.org

Local control of cops

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February 7, 2012

1

news@sfbg.com

Sup. Jane Kim has introduced legislation to the Board of Supervisors calling for a re-examination of the San Francisco Police Department’s participation in some aspects of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was created by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to do domestic surveillance.

The proposed ordinance would prohibit the SFPD from working with the JTTF to collect intelligence on individuals in the absence of criminal wrongdoing, which has been a concern of civil libertarians since last year when a secret memo revealed that local officers were under FBI command and not bound by local and state restrictions on such surveillance (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11).

Kim said the ordinance was necessary to ensure the “requirement of reasonable suspicion before we do any type of investigation of criminal activity. And we don’t base it on ethnic identification or religious practice as some of the members of the community have been experiencing the last couple of years.

“Our office is sponsoring this because many members of the Arab, Asian and the Muslim community worship in the district and own many small businesses,” she said.

Critics of the relationship between local and federal law enforcement agencies, facilitated through participation in the JTTF, have long raised concerns about racial profiling and unnecessary spying ordered at the federal level, and carried out by SFPD inspectors assigned full time to the task force.

Federal regulations governing FBI intelligence gathering are weaker than standards set by San Francisco and California’s Constitution. In 1990, the San Francisco Police Commission established rules requiring that intelligence-gathering involving any First Amendment activity be based on reasonable suspicion of significant criminal activity. Those rules reflect the California Constitutional requirement of an “articulable criminal predicate” before law enforcement agencies engage in intelligence-gathering activity.

However, because the SFPD inspectors assigned to the JTTF work under the direction of the FBI, the local regulation and control of law enforcement is effectively limited in JTTF investigations.

“It’s important that a clear prohibition against policing based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion applies to all of our officers, all of the time,” said John Crew, police practices expert for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is one of more than 30 civil rights and community organizations participating in the Coalition for Safe SF, which helped develop the proposed ordinance.

According to the coalition, current rules prevent the SFPD from barring its inspectors assigned to the JTTF from joining FBI agents in collecting intelligence on San Franciscans without any “particular factual predication.”

“The purpose of this legislation is to restore local control, civilian oversight, and transparency over the SFPD’s participation in FBI intelligence-gathering,” stated attorney Nasrina Bargzie of the Asian Law Caucus, which is part of the coalition.

The coalition was a major participant in the San Francisco Human Rights Commission hearing in 2010 on the issue of baseless spying and racial profiling in JTTF investigations. The result was a comprehensive report, endorsed by the Board of Supervisors last spring.

But in 2011, the ACLU and Asian Law Caucus learned that key protections for civil liberties — including civilian oversight of intelligence activity and safeguards to limit intrusive tactics — were thrown out the window and replaced by a secret Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement in 2007.

Under the MOU, SFPD paid officers work out of the local FBI office. The secure nature of their work means they must seek federal permission to even talk to their superiors in the SFPD about their work, effectively removing them from the local chain of command. Despite mandated requirements on local law enforcement, the MOU does not allow for any civilian oversight of the work of officers assigned to the JTTF.

San Francisco Chief of Police Greg Suhr said he believes that the concerns have already been addressed. In his first days in office, Chief Suhr issued a binding Bureau Order #2011-07 setting forth the requirement that officers comply with local standards.

An excerpt of the order reads, “SFPD officers shall work with the JTTF only on investigations of suspected terrorism that have a criminal nexus. In situations where the statutory law of California is more restrictive of law enforcement than comparable federal law, the investigative methods employed by SFPD officers working on JTTF investigations shall conform to the requirements of such California statutes.”

“With this Bureau Order, the language of the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding no longer applies and SFPD personnel are bound by the provisions of the 2011 Order,” SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian.

But Crew said that as long as the MOU between the SFPD and federal law enforcement remains in place, Suhr’s order at best creates contradictory policy. “The Memorandum of Understanding is a binding legal contact with the federal government. Which do you think will take legal precedence when it comes up against a local police chief’s departmental order?” said Crew, who urged the department to clarify the matter by withdrawing from the MOU, a step the SFPD has thus far been unwilling to take.

A letter from Sept. 28 of last year to Coalition for Safe SF from FBI Special Agent Stephanie Douglas regarding the contradiction clarifies the matter. “I do retain the right to assign FBI JTTF cases,” states Douglas, who goes on to assert it is she who makes the confidential judgment of which cases fall afoul of the state and city rules and which do not.

After years of intelligence-gathering authorized under a secret memorandum, public mistrust in the SFPD’s relationship to federal law enforcement persists. Kim says she believes the proposed ordinance will still help make San Francisco safer. “It increases the trust of the community members that are working with public safety in reporting, and in cooperating around many of the actual criminal activities that might be going on in the city,” she said.

The proposed legislative approach of regulating the scope of local participation in federal JTTF work is not unprecedented. The city has the option of terminating the MOU with 30 days notice, a step that the city of Portland, Oregon has taken to prevent its police force from spying on citizens in violation of local and state law.

In December, the city of Berkeley suspended its agreement with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (an arm of the Joint Terrorism Task Force) as part of a broad review of that city’s relationship to other local and federal law enforcement agencies (see “Policing the police,” 12/13/11).

“What this is about is maintaining local control of law enforcement and ensuring the civil liberties of the people of San Francisco,” Crew said. “Don’t San Franciscans deserve the same protection of their civil liberties as the people of Portland?”

Kim was joined by Sups. David Compos and John Avalos in sponsoring the ordinance. Supervisors are expected to vote on the whether to adopt the ordinance this spring after the measure is heard by the city’s Public Safety Committee following the normal 30-day hold. The measure seems to have the support it needs to pass the Board of Supervisors, but it remains unclear whether Mayor Ed Lee, who did not answer our inquiries, will sign it.

The sex worker struggle

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February 7, 2012

3

yael@sfbg.com

Google has come under fire in the past year for everything from privacy policies to censorship. But in December, some Bay Area residents were protesting the tech giant for a very different reason. The group that marched in front of the company’s San Francisco office was angry over the company’s donation to organizations fighting human trafficking.

The flyers declared, “Google: Please fund non-judgmental services for sex workers, NOT the morality crusaders that dehumanize us!”

Google had donated a whopping $11.5 million to organizations that “fight slavery” last December, including the anti-sex trafficking groups International Justice Mission, Polaris Project, and Not For Sale.

But the activists said that these are religious organizations that ignored the rights of consensual sex workers.

According to a press release from Sex Worker Activists, Allies, and You (SWAAY), “As frontline sex-worker support services struggle for funding to serve their communities, it is offensive to watch Google shower money upon a wealthy faith-based group like the International Justice Mission, which took in nearly $22 million in 2009 alone.”

“I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but I wish that they had done more research,” Kitty Stryker, a local performer, sex worker and activist, of Google’s choice to fund the organizations.

In a society where the term “sex worker” — coined to describe those who consensually engage in commercial sex and consider it legitimate labor — is still new to most people, this sex workers rights struggle can be an uphill battle. But it rages on, and San Francisco remains one of its most important front lines.

FREE SEX FOR HIRE

The heart of the struggle is, and or years has been, fighting the prohibition of prostitution, and the ultimate goal of the sex workers movement is the repeal of the laws that criminalize sex for hire. Decriminalization would be a vital safety measure for escorts, people working on the street, phone-sex operators, exotic dancers, porn actors, and other occupations that fall under the umbrella category of sex work.

Sex workers held worldwide conferences in the 1980s, meeting in Amsterdam and Brussels. Sex work was legalized and decriminalized in several countries around the world, including New Zealand, the Netherlands and Germany. The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) became one of the most important organizations fighting for the cause, with chapters around the world.

Here in San Francisco, the city remains a hub for sex-workers rights advocates, who raise awareness about issues ranging from STD prevention to consent in BDSM contexts. The Saint James Infirmary supports and treats sex workers when they need medical assistance, and the Center for Sex and Culture is a resource and community center that embraces all San Franciscan’s with their minds in the gutter, sex industry workers included.

San Francisco’s sex workers rights history includes two unions. Workers at the North Beach strip club the Lusty Lady formed the Exotic Dancers Union in 1997. The union became part of the Service Employees International Union, and the Lusty Lady remains the only collectively run, sex-worker-owned strip club in the United States.

Maxine Doogan founded the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) in 2004 as an umbrella organization for sex workers in various industries. The ESPU has been active in opposing regulations of the massage industry and sponsoring Proposition K, a 2008 ballot measure that would have decriminalized sex work in San Francisco.

I spoke to a handful of Bay Area sex-workers rights activists to get a sense of the major issues and priorities for the next year.

NO VISAS

Activists are currently planning for the July, 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

Many international sex workers rights advocates have been denied visas to get to the conference. The U.S. typically bars convicted felons — but there’s a special exception for people guilty of misdemeanor prostitution charges.

“SWOP has an idea of getting in touch with some of the people denied entrance and asking them what they were going to present on and to try and present their papers in their place, to make sure these organizers voices are heard,” said SWOP-Bay Area spokesperson Shannon Williams.

But that’s not where the government’s weird exclusion of sex workers from its efforts to fight AIDS ends.

The Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) fund allocates $48 billion to organizations around the world engaged in AIDS treatment and prevention. But thanks to the religious right, the law, approved in 2003, includes a stipulation that all recipient groups must make a pledge decrying prostitution. It’s known as the “anti-prostitution loyalty oath.”

A court ruling July 6, 2011 declared the oath a violation of the free-speech rights of organizations in the United States, but the U.S. still blocks PEPFAR funding for international organizations based on the “loyalty oath.”

“Sex worker activists are going to converge in D.C. for the AIDS conference and talk about the loyalty oath. The US is exporting its ideology through this funding requirement” said Carol Leigh, a longtime activist who curates the annual San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Art Festival.

EMPHASIZING CONSENT

Sex workers rights activists continue to be engaged in their complex, decades-long struggle with anti-sex trafficking organizations.

People who want safer working conditions say that decriminalization would make it easier for police to distinguish between coerced and consensual prostitution and encourage those with knowledge of crimes perpetuated against sex workers to come forward without risking prosecution for their own illegal work.

But many anti-trafficking advocates dismiss the distinction between forced and consensual prostitution in their efforts. According to a document called “Ten reasons for not legalizing prostitution,” on the website of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, “There is no doubt that a small number of women say they choose to be in prostitution, especially in public contexts orchestrated by the sex industry… In this situation, it is harm to the person, not the consent of the person that is the governing standard (emphasis theirs).”

It’s this refusal to acknowledge the importance of consent that really pisses off advocates —and has a powerful effect on the policy that governs them.

The federal definition of sex trafficking includes consensual prostitution, and defines coerced prostitution as “severe sex trafficking.” “Law enforcement agencies can use anti-trafficking funds to arrest sex workers in prostitution, on the grounds that the feds define all prostitution as trafficking, even though the government distinguishes between trafficking and severe trafficking,” said one sex workers rights activist.

According to Leigh, anti-trafficking organizations are not all bad; she named the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women as an organization that “has been allied with sex workers rights movement and takes rights-based approach.”

But organizations that conflate consensual and coerced commercial sex are often big-time recipients of public and private funding.

Doogan is wary of any attempt to further regulate or criminalize sex work. She says that often, laws meant to deter prostitution trap people who may want to change occupations. “Women have to continue working in the industry because no one else will take them for work when they have those convictions on their record,” said Doogan.

That may be the case with Lola, an occasional Erotic Service Providers Union volunteer who was arrested on prostitution-related charges outside California earlier this year. She moved to the Bay Area and is looking for a job, but after a promising interview last week, she’s nervous that a background check will reveal her arrest.

“I’m waiting to hear whether that’s going to be an issue or not. They could tell my landlord, and then I could lose my house too…all I’m trying to do is get a job,” Lola told the Guardian.

THE WORK GOES ON

For most sex-workers rights activists, the long-term goal remains decriminalization. For now education, creative projects, and protest in service of that goal continue.

Members of SWOP-Bay Area have a program called Whorespeak that does outreach at colleges, and “we’ve also been speaking in classes for therapists about how to work with current and former sex workers and not pathologize them,” said Williams.

According to Stryker, one of the most exciting projects happening now is Karma Pervs. The website, run by local queer porn star Jiz Lee, sells unique sex-positive porn and donates the proceeds to organizations like the Saint James Infirmary.

Then, of course, there’s the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, when sex workers and allies gather to commemorate sex workers who have been assaulted and killed.

Sex workers often can’t go to police to report crimes for fear of being locked up themselves, society retains a huge stigma surrounding sex work, and there is an insidious cultural myth that “you can’t rape a prostitute.” These all add up to put sex workers at high risk for assault and murder; serial killers, such as the Green River Killer in Seattle and a murdered in Long Island-area this past summer, are disproportionately likely to target prostitutes.

That’s why, for Williams, “Our long-term goal is to decriminalize prostitution. But the real goal is to end violence against sex workers.”

Whiskey punch

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February 7, 2012

2

virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE An Irish whiskey with a Bay Area connection… Livermore, to be exact? It’s true. January saw the release of a brand new whiskey, not a common occurrence in Ireland. What better way to initiate this new release than with a Bon Vivants party?

My recent travels through Ireland, particularly exploring whiskey production in County Cork (from pot still beauties like Redbreast to mass production Jameson), amplified my love for the smooth pleasures of Irish whiskey.

Cocktail and event gurus the Bon Vivants (www.facebook.com/thebonvivants), a.k.a. Josh Harris and Scott Baird, throw some of the most memorable parties I’ve ever been to. The Concannon Fighting Irish party was no exception. Think unmarked Mission warehouse, rousing traditional Irish band, and two boxers pounding it out in a clandestine brawl for multiple rounds. (Yes, there was blood).

Meanwhile, pours of Concannon (www.concannonvineyard.com) — the name means “wisdom without compromise” — flowed neat over hand-chipped ice, in Irish Coffees or punch. Filling up on corned beef sandwiches, we were a happy lot, transported to another time and place: boxing matches of decades ago.

What about the whiskey? It’s as smooth and supple as you’d expect an Irish whiskey to be, but not because it’s thrice distilled, like a number of popular Irish whiskeys. Concannon is actually twice distilled at Ireland’s Cooley Distillery (www.cooleywhiskey.com) by master blender Noel Sweeney, who blends all Cooley whiskeys. I appreciate minimal distillations, since it simply means more of the original flavors are left in the spirit rather than stripped out of it.

Made from locally harvested spring barley and blended with French corn distilled in a column still (again, unusual for Irish whiskey), the whiskey is distilled in copper pot stills, then aged a minimum of four years in Heaven Hill bourbon casks.

Cooley Distillery is known for pushing Irish whiskey boundaries: it continues that tradition by finishing Concannon whiskey for four months in Concannon Vineyards’ Heritage Petite Syrah barrels (the winery’s highest tier, award-winning wine). The whiskey is then bottled here in California.

After a rousing release party, I spent the next day in Livermore at Concannon Vineyards as part of a press tour, lingering over Irish breakfast and Irish Coffees, made with Concannnon whiskey, naturally. We were joined by the winery’s fourth generation vintner, John Concannon, and Cooley’s global brand ambassador, John Cashman.

John Concannon regaled us with stories of the Concannon family’s immigration from Ireland to California, the winery’s history dating back to the 1800s, and how it survived Prohibition by being one of the only wineries designated to make altar wine… yes, religion kept them alive. The unexpectedly swank but relaxed atmosphere at the winery is well worth visiting, which includes a tasting room, restaurant, and wine bar pouring more than 50 wines by the glass.

Concannon whiskey is an obvious step above other Irish whiskeys in this price range. Smooth and affordable ($24.99 a bottle), caramel and vanilla notes from bourbon barrels hit the nose. To taste, there are apples, gentle spice, and golden raisins with a silky, oak finish. And that Bay Area connection creates an immediate bond.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

The cat and the hedgehog

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February 7, 2012

1

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS You know who I love? Hedgehog. One year ago today we had our first date, and now we are domestical partners. She calls me root beer eyes. I know it’s a compliment because her favorite drink is Abita root beer with bourbon in it, and sometimes she looks at me like that.

One year ago today, I was a tagalong nanny for a Tulane-S.F. State couple, and Hedgehog was supervising sound editor for an HBO show set in New Orleans. This year, she is also a writer for that show, and I am a tagalong housewife. Count em: two dreams come true!

For our anniversary, she’s on set all day, and I’m writing this then going to play flag football. Maybe we will see each other in bed.

What a difference a year makes! One year ago today, for example, it was Monday. I had the day off. She did too. For our first date we were going to go to the cemetery, but then we found out it was closed. In New Orleans, the dead do not receive visitors on Mondays. They have been partying too hard all weekend. They have hangovers, and couldn’t get out of bed, let alone a grave.

So we went to the French Canadian Quarter instead, ate lunch, walked along the river, looked at the water, drank at a gay bar, walked some more, and did not kiss.

OK.

Now, the big loser in all of this, of course, is Stoplight. The cat. Not only because I’ve been home a lot less, but — even sadlier than that — my domestical partner is allergic to my domesticated partner. So before we left for the Big Greasy this time, I had to have a little talk with my furry friend.

Well, but first I had to have a little talk with some cheese farmers from Petaluma. Which brings us (very very naturally) to the downtown Berkeley farmer’s market one Saturday.

As it happened — and we’ll never know why — Hedgehog was stricken on that particular day with a very bad stomachache, so all she could do while I sought out and talked with my cheese farmers was sit on a bench and watch some hippies play their guitars. Maybe she was moaning and groaning, too. I know I would have been, if I had to sit on a bench and watch hippies play their guitars.

In fact, I was sure she was going to puke. (The kids had it. It was going around.)

Now: my cheese farmers, on whose cheese farm Stoplight was born, had told me way back when that if things didn’t work out for him in the big city, they would take him back. This, they unflinchingly, un-guilt-trippingly agreed to do. So I bought some cheese.

The drop would be made the following Saturday. Meanwhile, I was surprised to learn upon fetching my li’l sicky, Hedgehog was hungry. So here’s to the curative powers of hippies! I take back everything I said about them.

The Berkeley farmer’s market has a lot of greasy looking and happy smelling food stands, but Hedgehog understandably wanted something healthy. Which to her means pho. Pho ga. (That’s chicken.)

We have a running argument about pho. Beef is best, I say. Whatever, says she. For sure, downtown Berkeley is not the best place to be when dying for Vietnamese food in a hurry.

But we saw Saigon Express there on the corner of Addison and Shattuck, went in, sat right next to the bathrooms (just in case), and ordered our pho.

And of course Hedgehog was yelping the place while we waited for it. Two people mentioned food poisoning.

Food poisoning doesn’t scare me. Stomach bugs do. But according to Hedgehog, it’s impossible to tell the difference. “Food poisoning takes three days to hit you, usually,” she said.

“Really?”

“Could be,” she said. Then she started Googling that. But the pho came and was surprisingly fantastically delicious. At least mine was. The beef broth, heavy on the star anise, was really very wonderful. And the rare beef was still pink.

The noodles had a good texture. A little bit of pull to them, not mushy. Basil, cilantro, jalapenos, sprouts. And nobody threw up. Not even Hedgehog. New favorite restaurant:

SAIGON EXPRESS

Mon.-Sat. 10:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.

2045 Shattuck Ave., Berk.

(510) 486-1778

MC/V

Beer & wine

Twisted misters

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February 7, 2012

1

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM This year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival kicks off with a film that knows exactly what time it is: 4:44 Last Day on Earth.

Abel Ferrara’s latest imagines what the end of the world might be like for a volatile Lower East Side couple — he’s an ex-junkie (Ferrara favorite Willem Dafoe), she’s a young painter (Shanyn Leigh, Ferrara’s real-life companion). The film’s title refers to the predicted instant that an environmental catastrophe will completely dissolve the ozone layer, but 4:44 is mostly set indoors, specifically within the headspace of Dafoe’s character. It’s a gritty film that veers between self-indulgence and stuff that honestly seems pretty practical (sure, there’s a lot of Skyping, but if the world were ending, wouldn’t you?); as far as inward-looking disaster movies go, anyone planning an apocalypse film festival could double-bill 4:44 nicely with 2011’s Melancholia.

IndieFest is not an apocalypse film festival, per se. You could choose to have a jolly old time; there’s a power ballad sing-along, and even a flick called I Like You. But the selections for sick puppies are truly, truly outstanding this year. Personally, I recommend going as dark as you can possibly stand.

Start your journey with Michael R. Roskam’s Bullhead, a Belgian import that just scored a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination. The five-second description of this film, which is about a cattle farmer who injects both his livestock and his own body with illegal hormones, doesn’t do it justice. Who knew there was such a thing, for instance, as a “hormone mafia underworld”? While some of Bullhead‘s nuances, which occasionally pivot on culture-clash moments specific to its Belgium setting, will inevitably be lost on American viewers, the most important parts of the movie come through loud and clear, and you won’t soon forget them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvLVNlMvus

Also memorable is Snowtown, another standout Australian crime film on the heels of Animal Kingdom (2010). While Snowtown — whose vérité shooting style recalls Andrea Arnold’s films about desperate living amid Britain’s council estates — isn’t quite as exportable as Animal Kingdom, it is just as uncomfortably tense, and features a teenage protagonist struggling to survive amid close-to-home evil. It’s based on the real-life case of Australia’s worst serial killer, and follows the gruesome facts quite closely. The film has a lot of characters that come and go without much explanation or introduction, which starts to seem deliberate after awhile. Fortunately, the core cast is magnetic. Remember 2005’s Wolf Creek? Snowtown is just as intense.

Still have a lust for blood? Of course you do. British director Ben Wheatley made a splash with 2009 gangster drama Down Terrace; he’s back with much buzz surrounding Kill List, with a review in the IndieFest catalog citing it as “the number one horror film of the year.” I’d hate to hand out that accolade so early in 2012, but this hired-killer-down-the-rabbit-hole tale is indeed worth considering.

Of course, there’s more to horror than guts and torture; if you need a reminder as to why, check out the festival’s pair of home-is-where-the-creepy-is films from Austria, Beside My Brother and Still Life. Beside My Brother‘s set-up — an emotionally disturbed father pretends his twin sons are the same person, and forces them to live as such, a practice they maintain into adulthood — is more promising than its payoff. Remember how in Dead Ringers (1988), the doppelganger bros were gynecologists? Here, they’re painters, and pretty bland ones at that. Far more harrowing is Still Life, about the irrevocable damage wrought by a father’s single, horrible revelation. First-time feature director Sebastian Meise manages to distill the complete crumbling of a seemingly normal-ish family into a slender, wrenching 77 minutes.

Speaking of harrowing, there’s nothing scarier in all of IndieFest than the early scenes of documentary Last Days Here, made by Don Argott and Demian Fenton (directors of 2009’s excellent The Art of the Steal). The film alights upon Bobby Liebling, dubbed the “godfather of doom” for his forty-plus year stint fronting legendary band Pentagram, as a fiftysomething crack addict living in his parents’ basement. Last Days Here is both heartfelt and gloves-off; it’s also blessed with having one of the most unbelievable comeback stories at its core (not a spoiler if you keep abreast of Bay Area concerts; Pentagram’s played here several times in recent years). It, like many of the films discussed here, has a distributor and will be coming around after IndieFest, but I implore you not to sleep on this one — even if you don’t love heavy metal, but especially if you do.

Less successful but no less intriguing is Atlanta oddity Snow On Tha Bluff, which is somewhere between an old-school ethnographic film — like, Robert Flaherty old — and self-aware product of the YouTube generation. The opening and closing scenes are obviously staged, as a drug dealer named Curtis Snow steals a video camera and decides he’ll make an autobiographical movie from the footage he collects. What’s between those bookends is what appears to be an authentic record of life in Snow’s crime-infested neighborhood, complete with drive-by shootings, home invasions, run-ins with the police, copious drug use, etc. Why any of the involved would allow their faces to be shown on camera while, say, firing a non-street legal weapon into a rival’s home is the film’s biggest mystery; its biggest accomplishment is obscuring the obvious lines of demarcation between what’s real and what’s not.

To end your IndieFest experience on a slightly uplifted note, you will have to die — or at least be cool with hanging out with the ghosts in Finisterrae, the first feature from Catalan artist Sergio Caballaro.

Expressing themselves via droll, post-production “dialogue” (in Russian, subtitled in English), the newly-deceased, sheet-wearing duo decides they would like to live again. A-journeying they go, following the wind and encountering an array of strange characters, including enough taxidermied animals to make Chuck Testa‘s head spin. Finisterrae starts slow but builds to glorious, gorgeously filmed and supremely weird heights. Hippies beware.

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 9-23, most films $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Eternal return

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February 7, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

FILM Gregory Markopoulos was born in Toledo, Ohio, but his Greek heritage lights the way in critical appraisals of his refined and elusive body of work. Many of the films featured in the Pacific Film Archive’s “Seconds of Eternity” series are imagined on the stage of Greek myth. After leaving New York in 1967 with his partner Robert Beavers, an outstanding filmmaker in his own right, Markopoulos drew still closer to his ancestral home. He died in 1992, but Beavers, who will be on hand at the PFA to shepherd the films, has preserved the work for the Temenos, a unique archive and biennial outdoor screening cycle located near Lyssaraia, Markopoulos’s father’s home. This June brings another such event.

Markopoulos’s films have themselves long achieved mythic stature. He was a colossal figure during the heroic phase of the American avant-garde and then left it behind. Dissatisfied with exhibition standards, he withdrew his prints from circulation (the Temenos screenings represents the idealistic rejoinder). Remarkably, he requested that critic P. Adams Sitney excise a full chapter on his works from Visionary Film, generally considered the central critical survey of the American avant-garde. So Markopoulos went to almost unthinkable lengths to maintain the primacy of his early films (he continued making new ones, as well). Any opportunity to watch these ravishing films close to home is unusual.

Markopoulos once remarked that “locations and beautiful faces have been the backbone of my work,” and one sees that to an archetypal degree in Psyche (1947), the first film of his Du Sang, de la volupté et de la mort trilogy, made when he was still a teenage student at USC living across the hall from Curtis Harrington. Inspired by a Pierre Louÿs novella, the film replaces spoken language with dynamic color and framing. We begin with a man and woman crossing each other on a leafy Angeleno street: a few steps further and they turn back to consider what they’ve just passed. All that follows might be transpire within this instant: a languid fantasia hatched within a fugitive moment of lost time. Markopoulos frames the couple in deep focus two-shots, grazing shoulders and lips and tumbling toward dreams.

An evident poverty of means only concentrates the film’s withdrawal into a private world of frustrated beauty (across town Kenneth Anger was fashioning his more explicitly Dionysian Fireworks). The dive into inexpressible desire reaches a peak when Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Serenade” suddenly drops out and the image snaps to a silent interlude of natural splendor bordering on abstraction — sea grass gorgeously superimposed upon the sea. This image gives magnificent form to the phrase “out of the blue” and overflows the frame in such a way as to shake loose the film’s more studied visual effects.

Markopoulos would later articulate in written form (“Towards a New Narrative Form in Motion Pictures”) what he set out to accomplish beginning with Psyche: “The film maker gradually convinces the spectator not only to see and to hear, but to participate in what is being created on the screen, on both the narrative and introspective levels. The magnificent landscapes of emotions, with colors brighter than the film viewer has ever been concerned with, begin to exist. The transient impact of meetings, handshakes, kisses, and the hours apart from these contacts becomes revealed in all its astounding simplicity.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59mrfKQRdQ

That “astounding simplicity” is readily apparent in A Christmas Carol (1940), a compressed bildungsroman evoking a richly embroidered fabric of memory with only a few spare images (mother setting the table, father looking up over his newspaper, figures dancing on a nearby rooftop). Twice a Man (1963) reveals the full extent of Markopoulos’ dream of a new narrative language. A psychologically fraught interpolation of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra (son seduced by mother and liberated from suicidal thoughts by a healer-artist), the film surfaces an internal state of emergency in a persistently emergent form.

Most remarkable is the densely interleaved editing by which Markopoulos folds multiple registers of time, color, and theme. Though often likened to other seminal works of the American avant-garde (especially Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, 1961-64), Twice a Man‘s fractal form also recalls contemporaneous French films like Alain Resnais’s Muriel (1963) — though if anything Markopoulos’s cutting seems more evolved for its thoroughgoing commitment to simultaneity. Beginning with a ferry ride into blue New York, suggestive of any number of mythic crossings, there is an ever-sharpening concordance of different blocks of imagery. The protagonist’s central struggle to get out from under his mother and be reborn as his own person takes root in these syntactical somersaults. Indeed, this is where the modernist character of Markopoulos’s work shines through: a classical story embodied in the radical address of the senses. (You don’t need a neurologist to know that your brain gets a tune-up watching this film). Less successful is the cut-up spoken address that Phaedra delivers to her son, with which Markopoulos seems a little too assured of his genius. The haranguing pure speech dampens an otherwise brilliant film with a faintly misogynistic mist.

Though Markopoulos delved still deeper into myth with his Illiac Passion (1964-1967), he also gravitated towards more focused portraits of people and places in these years. San Francisco Cinematheque will screen Galaxie (1966), his anthology of New York people, in May. Meanwhile, the PFA sneaks in Ming Green (1966) before the epic Illiac Passion. The silent film gathers up images of the New York home Markopoulos was soon to leave as if for a bouquet. Edited in camera with great fluency, Ming Green revises the still life for cinema: the apartment’s objects sit in repose, vibrating with the articulation of color and residue of memory. Flourishing superimpositions put on a terrific show without abandoning the refined air of quietude. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a more exquisite short roll of film this year.

SECONDS OF ETERNITY: THE FILMS OF GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS

Feb. 9-16, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

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February 7, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 8

Aphrodesia Afterhours Valentine’s Day Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, 100 John F. Kennedy, SF. (415) 831-2090, www.conservatoryofflowers.org. 6 p.m.-10 p.m., $10.

Chocolate is hands down the best part of Valentine’s Day. Join local chocolatier TCHO’s chief chocolate guru, Brad Kintzer, for his demonstration on how to transform beans into bliss. Afterwards, grab a love potion from the Cocktail Lab, frolic amongst the orchids, and enjoy a live performance by Le Quartet de Jazz. Remember to take a picture in the photobooth — a night dedicated to chocolate is a night to remember.

Love on Wheels dating game Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. (415) 932-0955, www.sfbike.org. 6 p.m., $5 for SF Bicycle Coalition members; $10 for non-members. The cutest people always seem to be railing past each other on their bikes. The SF Bicycle Coalition is going to sit all you guys down so you can date already. Lovebirds will quiz three potential dates (hidden from view) and go on a date provided by one of the sponsors. This annual tradition is a cute hoot.

THURSDAY 9

“Animal Attraction” NightLife aquarium gallery and sex talk California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org. 6 p.m.-10 p.m., $12. Cal Academy’s weekly Thursday evening party, NightLife, is launching a new gallery for fish-lovers (and friends!) with a series of reproduction-themed talks. Various experts will be talking about mating strategies in the animal kingdom, penis bones of different species, and the sex life of Zodiac signs. Dr. Carol Queen from Good Vibrations will be sharing her knowledge about the science of orgasms. So let’s do like they do on the Discovery Channel.

“Cupid’s Back” sixth annual Valentine’s Day party Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, cupidsback.kintera.org. 8 p.m.-midnight, $30-35. Gay charity impressario Mark Rhoades is back — like Cupid, you might say — with this popular shindig that brings together oodles of hot men. DJ Juanita More will fluff the crowd, and it all goes to help out our invaluable GLBT Historical Society. Shoot your arrow and it goes real high …

“Go Deep” lube wrestling for the boys El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife. 8 p.m.-11:30 p.m., $10–<\d>$15. What says romance more than watching half-naked queer boys with fantastical monikers like Yogzar and Red Dragon wrestling in a vat of lube? Slide your way into V-Day at this monthly grip ‘n slip put on by neo-Vaudevillian troupe SF Boylesque, with DJ Drama Bin Laden, a performance by the Bohemian Brethren, and Cajon food from Family Meal available on the back patio.

FRIDAY 10

Bardot A Go Go Pre-Valentine’s Dance Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.bardotagogo.com. 9 p.m., $10. “Music by French people for everybody” is the motto of the neato longtime roving Bardot A Go Go — and that includes a bubbly beretful of cute folks who revel in 1960s pop glamour filtered through contemporary va-va-voom. Live band Nous Non Plus is très adorable, and DJs Pink Frankenstein, Brother Grimm, and Cali Kid bring French kisses galore. Plus: free hairstyling by Peter Thomas Hair Design, d’accord.

I Heart Some Thing The Stud, 399 9th St., SF. (415) 863-6623, www.studsf.com. 10 p.m.-late, $8. “We love love! We just love it!” scream the awesome queens of Some Thing, the mind-altering weekly friday drag show and party at the Stud. You may detect a hint of the sardonic in there, but the smart Some Thingers always cover their bases with a healthy dose of sincerity to go with the staged pop culture send-ups. heart-shaped performers include Glamamore, Manicure Versace, Cricket Bardot, and Nikki Sixx Mile. Afterhours dancing, too.

Mortified’s Annual Doomed Valentine’s Show DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.getmortified.com. 7:30 p.m., $14 adv; $21 at door. Do you remember your first kiss when you went in for the gold, missed completely, and your lips puckered mid-air? Well, the folks at Mortified sure do. They have sorted through the oldest and nerdiest notebooks, letters, photos, and shoeboxes so that they can share with you their most humiliating romantic encounters. Reinvigorate your disdain for this holiday by taking comedic comfort in the mishaps of these thick-skinned Valentine’s veterans.

Ninth Annual Food from the Heart Festival Ferry Building Marketplace, 1 Ferry Building, SF. (415) 983-8000, www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com. Through Saturday. 5:30-8 p.m., free entrance. Nothing says “I love you” like food. Give the gift of a happy stomach to your lover this Valentine’s in the candlelit Grand Nave of the Ferry Building, with a night of dancing and eating. Revel in the magic of the waterfront, sip on wine poured by local Napa Vinters, and taste a scrumptious hors-d’oeuvre or five.

“On The Edge 2” erotic photography exhibition Gallery 4N5, 863 Mission, SF. (415) 522-2400, www.gallery4n5.com. Through Sunday. Gallery hours Fri., 4 p.m.-9 p.m.; Sat., 11 p.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m., free. Valentine’s Day may be about romance for some people, but for us it’s about getting naked. (And eating, but mostly getting naked.) This group exhibition features 400 pictures of artful sexiness taken by 25 erotic photographers who bring on the nudes.

SATURDAY 11

“Drunk with Love” with Carol Peters The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF. (415) 500-2323, www.carolpeters.net. 8 p.m., $10. Carol Peters, a.k.a. “Velvet Voice,” is known for her passionate and amorous renderings. For one steamy night in light of Valentine’s Day, Peters will grace the stage to croon sensual tunes that capture the many dimensions of love.

Valentine’s Surprise SF Lindy Ball Womens Building, 3543 18th St., SF. sfswingjam.eventbee.com. 7:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., $22 This Lindy Hop and Swing ball is actually the centerpiece of a three-day swing summit in celebration of romance (check the website for full line-up) — because what says, “I love you” more than artfully mopping the floor with your partner? We sure don’t know. Hoppin’ workshops and technique tune-up sessions complement the ball, which consists of a Lindy contest, live swing music, and a surprise 91st birthday celebration for classic movie star Ray Hirsch.

Watson’s “Naked at the Art Museum Scavenger Hunt” Legion of Honor, 34th Ave, SF. (415) 750-3600, legionofhonor.famsf.org. Through Sunday. 2 p.m.-4:30 p.m., $20. Who said museums had to be tame? Bring a lover or friend this weekend to the Legion of Honor for a sexy scavenger hunt. You will scope the halls for studly sculptures, titillating paintings, bathing beauties, and many sexy inanimate objects more. Museums will never be the same again.

SUNDAY 12

SF Mixtape Society’s “Under The Covers” music exchange and contest The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF. (415) 440-4177, www.sfmixtapesociety.com. 6 p.m., free with mix. Don’t have someone to make a mixtape for this year? It’s OK. Your ex’s music taste was awful anyways! Put that playlist you love on a CD, cassette, or USB drive and have it land right in the ears of a random yet lucky someone. You’ll end the night with someone else’s coveted mix, and everyone will get to vote for the playlist with the best track listings and artwork.

MONDAY 13

Litquake Literary Festival presents: Love Hurts readings of grief-stricken passages of love and lust The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF. (415) 440-4177, www.litquake.org. 7 p.m., $10. Ten Bay Area writers will give their own cynical (and mostly hilarious) twists on the forlorn words of some of the most melancholic and/or melodramatic novels ever written. Come sort out the parallels between drug dependency and romance in Valley of the Dolls, the masochistic plotline of The Story of O, and many more classics that well forewarned of broken hearts.

TUESDAY 14

Club Neon’s Eighth Annual Vaslentine’s Day Underwear Party The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6884, www.theknockoutsf.com. This is THE event for fresh and nubile indie heartbreakers, stripping down to make you all “damn!” and stuff. One of our favorite annual pantsless throwdowns, with steamy rock DJs Jamie Jams and EmDee making you want to take it all off.

The Fifth Annual Poetry and Music Battle of ALL of the Sexes Uncle Al and Mama Dee’s Cafe at POOR Magazine, 2940 16th St, SF. (415) 865-1932, www.poormagazine.org. 7 p.m., $5-$20 suggested donation for dinner and show. Instead of scribbling your words in to a Hallmark card, show off your love this Valentine’s in rhyme and verse. All proceeds will support POOR magazine, a local arts organization that advocates education and media access for struggling communities. The theme is 1950s, but the beats will be timeless.

Love Story film showing and gala with Justin MX Bond Castro Theatre, 429 Casto, SF. (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. 8 p.m., $10 film only; $25 for gala tickets. Relive the drama, the tragic heartaches, and the swooning love story of the 1970 film classic. Ali MacGraw will be at the Castro mezzanine in person, “Theme from Love Story” will be sung by Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and special guest Mx Justin Vivian bond will be doing a “sorry” medley.

Passion Punch Valentine’s day kickboxing class UFC Gym, 1975 Diamond, Concord. (925) 265-8130, www.ufcgyms.com. 6:30 p.m., free. Valentine’s got you foaming at the mouth? Let it out. This 60-minute class will incorporate dynamic boxing moves so that you can punch away all the annoyances you will be feeling by the end of this day.

The Crackpot Crones present “I Hate Valentine’s Day” sketch comedy and improv show The Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF. (415) 648-5244, www.crackpotcrones.com. 8 p.m., $20. Outrageous duo Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers are providing a public service for the romantically challenged. They will be making fun of everything Valentine’s related — especially silly little concepts like true love and soul mates. Belt along to the song, “The Twelve Days of Being Dumped,” and give your best evil cackle at this sketch comedy show.

Valentine’s Day Party with T.I.T.S and Uzi Rash Hemlock, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com. 9 p.m., free. There is no need for all the fuss, the fancy gifts, the cutesy ribbons, or the overpriced dinner. If you’re sick of the pink, come dance your anti-heart out at this doom punk show. Flowers wilt anyways.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam

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February 7, 2012

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Schedules are for Wed/8-Tues/14 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. Dirty Looks presents: City of Lost Souls, Fri, 8. “Mindscapes,” short films, Sat, 8.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS 1118 Eighth St, SF; www.dirtylooksnyc.org. Free. Dirty Looks presents: “Queer Conversations on Culture in the Arts,” with selections from the “Female Trouble” experimental shorts program and a conversation with Margaret Tedesco, Thurs, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959), Wed, 3:30, 7:15, and American Gigolo (Schrader, 1979), Wed, 4:55, 8:45. •Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946), Thurs, 3:05, 7, and No Such Thing (Hartley, 2001), Thurs, 4:55, 8:50. “Midnites for Maniacs: I’m Black and I’m Proud:” •I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Wayans, 1988), Fri, 7:30; Pootie Tang (Louis CK, 2001), Fri, 9:30; CB4 (Davis, 1993), Fri, 11:30. French American International School presents: “I-Speak: Celebrating 50 Years of International Education,” Sat, 6:30. This event, $5-10; tickets at www.internationalsf.org. •Do The Right Thing (Lee, 1989), Sun, 2, 8, and Malcolm X (Lee, 1992), Sun, 4:15. “Love: Ali MacGraw:” Love Story (Hiller, 1970), Tues, 8. With pre-show gala performance and MacGraw in person; for tickets ($25-45), visit www.ticketfly.com.

ELMWOOD 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.rialtocinemas.com. Free. “Community Cinema:” More Than a Month: One Man’s Journey to End Black History Month (Tilghman, 2012), Wed, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. “Rafael Film Club:” “Jan Wahl,” Thurs, 1. Pina (Wenders, 2011), call for dates and times. “Mostly British Film Festival:” Route Irish (Loach, 2010), Wed, 7; Albatross (MacCormick, 2011), Thurs, 7. “2012 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” narrative and documentary (separate admission), Feb 3-9, call for times.

LAMORINDA THEATRES Four Orinda Theatre Square, Orinda; www.caiff.org. $12-15. “California Independent Film Festival,” 11 features, plus docs, shorts, and educational seminars, Feb 10-16.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Hollywood Dames: Beauty and Brains:” Intermezzo (Ratoff, 1939), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Documentary Voices:” The Green Wave (Ahadi, 2010), Wed, 7. “Seconds of Eternity: The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos:” “Markopoulos: The Early Films (1940-49)” Thurs, 7; “Eros and Myth (1950-63),” Sat, 6:30. “Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson:” The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Fri, 7; Les dames du Bois du Boulogne (1945), Fri, 8:25; Lancelot of the Lake (1974), Sat, 8:30. “Screenagers: 14th Annual Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival,” Sat, 3. “Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man:” The Criminal Code (1931), Sun, 4:30; Bringing Up Baby (1938), Tues, 7. “African Film Festival 2012:” Viva Riva! (Munga, 2010), Sun, 6:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. Come Back, Africa (Rogosin, 1959/2012), Wed-Thurs, 6:45, 8:30. Drive (Winding Refn, 2011), Wed, 8:45. Into the Abyss (Herzog, 2011), Wed, 6:45. SF IndieFest, Feb 9-23. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $10-11. Domain (Chiha, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011), Feb 10-16, 2, 5:30, 8:30.

TWINSPACE CONTINUUM 2111 Mission, Third Flr, Ste 3, SF; www.blockreportradio.com. $15. “Human Rights and Hip-Hop Film Festival,” documentaries and shorts, Fri, 5; Sat, 6:30.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; www.mostlybritish.org. $12.50. “Mostly British Film Festival:” Black Butterflies (van der Oest, 2011), Wed, 5; London Boulevard (Monahan, 2010), Wed, 7:15; The Great White Silence (Ponting, 1924), Wed, 9:30; A Passionate Woman (2010), Thurs, 5; Route Irish (Loach, 2010), Thurs, 7:30.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $7 donation. “The Second Coming of the Vortex Room:” The Second Coming of Suzanne (Barry, 1974), and Marjoe (Kernochan and Smith, 1972), Thurs, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Bros Before Hos:” The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976), Thurs, 7:30; “Female Trouble,” experimental shorts program presented by Dirty Looks curator Bradford Nordeen, Sun, 2.

Psychic Dream Astrology: February 8-14

Andrew Lam

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February 7, 2012

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ARIES

March 21-April 19

Be brave enough to move to the next stage of your relationships. All it will take is to trust in your own instincts enough to do what’s right in current dynamics, instead of what you’re used to doing out of habit. Consider the big picture as you improve your interactions this week.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Whether you are dating or not, it’s time to invest in your love life. Make the effort to revisit what you want for yourself with relationships, and check in with how close or far you are from your goals. This will allow you to participate with others in a way that will help get everyone’s needs met.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

You are meant to go directly towards what you want, and to do it with an open heart. The direction that you point yourself in this week will determine where you end up in coming months, so take full responsibility for where you set yourself to go and how you plan on getting there, Twin Star.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Think in terms of building blocks. You are creative and capable, but if you lack vision then you will fritter away all your awesome energy. Now is the time to strategically envision what you need to do and embody in order to be where you want to be. Move steady, and step by step.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

What’s the rush, Leo? Sit still for a minute and calmly assess where you’re at, both in your dynamics and also more deeply within yourself. There is no way to deal authentically with others if you don’t know what’s real within you! Take the time to be with yourself this week for best results.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

The power of your mind is formidable, but can be used as a weapon as well as a tool. Instead of running over every detail you can, why not check in with yourself about how you feel? Nothing in your life is written in stone, and you can turn things around that don’t make you happy. Lighten up as you reflect.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Go forth towards love with your ego held in check, and your emotional needs placed first, right where they belong. Partnership is a big theme in your life; don’t look for what compels you as much as what inspires you. it is time for you to be more whole and engaged in your life. Take a chance on love, Libra.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

You are both at the end of a cycle and at the start of something new. Look around you to see all that you have accomplished over the last three months and feel good about it. Once this is done you’ll be ready to push ahead in the realm of relationships. Participate, Scorpio; don’t hide yourself away.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Be where you’re at and enjoy it without jumping ahead in your mind and getting all future-trippy. Honesty with yourself and the people around you is essential. Be vibrantly here right now, but you don’t have to commit to anything. The truth won’t spoil anything good, so lather it on this week.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

You are free, Capricorn, but you need to deal with the ways that you feel trapped so you act more independent of your fears and bad habits. Cultivate patience with your personal life as it develops at the pace it needs to. Be willing to change and to share those changes with others.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

There is no way to make things perfect, so instead work with what you’ve got. This week your need for connection is battling with your needs to be alone, and it’s unclear which side you’re rooting for. Take care of your insides so you’re a better advocate for your outsides.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Kindness is the answer, and don’t get it twisted. No matter how fretful you feel, now is the time to make sure you are being caring to yourself and also showing compassion to others. The trick is to not play out any willing victim games or to fall for others’ martyr trips. Consideration without strings this week.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam

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February 7, 2012

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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Previews Wed/8-Fri/10, 8pm. Opens Sat/11, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre performs Joe Penhall’s comedic drama about a hospital patient who claims to be the son of an African dictator.

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Opens Tues/14, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, Feb 15, and Feb 27, 8pm. Through March 3. Desiree Butch performs her solo show about a deck of cards’ worth of sexual encounters.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, MainStage, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Opens Thurs/9, 8pm. Runs Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

BAY AREA

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Previews Fri/10-Sat/11 and Tues/14, 8pm; Sun/12, 7pm. Opens Feb 15, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Feb 16, Feb 25, March 1, 8, and 15; no show March 23); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through March 25. Berkeley Rep performs a contemporary update of the Molière comedy.

ONGOING

Cabaret Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldc C, Room 300, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 381-1638, cabaretsf.wordpress.com. $25-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 19. Shakespeare at Stinson and Independent Cabaret Productions perform the Kander and Ebb classic in an intimate setting.

Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 24. David Mamet’s cutthroat comedy, courtesy of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco.

Higher Theater at Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Howard, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-65. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinee Wed/8). Through Feb 19. American Conservatory Theatre presents Carey Perloff’s smart and sexy world premiere.

Jesus in India Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Feb 18, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 19. Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap is still one of Magic’s strongest premieres in recent years, an intriguingly funny and affecting cross-cultural tale of an absent Korean father’s return to the family he abandoned in West Texas 15 years earlier. Suh’s latest makes a disappointing contrast. There’s again an absent father (or two) and a sense of dislocation, but Suh’s “Jesus in India” does little or nothing with them. Director Daniella Topol assembles a bright cast headed by musically adept charmer Damon Daunno — on Michael Locher’s colorful, all-encompassing street mosaic set (comprised of floor-to-wall stickers, spray-paint, and mandalas around a central thicket of abandoned bicycle wheels) — but it all serves an insipid chronicle of the deity’s wayward teen years, which are spent getting high and playing in a punk band in India. Pure irreverence might have been worthwhile, but the “dude, fuckin’ &ldots; dude” humor here — one-note and rarely that funny — comes yoked to a fourth-quarter theme (basically a Henry IV thing, the sowing of wild oats ahead of the taking on of a “king’s” responsibilities) that proves even sketchier, not to mention out-of-step with these deliberately leaderless times. (Avila)

*Little Brother Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 25. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Josh Costello’s adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s San Francisco-set thriller.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 8:30pm. Extended through Feb 25. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

Olivia’s Kitchen Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.generationtheatre.com. $20-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Feb 19. GenerationTheatre offers this “remix” of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Private Parts SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 25. Graham Gremore performs his autobiographical solo comedy.

*True West Boxcar Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; (415) 967-2227, www.boxcartheatre.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 7. The first installment of Boxcar Theatre’s four-play Sam Shepard repertory project, True West ushers in the ambitious run with a bang. This tale of two brothers who gradually assume the role of the other is one of Shepard’s most enduring plays, rich with humorous interludes, veering sharply into dangerous terrain at the drop of a toaster. In time-honored, True West tradition, the lead roles of Austin, the unassuming younger brother, and Lee, his violent older sibling, are being alternated between Nick A. Olivero and Brian Trybom, and in a new twist, the role of the mother is being played by two different actresses as well (Adrienne Krug and Katya Rivera). The evening I saw it, Olivero was playing Austin, a writer banging away at his first screenplay, and Trybom was Lee, a troubled, alcoholic drifter who usurps his brother’s Hollywood shot, and trashes their mother’s home while trying to honor his as yet unwritten “contract”. The chemistry between the two actors was a perfect blend of menace and fraternity, and the extreme wreckage they make of both the set (designed by both actors), and their ever-tenuous relationship, was truly inspired. (Gluckstern)

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

*Vigilance Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; (415) 335-6087, secondwind.8m.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 25. Ian Walker (The Tender King) directs a sharp revival of his own lucid, involving 2000 domestic drama about three households brought to the brink by the arrival of a menacing working-class loner. Seamlessly staged in a single pair of rooms (designed by Fred Sharkey) representing all three suburban middle-class homes — as well as downstage on the street where dream-home lottery winner Duncan (an imposing Steven Westdahl) throws his beer cans and leers at the wives and children — Vigilance begins with three friends meeting under the pretext of a poker game. Host Virgil (played with gruff charm by a commanding Mike Newman) is a 30-something husband, father, and guy’s guy whose Montana-grown libertarian machismo compensates for the agro of a stormy marriage and rocky finances. He talks the suggestible, nebbishy Bert (a slyly humorous Ben Ortega) and the equally nerdy but independent-minded Dick (a nicely layered Stephen Muterspaugh) into forming a “committee” to deal with the troublesome Duncan. Walker’s well-honed dialogue brings out the false notes in the supposed pre-Duncan harmony right away, especially in the volatile arguments between Virgil and wife Marla (a sure Natalie Palan Walker) and the passive but more troubled confrontations between Dick and his distant, frustrated wife Cathy (a subtly fraught Kim Stephenson). While the insular, repressed lives of the moderately well off come across well, Duncan’s final monologue is a compressed, if dramatically necessary, attempt at voicing the other side. Vigilance strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship, the latter further invoked in the concerned intervention of cop and childhood friend Frank (a sympathetic Leon Goertzen). (Avila)

Waiting for Godot Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; (415) 336-3522, www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 18. The fuchsia papier-mâché tree and swirling grey-on-white floor pattern (courtesy of scenic designer Richard Colman) lend a psychedelic accent to the famously barren landscape inhabited by Vladimir (Keith Burkland) and Estragon (Jack Halton) in this production of the Samuel Beckett play by newcomers Tides Theatre. Director (and Tides’ producing artistic director) Jennifer Welch layers the avant-garde classic with some audio accents as well (although Jon Bernson’s minimalist industrial soundscape is a bit low in the mix to be very effective). More compelling is the gentle, sad humor and couched intelligence captured expertly by Halton in the circular but deliberate rhythms of his hapless tramp. Burkland as pal Vladimir exudes a palpable presence as well, though lacks the same focus. Timing is all in vaudeville — the parallel universe from whence these tangible modernist archetypes hail — as well as in a play whose plot goes intentionally nowhere, or rather loops back on itself in an implied dance with eternity. The halting aspect to Tides’ staging gets compounded with the arrival of brash whip-cracker Pozzo (a suitably stentorian but inconsistent Duane Lawrence) and his pitiful slave Lucky (a haunted, generally sharp Renzo Ampuero, made up to look like a goth doll à la some Tim Burton movie). That said, the best moments here broadcast the brooding beauty of the play, with its purposely vague but readily familiar world of viciousness, servility, trauma, want, fear, grudging compassion, and the daring, fragile humor that can look it all squarely in the eye. (Avila)

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 24. Brian Copeland returns with a new solo show about his struggles with depression.

BAY AREA

Arms and the Man Lesher Center for the Arts, Margaret Lesher Theater, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-7469, www.centerrep.org. $38-43. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 25. Center REPertory Company presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic romantic comedy.

Body Awareness Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 4. Aurora Theatre performs Annie Baker’s comedy.

Counter Attack! Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 444-4755, ext. 114, www.stagebridge.org. $18-25. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 4. Stagebridge presents the world premiere of Joan Holden’s waitress-centric play.

Ghost Light Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Feb 16, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Feb 19. Berkeley Rep performs Tony Taccone’s world-premiere play about George Moscone’s assassination, directed by the late San Francisco mayor’s son, Jonathan Moscone.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through March 25. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

The Pitman Painters TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Arts, 500 Castro, SF; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Wed/8, 7:30pm; Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm); Sun/12, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs a new comedy from the author of Billy Elliot about a group of British miners who become art world sensations.

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/11 and Feb 25, 2pm; Feb 16, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Keith Huff’s neo-noir drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: Sun/12, Feb 19, 26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tues, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“Epic Romance” Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 474-6776, www.improv.org. Tues/14, 8pm. $25. BATS Improv taps its collective quick-wit talents to conjure a romantic play on the spot.

“The Eric Show” Milk Bar, 1840 Haight, SF; www.milksf.com. Tues, 8pm (ongoing). $5. Local comedians perform with host Eric Barry.

“How We First Met” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.howwefirstmet.com. Tues/14, 8pm. $40-75. Jill Bourque’s long-running holiday tradition is inspired by audience members’ real-life tales of romance.

“The I Hate Valentine’s Day Show” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.crackpotcrones.com. Tues/14, 8pm; Feb 19, 5pm. $20. “Sketch comedy and improv as a public service for the romantically challenged” with Crackpot Crones Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers.

“It’s Got to Be Love” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Mon/13-Tues/14, 8pm. $20. Craig Jessup sings Rodgers, Hart, Gershwin, and Sondheim to benefit the San Francisco Arts Education Project.

“Love Bites — and So Did the ’80s” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.lgcsf.org. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. $15-30. The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco celebrates the neon decade with this cabaret and musical extravaganza.

“Mortified! Doomed Valentine’s Show” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/10, 7:30pm. $21. Also Sat/11, 8pm, $20, Shattuck Down Low, 2184 Shattuck, Berk. The awkward storytelling series returns with a romance-gone-awry theme.

“Our Feet Speak the Rhythms of Our Hearts” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.fortmason.org. Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 3pm. $15-25. Tango and More Argentine Dance and World Arts West present this event featuring six ethnic dance companies, including La Tania, Ensembles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco, Valverde Dance, Barbary Coast Cloggers, and Ballet Pampa Argentina.

“Through the Night” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St, SF; www.communityworkswest.org. Sat/11, 7pm. $40-100. Daniel Beaty performs at this evening honoring author Nell Bernstein and activist Sujatha Baliga; proceeds benefit Community Works’ programs for Bay Area children, families, and communities impacted by incarceration.

“The Weight Game” NOHspace Theater, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/10-Sat/11 and Feb 17-18, 8pm. $15. Sarah Abbey performs her semi-autobiographical solo show about diets and self-esteem.

BAY AREA

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 4pm. Also Feb 17-18 and Feb 24-25, 8pm; Feb 19, 4pm; Feb 26, 7pm, Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF. $10-25. Celebrate African and African American dance and culture at this multi-part festival, with works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, and more.

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