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Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, JULY 7

Two years after the coup

Andrés Thomas Conteris, founder of Democracy Now! En Español, along with Adrienne Aron and Theresa Carmeranesi, will share observations from their recent trips to Honduras, specifically the well-organized resistance movement against the repressive coup that ousted their democratically-elected president in 2009.

7–9 p.m., free

First Unitarian Universalist Church

Thomas Starr King Room

1187 Franklin, SF

www.soaw.org

Saving labor murals

All over the country, many of the murals created during the WPA-era that depict the history and struggles of the U.S. labor movement are threatened of permanent removal, like the hidden labor history mural in the Maine Labor Department Building. At this event, noted New Deal historians Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith will speak about the unremitting war on labor art and history occurring closer to home.

7–9 p.m., free

Berkeley City College Auditorium

2050 Center, Berk.

www.laborfest.net

SATURDAY, JULY 9

Stop the Libya bombing!

NATO intervention in Libya: a massive outpouring of humanity or a blatant display of U.S. imperialism? If you agree with the second viewpoint, stand up against the bombings in Libya, where civilians have been caught in the crossfire. The bombings also cost the U.S. $10 million a day, outrageous at a time when workers in the public and nonprofit sectors are being fired due to a nationwide budget crisis. There will also be a joint action the same day in Washington, D.C. in front of the White House.

12–2 p.m., free

Meet at Powell and Market, SF

(415) 821-6545

www.answersf.org

TUESDAY, JUNE 12

Who built San Francisco?

Learn about San Francisco history and 120 years of its architecture from the perspective of the people — the union workers who built these massive artifacts — not from the architectural firms that usually get all the credit. In two hours, you will see 30 buildings, from famous skyscrapers and little-known treasures, that tell a story about the rich labor and political history of the city, as well as the design trends that helped change the concrete face of America.

10 a.m.–12 p.m., free

Meet at Stockton and Maiden lane, SF

www.laborfest.net 2

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

25

tredmond@sfbg.com

I had, as they say, a spirited and frank discussion last week with Enrique Pearce, the political consultant working on the Run Ed Run campaign. I chided Pearce, whose firm is called Left Coast Communications, for leading an effort that, at the very least, involves some touchy legal and ethical issues. (After all, the group is raising money for a campaign for a candidate who hasn’t filed as a candidate. There are reasons why federal, state, and local laws mandate that people who are running for office declare that they want the office before they start raising money.)

Pearce insisted he was doing nothing illegal. (Okay, if he says so.) He also argued that his firm is the most progressive consulting operation in the city. (Whatever.) But the real focus of our discussion — and the reason it’s worth talking about — was the question of whether corruption really matters.

I think sleaze — and the appearance of sleaze — is a defining progressive issue. If Pearce agrees, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Let’s back up here. When Willie Brown was speaker of the state Assembly, he passed some good legislation, and allowed some very bad legislation to become law. But his greatest legacy is term limits — and the terrible public perception of what was once one of the best state legislatures in the nation.

Brown was the epitome of corruption, a guy who actively flouted the notion of honest, open government. Among other things, he had a private law practice on the side — and clients would pay him big money because of his influence on state legislation. Of course, we never knew who the clients were; he wouldn’t release the list.

When he was mayor, his sleazy ways continued — and left even progressive San Franciscans believing that you can’t trust City Hall with your money. Which means, of course, that it’s harder to convince anyone to pay more taxes.

There’s no question that Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak (don’t get me started) were key players in putting Mayor Ed Lee in office, and that they’re playing a big role in this new effort. Which means, as far as I’m concerned, that it’s utterly untrustworthy — and that progressives should be miles and miles away.

I’m not arguing that Ed Lee is a bad mayor (he’s way better than the last guy). He might even turn into a good mayor if he runs for a full term. Pearce thinks he’d be better for progressives than state Sen. Leland Yee. We can argue that later.

But as long as his campaign is directly linked to people whose standard practices undermine the heart of the progressive agenda (which depends on a belief that government can be trusted to take on social problems), then you can count me out.

Campaign for the Woolsey legacy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin, Sonoma counties) is a rarity on Capitol Hill. She’s a lawmaker with guts who speaks from the heart.

Whether focusing on children and seniors at home or the victims of war far away, Woolsey insists on advocating for humane priorities. Several hundred times, she has gone to the House floor to speak out against war. She stands for peace, social justice, human rights, a green future, and so much more.

Last week, after more than 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Woolsey announced that she will not run for reelection next year.

She has set a high bar for representing the region in Congress. It’s a high bar that I intend to clear.

Back in January, I wrote in the Guardian that “if Rep. Woolsey doesn’t run in 2012, I will” (“Why I may run for Congress,” 1/25/2011).

At the time I noted that “alarm is rising as corporate power escalates at the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.” I cited such realities as “endless war, massive giveaways to Wall Street, widening gaps between the rich and the rest of us, erosion of civil liberties, outrageous inaction on global warming … “

Six months later — with war even more endless, giveaways to Wall Street even more massive, and overall conditions even worse — my grassroots campaign for Congress is well underway.

Redistricting lines are in flux this month, but the political lines are clear as corporate Democrats salivate for this congressional seat. They want it bad.

This is a grassroots vs. Astroturf campaign. I’m facing opposition with a long history of big corporate funding. But we have something much better going for us: a genuine progressive campaign that’s growing from the ground up.

Already, more than 750 people have made donations to my campaign (we topped $100,000 weeks ago) and nearly 300 have signed up as volunteers. You’re invited to join in at www.SolomonForCongress.com.

We have to hold the North Bay congressional seat for the values that Lynn Woolsey has represented. That means directly challenging the undue corporate power that stands in the way of real change.

As a member of Congress, I want to work on building coalitions to fight for a wide-ranging progressive agenda — including guaranteed health care, full employment, workers’ rights, green sustainability, full funding for public education, fundamental changes in federal spending priorities, and an end to perennial war.

On Capitol Hill, I will insist that we need to bring our troops and tax dollars home — and that caving in to Wall Street and polluters and enemies of civil liberties is unacceptable.

Every day, the ideals we cherish are up against what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism,” running amok in tandem with corporate greed.

Nuclear power is emerging as one of the big issues in this campaign. I reject the claim that we need to wait for more “studies” from nuclear-friendly federal agencies before closing down the likes of California’s Diablo Canyon and San Onofre reactors. We need to fight for serious public investment in renewable energy, conservation, and a nuclear-free future.

Overall, the obstacles to gaining electoral power for progressives may seem daunting. But the narrow definition of politics as “the art of the possible” has led to disaster. What we need is the art of the imperative.

Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For more information go to www.SolomonForCongress.com.

Ghost Fleet wanderers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

5

Scott Haefner, Stephen Freskos, and Jon Haeber aren’t the types to stand out in a crowd. Haefner is a web developer, Freskos supervises projects for an engineering firm, and Haeber has a desk job at a company that helps businesses hit high on Google — three straight-laced Bay Area professionals who blend readily into the corporate world.

But everyone’s got their thing — a way to break out of bounds, or scratch the itch of some incessant curiosity.

For these three friends in their late-20s to mid-30s, their thing entails prowling around in rundown deserted places by the light of the full moon, at times taking great pains to avert detection by security patrols. “We go into places that most people don’t go,” Haefner says. They’ve been traipsing into the unknown and documenting their discoveries together for years, motivated as much by art as adrenaline.

This past May, after weighing the consequences, they publicized one of their boldest excursions yet: Sneaking aboard the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay to spend entire weekends roaming the bowels of the mildewed vintage ships, while dodging the beams of patrol-boat searchlights.

Unlike many nocturnal wanderers magnetically drawn to abandoned spaces — squatters, taggers, or scrappers, for instance — they don’t break in, vandalize, or steal. Instead, they adopt the same sense of reverence in decaying, chemical-laden industrial places that conscientious hikers assume on backwoods trails. They shoot night photos with professional quality gear, occasionally using flashlights to achieve a technique called light painting.

Haefner, Freskos and Haeber consider themselves advanced practitioners in the art of urban exploration (a.k.a. urbex or UE), an underground activity that’s grown trendier as it draws in adventuresome novices. Now that they’ve publicized their caper aboard the Mothball Fleet, however, they’ve also come under the watchful eye of the feds.

EXPIRATION DATE

At first they thought it was a pipe dream. Doubting their ability to access the Mothball Fleet was saying a lot, considering they’d once snuck onto the Vandenberg Air Force Base and wandered amid abandoned missile silos, absorbing the gravity of the military history those Cold War artifacts represented. Another time they’d managed a nighttime excursion to Neverland Ranch, the famed private amusement park of the late Michael Jackson.

But the ghost ships moored at Suisun Bay seemed out of their league. The rows of hulking, government-owned vessels were locked up and berthed offshore, surrounded by a security headquarters and a shoreline barricade plastered with “No Trespassing” signs. Patrol boats equipped with searchlights circled the docks 24 hours a day, and the prospect of climbing aboard without being spotted seemed crazy.

But then they got word that the last of the aging ships would soon be towed away and destroyed. For Haeber, the history nut of the bunch, this changed everything. “It was about the urgency of making sure these ships were documented,” he explained. “Getting them in the current state that they’re in is so important.”

Alternatively known as the Mothball Fleet and the Ghost Fleet, the ships are part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, a collection of cargo ships, tankers, and military auxiliaries overseen by the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD). Created in 1946 to be ready for deployment in case a national emergency arose, the fleet consisted of 2,277 ships at its height in 1950, strategically stationed at eight anchorages nationwide. For most of the vessels, the call to service never came, and they declined into obsolescence. By April, the entire fleet had dwindled to just 178 ships, at dock in Suisun Bay; Fort Eustis, Va.; and Beaumont, Texas.

The ships that have been moored at Suisun Bay for decades have long since deteriorated, and now they’re being hauled off to the scrap yard bit by bit, though the spot will continue to serve as an anchorage for newer additions to the National Defense Reserve Fleet.

Some were constructed in the World War II era, while others date back to the 1960s and 1970s. While many are tankers or merchant vessels, there are also warships, relics of history deployed in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Operation Desert Storm.

Many of the roughly 70 dilapidated ships have become ecological hazards, leaching toxins and heavy metals into the tidal estuary, which flows into San Francisco Bay. The monumental task of removing and dismantling them began late last year, providing badly needed blue-collar jobs on Mare Island, in the economically depressed city of Vallejo.

By 2017, the last of the ghost ships will have met with torch cutters. At least one will be salvaged: the USS Iowa (BB-61) — a 1938 lead battleship that shuttled President Franklin D. Roosevelt to and from the Tehran Conference during World War II — will be donated and turned into a museum.

Aside from being scrapped, outmoded ships meet with a variety of fates. Some are donated for educational use while others are deliberately sunk to create artificial reefs. Still others are used for target practice in the Navy’s sink-at-sea live-fire training exercises program (SINKEX).

“We saw that these things were going to be gone,” Haefner said. “So we planned it out.”

Haeber examined satellite imagery on Google Earth. Freskos, who’d spent time at sea, studied the tidal patterns. The three scoured the Internet for online photos of the Ghost Fleet. They conducted a scouting mission with binoculars in hand, and gained a sense of when they could take advantage of windows of opportunity between the 30-minute patrol boat rounds.

Long before they even discovered a navigable slough that snaked through a marsh into Suisun Bay or spotted the Craigslist post advertising an inflatable raft for sale, Freskos went up to shoreline gate where the “No Trespassing” signs were posted. He peered through at the tantalizing rows of mothballed ships, and hollered as loud as he could. Nobody responded.

DECAYED TIME CAPSULES

After the months of planning left them confident that it was indeed possible to access the Mothball Fleet, the trio of photographers set out for their first visit, with about 700 pounds of gear in tow. They split the cost of a 12-foot inflatable Fish Hunter raft with a Minn Kota trolling motor. They carried the raft and their gear through a muddy expanse to a marshy spot where the low-profile craft could be set into a narrow slough, safely out of view.

“We always went on or exited at nighttime,” Haefner said. “We would go on nights near the full moon so we could take pictures. It makes it look even more ghostly.”

Their first target was Row F, a line of ships docked in a straight shot from where the slough filtered into the bay. They maneuvered down the narrow channel in their raft, dodging submerged obstacles along the way. Keeping tabs on the whereabouts of the security boat, they started rowing once they reached the open water, and managed to bridge the 800-foot distance to the first ship.

“Our plans were kept secret to all except our loved ones,” Haeber wrote in an online account of that first excursion. “Nobody, other than my girlfriend, knew exactly where I was that weekend. For all intents and purposes, I was on a fishing trip with some friends.”

“Keep Off” signs announcing an invisible 500-foot barrier that was not to be breached were affixed to the hull of every ship. The intruders maneuvered their raft between two Coast Guard cutters, Planetree and Iris, and tied up.

“It can be kind of a challenge getting on,” Haefner explained. “We’re risking ourselves, obviously, but we also brought a bunch of expensive camera gear.” He was the first one to climb aboard the Iris, reaching high to grab onto a bumper that he could then pull himself up on to gain access to the ship. While Freskos kept watch, Haeber handed the gear up to Haefner bit by bit. Once all three were aboard with their backpacks and camera equipment, they hauled up the raft and deflated it.

The Iris was commissioned in 1944. In 1970, it responded to the scene of an oil-rig fire in Galveston, Texas. In 1987, it assisted with cleanup operations in Prince William Sound after the Exxon-Valdez spill. It was decommissioned in 1995, so their entrance likely marked the first time anyone other than MARAD employees had been aboard in 16 years.

A handy feature of ghost ship exploration is that once aboard a ship, it’s possible to access any ship along the entire row, thanks to gangplanks connecting the vessels. So while many of the mothballed vessels were completely secured, there was always the chance that the next one down would have an unlocked entranceway. Part of the ethos of urban exploration is to avoid breaking anything, so they only accessed the interiors of unsecured ships. “They are fairly vigilant about keeping doors locked up tight,” Haefner said. “But there are just so many doors.”

Haeber found a single open door on the SS Exxon Gettysburg, a mammoth oil tanker constructed in 1957, and entered the ship alone, enthralled. The interior, he later wrote, smelled like a mix of mold, benzene, and soggy newspaper. He turned on his flashlight and began tiptoeing through the corridors and peering into the cabins. “They were like time capsules, untouched since the 1970s,” Haeber said.

“Some of the ships were 15 stories deep, like a maze,” Freskos said. “We’d get lost inside.” The trio split from Row F before sunrise and managed to get back to the slough without any mishaps, but they returned on a handful of other occasions with sleeping bags and enough food and water to last a weekend. On those subsequent journeys, they’d seek out places to sleep, often crashing in the once-luxurious captain’s quarters. They slept by day, so that entire nights could be devoted to wandering in awe of the decayed, post-apocalyptic industrial environs, shooting hundreds of photographs.

They visited rooms where crews once hung out playing board games, still littered with cigarettes. They photographed molded interiors, dark cavernous stairwells, engine parts, navigational equipment, and abandoned cabins with peeling wallpaper. “We found personal letters, cards, things people left,” Haefner said. “We were always looking for signs of life.” They wandered through mess halls, engine rooms, bathrooms, galleys, even chilling places with operating chairs and overhead spotlights. They climbed around on the decks in the open night air, wandering through derricks and cranes.

The old ships would make eerie creaking noises when the tide rushed in, and there was always that mild sensation that one experiences on a boat, of things not staying still. “It was like a cacophony of sound when the current was coming in,” Freskos recalled. Hawks, osprey, and owls nested aboard some of them, so the creaking noises were sometimes accompanied by screeching birds of prey.

“The place is steeped in history,” Freskos said. “I’d always think of what this room was used for, or what went on here, when people were experiencing the suffering, craziness, and nervousness of war.”

HIGHLIGHTS AND HAIR-RAISERS

A highlight of their journeys aboard the Mothball Fleet was stumbling across the sleek black Sea Shadow, a stealth ship, which was ensconced within a barge on Row G. Shrouded in secrecy, the angular vessel was developed by Lockheed for the U.S. Navy to test how low of a radar profile could be achieved, and it served as inspiration for a stealth ship featured in a James Bond film. According to the MARAD website, “Sea Shadow was constructed and tested under a high degree of secrecy; until the Navy made its existence public in 1993, all tests were conducted at night.” The ship entered the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in September 2006.

They also found their way aboard the USS Iowa, which bears the distinction of being the only U.S. Navy warship ever outfitted with a bathtub, so FDR could have a soak while crossing the Atlantic. While they didn’t manage to go inside, an eerie photograph of three enormous guns on deck conveys the magnitude of the battleship.

One of Haeber’s most cherished discoveries was a three-story-tall mural he photographed inside the SS President Lincoln, an American President Lines ship constructed in San Francisco in 1961. An early version of a containerized cargo vessel, the Lincoln doubled as a cruise ship catering to a small number of elite passengers, and remnants of the elegant interior décor remained. The ship has since been hauled to the scrap yard.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the three urban explorers. Once they narrowly dodged a work crew aboard a ship — “but we saw or heard them before they saw us,” Haefner said. Another time, while paddling back to the slough, they discovered their raft was punctured and had to manually pump air into it as they traveled. Then, at the tail end of their final journey to the Ghost Fleet, they found themselves fully illuminated by the dreaded patrol-boat searchlight for a full 10 seconds. They froze, convinced they’d been caught. But nothing happened, so they powered up and rowed like hell to get back ashore, and never returned.

Of course, posting interior photographs of the Mothball Fleet all over the Internet and delivering a public slideshow about their sneak-aboard escapades has attracted the attention of the federal government. “The Department of Homeland Security has been looking into it,” said Haefner, who can tell by monitoring web traffic on his blog. “I know that they know.” He also noticed hits from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice, but so far, none have come knocking.

In response to a Guardian request for comment about the Mothball Fleet photographers, Kim Riddle, a spokesperson for MARAD, e-mailed an official statement. “We were aware of the intrusion,” she wrote. “We are concerned about the safety of individuals onboard our ships. This is a dangerous industrial site, and we take significant precautions for our own workers when they are onboard the fleet to make sure that areas are safe for them to enter. While trespassing on federal property, these photographers put themselves in a very dangerous position and could have been severely injured or killed from a fall or by entering an enclosed space that doesn’t have enough oxygen. Since learning of this incident, we took additional security steps, reviewed our procedures, and reinforced training with our employees to stop these kinds of intrusions.”

Freskos touched on the safety issue in an online discussion about the project. “There were many long discussions about oxygen-deprived spaces such as anchor chain lockers and ballast tanks,” he wrote. “There were contingency plans made for injuries. We carried a medical kit, we wore [life jackets], and took many other precautions.” He also responded to those who questioned the wisdom of publicizing their late-night excursions to the Mothball Fleet. “I think I speak for the three of us when I say that we are well aware of the consequences,” Freskos wrote. “But it’s a passion of ours, and it’s worth it.”

The photographers’ work can be viewed here, here, and here.

Biting the Big Apple

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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arts@sfbg.com THEATER The world’s largest arts festival, the now-venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe, got its start in 1946 as a scrappy party-crasher outside the official Edinburgh International Festival. Thanks to its inspired blend of difficult-to-categorize, anything-goes performances, the Edinburgh Fringe helped create a definitive theatrical format that has since flourished in Fringe Festivals around the world. Among other things, Fringe is a catalyst for new works, new companies, and new interpretations of how theater can be made, and experienced.

Of all the Fringe Festivals in the United States, the one that generates the most buzz is by far the New York International Fringe Festival (this year’s dates are Aug. 12-28). That the New York Fringe is curated is a sticking point among festival purists because it violates one of the founding precepts of Fringe: that anyone with a story to tell and a willing venue can take part. Despite that breach, there still manages to be a pretty broad spectrum of representation.

Works originating in the Bay Area display a staggering variety: the tale of an Iranian-American woman striking a compromise with her Islamic family over her live-in atheist boyfriend; a provocative series of multigenerational monologues on body image and acceptance; a musical homage to a 19th century black opera pioneer; and a transcontinental coming-of-age story.

When Bay Area comedian Zahra Noorbahksh began developing her solo show All Atheists Are Muslim at the Bay Area’s Solo Performance Workshop in 2008, she discovered something about the material that she had previously worried about being alienating or inaccessible.

“The Muslim and non-Muslim public is [hungry] for a three-dimensional view of a mainstream Islamic-Iranian American family that isn’t some heavy-handed political discourse,” she shares over e-mail. “I love seeing that moment when the audience that came in with their arms crossed, ready to challenge me and my ‘ludicrous’ title, realize that by my father’s very mathematical equation, all atheists are in fact Muslim.”

For Noorbahksh, the fest offers not only the opportunity of performing in New York but of expanding on the very definition of Fringe.

“It gives a ‘fringe’ culture and religion like Islam a platform and an opportunity to open up a dialogue with the non-Islamic world,” she says. “[And it] has given me an opportunity to be a part of the healing that needs to happen between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans and the general image of Islam in the public consciousness today.”

Oakland native ‘rie Shontel (a.k.a. Anita Woodley) raises consciousness every week as a producer for syndicated North Carolina Public Radio show The Story in Chapel Hill. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Shontel was moved to tell her own story, initially to friends and family, and Mama Juggs was born. Inspired by the memory of her 100-year-old great-grandmother, Suga Babe, and her repertoire of breast-feeding songs, Shontel performs four interwoven monologues wrestling with body image and breast awareness (her mother, one of the characters portrayed, died of breast cancer at 47), and the cultural myopia surrounding both. What sounds on the page like potentially heavy-handed material reveals itself on the stage as a thoroughly engaging, irreverent take on “titty juggs,” her great-grandmother’s term.

August may mark Mama Juggs‘ first foray into Fringe, but Shontel has already been drumming up national support via her “100 Living Rooms” tour, performing in private homes across the U.S.

“The intimate parlor performances have raised many interesting discussions and encouraged many to get breast exams,” she reports. “My mission for Mama Juggs is to make breast health a topic for conversation.”

“I was inspired by this very accomplished woman of color and wanted to give voice to her story that has been largely forgotten.” Opening up an entirely different conversation, Oakland-based opera singer Angela Dean-Baham’s solo show The Unsung Diva traces the history of 19th- century black opera sensation Sissieretta Jones. In a format reminiscent of Tayo Aluko’s tribute production Call Mr. Robeson, Dean-Baham’s one-woman work of musical theater combines American folk and spirituals with operatic arias and character vignettes drawn from the life of a woman once so influential that she was the first African American to perform at the then-unnamed Carnegie Hall. Like her hero, Dean-Baham is excited about what a successful run in New York could mean for her future.

“NY Fringe offers its artists a tremendous opportunity to put work before NY agents, producers, press, diverse audiences at a reasonable cost to self-producing artists,” she said. “As a juried theater festival, they offer the immediate gratification that other artists find the work engaging and that there is an audience for the work.”

San Francisco-born Aileen Clark knows firsthand the universality of a good story. Raised speaking three languages on four continents, Clark nevertheless refers to herself as the “whitest Latinita” on the planet, and her solo show How I learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity has touched a nerve among audiences of all colors and persuasions.

“I’ve always loved telling stories and acting out everything I see and do,” she says, describing the impetus behind the show’s creation. “I set out to make a play that would feel like we were just hanging out at a party and talking.” With John Caldon of Guerrilla Rep and Claire Rice of AMP, she crafted a comedic coming-of-age memoir packed with 21 characters, which debuted at the EXIT Theatre in November 2009. Newly transplanted to Brooklyn, Clark hopes Virginity will help introduce her to New York audiences.

“This show definitely gives me a wonderful connection with the people who come to see it,” she enthuses. “I’m hoping Fringe can be a door that opens other doors to great opportunities.”

www.fringenyc.org

Maniocs!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I’ve got to get my head out of my ass. I don’t know if bars are where this happens, but the music is better. At the Dovre Club, they were playing the Cars, then the Clash, and Kayday was trying to think what comes next — the Dead Kennedys, or Devo — when a cockroach peeked out from under a coaster, then scampered between our drinks.

An interesting thing is that I was having a gin and tonic for probably the first time since I was in high school, listening to the Cars, the Clash, and then-what. This cockroach had probably only been alive for six days, week-and-a-half tops. It was pretty scrawny.

Kayday, who is a way, way more classy woman than I can ever dream of being, sort of lifted her glass (without spilling!) and scooted the little no-no over toward the bartender, who unceremoniously dealt with it.

And that was a life.

Mine is different. The Dovre Club has always been good to me, ever since it was in the downstairs corner of the Women’s Building. It was there, 15 years ago, in front of a pint of something-or-other, that I made an important, life-altering decision: to go to El Rio.

Where I met Crawdad de la Cooter, my most significant ex-other ever, whose children are the strongest argument for getting out of bed in the morning that I have ever heard. Especially the past couple mornings, when the argument was made in person and accompanied by pulls and tugs and demands for oatmeal.

With kids it’s automatic: your head can’t be up your ass because it has to be up theirs. And this is why my No. 1 goal in life is to become a grandmother. Somehow. Against all odds — every single one of them, given my own personal lack of children. But if I can only have a grandchild! Then I can die, when I do, with my head out of my ass.

And with a big pot of sauce on the stove.

I was talking with my hairdresser last night about mortality, and our problems with it — which are for the most part, at this point, conceptual. When I left the house, the kids were sleeping. Their father was home from work, eating ice cream, being the dad of their dreams, and just generally practicing the sousaphone. Their mom was in Bellingham, Wash., memorializing a friend of ours who was too young to die but did.

So I got my hair done. And when I came back, he didn’t even look up from his ice cream. “Nice haircut,” he said.

“Crawdad is a lucky woman,” I said, and went to bed.

But before any of this, before even the cockroach that came after the Cars and the Clash and between our drinks, my long-lost bestie Kayday and me were seeing to some Nicaraguan food at Nicaragua Restaurant on Mission Street.

There was ceviche, which I loved, and a tamale, which I didn’t, and the great Nicaraguan dish called chancho con yuca, which means, in no uncertain terms, pig with yuca.

As you know if you’ve ever been to Limon Rotisserie and ordered right (i.e. fried), yuca can be so good. Or … not.

Not that it was bad at Nicaragua. It just was, you know, a starch. Like a boiled potato, it needed work. If you scoop a bunch of the tangy ceviche juices onto it, hot sauce, salsa, and mash it up with your fork: OK. Yum. Otherwise, you know, ho fuckin’ hum.

Kayday started waxing poetic on the nature of starches, such troopers! How resilient and accommodating they are. Up for anything. Then the next thing I knew, she was speaking from the point of view of our plate-loads of underseasoned yuca. She’s from Indiana and therefore does great impersonations of starches.

Anyway, it was better than the music. For some strange reason, by way of atmosphere, they were playing Juice Newton and Laura Branigan. Which is why the Cars and Clash songs after were such a treat, like a chiropractic adjustment.

Or something.

NICARAGUA RESTAURANT

Sun.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–8:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

3015 Mission, SF

(415) 826-3672

Beer and wine

Cash only

Toeing the tiara line

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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culture@sfbg.com

BEAUTY Miss City by the Bay wants one thing to be clear: the Miss California USA 2012 competition is not about clogging, trained pigeons, or sparkly pink batons. Erika Ari Alexandra will be among those representing San Francisco in this year’s pageant, but she doesn’t need to break out any vaudeville to routine compete. “Special talents are for Miss America pageants. In Miss USA, our community service is our special talent,” Alexandra says.

The 23-year old Vallejo woman also insists that the competition isn’t just about looks. “It’s not just a physical thing,” she says. “It’s about celebrating all the aspects of beauty — looking at our minds and our hearts and our souls.”

At 5 feet, 11 inches and 128 pounds, with flowing locks that complement her svelte frame, this catwalk queen isn’t challenging any conventional notions of what looks good. Although this is the first time she’ll compete, she’s had pageants on her mind since she was young.

“I always saw myself as someone who would be able to use my talent on a larger scale. When I was little, I watched [pageants] on TV and thought ‘I could do that,'” the San Francisco State University communications major and aspiring model says.

Alexandra explains that her goal is to gain notoriety and use it as a platform to inspire inner-city youth. She has volunteered for the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program and currently works with the Bayview YMCA as a youth and adult tutor. For Alexandra, role-modeling and model-modeling go hand in hand: she hopes the competition will give her the opportunity to “develop a real voice and support what I care about.”

If this all sounds like it’s toeing the pageant line, it could be worth noting that the Miss USA organization itself — which is owned by Donald Trump and includes the state titles as well as Miss Universe — doesn’t specify charity as a prerequisite for donning heels and walking down the runway. Women are rated in just three categories: evening gown, a three-minute personal interview, and of course — swimsuit.

Between now and November’s competition, Miss California USA contestants will spend their time fundraising, courting sponsors, and campaigning. According to the organization’s website, the goal is to make enough money to cover the $1,700 entry fee — money that recruiter Erik DeSando says covers production costs for the organization. Contestants also solicit sponsors for additional goods and services such as tanning, hair, makeup, manicures — even ball gowns.

Though the organization encourages this type of fundraising, it’s technically not required of entrants, and no part of the competition regulates how contestants handle money they do raise. They’re equally free to pay out of pocket, or pocket extra donations.

Which means that any contestant who uses her affiliation with Miss USA to save the whales, rather than paint her nails, has gone beyond her pageant-related duties.

Although there’s no paperwork to prove it, the consensus is that plenty of contestants secure sponsors who not only fund sparkly bikinis but a bevy of charitable causes. Some women even choose to compete under titles like Miss Muscular Dystrophy or Miss California Innocence Project to raise awareness for these causes. Most Miss California competitors, like Alexandra, claim a title based on a city, county, or landmark.

One might well ask: if contestants truly care about the causes liberally sprinkled over their resumes, why don’t they dispense with the pageantry and dedicate themselves to saving the rainforest or promoting animal welfare?

Erik DeSando, who counsels contestants from California to New York City, says that his competitors have used the pageant not only to raise thousands of dollars, but to effectively create a “personal brand” with clout.

“They increase their value enormously by associating with us,” DeSando says. He emphasizes from the beginning that “his girls” probably won’t win and that they should focus on goals besides the crown.

By marketing themselves with the Miss USA brand, contestants are able to create huge community followings well before November’s three-day event. Campaigning doesn’t help contestants directly: their supporters can’t vote or influence the judges’ decisions in any way. But Alexandra says fundraising in the community creates momentum for important causes. “It’s a way to get people involved, to get people excited and talking,” she says.

“We’re involved in creating something that’s big and bold, something that says ‘this person’s special,'<0x2009>” DeSando explains. Of course, he points out that contestants are usually the “right type of girl” to begin with.

In his book, that’s a girl who is “five-fingered”: loving, caring, giving, nonjudgmental, and — the thumb — beautiful. “I couldn’t believe the quality of female I was dealing with,” he says, describing his first day at Miss USA. “I thought the competition was just a bunch of hotties trying to be hottest. But these were real wife-quality girls, which is about the highest compliment there is, coming from a guy.”

Indeed, potential “wife-liness” is big with Miss USA. Contestants must be between 18 and 27; must never have been married, given birth, or been a parent; and must remain single during their reign.

Those of you waiting for a competition to judge “husband-quality” men may be out of luck. In DeSando’s words there’s no Mr. USA pageant because, well, “I just don’t think men like to be told what’s wrong with them.”

And should you be of the steadfast belief that beauty pageants are Neolithic rituals promoting airheads who eat nothing, you will be vindicated to know that DeSando makes no bones about promoting physical beauty.

“Studies are coming out all the time that emphasize the importance of attractiveness,” he says. “Attractive people have a 25 percent added value over average-looking people.”

For comparison, DeSando claims, an Ivy League education creates only an 8 percent to 10 percent added value. So to enhance salaries, job productivity — and, yes, the ability to raise money for a charity — it might be better to just go ahead and enhance yourself first.

“I think most people in America should care more about their looks. Most of them could try harder,” DeSando says. “Participating in Miss USA teaches that. I want my girls to come in as Arrowhead water and leave as Fiji water. It’s the same water, but it costs $3 more per bottle.”

If DeSando’s unabashed endorsement of eyebrow-plucking (not to mention plastic-encased H2O) has you cringing, it may be heartening to know that not all the women he advises see things in the same light.

“If you’re selfish, if you only care about yourself, it will affect how you look on the outside no matter what,” Alexandra says, explaining that hard work, inspiration, and commitment really can translate to physical beauty. “If you see someone who’s glowing from the inside, it makes them something unique.”

Which, Alexandra says, may make all the difference.

Support Miss City by the Bay at www.facebook.com/ErikaforMissCA.

Don’t fence him in

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

0

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE One of the most fascinating aspects of the world of dance studies has been the split that has taken place in the last few decades between dance history and dance theory. To oversimplify, the first concerns itself with discussing works in terms of their formal values of aesthetics; the second, influenced by cultural studies, prefers to look at pieces as social constructs.

Of course, there is an overlap between the two fields, and while I appreciated this new way of thinking about dance as a mind expander, I also deeply resented what I considered the devaluing of individual artistic achievement.

Good news: dancers themselves have come to the rescue. Immersed in cultural, gender, race, and other sociological studies — the lingua franca of today’s academy — they have started making works in which concepts like ambiguity, perception and reality, performance and identity, and direct and mediated experience are the subject matter, not a byproduct, of their work-making concerns. Some of these approaches — such as Jess Curtis’ ongoing Symmetry Project Studies, for instance — have yielded astounding results. Or Keith Hennessy’s mashing together of sociopolitical issues into novel form-giving approaches. Even at the heart of Joe Goode’s work, though he is in many ways a more traditional artist, lie principles of uncertainty and multiplicity on a constantly shifting ground.

It’s probably no accident that Miguel Gutierrez, a prominent member of this group of artists, started his career in the Joe Goode Performance Group. Gutierrez, now a New York City resident with a growing international reputation from France to Australia, is bringing his most recent piece, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE, to San Francisco. Clever that man he is, he recently refused to describe this solo in an interview with the Dancers Group’s indance publication.

Gutierrez last performed in San Francisco in 2008, when he brought his Bessie Award-winning Retrospective Exhibitionist/Difficult Bodies to what is now Z Space. It consisted of a solo for himself and a trio for Anna Azrieli, Michelle Boule, and Abby Crain. Although the trio had its own merits, it was Gutierrez’s appropriately-titled solo that communicated as a gutsy, spectacularly in-your-face piece of dance theater. Retrospective intrigued because of newness, intoxicated because of its intensity, and overall impressed because it was a complete statement. The questions Gutierrez asked about identity, perception, and the nature of performance may not have been that novel or original, but the way he framed them within a reshaped theatrical context made them so.

Wriggling lasciviously on a full-length mirror, he attempted to devour and slip into his own image. It was simultaneously pathetic and touching. Putting side-by side a video of himself as a high school pretty boy with two girls and his current, lived-in body as a gay man on stage put both identities in question.

In another section, Gutierrez laconically read aloud answers he had given in a videotaped interview while we watched the original on a monitor. What was more true: the artifice of his aping himself or the fake spontaneity of the television image?

Gutierrez appears in San Francisco as part of the Garage’s Verge festival, where kindred spirits Laura Arrington, Jorge de Hoyos, and Jesse Hewit will open for him. Garage director Joe Landini is presenting Gutierrez because he wants to encourage this type of performance practice, but also because he is an old friend. “Miguel used to run that [Methuselah-age] elevator at 50 Oak Street,” he remembers — up to Lines Ballet’s studios and down to the basement swimming pool.

HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE Fri/8–Sun/10, 8 p.m., $15. Garage, 975 Howard, SF. www.brownpapertickets.com

Criolla Kitchen

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

5

DINE The soft bigotry of low expectations — one of those marvelous phrases dreamed up by George W. Bush’s hardworking speechwriters, who fed him their words the way you would put junk mail through a shredder — was on my mind recently when I walked into Criolla Kitchen, which earlier this spring replaced Bagdad Cafe at the corner of Market and Sanchez streets. My expectations were low. Why? Because Bagdad Cafe was the last titan of mediocre 24-hour gay diners in the Castro. Oh, it had its charms, and it had been there forever, but people weren’t piling in for the food.

Still, when the old soldier mustered out at the end of March, I felt a pang, because it was one of the last memories of what the Castro once had been — for that matter of what this city had once been. And when I learned that it was to be replaced by a restaurant serving Creole food, I thought: eh. Bagdad Cafe, for all its winsome qualities, did leave the premises with the bar set on the low side food-wise, and Louisiana cooking has never been particularly well-represented here.

But: the man behind Criolla Kitchen is Randy Lewis, late of Mecca, Le Club, and other distinguished kitchens, so more optimism might have been warranted. Lewis’ food is brightly seasoned, full of life, and reasonably priced, while the setting — a triangle of light, a slice of glass pie with a flower stall on the sidewalk outside for color — recalls an early edition of Zuni Cafe.

It’s always seemed right to me, in a wistful sort of way, that we don’t have particularly distinguished Louisiana food here. This isn’t Louisiana, after all; if you want good Louisiana cooking, you should go there. The Cajun and Creole culinary traditions of the Mississippi delta are an authentic cuisine, a blend of French, Spanish, Caribbean, and African influences quite different from those that make up our own, also authentic — and distinctive — style.

The delta style is a little brighter and more pointed than ours — more Matisse than Monet — and because I am personally fond of extroverted food rendered in primary colors, I found myself bewitched by Criolla Kitchen. There is a lot of fried stuff on the menu, and why Southerners like to fry things so much remains a mystery to me. But they do it well, and it does taste good. I’ve heard people fret endlessly about eating too much of it, but I’ve never heard them say they don’t like it.

Besides, if you want hush puppies ($5.90), like little fried corn dogs except with shrimp inside, you can balance your account with the likes of the mirliton salad ($5.90). Mirliton is a cross between a cucumber and a pepper, and has a cool crunch and refreshing quality you might associate with sorbet. The salad was enriched with slices of ripe, creamy avocado, then lighted up with a well-balanced vinaigrette of lemon and cumin. As for the hush puppies, you dip them in a pickle rémoulade, a modified mayonnaise that’s a lot like what the French call sauce gribiche. It’s rich, but with enough acidity to make at least a slight dent in the hush puppy fattiness.

The ribs ($18.90), we were told, were slow-barbecued at an undisclosed location in the East Bay. I found them flavorful but slightly dry. The barbecue sauce on the side, on the other hand, had a pepperiness far more assertive than is typical of the commercially available stuff, which tends to be sweet and thick even if with some kick. This sauce was taut and lean, with low body fat. We also admired the accompanying sides of coleslaw (tangy, not sweet, and with long threads of green cabbage) and potato salad, made from smashed new potatoes and sober, direct mayonnaise. The importance of good mayonnaise in this kind of cooking can’t be overstated; it also made the difference (along with a tangy-fresh baguette) in the shrimp po’boy ($10.90).

All the juiciness absent from the ribs turned up in the fried chicken ($12.90), a full half-bird served with red beans and rice. Even the breast meat was juicy, while the skin and the artfully seasoned batter had fused into a shell that was an experience unto itself — almost like shards of savory candy.

Dessert could only be pecan pie ($3.90), which was not at all cloying and for that matter didn’t even really resemble a slice of pie — more a kind of crumble, with chunks and bits of pastry everywhere. We didn’t mind, but … is there such a thing as a pie shredder?

CRIOLLA KITCHEN

Dinner: Sun..–Thurs., 6–11 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 6 p.m.–midnight

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

2295 Market, SF

(415) 552-5811

www.criollakitchen.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Na Nach hey hey

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

2

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO My ever-ahead Hunky Beau just introduced me to Na Nach techno — and I’ve been kinda freaking out about it, like I would about 3-D animated GIF nail polish, that you could upload Hipstamatic photo booth pics of you and your friends to, reenacting tacky 1980s movie dance montages, but happening on your nails, in 3-D, if it even existed, which it doesn’t, so why don’t you just get off your boring global warming-proving ass and do something fabulous about that, Mr. Scientist. I already know the weather’s weird. I want Footloose on my fingernails!

Na Nach is the name of a newish Hasidic Jewish subsect of followers of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the kabbalist mystic who lived 200 years ago. But unlike the larger Breslovian following, it has mobile rave units. Driving around Israel in white vans graffitied with giant Hebrew letters, the Na Nach stop at intersections and come tumbling out, blasting homemade electro trance, chanting “Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’uman” (the Rebbe’s name spelled out), and dancing ecstatically in outfits that are part typical Orthodox dude and part Ali G. It’s basically a glorious logical conclusion to the whole “trance music as religious experience” thing. Of course the Sufis already got there centuries ago but, one suspects, without the aid of JBL 18-inch portable subwoofers and a pirated copy of Ableton Live.

The happy, energetic music and mood are actually pretty infectious. And the Na Nach, some of them former ravers and gangsters, have become so ubiquitous that hilarious parodies have started springing up — including one by the great gay Tel Aviv party Arisa (whose video flyers rule the homo Web right now.) Have a Na Nach look and listen at www.sfbg.com/nanach.

TABOO

DJ David Harness’s lovely, deep-yet-breezy party anchored San Francisco’s soulful house scene throughout the early 2000s, one of those joints where you could use the words “vibe” and “spiritual” and not feel like you were tossing up disco clichés. Yes, there were candles and, er, incense involved, and quite a few flowers tucked behind perked-up ears — hands snaking luxuriously up into the air as well. Now the party returns, finding a new biweekly Oakland evening home at the spacious Bench and Bar. Organic sounds, no labels.

Thurs/7, 6 p.m.–midnight, free. Bench and Bar, 510 17th St., Oakl. www.bench-and-bar.com

TIPPER SOUND EXPERIENCE

Cosmic, Burner-like blasts of time-warped bass and cheeky step from multimedia mindblower Tipper, the modest Brit who takes his audio technology fetish to another level. Gotta love it when he drops the lingo: “Featuring a five-way crossover sound system in a Quadraphonic Array with specialized subwoofers dedicated to 45 hertz and below … ” With a six-screen projection rig thrown in, you’ll basically be entering the electronic space-pod of your ear dreams. It’s an experience.

Fri/8, 8 p.m., $22.50. Regency Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. www.theregencyballroom.com

LEE BURRIDGE

The bloke from Bournemouth who was crucial in spreading the acid house gospel in the ’80s — and brought rave to Asia, with his storied seven-year stint in Hong Kong — has become a reliably sunny, techno-twisty force on Top 100 DJs lists and better global dance floors. Good, solid fun is had whenever he gets to town (and sometimes I just randomly prance around and drop to his xylo-yummy 2010 track “Wongel” in my head) so go already. Nikola Baytala, Rooz, and other locals work the build-up.

Fri/8, 10 p.m.–late, $15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

LEE FOSS

Guess it’s a battle of the Lees this week — luckily there’s some after-hours leeway to hit up both. This Lee comes to us from the Midwest via Los Angeles and London, were his chiseled looks and dreamboat eyes were at first as much of a talking point as his music. Luckily he overcame that crippling handicap to inject some bouncy tech-funk flavor into the trademark R ‘n’ B house of the Wolf and Lamb set. Call it the new New Jack Swing sound if you like. And you will like, especially when grouped at Public Works with Beats in Space radio host Tim Sweeney and my not-so-secret French house crush, Le Loup. (I love his little fuzzy mustache!)

Fri/8, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $12. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

The nonconformist

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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arts@sfbg.com

FILM Marxist, aesthete, padrone, Oscar winner, supreme screen sensualist — the list of contradictions goes on, onscreen as well as off, for Bernardo Bertolucci. Earlier this year he emerged from a long creative hibernation (attributable, it turns out, to back pain so severe it prevented any work) to accept an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and begin work on his first film in nearly a decade, a claustrophobic drama about a withdrawn teen who secretly sequesters himself in the family basement. It will be filmed in 3-D — an idea so daft it just might prove brilliant.

Because, after all, it is lunacy and excess as well as intelligence, beauty, instinct, and so forth that have led Bertolucci to some of his most extraordinary as well as dubious achievements, nearly all of them debatable as falling into either category.

Now that he’s reaching a half-century spent in the director’s chair, it is clear what an unpredictable, erratic, even arbitrary career this has been; the line between the sublime and silly in his films is easily felt but almost impossible to define. What makes 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, for instance, a genuine fever dream of mad desire, while two later films equally about eros and yearning — 1996’s Stealing Beauty and 2003’s The Dreamers — are fussy, false, a little embarrassing? Trained as a poet (whatever that means), he surrenders to cinema time and again as someone intoxicated by images as he once was to words, taking each sustained impulse to its logical (or illogical) endpoint, whether to transcendence or off an artistic cliff.

The Pacific Film Archive’s summer retrospective “Bernardo Bertolucci: In Search of Mystery” provides an opportunity to weigh most of the exhilarating highs and a couple of the baffling lows in a wayward trajectory one hopes is nowhere near complete. (Only 71, he can surely spare us another three decades — look at Manoel de Oliveira, wildly prolific at 102, yet without a single film as memorable as a half-dozen or more of Bertolucci’s.) All 13 features will be offered in new prints, a big lure for a director whose best movies — particularly those shot by the incomparable cinematographer Vittorio Storaro — it would be criminal to view in any but the most pristine visual condition.

After a promising literary start as a teenager — his father, notably, was a well-regarded poet, art historian, and film critic — Bertolucci apprenticed to family friend Pier Paolo Pasolini on 1961’s Accattone!. When Pasolini moved on to another project, Bertolucci made his own directorial debut at age 21 with similarly gritty The Grim Reaper (1962). That tale of a prostitute’s murder, cowritten with Pasolini, as well as 1964’s Before the Revolution (a presumably somewhat autobiographical mélange about a young bourgeois torn between tentative radicalization and pleasures of the flesh as represented by Bertolucci’s then-wife Adriana Asti) reflected his heavy early influencing by the ebbing Italian neorealist movement and still-current French New Wave.

Inspired by Dostoyevsky, 1968’s Partner was a transitional work, straddling Godardian dialecticism and pure extravagance. When 1970’s Jorge Luis Borges-drawn puzzle The Spider’s Strategem found Bertolucci discovering his sumptuous mature style (as well as Storaro’s rapturous lighting and camera movement), Godard denounced him as a sellout. The international breakthrough was that same year’s The Conformist, a Moravia story about the individual surrender to fascism — passivity turning to criminality being a frequent Bertolucci subject — that somehow became a baroque tone poem of saturated color, hedonistic suggestion, and damp paranoia. It announced the arrival of a great artist, albeit one for whom style would always trump political content, and whose literary sources were often twisted nearly past recognition by his own overwhelming authorial stamp.

The 1970s were a dazzling high-wire decade for Bertolucci. Last Tango was an X-rated scandal and sensation, an experience so psychologically (and literally) naked for Marlon Brando that he didn’t speak to the director for years afterward. Bertolucci explained: “He felt that I stole something from him, that he didn’t know what he was doing … I like to have very famous, important actors because it is a challenge to find out what they are hiding.”) Its tale of two people with only compulsive coitus in common is still berserk, implausible, off-putting, and completely enveloping.

The epic, multinational cast (Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, even some Italians) 1900, a film originally over five hours long, offered the first half of Italy’s 20th century as a class struggle, as well as a conceptual one, between idealism and decadent pageantry — Pasolini wrestling with Luchino Visconti. Few knew what to make of the contrastingly intimate (yet, again, stylistically gaga) 1979 La Luna, an Oedipal drama based on a dream Bertolucci had about Maria Callas. Fervently loved by a slim cult following, it was otherwise so ridiculed and loathed that 32 years later 20th Century Fox still hasn’t coughed up a U.S. home-format release.

With the new decade, the limbs Bertolucci went out on became less reliably inspirational, perhaps partly because Storaro had developed conflicting allegiances to other directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Carlos Saura, Warren Beatty). Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981) is dispirited and dull. Little Buddha (1993) was a silly idea nonetheless spiked by enchanted storybook scenes with Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha — ludicrous-sounding stunt casting that is somehow perfect. Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers found this uneasily homophilic director reduced to ogling young bodies of both sexes like a dirty old professor.

On the other hand, 1990’s The Sheltering Sky was difficult, ravishing, another masterpiece if a great commercial disappointment. Another leap into exotica, 1987’s The Last Emperor had the opposite fate — winning all nine of its nominated Oscars in a slow year, a staggering spectacle widely admired yet loved by few (least of all the Chinese), elephantine yet wry, and closer to David Lean respectability than auteurist idiosyncrasy. Then after all this 1998’s Besieged, a tiny story of unrequited love and noble sacrifice shot with two actors and hand-held camera, felt rejuvenative — as if the increasingly burdened composer of massive symphonies had discovered the joy in a piano miniature.

The curio in the PFA’s series is 1967’s The Path of Oil — a three-part Italian documentary about petroleum production, apparently undertaken in a funk when two failed first features had temporarily reduced his career prospects. It’s handsome, if clearly less than a labor of love. But for the Bertolucci fetishist, no film is so impersonal or underwhelming (or on the other hand beloved) that it might not yet spring surprises, whether on a first viewing or an umpteenth.

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: IN SEARCH OF MYSTERY

July 8–Aug. 18, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

A minor place

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

0

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL The painter Margaret Kilgallen died in 2001; she was just 33 years old. A year later, critic Glen Helfand would write in the Guardian (“The Mission School,” 7/1/2002) a coming out party for Kilgallen, her husband Barry McGee, and friends such as Chris Johanson and Alicia McCarthy, whose scruffy, heartfelt, and street-influenced art had started to attract a popular following abroad as well as intense interest from beyond the Bay Area art world.

When an artist dies young, it is hard to not view their work through the lens of their cruelly curtailed biography. The work that remains is always haunted by speculation about what could have been. Posthumous exhibits will always be, to some extent, tributes, and those who write about that artist’s work face the very human impulse to eulogize, as well as the critical one to historicize.

This dilemma is especially true for Kilgallen and her art. In the decade since her untimely passing due to complications from breast cancer, the Mission School has been variously contested and embraced as both an aesthetic and historical category, and the artists Helfand associated with it have become well-known, frequently imitated, and displayed in increasingly prestigious venues. Kilgallen, along with Johanson and McGee (with whom Kilgallen had a daughter just three weeks before she died), is prominently featured in the Geffen Contemporary’s current, much-hyped summer blockbuster “Art in the Streets.” And viewers need only spend a few hours trolling Etsy to sense the larger stylistic impact the Mission School has had on a younger generation of creative types.

“Summer/Selections,” Ratio 3’s current exhibition of paintings by Kilgallen and the first San Francisco solo show of her work in 13 years, is a bittersweet homecoming, to be sure. But it’s also, like Kilgallen’s art, unsentimental — which is not the same as unfeeling. It’s a reminder that while time doesn’t heal all wounds, it can sometimes afford us enough distance to see with greater clarity those qualities of the departed that so compelled or moved us in the first place. And, undoubtedly, the soft power of Kilgallen’s talents as a sympathetic observer is fully on display here.

Like her contemporaries, Kilgallen culled much of her imagery from hand-painted storefronts and signage along Mission Street, thrift-scored printed matter, old-fashioned typography, and the hand-scrawled texts of the homeless and itinerant. But sometimes the signal-to-noise ratio in her larger pieces — the crazy quilts of painted and stitched-together canvas scraps, or even her wall murals — drowned out the delicacy and assuredness at work in each individual component.

The remarkable selection of acrylic paintings — most from 2000 and all untitled — hanging in Ratio 3’s main space offers some much-welcome breathing room. They are single-subject studies of objects (groups of shoes, wigs, lips, trees, and plant life), simple repeating patterns (droplets, waves, grids), or (mostly) female figures on canvases made from discarded endpapers or repurposed grocery bags — another instance of Kilgallen’s sensitivity to the material grain of her surroundings.

Whether in the color gradations and tiny spiked edges of a leaf, or in the finely outlined toenails of a mule-clad foot, Kilgallen’s remarkable control over line and paint application imbues each canvas, even the simplest or most abstract, with an untold back-story. This is especially true of the women, who all have laugh lines but usually address the viewer with a tight-lipped smirk. If Kilgallen’s flora could have come from a children’s book, her women could pass as characters from a Dan Clowes comic.

The untitled collage pieces in the back room — smaller-scale examples of Kilgallen’s quilt-like assemblages of canvas — are more abstract, yet still retain the just-right sense of color, line and proportion on display in the other paintings. In one piece, from 1999, a single fluffy gray cloud is the only graphic break in a long expanse of sutured turquoise. Another from the same year resembles the collaged remains of a billboard’s past incarnations. But like all of the pieces in “Summer/Selections,” it feels wholly fresh.

I wish the same could be said of the recent work of Johanson, an SF expat and Kilgallen’s contemporary, whose current show at Altman Siegel is about as coherent and compelling as its title: “This, This, This, That.”

I have always preferred Johanson’s folksy takes on Sol LeWitt’s rainbow-hued precision over his text or figure-filled paintings, and there are plenty to take in here. The problem is one of editing.

For every piece — such as the carefully thought-out uneven grid of squares and rectangles “Fall Apart and Let It Go” (2011) — that feels like Johanson is trying to push himself and his explorations of color into a more formal direction, there is another that reads as an easy way out.

The acrylic and latex color shards of “Same Brain, Same Body, Different Day” (2011) nicely mirror the visible segments of the pressed grain of the wood they’re painted on, whereas “Celebration of Life Through Found Palette and Paint” (also 2011), a painted panel mounted to an upright, rainbow-colored wooden shipping palette, just feels lazy.

Certainly, many artists have made repetition a compelling cornerstone of their practice, extending their engagement with a single technique, approach, or material into a fruitful long-term relationship. Johanson, however, seems like he is simply in a rut, making more and more of the kind of art that first brought him wider renown with diminishing creative returns. Warhol did all right for himself in the 1970s, though, and I’m sure Johanson is doing just fine as well. But I know he’s capable of doing more.

MARGARET KILGALLEN: SUMMER/SELECTIONS

Through Aug. 5

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3371 www.ratio3.org

CHRIS JOHANSON: THIS, THIS, THIS, THAT

Through July 30

Altman Siegel

49 Geary, Fourth Floor, SF

(415) 576-9300, www.altmansiegel.com

Is LEED really green?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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news@sfbg.com

The archangel of sustainable development has arrived, promising much needed city housing that will add to the “social fabric of the waterfront community” with its glamorous green rooftops and unheard-of bay views. This is going to be the greenest building of them all, or so we’ve been told, but the truth is a bit more complicated.

A condominium development 25-plus years in the making, 8 Washington would transform the site of the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club near Pier 39. The developer plans to renovate the recreation center with a larger fitness facility, provide two new waterfront parks with public access, and supply 30,000 feet of ground-floor retail stores and restaurants beneath its 165 new luxury apartments.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? The problem with this $345 million project is that it’s being touted, with its “green building” LEED certification, as the most sustainable structure it can possibly be.

But there’s nothing sustainable about building high-end condos in San Francisco, a city with too many high-end condos and not enough affordable housing. And LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the most popular sustainable development certification system in the country, is a lie — at least as your friendly neighborhood building developer is marketing it.

LEED, the baby of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a great marketing tool for developers in San Francisco, the city with the single most LEED certified buildings in the United States. San Francisco was just named the “greenest” city in North America at the 2011 Aspen Ideas Festival, largely due to its extensive representation of green buildings — which normally means structures built with recycled materials, near a transportation hub, featuring some solar panels or other renewable energy sources.

“LEED is certainly a positive thing,” Planning Commission President Christina Olague told us. “There’s this whole push toward green sustainability.”

The project’s “platinum” LEED status is all a San Francisco developer could hope for to attract the green — and more important, the city’s approval.

“LEED certification is part and parcel to the vision for the project,” said PJ Johnston of PJ Johnston Communications, speaking for the developer. “The city, neighborhood, and waterfront deserve healthy, sustainable structures, living spaces, public spaces, and amenities. That’s exactly what 8 Washington will bring.”

LEED has become the final word in green building — if your building is LEED certified, you’re golden. But all this green they’ve been feeding us is really a misleading, incomplete rating system.

The first thing to consider is that sustainable development, even if it uses recycled materials and 10 percent sun-powered electricity, is still development. Any time a structure is torn down, “the energy and materials in that [original structure] are going to get sent to landfills somewhere. You gotta calculate all that,” said sustainable development activist Brad Paul, a former SF deputy mayor, who believes in considering the entire “life cycle of a building” in determining its sustainability.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency sometimes discounts essential considerations of sustainable building. When it sought a new SF office space in 2009, its intention was to find a home that was “a model of sustainable development,” the SF Biz Times reported. But its first choice was to build new development, at the site at 350 Bush Street — with its environmental costs of demolition, throwing out old materials, and starting from scratch.

Last month, the EPA decided to remain at 75-95 Hawthorne Street instead of moving to a new building, but not because it was the sustainable choice. No deal was reached for 350 Bush, and as Regional Public Affairs Officer Traci Madison said, “There was no other option to choose from.”

Although it’s a measure of a structure’s material sustainability, LEED does not consider a building’s life cycle, or even its use. Consider 8 Washington. The developer has boasted that it’s the most expensive housing project in San Francisco history, with a hefty price tag of $3 million to $10 million per apartment.

“Who can afford these luxury condos, and what do they use them for?” Paul asks. “These guys who work for hedge funds on Wall Street,” who use the condo as a second or third home and commute on their private jets to get there.

Johnston said 8 Washington will be marketed to a “mix of buyers, including young professionals, empty-nesters looking to move back to San Francisco, and families … The project has many two- and three-bedroom units, encouraging family living,” he said. But it’s unlikely that those who can afford a condo of this luxury will make it their only home.

“[Board President] David Chiu says he’s worried about SF becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley,” said Paul. “I’m more worried about this being a bedroom community for New York, Boston, L.A.”

Instead of providing the affordable housing that San Francisco so needs, projects like 8 Washington attract the wealthy, who aren’t using public transportation. Instead, Paul said, they burn tons of fossil fuels using their new condos as weekend getaways.

LEED FOR THE RICH

LEED certifies buildings as “sustainable developments” based on the following categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation in design and regional priority.

Earning points in each category brings a building closer to LEED certification, which requires at least 40 points. Above “silver” and “gold” status, a “platinum” LEED certification requires 80 points. But how builders get the points is what matters. For example, a developer might skimp on the insulation to install extra solar panels and get more points for a less efficient building.

Does LEED consider a building’s actual use? “The short answer is no,” said Jennifer Easton, a communications associate at the USGBC who added, “We want [LEED] to be used by every type of project.” But despite its billing, LEED tells an incomplete story.

“It’s just green drapery,” said SF attorney Sue Hestor, a slow growth advocate. “They’ve really had a PR machine. They keep touting all this greenness.”

LEED certification has value, Paul said, but it doesn’t turn multimillion dollar condos green. “There is absolutely no need for high-end luxury housing in the city right now,” he said.

Building luxury condos in place of affordable housing encourages the “Manhattanization” phenomenon, attracting wealthy out-of-towners to expend fuel on their private jets to get to their new crash pads.

“They aren’t gonna be living there all year,” Olague said of residents of luxury housing. “We hear a lot of, ‘We need more housing.’ If you keep building housing for the top 2 percent, how does it lessen the demand on your average workforce?”

But not everyone sees luxury condo-building as counterproductive. “Building that project actually allows for more affordable housing,” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR (San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association). “It’ll provide housing for some people, and that can only be helpful to the housing market. If you don’t build new condos, then people just compete for the crumbs, and that means people who are rich push the rest of us out.”

In other words, if you give the rich housing, then they won’t take over your flat in the Mission — if they ever really wanted it in the first place. “I don’t think we can impose some kind of hipster elitism that they’re not our kind of people so they’re not allowed in,” Metcalf said of the wealthy out-of-towners.

LEED agrees. “We don’t want [LEED] to be for one specific group of people,” Easton said. “We have LEED-certified homeless shelters, but having a LEED certified luxury condo building is an advantage. We can’t control if someone is flying across the country in a jumbo jet every day — but we can control their energy efficiency in a building.”

WHO RIDES BUSES?

For the typical working class San Franciscan, living modestly is a must and public transportation is essential. So there’s an inherent environmental advantage to attracting residents who don’t rely on polluting planes and cars.

“There’s a definite need for workforce housing, middle class housing in San Francisco,” Paul says. “I guarantee you none of those people get there by private jet. The less income people have, the more likely they’re going to be to use public transit.”

But 8 Washington and luxury developments like it don’t foster public transit. The more wealthy people who move in, the more low-income residents get displaced — to the East Bay or other areas with more affordable housing. It’s another strike against sustainability when these workers opt to drive back into the city for work instead paying for BART, says Paul, particularly when they drive older, less-efficient cars.

“LEED was a way to spell an environmentally friendly product, but you have to figure in the extra driving,” said Paul.

But 8 Washington gets LEED points for building on a site close to public transit in an attempt to discourage individual car pollution. But will wealthy condo owner actually take the infrequent F-line with all the tourists instead of parking their $150,000 car in the underground parking garage right below their feet?

“When you’re talking about sustainable practices and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how it relates to land use planning, it makes you wonder if that’s supposed to [solely] relate to housing people near transit corridors,” said Olague. “It seems to me you have to look at equity.”

The garage at 8 Washington, to be built below sea level under the condos, will house 415-plus parking spaces. The developer says that 250 of the spaces will be offered as public parking for the busy Ferry Building down the street, but the 165 additional spaces guarantee one parking space for each residential unit.

“Given the larger size of the residential units and the fact that the majority of the units are two to three bedrooms, we believe that one parking space per dwelling is appropriate,” said Johnston. Appropriate, maybe, but not environmentally friendly.

PROMISES AND REALITY

Wealthy people and affordable housing aside, LEED doesn’t actually measure the energy used in a building, says New York City-based architectural associate Henry Gifford. He filed a $100 million class action lawsuit against LEED last October for gaining a monopoly on the sustainable development market by making false claims about buildings’ energy savings.

“They say that the building is required to be energy efficient. But the building doesn’t have to be energy efficient — it just has to earn points, to promise it’s going to be energy efficient,” Gifford said.

It’s up to the developer what computer software is used to predict a building’s energy efficiency, and Gifford says that computer diagrams can easily be manipulated and do not consider inconsistent factors, like weather.

“California is the promise land,” said Gifford. “All you’re required to do is provide a promise. The sad thing is that it removes all the integrity from the process — it encourages lying.”

Furthermore, once the building is built and has achieved LEED certification, the building’s actual energy use in its life cycle isn’t considered. The only way you can truly know if a building is energy efficient is by looking at the utility bills, says Gifford. But once it’s LEED-certified, who cares?

There is a voluntary program called Building Performance Partnership (BPP) that tracks a building’s energy and water use over time. “The idea is we want LEED to be a system where it enacts change in the actual building,” said Easton. But the problem is the building has already gained LEED certification before the first utility bill is even mailed.

“We publish baseball scores. With everything in life, people get scored,” said Gifford, who operates with transparency in developing energy efficient buildings in New York, hosting open houses after buildings are built with printouts of their recent utility bill history.

LEED was never intended to have the final say on sustainable building, to be a seal of green approval, according to a New York Times op-ed by Alec Appelbaum last year (“Don’t LEED us astray,” 5/19/10). “Rather it was to be a set of guidelines for architects, engineers, and others who want to make buildings less wasteful. However, developers quickly realized that its ratings — certified, silver, gold, or platinum — were great marketing tools, allowing them to charge a premium on rents.”

Therein lies the issue. Yes, 8 Washington will “allow for more ‘eyes on the street’ at all hours of the day” and provide two or three-bedroom units for families who can afford them, as it promises. But a sustainable structure is far different than the promise of a sustainable life cycle of a building. And a promise is just that. *

UPDATE: Jennifer Easton at LEED wrote to inform us that, although the 8 Washington website clearly states that the project will include LEED certified buidlings, “We would like to clarify that 8 Washington is not a LEED-certified project, nor a LEED-registered project.”

PLANNING COMMISSION HEARINGS

July 7: Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront

July 14: City demographics and sustainability; the need for low-income housing; presentation of “jet fuel burn rate” argument.

July 21: 8 Washington’s EIR approval hearing

All hearings to be held at 12 p.m. in the Commission Chambers, Room 400, City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place.

JET FUEL BURN RATE FOR LUXURY CONDOS

Let’s assume that just five of the 165 condo buyers at 8 Washington (3 percent) are Wall Street hedge fund traders or venture capitalists using them as second or third homes. Let’s also assume they’ll use them 1.5 times a month and commute to SF aboard their business jet, a reasonable assumption for Wall Street execs making tens of millions in salary and bonuses. Why would they fly by private jet rather than take Southwest or Amtrak? Because they can. This must be factored into any environmental analysis of a project that explicitly markets to this demographic and include the following:

Mid to large size business jets used to fly cross country (Hawker 800XP, Gulfstream G2/ G3, Bombardier Global Express) on average burn 400 gallons of jet fuel/hour, take 6 hours to fly New York to SFO and 5 hours for return trip. Therefore, a single round trip burns:

• 11 hours X 400 gallons per hour = 4,400 gallons of jet fuel per trip. A typical family car uses 1,200 gallons of gas per year, so one flight from NYC to 8 Washington equals almost four years of driving a family car.

• 1.5 trips/mo. = 6,600 gallons X 12 months = 79,200 gallons of jet fuel/year or the equivalent of driving a family car for 66 YEARS each month.

Using our example of five residents, the numbers over one year and 20 years are:

• 5 X 79,200 gallons/per year = 396,000 GALLONS OF JET FUEL A YEAR or equal to driving a family car 330 years, A THIRD OF A MILLENNIUM, each year.

• 396,000 gal. X 20 yrs. = 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel, equivalent of driving family car 6,600 years, OVER 6 MILLENNIUM, in 20 years.

Given this reality, the 8 Washington environmental impact report must analyze such questions as:

How many solar panels are needed compensate for burning 396,000 gallons of jet fuel/year? How many low flow toilets would make up for burning 396,000 gallons of jet fuel/year? Etc.

On the Cheap

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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

THURSDAY 7

SPACEcraft’s birthday bash CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.cellspace.org. 7-11pm, free. This one-night-only event featuring visual art, music, and performances from emerging artists has been going strong every first Thursday at CELLspace for two years now. It is once again time for the yearly celebration of this local art collective with a show featuring the works of Grace Cooper (you may also know her from the Sandwitches), Kool Kid Kreyola (yeah, that Kid Kreyola), and 25 others – not to mention musical performances from Panic is Perfect, Late Space Empire, and more.

SATURDAY 9

Renegade Craft Fair Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion, Marina and Buchanan, SF.; www.renegadecraft.com. Sat/9 and Sun/10, 11am-7pm, free. Been jonesing for some post-Maker Faire handmade whatchamacallits? Get your D.I.Y. fix at this two-day smorgasbord of handmade goods – everything from jewelry, clothing, ceramics, stationary, and housewares to comics, art, and more. Looking for something specific? Plushy pomegranate-shaped salt and pepper shakers? If it’s handmade, it’s fair game and chances are you will find whatever you are looking for here – if not the inspiration to make it yourself.

Bay Area Now 6 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF.; (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org. Noon, free. This is the YBCA’s triennial nod to outstanding artistic talents who are inspired by the Bay Area – whether it be African American identity in Oakland as expressed in the afro-futurist canvasses of David Huffman or the re-birth of heavy metal, articulated in the quilting of Ben Venom. However varied the media and styles, the works are all connected by a common thread that resonates Golden Gate.

“Sees Girls” opening reception Mission Comics and Art, 3520 20th St., SF; (415) 695-1545, www.jenwang.net, www.missioncomicsandart.com. 7pm, free. Jen Wang – San Francisco native now living in L.A. – can add artist, illustrator, cartoonist, paper doll designer, and now graphic novelist to her curriculum vitae. Having contributed artwork to various art anthologies and McSweeny’s publications in the past, Wang has recently published her very own graphic novel, Koko Be Good, a colorful tale of a happy 20-something drifter living in San Francisco about to embark on some big life changes. Be sure to check out her homecoming exhibition, mostly of recent paintings, illustrations, and (hopefully) fan-art (fingers crossed – we hear she’s a big Game of Thrones enthusiast).

A Rocky Horror roller disco Big Gay Warehouse, SF; www.biggaywarehouse.com, Facebook: Rocky Horror Roller Disco. 7pm, sliding scale donation. Dust off your roller skates, this will be the last event ever at the Big Gay Warehouse – for real this time, (sadly) we swear. Be sure to bring some cash because they need help with their moving costs. It will surely be worth every penny with the night they have planned – lot’s of bands, a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show (“I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania”) and a roller disco with DJs spinning everything from – surprise! – disco to house and hardcore. Be sure to check Facebook – the exact address will be disclosed the day of for the newbies.

SUNDAY 10

The Stranger Dinners Various locations, SF; www.strangerdinner.org. Time TBD, $5-10 suggested donation. Tonight (and usually about once or twice a month), groups of six strangers will come together to create a collaborative meal without any expectations or commitment attached. Did you say the guy across from you chews with his mouth full? Gross! You won’t ever have to see him again. But more than likely, you will make a new friend or two, snag a couple of recipes or learn a new joke, because you’re an amazing, outgoing, and adventurous person, right? Bring your favorite dish to share (social lubricants provided) and get ready for a serendipitous adventure! Don’t forget to register online to participate and receive the deets, like time and location.

Sunday Streets: Great Highway! Great Highway, SF; www.sundaystreetssf.com. 11am-4pm, free. The fifth “Streets” of the season returns to the Great Highway. It will begin at the SF Zoo and follow Route 1 to Golden Gate Park and continue down JFK Drive to Stanyan. Bring your roller skates, unicycle, skateboard, or just a plain pair of walking shoes and enjoy the activities and vendors that line the nearly six miles of car-free roads.

Music Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bianca and the AMs 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Darwin Deez, Dirty Gold, Younger Lovers Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Free Moral Agents, Wild Pack of Canaries, Thousandnames Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Maus Haus, Swahili Blonde, Gangi, Epic Sauce DJs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Mental 99, Wesley Morgan Madrone Art Bar. 7pm, free. Every Wed. in July.

Anais Mitchell, Bhi Bhiman Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

Moonbell, Magic Christian, Antenna Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Eddie Neon Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Rosebuds, Other Lives Independent. 8pm, $14.

Tunnel, Aranya, Black Caucus Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias and Christine Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Jazz organ party with Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Jimmie Vaughan and the Tilt-a-Whirl Band Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, free. Funk, swing, rare grooves, and more with Dr. Musco and guests.

Mary Go Round, the New Generation Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

THURSDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bit Shifter, Crashfaster, Glowing Stars, Starpause, Awkward Terrible DNA Lounge. 7pm, $16.

Blank Tapes, Collin Ludlow-Mattson and the Folks, Beehavers Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10. Presented by Seaweed Sway.

Buckethead, Wolff Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $30.

Vanessa Carlton Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

“George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Birthday Funkathon” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $50.

Karen Lovely Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Massive Moth, Soft Tags, Teenage Sweater Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Moanin Dove, Audio Out Send, Beep Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Morning Commute, Rad Cloud, All My Dead Young Friends Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Rattle and Rye, Trainwreck Riders, Buxter Hoot’n, Quinn Deveaux Slim’s. 8pm, $15. With Fox and Woman, Jimmy Sweetwater, Robin DiCarlo, Jelal Huyler, and more.

Stalley and Reks Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com. 9pm, $15.

State of Independence Dance Tour 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Gillian Welch Warfield. 8pm, $32.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Chives Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

Cosmo Alleycats with Ms. Emily Wade Adams Blondie’s, 540 Valencia, SF; (415) 864-2419. 9pm, free.

Dave Parker Quartet Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; (415) 956-1653. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Joe Cohen Show Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 8pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Soul jazz party with Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Heather Combs, Damond Moodie, Mike Gibbons, Kate Cotter Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious X Fex Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk with the Voo Doo Killer, DJ Newlife, J. Boogie, and B Maj.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas, Yusuke, Vinnie Esparza, and Basshaka and ILWF.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm, $2. Indie music video dance party with DJs Blondie and subOctave.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Josh Miller Jam Party Knockout. 9:30pm. With DJs Russell Quan, Erin McDermott, Chris McVicker, and Josh Miller.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party features video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Popscene Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12. With Bass Drum of Death and DJs Aaron Axelsen and Omar.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

Thursdays at the Cat Club Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

AC/Dshe, Thunderbleed, Hell Fire Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Buckethead, Wolff Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $30.

Graham Colton, J. Irvin Dally, Megan Bonnell Hotel Utah. 9pm, $14.

“George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Birthday Funkathon” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $50.

Graffiti6, Hundred Days, A Silent Film Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12.

Guitar Shorty Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Reverend Horton Heat, Swingin’ Utters Independent. 9pm, $20.

Ian Fays, Sidewalk Society, Bowery Beasts, Golden Ghosts Knockout. 9pm, $7.

“Let Her Dance” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.letherdance.eventbrite.com. 8pm, $15. With Heidi Alexander, Grace Cooper, Quinn Deveaux, and others performing 60s hits.

MP Allstars 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

New Diplomat, Reckless Kind, Please Do Not Fight, DJ Huffy Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8.

Riverboat Gamblers, Dead To Me, Off With Their Heads, Underground Railroad to Candyland, Big Kids Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

Soul of John Black Biscuits and Blues Union Room. 8:30 and 10:30pm, $20.

Sunbeam Road, Bassturd, Coolzey Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Tracing Figures, Yomihara, Your Cannons, Caught in Motion Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Trophy Fire, Bruises, Hate Factory, Eighteen Individual Eyes Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Dan Heffez Trio Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 9pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Soul jazz party with Jules Broussard and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Vaughan Johnson Jazz Combo Jack’s Club, 2545 24th St., SF; (415) 641-1880. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

La Gente Red Poppy Art House. 9pm, $12-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

“Benefit for Cheb I Sabbah” 1015 Folsom, SF; www.chebisabbah.com. 9pm, $15 and up. With artists from Anon Salon, Hookahdome, Opel Productions, Non Stop Bhangra, Six Degrees Records, and more.

Blow Up DNA Lounge. 10pm, $20. With Jessica 6, Jeffrey Paradise, and Austy Pantz.

Lee Foss, Tim Sweeney, Le Loup Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 10pm, $8-12. House, funk, techno, and disco; also with Eug, Jason Kendig, and Briski.

Tipper, VibeSquaD, Dov, Hypnotech Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $28. With visuals by Johnathan Singer.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Absent Society, Name, Ashkira, Memento Mori Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

Catholic Radio, Crazies Will Destroy You, Yalpine Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Finish Ticket, Happy Body Slow Brain, Bird By Bird, PK Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $12.

“George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Birthday Funkathon” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $50.

Reverend Horton Heat, Swingin’ Utters Independent. 9pm, $20.

Leaders, Midnite Snaxxx, Uzi Rash, Slam Dunk Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Soul of John Black Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com. 9pm, $10.

Static Sound, Imaginary Colors Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

TYGA, Mindless Behavior, Lil Twist, Jawan Harris, Travante Fillmore. 7pm, $28.50.

Washed Out, Class Actress, Chain Gang of 1974 Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

West Coast Ramblers, Slim Jenkins, Stillmen Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Jazz organ party with Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Mike Hirsch Trio Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Lamont Cole and Rebekah Todd Red Poppy Art House. 9pm, $10-15.

Robin Lovejoy 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Queen Ifrica and Tony Rebel Rock-It Room. 9pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $8-15. Mash-ups with guest Victor Menegaux.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $8-10. With Natalie Nuxx.

Fly Me to the Moon Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 9:30pm, free. Sixties soul, girl groups, and garage with DJs Amy A and DJ the DJ.

Smithsfits Friend Club Knockout. 9:30pm, $4. Smiths and Misfits with DJs Josh Ghoul and Jay Howell.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Electro cumbia with DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro11.

SUNDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Pete Anderson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Brother Pacific, That Ghost, Cool Ghouls Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

“George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Birthday Funkathon” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9:30pm, $50.

“Gorilla Takeover” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm. Battle of the Bands with Krawl, Thy Winter Shadow, and more.

Drew Grow and Pastors’ Wives, Winnie Byrd, Chineke Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

“JAMband Family Festival” Park Chalet, 1000 Great Hwy, SF; www.jamjamjam.com. 11am, free. With Charity and the JAMband, plus Rhythm Child.

Anya Marina, How Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Ian Moore and the Lossy Coils, Bare Wires, Lotus Moon Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“After the End of the World Concert” Musicians’ Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, SF; www.noertker.com. 7:30pm, $10. With Annelise Zamula, Tracy McMullen, Bill Noertker, and Dave Mihaly.

Lua Hadar, Aaron Germain, Jason Martineau Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30-7:30pm, $10.

Jazz organ party with Lavay Smith and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 7pm.

Sheelagh Murphy Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm, $7.

Rob Evans Trio Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 5:30pm, free.

Sunday Jazz Jam 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

AfroCubanism and Pellejo Seco Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Lee Vilensky Trio Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep and guests Robert Rankin’ and Spliff Skankin’.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

Tropical Hot Dog Night Knockout. 10pm, free. Mutant disco and post-punk with DJs Placentina and Lady of the Night.

MONDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

John Doe and Jill Sobule Café Du Nord. 8pm, $20.

Guverment, Illusion of Self, Illness Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

TUESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bees Table, Gunfighter Nation, Jiggabits, Parentz Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Oslo, Violet Isle, Hosannas Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Pacific Pride, Goochi Boiz, Western Hymn, Wild Assumptions Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

School of Rock All-Stars Rickshaw Stop. 6:30pm, $20.

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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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. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 24. Marga Gomez presents a workshop production of her new comedy, her ninth solo show.

Salty Towers Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Opens Thurs/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through July 23. Thunderbird Theatre Company performs a farce that combines Greek mythology with a tale of sea creatures running a two-star hotel.

Twilight Zone Live: Season 8 Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.ticketturtle.com. $20 ($5 discount if you use the code word “maggie”). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 29. The Dark Room Theater presents its eighth annual tribute to classic Twilight Zone episodes.

BAY AREA

Macbeth Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Previews Fri/8-Sun/10, 8pm. Opens July 15, 8pm. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Aug 14. Marin Shakespeare Company takes on the Scottish play, opening under a full moon, no less.

The Verona Project Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also July 30, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through July 31. California Shakespeare Theater performs a world-premiere play (inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona) by Amanda Dehnert.

ONGOING

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Sun/10, 7pm. Zahra Noorbakhsh returns with her timely comedy.

Assisted Living: The Musical Imperial Palace, 818 Washington, SF; 1-888-88-LAUGH, www.assistedlivingthemusical.com. $79.59-99.50 (includes dim sum). Sat-Sun, noon (also Sun, 5pm). Through July 31. Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett’s comedy takes on “the pleasures and perils of later life.”

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Sept. 17. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong, beginning with opening night’s impressive J.P. Viernes in the title role. Broadway’s Faith Prince is an especially engaging presence as the ballet teacher who takes an interest in Billy’s inherent talent, setting him on a course out of the doomed town and into London’s Royal Ballet School — much to the violent disgust of his predominantly male and prickly household. The first act is a nearly perfect balance of bawdy humor, aggressive staging, adept scene-setting and character development and a potent tide of song and group choreography that is hard to resist. There are some unfortunate choices later on, like a bit of Peter Pan wire work that has Billy twirling over the stage (an excessive display that hovers awkwardly over dullsville) and in general the second act is not as strong as the first. It’s also the point where the working-class politics paid homage to by the script gets seriously blunted by a concomitant streak of middle-class individualism. But as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-29. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

“Fury Factory 2011” Various venues and prices; www.brownpapertickets.com. Through Tues/12. Over 30 Bay Area and national companies participate in this bi-annual theater festival.

Indulgences in the Louisville Harem Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $20-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 30. Two spinster sisters find unlikely beaux in Off Broadway West Theatre’s production of John Orlock’s play.

The Pride New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed/6-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 2pm. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the West Coast premiere of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s love-triangle time warp drama.

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. 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)

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 20. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

All My Children Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through July 23. Not the soap opera — it’s Seattle Improv co-founder Matt Smith in his comedy about a middle-aged man with boundary issues.

East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 7. Don Reed’s hit solo comedy receives one last extension before Reed debuts his new show (a sequel to East 14th) in the fall.

Metamorphosis Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Tues and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through July 17. Aurora Theatre Company performs a terrifying yet comic adaptation of Kafka’s classic by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson.

A Raisin in the Sun Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn. View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs/7-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 2pm. Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play comes to life on the Pear Avenue Theatre stage.

2012: The Musical! Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose, Berk; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/9-Sun/10, 2pm. Continues through Sept. 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

*Working for the Mouse La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs/7-Fri/8, 8pm. It might not come as a surprise to hear that even “the happiest place on earth” has a dark side, but hearing Trevor Allen describe it during this long overdue reprise of 2002’s Working for the Mouse, will put a smile on your face as big as Mickey’s. With a burst of youthful energy, Allen bounds onto the tiny stage of Impact Theatre to confess his one-time aspiration to never grow up — a desire which made auditioning for the role of Peter Pan at Disneyland a sensible career move. But in order to break into the big time of “charactering,” one must pay some heavy, plush-covered dues. As Allen creeps up the costumed hierarchy one iconic cartoon figure at a time, he finds himself unwittingly enmeshed in a world full of backroom politics, union-busting, drug addled surfer dudes with peaches-and-cream complexions, sexual tension, showboating, job suspension, Make-A-Wish Foundation heartbreak, hash brownies, rabbit vomit, and accidental decapitation. Smoothly paced and astutely crafted, Working for the Mouse will either shatter your blissful ignorance or confirm your worst suspicions about the corporate Disney machine, but either way, it will probably make you treat any “Casual Seasonal Pageant Helpers” you see running around in their sweaty character suits with a whole lot more empathy. (Gluckstern)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Front Line Theatre CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sun/10, 8pm. Also July 21-23, 8pm, Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Both venues, $20. The company presents the world premiere of Rare Earth, a verse-and-movement comedy about waste and the past.

Miguel Gutierrez Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sun, 8pm. $15. The choreographer performs his 2010 work Heavens What Have I Done as part of Verge, the Garage’s workshop series.

LINES Ballet Summer Program Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.linesballet.org. Tues/12, 7:30pm. $15. The LINES Ballet Summer Program celebrates its 10th anniversary with the first of two student showcases.

“OMFG! The Internet Dating Musical” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 17. $15-18. ODC Theater Resident Artist Chris Winslow presents his new comedy about a couple who both fear they can’t live up to reality after meeting online.

“Project Bust” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/6 and Aug 3, 8pm. $15. Malinda LaVelle presents her evening-length dance-theater piece.

“Sympathetic: An Aerial Dance Performance Honoring Labor” Rincon Annex Post Office, 121 Spear, SF; (415) 564-4010. Sat, 1 and 3pm. Free. The Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University, and Flyaway Productions present this work honoring the 1934 San Francisco General Strike by choreographer Jo Kreiter and musician Pamela Z.

“The Tinker Show” Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.thetinkershow.com. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. $18-20. “Old school immaturity” via live sketch comedy and improv, plus original short films.

Yubiwa Hotel Performing Arts Company NOHspace, 2640 Mariposa, SF; www.sfiaf.org. Fri, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. $12. The company performs the play Mesujika Doe, a Japanese-American collaboration from Shirotama Hitsujiya and Trista Baldwin.

Fetish and armor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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culture@sfbg.com

LUST FOR LIFE The year I was 16, I wore nothing but thrift shop vintage lingerie. As outerwear. I’d layer two slips or two half-slips on top of each other so they wouldn’t be quite as see-through and clomp around in impossibly high heels. I bought my actual underwear from the Victoria’s Secret at the mall when they had their blowout sales. There and at places like Forever 21 — flashy, clubby, and cheap.

I tell you these details because it’s important, naming the places I picked up armor and fetish. Because it felt like armor and it felt like fetish — in all senses of the word. Sexual but mythic and protective in proportion, too. That lacy magenta push-up demi-bra, the one that was just a little too tight, the one that was always uncomfortable. But I’d wear it anyway because I understood the importance of armor. Of having something that would protect me if bad shit went down.

The refrain from my mother — and from the more prudish crowd at my school, the tough homophobic boys in my neighborhood, the cat-calling older men at the Mission BART Station who didn’t realize how young I was — was that if you wear clothes like that, you are asking for it. You’re putting yourself in danger.

But didn’t any of them realize that this was my way of staying out of danger? I felt so much more powerful in those impossible heels, tits pushed up and out, cleavage for days, fishnets encasing my thighs, tight leather boots hugging my calves. I felt so much more powerful and able to fight if any shit went down.

I get that kids are sexualized young in this culture, especially girls. That’s creepy, and I’m not saying it’s okay. When Abercrombie & Fitch sold thongs to preteens, it disgusted me. Toddler beauty pageants scare the hell out of me.

But whenever people get moralistic and concerned about teenage girls’ slutty outfits, about how sexual teens are these days — I cringe. Because I was that girl who got into screaming fights with her mother about fishnets and cleavage and dresses that were too tight. And I want us to actually talk to that girl without screaming at her. To see how she feels about what she’s wearing. To see if she’s doing it solely to impress people, or if she’s doing it to go along with the crowd, but she really hates it. Or if she’s doing it because it’s a way to claim power in a world that hates sexuality and hates femininity.

I was a queer chubby girl wearing sexy clothes trying to learn how to love herself in a viciously fatphobic, sexist, homophobic world. Honestly? Cobbling together a wardrobe of vintage lingerie was one of the ways I coped. I spent a lot of time figuring out what clothes worked for my body. Like most fat people, I had to figure it out on my own.

There is no cultural road map for being fat and sexual. We’re taught that the two are at odds with each other. I have lost count of how many times I have heard people say — in person, on the Internet, in print media — that fat people should not go out in clothes that are tight or revealing or provocative. That the very sight of our flesh — and in particular, the sight of our sexual bodies — is cause for disgust, even for violence. I wonder sometimes if people would have reacted as strongly to my outfits as a teenager if I’d been a size 2 or 4 instead of a size 12 or 14. How much of it was fear of young people being sexual? How much of it was fear of fat people being sexual?

I was speaking at a reproductive justice conference a while back, on a panel called something vague and cutting-edge like “The Politics of Sexuality.” I was supposed to be talking about my work in the porn industry as a fat queer woman — what I like and don’t like about doing porn. But the panel moderator opened the session by referring to Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon (who are famously anti-porn) as “sex-radical feminists.” My eyes about bugged outta my head.

It all went downhill from there. Women in the audience started disclosing their rape fantasies during the Q&A: “Why do we like this? Are we fucked up?” It was like group therapy and second-wave feminist sex guilt were getting together to have a really terrible party. By the end of it, I was bowled over and exhausted.

And then a pretty young fat girl — white, maybe 19 or 20, kinda punky, with wire-rimmed glasses and fine blonde hair with an orange streak — walked up to me as I gathered my things. She had tears in her eyes.

“I’ve …” She had to gulp, she was that choked up. “I’ve never… Gina, you’re the first fat person I’ve ever heard talk about being comfortable with your body and comfortable with sex. I really want to be there, and I’m not yet. What do I do?”

I was floored. I almost started crying too. I hugged her. I told her she was beautiful. I scribbled down some websites and some book titles. And then I hugged her — again — and told her she was beautiful — again. I felt like I could not say that enough times.

I wish I’d had time to tell her my story — how wearing clothes as armor and fetish helped and healed, and got me to where I am now. If that girl wants to wear nothing but vintage lingerie for a year? For the rest of her life? More power to her.

Gina de Vries is a San Francisco-based writer, sex worker, activist, and writing instructor. Hear all about her at www.ginadevries.com. Hot for Lust for Life? It’s our new sex column, stay tuned.

Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide. Due to the Fourth of July holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

OPENING

A Better Life Demian Bichir (Weeds) stars in this drama about an immigrant family struggling to realize the American dream. (1:38)

Horrible Bosses Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston star in this workplace comedy. (1:33)

How to Live Forever After his mother died, documentarian Mark S. Wexler began to seriously contemplate aging and, inevitably, his own death. A certain amount of baby boomer naval-gazing is the inevitable result, but Wexler is curious enough to expand his quest into realms beyond his own graying hair and expanding midsection. The film’s (mostly) tongue-in-cheek title comes into play as he visits scientists, inventors, new age types, cryonics-facility workers, and doctors with various anti-aging philosophies and agendas. But probably the most compelling long-life widsom comes from the elderly folks he visits for practical advice. While the Guinness record-holding 114-year-olds aren’t much for coherent communication, quite a few of the 80-, 90- and 100-somethings Wexler talks to suggest that simply being a spitfire is a key to longevity. Highlights include the late fitness guru Jack LaLanne, enviably energetic in his mid-90s; a 104-year-old Brit who’s a smoker, drinker, and aspiring marathoner; and an 80-year-old tap dancer who decides to compete in a beauty pageant for senior citizens. “I’m older than he is,” she giggles of her boyfriend. “But he can drive at night!” (1:34) (Eddy)

Vincent Wants to Sea An anorexic, an obsessive-compulsive, and someone with Tourette syndrome go on a roadtrip: it’s not the setup to a bad joke, it’s the gist of Vincent Wants to Sea, a mostly fun, sometimes touching, but often improbable film. When Vincent’s mother dies, his father (Heino Ferch) decides it’s time for Vincent (Florian David Fitz — who also wrote the screenplay) to once and for all eradicate his tics and spasms and sequesters him at a summer camp-esque institution in the German countryside. The subsequent escape and journey to the Italian coast (where Vincent hopes to scatter his mother’s ashes) with two fellow patients, the anorexic Marie (Karoline Herfuth) and the Bach-loving compulsive Alex (Johannes Allmayer), is rife with self-discovery and uplifting music, so much so that it sometimes resembles a Levi’s ad more than a feature film. There’s real heart and humor beneath the cheese, but there’s a lot of cheese. (1:36) (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Zookeeper Kevin James graduates from policing mall rats to hanging with talking zoo animals. (1:42)

ONGOING

The Art of Getting By The Art of Getting By is all about those confusing, mixed-up and apparently sexually frustrating months before high school graduation. George (Freddie Highmore) is a trench coat-wearing misanthrope — an old soul, as they say — whose parents and teachers are always trying to put him inside a box and tell him how to think. He finds a kindred sprit in Sally (Emma Roberts) who smokes and watches Louis Malle films. Hot. Heavily scored by the now-ancient songs of early ’00s blog bands, it may all sound like indie bullshit but this one has charm and wit despite its post-trend package. Like a sad little crayon, Highmore is a competent Michael Cera surrogate du jour. Writer-director Gavin Wiesen embraces hell of clichés, but he suitably sums up a generational angst along the way. The film may not always feel real, but it does have real feeling. Look out for great performances from Blair Underwood and Alicia Silverstone. (1:24) (Ryan Lattanzio)

Bad Teacher Jake Kasdan, the once-talented director of a few Freaks and Geeks episodes and 2002’s underrated Orange County, seems hell-bent on humiliating everyone in the cast of Bad Teacher. Cameron Diaz is Elizabeth, the title’s criminally bad pedagogue who prefers the Jack Daniels method to the Socratic. Her impetus for pounding Harper Lee into her middle school students’ bug-eyed little heads is to cash in on a bonus check to fund her breast-y ambitions and woo Justin Timberlake and his baby voice. The only likable onscreen presence is Jason Segal as a sad sack gym teacher in love with Elizabeth. But he could do so much better. There’s no shortage of racist jokes and potty humor in this R-rated comedy pandering to those 17 and below. When asked if she wants to go out with her coworkers, Elizabeth ripostes, “I’d rather get shot in the face!” That scenario is likely a better alternative than suffering this steaming pile of cash cow carcass. (1:29) (Lattanzio)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) (Peitzman)

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) (Sussman)

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) (Lattanzio)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) (Peitzman)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) Smith Rafael. (Sam Stander)

Cars 2 You pretty much can’t say a bad thing about a Pixar film. Cars 2 is by no means Ratatouille (2007) or Wall-E (2008), but the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars offers plenty of sleek visuals and one-note gags under its hollow hood. If nothing else, Pixar seems to have overcome the dingy, dark glaze that plagues 3-D films. Directors John Lasseter and Joe Ranft return to beloved autos Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and the “extremely American” Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). This time around, secret agents Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) come along for the ride while working to expose sabotage in the alternative fuel industry. Compelling chase sequences, explosions and more than a few jabs at cultural stereotypes follow suit. This is the lightest, silliest Pixar film to date, but you probably don’t have any business seeing it unless you’ve got a kid in tow. (1:52) Balboa. (Lattanzio)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) (Eddy)

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop seems less of a movie title and more like a hushed comment shared between one of the many hangers-on during the filming of the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour.” Throughout 23 cities’ worth of footage, O’Brien seethes, paces, sweats, yells and beats dead jokes so hard that they spring back to life, as he is wont to do. At this point, the Leno/Coco drama is a bit stale — at least in internet time — but the documentary is a fascinating comedian character study nonetheless. It may be hard to sympathize with a man nursing a bruised ego as he cashes a $45 million dollar check, but it’s easy to see that he’s one of the best late night hosts (temporarily off) the air. Split primarily between clips of O’Brien performing songs on stage with a myriad of celebrity guests and bemoaning how exhausted and frustrated he is, Can’t Stop derives most of its hilarity from the off-the-cuff comments that pepper Conan’s everyday conversations. (1:29) (David Getman)

*The Double Hour Slovenian hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and security guard Guido (Filippo Timi) are two lonely people in the Italian city of Turin. They find one another (via a speed-dating service) and things are seriously looking up for the fledgling couple when calamity strikes. This first feature by music video director Giuseppe Capotondi takes a spare, somber approach to a screenplay (by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, and Stefano Sardo) that strikingly keeps raising, then resisting genre categorization. Suffice it to say their story goes from lonely-hearts romance to violent thriller, ghost story, criminal intrigue, and yet more. It doesn’t all work seamlessly, but such narrative unpredictability is so rare at the movies these days that The Double Hour is worth seeing simply for the satisfying feeling of never being sure where it’s headed. (1:35) (Harvey)

Empire of Silver Love, not money, is at the core of Empire of Silver — that’s the M.O. of a Shanxi banking family’s libertine third son, or “Third Master” (Aaron Kwok) in this epic tug-of-war between Confucian duty and free will. The Third Master pines for his true love, his stepmother (Hao Lei), yet change is going off all around the star-crossed couple in China at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, and the youthful scion ends up pouring his passion into the family business, attempting to tread his own path, apart from his Machiavellian father (Tielin Zhang). Much like her protagonist, however, director (and Stanford alum) Christina Yao seems more besotted with romance than finance, bathing those scenes with the love light and sensual hues reminiscent of Zhang Yimou’s early movies. Though Yao handles the widescreen crowd scenes with aplomb, her chosen focus on money, rather than honey, leaches the action of its emotional charge. It doesn’t help that, on the heels of the Great Recession, it’s unlikely that anyone buys the idea of a financial industry with ironclad integrity — or gives a flying yuan about the lives of bankers. (1:52) (Chun)

Green Lantern This latest DC Comics-to-film adaptation fails to recognize the line between awesome fantasy-action and cheeseball absurdity, often resembling the worst excesses of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. A surprisingly palatable Ryan Reynolds stars as Hal Jordan, the cocky test pilot who is chosen to wield a power ring as a member of an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. He must face down Parallax, an alien embodiment of fear, who appears here as a chuckle-inducing floating head surrounded by tentacles. Peter Sarsgaard is effectively nauseating as Hector Hammond, who becomes Parallax’s crony after he is transformed by a transfusion of fear energy. The acting is all over the map, with Blake Lively’s blank-faced love interest caricature as the weakest link, and the effects are hit-or-miss, but scenes featuring alien Green Lanterns should please fans, and you could probably do worse if you’re looking for an entertaining popcorn flick. (1:45) (Stander)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) (Chun)

Happy Happy, a documentary by Roko Belic (1999’s Genghis Blues), traces the contented lifestyles of men and women around the globe. Manoj Singh is a Kolkata rickshaw driver sustained by his son’s smile. Anne Bechsgaard’s life is enriched by her co-housing community in Denmark. These soothingly sentimental profiles are intercut with commentary from leading neuroscientists and psychologists. They provide a cursory guide to the rare balancing act that is happiness in the 21st century. A brisk 75 minutes, the film is saturated with thought-provoking tidbits (the Bhutan government aims for gross national happiness instead of GDP) and an ambient backing track that’s heavy on the chimes. However, sometimes there’s the sense that these mechanics of happiness aren’t cinematically compelling enough, and that rifling through a couple Wikipedia pages might offer just as much insight. At its best, Happy sparks a reflection on how many of the unofficial criteria for joy one has fulfilled, and suggests ideas for simple happiness boosters. (1:15) Roxie. (Getman)

Kung Fu Panda 2 The affable affirmations of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda take a back seat to relentlessly elaborate, gag-filled action sequences in this DreamWorks Animation sequel, which ought to satisfy kids but not entertain their parents as much as its predecessor. Po (voiced by Jack Black), the overeating panda and ordained Dragon Warrior of the title, joins forces with a cavalcade of other sparring wildlife to battle Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), a petulant peacock whose arsenal of cannons threatens to overwhelm kung fu. But Shen is also part of Po’s hazy past, so the panda’s quest to save China is also a quest for self-fulfillment and “inner peace.” There’s less character development in this installment, though the growing friendship between Po and the “hardcore” Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is occasionally touching. The 3-D visuals are rarely more than a gimmick, save for a series of eye-catching flashbacks in the style of cel-shaded animation. (1:30) (Stander)

Larry Crowne While Transformers: Dark of the Moon may be getting all the attention for being the most terrible summer movie, I’d like to propose Larry Crowne as the bigger offender. No, it doesn’t have the abrasive effects of a Michael Bay blockbuster, but it’s surely just as incompetent. And coming from an actor as talented as Tom Hanks — who co-wrote, directed, produced, and stars in the film —Larry Crowne is insulting. The plot, insofar as there is one, centers around the titular Larry (Hanks), a man who goes to community college, joins a scooter gang led by Wilmer Valderrama, and ends up falling for his cranky, alcoholic teacher Mercedes (Julia Roberts). The scenes are thrown together hapharzadly, with no real sense of character development or continuity. Larry Crowne doesn’t even feel like a romantic comedy until a drunk Mercedes begins kissing and dry humping her student. But hey, who can resist a shot of Larry’s middle-aged bottom as he tries to wriggle into jeans that are just too small? (1:39) (Peitzman)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Balboa. (Harvey)

Monte Carlo (1:48)

Mr. Nice By the second hour of Mr. Nice, star Rhys Ifans and company have exhausted every possible pot smoking flourish. There’s the seductive French inhale by the pool, the suggestive mouth to mouth, the euphoric dragon release in the deserts of Pakistan: all rendered in extreme close-up with improbably thick plumes of white smoke. Mr. Nice is mostly sexy drug use tutorial, though it’s also part biography of real-life drug smuggler Howard Marks. His claim to fame — at least according to the movie’s tagline — is the sheer number of aliases, phone lines, and children he had (43, 89, and 4, respectively). Unexpectedly, it’s the period costuming, cinematography, and the enchanting listlessness of Chloe Sevigny that redeem the film. Mr. Nice is captivatingly interlaced with vintage news and scenery clips from the period and it’s shot in a way that is both hyper-stylized and erratic. Those twists and turns of Marks’s life turn out to be not nearly as suspenseful onscreen as they should be, making the movie less of a traditional drug thriller and more of a mildly interesting reflection on the culture of the period. (2:01) (Getman)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (1:35)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*Page One: Inside the New York Times When Andrew Rossi’s documentary premiered at Sundance this January, word of mouth on it was respectable but qualified, with nearly everyone opining that it was good … just not what they’d been led to expect. What they expected was (in line with the original subtitle A Year Inside the New York Times) a top-to-bottom overview of how the nation’s most respected — and in some circles resented — arbiter of news, “style,” and culture is created on a day-to-day as well as longer term basis. That’s something that would doubtless fascinate anyone still interested in print media, or even that realm of web media not catering to the ADD nation. But that big picture and the wealth of minute cogs within isn’t Page One‘s subject. Instead, Rossi focuses on the Gray Lady’s wrestling with admittedly fast-changing times in which newspapers and any other information source on paper seem to constitute an endangered species. This particular Times, however, is such a special case that that crisis might better have been explored by training a camera on a less fabled publication, perhaps one of the many that have succumbed to a once unthinkable, market-shrunk mortality in recent years. The film finds its colorful protagonist in David Carr, an ex-crack addict turned media columnist who retains his cranky, nonconformist edge even as he defends the Times itself from the same out-with-the-old cheerleaders who 15 years ago were inflating the dot-com boom till it burst. Facing one particularly smug champion of the blogosphere at a forum, Carr notes that without a few remaining outlets — like the Times — doing the hard work of serious research and reportage, the web would have nothing to purloin or offer but its own unending trivia and gossip. Page One does what it does entertainingly well, but if you’re looking for insight toward this not-dead-yet U.S. institution as a whole, you’d be better off simply picking up this week’s Sunday edition and reading every last word. (1:28) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Super 8 The latest from J.J. Abrams is very conspicuously produced by Steven Spielberg; it evokes 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as well as 1985’s The Goonies and 1982’s Poltergeist (so Spielbergian in nature you’d be forgiven for assuming he directed, rather than simply produced, the pair). But having Grandpa Stevie blessing your flick is surely a good thing, especially when you’re already as capable as Abrams. Super 8 is set in 1979, high time for its titular medium, used by a group of horror movie-loving kids to film their backyard zombie epic; later in the film, old-school celluloid reveals the mystery behind exactly what escaped following a spectacular train wreck on the edge of their small Ohio town. The PG-13 Super 8 aims to frighten, albeit gently; there’s a lot of nostalgia afoot, and things do veer into sappiness at the end (that, plus the band of kids at its center, evoke the trademarks of another Grandpa Stevie: Stephen King). But the kid actors (especially the much-vaunted Elle Fanning) are great, and there’s palpable imagination and atmosphere afoot, rare qualities in blockbusters today. Super 8 tries, and mostly succeeds, in progressing the fears and themes addressed by E.T. (divorce, loneliness, growing up) into century 21, making the unknowns darker and the consequences more dire. (1:52) (Eddy)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) (Harvey)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon I’ll never understand the wisdom behind epic-length children’s movies. What child — or adult, for that matter — wants to sit through 154 minutes of assaultive popcorn entertainment? It’s an especially confounding decision for this third installment in the Transformers franchise because there’s a fantastic 90-minute movie in there, undone at every turn by some of the worst jokes, most pointless characters, and most hateful cultural politics you’re likely to see this summer. But when I say a fantastic movie, I mean a fantastic movie. It took two very expensive earlier attempts before director Michael Bay figured out that big things require a big canvas. Every shot of Dark of the Moon‘s predecessors seemed designed to hide their effects by crowding the screen. Finally we get the full view — the scale is now rightly calibrated to operatic and ridiculous. The marquee set pieces are inspired and terrifying, eliciting a sense of vertigo that’s earned for once, not imposed by the editing. The human hijinks are less consistent but ingratiatingly batshit, and without resorting to preening self-awareness and elaborately contrived mea culpas. But unfortunately Bay is too unapologetic even to walk back the ethnic buffoonery that not only upsets hippies like me but also seems defiantly disharmonious with the movie he’s trying to make. Bay is like that guy at the party who thinks amping up the racism will prove he’s not a racist. It’s that kind of garbage (plus, I guess, some universal primal hatred of Shia LaBeouf that I don’t really get) that makes people dismiss these movies wholesale. This time it’s just not deserved. I wouldn’t want to meet the asshole who made this thing, but credit where credit is due. It’s a visual marvel with perfectly integrated, utterly tactile, brilliantly choreographed CG robotics — a point that’ll no doubt be conceded in passing as if it’s not the very reason the movie exists. As if it’s not a feat of mastery to make a megaton changeling truck look graceful. (2:34) (Jason Shamai)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) Smith Rafael. (Devereaux)

*Trollhunter Yes, The Troll Hunter riffs off The Blair Witch Project (1999) with both whimsy and, um, rabidity. Yes, you may gawk at its humongoid, anatomically correct, three-headed trolls, never to be mistaken for grotesquely cute rubber dolls, Orcs, or garden gnomes again. Yes, you may not believe, but you will find this lampoon of reality TV-style journalism, and an affectionate jab at Norway’s favorite mythical creature, very entertaining. Told that a series of strange attacks could be chalked up to marauding bears, three college students (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck) strap on their gumshoes and choose instead to pursue a mysterious poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen) who repeatedly rebuffs their interview attempts. Little did the young folk realize that their late-night excursions following the hunter into the woods would lead at least one of them to rue his or her christening day. Ornamenting his yarn with beauty shots of majestic mountains, fjords, and waterfalls, Norwegian director-writer André Ovredal takes the viewer beyond horror-fantasy — handheld camera at the ready — and into a semi-goofy wilderness of dark comedy, populated by rock-eating, fart-blowing trolls and overshadowed by a Scandinavian government cover-up sorta-worthy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). (1:30) (Chun)

*X-Men: First Class Cynics might see this prequel as pandering to a more tweeny demographic, and certainly there are so many ways it could have gone terribly wrong, in an infantile, way-too-cute X-Babies kinda way. But despite some overly choppy edits that shortchange brief moments of narrative clarity, X-Men: First Class gets high marks for its fairly first-class, compelling acting — specifically from Michael Fassbender as the enraged, angst-ridden Magneto and James McAvoy as the idealistic, humanist Charles Xavier. Of course, the celebrated X-Men tale itself plays a major part: the origin story of Magneto, a.k.a. Erik Lehnsherr, a Holocaust survivor, is given added heft with a few tweaks: here, in an echo of Fassbender’s turn in Inglourious Basterds (2009), his master of metal draws on his bottomless rage to ruthlessly destroy the Nazis who used him as a lab rat in experiments to build a master race. The last on his list is the energy-wrangling Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who’s set up a sweet Bond-like scenario, protected by super-serious bikini-vixen Emma Frost (January Jones). The complications are that Erik doesn’t ultimately differ from his Frankensteins — he pushes mutant power to the detriment of those puny, bigoted humans — and his unexpected collaborator and friend is Xavier, the privileged, highly psychic scion who hopes to broker an understanding between mutants and human and use mutant talent to peaceful ends. Together, they can move mountains—or at least satellite dishes and submarines. Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast fill out the cast, voicing those eternal X-Men dualities — preserving difference vs. conformity, intoxicating power vs. reasoned discipline. All core superhero concerns, as well as teen identity issues — given a fresh charge. (2:20) (Chun)

Psychic Dream

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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July 6-12

ARIES

March 21-April 19

The surest way to create lasting security is by being open this week. A huge amount of potential is trying to express itself in your life, but you have to make sure that your fears aren’t unnecessarily limiting you. Try new ways of doing things and taking risks, Aries.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

The choices you make will have important consequences for your future this week, Taurus. And make no mistake — you are making choices, no matter what you do. Strive toward balance between what you ideally want and what is practical right now for best results.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

If you aren’t checking in with your innermost truths, you may feel like a chicken with its head cut off, running aimlessly in circles. Clarify your desires and goals so you can move forward on them. Here’s the key when all else fails: if it doesn’t nurture your heart, it’s not likely to have staying power.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

If you don’t trust in what you’ve got, you won’t get the pleasure from it that you deserve, Moonchild. Give thanks for the good stuff in your life this week to help you remember what holds you up. Change is coming on quickly and you shouldn’t let feelings of scarcity lead your thinking when it does.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

You are at the end of a meaningful cycle, Leo, and there is a battle of the bands being fought within you. Part of you wants to look back, and part of you is yearning to rush ahead, but neither side is right. Finesse a mashup that honors both impulses without downgrading either one.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Be nice to yourself, Virgo. The way that you talk to yourself inside your head lays the foundation for how you think, which in turn sets the stage for how you treat others. Be kind — and when you fail to do that, be compassionate. This will help all parts of your life.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Don’t add complications to your relationships right now, Libra. Be emotionally honest with yourself as you slow it down with others. You should not rush into or out of anything, buddy. Improvements are needed, but not at any cost. Make your insides certain, and the rest will fall into place.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Freedom does not mean you can recklessly do whatever you like — it means you choose without compulsions and obligations driving you. Strive toward authentic freedom this week, even if you have to start with letting go just when you want to add something new, Scorpio.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Sometimes things just hurt and the crappy feelings are unexplainable. This week you know exactly why you feel cruddy, and if you don’t pick at it, this wound will heal on it’s own. Let your heart mend without adding distractions to the mix. Find opportunities in your current sorrows, Sagittarius.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

It’s time to use your creative powers to make a quantum leap through your own crap, Capricorn. Instead of keeping your nose to the grindstone, keep your eyes focused upward! You can unify the different elements of your life that are wigging you out with patience and courage this week.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Deal with reality this week, no matter how worrisome it may feel. There’s a fine line between coping with the real and torturing yourself with negative projections — and your job is to avoid the latter. When in doubt, directly address your concerns, and use the KISS method (“keep It simple, stupid”).

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Find the balance between where you get happiness versus pleasure this week. Make sure you maintain your integrity with the fun you’re pursuing, Pisces, even if that means you have a little less of it. It’s not an either/or situation, but it’s best to pursue good times with honor.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com.

Rep Clock

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 5, 2011

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Schedules are for Wed/6–Tues/12 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $20. “Opera, Ballet, and Shakespeare in Cinema:” Love’s Labours Lost, performed at the Globe Theater, Sat-Sun, 10am.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-13. •Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947), Wed, 3:15, 7, and The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955), Wed, 5, 8:55. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog, 2010), Thurs, 3, 5, 7, 9. “Watching Big Brother: A Tribute to the Summer of 1984: Day One” •The Last Starfighter (Castle, 1984), Fri, 7:30; Gremlins (Columbus, 1984), Fri, 9:45; and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter, 1984), Fri, 11:59; “Day Two:” •Cloak and Dagger (Franklin, 1984), Sat, 2:30; The Karate Kid (Avildsen, 1984), Sat, 4:45; Red Dawn (Milius, 1984), Sat, 7:15; The Pope of Greenwich Village (Rosenberg, 1984), Sat, 9:45; and Streets of Fire (Hill, 1984), Sat, 11:59. “Marc Huestis Presents: I Dream of Barbara Eden:” 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (Pal, 1964), Sun, noon; Gala Event with on-stage interview, performances, and more, Sun, 8. Tickets for the Gala Event, $25-45 at (415) 863-0611 or www.ticketfly.com.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. Buck (Meehl, 2011), call for dates and times. Page One (Rossi, 2011), call for dates and times. The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011), call for dates and times. The Trip (Winterbottom, 2010), call for dates and times. Mann vs. Ford (Chermayeff, 2011), Wed, 7. With director Maro Chermayeff and producer James Redford in person. Swan Lake, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, Thurs, 7; Sun, 1. The Big Uneasy (Shearer, 2011), Mon, 7:15. With director Harry Shearer in person; this event, $15.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 451 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; (415) 272-2756, www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. ) Beatles movie TBA, Fri, 8.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness” •Torrid Wave (Lin, 1982), and Sex and Zen III (Min, 1998), Thurs, call for times.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Music and Nostalgia:” Oh! What a Lovely War (Attenborough, 1969), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Japanese Divas:” Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoshita, 1954), Wed, 7; Carmen Comes Home (Kinoshita, 1951), Thurs, 7 and Sat, 6:30: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Naruse, 1960), Sat, 8:20; •Woman of Tokyo (Ozu, 1933) and A Hen in the Wind (Ozu, 1948), Sun, 5. “Bernardo Bertolucci: In Search of Mystery:” Before the Revolution (1964), Fri, 7; The Grim Reaper (1962), Fri, 9:10; The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), Sun, 7:45.

PARAMOUNT 2025 Broadway, Oakl; 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com. $5. National Velvet (Brown, 1944), Fri, 8.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Wed, 2, 7, 9:25. Circo (Schock, 2010), Thurs-Fri, 7:15, 9:15. Poster sale, noon-6pm. “An Evening with Jonathan Richman:” Vengo (Gatliff, 2000), Sat, 8. Babe (Noonan, 1995), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sun, 2, 4). What’s Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972), July 12-13, 7:15, 9:20 (also July 13, 2).

RIALTO CINEMAS ELMWOOD 2966 College, Berk; (510) 433-9730, www.rialtocinemas.com. $5-10. The Big Uneasy (Shearer, 2011), July 8-14, call for times.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Happy (Belic, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 7, 8:30. Viva Riva! (Munga, 2010), Wed, 7, 9. “San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking Graduating Class ’11 Presents: Love the Shorts,” Thurs, 7, 9. “San Francisco Frozen Film Festival,” Thurs-Sat. Visit www.frozenfilmfestival.com for tickets and info. The Big Uneasy (Shearer, 2011), Sun-Mon, 7, 9 (also Sun, 3, 5). “Where Did That Come From?,” illustrated lecture with Bill Nichols, 7. For tickets ($20), visit www.sffs.org.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA 2011” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. D-Tour (Granato, 2009), Thurs, 8:45. With music by Pancho San at 8pm.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $15. Das Boot (Petersen, 1981), Thurs, 6. Restored and remastered director’s cut version of the film in honor of its 30th anniversary, with producer Ortwin Freyermuth in person. VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “The United States of Vortex:” •Wild in the Streets (Shear, 1968), Thurs, 9, and The Werewolf of Washington (Ginsberg, 1973), Thurs, 11.

Dearly beloved

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 1, 2011

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Pop historians have praised Prince’s 1984 Purple Rain as the greatest soundtrack of all time, the greatest album of the 1980s, and even the greatest album (full stop) of all time. Fans agree — the Oscar-winning platter has sold more than 13 million copies.

Purple Rain, the movie, occupies another space entirely — it’s a time capsule of the big-hair, tight-pants era. Far from a forgotten footnote to the Purple Rain album, however, the movie has emerged as a full-fledged cult classic. Naturally, this means it’s a favorite of Peaches Christ, who’ll be feting the movie in royal style this weekend. The film’s leading lady, actor-musician Apollonia, who still performs and also runs her own production company, will appear in person. I spoke with her from the shores of Lake Minnetonka — er, Los Angeles — ahead of her San Francisco visit.

SFBG One of the highlights at the Castro event is sure to be the costume contest. Do you have any ’80s fashion regrets?

Apollonia I think my fashion regret was wearing, like, lace leggings. I wore those with undies underneath for a TV show in Mexico. They looked great in person. You know, sometimes you wear things and you look in the mirror and you go, “Oh man, this is kickin’.” Then I saw it on TV and I was like, “Oh shit, what the hell did I just do?” It was baaad. [Laughs.]

SFBG I’m sure Purple Rain fans always ask about your relationship with Prince.

A The funniest thing — a bit annoying, too — is that a lot of people will ask, “I want to buy tickets for the Prince concert, can you get me better seats?” [Laughs.] And these are just innocent fans who don’t know better. [I also get] “Did you guys date? Were you married?” No, we never dated. We were not married. I’m not the drummer, I’m not the ex-wife. I’m the actor that was in the movie!

SFBG How was Prince to work with? Do you keep in touch?

A He’s funny, great personality. Musical genius. We don’t see each other every month, but we [performed together] at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood maybe two years ago. I always tell friends, you know, forever it’s Ike and Tina, Sonny and Cher, and Prince and Apollonia. I could see people’s faces, they were freaked out watching us!

SFBG Do you have a favorite memory of working on Purple Rain?

A It was all hard work, but I enjoyed it from day one — and going to the Oscars, which was wild! Just being part of music folklore — it’s an iconic movie and I’m honored to have been part of it.

PURPLE RAIN

Fri/1, 8 p.m., $25–$43

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.peacheschrist.com

All the names

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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June 30, 2011

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marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Whew, it’s all a preposterous worldwind of nightlife news and woo-hoo this pre-Fourth week, so let’s take a minute to catch up before we put the riot in patriot (and the “tearoom” back in tea party).

First the awful: beloved global “1002 Nights” DJ Cheb i Sabbah was recently diagnosed with dire cancer and is having trouble paying for health care. For 45 years, the Algerian-born DJ and former Living Theatre actor has been spreading worldly musical vibes — the past 30 or so in San Francisco, ensuring our status as one of the most open-eared, innovative places on the sonic map. Read more and help out at www.chebisabbah.org.

Better news: The Bay’s biggest legal outdoor rave, Lovevolution, is back on this year, now on the grounds of Oakland Coliseum (deftly avoiding the war on Fun in SF that forced previous cancellation.) Prepare your fuzzy outfit for Sept. 24 and hit up www.sflovevolution.org for details.

Three new party venues opened recently. Chambers (601 Eddy, SF. www.chambers-sf.com), in the old Bambuddha space in the Phoenix Hotel — it has an amazing “Be Amazing” light-bulb-bedecked sign within its wood-paneled, library-like setting featuring shelf upon shelf of vinyl records. I haven’t yet dropped in on Noble (600 Polk, SF. www.noblesf.com), which seems to be taking a more mainstream approach with some yummier stuff thrown in nevertheless, or 11th Street Corridor after-hours spot Beatbox (314 11th St., SF. www.beatboxsf.com) — no relation to one of our more active party promotions crews (www.beatboxevents.com) — but I’m sure I’ll be rolling around their floors soon.

Speaking of threes: on Friday, July 1, SF will be hit with three actually legendary DJs at once: Nuyorican Master at Work Lil Louie Vega (9 p.m.–late, $15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com), Chicago boogaloo-house pioneer Derrick Carter (9:30 p.m.–3:30 a.m., Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com), and Detroit-Windsor Plastikman techno wiz Richie Hawtin (9 p.m.–3 a.m., $22.50 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com). The agony of indecision is exquisite. I’m totally setting up a senior shuttle among the three for us frisky old-schoolers.

A CLUB CALLED RHONDA

One day, one of our fantastic young queer-friendly clubs will grow up to be like L.A.’s A Club Called Rhonda — a kiki polysexual house and disco free-for-all that still retains its underground energy even as it draws huge-name talent and, now, tours the country with the awesome Metro Area and House of House. Seriously, can’t miss.

Thurs/30, 10 p.m., free with RSVP to www.scionav.com/avrelease. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

CLUB CORNHOLE

Wild queer-and-beyond Unclear Cabaret, formerly hosted at the Mission’s favorite anarchist underground warehouse, goes all legit with this new biweekly at the Stud: Miss Oblivious hosts live music and punked-out “lowered expectations” drag performances galore, with DJs Phatima and M.F.

Thurs/30 9 p.m., $3.99. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. Facebook: Club Cornhole, www.studsf.com

RADIO SLAVE

Berlin-based DJ and music-maker Matt Edwards is a man of many musical personae — Rekid, Matthew E., Sea Devils, Quiet Village. His deeper house and disco re-edit one, Radio Slave, is the one I like best — even as I like the name the least, ha — with the soulful build of Rekid a close second. Radio Slave (and I suspect a bit of Rekid) will be playing the weekly Base party.

Thurs/30, 10 p.m., $10–$20. Vessel, 85 Campton Pl., SF. www.vesselsf.com

RITUAL WITH MOCHIPET

Rad dubstep massive Ritual amps up its weekly Thursday blast for this specialness, feting furry Daly City beat-chameleon Mochipet’s new release on MalLabel, “Spacezilla.” Goofball skull-crushing bass for all!

Thurs/30, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $5. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

DEBASER

Big themes at this crazy-gnarly 1990s grunge and alternative retro party: American vs. British indie battle! DJs Jamie Jams and Emdee “recreate the American Revolution using only ’90s rock vinyl,” pitching Brits against Murikans all night for the crowd’s vote. Oh please, we all know Oasis is gonna win. KIDDING.

Sat/2, 10 p.m., $5, free with baby doll dress. The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.facebook.com/debaser90s

STEVE RACHMAD

More freaky people need to get to the monthly Kontrol party at the End Up — the minimal techno and “avant house” programming is right on time, although the techy crowd sometimes blands me out. Help, weird fellow music fiends! This time, the boys are bringing in Steve Rachmad from the Netherlands, who knows how to sculpt a postminimal set superbly. Also on hand: a rare treat from Asia, Singapore’s Xhin, and the debut of hometown duo Safeword.

Sat/2, 10 p.m.–6 a.m., $20, free before 11 p.m. The EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

CREAM OF BEAT

Time for a real decks education: classic Bay Area hip-hop and scratch DJs kick up a celebration for gear store True’s 15th anniversary, with Apollo, Shortkut, Sake 1, Rolo 1-3, Fran Boogie, and Del live. The Pirate DJs are presenting, so it’ll be a bit bonkers.

Sun/3, 9 p.m., $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. creamofbeat.eventbrite.com

BOOM!

It’s a colorful gay-dependence extravaganza (despite the disappointingly stereotypical shirtless dude on the flyer), as promoters Miss Juanita More and Joshua J go all out at the DNA, with a smorgasbord of performances and tricks from the Miss Honey, Some Thing, Viennetta Discotheque, and Booty Call crews. Boom, like your hairdo.

Sun/3, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $10 advance. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

HONEY WITH ANTHONY MANSFIELD

Local disco edit and funky house king Mansfield will be polishing up his crown with a special techno set at Honey Soundsystem’s weekly Sunday blowout, which attracts one of the best-energied and most interesting crowds in the city. The barbeque starts at 6 p.m. in the back, so come hungry.

Sun/3, 6 p.m.–2 .m., $3 before 11 p.m., $5 after. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. facebook: Honey Mansfield, www.honeysoundsystem.com

INDEPENDANCE

The annual, exuberant pairing of classic SF Stompy and Sunset crews will ride you this year like Paul Revere, sweetie. Steaming up Cafe Cocomo’s massive patio and indoor dance floor? Parisian sexy house groover Jef K puts some France in your pants, while SF native, New York City transplant DJ Spun of Rong Music is a master of deep re-edits and funky churn. Solar, Galen, Tasho, J-Bird, Deron, and Sweet P support.

Sun/3, 2 p.m.–2 a.m., $10 before 5 p.m., $20 after. Cafe Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF. www.stompy.com/dance

He’s back!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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June 29, 2011

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steve@sfbg.com

It’s been more than a year since relations between San Francisco’s nightlife community and the San Francisco Police Department bottomed-out following a nasty crackdown and pattern of harassment led by plain-clothes Officer Larry Bertrand and Michelle Ott, an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The pair’s antics included repeatedly shutting down clubs, aggressively raiding private parties, seizing laptop computers and other property, making arrests for minor infractions, roughing up and threatening those who objected to the harsh treatment, dumping out dozens of bottles of alcohol, and, according to one lawsuit, retaliating against those who filed complaints.

There were at least four lawsuits against the city related to the crusade, including one that the city is in the process of settling for $50,000 (involving promoter Arash Ghanadan, who had repeated run-ins with Bertrand) and another federal lawsuit alleging that Bertrand’s harassment of legal businesses amounted to a criminal racketeering enterprise. The federal case is headed for trial later this year.

After cover stories in the Guardian (see “The new War on Fun,” 3/23/10) and SF Weekly exposed the abuses, and the nightlife community formed the California Music and Culture Association to counter the assault, Bertrand and Ott were pulled off the nightlife beat and things slowly got better.

So when Bertrand appeared back on the beat on a recent Friday night, June 17 — targeting two of the same clubs he allegedly harassed before, Mist and Sloan, and shutting Sloan down for the night on a technical violation — many in the nightlife community freaked out, fearing that their improved relationship with SFPD was over and the bad old days were back.

“My phone was blowing up with texts and photos of his raid on Sloan nightclub. People are livid,” attorney Mark Rennie, who works with clubs on permitting and compliance issues, wrote to a group of nightlife advocates in an e-mail titled “Officer Larry Bertrand back on the Streets last night and up to his old tricks.”

Complaints were made to new Police Chief Greg Suhr and others in the command staff. The SFPD initially refused a Guardian request for comment on whether Bertrand would remain back on the beat, citing the ongoing lawsuits. But police spokesperson Sgt. Mike Andraychak eventually admitted it was a mistake to have Bertrand busting clubs and said he won’t be back on that beat anytime soon.

Andraychak said the new commander of Southern Station, Capt. Charlie Orkes, assigned Bertrand to police the clubs for the night and “he wasn’t aware of the history of lawsuits, and so that’s why Officer Bertrand was out there that night doing permit inspections … He won’t have Officer Bertrand in that role again, in the interests of good community relations.”

Those relations have become much better and more cooperative in the last year, according to Suhr, Rennie, and Entertainment Commission Executive Director Jocelyn Kane. “We’re happy with our relationship with the Police Department right now,” Kane told us. “That’s why [the reappearance of Bertrand] was of concern to people.”

During an interview with the Guardian on the morning of June 17, Suhr said he was supportive of nightlife. “I’m pro entertainment and I want the clubs to succeed. It think it draws people to the city and allows us to do a lot of things,” Suhr said, emphasizing the importance of clear communications and good relations between clubs and the SFPD. “If we’re being fair, consistent, and objective in how we treat situations, the clubs will know how it works.”

To many in the nightlife community, Bertrand represents the antithesis of that approach. Mist owner Mike Quan, a plaintiff in the ongoing federal lawsuit alleging Bertrand repeatedly harassed him and his customers, said he was shocked to hear Bertrand showed up at his club and was abrasive with his employees again. “My attorney sent [SFPD] a letter the next day saying this is not acceptable,” Quan told us. “Hopefully they got the message.”

Mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, who is close to the nightlife community, helped reach out to Suhr after the incident and said he believes it was an aberration. “This is something that is a concern and the leadership needs to be sure that we’re not falling back,” Dufty told us.

Appeals also went out to the City Attorney’s Office, headed by another mayoral candidate, Dennis Herrera, who said he was happy to hear this was an isolated incident. But he said it illustrates something he’s been saying in meetings with clubs and cops — that SFPD’s nightlife enforcement policies need to be clear and consistent.

“We need to get it above the ad hoc way we’ve done it, so that it’s above the captain level and coming from the command staff,” Herrera told us.

Suhr, who has better relations with the nightlife community than any of his recent predecessors, also emphasized the need to lay out clear expectations. But he stopped short of saying there wouldn’t be anymore undercover raids of clubs and parties, telling us, “I think it’s important that people think that’s a possibility.”

Smells like motherland spirit

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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June 28, 2011

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cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM When North Korea makes the news, it’s usually under unpleasant headlines containing words like “nuclear” and “hostilities.” What most Americans know of this secretive country is either drawn from these dire reports or formed via pop culture. Notable are Vice magazine’s surprisingly illuminating North Korean travelogue, which “aired” online, and a pair of 2004 films: doc A State of Mind, about two girls training for the country’s circus-on-a-terrifying-scale Mass Games, and, of course, Team America: World Police.

For the sum of a few thousand euros, Beijing-based Koryo Tours can book Westerners (except journalists — NO JOURNALISTS ALLOWED!) on trips that include the Mass Games, the DMZ, Baekdu Mountain, and more (act now for the “Kim Il Sung 100th Birthday Ultimate Mega Tour 2012”!) The Koryo website’s FAQ (“Will the guides try to brainwash me?”) offers quite an education about how controlled access to the country really is — as you might suspect, tourists have to be extremely careful where they point their cameras. Still, a vacation in North Korea would surely be a one-of-a-kind experience.

With that in mind, Koryo is sponsoring a screening of a one-of-a-kind — at least in America — film, Centre Forward, a 1978 curio that was digitally restored in 2010. Directed with limited artistic flair by Pak Chong-Song (according the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ website, “considered one of the DPRK’s finest filmmakers”), this 75-minute, black-and-white propaganda piece weaves the tale of Comrade In Son, a gifted but inexperienced soccer player struggling to succeed on a team that recently upgraded its training regime from merely exhausting to sadistically brutal.

Along the way, the lad wearing No. 17 learns important lessons from his sister (a dancer whose training also tends toward the sadistically brutal), his roommate (an older player with international triumphs under his belt), his coach (who gives motivational speeches that invoke the teachings of the Fatherly Leader), and the lyrics of the rousing tunes that play over the film’s many montages — “Oh we are sportspersons of the Leader, let us demonstrate wisdom and vigor,” that sort of thing. There’s never any doubt, because it’s emphasized over and over, that sporting glory is owned by the motherland, not individual players. (Though if you fail, you’re personally responsible for hindering the DPRK’s pursuit of being “a kingdom of sports.”)

Centre Forward‘s original release must’ve stirred the hearts of North Korean soccer fans who recalled the national team’s best-ever World Cup showing; in 1966, it reached the quarter-finals after defeating perennial powerhouse Italy. Contemporary fans might better remember the 2010 World Cup, though they’d probably prefer not to — while even qualifying for the tournament was an accomplishment (and the extreme underdogs did score a goal in their game against Brazil), the team exited after three losses, including a humiliating 0-7 defeat versus Portugal.

The media, of course, feasted on the oddities the outsider country brought to the World Cup stage: the identically-dressed fans that were alleged to be Chinese actors imported to South Africa for the occasion; the assertion that the North Korean coach was getting pitch-side advice from Kim Jong-il via an invisible phone invented by the Supreme Leader himself. We chuckled, sure. But who didn’t worry a bit when the team had to trudge back to Pyongyang, still stinging from having their asses handed to them on international television by Cristiano Ronaldo and company?

Multiple sources reported the team and coach were “publicly rebuked” (some said for six hours) for their poor showing, and that the team was forced to “reprimand” their own coach, who was then quickly shunted into a laboring job (see above, re: “kingdom of sports.”) Superstar striker Jong Tae-se — loyal to North Korea, but born in Japan, so he enjoys the decadent luxury of playing in Europe — was spared from this punishment. But what happened to the other players? If Centre Forward‘s “no pain-no gain” training philosophy at all resembles real life, I shudder to imagine.

CENTRE FORWARD

Thurs/30, 7:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Print sections as they appeared in the early 2010s

Print Sections

Two years after the coup

Saving labor murals

Stop the Libya bombing!

Who built San Francisco?

EXPIRATION DATE

DECAYED TIME CAPSULES

HIGHLIGHTS AND HAIR-RAISERS

TABOO

TIPPER SOUND EXPERIENCE

LEE BURRIDGE

LEE FOSS

LEED FOR THE RICH

WHO RIDES BUSES?

PROMISES AND REALITY

A CLUB CALLED RHONDA

CLUB CORNHOLE

RADIO SLAVE

RITUAL WITH MOCHIPET

DEBASER

STEVE RACHMAD

CREAM OF BEAT

BOOM!

HONEY WITH ANTHONY MANSFIELD

INDEPENDANCE