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She’s got the look

Andrew Lam
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0
She’s got the look

culture@sfbg.com

QUEER Apparently being a lesbian is the hottest new trend — so much so that middle-aged white dudes are posing as gay ladies, writing famous blogs and filling entire websites with lesbian content. (Yes, I’m talking to you, “Amina” and “Paula.”) Really?

Fortunately, there are plenty of actual queer women who can blog for themselves, thank you very much. Catherine “Cat” Perez, is one of those real-life queer women — verified by an in-person chat at the Wild Side West bar — posting real-life depictions of other actual lesbians on her blog Lesbians in San Francisco, a tribute to girls who like girls in America’s gay capital.

The layout is simple: each featured lez gets one photo and three fun facts of her choosing (“She won a s’mores eating contest as a Girl Scout.” “She doesn’t know how to whistle.” “She is related to Chuck Norris.”) Perez started LISF last summer with the intention of giving queer women of the Bay some flattering but honest representation.

“I just think in terms of the queer community, women can get bypassed and overlooked,” she told me, flicking her cigarette. “I want to educate people about what queer women look like, what they’re interested in, what they do. It may not always be what people assume.”

Perez began by photographing her friends, then opened it to anyone in the Bay Area, aiming for an accurate depiction of the city’s diversity. She swears there is no screening process. Although the aim is inclusion, the final product looks pretty tailored. Beauty may reside in the eye of the beholder — but it’s undeniable that these super-fashionable, adorably hipster girls are hot.

“Yes, there is definitely a ‘scene’ element to it. But that’s not the point,” Perez shakes her head and throws up her hands. “I’m only one person and I work a nine-to-five. People need to actively pursue a shoot with me.”

And it’s that simple — send Perez an e-mail, brainstorm your idea for the shoot, and show up. It’s an offer she often won’t refuse. So why are only a specific type of lezzies contacting LISF? Vanity? A need for self-promotion? Has LISF become a showcase of our local celesbians? Maybe it’s time for the rest of the community to get our faces up there, too.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a celesbian — I don’t know how I feel about that term,” Perez said with a laugh. “If I had to choose a label, I would identify as a queer woman,” embracing the broader, more inclusive mode of thinking. The title of the blog has discouraged some women from participating, but Perez says she has no plans to change it anytime soon.

“Growing up, I always wondered what queer communities looked like outside of my home in New Jersey,” she says. With its general-interest name, her blog comes up pretty high on Google searches. “I just want to shed some light on the people who live here. That’s it.”

Through the end of the month at the Lexington Club (www.lexingtonclub.com), Perez is exhibiting a collection of blog-inspired photos called “Stereo,” which simultaneously celebrates and debunks lesbian stereotypes. Perez selected 15 queer women and photographed them each twice: once in a stereotypical role (softball player, gym teacher, high femme) and once as themselves. As one might imagine, there’s a lot of overlap.

“Some girls were dressing up as other’s stereotypes,” she says. “Stereotypes don’t have to be negative. These photos embrace that, because, yeah, sometimes we are the stereotype.”

Bright on

Andrew Lam
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1
Bright on

culture@sfbg.com

QUEER Heady, hilarious, heartbreaking: Big Sex Little Death explores legendary sex writer, educator, and instigator Susie Bright’s coming of age from the 1960s to the present. Bright’s memoir focuses on her involvement with The Red Tide, a radical high school newspaper in Los Angeles in the 1970s, and her subsequent membership in a socialist sect that sends her halfway across the country. Her union organizing stint lasts until the Party leadership expels her for “joining or leading a cult of personality.” Personality is certainly one of Bright’s strong points, so perhaps we should be grateful for this particular falling out. It eventually leads to Bright’s role in founding the first lesbian porn magazine, On Our Backs, in San Francisco in 1981, as well as her pioneering work as a fiery spokesperson for free speech and sexual liberation. I spoke with her over the phone about sex and memory and writing.

SFBG You do such a great job of talking about your sexual coming of age as a teenager: describing your sluttiness without shame, your curiosity about bodies and pleasure and the intricacies of sexual positioning.

Susie Bright I think it’s because I wrote my memoir like a storyteller, like a poet — not a polemicist. I wasn’t ashamed; it never occurred to me. Margaret Mead would have found my little teenage tribe to be quite poignant.

SFBG There’s a tendency for many sex-positive spokespeople to glamorize even the most annoying, mundane, or gross sexual experiences as somehow — well — positive. Sometimes this sex-positive rhetoric ends up making those of us who don’t always succeed at having a wonderful sex life feel like failures …

SB I think bad sex — obnoxious, absurd, BIG FAIL sex — is funny, nostalgic, and more endearing as you grow older. It also goes hand in hand with adventurous, rapturous, mind-blowing sex. You actually know the difference. You’ve spanned the spectrum, you’ve lived. The big bummer with American sex right now is the unrelenting banality and flat-out scarcity.

SFBG The most striking part of Big Sex Little Death for me is the way you describe betrayal in the social and political realms you choose to inhabit — places that initially give you so much hope. Like when you helped to start On Our Backs, the first lesbian porn magazine, in the early ’80s. Feminist bookstores refused to carry it, claiming that you were aiding the patriarchy.

SB It was more than that. The whole mainstream feminist movement was calling for our heads. Or, as Barbara Grier of Naiad Press put it, “Everyone I know thinks y’all should be assassinated.”

It’s been a part of every civil rights and social justice movement that I’ve been a part of. We know it — we talk about how the powers that be would prefer to let the weak fight among themselves. We see how divide-and-conquer tactics are so effective, but it’s very hard to resist.

What kills me is the blindness, even years after the fact. Sometimes it’s comical. I got a letter from an ambitious writer the other day who told me that in the ’80s she fought the sex-positive On Our Backs types tooth and nail, no tactic too dirty. “We” were pimping the patriarchy and she was on point to take us down. She asked me if I found it amusing that she’s now in a submissive relationship with a man — no! Then she asked me if I would blurb her new book.

Someone asked me on this tour if I ever got an apology, and I was startled. No, not for the bombings or the death threats or the bannings or the locked doors or the bizarre libels and slanders. No way.

SFBG When the feminist movement refused to support you, you found several surprising allies. Among them were John Preston, at the time the editor of the gay leather magazine Drummer; cult filmmaker Russ Meyer of Faster Pussycat fame; and even the Mitchell brothers of that legendary exploitative straight strip club on O’Farrell Street.

SB Well, those were strange bedfellows, eh? They were all mavericks, iconoclasts, outlaws, film buffs, and we shared that in common. Aside from public librarians and ACLU lead attorneys, these guys were probably the most eloquent defenders of the First Amendment you ever met.

SFBG On Our Backs was started by two strippers who worked at various clubs in the Tenderloin and North Beach. One of the most heartbreaking chapters in Big Sex Little Death is where you show us how so many strippers worked to support their lovers financially, male and female, and then ended up strung out on drugs, homeless, or dead after their lovers used and abused them.

SB “Legalize it,” as Peter Tosh said. That is why these tragedies happen — because sex work is criminalized.

SFBG In your preface, you say, “I’m more preoccupied with people dying than with people coming.” And so of course you want to prevent these unnecessary deaths. Toward the end of the book, you also mention the deaths of friends, lovers, and confidantes to AIDS — but only briefly. It’s as if it’s still too painful to talk about.

SB The main deaths I talk about are my parents’, where I could fit more of the puzzle together; then John Preston, as a small example of what went on in early ’80s plague life; and the dykes I first knew at On Our Backs, some of who died too young. I am angry and too ragged to write about it all yet — I don’t have the distance from it. The last memorial I attended this past fall was [for] one of my greatest inspirations, a total ball-of-fire who ate a Fentanyl patch, choked to death on her vomit, and left a suicide note.

It was the exact one-year anniversary of the death of her father, a Southern fundamentalist preacher who beat and raped her as a child. She left him at 15 to come to California and made her way as one of the first generation of out dyke strippers and punk rockers. My redheaded friend was a leader of a local NA chapter by the time she was 20. What happened to her, all these years later, breaks the heart of everyone who knew her. She was a wonderful, wonderful, caring, radical feminist creative dyke who wanted to be a superhero who would vanquish all the abusers. It’s not fair.

SFBG Fairness is one of the central issues of the book — who lives and who dies, which cultures disappear and which remain. At the end of the book, you talk about deciding to give birth to a child, Aretha, and raising her. I’ll admit I got a bit worried that you would suddenly talk about this trajectory in a way that erased your sexual and political history, the histories of people like the friend you just mentioned.

SB My daughter has a trajectory of her own, now!

SFBG But somehow you’re able to talk about your love for Aretha while making it clear that child rearing certainly isn’t for everyone, and still articulating an anti-assimilationist queer world view focused on sexual liberation and radical politics.

SB I’m just drawn that way.

SFBG Why do you think gay assimilationists emphasize marriage, military inclusion, and child-rearing as the only choices for respectable queers, narrowing the options for everyone and rejecting sexual liberation as something dangerous from the past?

SB They’re squares — what can I say? They’ve always been around. Square used to be a synonym for straight. We’re constantly caught in the middle on this, the boho bunch. Of course we want civil rights for all, duh. I defend anyone’s right to let the state be their pimp, to fight the wars, be the cannon fodder, acquire family assets like a stamp-collecting hobby. Bully for you. But as Peggy Lee said, “Is that all there is?” Christ, I hope not.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is most recently the author of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly.

 

Pasión

Andrew Lam
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2
Pasión

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Amid the restaurant babble of Ninth and Irving streets (UCSF’s answer to Harvard Square), there is one restaurant that stands out as a spot for people who already have all the degrees they’re ever going to get, and that is Pasión. The name suggests both the high energy of the place and the style of its cooking, which draws many of its influences from Latin America and, in particular, Peru. The young chef and owner José Calvo-Perez, a native San Franciscan whose father Julio launched what was to become the highly successful Fresca enterprise, describes the style as “modern Latin.”

The space was the longtime home of P.J.’s Oyster Bed (Pasión moved in late last year), and because it’s in the middle of a cluttered block, it doesn’t stand out as a physical fact as much as it does as an idea. You could walk right by without noticing it, or you might notice it but think it’s just another one of the sort of food emporia you so often find near large university campuses. But once you’re inside, you find that Pasión feels a little like Miami: twinkles and gleams here and there in the suggestively dark lighting, a sense of human warmth, a dramatic open kitchen with two faces at right angles, and a main dining area doubled around the back of the bar like a horseshoe. The restaurant is on the loud side, and no doubt that’s in large part because it’s busy. Clearly there was an unmet demand for this kind of destination in the neighborhood.

Pasión might not be that innovative — pan-Latin cooking was unexpected 10 years ago; it is less so now. Still, it can’t be a bad thing to claim descent from Fresca. Some of the more prominent signifiers of that lineage on the menu are the pollo a la brasa ($18), a beautifully roasted half-chicken with Peruvian-style spices and fine french fries, and a broad selection of ceviches.

As someone who likes ceviche without loving it, I was pleasantly surprised by the exquisiteness of the Pasión version ($10), which brought together cubes of ahi tuna and salmon, kernels of purple corn, and bits of cilantro, red onion, and yellow pepper — I haven’t seen so much color in one place since looking into a box of Crayola crayons — in a marinade softened and deepened by passion-fruit purée. Too many ceviches seem to me to be joltingly salty-sour, salt and lime being a pair of alpha ingredients that will fight if there is no mediator. (Morty Seinfeld: “You’ve gotta have a buffer zone!”) A little sugar, a little sweetness, brings a necessary balance, and all the better if the sweetness comes, as here, from a natural source, a sweet fruit, instead of a sack of C&H.

But, even in America, land of the sweet, sweetness isn’t always a good thing. The aioli that served as a dipping sauce for salt-cod fritters ($10) had been enhanced with lemon and honey (honeioli?), but for me it was too sweet and reminded me of Miracle Whip. The fritters themselves, presented in a small basket, were right at the edge of being too crisp. And yes, that is a kind of euphemism.

The duck empanadas ($10) were better, though of course they were very rich, made as they were with shreds of duck confit and smoked duck. Here the richness of the meat and the frying was moderated by a clever combination of currants and a sherry reduction — fruit to the rescue again.

Is there a good way to serve paella in a restaurant? Calvo-Perez was probably bound to try to figure one out, since he apprenticed in Spain. My thought would be to make a big, proper one every hour or so and serve portions of it, but Pasión appears to follow a made-to-order model. The kitchen’s vegetarian version, called arroz verde ($18), was made with cilantro rice and did have a green sheen, but it was as much gray as green, and this wasn’t reassuring. The dish, although presented in a small, cast-iron paella pan, lacked the crust of caramelized rice you hope will form on the bottom. It was also afflicted by a bitterness we finally traced to large chunks of celery, lurking in the murk like alligators in a bog among the green peas, shiitake mushrooms, pickled carrots, and green beans. It also featured an abundance of red onion slivers, which were methodically plucked out (not by me), like bits of shrapnel being removed from a wounded soldier. Obviously some people feel passionately about raw red onions.

Pasión

Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5–11 p.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

737 Irving, SF

(415) 742-5727

www.pasionsf.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Busted!

Andrew Lam
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0
Busted!

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I have already written a restaurant review, a poem, and a cheerful pop song about my anal abscess. I don’t know how else to celebrate the cursed motherfucker. I could curse … But I guess I’ve done that too.

I’ve already had it lanced twice. Those were the good times. Except that on the first occasion I missed a day of work, and on the second I missed a baby shower. I felt so badfully about the missed baby shower that I invited the moms-to-be, Pod and the Attack, to breakfast the following Saturday. Technically I guess maybe I invited myself to breakfast. At their house.

Bless them, they made my favorite: waffles! With fresh strawberries! They made bacon! They made eggs! They made roasted tomatoes! It was the perfect meal! It was a masterpiece! It was culinary genius! It was the time of our lives!

Problem: I forgot to go. I don’t know, I was looking forward to it all week and then I woke up on Saturday morning, went, “Dum-de-doe,” and decided — oh, I don’t know — maybe do a little recording, or something.

I record in my kitchen because it’s the quietest room in my apartment, if I turn off the refrigerator. My cell phone was in the closet. At the designated hour, Pod went to West Oakland BART and waited for me.

When she called to say what-the-where-the-fuck-are-you? I was in the kitchen. I had my headphones on, refrigerator off, and was laying some blistering electric ukulele tracks onto Garage Band, singing: “It’s a new day/ It’s a driving rain/ I’m gonna have anal surgery/ It’s gonna be OK/ Gonna feel no pain / Or if I do it will be good for me.” La la la la la la.

And so forth.

Then.

I saw my cell phone while I was getting ready for work. It was lit up like a Christmas tree: texts, voicemails, e-mails. What-the-where-the-fuck-was-I? Oh my sweet baby Jesus, you can imagine my horror, and self-hatred — nay, loathing — as it all sunk in. How did I do that? How could I? Was my head so far up my ass that … ?

Well, technically it was, damn me. Clobber me in the kidneys with a golf club. I felt as low as a horse’s hoof cheese. And that was before the Attack sent me a picture of their spread, Pod in all her pregnancy sitting down to eat those wonderful things I said, plus cantaloupe.

Minus me.

I’ve done some dumb-ass things in my day, but don’t know if I’ve ever hated myself more. I couldn’t imagine how I was ever going to forgive myself. I still kinda can’t. I mean, the bacon alone looked so good in that picture.

They were of course very gracious and forgiving, and I was of course determined to make it up somehow. I invited them over to Berkeley that evening for some of the chicken pot pie that me and the kids were making. They declined.

I invited them to breakfast the following morning. Out somewhere, on me, and they accepted. We went to the Sunny Side Café in Albany, which was alleged to be kind of fancy-pants, and great.

Never in my life, before this, have I wanted a meal to cost more than it did. But, alas, it didn’t. It was like normal weekend brunch prices, roughly $10 apiece. Less tragically, but more to the point, I didn’t think the food was that good. Let alone great. I may have malordered. Maybe I was still traumatized by my brain fart from the morning before, but my spinach-and-sausage scramble was bland city, even with salt-pepper-Tapatío. The roasted tomatoes … meh.

Pod’s pigs in blankets … that was better. And the Attack, she got it right. She hit the jackpot with the Alameda, a stack-up of good stuff — ham, cheese, french toast, eggs — and some other things I personally don’t go for, which is to say mushrooms and Hollandaise. Oh, and a balsamic reduction.

It’s her new favorite restaurant.

SUNNY SIDE CAFÉ

Mon.–Fri. 8 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun. 8:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

1499 Solano, Albany

(510) 527-5383

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

 

Cleaning up UC’s mess

Andrew Lam
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5
Cleaning up UC’s mess

news@sfbg.com

By 7 a.m., when engineering students begin to trickle into Cory Hall at UC Berkeley, Arnold Meza has already scrubbed the floors, wiped clean the chalkboards, and emptied the trash of 30 offices and many of the classrooms and hallways of the six-floor building.

His early shift as a custodian is a gift, he says, because it is steady compared to his former swing-shift schedule, but Meza is still barely making rent. And he is a single father of four. Like many service workers in the University of California system, Meza wonders how the university can refuse to give him a 3 percent wage increase while top UC executives receive six-figure bonuses every year.

“It falls on broken promises,” Meza said while tying up a bag of trash, one of hundreds he would take out that week. Meza was referring to an agreement in 2009 between the university and its service workers unions, including Meza’s union, AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). At that time, the administration established a minimum wage (currently $13 per hour) for the more than 7,000 service workers and agreed, if funding was available, to increase wages annually to bring their low-wage workers out of poverty.

But the university is going back on its promise, refusing to increase wages with the funding dedicated for that very purpose, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and the Partnership for Working Families (EBASE) notes in its recent report titled “Bad Budgeting, Broken Promises.”

As the UC Office of the President sees it, the 2009 discussion was not an agreement at all, but a “conditional memorandum of understanding” that would only be effective if state funding was available, said UCOP spokeswoman Dianne Klein.

“We’ve already taken $500 million in cuts. We’ll have to take another $500 million in cuts. Because there is no new money, the memorandum of understanding is moot,” Klein told us.

The state budget vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown last week would have set the UC system back $150 million in cuts on top of the $500 million in cuts approved by Brown in January. How much more will actually be cut from UC funding remains to be seen, but the forecast is not promising.

Despite the cuts, the proposed budget bill states that $3 million in distributed state funds should go toward the salaries and benefit of service workers in the UC system. In a March 24 letter to the governor, UC President Mark Yudof requested that the governor veto that restriction so the university could use the dedicated $3 million “to preserve our flexibility in dealing with the $500 million reduction.”

Compared to the total UC budget of $21.8 billion, that $3 million makes up only 0.014 percent — nickels and dimes to give employees a living wage.

Meanwhile, Meza and his fellow coworkers struggle to put food on the table, making ends meet by working two jobs. After his 4 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday shift, Meza works eight-hour shifts as a car mechanic on weekends. Similarly, many UC service workers collect cans to get a few dollars from the recycling center.

“When I started here 20 years ago, I was making close to $9 an hour. That wasn’t enough,” recalled Meza, who put his four children through public high school on that salary. Today, Meza brings home about $2,400 a month, barely enough to cover rent and a few bills at his El Cerrito home.

“I want my kids to go to college. But financially, I can’t afford it,” he said. “For me, it’s a sad reality.”

Meza’s union, AFSCME, is working with UC to lower the workers’ contribution to retirement pensions to 1.5 percent. The university proposes a 3.5 percent pension plan to go into effect this July and 5 percent in July 2012—the same amount requested from top UC executives. At their low wage, that would cost the service workers the equivalent of one biweekly paycheck a year.

Some UC executives, such as UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, receive additional retirement perks. Roughly 200 highly paid UC executives receive a supplemental retirement benefit of 5 percent of their annual pay, said Nikki Fortunato Bas, the executive director of EBASE. That’s a total annual cost to UC of $4 million.

“If UC gets its way in 2011, instead of getting to climb that next rung on the ladder out of poverty, [the low wage workers] will take a step backward through a combination of increased contributions to retirement and healthcare and UC withholding a 3 percent raise,” Bas said. “All the while, UC is showering already highly-paid executives with six-figure bonuses.”

In an infamous budget battle that has required the UC system to restructure its quickly diminishing funding from the state, more than 100,000 employees’ paychecks have been reduced while top execs like UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center CEO David Feinberg receive thousands of dollars in bonuses. In September 2010, Feinberg’s base pay was increased by 22 percent and he received a $250,000 “retention bonus,” for a total compensation of $1.33 million.

These astounding numbers, as part of a $3.1 million package in bonuses for 37 UC executives last September, were quoted in the EBASE report, using data from the UC Regents website (www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents).

UCOP says the retention bonuses are necessary “because we pay below market as it is [for top executives’ salaries],” said Klein, and the UC needs to offer huge bonuses to keep the executives from moving to higher paying universities. “You have two options: sayonara or we’ll match it,” Klein said. “You can’t recruit in the classifieds for these people … and you’ll have to replace them for the same money, anyway.”

The bonuses are not state-funded, said Klein, but are taken from research grants, patient care, and even federal funding. But Bas said the problem is with UC’s priorities: “Time and again, they have shown that they can find money to give bonuses or backfill sports programs,” she said. “UC may look at this as a matter of technicalities, but we cannot ignore the stories of employees and their families who are struggling to get by.”

As it stands, UC is short-staffed when it comes to service workers. “We’ve been short-staffed for the last 10 years,” said Meza, who estimates that UC Berkeley employs about 140 custodians, less than one-third of the 460 or so custodians the university employed in the 1980s. The result is that the students suffer, said Meza. “The students are getting the short end of the stick because we can only clean once a week in some classrooms because we’re short staff. We see the students pay a lot with tuition, and they’re getting less.”

Already, student fees have increased by more than 32 percent, and another 8 percent fee increase is pending, reported EBASE. As the state continues to make cuts, students and low wage service workers suffer the consequences.

According to the California Budget Project, a single-parent family needs to make $68,375 a year just to make ends meet in Alameda County. “UC workers have reduced-cost healthcare, so this number could be adjusted downward to $58,544,” said Bas. “For a custodian at UC Berkeley or UC San Francisco making $30,000 or even $40,000 a year, this means working two jobs and collecting cans just to scrape by.”

When his oldest was nine years old, Meza remembers, he used to drive his family to the recycling center to get cash for cans he had taken out of the garbage. “The kids were happy in the car because I was going to get money for food when I recycled cans,” which meant there would be dinner on the table that night, Meza said, apologizing for getting teary-eyed at the memory.

“I just don’t want people who work here to go through what I went through to raise a family,” he said.

No matter how many cars Meza fixes on the weekend, he never seems to have a break from the stress of trying to cover fuel, rent, heating bills, doctors’ bills, and other necessities. He’s only 43, but he feels much older after 20 years of working two jobs, seven days a week, providing for four children on his own.

UC workers, unions like AFSCME and other stakeholders have proposed $600 million in budget alternatives such as reducing the excessive 7-to-1 employee-to-management ratio (at UC Berkeley, the average is four employees to one manager). Yet UC does not appear to be seriously considering these alternatives; its current goal is to take back the $3 million dedicated to its low-wage service workers.

“We think this is a matter of finding the will within the UC administration to do what’s right by honoring their word to protect working families’ a path out of poverty,” Bas said.

Two months ago, Meza and his fellow union members marched into UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s office and asked him to spend one day in the life of a service worker on campus. He still hasn’t answered their request.

“People are really struggling here. We are committed to working and we give 110 percent — that should be accounted for,” said Meza. “Give us our 3 percent. We earned it.”

Beyond the Ford severance scandal

Andrew Lam
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0

Supervisor John Avalos and state Senator Leland Yee, who are both running for mayor, picked up on a populist issue last week, blasting away at Muni for paying outgoing chief Nathaniel Ford a whopping $384,000 severance. “With $384,000,” Yee’s website lamented, “the entire city of San Francisco could park free of charge for three days. Muni could be entirely free for a whole day. We could stripe seven miles of new bike lanes.”

In reality $384,000 is a fraction of Muni’s budget — less than half of 1 percent. And it’s a trivial amount compared to what CEOs get in the private sector — Peter Darbee, whose firm killed eight people and wiped out a neighborhood, walked away with $35 million when he left Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in disgrace.

But this is exactly the sort of deal that infuriates the public. When the cost of parking meters and tickets keep rising, and Muni’s on-time performance lags, why is the guy in charge, who’s leaving in part because he isn’t doing the job, getting such a nice golden parachute, courtesy of the taxpayers?

In the end, there’s not a lot Yee or Avalos can do about it. For one thing, the decision was made not by the supervisors but by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Beyond that, SFMTA had only limited choices — Ford has an employment contract. And it’s hard to fire someone in the middle of a term of contracted employment without buying out at least part of the deal.

That’s the larger issue here, one that the mayoral candidates ought to be talking about. Why does the head of Muni get a special employment contract? The heads of the Police Department and Fire Department don’t get one. In fact, most department heads don’t get contracts specifying a term of office and including severance pay.

Those contracts can be expensive — Susan Leal got $400,000 when she was dismissed as head of the SF Public Utilities Commission. Arlene Ackerman got $375,000 when she left the San Francisco Unified School District.

No rank-and-file city employees get severance if they’re fired for cause (or if they negotiate a resignation to avoid disciplinary action). City department heads shouldn’t either.

We understand why school superintendents and Muni managers want those sorts of deals: If you work for a political agency, there’s always a chance that the people who hired you will be gone at some point and you’ll be working for people with different visions and political positions. But none of these department heads are paupers — they’re well paid, and, like anyone who takes a management job, they know that their job security depends on performance.

It’s akin, in a much more limited way, to what’s been happening in the private sector, where the top people get compensation that vastly exceeds what even the people immediately below them get. Muni’s assistant general managers don’t get employment contracts with golden parachutes.

San Francisco needs a city policy on special employment contracts — and rules barring excessive severance pay for management-level employees. The supervisors ought to ask the budget analyst for a report on which city employees have contracts, what they call for, and how they compare to what similar-level employees without contracts are paid. There should be hearing on this and legislation that clears up what is now an expensive — and disheartening — hodgepodge of private deals.

 

On the hook

Andrew Lam
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4
On the hook

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Unique Roberts squared back her shoulders and recalled what it was like when she first moved to San Francisco from East Oakland more than a decade ago. A tall, 33-year-old African American transgender woman with piercing eyes and a charming smile despite gaps of missing teeth, Roberts said she performed as a showgirl at clubs like Harvey’s and the Pendulum in the Castro. In those exciting days, “I fell in love with this boy, and he was an addict,” she explained. “I thought that if I did it, it would keep our relationship together.”

She recalled how awful her boyfriend felt when he found out she was using, telling her, “You don’t know what you’re doing to yourself.” He departed for Texas several years later, but addiction stuck with her as a way of life.

She says she’s tried to kick the habit, but it’s wrapped up in a battle against depression stemming from the loss of loved ones. Roberts was wearing one of the bright orange sweatshirts issued to inmates at San Francisco County Jail. She landed there after being arrested in April for allegedly selling a tiny rock of crack, weighing just 9/100s of a gram, to an undercover narcotics officer. According to the police report, the cop offered her $20 for it — but based on National Drug Intelligence Center street-value estimates, that amount is only worth about $2.50.

Roberts may go by the first name Unique, but her lawyer Tal Klement, who works for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, is fond of saying her case is hardly unique at all. She was one of several people arrested in the Tenderloin that day after interacting with the same plainclothes officer.

It was part of a coordinated sweep known as a buy-bust, a common practice under which an officer may pose as a homeless person, a clueless outsider, or a dope-sick fiend to lure people into selling crack, pills, meth, heroin, or marijuana. Once a transaction is made, a team of officers awaiting the signal immediately closes in and arrests the seller.

As of June 20, there were at least 109 open buy-bust cases in San Francisco. Based on defendants’ rap sheets, 92 percent had prior drug-use histories, according to a tally conducted by the Public Defender’s Office.

The officers posing as buyers — who often earn overtime — use street lingo, know which drugs can be obtained at which intersections, and sometimes offer higher prices than the accepted street value. Attorney Anne Irwin, also a public defender, is critical of the practice, saying it’s an expensive tactic that’s makes for easy arrests — because the money is irresistible to addicts who think they’re getting an opportunity to convert a personal stash into more drugs.

In a lean budget year, “they’re cutting social services left and right, and these are the very services that could help the addicts get off the street,” Irwin noted. She’s skeptical that the strategy stems the flow of substantial quantities of drugs.

Police Chief Greg Suhr, who said he participated in buy-busts for years as a narcotics officer, credits the tactic for helping to eradicate a rampant open-air drug market on Third Street in the Bayview, and says it can help prevent drug-related violence.

Klement, however, condemns it as a “war on crumbs,” saying it ensnares far more addicts than serious dealers and often ends up unnecessarily pinning felony convictions onto low-level offenders.

 

NUMBERS GAME

Buy-busts usually involve around eight officers, according to an average calculated by the Public Defender’s Office based on open cases, but have involved as many as 14 and as few as three. There’s the decoy buyer, who sometimes dresses in grimy sweatpants, goes without shaving, or dirties his face to look like a street addict in desperate need of a fix. There’s a “close cover” officer who follows the decoy, plus an arrest team that is also sometimes in plainclothes. Beforehand, officers will photocopy cash — usually $20 bills — to document the serial numbers so that the same marked city funds can be used as evidence once recovered from arrestees. Busts can happen within minutes of one another, and a single shift may net five or six arrests.

Irwin says the people snared aren’t typical drug dealers — certainly not big-time players. But they’re charged as dealers — and in many cases wind up branded as felons, with severe legal penalties such as multiyear prison sentences.

While the police department is able to show on paper that it’s brought hundreds of drug dealers into custody — and the district attorney can point to a boost in the conviction rate thanks to the program’s efficiency — Irwin says the amounts being peddled are tiny.

“In traditional narcotics operations, they cultivated snitches, used surveillance, and obtained search warrants” to go after major dealers, Irwin said. With buy-busts, “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone agrees that we need cops on the streets to help keep us safe … But do we want to be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for this?”

Sharon Woo, chief assistant of operations for the San Francisco District Attorney, told the Guardian that “we charge based on the conduct of the individual.” Woo went on to say that the DA tried to “exercise appropriate discretion” on a case-by-case basis when individuals are selling to support an addiction or due to being in dire financial straits.

Sometimes individuals are ushered into alternative programs such as drug court or a Back on Track program for first-time offenders, Woo said. And while the DA typically includes charges that make defendants ineligible for probation under state law if they have prior convictions for selling crack-cocaine — a discretionary practice that has drawn criticism from public defenders — Woo observed that “it doesn’t mean that’s how cases resolve.”

Police forces in nearly every major metropolitan area practice buy-busts, said Frank Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law specializing in criminal justice issues. Yet he described the practice as costly and noted that paying overtime for it “makes what would ordinarily be a very expensive operation into a more expensive operation.”

Cost estimates for the entire program are tough to pin down. It costs $130 per day to house each prisoner in the county jail, amounting to more than $14,000 per day if all of the defendants with pending cases are in custody. If an average of eight officers per bust were paid $60 an hour each to spend six hours conducting a buy-bust, the current caseload represents more than $300,000 in officer pay — a conservative estimate — and that’s before lawyers in the offices of the public defender and district attorney are paid to prosecute and defend the suspects in court.

But no matter how you add it up, it’s a lot of money.

Suhr told the Guardian that apprehending street-level offenders occasionally leads officers to bigger fish. “Sometimes you get a low-level person, or a buyer if you will … if that same person would say, ‘But I know this guy and he has guns and he’s a big dealer and whatever.’ That is a good way to get to those bigger people.”

“We’ve never seen that happen in practice,” Klement countered.

One of Irwin’s clients, a homeless man, was charged with selling narcotics after he scraped out the contents of his pipe to sell 1/1,000th of a gram of crack to an undercover officer for $20. In a rare twist, the case was ultimately settled on a misdemeanor possession of narcotics.

Inspector Robert Doss, who served as the decoy in that case, has earned substantial amounts of overtime while going undercover to buy drugs, according to a court transcript. In 2009 Doss earned $35,488 in combined overtime and “other pay,” which includes time spent testifying in court, according to a San Francisco Chronicle database of municipal salaries.

 

ON THE STREET, OFF THE STREET

The Tenderloin is frequently targeted for buy-busts, with 65 percent of open cases as of June 13 having taken place in that neighborhood. The Haight ranked second, with nearly 12 percent of cases, and the Mission followed with 10 percent. Shortly after District Attorney George Gascón was sworn into his prior post as police chief in 2009, he announced a concerted effort to clean up the Tenderloin, and Klement maintains he’s seen a surge in cases stemming from buy-busts there ever since.

Drug dealing in the Tenderloin often makes the news as a source of frustration to merchants and residents. “You try and explain to the people of San Francisco that it’s okay for people to have open-air drug markets right in front of their stores,” Suhr said.

Yet Klement maintains that what is essentially a quality-of-life crime should not be treated as a felony. “There’s a lot of pressure from people who are invested in businesses [in the Tenderloin] who would love to see that neighborhood become the next Hayes Valley,” he said. “But what they don’t realize is that people are paying with prison for that agenda.”

Once someone has been labeled a drug dealer in the eyes of the law, he said, it becomes more difficult for them to access drug treatment — not to mention get a job, qualify for a student loan, or find housing.

Roberts’ case nearly went to trial. If convicted, she could have been sent to prison for a minimum of three and a maximum of 17 years due to extra penalties from prior convictions. On the eve of the trial, however, the case was settled on a possession charge for a year in jail, a rare outcome. Klement was hoping to have her placed in a treatment program.

Asked if she knew of others swept up in undercover operations, Roberts gave a wry chuckle and gestured to the jail corridor behind her, indicating that nearly everyone there had been taken down in similar fashion. Klement noted that the targets of the buy-busts are almost exclusively people of color, saying, “You walk into the holding cell and you think you’re in Alabama or Mississippi, not San Francisco.”

In an editorial on the subject that he wrote a couple years ago, Klement noted that by contrast, predominantly white middle class people with a fondness for illegal drugs are rarely targeted because they aren’t the ones selling drugs on the street. “The hard truth is that the police ignore most of the middle class drug use and dealing occurring out of private homes in every neighborhood or other public venues in the city — bars, nightclubs, concert halls. More drugs are being transported to Burning Man as we speak than will probably be seized during Gascón’s entire crackdown.”

For Klement, it’s just another symptom of a broken system. “A lot of these people are repeat players because we don’t have the right interventions at the right time,” he said. “We don’t understand addiction.”

 

Yearbook of heartbreak and outrage

Andrew Lam
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Yearbook of heartbreak and outrage

news@sfbg.com

The giant commemorative AIDS ribbon that was up on Twin Peaks during the first half of June has been taken down, but the 30th anniversary of the epidemic, and how it changed San Francisco, is still reverberating throughout the city.

“It was like paradise,” Mark Ottman said as he guided me through the high-ceiling lobby, quiet as a library, of Union Bank on 400 California St. “For a few years. Then things got really scary.”

Ottman, the vice president of personal trust and estate services at the bank, recalled arriving in the city in 1981 as a 22-year-old Montana transplant. That year, the gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter published the word AIDS for the very first time.

Although the paper has been at the forefront of reporting gay news for its 40 years — from White Night Riots of the 1970s through the Lavender Sweep of the 1990s, the Bowers vs. Hardwick decision through the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal — the way it straightforwardly handled the heartbreak of AIDS and the outrage that followed has become its lasting legacy.

“This was not stuff that was shown on the nightly news,” Ottman continued. “The B.A.R. was three or four months ahead in covering AIDS. In that sense, it was really the leader.”

This month, those with a thirst for history will need to look no further than newsprint. Union Bank’s LGBT Alliance has commissioned a retrospective exhibit highlighting the Bay Area Reporter’s coverage of the gay and lesbian community.

When the B.A.R. started in 1971, founders and friends Paul Bentley and Bob Ross had the intention of making it more than just a gossipy guide to bars and bathhouses. The newspaper focused on serious local news — even recruiting Harvey Milk as a political columnist.

“The founders weren’t journalists,” said Rick Gerharter, the longtime freelance photographer who curated the photo- and front page-filled exhibit at Union Bank. “But as the paper grew, it certainly became more professional.”

In 1981, when AIDS first appeared, the B.A.R. had no choice but to undergo a journalistic coming of age as it struggled to be first and be fair covering the mysterious disease that had begun to mow down gay men.

 

UNEASY EARLY AIDS COVERAGE

Yet the newspaper was not immune to the confusion and uneasiness that enveloped the community during the early days of the “gay cancer.”

“Me and my boyfriend both laughed — it must be another Anita Bryant plot against homosexuals,” said Robert Julian, recalling his first response to talk of the “gay-related immunodeficiency” or GRID.

“Gay people are united by sexual orientation, not genetics,” said Julian. Initially, the former B.A.R. entertainment editor and author of But the Show Went On: San Francisco 1987-1988 had his suspicions, thinking that a “physical ailment confined solely to gay people was a practical impossibility.”

It didn’t take long before the B.A.R. began reporting on the latest research, medical resources, and information about financial services available to the hundreds of gay men in San Francisco who had contracted the HIV virus.

Once researchers discovered that AIDS was being transmitted sexually, public opinion divided. Then-Mayor Diane Feinstein and Director of Public Health Mervyn Silverman wanted to close the bathhouses, but some members of the gay community considered this a violation of personal rights.

“There was this repression around gay people and sex, this hysteria around bathhouses,” said Gerharter. And the B.A.R. was hesitant to feed into that frenzy at first. “When it was clear what was really happening, how this thing was being spread around, then it clicked — and the paper really jumped to the forefront of covering what had tuned into an epidemic.”

 

STEAMY BATHHOUSE DEBATE

The paper not only began to cover the AIDS crisis extensively, but did it with an editorial slant that fostered debate in the community. Paul Lorch, then-managing editor, became a prominent voice arguing to keep the bathhouses open. Bathhouses don’t give you AIDS; unprotected sex gives you AIDS, Lorch expressed in strongly-penned editorials. Sometimes he even answered back to Letters to the Editor.

“Lorch and the publishers didn’t believe closing the bathhouses would solve it,” said Wayne Friday, who took over the paper’s political column after Harvey Milk was assassinated and continued it for 27 years. “But no one had an alternative. Diane [Feinstein] would call me at 5 a.m. asking me what we should do about this thing.”

The community was split. Some, including Friday, believed that the bathhouses were a public health hazard while others accused Feinstein of scapegoating. “Those people were being selfish and foolish,” Friday said. “Closing the bathhouses saved lives.”

In 1984 the San Francisco Health Department asked for a court order forbidding renting out private rooms in bathhouses. Without the luxury of privacy, most closed within months. “San Francisco became a blueprint of how to handle AIDS on the city level for the rest of the country,” Friday said.

 

OBITUARIES KEPT SAD TALLY

During this time, the B.A.R. was also keeping a more morbid type of tally: the obituaries. Each week the paper published two pages — 30 to 50 obituaries — until 1998.

“When you picked it up, it was the first thing you turned to,” Gerharter said. “It was just a name and a face. Maybe you recognized the person. Maybe someone you tricked with.”

In 1989, art director Richard Burt became so overwhelmed by the number of obituaries that had been turned in to the B.A.R. within the first 10 months that he wanted to convey the sinking feeling in the pages of the paper. The Nov. 16 issue included a four-page collage of everyone who had passed away due to AIDS that year. Just a name and a face.

“It was heartbreaking,” Julian said, “to see my friends and lovers pictured there.”

Through the efforts of Tom Burtch and the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, a massive searchable online database of B.A.R. obituaries since 1979 was launched in 2009 (www.leifkerdesigns.com/olo/index.jsp).

During his tenure at the paper, Julian chose not to cover AIDS, feeling that the point of entertainment news was to distract away “from the soul-crushing presence of the grim reaper stalking our neighborhoods.”

Though AIDS was a heavily political newsbeat, Friday removed himself from covering it for different reasons. “I knew every elected official. I sat in on all the City Hall meetings about the bathhouses,” Friday said. “But I just couldn’t do it every week. It was too damned personal.”

“Thinking about turning the page to those obituaries even now is making me shiver,” Ottman said. “It’s like a high school reunion, except you don’t know which half made it.”

 

COVERING THE RISE OF ACTIVISM

The B.A.R. was also instrumental in covering the various political and protest actions that accompanied the disease, including the bloody police sweep of ACT-UP protesters the Castro and the Stop AIDS Now or Else blockade of the Golden Gate Bridge, both in 1989.

Gerharter remembers the blockade. “They arranged it for the morning commute. And thank God it was foggy or else the surveillance cameras would have stopped us.”

Gerharter would often be trusted with information about an upcoming demonstration and be the only photographer allowed to tag along. “You can document history better when you become a part of it. You get closer to the people — they’re not posing,” he said. “It was our job to be advocates and watchdogs.”

After consistently seeing the tragedy of AIDS on the front page for almost a decade, the B.A.R. became more active itself, inciting its readers to action. “We’d read the B.A.R. to find out about the rallies were happening so we could skip work and take a road trip to Sacramento,” Ottman said. “The Chronicle would never cover that.”

When the fight against AIDS became a war, the B.A.R.’s writers often felt like they had become war correspondents, complete with all the outsize personality conflict and drama of the classic stereotype.

“[Bob] Ross was a nightmare boss, a pain in the ass, and complete rageaholic,” Julian said of B.A.R.’s often conservative cofounder, who died in 2003. “But he was committed to keeping the paper and us running.”

THE BAY AREA REPORTER 40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT

Through June 30, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.

Union Bank Main Branch

400 California, SF

 

Stage Listings

Maria Poblet
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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. 

 

OPENING

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-29. Previews Fri/24-Sat/25, 8pm; Sun/26, 7pm. Opens Tues/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

BAY AREA

A Raisin in the Sun Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn. View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Previews Thurs/23, 8pm. Opens Fri/24, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 10. Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play comes to life on the Pear Avenue Theatre stage.

Working for the Mouse La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Opens Thurs/23, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 8. Trevor Allen revives his hit solo comedy about working at Disneyland in this Impact Theatre and Black Box Theatre co-production.

 

ONGOING

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

Assassins Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $20-36. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm). Whether the world truly needed a Sondheim musical about the joys of political assassination or not is debatable, but as long as there is one it might as well go for the gusto. Brought to you by Ray of Light Theatre, the folks behind last year’s production of Jerry Springer the Opera, Assassins imbues society’s greatest misfits with quirky relatability. From Joel Roster’s hangdog portrayal of Leon Czolgosz (McKinley’s assassin) to Lisa-Marie Newton’s frazzled Sara Jane Moore (attempted to off Ford), Danny Cozart’s foul-mouthed, Santa Claus-suited, Samuel Byck (out for Nixon) to Gregory Sottolano’s loopy Charles Guiteau (bagged Garfield), the solid cast examines the assassination impulse in a breezy, borderline goofy manner. The production takes a more somber tone when Lee Harvey Oswald (Michael Scott Wells) takes the stage, encouraged by John Wilkes Booth (Derrick Silva) to turn a presumptive suicide attempt into one of assassination, while the other assassins beg him to legitimize their dark impulse through his action. The pacing works best when at its most frenetic, though Silva’s Booth, a pokerfaced elder statesman, lends an air of balancing gravitas. But the true stars of the show might well be the ultra-tight, eight-person house band playing a wide variety of American musical styles from the last 150 years, confidently directed by David Möschler.(Nicole Gluckstern)

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.”

Fighting Mac! Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th St, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.therhino.org. $15-30. Opens Fri/10, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through July 3. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s play about real-life queer British general Hector MacDonald. “Fury Factory 2011” Various venues and prices; www.brownpapertickets.com. Through July 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.

Much Ado About Lebowski Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. $25. Fri/24-Sun/26, 8pm. SF IndieFest and the Primitive Screwheads perform a Shakespeare-inflected take on the Coen Brothers’ classic film.

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

Risk is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival EXIT on Taylor, 227 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. Free. Fri/24-Sat/25, 8pm. Cutting Ball Theater closes its 11th season with a festival of experimental plays, including works by Eugenie Chan, Rob Melrose, and Annie Elias.

The Stops New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed/22-Sat/25, 8pm; Sun/26, 2pm. New Conservatory Theater Center presents a musical comedy set in San Francisco.

A Streetcar Named Desire Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed/22-Sat/25, 8pm. Actors Theatre of San Francisco presents the Tennessee Williams tale.

*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.

Wish We Were Here New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-32. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm. Slacker meets genie in this Michael Phillis comedy.

BAY AREA

Care of Trees Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $17-26. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm; Sun/26, 5pm. E. Hunter Spreen’s Care of Trees, which is receiving an inventively bold world premiere production in Shotgun’s capable hands is at once ambitious yet unsatisfying. The basic plot — “girl meets boy then turns into a tree &ldots; sort of” — is a quirky premise full of untapped potential. With so many possible interpretations of Georgia’s (Liz Sklar) unique predicament, the one that seems most predominant is an unwitting critique of the banality of the self-realization movement. “If I don’t do &ldots; what I see as right, then I’ll be lost to myself,” she tells her understandably frustrated husband Travis (Patrick Russell), as she abruptly shuts off her empathy-meter and bids him to do the same. During isolated pockets of dramatic tension, Georgia is stabbed in an altercation with a tree-hugger, suffers a series of violent seizures, is shuttled off to a battery of clueless doctors, and granted an audience with a Peruvian shaman, yet the underlying significance of actually turning into a tree, is barely explored, certainly never understood. Sklar and Russell turn in standout performances as the forest-crossed lovers, and the canopy of Nina Ball’s inventive set soars, but overall this Tree could stand to develop some stronger roots. (Gluckstern)

Down a Little Dirt Road Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through July 3. A naturalistic family portrait twists itself into a supernatural love knot in Erin Marie Bregman’s first full-length play Down a Little Dirt Road, directed by Molly Aaronson-Gelb. Dad (Anthony Nemirovsky), an earthquake researcher, has moved his family to Parkfield, Calif. for work, but Mom (Lisa Morse) is not with them. Did she die in a plane crash on September 11? Did she vanish into another dimension? Daughter Alice (Alona Bach) has plenty of theories to share, each more earnestly improbable than the last. She is also plagued with recurring nightmares, an unsettling trait she shares with her father. Together they dream of wandering, lost, in a shadow realm, gradually revealed to hold the shade of the missing mother, trying desperately to get back to her daughter while a menacing authority figure (Ryan Tasker) tries to literally pry her memories away. Alona Bach delivers a guileless, pitch-perfect performance as Alice, and her relationship with her stage parents is comfortable and genuine. Berman is clearly playing with the convention of the family-oriented horror story, much like the referenced Roald Dahl classic The Witches, but the ghostly elements prove somewhat problematic in terms of staging and clarity, and while there are a few moments with some serious spine-tingling potential, the overall effect is somewhat flat. (Gluckstern)

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.

*Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm); Wed/22 and Sun/26, 7:30pm (also Sun/26, 2pm). Marin Theatre Company performs Albee’s most divisive play, an erotic thriller-cum-comic allegory.

Let Me Down Easy Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm); Wed/22, 7pm; Sun/26, 2pm. Anna Deavere Smith performs her latest solo show.

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

[title of show] TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $24-42. Wed/22, 7:30pm; Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm); Sun/26, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs a new musical about musicals by Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen. 

 

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
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Schedules are for Wed/22–Tues/28 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:” Rigoletto, performed by Placido Domingo, Sat-Sun, 10am.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” Wed-Sun. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information. Stonewall Uprising (Davis and Heilbroner, 2010), Tues, 7. Free screening.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011), call for dates and times. The Trip (Winterbottom, 2010), call for dates and times. Coppelia, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, Thurs, 7 and Sun, 1. This event, $18. Buck (Meehl, 2011), June 24-30, call for times.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 451 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; (415) 272-2756, www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), Fri, 8; National Velvet (Brown, 1944), Sat, 8.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness” •The Host (Bong, 2006), and Yang Zean (1979), Thurs, call for times.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Music and Nostalgia:” The Blues Brothers (Landis, 1980), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Japanese Divas:” Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953), Wed, 7; Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 1933), Fri, 7; Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi, 1936), Fri, 9; Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956), Sat, 8:45. “The Cult of the Kuchars:” “8mm Films by George and Mike Kuchar,” Thurs, 7; Weather Diary 1 (George Kuchar, 1986), Sat, 6. “Secession from the Broadcast: The Internet and the Crisis of Social Control,” lecture by Gene Youngblood, Sat, 3:30. “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping:” Little Big Man (1970), Sun, 5:30; Night Moves (1975), Sun, 8:10.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. “Midnites for Maniacs:” •The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen, 1985), Wed, 2, 9:15, and Broadway Danny Rose (Allen, 1984), Wed, 7:15. Single film, $7; double feature, $10. Forgetting Dad (Minnich, 2009), Thurs, 7:15, 9:25. The Warriors (Hill, 1979), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat, 2, 4:15). Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (Bowser, 2011), Sun-Tues, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sun, 2, 4:15).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” Wed-Thurs. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information. Making the Boys (Robey, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7:30, 9:30.

SUBTERRANEAN ARTHOUSE 2179 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 540-7185, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. “Innovative California Dance Films,” Fri, 8:30.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA 2011” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. Trust (Kelly and Yamamoto, 2010), Thurs, 8:45. With music by Ash Reiter at 8pm.

TOP OF THE MARK InterContinental Mark Hopkins, One Nob Hill, SF; www.topofthemark.com. Free. Bullitt (Yates, 1968), Tues, 7:30. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. Oki’s Movie (Hong, 2010), Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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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.

FRAMELINE

The 35th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs through Sun/26 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; and Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF. For tickets (most films $9-$15) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

OPENING

Bad Teacher Cameron Diaz don’t need no education. (1:29) Shattuck.

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) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sam Stander)

Cars 2 Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, and others give voice to the autos in this spy-themed Pixar sequel. (1:52) Balboa, Shattuck.

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) Lumiere, Shattuck. (David Getman)

Oki’s Movie See review at www.sfbg.com. (1:20) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

*Viva Riva! Gritty, riveting, and even heartbreaking, Viva Riva!, the first Congolese feature film to get distribution in the states, is much like its small-time crook of an anti-hero, Riva (Patsha Bay Mukuna) — in love with life and prepared to laugh in the face of death when it comes knocking. Director Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s African Movie Academy Award winner tumbles with the grimy details of its Kinshasa, Congo, backdrop, and rarely stumbles. A mere foot soldier in a sprawling crime world, Riva has seized his chance at breaking into the big time, with a score of stolen gasoline, and has returned home. His eyes are on an unlikely prize, Nora (Marie Malone), the well-guarded moll of a Kinshasa gangster. As Riva stalks his lithe prey, he’s tailed by the ruthless Angolan crime boss he’s crossed (Hoji Fortuna) and a local military commander under the thug’s thumb (Marlene Longage). As sexy and violent as a contemporary noir, and as familiar as a folk tale unraveled round a campfire, Viva Riva! holds your attention with all the bruised bravado of its Stagger Lee-like protagonist, catching you in with the way the gorgeous Nora undulates at an outdoor gathering at one moment, then squats in the dirt to take a piss at the next. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

ONGOING

*L’Amour Fou Pierre Thoretton’s documentary L’amour fou opens with two clips of men bidding farewell. The first, from 2002, is of the French-Algerian couturier Yves Saint Laurent announcing his retirement in a moving and emotional speech worthy of his favorite writer Marcel Proust. The second is of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s longtime business partner and former lover, eulogizing his departed friend at the designer’s memorial service six years later. Thoretton’s film is suffused with goodbyes, many tender and candid, some portentous and rehearsed. To be sure, L’amour fou is a touching portrait of the powerful and tempestuous bond between Saint Laurent and Bergé, a bond that lasted close to five decades and resulted in one of the great empires of 20th century fashion. But it is also, alongside David Teboud’s two 2002 YSL documentaries, another entry in the hagiography of Saint Laurent, one cannily steered by Bergé as much as by Thoretton. Well-spoken and charming, Bergé still comes off as the punchy entrepreneurial foil to Saint Laurent’s dazzling but fragile genius. He can be both hyperbolic (praising Saint Laurent’s gifts) but also forthcoming (discussing the designer’s demons). Former muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux are also interviewed, but this is clearly Bergé’s show. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

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) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Beautiful Boy Save the children, but pity the parents. Director-cowriter Shawn Ku’s Beautiful Boy is one of two recent films concerning parents of kids who go on school killing sprees, and it’ll get potentially shortchanged due to the forthcoming We Need to Talk About Kevin‘s head-turning cast and its Hitchcockian literary source material. Still, Beautiful Boy shines in its own humble way, by dint of its quiet sense of integrity and refusal to pander. The bone-deep unhappiness suffusing the family concerned was present long before 18-year-old college student Sammy (Kyle Gallner) picked up a gun, killed more than a dozen people, then took his own life. Surviving parents Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) already kept separate bedrooms under the same roof and led separate lives, with Bill pasting an unsettling grin on for work and Maria relentlessly pushing to make everything all right, neither noticing the barely perceptible warning signs that their only son was succumbing to despair. Belying its title, Beautiful Boy is less focused on the desperate youngster than on the adults attempting to cope with the horror he’s wrought — not necessarily cleaning up after him or picking up the pieces, but somehow finding their way through their own explosive responses. Bolstered by fine performances by Bello and Sheen, it’s yet another installment in the post-9/11 cinema of trauma — this time, attempting to imagine the unimaginable and to comprehend a kind of healing. (1:40) SF Center. (Chun)

*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) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (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) Opera Plaza. (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) Opera Plaza. (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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*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) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*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) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

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) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (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) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer Try not trying so hard, Judy Moody. The tween paperback fave gets an OTT makeover for the cineplex, as director John Schultz and company throw as many bells, whistles, silly new slang, kooky gruesome colors, CGI twinkles, sing-along subtitles, and zany hijinks into the mix as possible, in vain hope of keeping kiddie eyeballs from drifting. Bright-eyed redhead Judy Moody (Jordana Beatty) — think Pippi Longstocking, only way more annoying — is stuck at home for the season, sans most of her pals and parentals, scuttling her plans for a Not Bummer Summer filled with weirdly competitive thrill points (her very own invention) and pointless faux adventures (ditto). Her cute, arty, wack-eee Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) offers some diverting solace, but the summer seems to find its groove only after Judy slimily co-opts younger bro Stink’s (Parris Mosteller) obsession with Bigfoot. Lovers of visceral kid stuff will appreciate Judy and mob’s affection for pee and puke references — too bad the entire enterprise just reeks of very bummer desperation. (1:31) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

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) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Stander)

*Making the Boys In 1968 The Boys in the Band revolutionized Broadway and opened a lot of minds by being a hit play (and film) about NYC homosexuals. Yet on the cusp of “Gay Liberation” and for many years thereafter, much of the actual gay community hugely objected to author Mart Crowley’s fictive portrait of its ‘mos as insular, shallow, classist, bitchy, and guilt-ridden. It was (as interviewee Edward Albee notes here) a picture ideally suited to straight Broadway audiences who lined up to see queers rendered pitiful if still identifiably human. Crayton Robey’s absorbing documentary chronicles the bumpy road of Boys and its creators — Crowley never had another hit, floundering until he moved into TV series scripting. The cast of the 1970 movie version, directed by William Friedkin (one year before The French Connection, followed by The Exorcist), saw their big break turn into a virtual industry blacklisting. Exceptions were unimpeachably heterosexual thespians Laurence Luckinbill and Cliff Gorman, who only “played” gay. This engrossing document recalls a work that trailblazed, was rejected as politically correct, then re embraced as an important touchstone in gay visibility and self-empowerment. (1:33) Roxie. (Harvey)

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) Albany, Balboa, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (1:35) 1000 Van Ness.

*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)

Submarine (1:37) Opera Plaza, SF Center.

*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) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness. (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) Bridge, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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) California, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (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) Albany, Clay, 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) Lumiere. (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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

 

Psychic Dream Astrology: June 22-28

Maria Poblet
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0

Happy Homo Pride, San Francisco. May your gayest dreams come true!

ARIES

March 21-April 19

You have everything you need within you to make the right choices, Aries. Let go of attachments that unnecessarily limit you and keep your vision affixed on where you want to be in your relationships. Trust your gut.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Things may not be where you want them to be, sweet Bull, but that’s just the Universe’s way of getting you to change. Take motivation from what’s not working in your life to create much needed adjustments.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Don’t pile stuff on top of crap, Gemini. Release your gloomy feelings by taking care of your saddened heart before you start to try and create new securities. Mourn what’s lost before you move on to the next thing.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

As changes develop all around you, you need to stop horoscopin’ and get copin’! Predicting the future won’t absolve you of the work you need to do. Quit worrying and get constructive. The future will come; make it a good one.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

This week it’s high time you were decisive. Take responsibility for how you are behaving and make sure it lines up with what you actually want. Stop making excuses and start (wo)man-ing up, Leo.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

If you gauge your success solely based on the approval of others, this is gonna be a hard week, Virgo. Figure out what you want and be brave enough to go for it — one step at a time.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Invest in the quality of your relationships this week, Libra. Mend the seams of your old connections and strengthen the foundations of your new ones. Your future self will super-appreciate it.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Deal with your anxieties by focusing on all the things you’re grateful for, no matter how small or big they are. You are going in the right direction, so don’t let your worries trip you up. Redirect your attention to the good stuff.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

It’s time that you deal with the foundations of your own welfare. It’s all about paying your bills on time, eating right, and returning your phone calls. Think about improving your quality of life from the ground up this week.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

You are in a spiritual doorway, Capricorn, and you’re simultaneously leaving something behind and moving toward something new. For best results, be open to doing things differently from the way you’ve been doing them in them in the past.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

You’re okay, but that doesn’t mean you don’t hurt. Take care of yourself by feeling your feelings this week, even if they suck. You are just about to move into a new phase; don’t bring your old heartaches with you.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Your circumstances are changing and it’s time to get ready for something new to enter into your life. Get a clear vision of what you want from your relationships so that when it comes, you’ll be certain to recognize it.

 

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 16 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.

Alerts

Maria Poblet
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0

ALERTS

 By Jackie Andrews

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 23


Radical Women meeting

Attend this round-up of radical women and LGBTQ organizers who work hard to improve their communities to fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, and labor exploitation. Tonight there will be a light summer supper followed by a discussion and brainstorming session inspired by the “It Gets Better” campaign — a national group that provides hope for queer youth around the country. Collaborate with like-minded people who want to make change happen at home and help hammer out a plan to translate the mission of the “It Gets Better” campaign to our local queer community’s needs.

6:15 p.m., $7.50

New Valencia Hall

625 Larkin, SF

(415) 864-1278

www.radicalwomen.org

 

Medicare for all

Many progressives around the country are less than enthusiastic with the current administration’s reform on health care, which they see as a sellout to corporate interests. The San Francisco chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America presents this public forum on the topic, where Don Bechler, a tireless organizer for single-payer healthcare since 1994, and clinical psychologist Stephen Berman will discuss just how close we are to having a truly universal healthcare.

7 p.m., free

Unitarian Universalist Center

Martin Luther King Room

1187 Franklin, SF

(415) 776-4580

www.pdaamerica.org

 

SATURDAY, JUNE 25


People’s Movement assembly

Attend this community forum and planning session for next year’s East Bay Social Forum — inspired by the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit last June where more than 20,000 diverse people came together to build strong progressive movements for housing, health, justice, education, immigration, ecology, and peace.

9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., free

Lutheran Church of the Cross

1744 University, Berk.

(510) 848-1424

www.eastbaysocialforum.org

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 28


Clean Air Act

Find out how the Clean Air Act, signed into law by President Nixon in 1970, is the U.S.’s most important and successful law for controlling air pollution and why it is our best hope in curbing climate change. If used effectively, it could significantly reduce greenhouse gases to a level deemed safe by climatologists. Learn how the Clean Air Act works, what kinds of threats it faces from Congress, and how it can be used to protect the planet and our future.

7–10 p.m., free

Unitarian Universalists’ Hall

1744 University, Berk.

(510) 841-4824

www.bfuu.org 

 

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.

Treasure Island: 11 ayes, no sight

Andrew Lam
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6
Treasure Island: 11 ayes, no sight

On June 7, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 to reject an appeal of the Treasure Island environmental impact report. The appeal was brought by Arc Ecology and our colleagues the Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Wild Equity, former Sup. Aaron Peskin, and Yerba Buena Island resident Ken Masters.

The board will tell you that the Department of City Planning and the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development found the appeal lacking in merit.

In the appeal, we claimed the EIR lacked the specificity to qualify as a project EIR, which means that after it passes, the city will have substantially limited the ability of any future Board of Supervisors to address the project’s actual environmental impacts. But these impacts cannot and will not be known until actual development proposals, none of which presently exist, are made.

Sup. Jane Kim and city planning staffers argued that the EIR had almost too much specificity. For example, without showing a single confirming diagram, project sponsors claimed they could cut as many as 100 stories off the proposed skyscrapers — yet keep the same number of condos without increasing the bulk, height, or number of buildings in the overall project. How? Through the Harry Potter-like magic of “flex buildings and zones.”

The board will tell you that this project presents a vision of a new community unrivaled in the Bay Area and nation — a new Athens. But the supervisors don’t seem to realize that it’s a development with a population larger than Emeryville, about the size of Albany. Indeed, the separate dedicated buildings of affordable homes truly make Treasure Island like Athens of old, with poorer people segregated from the rich.

They don’t see that this is a self-reflecting vision blithely unconcerned about the impacts it will have on the greater Bay Area region, and that it’s a bloated project that will vastly exceed the region’s capacity to support it. It’s a project whose impacts will enslave legions of people to longer commutes as more cars flood the bridge, pushing traffic like rising sea levels into the upper reaches of East Bay freeways. Nor are project proponents particularly concerned about the impacts of air pollution blowing from the bridge and the region’s freeways into Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland.

Finally, neither the supervisors, nor the city planners, nor the Office of Economic and Workforce Development seem to be aware that San Francisco currently has 30,000 vacant housing units. It will cost a projected $577,000 to build each Treasure Island unit. But more units could be built on San Francisco’s mainland with almost no impact, simply by allowing rental units in the basements of some of our stock of 130,000 single-family homes.

That kind of housing isn’t as luxurious as a 45-story view of the bay from Treasure Island perhaps — but at a cost of $100,000 to $200,000 per unit, more than half of those in-law apartments could be rented at or below market rate. Infill housing of that sort would also mean greater stability for established home owners, more jobs and business opportunities, and more riders for Muni.

Still, the appellants weren’t trying to halt any project at Treasure Island. The appeal was about was fixing the deficiencies in the EIR and right-sizing the project so it can move forward with its benefits intact.

In the Tarot, the Five of Cups depicts an individual so besotted by that possibilities floating before his eyes that he stands mesmerized, believing they are at hand — of course, in reality he’s fooling himself. In the case of Treasure Island, the supervisors and city officials are intoxicated by the visions floating in the bay — and are thus blinded to the better options of making this city and region more sustainable and affordable.

Ready for takeoff

Andrew Lam
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0
Ready for takeoff

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Life partners running a dance company together is rare, and when it happens the couple usually keeps responsibilities distinct. In ballet, Gerald Arpino and Robert Joffrey did it for many years; Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary are making a go of it in Los Angeles. In modern dance, it is simply unheard of. Modern dance companies are one-man or one-woman affairs. But no longer: Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton have broken the mold.

A couple for the last 15 years, they plunged into choreographing together in 2007 with the splendidly original String Wreck. In 2009, they raised the ante with The Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories, which used a movement choir — something Moulton had perfected in his Precision Ball Passing works — of student performers and Garrett’s professional dancers. Now they have refined that model.

The exhilarating The Experience of Flight in Dreams was a wondrous meditation on the idea of being liberated from the boundaries and restrictions — physical and intellectual — that tie us down. With Experience, Garrett and Moulton have, in fact, taken flight. This new work tightly integrates the dancers and the choir into a propulsive whole without infringing on the essential identities between the two groups.

The choir was used ingeniously. Their many hands allowed the dancers to fly or float or swoop and dive. With their fingers, they delineated individual portraits. But they also became obstacles to be overcome and roads to be traveled. At one point supine on the floor, they were the dead calling out to dancer Nol Simonse.

The choreography for the five professional dancers was so fragmented and high-pitched that the relative calm of the choir’s activity created balance. Their unisons were also much less regimented; they were alive and filled with breath.

There were dreamers of many kinds in Experience. Dudley Flores was a loner who, encased by supporting arms, periodically woke up and tried to reach for the beyond. He finally succeeded at the end when, carried above the heads of everyone, he became a living image of transcendence — though it wasn’t an image I found convincing.

There was also the petite dynamo Tanya Bello and Yu-Mien Wu in spitfire encounters of kicks, rolls, and lock-steps. When carried aloft by the choir, Bello and Wu looked as if they had sunk into pillows and seemed slightly surprised at what happened to them. Wu is a stunning newcomer with a bravura elevation and leaps that hang in the air forever. He didn’t, however, need such a long solo to prove the point.

Simonse and Carolina Czechowska’s duet had a twitchy but distanced intensity to it as they tried to make contact. Simonse’s dream was a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake up. Like a wounded soldier who comes home, he couldn’t open his fists, no matter how hard he tried. Carried out by the choir, he looked like he had been crucified, or was a carcass. Always an intense artist, he outdid himself in this show.

But not all of Experience‘s dreams were lofty and profound. Some were earthy and simple, like a high-spirited social encounter to some gypsy music. Or Flores and Simonse in a hilarious, gesture-driven meet in which they went at each other, as a friend observed, like two roosters. Or perhaps Bello who, for the heck of it, interrupted a solemn proceeding with a running, screaming fit that, no surprise here, became infectious.

In the penultimate section, the choir hoisted and lowered big panels of fabric that created billowing waves the dancers had to pass through (not unlike the worshippers did in the “Wade in the Water” section of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations). Perhaps it was meant as a transition to the finale. It didn’t seem to make much sense.

Garrett and Moulton work well together; they also choose excellent collaborators. Foremost among them was group of eight top-flight musicians who, under the guidance of Jonathan Russell, played one of the most deliciously appropriate dance scores that has been heard in these parts in a long time (along with the absolute pleasure of having live music). Oana Botez Ban’s red and black palette for the costumes worked well, as did Jacob Petrie’s supportive lighting design.

Gamer road trip: E3 report!

Andrew Lam
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0
Gamer road trip: E3 report!

If last week’s E3 press conferences in Los Angeles are any indication, game consoles are no longer just about games. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, the year’s biggest video game industry event, lavishly presented gamers with a sneak peek at the most-anticipated titles and hardware goodies looking to lighten wallets later this year. But as more blockbuster game franchises are released simultaneously on the Wii, PlayStation, and Xbox, it’s become imperative for their parent companies to differentiate themselves — and traditional gaming has begun to take a back seat to this broad experimentation.

Along those lines, Microsoft attempted to guide itself out of the corner it had painted itself into following the huge sales of Kinect, the camera device that quickly became the fastest-selling consumer electronic of all time. Microsoft has been lacking significant game releases for Kinect owners, making this year’s release slate integral to satisfying the new and unexpectedly large consumer base. An upcoming Xbox interface allowing users to control other entertainment like Netflix and live TV by voice seemed to be a hit, as was the announcement of Kinect controls for traditional games like Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Microsoft undoubtedly launched Kinect to compete with the draw of Nintendo’s family-friendly Wii, and the device’s appeal to the more serious gamer is a delicate maneuver that these franchises could help accomplish.

In the PlayStation camp, Sony made a speedy apology for the PlayStation Network outage that has battered its reputation for the past two months and piggybacked its return with announcements for bundles, deals, and partnerships offering consumers considerable content for their respective price points. Presenting these products as “gifts” to consumers was an interesting approach to mitigating ire over the network snafu. All business, Sony’s presentation was the least titillating but perhaps most solid of the conferences.

No more beating around the bush: the biggest question going into E3 2011 was “What is Nintendo’s new console?” Leaked information that pointed to a new, more powerful console was confirmed when Nintendo announced the Wii U, a console with a touchscreen controller capable of streaming games to your hands — with or without a television screen. Actual game announcements were left to the newly-launched 3DS and surprises were scarce: tried-and-true franchises Mario Kart, Starfox, and The Legend of Zelda. While the possibilities for Wii U initially seem vast, the console’s true nature — and that of its “revolutionary” controller — remains nebulous. There’s the potential for an HD system to recapture Nintendo’s diminishing hardcore audience, but right now the Wii U looks like another stab at cornering families and casual players.

Third-party publishers care less about console revolutions and more about good ol’ fashioned video games. Electronic Arts stuck to its guns, offering concrete gameplay footage and loud (loud!) speakers that shook the Orpheum Theatre with Battlefield 3 explosions. The Battlefield franchise is looking to take Call of Duty head-on this year, and time will tell if players favor authenticity over that series’ scripted bombast. Either way, Battlefield 3 is one pretty game. EA also made a strong go at providing social networking experiences that augment traditional play, and offered them all for free — perhaps a dig at Activision’s recent announcement it will offer paid subscriptions to a similar Call of Duty social experience.

Inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, many newly-announced games were playable or shown in demo form. Highlights: Uncharted 3‘s two gameplay demos both boasted a top-tier knack for exciting set-pieces and storytelling, and it is the first game to truly suggest the power 3-D can add to the gameplay experience. BioShock Infinite was unmatched in attention to detail with its departure to a city-in-the-clouds backdrop. And Mass Effect 3 finally gave gamers a glimpse of Earth’s destruction in a short demo that demonstrated massive carnage and a surprisingly-affecting level finale. There were tears in a few eyes, folks.

E3 2011 was less about this or that game, and more about the process of evolving your traditional game console into an entertainment center where you surf the Web, watch movies, and even take the experience on the go. Nintendo was eager to suggest the new home applications its controller might afford, and Microsoft and Sony focused on expanding new possibilities for their current hardware through Kinect and Sony’s motion device, PlayStation Move. As more and more of the public identify as gamers, this is the playing field expanding to allow for different types of game experiences. Even so, games like Battlefield 3, Uncharted 3, and Mass Effect 3 suggest traditional gaming is more than up to the competition a broader user base might bring. 

 

The ol’ Vic-trola

Andrew Lam
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0
The ol’ Vic-trola

arts@sfbg.com

SOUND TO SPARE The potential closing of Haight Street’s Red Vic Theater has unsettled me. With one less place to go out and enjoy, what’s a shut-in-prone type like me to do?

Fortunately, when I spoke to Sam Sharkey, one of the co-op’s managing partners, he offered a ray of hope by saying that the Red Vic Movie House is here, organized — it just partnered with the Haight Street Fair and the California Jug Band Association for a benefit — and best of all, still screening movies, some of them music-related.

Let me take a breath for a minute to reflect and appreciate some of the carefully curated films I’ve encountered at this fine establishment. I’ve transcended the mundane through Ziggy Stardust’s gender-bending, screwed-up-eyes stage persona in Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Director D.A. Pennebaker, better known for documenting Bob Dylan in the 1960s, tried his hand at capturing the Bowie in full glam garb during a 1973 tour. Mick Ronson shreds on guitar to undeniably comical proportions. I recall the audience cracking up, something you just don’t get when you’ve opted to Netflix at home.

The less acclaimed — but equally gorgeous — somber sounds of a pop-star- turned-recluse proved to be quite a treat. Scott Walker: 30th Century Man (2006) was one of those films I didn’t know I needed to see, until the rainy day someone sent me a YouTube link to his song “It’s Raining Today.” The opening atmospheric sounds alone on this track are enough to captivate, but as it moves forward into Walker’s commanding crooning voice, you realize that he has the ability to convey dread and beauty at once. The film is a concrete testament to his influence on contemporary musicians.

Later I was given the soundtrack to boxing’s “Rumble in the Jungle,” set in early 1970s Zaire, where a showcase of mostly familiar soul artists pulled off a hugely successful stadium concert. Soul Power (2008) sort of serves as a musical counterpart to 1996’s When We Were Kings, which was the cinematic predecessor dealing with the same Ali vs. George fight. The symbolic implications of the event for African and African American pride are brought to the fore, and the concept of power is examined, whether it is achieved physically, politically or even musically.

Sharkey said that declining attendance was the Red Vic’s main obstacle. Single-screen theaters aren’t as much of a sustainable business anymore, as evidenced by the number that have closed in the last 10 to 20 years. The Castro Theatre and the Roxie in the Mission seem to be surviving, though — I wondered why people weren’t coming out for movies in the Haight anymore. Was it a bad rap from all the sit-lie buzz? Sharkey didn’t seem convinced on that argument, trusting that his patrons wouldn’t buy into that hype. He leaned toward more technology, calling this an age of competition and noting that the accessibility of movies via broadband Internet is just too convenient.

If you’re a music fan who wants to help curb the trend against local establishments falling by the wayside, then the no-brainer is to hit the Red Vic for the following music films. Rock out for the cause — or you may end up drowning in a sea of Whole Foods.

June 26-28, Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune. The unsung 1960s antiwar folksinger (who doesn’t mind taking a backseat to Dylan) gets the full doc treatment.

July 14, The Hippie Temptation. Vintage 1967 footage of the Haight-Ashbury scene in its glorious heyday as seen through the eyes of CBS News. Originally aired on TV, this “hilariously biased” take on flower power should have you craving the street peddlers’ wares immediately after the show.

July 15-16, Stop Making Sense. Classic Talking Heads circa 1984 at L.A.’s Pantages Theatre. Watching a jittery David Byrne working the crowd in his oversized boxy white suit should be worth the price of admission alone.

July 19-20, The Last Waltz. This one’s cool for a couple of reasons. First, it’s directed by Martin Scorsese and, second, it captures The Band’s final show at San Francisco’s old Winterland Ballroom, a place I’ve often dreamed of seeing a show.

Schizoid trickster

Andrew Lam
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0
Schizoid trickster

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Tyler, the Creator makes schizophrenic music. At least four entangled voices riddle his latest effort on XL Recordings, Goblin, the follow-up to his self-produced, rapped, and designed debut, Bastard, which he released on Tumblr.com in late 2009. One of those voices is some sort of inner conscience or demon, a pitched down grumble of bass, that doubles as Tyler’s obsequious therapist. But it also takes on the roll of ethical advisor and spiritual consultant: Tyler, you’re right to feel that way; people do like you; you shouldn’t kill all your friends. Even Tyler’s conscience disintegrates into corroded delusions and anxiety. Meanwhile, Tyler, at 20 years old, is an uncompromising, violent, self-hating, offensive, sexually repressed, obnoxious, yet sometime charming and funny protagonist who growls and spews partially digested rhymes over off-syncopated drum programming and synthetic keyboard washes.

The therapist conscience is a foil for Tyler’s caustic self-reflection in Goblin. This dynamic allows for multiple layers of inner dialogue, which subside only when other members of Los Angeles’ Odd Future collective (short for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) give Tyler’s disturbed and heavily claustrophobic mental space some breathing room. Frank Ocean, the only member of the crew above the drinking age, waxes sincere R&B verses in “She,” bringing into contrast how Tyler’s unfulfilled desire for his lust interest degenerates into anger, voyeurism, and eventually, fantasies of possession. With Hodgy Beats, Tyler is hungriest on “Sandwitches.” Who the fuck invited ‘Mr. I Don’t Give a Fuck’/ Who cries about his daddy and a blog because his music sucks, he raps, before flipping the chorus of “Wolf Gang” into a call to arms for all who feel slighted by the establishment, any establishment.

In response to the rapid escalation of media attention circling Odd Future since last winter (which perhaps recently climaxed in a lengthy New Yorker article on the mysterious disappearance of member Earl Sweatshirt), Tyler negates excessively: the hip-hop blogs that gave him no love, kids with comfortable homes and families, music critics, moralists who accuse him of homophobia and misogyny. Tyler stands for defiance and offensiveness, rejection and swag, bastards and goblins, skateboards, skating apparel, and the simple joys of juvenile delinquency.

Another voice in Goblin is a rare appearance: some sort of helium-intoxicated creature. It slightly echoes Madlib’s incarnation of gratuitous violence in the Quasimoto character, culled straight from a Melvin Van Peebles’ film trailing a black man’s escape and redemption from the systematic violence brought to bear on his body in America’s inner city. But there’s not much of a redeeming light in Goblin. And the source of Tyler’s frustration and belligerent lashing out is all the more obscure. The record is thoroughly dystopian, despite its pretensions to comedy — a lonely soul trying to find its way in a desolate and often antagonistic world.

Tyler shares as much in spirit with the paranoid hallucinations of the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” minus the lighthearted melody, as with Eminem’s confessional tirades. Moments of vulnerability seem to, if not justify the violent outrage, then at least make it bearable (and for a certain listener, endearing). The critique in Goblin, if there is any critique, might be one of taking the system more seriously than it takes itself. The record is neither ironic nor detached, but a head-on dive into the gluttony of indulgences that comprise popular culture and much of everyday life today, as well as the psychological pain and alienation that the system manufactures in its wayside.

Goblin is not much of a crossover album, either. There aren’t many hooks to hold onto since much of the schizoid discourse replaces formal pop structures. It’s a sprawling record, some songs inching toward 10 minutes. The most memorable hook is the anarchic anthem of “Radicals” in which “Kill people! Burn shit! Fuck school!” is yelled in a repetitive chant. It’s hackneyed and silly enough to make you cringe. But the chant makes more sense when Odd Future performs live (let me tell you, shit is wild), where a sea of teenagers, and those of teen spirit, tap into the sort of rebellious energy you thought had dispersed into the dust of musical archives. This seduction also comes through in the recording. The beat fumbles sickly and the distorted melodic slime falls away to empty pockets of sound where Tyler calls to the listener: “Odd future, wolf gang. We came together cause we had nobody else. Do you? You just might be one of us. Are you?”

ODD FUTURE

Tues/21, 8 p.m., $20

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness Ave., SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

Crying in public

Andrew Lam
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0
Crying in public

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL Weaving my way through the groups of slower moving shoppers and tourists ambling out of the Powell Street BART Station, I realized I was already too late.

I had wanted to be present for the June 11 noon kickoff of Market Day — the large-scale public art event tied to Allison Smith’s current Southern Exposure exhibit “The Cries of San Francisco” — but when I reached Mint Plaza and had been handed a schedule I saw that my timing had been off by an hour.

Oh well. The point of Market Day wasn’t to necessarily be at a certain place at a certain hour to see a certain something. The “something” was supposedly happening all around me. The nearly 70 Bay Area artists, performers, and craftspeople Smith had gathered for this ambitious public art project had dispersed throughout Mint Plaza, and up and down Market Street between Fifth and Third streets, to peddle their wares (many homemade), offer more ineffable “services” (such as owning the expletive of your choice or telling you a story), or to simply “perform” in “character.”

The criers were to be like tiny pebbles subtly altering the fast-moving watercourse of weekend foot traffic. Granted, participation is hard to measure for something like “The Cries of San Francisco,” but wherever I turned, people seemed engaged even if the number of folks documenting a given artist seemed to greatly outnumber the members of the public they were interacting with.

I decided I needed a little more intimacy if I was to get my feet wet. I started back toward Market and ran into a woman dressed in steampunk-ish attire. Her name was Jamie Venci, a.k.a. the Questing Choreographer (each participating artist conveniently had a large nametag). She offered me an informative pamphlet about one of three historic buildings in the vicinity that had survived the 1906 earthquake if I promised to carry out the site-specific choreography contained within.

I agreed, and for convenience’s sake, I went with the Mint Building. Not five minutes later, I was on the steps of “the Granite Lady” attempting to convey the shape of its crenellated outline with my arms — per a step in Venci’s cutely drawn instructions — in what must have looked like a particularly inept approximation of tai chi.

Conceptual art requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of its audience. I was not merely being ridiculous in public, but was publicly enacting a new relationship to a space I had not really considered too closely before. I, as much as Venci, was the Questing Choreographer, and together we had collaborated on a piece.

The satisfaction I took in my demonstration of good faith was fleeting, as questions took over. What had passersby thought about what I was doing? And how could they really have anything to think about without some context for my undertaking? If a person dresses up in a colorful manner in San Francisco and carries on in public does anyone raise an eyebrow, let alone pause to consider the host of artistic and economic concerns that “The Cries of San Francisco” aimed to bring to the streets?

Materials for the event cited Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire to protest police harassment, as well as Carol Reed’s 1968 film version of the musical Oliver! as representational precedents. But despite the presence of Art for a Democratic Society’s Class War Store cart full o’ Marxism, the tenor of many of the criers was more playful than revolutionary. Whimsy was the order of the day.

Ha Ha La (Nathaniel Parsons) pushed around an “amusement park,” a steep ladder that participants would gingerly climb up and down while Parsons bellowed a New Age-y chant affirming their bravery and blessedness through a conch shell. After I took my turn on the rickety structure, I chose a souvenir badge that read, “You don’t have to behave you just gotta be brave.”

Also hard to miss was Maria de los Angeles Burr, who, as the Unsellable, had transformed herself into a walking pile of paper bags. “I have become burdened by too many possessions,” she muttered to me, as confused shoppers exiting from the Westfield Centre stopped to take pictures or gawked while hurrying on their way.

I wondered if they got the visual pun, or would simply move on and tune out the other criers much in the same way many of us avoid other solicitors like petitioners or canvassers.

I also wondered what the Market Street regulars — the men who sell cheap earrings, bootleg Giants merchandise, and faux-cashmere scarves from tables or the young hip-hop dancers who busk near the Powell Street cable car turnaround — thought about the criers. Did they view them as competition? As a friendly change-of-scene? Or did they see them at all?

By 4:30 p.m., all the criers had reconvened at Mint Plaza. They seemed tired from their day of art-making and being “on.” Continuing at a full clip, however, were tweens Colin Cooper and Cole Simon, by far the loudest and youngest hawkers, who had set up shop as the Masters of Disguise (one of their parents informed me that their after-school art teacher, a California College of the Arts student, had encouraged them to get involved with the project).

I walked away from our genial encounter $1 poorer but with a pair of plastic pink sunglasses and an orange mustache to my name. I felt braver with them on.

The carnival continues: the gallery installation component of “The Cries of San Francisco” is up until early next month and will host a series of performance events. Future Saturday marketplaces are scheduled for two Saturdays, June 18 and July 2 (noon to 6 p.m.). And on Wednesday, June 15 at 7 p.m., various criers will present a showcase of musical storytelling, speeches, and other forms of public address.

THE CRIES OF SAN FRANCISCO

Through July 2

Southern Exposure

3030 20th St., SF

(415) 893-1841

www.soex.org

 

In spite of himself

Andrew Lam
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In spite of himself

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Apparently Steve Coogan in no way cares if you think he’s an asshole. Fitting, then, that he has perfected an onscreen persona as vain and insecure as it is vapid and self-indulgent. Playing a fictionalized version of oneself has always been a tricky proposition, but Coogan has taken the gambit of self-portrayal-as-schmuck to the level of masochistic brilliance (Larry David, take note). Why would someone this purportedly insecure want to expose himself for the insecure mess that he is? Who cares? In The Trip, comedy as self-flagellation goes down with the ease of an expertly mixed cocktail at a Michelin-starred eatery.

Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom, who previously worked with British actor Coogan in 2005’s Brechtian Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and the 2002 cult fave 24 Hour Party People, humiliates Coogan (2008’s Tropic Thunder) on all number of levels 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.

Ironically, the “real” Coogan’s persona is rooted in a fictional character. Alan Partridge, the sniveling talk show host Coogan has embodied in all his vile glory for nearly two decades, has come to virtually define him not only as an actor but also, perversely, as a man. Partridge’s penchant for clueless assholery has reached legendary proportions in the United Kingdom, and the Coogan-is-Partridge attitude is clearly widespread. “Is it true what they say about you?” a young man asks before holding up a copy of the Daily Mail with the screaming headline “Coogan is a Cunt.” Yes, it’s part of the actor’s dream sequence, but it nicely folds his rampant insecurity together with the affirmation that (as seen in The Trip, anyway) he is indeed pretty much just that.

Coogan displays all the characteristically carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception in between dining on haute cuisine and being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career. His happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy, comic actor Rob Brydon (his Tristram Shandy costar, also playing himself here), is subjected to constant denigration during their travels but takes it all in stride. “I’d love to quote your work back at you, but I don’t know any of it,” Coogan jabs after Brydon does a spot-on Partridge. A particular highlight is the much-vaunted scene featuring the pair’s dueling Michael Caine impressions.

While Coogan can’t help but come off like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat, somehow his confused narcissism is our perverse panacea. Also be sure to enjoy the snot martinis and scallops, as well as Brydon’s gleeful “small man in a box” routine. Just don’t be put off by the schadenfreude. Coogan insists.

THE TRIP opens Fri/17 in Bay Area theaters.

 

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