Print Sections Archives — Page 196 of 493 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Scumlords settle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

news@sfbg.com

Five years after the Guardian’s award-winning, three-part series about how representatives for the Lembi family allegedly engaged in illegal and unethical tactics intended to force protected renters from their homes (“The Scumlords,” March 2006), City Attorney Dennis Herrera has concluded contentious negotiations to reach a multimillion dollar settlement with CitiApartments and other Lembi-controlled corporations.

The two sides have agreed on a settlement worth anywhere between $1 million and $10 million to the city, depending on the crumbling real estate empire’s future worth and whether the Lembi family decides to “forever cease property management operations within the City and County of San Francisco — permanently and irrevocably,” as the City Attorney’s Office put it.

That agreement and an injunction barring the landlords from future harassment of tenants was scheduled for submission to San Francisco Superior Court on March 29 and still must be approved by a judge, although that is usually pro forma in cases like this in which both sides have agreed to the terms.

In its lawsuit, the city alleged that the defendants “employed a business model that systematically and unlawfully dispossessed long-term residential tenants of their rent-controlled apartments, leaving defendants free to make significant unpermitted renovations and to re-rent those newly renovated units at dramatically increased market rates.

“Ostensibly, this illegal business model enabled Lembi family interests to aggressively outbid competing investors for perhaps hundreds of residential properties throughout San Francisco,” the complaint continued, further alleging that the defendants’ business entities were organized and operated in such a way that they were “the alter egos of defendants Frank Lembi, Walter Lembi, and David Raynal.”

The defendants disputed those claims, the injunction notes, “by reaching a settlement and agreeing to injunctive terms and payment of civil penalties, defendants are not admitting any wrongdoing or making any admission of liability.”

But the City Attorney’s Office said that this is “the most exhaustively detailed settlement in memory, and the strongest possible agreement to protect the public interest.” And Herrera told us that the settlement reflects “the pervasiveness of the conduct” the city looked at, regarding tenant treatment and the litigation process.

“So, it was necessary to get as tough and detailed an injunction as possible to ensure that tenants will be protected going forward, and in terms of trying to extract a maximum dollar settlement,” Herrera told us. “For us, their conduct is the most important thing, but the financial penalties are not insignificant. This ensures they do business under strict circumstances, play by the rules, and do not present a threat to tenants. But if they want to leave, obviously, there’s a dollar amount connected to that.”

The lowest possible settlement, $1 million, requires the Lembi companies to quickly get out of the rental business in San Francisco. The settlement comes almost five years after Herrera first filed suit against CitiApartments — and 18 months after former CitiApartments’ tenants sued the Lembi empire (see “SF vs. Frank Lembi,” 10/6/2009), following a financial crash that involved banks foreclosing on dozens of the group’s properties (see “Triumph of tenacity,” 6/1/2010).

The City Attorney’s litigation included evidence from tenants and other witnesses identified by former Guardian reporter G.W. Schultz, and Herrera credited the Guardian with originating the case. CitiStop, a coalition of labor and tenants groups, also referred tenants and helped the case, and almost 300 tenants and witnesses came forward after the city’s 2006 filing.

The City Attorney’s Office noted that Herrera amended his original complaint three times to fully capture the Lembi family’s “byzantine array of business entities, trusts, and partnerships within the scope of the lawsuit,” fighting through corporate stall tactics that were the subject of fines issued by the courts.

Even after their unscrupulous tactics were exposed, the Lembis continued to be celebrated by business groups such as the San Francisco Apartment Association, although city officials told us “real estate observers had long speculated that the Lembi family’s unlawful business model was ultimately unsustainable. And the severe economic downturn that began in late 2008 appears to have been cataclysmic for the aspiring real estate empire.”

Selling the Tenderloin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

3

steve@sfbg.com

Nobody wants Twitter to leave San Francisco, even if there is disagreement about whether it’s a good idea to give the company an estimated $47 million tax break to stay. But the most unsettling aspects of this deal are the unexplained, dramatic expansion of the tax giveaway zone and the unsupported claims that it will “revitalize” the mid-Market and Tenderloin areas without gentrifying them.

Nonetheless, the legislation creating a six-year payroll tax holiday for new jobs is on the fast track for approval after the Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Subcommittee sent it on to the full board for consideration on April 5, denying the request by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and other critics of the deal that the public be allowed to comment on a community benefits agreement with Twitter that is still being negotiated.

The deal was crafted mostly by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, starting last year under Mayor Gavin Newsom (who has close ties to Twitter and its would-be landlord, Shorenstein Properties LLC) and seamlessly continuing under Mayor Ed Lee. For top OEWD staffers Jennifer Matz and Amy Cohen, keeping big businesses happy is a core mission, so their advocacy for this tax-cut package isn’t really surprising. It’s an article of faith with them.

David Chiu, the board president and mayoral candidate who is cosponsoring the measure, also professes a basic faith in the power of cutting business taxes and has a particular disdain for the payroll tax, which he calls a “job killer.” Chiu, who supported extending the payroll tax holiday for biotech companies last year, says this deal is consistent with his fiscally conservative approach to economic development and has even suggested doing similar tax exclusions in other San Francisco neighborhoods.

But the motivations are less clear for two other key proponents of the measure: Sup. Jane Kim and Randy Shaw, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic director and self-styled power broker for a part of town that he’s been seeking rebrand as Uptown.

Kim told us that she’s a progressive who philosophically opposes these sorts of supply-side economic schemes, but that she decided to champion the measure to keep Twitter from leaving and address blight in the neighborhood. Yet that doesn’t explain why she has drastically expanded the giveaway zone or made several public statements that aren’t supported by the facts, and Kim has stopped answering questions from the Guardian.

City Economist Ted Egan testified that there are no discernible economic development benefits to including the entire Tenderloin, and that the Twitter-induced economic boost would increase commercial rents. In other words, the primary economic benefits would be to commercial landlords.

At the same March 16 hearing, Kim claimed the measure will revitalize the Tenderloin without gentrifying it, something she calls one of her top concerns.

Shaw strongly supported Kim’s supervisorial campaign and is pushing this deal with almost messianic desire to call the shots in the neighborhood where he’s been building an empire with public funds for 30 years.

POWER BROKER

A Guardian investigation (see “Behind the tweets,” March 15) revealed that Shaw was a key architect of the deal: working closely with OEWD staff, adding properties into the tax exclusion zone, developing the talking points, rallying support for the legislation, and being given credit for the deal when city officials talked to landowners.

Being the champion for corporate tax breaks and large landlords is a new role for Shaw, who began his career as a progressive advocate for low-income renters, using lawsuits against landlords and social services contracts with the city to grow THC into a $25 million nonprofit corporation that controls much of the city’s single-room-occupancy housing stock. THC was a prime beneficiary of Newsom’s Care Not Cash program, which converted cash assistance for the poor into housing subsidies and support services, increasing THC’s government grants from $9 million in 2004 to $15.7 million in 2009. Recently THC was awarded a five-year city contract worth $82 million.

But if Shaw is still trying to promote the needs of the poor, he’s now doing it by casting his lot with landowners.

Shaw has lately been in fundraising mode as he tries to open a Tenderloin history museum next year in the Cadillac Hotel (where THC has acquired an ownership interest), and he has ambitious fantasies of turning a neighborhood that has long been one of the city’s poorest into an international tourist destination (see “The Test of the Tenderloin,” 9/28/2010). Who is he soliciting money from? We asked him, in writing, and he won’t tell us.

Shaw once stood with housing-activist-turned-supervisor Chris Daly in protesting plans by UC Hastings College of the Law to tear down low-income housing and build a parking garage — but now Shaw sat through the March 23 hearing on the tax break deal with Hastings CFO David Seward, who spoke in support of the proposal after Shaw added the property into the tax-free zone, saying it might help the ground floor retail businesses on the garage property.

Shaw still plays up his progressive roots and long advocacy for the Tenderloin, as he did during an emotionally overwrought presentation to the Budget & Finance Subcommittee on March 16, detailing his advocacy work over 30 years. “We are a neighborhood starved for investment,” said Shaw, who actually lives in the Berkeley Hills. “We cannot compete on a level playing field.”

But the “we” Shaw refers to isn’t really the poor people in his hotels, or the progressive leaders or movement that he has repeatedly criticized over the last year as “a political machine” that he’s fighting against in BeyondChron, a political blog he runs out of THC. Given the scant information in public records on why so many properties have been added into the district or the private discussions that led to those decisions, it’s hard to say who Shaw’s “we” is these days. But we’ve dug up a few more clues.

HIDDEN AGENDA?

In August 2009, THC entered into a partnership with Giampaolo “Paul” Boschetti, to buy a 50 percent interest in THC’s office building, a 3,692-square-foot space at 126 Hyde St. What was unusual about the deal was its documentary transfer tax of just $750, which translates into a purchase price of $150,000.

Records with the Assessor/Recorder’s Office show that even with Prop. 13 limiting annual property tax increases after the property’s base year of 1991, the THC building was actually assessed at $964,161 — and that the reappraisal triggered by the sale would value the building in the millions of dollars, based on comparable buildings in the area.

The city and THC/Boschetti have been in negotiations to determine what the building is really worth for property tax purposes. Those negotiations are confidential, although one city official told us that the financial claims by this property owner are very unusual. The Guardian has repeatedly asked Shaw whether he has any financial interests in properties in the district, questions he ignored until we unearthed the Boschetti deal.

“We own our headquarters at 126 Hyde with Paul Boschetti. We have no other business dealings or investments with him, and our entire space is used by THC,” Shaw wrote. Responding to a follow-up question about whether he has any other financial interests in the district, he wrote, “only 126 Hyde.” When we asked about the strange undervaluing of that property and his financial arrangements with Boschetti, Shaw asked for detailed questions in writing, which we provided but he still refuses to answer. Boschetti also has not returned repeated Guardian calls.

But Shaw’s tax-break advocacy could also help another Boschetti-owned property: the Aida Hotel on Market Street. Helping “two growing hotel chains” buy a hotel on mid-Market Street was cited as a top reason for giving the tax breaks in OEWD e-mails we reviewed, although references to hotels was blacked out in dozens of other documents provided to the Guardian, with city officials claiming they were exempt as “propriety information or trade secrets.”

Matz denies knowing about Shaw’s business arrangements and says the redactions were to protect the identities of the national hotel chains that have been negotiating deals to come here. Boschetti appears to be an active real estate speculator, cutting deals in the Tenderloin and mid-Market areas.

An SF Weekly cover story (“Randy Shaw’s Power Plays,” 3/27/1996) details how Boschetti bought the Hotel Burbank in 1986, renaming it the Hotel Verona and converting it from a residency hotel for the poor into a tourism hotel, despite a city law against such conversions that Shaw worked on and has sued landlords under. “And though Shaw has battled tourism hotel conversion since the beginning of his career, he won’t comment on Boschetti, although he takes time out to praise the hotel owner as a good landlord,” reads the article.

City records show Boschetti also owns a 4,499-square-foot, 44-unit apartment building at 656 O’Farrell St.— just inside the tax exclusion zone that Shaw helped extend all the way to Geary and Polk streets — appraised at $2.6 million, as well as a commercial property at 2260-2264 Union St. worth $1.5 million.

An article in Poor Magazine (“Goodbye Mr. Stag,” 9/11/01) details Boschetti’s brief yet profitable ownership of properties at 1041 and 1035 Market St., once home to Mr. Stag Fashion Center. The article says Boschetti, “owner of the nearby Aida and Verona Hotels,” bought the property for $650,000, then sold it for $5.5 million in the spring of 2000 to a limited liability company, which then resold it four days later to another LLC for $7.75 million.

It is precisely this kind of lucrative real estate speculation — and its potential to affect the poor through rising rents and police crackdowns, such as the 18-hour-a-day police foot patrols that the city is promising Twitter — that most worries critics of the deal that Shaw is pushing.

“The people who are going to profit the most on this deal are big landlords,” said Gabriel Haaland with SEIU Local 1021, which is opposing the legislation.

Even those who support cutting a deal to keep Twitter here say they don’t understand why so many other properties were included. As Egan told us, “If you take Twitter out of the equation, this thing doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Asaf Shalev helped with research for this story.

Take back the knit

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREETWISE The dinosaur outside my library makes my day. Someone knit a little green bike rack cozy with floppy yellow spikes, right next to the rack that now has a custom-sized, rainbow-colored, beaded sweater. Indeed, the whole neighborhood has been knit-tagged — the stretch of Divisadero between Post and California streets has nary a rack that hasn’t been dressed against the spring chills.

The woman who answered the phone at Atelier Yarns, the knitting store down the block on Divisadero, didn’t know who had done the pieces, which is not to say they’d gone unnoticed. “They’re really good,” she said. “I wish I knew who had done them.”

Digging further, I fell into the deep abyss of Internet craft blogs and found that the Western Addition isn’t the only place where knit is joining the textures of the concrete jungle. Across the world, “yarn bombing” groups have sprung up. Last year, a group altered the Oakland-Berkeley border’s controversial “Here There” statues, knitting a colorful cozy over the T in “There” that renders the words equal, symbolically erasing the hierarchical positioning of the two bergs. There have been knitted seat covers on Philly’s Blue line subway and a knitted tank cover in shades of Pepto-Bismol pink in Copenhagen — not to mention jauntily decorated stop signs, trees, and railings the world over.

Magda Sayeg, a.k.a. PolyCotn, is generally regarded as the mother of this peaceful barrage. So I called her to find out why she — and now the rest of the world — yarn bombs.

It all started seven years ago with a knit cover for the doorknob of her Houston art studio. “It was about me making my door-handle pretty,” she remembers. Then she knitted a cover for a stop sign, which attracted lots of attention. “People would get out of the car, take pictures, scratch their head.”

She did more pieces. She formed a yarn bomb collective called “Knitta Please.” Since then, Sayeg has knitted everything from a riotously rainbow cover on a Mexico City bus to a powder pink coat for a single stone on the Wall of China.

Sayeg’s work makes knitting, once a private activity, part of the public domain. “You’re taking something so traditional and homey and placing it in an environment — graffiti art, it’s so male-dominated.”

Which is not to say that she doesn’t locate yarn bombing inside the tradition of street art. “I identify with the street artists more than the knitters,” Sayeg says, remembering the first time she saw the moaning cartoon faces of a gallery show by seminal SF street artist Barry McGee. “That really rocked my perception of what street art was. You could say [the yarn bombing] story started there.”

Like “traditional” street artists, Sayeg uses her creations to make her mark on her physical surroundings. She loves tagging the redundant bits of the urban landscape, like street posts whose signs have been removed and rendered useless. “It’s a visual pollution that we just accept. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t cover up something that’s not needed.” She pointed to the 3-D video game sprites of Space Invader and moss graffiti artists like Edina Tokodi as others who “are putting the can down” in the street art world.

But Sayeg also likes how yarn bombing questions the assumptions of what knitting is, which brings us to the question of the genre’s feminist interpretation. Though there are certainly male yarn bombers, you can’t deny that this kind of functional art, and craft in general, has historically been thought of as “women’s work” — and has had its worth denigrated and minimized as such. With yarn bombing, “there’s something there that might make people uncomfortable. An edge to something that never seems edgy. Like we’re supposed to be making sweaters and socks,” Sayeg says.

That stereotype has been turned on its head by craft activism, a form of protest that has its modern day roots in the 1980s and ’90s peace demonstrations at Greenham Common Royal Air Force base in England, where the U.S. military installed cruise missiles in 1981. Women gathered around the cyclone fencing at the base, stuffing its grid with knitted objects and hoisting handmade signs that read “Women’s Struggle Won The Vote, Now Let’s Use It For Disarmament.”

More recently, as Kirsty Robertson recounts in an essay in Extra/Ordinary (Duke University Press, 306 p., $24.95), the Revolutionary Knitting Circle held a “knit-in” at the 2002 G-8 summit in Alberta, Canada. Betsy Greer — who has a day job as an anti-sweatshop activist and also wrote an essay in Extra/Ordinary — coined the term “craftivism” to describe efforts similar to her own antiwar cross-stitch art. In Greer’s words, craftivism is “about using what you can to express your feelings outward in a visual manner without yelling or placard-waving. It was about channeling that anger in a productive and even loving way.”

Which is not to say that all urban crafters — as I’ve come to think of the men and women reclaiming textile and other forms of craft in a modern setting — are explicitly political. I was reminded of Sayeg’s desire to subvert the masculine face of street art when I visited the SoMa studio of Amy Ahlstrom, a San Francisco textile artist who is taking images from the walls of cities and translating them into painstakingly crafted quilts.

Ahlstrom, who has made her own clothes since her Molly Ringwald childhood, started quilting as an art student in 1991. She had a successful career in comic art and returned to stitching in 2005. “To me, this is a very natural thing,” she says, surrounded by her eye-popping creations hanging on stark white walls. “This was the most unique way I could speak to the world.”

Living in the Mission, Ahlstrom found the neighborhood’s murals, street signs, and tags an integral part of her city life. She began photographing them and was struck by an urge to alter their context. “I saw this tag and thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be funny in gingham?’ “

Like a textile DJ, she cut and sewed patterns made from the digital images she had captured into textured Dupioni silk. Now she’s working on a series of pieces dedicated to the visual cues of specific neighborhoods. Her SoMa quilt contains depictions of furniture leaping from public art installation “Defenestration”‘s decrepit Sixth Street building, Jeremy Novy’s ubiquitous stenciled koi, and the neon signs of Holy Cow and Brainwash. She’s not the only artist to harness the power of the quilt — Ben Venom is another SF quilter who creates heavy metal motifs from old band shirts (his “Listen to Heavy Metal While You Sleep!” skull-cross design is a Guardian staff favorite).

Ahlstrom brings the street to textile and the yarn bombers bring their textiles to the street, but they all work to the same end. Though Ahlstrom’s pieces will sell for hundreds of dollars and hang like the gallery pieces that they are, she creates them with the intention of breaking down the art world stipulation that craft cannot be art.

She cites the Gee’s Bend quilts as one inspiration for her work. Gee’s Bend is a small Alabama River community whose women inhabitants came together to have their quilts exhibited by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 2002, to great critical acclaim. In contrast to previous exhibitions, the quilts were not divorced from their functional use — museum literature placed the stories of Gee’s Bend quilters front and center in an attempt to highlight how the beauty of their geometric patterns was accentuated, not diminished, by their status as household objects.

So what did the gentle crafter of my beloved dinosaur have in mind when she or he looped that clover green around the bike rack? You’d have to ask the knitter — but at the very least, they’ve made their presence known.

alt.sex.column: Positive too negative?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

3

Dear Andrea:

I’m a 40-something M2F transsexual woman (though my gender status isn’t that important). I recently met a great guy I’ll call John and I’ve developed feelings for him. I’d jump his bones in two seconds except for one thing; he’s HIV-positive.

Love,

Paralyzed

Dear Para:

It would be hard to come up with a decision more individual and personal than this one. Plus, this isn’t a situation where I can pooh-pooh your concerns. Of course you have concerns. I have them for you.

Although having some sort of sex with an HIV-positive person is hardly risk-free, it is undertaken nightly by thousands of people who never sero-convert. There are condoms, and condoms are quite good at what they do. And there are all the noninsertive things one can do that are more or less incapable of introducing any virus. It may not be what you want, but it’s doable and, under the right circumstances, you can build a sex life based on what you’ve got rather than what’s missing.

If your big fear is not contracting the virus yourself, but loving somebody who already has it, there is no cute trick with latex or frottage that is going to fix that. Most any article you pull up on the subject is going to contain the statement, “HIV is no longer a death sentence.” Which is true as far as it goes, but it’s not like it’s no longer a problem. Either one of you could be hit by that bus that always crops up when people are discussing the capriciousness of fate. But he could also stop responding to his meds, or develop debilitating side effects, or follow some other course we’re not too up on yet because it occurs 40 years after starting therapy and nobody’s done that yet. We don’t know. And we, being human, like to.

But this sounds like something you can’t just walk away from — you have, as you say, “developed feelings.” But neither is it something you can just walk into. If you’re going to make a go of it, the two of you are going to have to get a therapist with expertise in exactly these issues and work through some stuff. You’re going to admit your concerns. To him. And he’s going to have to admit whatever it is he feels about the prospect of undertaking a long-term threesome: you, him, and HIV.

On other hand, you two are not officially an item yet. You do not have to do this. He probably wouldn’t think less of you if you decided you couldn’t hack it. Well, OK, actually, he might, but you can’t make a huge decision like this one on the basis of conflict-avoidance.

On the other, other hand, it’s possible your decision will get made for you when you spend more time together and find that he’s hopelessly argumentative about baseball trivia or in some other way not nearly as dreamy as you thought. And then you can ditch him with a clear conscience.

Love,

Andrea

Stuck on my craw

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Finally! Business as usual, here at Cheap Eats. But before I start talking about sports, there’s a little more I want to say about the poop in Coach’s garage.

It came with a few sheets of toilet paper on top. And when her landlord found it he said, “Hey, was there a dog running around in the garage?” I stayed in the house while Coach went out to see for herself. She was pretty sure that dogs didn’t use toilet paper, she said.

Then they both cleaned it up, and Coach started down that long, rocky road to forgetfulness. You know, at first I was on her side, but now it’s one week later and she keeps bringing it up. So I guess that means I’ll keep writing about it.

Blame Papa for not letting us talk about football last night, over sushi.

We lost 32-6. Speaking of shit. Maybe that had something to do with why Papa, our Center, didn’t want to talk about it. Actually, 32-6 was less than we expected to lose by. This would have been the first time in sports history that a 32-6 loss went down as a “moral victory” — except for one minor problem: they only had six players, and we had 14.

Athleticism is a wonderful thing to watch, even when you are covered in mud with cleat marks in your cheek. I’m not saying that’s what happened. We play on turf, so I was covered in little black turf balls with cleat marks in my cheek.

You know how they say that winning isn’t everything? Well, neither is losing. Traditionally.

We might change that, but in the meantime the troops remain optimistic and cheerful. My favorite moment was watching our quarterback chasing down yet another interceptor, late in the game, while laughing her head off.

She’s a rugby player. We may be the most bad-assedly bad team in the league, if not sports. We have a couple field hockey players, two to three soccer players, a basketball star, and maybe a little softball experience. But only two of us have ever played American football outside of bed and/or high school gym class.

We will have our day. It just might not be in my own personal lifetime.

After the trouncing, I made the mistake of going to Rockin’ Crawfish on Lake Merritt with the de la Cooter fambly. As if I didn’t already know what it means. To miss New Orleans.

While I was there — down South, that is — I kept sending pictures to Crawdad de la Cooter’s mister, Mr. Crawdad de la Cooter, of all the wonderful things I was eating, which included of course fried oyster po’ boys with bacon and cheese, and even more of course, crawfish etouffe, crawfish pie, and crawfish.

First he kind of begged me for mercy. Then he gave up on mercy and wrote me about a place they found in Oakland with “passable boiled crawfish.” When he brought it up again, upon my reentry, I thought he was trying to be helpful. I should have known he was plotting his revenge.

Passable? Maybe, if you haven’t been anywhere near Louisiana for at least four years. Mere days after feasting on Kjean’s with Cherry, B.B., and Hedgehog … forget about it.

I love Cajun. I love Asian. I love fusion. Authenticity means nothing to me. Berkeley has better Chicago pizza than Chicago, and the best pizza I ever ate was in Germany. I’d pit Just For You’s po’ boys against any I had in New Orleans.

Rockin’ Crawfish … just … doesn’t. Like Red, here in the city, it’s like they’re trying too hard. They crash the garlic over your head and blast you with hot sauce. And I love both those things but don’t associate either one with great crawfish.

The ones I was making love to last couple months, they don’t give you five choices. They come one way, with a subtle, more blended and complex zing to them.

It ain’t fair, I know. I should have waited four years. Anyway, I’m here. Sigh. My new favorite restaurant?

ROCKIN’ CRAWFISH

Mon.–Fri. 2–11 p.m.; Sat.–Sun. 1–11 p.m.

211 Foothill, Oakl.

(510) 251-1657

MC/V

Beer and wine

25 Lusk

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If you don’t know where Lusk Street is or have never even heard of it, please take a number and step to the back of the line. The name isn’t a joke, although it does sound as if the words “lust” and “luxe” collided on some drunken voluptuary’s lips. The street itself (right off Townsend between Third and Fourth streets) isn’t even a street, exactly; more like an alley. In an odd way it reminded me of Downing Street, in Whitehall, central London (home of the PM): a stub of pavement with no through traffic, lots of shiny black cars, and a strong sense of occasion. The occasion here would be the new restaurant 25 Lusk, whose big white neon signage glows brightly into the night. Nothing like it at Number 10.

Not since the advent of Bix, more than 20 years ago, has a restaurant brought such panache to an urban alley. And the resemblances run deeper: both restaurants have a strong vertical dimension inside: Bix its aerie-like mezzanine and soaring ceiling, 25 Lusk its main dining floor floating over a lounge that feels like a cross between Studio 54 and a ski lodge. (The building was once a meat-packing plant.) And both seem to attract high rollers. Indeed, my mole assured me that 25 Lusk was full of VC (venture capitalists) having expensive bottles of wine decanted while they sat around discussing what to do with the pots of money he’s sure they’ve been sitting on for the past three years.

I didn’t notice any obvious VC. The crowd reminded me of Boulevard’s, maybe slightly younger and hipper — except for the downstairs lounge, which was raucous with a definite whiff of pick-up scene with people laughing too loud and the odd shriek). All this is as it should be, because the restaurant is in the middle of a rising neighborhood, run by an in-their-prime duo (Chad Bourdon and Matthew Dolan) who are taking their first crack at running their own place on a theory of “approachable fine dining” — nice phrase, with an implicit condemnation of the other, stuffy kind.

Dolan’s food conforms to the familiar tropes of “seasonally driven” and “new American,” but mostly it struck me as intensely plated, meaning, a good deal of thought and energy got spent on presenting things. One advantage of this, apart from the aesthetic pleasure, is transparency: you can see everything. The disadvantage is that dishes are apt to be deconstructed to a greater or lesser degree, which can leave the bringing-together of flavors and effects in the diner’s hands.

The Sonoma foie gras torchon ($16), for instance, looked like a contemporary art display, with its block of paté, heap of spiced peanuts, stack of toast squares, scattering of roasted grapes, and dramatic smear of blueberry banyuls sauce across a quarter of the rectangular white plate. But … how to eat it gracefully? The toasts were of little use; they were like people who couldn’t bend their knees. The asparagus terrine ($14) too, was underconstructed, with a stack of beet-cured gravlax slices sitting at the side of the plate like gawkers.

Potato gnocchi ($14), nicely browned cylinders about the size of thumbnails, were a little easier to handle. They came in a shallow dish and were bolstered by braised, boneless short rib, which (with manchego cheese shavings) provided a nice glueyness. You do need binders for this kind of style. The grilled prawns ($26) — four sizable prawns neatly lined up like soldiers being reviewed — benefited from a berm of carrot puree as well as a thick bed of fabulously fragrant Japanese pepper grits, like lemony polenta.

The roasted quail ($26) was substantial and bolstered by a sauté of arugula and haricots verts that looked like a neglected garden being overrun by trailing vines. And Oregon steelhead ($26) featured a lovely slaw of shredded fennel root marinated in citrus along with lobster beignets, mysterious little fritters with no detectable taste of lobster. I add them to my growing dossier of proofs that lobster is overrated.

One item on the dessert menu neatly reprised, for me, my sense of 25 Lusk: the medjool date cake ($10) served with a pat of apricot ice cream and small thatch of candied ginger. The cake itself was splendid and datey, the ice cream intensely apricoty and not very sweet, and the candied ginger sublime. But they each stood apart on the plate, like young teenagers at a party, segregated by sex. “Go forth and mingle!” I longed to cry, before giving a lusty shove with my fork.

25 LUSK

Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5:30–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

Brunch: Sun., 11 a.m.–2 p.m.

25 Lusk, SF

(415) 495-5875

www.25lusk.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Loud

Wheelchair accessible (elevator)

The world Maclaine made

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

2

arts@sfbg.com

FILM For a biographical abstract of Christopher Maclaine, try the famous first lines of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. For greater precision, observe poet David Meltzer’s letter to film historian P. Adams Sitney (reproduced in Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000): “Poet, filmmaker, stand-up comic, bagpiper, chaser of mysteries.” Meltzer’s letter continues, “In the mid-’60s sacrificed his nervous system to methedrine.” Stan Brakhage wrote of Maclaine, “He courted madness and he finally got it.” Before he did, he completed four films, the first of which — his preemptive magnum opus, The End (1953) — flattened a very young Brakhage at its infamous Art in Cinema premiere. Sixty-seven years after the museum crowd balked at Maclaine’s celluloid testament, the film is back at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

We still haven’t found the categories that will contain Maclaine’s non-sync film of revelations: a found-footage narrative composed of original materials; a lettrist pulp fiction; a proto-punk murder ballad radioed to the void; a hipster “duck and cover” drill with time enough for Beethoven and Bartok. Like Sunset Blvd. (1950), The End is narrated from beyond the grave — only this voice (Maclaine’s) speaks behind nuclear holocaust rather than mere murder. First thing, we see the mushroom cloud (annihilation was in the air: America had recently tested the hydrogen bomb in the Pacific). Maclaine insinuates us over extended black leader: “Soon we shall meet the cast. Observe them well. See if they are not yourselves. And if you find none of them to be so, then insert yourself into this revue.” The cast, he explains, were his friends: “They all have stories. We shall be able to learn a little about each of them before our time runs out.”

The following 30 minutes snakes through six sections and four clearly identified characters. Though the cast is unwitting of the coming apocalypse, they are not innocent of its destructive energies. Before the blast, two die by their own hand and one on the wrong side of a stranger’s gun. The fourth, an innocent poet in a cruel world (played by Wilder Bentley II, who will be in attendance for the Thurs., March 31 screening), seeks redemption as a leper. They are all on the run from America — each “couldn’t face the 20th century.” Maclaine’s montage scatters images from the different mini-narratives and pulls together a mash of insert motifs that function as another layer of poetic commentary — a lyrical compliment to the voice-over’s epic address.

The cubist construction of these episodes is such that you would know a bomb had gone off even if you hadn’t seen the mushroom cloud. Scholar J.J. Murphy helpfully suggests Charlie Parker’s phrasing as a possible influence on Maclaine’s frenzied cutting, though the North Beach Scotsman also seems to anticipate the rhythms of Blank Generations to come. There are many jolting connections throughout The End, some delightfully unforeseen (the Powell Street trolley turnaround next to a gun barrel’s spin) and others simply damning (dramatization of a suicide’s collapse intertwined with documentary footage of a homeless man flat on the street). The montage reaches its zenith in the film’s closing moments, when a tumble of images registering sexual release and last-gasp poignancy are set to “Ode to Joy” as final shards of the known world.

It’s hard to fathom The End‘s originality now that so many of its techniques have become familiar avant-garde strategies. At the time, most experimental films strove for self-conscious lyricism, drawing on abstraction, silence, and psychosexual expressionism to articulate a space outside society. Maclaine dramatizes the break, never more explicitly than when he directly addresses the audience (“The person next to you is a leper!”) With its strong conviction that death itself has changed, The End is often discussed as an expression of atomic-age nihilism. Even more radical is the way Maclaine channels what was then still a new mode of address: the live television feed, which Sen. Joe McCarthy was just then exploiting in his Voice of America hearings. A decade before Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, Maclaine intuits the connections between medium and message — the mushroom cloud and television being two sides of the same terrifying totality.

Maclaine made only three short films after The End, all of which will be shown Thursday night: The Man Who Invented Gold (1957), Beat (1958), and Scotch Hop (1959). None of these match The End‘s x-ray vision, although The Man Who Invented Gold and Beat both unfold the same vivid imagination of the San Francisco terrain. Scotch Hop is something different and, on first viewing, my favorite of the later works: the Scotsman’s equivalent of Olympia (1938), with low angles and slow motion placing bagpipers, log-throwers, and fiercely proud dancers on a heroic plain. Brakhage claims it a masterpiece in his poignant remembrance of Maclaine in his book Film at Wit’s End, but there’s little doubt that The End had the more profound impact on his own filmmaking — specifically in the way it demonstrated the liberating effects of a film grammar built of “mistakes.”

Meanwhile, the search for Maclaine continues in a serial analysis of The End on SFMOMA’s Open Space blog by filmmaker and projectionist Brecht Andersch in collaboration with Hell on Frisco Bay blogger Brian Darr. As of this writing, “The The End Tour” has reached its 15th installment. All together, it constitutes a supremely dedicated work of media archaeology, and one of the liveliest works of film criticism I’ve encountered in some time. Andersch and Darr’s spirited dissection of the film’s psychogeographic dynamics has illuminated the film’s subliminal operations as well as its creative mapping of the local landscape. Most remarkable is their discovery that a prominent patch of graffiti (“PRAY”) that appears in the film is still tattooed on a China Beach wall — as if Maclaine’s imagined nuclear blast fixed it there for all time.

IN SEARCH OF CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE: MAN, ARTIST, LEGEND

Thurs/31, 7 p.m., $10

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

A third space to call their own

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

4

culture@sfbg.com

EAT HANG LOVE Every neighborhood has its ups and downs, but when it comes to Sixth and Market streets, many shop owners and residents will tell you all about the downs — street crime, homelessness, and substance abuse, to name a few. But despite warnings of stormy weather, one café and community art space has dropped anchor to serve this neighborhood. With affordable food, superior coffee, and accessible seating areas for creativity and connection, Rancho Parnassus provides a living room for neighborhood characters stuffed into cramped apartments and dirty streetscapes. But it hasn’t been easy — the good guys behind the endeavor worry that it may come down to sink or swim.

Weary of the nautical analogies yet? It’s hard not to make them after setting foot in the cafe, whose interior resembles the inside of a ship at sea. With big wooden furniture sets, photographs from group art shows hanging from ropes — not to mention the sailing equipment, bright blue walls, wooden barrels, plastic fish, and ship wheel décor — even the tiny kitchen is modeled after the galley of a ship.

Owner Andy Harris says the nautical motif is no coincidence. From behind the kitchen counter on a slow weekday morning he tells us that “the idea is that when you come in here, you’re going somewhere. You are on a ship, you’re on a journey. I don’t like static spaces — I’m trying to give people that come in here a feeling of motion.”

A lot of the lingo that Harris uses when he talks about the ideology behind Rancho Parnassus comes from the new urbanism movement. “It’s about revitalizing America’s cities rather than encouraging people to flee to the suburbs. The café and corner store are really important — they’re examples of third space, a space that is neither home nor work. That’s what this community was missing: a casual, affordably priced all-day, all-ages hangout.”

Harris refers to Rancho Parnassus mostly as a “creative hub,” and emphasizes that the food and coffee come second. But it’s hard to ignore the high quality and low prices of the coffee and food. Harris makes every cup of joe fresh using an aeropress, which is similar to a French press but with an even smaller microfilter, resulting in a brew that’s strong and tasty.

And when it comes to the menu, Harris depends on Tony Thomas, his chef and right-hand man. Thomas, a musician and performer who says he grew up cooking in his family’s now-defunct SF restaurant, was a regular at Rancho Parnassus before he got his current gig. He says he came in to play the piano one day when he spied Harris, frazzled to get through a morning rush. “He was sweatin’,” Thomas recalls. Eager to help, the cook jumped behind the counter and started frying eggs and toasting bread. He never looked back.

As Thomas tells us his story, a regular comes in to order a brioche bun stuffed with sausage, gorgonzola, spinach, and bacon, which shows up on Rancho’s menu as “The Bird in the Hand.” In keeping with the rest of the sustenance on offer, the sandwich is affordably priced — $2.50.

Although Harris and Thomas say that food costs are low, Sixth Street isn’t a big money-making location. They worry that this free art and performance space — the dining room is regularly rented out to creative types from around the city — and café might not be open much longer. It’s a frustrating reality for Harris, who knows he will “never get rich off of this space” and is more interested in his cafe’s social mission.

A typical Rancho afternoon is enough proof that the cafe means a lot to its regulars. Most days you’ll find the street artist who goes by the name of Big Face using the space as his personal studio, constructing collages at the café tables or on an easel. Around him other patrons work on their laptops or use the café’s public Apple computer, talking, eating, or just sitting quietly. “I don’t make a big fuss about anyone buying anything,” Harris says. “I want people to hang out, and we are certainly never going to push anyone out as long as they are polite and not disturbing the creative environment.”

The community members familiar with Rancho Parnassus vouch that the space makes them feel welcome. “I kind of wandered in by accident,” says Adrien, a 20-year resident of the neighborhood who lives two blocks away. Adrien comes in every day for breakfast and to do work in the morning. “There’s really no other place around here like this. There is a more relaxed vibe here between the décor, the music, and the people who work here. Other places are similar but they get too crowded and it’s more ‘get in, get out.’ “

Harris says it will be up to the community and the economy to keep Rancho Parnassus open. Although the café has a community agenda, it’s still a business, which means it won’t be receiving grants or funding from outside organizations. “There’s no grant for ‘really wonderful café — let’s get them to stay open,’ ” Harris says. When he talks about the struggle to stay afloat, you can tell he thinks the stakes are high. “It’s such a great thing for this neighborhood. So many depend on us to be here.”

RANCHO PARNASSUS Mon.–Sat. 6 a.m.–7 p.m. 505 Minna, SF (415) 503-0700 www.ranchoparnassus.com

Exercises in style

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

arts@sfbg,com

HAIRY EYEBALL Will Yackulic’s return to painting has none of the grandiosity or pretension that the phrase “return to painting” might suggest. Rather, Yackulic’s abstract canvases at Gregory Lind offer a contained (one might say modest, even, as each rectangle measures in the neighborhood of 144 square inches) but no less exhilarating exploration of the tension between the two qualities of his work that are so perfectly pinpointed by the show’s title, “Precision and Precarity.”

Although it has been six years since Yackulic last picked up a brush, his approach here is not unlike the works on paper he has steadily created in the interim. Much like his wave fields made from the dense accumulation of precisely spaced typewriter keystrokes, there is a finessing of the medium in this new group of (mostly) oil paintings that never claims mastery. The material seems to have had as much of the final say as the artist’s hand.

The subject of the conversation — geometric abstraction — has been a recurring one for Yackulic. This time, instead of floating geodesic orbs, the starting point was a Jenga-like stack of woodshop scraps Yackulic constructed and then set about capturing using a variety of colors, paint application techniques, perspectives, and degrees of abstraction. One canvas, the appropriately titled Smolder, even appears to have been burnt with a cigarette.

Some paintings come across as proper still lifes, engaging with the woodpile as a physical object. Taken together, the heavy yolk-yellow highlights and brown shadows of Claypool’s and the nocturnal blues and watery purples of Crepuscular and Evening Arrangement form a dance of the hours played across what could be a model of one of mid-20-century architect Joseph Eichler’s experiments in suburban modernism.

Other canvases respond to the form as a prompt about pure shape, discarding fixed dimensionality. In Over/Under, jutting lines become breakwalls for an incoming tide of indigo that has spilled over into the canvas’ azure lower half. Yackulic also employs other shapes (the cross-hatches in XXX, the Easter-ish green and pink dots of Sick Day) to colonize what becomes, over the course of the show, familiar terrain.

All this shape shifting brings to mind Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1949), in which the experimental French writer retells the same banal incident 99 times employing a different voice, genre, or formal device with each successive iteration. Yackulic does much of the same thing in “Precision and Precarity,” only the story he’s retelling is the abstract tradition in modern art.

Retelling, though, shouldn’t be confused with repeating, and Yackulic doesn’t shy away from giving his exercises in style some bite when necessary. The aforementioned Smolder, although hung closest to the gallery’s entrance, provides a humorous coda to the rest of the show. Slanted lines, suggestive of the beams of Yackulic’s original model, disappear into a black cloud of pencil smudge as if to playfully say, “You know what else depends on precision and precarity? Arson.”

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

Camilla Newhagen’s soft sculptures made from everyday clothing are anything but soft. Bras and reclaimed suits are stuffed full of polyester and contorted into unsettling anthropomorphic forms reminiscent of Hans Bellmer’s monstrous feminine sculptures. However, the strongest piece in the powerful but small selection of Newhagen’s work now at Jack Fischer is the least assuming: a man’s white Oxford shirt on a hanger, sheared of everything save its collar and one sleeve, and tacked to the wall with the aid of invisible push pins.

Ghostly and extremely sensuous, Pin Point Oxford evacuates gender and class from an overly marked and rather quotidian garment. The white button-down is no longer so buttoned-down. Much like the work of Belgian designer Martin Margiela, who famously fashioned dresses to look like dress-forms and vests from leather gloves, Newhagen has created a piece of irresistible anti-clothing. It’s a pity you can’t slip it on. *

WILL YACKULIC: PRECISION AND PRECARITY

Through April 30

Gregory Lind Gallery

49 Geary, Fifth Floor

(415) 296-9661

www.gregorylindgallery.com

CAMILLA NEWHAGEN

Through May 7

Jack Fischer Gallery

49 Geary

(415) 956-1178

www.jackfischergallery.com

Recording season

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC “It’s one of those things you say in an interview and then regret two years later,” sighs Meric Long, vocalist and guitarist of San Francisco pop folk duo the Dodos, when asked about the influence of West African drumming on the group’s music, a factoid that saturates the blogosphere. “As a band, in our press, we get branded [with] that.”

The truth is, Long has never studied West African drumming intensively. Rather, he’d intended to write a paper about the history of pop music, beginning with West African drumming and plantation songs. “I was overly ambitious and retardedly naïve to think that I could write about the diaspora of black American music [all the way through] current pop music,” Long says, with a hint of abashment in his voice. Nonetheless, in the process of writing the paper, he became interested in learning more about West African drumming and met with a professor who “showed [him] some stuff.”

For Long, the experience was eye opening. “It completely transformed my sense of rhythm in terms of what is possible — I think rhythm is probably the most important thing in the band.”

This belief becomes obvious on the Dodos’ recently released No Color, its third LP for Frenchkiss Records. The opening track, “Black Night,” begins with booming thumps from the bass drum of Long’s bandmate, Logan Kroeber. Moments later, Long’s aggressive acoustic finger-picking marries with Kroeber’s controlled yet frenetic percussion. The two are able to maintain this electric energy and sense of connection throughout the entirety of the album.

To make No Color, Long and Kroeber booked as much time in the studio as they could afford — something they’d never done before. With more hours at their disposal, they were able to experiment — so much so that during recording, one of the Dodos’ Facebook status updates declared: “Things are sounding somewhere between horrible and amazing.”

Although Long and Kroeber went into the studio without a schema for the album, they did have one core objective. “We [wanted] to make something that was energetic, something that captured the heavier side of the band,” Long says. “In the past, I don’t think we’ve gotten the point across enough. So this time around we really wanted to make sure it had a certain sound quality.”

Last summer, Neko Case sang with Long at Lollapalooza, on the last night of a Dodos tour. Case provides backup vocals on more than half of No Color, although she was in the studio for only two days. “It was funny because [she arrived] after [we were] working on the record for a month — basically, a month of being locked in the studio with three other dudes,” Long recalls laughing. “It was, like, a total sausage fest. It had this energy of “no outsiders,” and then here comes Neko Case barging through the door. We didn’t know what to do with her energy, but it was great to sever that dude-ness.”

In Long’s experience, working with other musicians briefly is an all-or-nothing experience when it comes to capturing something great. Initially he was somewhat nervous and uncertain about the collaboration with Case. By the second day of recording, these fears were quelled, thanks to Case’s obvious dedication.

“It happened with her on the second night,” Long says, asked to pinpoint the moment he knew Case’s presence was a crucial part of No Color. “She really worked hard for us. When she was in the booth singing, laying over parts, she was pushing it. And to see that was amazing. Her voice is absolutely insane. It’s like this fucking monster that comes out of her.”

THE DODOS

April 7, 9 p.m.; $27.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.livenation.com

From East Coast to West

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

2

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC I guess there’s some redemption for America in that it can still produce someone like Kurt Vile, a pure rock musician, to the manner (rather than to the manor) born.

Last spring I caught Philadelphia’s Vile in the Hemlock Tavern’s crowded back room, and instead of blowing everyone away with a crowd-pleasing performance, he did something different, going deep into his songs to a degree that the audience was an afterthought. This wasn’t Catpower-style meandering as lame performance art, it was a musician working with his guitar. Jay Reatard had died a few months earlier, and for me, there was a sense of relief that his introverted counterpart Vile seemed so engaged with what he was doing, with his calling.

Vile’s new album Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador) is the best studio effort by him and his band, the Violators, and roughly the equal of his superb 2008 collection of stripped-down solo recordings, Constant Hitmaker. The instrumental chops are top notch, a rarity in indie land. Vile wears a Midwestern twang like a fine middle-finger salute when he isn’t doing his best son-of-Iggy on “Puppet to the Man.”

Throughout Smoke Ring For My Halo, the couplets flow freely: “Society is my friend/ He makes me lie down in a cold bloodbath”; “If it ain’t workin’ take a whiz on the world/ An entire nation drinkin’ from a dirty cup/ My best friend’s long gone, but I got runner-ups” “I don’t want to give up but I kind of want to lie down/ But not sleep, just rest.” Vile shrinks himself to Tom Thumb proportions to fit into his baby’s hand, and plays the role of peeping tom captivated by a tomboy. He goes back and forth between deadpan morbid or devastating observations and just-joshing asides, all the while maintaining the disconcerting familiarity of a bar-stool neighbor.

Vile and his band peak with “On Tour,” which turns the lonely romanticism of an on-the-road ballad into a Lord of the Flies scenario within its first two lines. The song blankly presents the visions of a traveling musician — and restlessly contemplates the idea of the traveling musician — then torches all of it. “Oh yeah,” Vile drawls, at the quiet onset of a thunderous instrumental passage that’s totally shiver-inducing. Oh yeah is right.

Cass McCombs’ has spent time in the Midwest, but it was a passage in a Californian son’s vagabond travels. McCombs is more of a stately chap, his voice a little higher and prettier, his arrangements — while also country-tinged — a little more chamber-like and precise, his Poe-tinged fatal lyricism more literary and bookish. The lyrics for Wit’s End (Domino), his follow-up to 2009’s impressive Catacombs, are printed in English and German.

Like Vile’s, McCombs’ portraits of American life are defined in relation to death. There’s more quiet and open space in his compositions, yet when he sings “I can smell the columbine” on the opening “County Line,” he’s finding wildflowers trampled beneath a landscape — and world of meaning — familiar with high-school massacres. This is someone who gave a tune about a guy who loves his job the title “The Executioner’s Song.”

At eight songs, Wit’s End, due out in late April, doesn’t overstay its welcome. “County Line” takes the keening, solitary atmosphere of 1970s radio ballads such as Paul Davis’ “I Go Crazy” or the Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” and replaces their fantasies of love with an empty landscape.

The song that follows, “The Lonely Doll,” is even more brash in its formal marriage of poeticism and storytelling. It could be heard as an answer-song to France Gall’s Serge Gainsbourg-penned 1965 hit “Poupée de cire, poupée de son,” which was covered as “Lonely Singing Doll” by Twinkle in 1965 and Anika last year. An unsettling lullaby, “The Lonely Doll” is a voyeur scenario to match Vile’s “Peeping Tomboy.” But there and elsewhere on Wit’s End — “Saturday Song,” in particular — the writing, sometimes piano-based, is more evocative of Kurt Weill than Kurt Vile.

KURT VILE AND THE VIOLATORS

With RTX

April 22, 10 p.m.; $12–$14; all ages

Bottom of the Hill

1233, 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

CASS MCCOMBS

With Frank Fairfield

May 5, 8 p.m.; $15; all ages

Swedish American Hall

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

Animal instinct

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

PETS A pet-free existence — who needs it? Creature comfort can’t be underestimated, whether you’re ready for a one-time volunteer session, a casual relationship, or some long-term lovin’.

ADOPT AWAY

In this country of serious pet overpopulation, there’s no need to buy your next animal companion from a pet store. Whatever you’re looking for — cats, dogs, parakeets, rabbits, mice, rats, chickens, snakes, lizards, even chinchillas — the odds are good that some local shelter or rescue group will have one waiting to be adopted.

Animal advocates (and even some pet stores) urge seekers of furry, scaly, or feathered companions to think adoption first. “That’s been our message for years,” said Jennifer Scarlett, co-president of the San Francisco SPCA.

In most cases adopted pets work out better for the animal and the human, notes Deb Campbell, spokesperson for the city’s Animal Control Commission. “People who impulsively buy pets tend to have more problems,” she said.

In this city alone, there are too many unwanted dogs and cats — many the result of backyard breeders and owners who fail to get their animals spayed or neutered. And with the recession, more people have been forced to give up their pets. So adoptable creatures abound.

If dogs are your thing, the SPCA (www.sfspca.org) and the city shelter (www.animalshelter.sfgov.org) have dozens waiting for the right home. So do several local rescue groups. Wonder Dog Rescue (www.wonderdogrescue.org), Rocket Dog Rescue (www.rocketdogrescue.org), Family Dog Rescue (www.norcalfamilydogrescue.org), and Grateful Dogs Rescue (www.gratefuldogsrescue.org) all offer large and small pups of all ages and breeds for adoption— you can even snag a ex-racer from Golden State Greyhound Rescue (www.goldengreyhounds.com).

Many adoption programs are able to give you the lowdown on your prospective pet’s personality. “Our dogs all live in foster homes, so we have a real sense of what they’re like and how they interact,” says Wonder Dog’s Linda Beenau.

Muttville (www.muttville.org) specializes in placing older dogs. “With a senior dog, you know exactly what you’re going to get,” said Sherri Franklin, the group’s founder. “We evaluate the people who are looking to adopt, evaluate the dogs, and try to fill everyone’s need. We’re matchmakers.”

Shelters and rescue groups spend a lot of money making sure the animals they adopt out are in good medical condition (and won’t reproduce).

Cats are the most popular pets in the city, and the SPCA and the city shelter both offer cat adoptions. “We adopt out about 4,000 animals a year, and two-thirds are cats,” said Scarlett. There’s even a working-cat program for feral cats that may not be cuddly but can offer businesses an organic solution to rodent problems.

But the list doesn’t stop there. The city shelter “adopts out small exotic animals, fish, birds, poultry — you name it,” Campbell said. “It’s illegal to buy a rabbit in San Francisco, but you can adopt one from us.”

“Chickens are very popular pets these days,” she added. “They can give you breakfast.” (Tim Redmond)

FOSTER BLISS

We don’t know about you, but seeing precious pets cooped up in cramped shelter cages — well, it makes us knock over garbage cans, spray urine on an expensive sofa, and caterwaul at the moon. And this is a country that euthanizes between 50 percent and 70 percent of its shelter animals. Sorry to be a bummer. But you can help, even if you’re not ready for a 10-year commitment. Really — you can!

Fostering a pet serves a lot of purposes. First, for us flighty city creatures, it provides a low-commitment avenue to pet ownership. Second, to foster is to play a vital role in the shelter system. Many of the city’s smaller animal rescue organizations and humane societies couldn’t exist without a network of caring foster homes to nurture pets while their shelter facilities are full. And for some, saving animals from shelter euthanasia wouldn’t be possible without temporary homes.

“We’re a grassroots organization that doesn’t have a brick and mortar location besides our three adoption sites,” says Lana Bajsel of Give Me Shelter cat rescue, a group that typically cares for 54 cats at a time. “The fosters serve as our safety net. Their role is crucial.”

Cats and dogs aren’t the only cuddly creatures that can join your family for a short period of time. Wonder Cat (wondercatrescue.petfinder.com), Pets in Need (www.petsinneed.org), Furry Friends Rescue (www.furryfriendsrescue.org), and Rocket Dog Rescue do concentrate on dogs and cats, but you can also foster a rabbit through Save A Bunny (www.saveabunny.org) or birds through Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue (www.mickaboo.org).

Foster systems provide a way for many shelters to save furry friends that are long-shot adoptees or would fare poorly in cages. The SPCA’s “fospice” program can match you with a chronically ill (but not contagious) pet that needs your love. As in most foster programs, the SPCA will pay for any medical care fospice animals need (although as a foster parent, you’re usually responsible for food and other daily needs).

Organizational requirements vary from group to group, but Bajsel says that most of the time all it takes to be a foster parent is a safe home (for example, no windows without screens that open onto busy streets), your landlord’s permission, and preferably, a little animal savvy. “But we’ve placed cats with fosters who have never had one before. In those cases, we can provide a little more hand holding” she says.

With such demonstrable need, most organizations will accept any help you can give — even if it means a little something before you leave on your summer vacation. It’s really contingent on you, the foster parent. “The time commitment can be as little as two weeks,” Bajsel says. (Caitlin Donohue)

VICARIOUS

Say your flea trap apartment or Scrooge-like landlord prohibits adopting or fostering — you can always volunteer at one of the many Bay Area organizations dedicated to animal welfare. Once you catch the scent of the needy pooches, cats, rats, and people dedicated to saving them, it’ll be tough not to volunteer.

Cat lovers will feel right at home at Give Me Shelter cat rescue, which can use your help with anything from petting a purr-er to cleaning cages to lending a hand at adoption events. If you’re more of a man’s best friend kind of gal or boy, lend a hand at one of the city’s incredible dog shelters. Muttville can hook you up with a variety of ways to get involved, including matching elderly dogs with lonely older folks as part of its heart-melting “seniors for seniors” program.

Rocket Dog Rescue is another all-breed dog rescue organization with a mission to save animals “at the speed of light.” Learn more at one of its volunteer orientations on second Sundays of the month.

Bad Rap (www.badrap.org) stands for Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls, a group that’s serious about reeducating the public about pits, as well as getting perfectly adoptable pits placed with loving owners. Volunteers with the group will discover the secret world of big, barrel-headed sweethearts — and their ardent admirers. Bad Rap needs volunteers who can show up on Saturdays to train pits on leash skills at Berkeley Animal Care Service.

It doesn’t take an overly sappy soul to see the appeal in puppies and kitties, but can all our rodent people please stand up? Rattie Ratz (www.rattieratz.com) is a sweet-hearted organization in Woodside that rescues rats and treats these surprisingly amenable pets with respect. The group is all about rat rescue, resources, and referrals, and needs volunteers to help with animal therapy programs, adoption, fostering, and education.

Finally, we know that some of the sweetest creatures can’t be happily held — but they can still use your help! You can lend a hand at the Marine Mammal Center (www.marinemammalcenter.org) by getting trained to find and transport stranded animals and bring them to medical centers. Wild Care also (www.wildcarebayarea.org) has plenty of volunteer opportunities to help save Bay Area wildlife — it needs folks to work the hotline call center, do outreach education, and work directly with pet hospital staff. (Hannah Tepper)

When kitties attack

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

0

sarah@sfbg.com

PETS Our cat Spartacus has a reputation for being a bit of a badass. But we never thought he’d end up under house arrest with a rap sheet from the police.

It’s true that he still has the tightly muscled body of a tomcat who came in from the cold a couple of winters ago and stayed after we gave him food and a safe place to sleep. But he’s settled down a lot since we got him fixed. He’ll still bounce other cats from our yard and growls if you tip him out of his favorite chair. But he doesn’t bite people. Or so I thought, until I scooped him out of the path of an unleashed dog one February night and he sunk his teeth into my wrist so fast I didn’t even realize I’d been bitten.

But my wrist began to feel like it had been stung, and soon I noticed a swelling the size of a marble with four tiny tooth marks adorning my wrist. Since it happened at midnight, and since my tetanus shots and Spartacus’ rabies vaccinations were up to date, I simply washed and disinfected the wound, planning to see my doctor the following morning.

“They’re like snake bites,” veterinarian Marie-Anne Wooley told me when I sought solace for Spartacus’ sins. “A cat’s teeth are long and sharp and when they pull out, the holes seal over, trapping the bacteria. Dogs mash things around so their bites are more open, making them easier to clean.”

The doc immediately put me on antibiotics and said to come back if my wrist — already stiff and swollen — got worse. When a rash began spreading up my arm the following night, I headed for the emergency room, where they gave me an intravenous infusion of antibiotics.

“You have an infection of the skin called cellulitis,” the ER doctor said, drawing ink lines on my skin to show how the infection had spread to my elbow and fingers.

She ordered me keep my arm elevated above my heart to prevent the infection from reaching my heart. And before I left the hospital, a police officer took an animal bite report. Animal Control told me to keep Spartacus inside for 10 days.

Even though I spent the next day bedridden, the bite tingled, hurt, and itched every time I lowered my hand. It took three visits to the ER, four days off from work, and two weeks of heavy-duty antibiotics before I was fully healed.

Judy Kivowitz, a nurse at Noe Valley Pediatrics, has seen squirrel, rat, snake, chipmunk, spider, even possible bat bites in the course of her work, and says treating animal bites varies widely.

“It depends on the animal — whether they are a pet and have had their rabies shots.” If you have been bitten by someone’s pet, you should wash, disinfect, apply Neosporin to the area, and inquire about the animal’s vaccine status. Kivowitz notes that even if the animal is known, it should be quarantined for 10 days after biting someone.

Maybe we could all learn from Kivowitz’s three basic steps in animal interaction, which she teaches in an animal-handling class she holds for toddlers. “Ask permission from the animal’s mom and dad to touch it. Do one-finger petting. And don’t look an animal in the eye — even if you know them.”

Or perhaps more to the point, you can do what my doctor told me to do if it happens again with Spartacus. “Next time, try dousing the cat and dog with water instead of putting your arm in the way.” Duh.

Beyond Fido

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

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culture@sfbg.com

PETS You can’t keep a hedgehog, ferret, or sugar glider as a pet — legally — in California. But don’t worry, there are still plenty of options when it comes to unusual creatures to keep your pad rad. Read on for exotic animals you can enjoy right here in the city.

A BLUNT RUMP ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

In addition to what he claims is the largest exotic bug store in the country, Ken the Bug Guy (www.kenthebugguy.com) is the proud parent of tail-less whip scorpions that he’s raised from babies. At two and a half years old, they’re only half-grown, but Ken is eagerly monitoring their progression from weanling to adult.

“We don’t usually get to see the whole process,” he says, explaining that most of his scorpions — which hail from the order amblypygi, meaning “blunt rump” — are imported from breeders abroad. A mama amblypygid lays a sac of eggs and carries it under her belly until the eggs hatch. In the wild, she would then pile the babies on her back, protecting and feeding them. In captivity (where food is plentiful and predators scarce), the babies are separated from their mother to sell to a distributor like Ken.

The benefits of a blunt rump to call your own? They’re “crazy-looking, like an alien,” according to Ken. They also live seven to 10 years, don’t sting or bite, and have interesting, complex social structures like wolves.

“They’re completely harmless,” Ken emphasizes. “Little kids can hold them and play with them, and they only need to be fed once a week and have their cage misted a bit.”

PYTHON PERFORMANCE: WHY SHOULD BRITNEY HAVE ALL THE FUN?

Get it straight: dancer Jim Berenholtz’s red tail boas, African ball pythons, and Central American boas aren’t his pets — they’re flatmates.

“They’re other beings that share my living space, but I don’t own them, and they don’t own me. We’re all equal partners,” he tells us. They’re also costars.

Berenholtz has been performing with his snakes since 1989, when he debuted his act on his birthday, the eve of the Chinese Year of the Snake. A “powerful dream” prompted him to try snake dancing and in 2003, he started Serpentium, a troupe that dances for corporate events and for celebrities in the Bay Area and beyond. Over the years, Berenholtz has performed with some 16 to 20 different animals, sometimes with as many as seven at a time.

“I respond to their movements, and they respond to mine,” he says. “You may have seen belly dancers performing with snakes as props. But for me they’re not props. They’re living beings that I interact with as if they were a human partner.”

At home, his menagerie has grown organically — some of his animals have bred and produced offspring, others he adopted when previous owners could no longer care for them.

Though nearly all reptiles need to stay under heat lamps in this chilly city — East Bay Vivarium (www.eastbayvivarium.com) has space heaters for your scaly ones — Berenholtz will occasionally take his snake friends out of their aquariums and allow them to wrap their bodies around his while he’s lounging to “give them time outside of their tanks and to enjoy their presence.”

ALL SWEET, NO SNEEZE

Love the kitties, but not their dander? You may have heard that hairless cats can provide your feline fix sans sneezes. But if the alarmingly naked critters give you the cold willies over the warm fuzzies, there’s another way.

Patty Royall owns Sugar, a Cornish Rex with extremely fine, soft, curly hair. The breed, along with the related Devon Rex, is defined by a lack of all fur except a thin undercoat of down, which is said to be hypoallergenic. The breed’s characteristics are the result of a genetic mutation preserved from a litter born in 1950s Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

Like most Rexes, Sugar is often cold. The cats are known to hang out around light bulbs and computer monitors, but Sugar takes a more straightforward approach: she’ll simply jump under the bed covers and stay curled up all day, Royall says. Luckily, if you’re considering a Rex of your own, Royall has found a convenient solution for the chills. She uses a microwaveable heating pad that stays hot for about nine hours. Try a SnuggleSafe heat pad (www.snugglesafe.co.uk/), available at Pawtrero pet supply store (www.pawtrero.com).

What about baking in the summer sun? Royall has heard that some people use sunscreen on their Cornish Rexes, but — given how cats groom themselves by licking — she doesn’t think that’s the best idea.

CUTE COOING

Elizabeth Young is the founding director of Mickacoo Pigeon and Dove Rescue (www.mickacoo.org, a division of SF-based Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue), but if you’re thinking about the greasy green-and-gray birds you plow through every day on the sidewalk, think again. The birds Young rescues are primarily king pigeons, a pure white domestic breed that — unlike San Fran’s feral flocks — can’t survive outdoors on their own.

“They’re good-natured, easygoing, adaptable pets,” Young says. “They’re experts at the leisure arts — lounging, flirting, snacking, napping.” She adds that because of their mellow nature, they’re not demanding companions and do very well indoors or in an outdoor aviary.

Young says her seven pigeons have distinct personalities and form monogamous pairs — a characteristic that leads her to personify her birds’ love lives as though they were soap-opera biddies, describing, for example, how once-shy Frances eventually won the heart of widowed Country.

The birds are affectionate toward people, too. The aforementioned Frances comes hurtling down the hall when Young calls him, screeching by and then turning on a dime to locate Young. Because the birds are quiet, don’t chew, and don’t bite, they are ideal for homes where dogs are not an option.

The only problem with pigeons is that, unlike dogs, they can’t be housebroken. Luckily, the fine people at BirdWearOnline.com (www.birdwearonline.com) have invented pigeon pants — stylish suits that Young heartily endorses.

Paw bump

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

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For the past couple of years, Pawesome.net has been the Gawker of fuzzy cuddliness, collecting all the coolest, most relevant pet news onto one — yes — awesome blog. From in depth stories about Dogs of the Ninth Ward and Japanese disaster animal rescue help to peeps at intriguing and sometimes scandalous pet trends and products, Pawesome covers it all with fine feathered flair. Local BFF founders Sonia Zjawinski and Sarah Han (formerly of the Guardian) chatted with us over e-mail.

SFBG Pawesome is very active about animal welfare — what are some of the issues you’ve covered that have meant the most to you?

Sonia Zjawinski It’s the awful stories of abuse and neglect that often go viral, but for every horrible person out there we believe there are thousands of kind, selfless people who truly care about animals. For example, last year we posted about a group of Brooklyn bartenders who got together to save an abused and sick stray puppy. A lot of people walk past animals in need and think there’s nothing they can do, but this generous group proved that it doesn’t take much to help and the reward is priceless.

Sarah Han I’m a huge advocate for getting people to adopt from shelters and rescue groups. I find it really sad that there are so many perfectly adoptable animals in shelters that are at risk of being put down because people are still buying pets from breeders and pet stores. I’m all for the ban of selling animals in pet stores in San Francisco, and everywhere else in the country. I’m also a fan of rescue groups that focus on older pet adoptions, like Muttville in San Francisco. I love senior cats and dogs because they’re usually pretty chill dudes.

SFBG Which Pawesome post is your favorite?

SZ Last year’s April Fool’s joke — we wrote that Stephen Colbert bought Cat Fancy and was rebranding the magazine as Colbert’s Cat Nation. No calls from Colbert’s people asking us to come on the show yet, though.

SFBG What are some interesting trends or story lines happening now on the pet scene?

SZ One of the most exciting areas in the pet industry is the influx of goods on Etsy. The world of toys and accessories used to be very limited, and you were stuck with ones made out of eco-unfriendly materials produced in even more eco-unfriendly countries. With Etsy, there’s an amazing collection of handmade gear crafted out of organic or sustainable materials, and made right here in the States. And it’s stuff you won’t gag at when you see it in your home.

SH I’ve noticed that people are paying more attention to what their pets are eating these days. The pet food recalls definitely got people thinking about all the crap that big commercial companies (and even some pet “health food” companies) get away with. People are also concerned with pet obesity. As our lives get busier, we get fatter and so do our pets. There’s a pet-people gym in Bernal Heights (Fit Bernal Fit) and doggy yoga classes for folks to get in shape while exercising their dogs, too.

I think we’ll be hearing about more of those kinds of services in the future, and maybe because of the off-leash dog issue that’s been raging in SF. Dog owners are feeling very threatened by the GGNRA possibly ending their off-leash privileges in outdoor spaces. I’m torn on the issue because I think dogs need and love outdoor time, but I also believe in protecting what wildlife we have left in the city. Hopefully we can come to an agreement that allows for everyone, including dogs, to enjoy the outdoors.

Scruff love

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

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caitlin@sfbg.com

PETS A tongue lolls fetchingly from on side of a mouth. Warty, crepey skin, accented with stray tufts of wiry white hair. Perhaps even an under bite … to die for. These are the stars of the Petaluma Sonoma-Marin Fair’s ugliest dog contest, and their owners care not a whit for hegemonic notions of beauty.

“None of us think our dogs are ugly,” says Jon Adler, owner of a Chinese crested named Icky, both of whom are central characters in a new documentary on the world-famous ugly dog contest. “Although the first time I woke up and saw Icky on my pillow, he startled me. Looked like a bald rat or something.”

“I think it’s the classic car wreck phenomena — we all slow down to get a good look even though it makes us cringe,” says John Beck, one of the makers of Worst in Show. “It’s also a bit like those rate your teacher or Yelp sites — we love to assign a value and critique everything.”

And all the world loves an ugly doggy. The winner of the Petaluma competition — which has spawned copycat events through 23 years of inspired unattractiveness — lands appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and worldwide exposure through the high-pitched yips of international news services. So there’s more than just barking rights at stake here.

You’ve seen Best In Show, so you pretty much know the turf battles and growling that can occur en route to dog show trophies. Among owners, that is — the dogs always seem stoked to be there even if some are a wee bit trembly. Beck says ugly dog owners have more challenging roles — after all, their mission is not only to prove to international audiences (many contests are decided through online voting) that their dog is the most hideous, but the most lovable — after all, who is going to vote for an ugly dog without star power?

Beck and coproducer Don Lewis followed contest front-runners through their competition prep and show time jitters, including one Dane Andrews, the universally-spurned, fame-mongering gentleman who has been showing warty, bald Chinese cresteds (the ringers of this particular universe) since his teens. Andrews’ arch rival is the earnestly tattooed and mohawked Adler, an AIDS housing worker who more recently entered into the world of ugly-dogging when he was on “one of these social networking sites.”

“I saw this picture of a girl I went to high school with kissing [past Sonoma-Marin Fair champion] Ellwood and got really jealous,” he explained. “I had to meet that dog!”

The film follows Adler as he’s quickly sucked into the dog-eat-dog world of ugly. “I didn’t realize the media circus that this thing is,” he tells me. “I was eating my funnel cake and all of a sudden this tabloid reporter from England wants to do an interview.” But by the end of the 90 minute movie, he’s participating in an ethically gray contest situation — where he is joined by Andrews.

How did it all get so serious? “The only problem I had with Dane was that he wouldn’t accept my friend request on Facebook,” Adler says. “But it doesn’t take much to egg me on, especially when we’re dealing with a douchebag.”

Think of the doggies, fellas! Not that viewers of the movie will need the reminder. “It’s crazy how huge the global press coverage is every year. We’re all attracted to the unattractive,” Beck says. *

Check Worst n Show‘s website (www.worstinshowmovie.com) for upcoming Bay Area screenings

Fernando Di Leo, glorious bastard

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

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ITALIAN CRIME CINEMA Italian cinema has a long history of innovators, but — like every other country, albeit more so — it survived commercially for decades via genre imitators. Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Pasolini, Bertolucci, and so on couldn’t have existed without the fiscal cushion provided by genre-feeds to the international market: first via mythological muscle man fantasies that reduced Hollywood’s Cecil B. DeMille-styled antiquity epics to more cost-effective displays of simple brawn, spear-throwing, and horse-riding over Hollywood-level stars and production values. Then via spaghetti westerns that made Clint Eastwood the star he hadn’t become on home turf, reworking a quintessentially American genre toward border-blurring maxi-minimalism.

That was the 1950s and ’60s. Fernando Di Leo began as a scenarist, contributing to myriad spaghetti westerns including Sergio Leone’s Dollars films, though he never liked the genre. (“Happily, I have a great capacity for writing incredible crap.”) He stirred controversy with early directorial efforts about female sexual frigidity and juvenile delinquency, really hitting his stride with a series of the violent crime dramas that dominated 1970s Italian commercial cinema — alongside horror films and the neverending sex comedy genre.

Often tapping the “elephant’s graveyard” of past-prime Hollywood actors who preferred to take starring or lucrative “guest star” roles in European films rather than support whippersnappers back home, these movies were made with the international market in mind. Some are even baldly imitative of The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), and other influential U.S. hits of the era, to the point of unconvincingly fudging cultural and geographic compasses.

But while Di Leo’s films duly mixed veteran American actors into “Europudding” casts, his poliziotteschi exercises (he later voiced a preference for the term “noir”) were specifically Italian, with strong undercurrents of social criticism toward corrupt cops, politicians, and church officials — particularly those who’d disingenuously claim the Mafia “no longer existed.”

It certainly existed in these movies, four of which are showcased in “Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime Collection,” a box set representing DVD specialty label RaroVideo’s launch into the U.S. market. (It’s simultaneously releasing Fellini’s 1971 circus homage The Clowns as well.) It’s quickly apparent why this director was a professed huge influence on Quentin Tarantino, though they differ in politics (does QT have any?) and taste for verbal pyrotechnics (of which QT has arguably too much). The flamboyant tough guys played by beloved character actors, intricately internecine plots, explosions of outré violence, and vintage leisure-suited cool, however, passed from one to the other like DNA.

Caliber 9 (1972), first of the “Milieu Trilogy,” starts out as an unremarkable series of you-hit-me, I-hit-you shootings and explosions in the wake of the disappearance of $300,000 after a robbery. Primary suspicion falls on stony Ugo (Gastone Moschin, hitherto a comic actor), a bagman just out of prison who steadfastly denies that he absconded with the loot belonging to crime boss “the Americano.” But by the end every last viewer certainty has been overturned.

Mario Adorf, cast as the loudest, most obnoxious of Ugo’s mob tormentors, becomes the lead in that same year’s The Italian Connection, playing a small-time Milan pimp framed for a heroin shipment’s theft — and as a result hunted by two imported U.S. hit men. They’re sleazy career villain Howard Silva and John Ford’s towering, poker-faced fave Woody Strode, who both worked for Di Leo again. (He enjoyed repeatedly working with certain actors.) They provided the model for John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s scrapping double team in 1994’s Pulp Fiction.

A private-screening-room massacre at the start of 1973’s The Boss doubtless provided blueprint for the fiery climax of 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. Not that the two are otherwise related — this tale of Sicilian mob wars has a don’s university-student daughter kidnapped by rivals as revenge for that earlier act, then “rescued” by Silva’s stone-cold contract killer.

But the misogyny that surfaces fairly briefly in Caliber and Connection takes alarming precedence here: adapting to her gang-raping captors like fish to water, Rina (Antonia Santilli) proves a nymphomaniac pothead alcoholic, insatiable every which way. She’s a degrading “rich bitch” cartoon that must have horrified its few female viewers at the height of women’s lib. (No wonder Santilli abandoned her short screen career almost immediately afterward.) At least The Boss outruns that sour shit with a last lap of spectacular twistiness. A professed womanizer, Di Leo now seems like an auteur who should have left female characters the hell alone.

The RaroVideo box ends with 1976’s exceptionally stylish and perverse Rulers of the City, a.k.a. Mr. Scarface, in which a child survivor of a mob slaughter (Fassbinder regular Harry Baer) grows up to avenge himself on don Jack Palance (“Just looking at him and my asshole twitches,” an underling opines), who exercised reptilian zest decades before his exhibitionist-pushup Oscar comeback. But he’s not the only one: a Shirley Temple-bewigged chanteuse vamp (Gisela Hahn) in see-through lingerie sings about abortion just before being glimpsed in a postcoital five-way with participants including too-pretty ice-blond Al Cliver (a.k.a. Pierluigi Conti). Culminating in a foot race as clever as the automotive climaxes of Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection, this is a baroque, self-mocking melodrama you’d be hard-pressed not to love.

Di Leo ended the decade with two highlights among many lurid debtors to 1972’s Last House on the Left: Notorious To Be Twenty (1978), whose free-spirited young heroines meet a brutal fate all the more shocking for its coming out of the blue after 80-odd minutes of comic frivolity; and Madness (1980), wherein Joe Dallesandro terrorizes a bourgeoisie household. But the films Di Leo liked to make were now unfashionable in a shrunken market, Italian financiers favoring crass new local tastes for gore-horror and softcore sleaze. After two dispirited mid-1980s action films he retired, still in his early 50s. Before his 2003 death he enjoyed revived attention thanks to cult enthusiasts led by guess who. These movies all look sharp in their DVD restorations, offered English both dubbed and subtitled. (There were precious few “original language” Italian features then — everything was post-synched, into whatever required languages.) The box set’s accompanying booklet features a 2001 interview with the director in which he’s both frankly self-critical and astonishingly hubristic.

Spring nightlife preview

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 29, 2011

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Dear Miss Rotissary Ethnicity Jackson-Houston Ross,

By the time you read this, I will be gone. Europe and North Africa are calling Hunky Beau and me, and after almost seven years of covering San Francisco nightlife for the Guardian, and 14 years in general, she needs a little break (as does her skin!) Don’t fret, I’ll be back soon enough, in some form, possibly this one, quidnuncking up in your after-dark business. And we’ll be polishing the nightlife part of our weekly Guardian music listings, so you can keep an eye on what all the other queens are up to while I’m gone. Or just know where to go for fun dancing, duh.

Miss Ross, I leave the San Francisco scene in the creatively manicured yet still slightly crackly hands of yourself and all the other gorgeous new club terrors who’ve recently sprouted like neon alfalfa along the gilt gutters of our dance floors. (Although I haven’t seen your name around in a hot minute and sincerely hope you’re not dead.) Our local, organic, small-batch, sustainable, house-manufactured alternative party scene is the sexiest and deepest and most creative in the world right now. Don’t fuck it up, loves. If I come back and it’s all loathsome Britney tribute night$ and DJs/models from Vegas with two “Z”s and a hash tag in their name, I will pull out my hardcore OG Detroit techno wig — the one that’s really three wigs at once, powered by an ECS RS485M-M motherboard and topped with an abandoned 1930s skyscraper on fire that rotates — and level y’all. To the ground.

But of course before I leave, I have just a few things to say. I hope I’ve helped break down any severely tired genre and crowd divisions in the clubs, and I’ve tried my best to elevate nightlife commentary to a higher level than mere celebrity rubbernecking and overuse of the word “fabulous.” Nightlife is an art form, Miss Ross, and it has actually saved my life on several occasions. It has a history, and deserves respect and study. But not so much that it ceases being cuckoo bonkers coco puffs Loleatta Holloway amazing.

Finally, unlike some other outlets in this town, the Guardian’s party coverage has never been for sale. I may over-gush on occasion, and I’ll never actively deflect a dishy bartender’s kind attentions after I’ve written about a party, but you’ll always find “advertorial” between “shit” and “syphilis” and “circuit party” in my dictionary app. I may not look like an objective journalist when sprawled spread-eagle at Lombard and Broadway at 5 a.m. with a paper sack of emptied-out Cuervo pints in one hand and a fierce knock-off Gabrielecorto Moltedo bag of emptied-out dignity in the other, but welcome to the new media. No matter how much I adore the people involved, I’d never steer you toward a Mongolian stinkbomb for the free drinks and pocket change, K?

And now, at last, here’s a gaggle of awesome upcoming special-event spring parties. Farewell, Miss Ross, for now, and goddess bless you and the children and the children’s children and the host with the guest list scrawled on a crumpled-up cocktail napkin in his other pants so everyone gets in free.

Where’s my lime wedge,

Marke B.

WED., MARCH 30

Salem Oh, hi, witch house? You’ve caused a lot of trouble among the no-labels crowd. But few can deny the gothic-gangsta spookiness of your haunted electronic sound. Michigan’s Salem brings the crunky rap and fractured neo-Orff production, openers Soft Moon and Water Borders will hold the crowd spellbound.

8 p.m.-11 p.m., $12.50 advance. 103 Harriet, SF. www.blasthaus.com

Stay Gold Five-Year Anniversary Five years already? Well, the crowd at this mad monthly queer-jam-centric dance-a-thon doesn’t look a day over three — and has grown so huge that they’re moving from the Make-Out Room to Public Works. With resident DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning and guests Dr. Sleep, Pee Play, and Durt.

10 p.m., $3 before 11 p.m., $5 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

THURS., MARCH 31

Ladies of the House NextAid Benefit All women on decks for a dubby-bubbly event in honor of National Women’s History Month, benefiting NextAid, which helps out African women and youth. Icon, Dulce Vita, tamo, shOOey, and more.

7:30 p.m., $10–$20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

FRI., APRIL 1

Kool Keith and DJ Godfather Raunchy-outrageous alien rapper meets Detroit king of booty tech? Plus two rooms full of glitchy bass and Chicago footwork? Pack me another bowl, because it’s all coming true.

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $18 adv, $20. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

SAT., APRIL 2

Blessed Second Anniversary Deep and lovely house with that fantastically rich Oakland vibe — free monthly Blessed celebrates with Australian native DJ Vincent Kwok, who brings a sunny global soul perspective to the tables.

9 p.m., free. SomaR Bar, 1727 Telegraph, Oakl. Facebook: Blessed 2 Year

Emo Spring Break Hahaha, no sunshine for emos, ever, but plenty of fun and sing-a-long emo jams courtesy of awesome ’90s retro night Debaser. Emo, screamo, and pop-punk gems await your mopey hairdo.

The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.facebook.com/debaser90s

Mount Kimbie Dominic Maker and Kai Campo, a.k.a. Mount Kimbie, are kings of thoughtful post-dubstep (and brought down Public Works last year). They’ll float heavy at Mezzanine with sultry beat-collagist Shigeto, LA’s Matthew David, DJ Dials, and more.

10 p.m., $15 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

SUN., APRIL 3

Beats For Japan A massive all-day dance community effort to raise funds for those affected by the recent disaster. DJs Mark Farina, Claude Von Stroke, Miguel Migs, Fred Everything, David Harness, Oliver Desmet, Julius Papp, and New Mondo turn it up and out. Be there.

2 p.m–midnight, 10 suggested donation. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

THURS., APRIL 7

Big Freedia The omnipotent transgender queen of genius New Orleans genre sissy bounce is going to show you all how to get Azz Everywhere with gin in your system. She played Oakland last year and was seriously on fire. With her smart musical compatriot Rusty Lazer.

9 p.m.–late., check website for price, public Works, 161 erie, Sf. www.publicsf.com

7 Dirty Girls This one looks a clever corker. Curvicious Cabaret is putting on this naughty tribute to comedian George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” skit. One hot lass performing a routine for each word equals “filthy, depraved, perverted, disgusting, and completely uncensored burlesque.”

9 p.m., $10. Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF. www.curvisiouscabaret.com

FRI., APRIL 8

Jokers of the Scene The hardcore Torontonian goofballs are so nutty they used to be controversial. Now, they’re just good electro fun, and will pack the shiny-shiny Lights Down Low party even more. With Brenmar and Christian Martin (also damn good).

10 p.m.-late, $10. SOM 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

Miss Blow Up USA The exuberant 18+ monthly glitz-electro night is still going strong — and now they need a queen (apparently I’ve been retired). Anyone can enter — and everyone wins with DJs Jeffrey Paradise, Lloydski, Dirty Dave, and more.

10 p.m., $10 21+/$15 18+, DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.blowupsf.com

SAT., APRIL 9

Aprilween Yes, yes, every day is Halloween for us freaks — but not every night is a massive costume party at the monthly mashup Bootie party. So here you have it, Aprilween, with DJs Adrian and Mysterious D with guests Faroff and Squrrrl and live mashup band Smashup Derby. Plus crazy costume contest.

9 p.m., $8 before 10, $10 after. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.bootiesf.com

BiBi The off-the-hook hot and charitable queer Middle Eastern party returns with a “sail the seven seas” theme. DJs Cairo brings the ululating beats, bellydancers, yummy drink specials, and, as always, friendly hipshakes and sultry winks.

9 p.m., $10. Club 8, 1151 Folsom, SF. www.bibisf.org

Justin Vivian Bond San Francisco’s drag cabaret pride and joy, now slaying them (and scoring Tony noms) in New York City is releasing a new CD, Dendrophile, and bringing a truckload of talent to the Castro Theatre for a scenester’s dream of a performance.

8 p.m.–11 p.m., $25–$65. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. www.castrotheatre.com

WED., APRIL 13

DJ Kentaro + Japan benefit I am so delighted that actual vinyl turntables are making a comeback — but one glimpse of this Ninja Tune dude’s mad scratch-collage skillness might send a generation running back to Serrato. Proceeds go to Global Givings Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund

9:30 p.m.–late, $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

FRI., APRIL 15

Mary Ann Hobbs BBC Radio’s undisputed queen of fractured beats and intel electronic dance comes back to the Bay — with a fanperson’s wet-dream roster: Joy Orbison, Kode9, Roska, Gonjasufi (yes!), Lorn, Ghosts on Tape, and loads more. Sooo good.

10 p.m.–late, $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

Tensnake After a few false visa-issue starts, the German recombinant house prince brings his funky, fantastic, steamy, sing-a-long creations to Public Works. Coma Cat here we come!

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $10 with Facebook RSVP. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. Facebook: Tensnake Live!

SAT., APRIL 16

Legowelt Absolutely smoking house with a classic mid-’80s feel from this Dutch “slam jack” artiste at a special installment of the rad Donuts! party. Also check out fellow headliners Miracles Club from Portland for more introspective early house-ish sounds and local spectacle-kinksters Tres Lingerie.

9:30 p.m.–3 a.m., $5 before 10, $10 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

TUES., APRIL 19

Bomba Estereo Brash and sexy Colombian electro-cumbia (and rap) band have burned up dance floors and the YouTubes with hit “Fuego.” New EP Ponte Bomb samples Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” to viral effect.

7:30 p.m., $18. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Magical Properties Tour 3 Wicked, knob-twisted abstract bass and visual blasts from L.A. dandy Daedelus, local mensch Shlohmo, and fab Brainfeeder Tokimonsta. The last two installments we’re seriously banging, smoke up.

10 p.m., $12. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

THURS., APRIL 21

Lil B Who’s ready to get based? You know you are or wish you were. Super-canny Based God Oakland rapper Lil B is probably reaching out to you right now through his 500 Twitter feeds, but I’m telling you about this gig anyway.

9 p.m., $20 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

The Tubesteak Connection Seventh Anniversary What started as a humble tribute to the gay bathhouse discos of the past has, er, blossomed into a phenomenon over the past lucky seven — as well as expanding its excellent musical scope, via DJ Bus Station John’s sensitive yet probing ear, to become a “petri dish of the era’s many styles.” You’ll still get hella laid by a mustachioed hottie and dance your keister off.

10 p.m., $5. Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF.

FRI., APRIL 22

Fag Friday Another installment of this wildly successful reunion of one of SF’s best gay house parties. The beats get cunty and the family, young and younger, comes out for this one. Special guest Tedd Patterson brings some NYC shine, and residents David Harness and Juanita More turn the packed floor out.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

PantyRaid and Lowriderz Burning Man sleaze-step superstars return with a mighty rumble and bang to meld crunk and dubstep to an apocalyptic sensibility.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

SAT., APRIL 23

Wicked 20 Years of Disco Glory The actually legendary soundsystem has raved through two decades, deepening the original sound into the purely sublime. Celebrating with a full-moon howl will be the original crew: Garth, Jeno, Markie, and Thomas. And you!

10 p.m.–7 a.m., $20 adv. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

SAT., APRIL 30

Bender’s Second Annual Toga Party The first time this top bar among top bars held a toga party, it burned down (a week later, but still). That won’t happen this time — the bar is back and double the size — despite the hot-sheets in the crowd. With the Corruptors and the Grannies live.

10 p.m., $7. Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF. www.bendersbar.com

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

Mighty Real: Jellybean Benitez The Mighty Real classic house series at Mighty kicked off last month with Frankie Knuckles, and it was breathing room only (and fun!). This time another giant, Jellybean Benitez, joins resident DJ David Harness. Here’s hoping he drops some wild freestyle.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

Surefire Sound Tour Wonderful neo-grime, post-dubstep antics from this crew, bringing young phenom Ramadanman (very, very good), Zed Bias, and our very own Salva to the fore.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

SUN., MAY 1

How Weird Street Fair Yay! It’s the first of our major street fairs, which means I can finally run wild and free in my bunny suit, legally. Get stoopid in a good way with tons of DJs, one of the best local vibes of the season, and totally WEIRD entertainment. Theme: “Mythical Realms.” After-parties: galore.

Noon-8 p.m., donation requested. Howard and Second Streets, SF. www.howweird.org

Sunset Boat Party Always a tipsy-tyrvy winner on the high seas annually with those Pacific Sound boys, Solar, Galen, and J. Bird.. Check www.pacificsound.net for details and guests.

THURS., MAY 5

Devotion 10-Year Anniversary Good lord, has it really been that long for this former weekly Sunday night affair? It still sounds as fresh as ever, energetically house-y with a dash of Latin love, and even though founder DJ Ruben Mancias has relocated to NYC, there’s always a heavy local vibe when he plays in town. With special guest David Morales, plus David Harness and Teejay Walton.

9 p.m.–late, $10 adv. Mighty, 119 utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

SAT., MAY 7

Tim Xavier How much do I love monthly international live-set techno bonanza Kontrol at the EndUp? Thiiiiiis much, but a little bigger. May sees the Kontrol kids bringing in this intense Berlin musicmaker on the Clink label, who’ll definitely keep the adrenaline level up.

10 p.m.-6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.rtheendup.com *

Alerts

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

0

ALERTS

By Jackie Andrews

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30

Benefit for Fire and Ink

Help raise money for Fire and Ink, the Bay Area’s foremost advocate for LGBT writers of African descent for an evening of readings, soliloquies, music, and more.

7–9 p.m., $5–$100 suggested donation

Z Cafe and Bar

2735 Broadway, Oakl.

www.fireandice.org

THURSDAY, MARCH 31

Justice on the big screen

Enjoy a complimentary screening of Exile Nation: An Oral History of the War on Drugs and the U.S. Criminal Justice System. The film discusses unprecedented imprisonment — more than any other country in the world — in this so-called land of the free, as well as the failed war on drugs.

7–11 p.m., free

Jellyfish Gallery

1286 Folsom, SF

www.jellyfishgallery.com

FRIDAY, APRIL 1

Relief fund for Japan

Social Work Advocates for Visions of Empowerment (SWAVE) presents Sounds of Justice: Relief Fund for Japan, a night of local music performances to raise money for the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center.

8 p.m., $15 suggested donation

Community Music Center

544 Capp, SF

www.sfcmc.org

Mark Danner’s latest

Mark Danner presents his latest book Stripping the Bare Body: Politics, Violence, War. The book was written to help Americans understand the U.S.’s role in political conflict and upheaval around the world.

7:30–9:30 p.m., $12–$15

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

2345 Channing, Berk.

www.kpfa.com/events

www.brownpapertickets.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 2

Bay Localize fundraiser

Join Bay Area localize for a delicious, organic, and locally grown dinner, spirits, and desserts. Expect inspiring words, video premiers, hip-hop, reggae artists, and more to entertain.

6:30–9 p.m., $55–$75

California Ballroom

1736 Franklin, SF

www.baylocalize.org

Rooted in Resilience

This biannual national conference unites supporters and allies for the environment including the Filipino American Center for Environmental Solidarity (FACES), Communities for A Better Environment, and the Philippine Solidarity Task Force for engaging discussions and workshops about the oil industry and accountability. Includes a special report on Chevron.

9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., $10–$30

3878 Ninth St., Room Four Oakl.

Www.facessolidarity.org

MONDAY, APRIL 3

Confronting compassion fatigue

Get help coping with the burnout in the animal protection movement with a bevy of speakers, including Cindy Machado of the Marin Humane Society. Proceeds benefit Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary.

5:30-7–30 p.m., $10/free for students

UC Berkeley

126 Barrows Hall, Berk.

Facebook: compassion fatigue workshop

TUESDAY, APRIL 5

Prisons dissected

An expert panel discusses the ramifications of solitary confinement and experimental isolation units in U.S. prisons, as well as prisoners’ rights and racial and religious profiling.

6:30–8:30 p.m., free

Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

www.ccrjustice.org

Activist on activism

Susan Rosenberg, a political activist during the 1960s through the 1980s, discusses her new book An American Radical: Political Prisoner in My Own Country and recounts her journey from the FBI’s most wanted list to a 16-year incarceration.

5:30–7:30 p.m., free

Pegasus Books

2349 Shattuck, Berk. www.pegasusbookstore.com

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.

Stage Listings

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

0

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

THEATER

OPENING

*Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Opens Thurs/31. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 1. The Marsh presents a new solo show about aging and mortality by Geoff Hoyle.

ONGOING

*Caliente Pier 29, The Embarcadero; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. $117-145. Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Open-ended. Teatro Zinzanni presents a new production conceived in San Francisco.

Lady Grey (in ever lower light) EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 10. Cutting Ball Theater presents the Bay Area premiere of three short plays by Will Eno.

M. Butterfly Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.custommade.org. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also April 3 and 10, 7pm). Through April 16. Custom Made Theatre presents David Henry Hwang’s award-winning play.

*Obscura: A Magic Play Exit Studio, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 16. Christian Cagigal is back with the magical. Over the last several years, the popular Bay Area writer/performer has developed a series of dramatically structured magic shows (the most recent being the autobiographical Now and at the Hour), each a different attempt at blending expert prestidigitation with elements of narrative theater. Tightly focused and deliberately small-scale, Obscura is in some ways his most successful foray yet. In the Exit Theater’s new studio space, Cagigal (with occasional help from his audience) unfolds a series of sly Gothic stories combined with extremely clever, sometimes dementedly playful card and coin tricks—the majority a collection of favorite pieces from other magicians—all played out on a delicately managed little table augmented by overhead projection (a set-up that offers various visual opportunities, including use of title cards). Rapid-fire narration (occasionally indistinct but generally articulate) and a laid back, slightly mischievous demeanor combine here with consummate skill in an intimate and very enjoyable evening of crafty little tales. If there’s an overarching theme, it probably has something to do with human folly, the persistence of mystery, and the devil, but then any good fable involving a deck of cards probably should. (Avila)

*The Oldest Profession Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Brava Theater presents a play by Paula Vogel, directed by Evren Odcikin. Who says tricks are for kids? Five elderly women of the night (Linda Ayres-Frederick, Lee Brady, Tamar Cohn, Cec Levinson, Patricia Silver) converge by day at a park bench to swap stories, cavil, and defend their turf amid a changing world and one or two last hurrahs in Brava Theater’s production of Paula Vogel’s 1988 play about sex work, aging, and class solidarity. The subject matter is ripe, but the drama feels somewhat undeveloped. Although consciously set on the cusp of the Reagan era—an era culminating now in roiling confrontations everywhere you look—this fitfully amusing if generally well-acted and enjoyable feminist drama-cum-floorshow gives only a gentle political bite, preferring the tickle and caress of heartfelt comedy centered on the seeming incongruity of streetwise matrons. As the group dwindles, each final bow comes as a sexy and/or raunchy swan song—highlights of the evening—accompanied with Old New Orleans ambience by Angela Dwyer’s jaunty upright piano. It’s a bit like Cabaret meets Going in Style, and as directed by Evren Odcikin makes for a short but sweet ride. (Avila)

Party of 2 — The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Fri, 9pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Regrets Only New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/3. New Conservatory Theatre presents a play by Paul Rudnick, directed by Andrew Nance.

7 Sins…One More Time! EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 10. James Judd’s long-running comedy hit has a return engagement.

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.shoppingthemusical.com. $27-29. Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. A musical comedy revue about shopping by Morris Bobrow.

*Wirehead SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3and 8pm. Through April Perfectionism’s ruthless class dimensions come to the fore in SF Playhouse’s smart, fun, and sharply staged Bay Area premiere about the super-smart posthumans of the near future, and the rest of us. A shady China-based conglomerate with a name that sounds like Sin-Tell sells a scintillating if dangerous procedure for those already well connected: a hardwire boost to the neural circuitry that gives the recipient more than an edge on the competition and something just shy of godlike powers. Two friends and colleagues in a banking firm (Craig Marker and Gabriel Marin) and their variously class-marked but equally ambitious girlfriends (Lauren Grace and Madeline H.D. Brown) are all drawn into this cyborgian gold rush, and it gets sticky in more ways than one, as meanwhile a brash local DJ named RIP (Scott Coopwood) raps sardonically over the airwaves about this latest twist in an old game. SF Playhouse’s Susi Damilano directs a charismatic cast (including a terrific Cole Alexander Smith in a related series of frenetic roles) in Matt Benjamin and Logan Brown’s culture-jamming riposte to tech-mad humanist hogwash about Progress. It gets you thinking. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Free Range Thinking Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 9. The Marsh Berkeley presents a new comedic solo show by Robert Dubac.

The Iliad Berkeley City Club, 1802 Fairview, Berk; (510) 698-4030. $12-24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/3. Inferno Theatre Company presents an adaptation of Homer’s ancient tale.

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Berkeley Playhouse, 2640 College; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/3. Berkeley Playhouse presents a musical fantasy based on the C.S. Lewis story.

The North Pool TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefiled, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $24-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sun/3. TheatreWorks presents a psychological thriller by Rajiv Joseph.

Not a Genuine Black Man The Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through Thurs/31. Brian Copeland’s one-man show returns to the stage.

*Ruined Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-73. Call for dates and times. Through April 10. Berkeley Rep presents Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning play about the lives of women in Africa.

Singing at the Edge of the World The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 16. The Marsh presents a one-man show by Randy Rutherford.

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through Sun/3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

Music Listings

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

0

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

WEDNESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B Foundation, Katastro, Jahlectrik Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Careerers, Le Mutant, Marmalade Mountain Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DOM, Heavy Hawaii, Melted Toys, EpicSauce.com DJs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Ari Hest, Rosi Golan Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Katchafire, Tomorrows Bad Seeds Independent. 9pm, $20.

Weapons of the Future, Tokyo Raid, Knives Knockout. 10pm, $6.

Mary Wilson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Mitch Woods Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Zodiac Death Valley, Preteen, Mata Leon Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

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

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

Guerrilla Cabaret with Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm.

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

Michael Parsons Trio Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Stevie Coyle Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm.

Rose’s Pawn Shop, All My Pretty Ones Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Matthew Santos, Chi McClean, Chris Gelbuda Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

David Wagner Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.caferoyale-sf.com. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Salem, Water Borders, Whitch, Disco Shawn 103 Harriet, 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 8pm, $10.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alabama Mike Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

B-Stars Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Dreamdate, Touch-Me-Nots, Elvis Christ Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Frail Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Doug E. Fresh Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

Brendan James and Matt White, Lauren Pritchard Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Kem, Timothy Bloom Warfield. 8pm, $49.50-69.50.

Koalacaust, Steel Tigers of Death, King City Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Travie McCoy, Donnis, Black Cards, XV, Bad Rabbits Slim’s. 7:30pm, $18.

Route 66 Players Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Southeast Engine, Pancho-san, Tommy Carns Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dominique Leone, Meotar, Headshear Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 9pm.

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

Pascal Bokar Band and Alan Benzie’s Berklee College of Music Band Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $10.

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

“Tingel Tangel Club: Three Year Anniversary Party” Café Du Nord. 9pm, $16-20. Cabaret with Ann Magnuson and Kristian Hoffman, Uni and Her Ukelele, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and old-time jam Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Prince Royce Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $38.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bag Raiders, DJs Aaron Axelsen, Omar, and KidHack Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm.

Base Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $10. With Roger Sanchez.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

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

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

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

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Wax Candy Showdown, 10 Sixth St, SF; www.showdownsf.com. 9pm, free. Disco, funk, house, and techno with Sergio, the Worker, André Lucero, and Travis Dalton.

FRIDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 8pm, $55.

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Ben, Ian, and Tom of Gomez Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Books on Tape, Downer Party, Nero Nava Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

De La Soul Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $45.

Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry and Rebirth Brass Band Fillmore. 9pm, $29.50.

Last Nova, Untied, Fever Charm, Distorted Harmony, Amply Hostile Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Lenka, Greg Laswell Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $14.

Stung, Petty Theft Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

“Thee Parkside Anniversary Party” Thee Parkside. 9pm, free. With Glen Meadmore and His Hot Horny Born Again Revue.

Walken, Lozen, Dog Shredder, Pins of Light Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

BeauSoliel aves Michael Doucet Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $25.

Head for the Hills Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Rupa and the April Fishes, Rumen Sali Shopov and the Soul of the Mahala, Sani Rifati and Mahala Blaster, DJ Zeljko Independent. 9pm, $20.

Tony Ybarra and Sonido Moreno Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Aural Fixation with Kool Keith Club Six. 9pm, $15. Plus DJ Godfather, Dials, Prince Zammy, and Ryury.

DJ Scott Cams Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

ESL Music Showcase Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 10pm, $15. With Rob Garza, Ancient Astronauts, and Afrolicious DJs.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Mix-Up! 540 Club, 540 Clement, SF; www.540-club.com. 10pm, free. DJ Ben Abstrakt plays indie, new wave, dance, and more.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, one-hit wonders, and soul with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

120 Minutes Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Witch house with DJs oOoOO, Whitch, Nako, and White Ring.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Strangelove Cat Club. 9:30pm, $6. Goth, industrial, and plenty of surprises with DJs Tomas Diablo, Melting Girl, Mitch, and more.

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

SATURDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Steel, Yi, Cat Party, Hanalei Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $12.

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 7 and 9:30pm, $55.

Baseball Project, Minus 5, Steve Wynn Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

Big Bang Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

De La Soul Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $45.

Doormats, Daisy Chain Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry and Rebirth Brass Band Fillmore. 9pm, $29.50.

Hunx and His Punx, Shannon and the Clams, Grass Widow Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Zigaboo Modeliste and the New Aahkesstra Independent. 9pm, $22.

Nibblers Shine SF, 1337 Mission, SF; www.shinesf.com. 9pm.

Sex With No Hands Ireland’s 32. 10pm, free.

Trophy Fire, I Was Totally Destroying It, Glass Trains Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Marcus Shelby Trio Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 11am, $5-15.

John Santos Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $19-60.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

“Americana Jukebox” Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-10. With Hang Jones and Susan James.

Hot Buttered Rum String Band with guests Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Lee MacDougall Elbo Room. 6-9pm, $10.

Belle Monroe and her Brewglass Boys, California Honeydrops, Windy Hill Bluegrass Band Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bardot A Go Go’s Serge Gainsbourg Birthday Dance Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10. French pop.

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups.

Bridge 2 MIghty. 10pm, $10. Eclectic dance music with Deekline, Udachi, and Qdup Foundation.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Fly your flannel at this 90s alternative party with DJ Jamie Jams and EmDee.

DJ Duserock Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

HeroesNHunks Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF; (415) 252-0306. 6pm. Superhero-themed party with an XXX twist.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Mount Kimble, Shigeto, Matthew David Mezzanine. 9pm, $15.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room. 7pm, $55.

A Day to Remember, Bring Me the Horizon, We Came as Romans, Pierce the Veil Warfield. 7pm, $27.

Ferraby Lionheart, Henry Wolfe, Charlie Wadhams Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Gears, Controllers, Poop Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $10.

Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, Atlas Moth Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

Middle Brother, Blake Mills Independent. 8pm, $20.

Dorian Wood Viracocha, 998 Valencia, SF; (415) 374-7048. 8pm.

Young Prisms Knockout. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Daria Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Swing-out Sundays Milk Bar. 9pm, $7-15. With beginner swing lessons.

“Switchboard Music Festival” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.switchboardmusic.com. 2-10pm, $15-40. Marathon concert with Birds and Batteries, Causing a Tiger, Loren Chasse, Genie, Gojogo, and more.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Gentry Bronson, Rachel Efron, Kate Isenberg Yoshi’s San Francisco Lounge. 8pm, $7.

Dang Show Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $35.

Slow Poisoner, Naked and Shameless Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Kush Arora.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

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

MONDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Saturn, KaeRo, Zutra El Rio. 7pm, $7.

Seasick Steve Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Witchburn, Betty White Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Phil Manley, Sean Smith, Ava Mendoza Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith Orbit Room, 1900 Market, SF; (415) 252-9525. 7-10pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Sarah Allner, Brian Weeber El Rio. 7pm, free.

Ryan Bisio, Gwyneth and Monko, Ben Jordan Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Erin Brazill and the Brazillionaires, Annie Bacon and Her Oshen, Love Axe Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

British Sea Power, A Classic Education, Sporting Life Independent. 8pm, $16.

Crackerjack Highway, Fulton and 44th Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $12. Benefit for Boys Hope Girls Hope of San Francisco.

Das Butcher, Rodney J. Cooper, Chronox Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Donion, Outlaws and Preachers 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Kevin Kinsella Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Talib Kweli Fillmore. 8pm, $28.50.

Sydney Ducks, Face the Rail, Go Time, DJ Mackiveli, DJ Taypoleon Knockout. 8:30pm, $5.

Yeallow, Secret Secretaries, General Bye Bye, Interchangeable Hearts Kimo’s. 9pm.

Pete Yorn, Ben Kweller, Wellspring Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Benefit for Capoeira Brasil Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. Brazilian dance hits, samba, and more with DJs Dion and Kwala.

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house

Film Listings

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

OPENING

*The Elephant in the Living Room Or, the mountain lion in the kitchen. The gaboon viper in the garage. Americans are crazy enough without needing to keep dangerously exotic pets, but keep them they do, as director Michael Webber discovers in this surprisingly emotional documentary. The film focuses on a pair of Ohio men: the fearless, big-hearted Tim Harrison, a cop and firefighter who’s also the point person when a cast-off or escaped pet’s in a jam; and Terry Brumfield, weakened by depression and the effects of a lingering truck accident, who keeps a pair of fully-grown lions in a dilapidated cage in his junk-strewn yard. As Tim tends to his real-life superhero duties (including going incognito to an exotic pet show and purchasing the deadliest snake on offer, then taking it to a venom lab where it’s put to work saving lives), Terry worries over the continued care of his prized pets, who he sees as family members. The two men inevitably meet, and their relationship is the heart of Webber’s film, which touches on the more sensational aspects of wild-animal ownership via news reports (remember that chimpanzee who ate that woman’s face off?) while never making Terry out to be a villain. On a more selfish note, here’s hoping any puff adder habitats in my neighborhood remain securely latched. (1:43) Four Star. (Eddy)

Hop Comedy about a live-action guy tangling with an animated Easter bunny, from the same director who made Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006). (1:30) Presidio, Shattuck.

Insidious Saw (2004) and Paranormal Activity (2007) creators join forces for this PG-13 horror movie about a family whose young son is menaced by evil spirits. (1:42)

Miral Slumdog Millionaire (2008) beauty Freida Pinto stars in Julian Schnabel’s drama about an orphan girl growing up amid Israel-Palestine unrest. (1:42) Embarcadero.

*Orgasm, Inc. Liz Canner’s doc begins as she’s hired to do some editing work for a drug company in need of a loop of erotic videos to excite the women who’re testing its latest invention: a cream targeting so-called “Female Sexual Dysfunction.” As it turns out, basically everyone with a lab is frantically trying to develop a female Viagra; potential profits could rake in billions. Canner’s intrigued enough to leave the porn-editing bay and further investigate the race to scientifically calculate exactly what women need to achieve orgasm. Of course, it’s not as simple as what men need — though that doesn’t stop pharmaceutical giants from pushing potentially harmful drugs, inventors from convincing women to get invasive operations to test something called the “Orgasmatron” (note: Woody Allen not included), surgeons from pimping scary “genital reconstruction surgery,” or TV doctors from defining what a “normal” woman’s sex life should be. San Francisco’s own Dr. Carol Queen is among the inspiring experts interviewed to help cut through all the big-money bullshit; she’ll be part of a panel discussion after the film’s Monday, April 4, 6:45 p.m. show. Director Canner will appear Saturday, April 2, from 8:30-9:30 p.m. at Good Vibrations (www.goodvibes.com) on Valencia Street. (1:19) Roxie. (Eddy)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

*Rubber This starts out just on the right side of self-conscious prank, introducing a droll fourth-wall-breaking framework to a serenely surreal central conceit: An old car tire abandoned in the desert miraculously animates itself to commit widespread mayhem. Credit writer-director-editor-cinematographer-composer Quentin Dupieux for an original concept and terrific execution, as our initially wobby antihero wends its way toward civilization, discovering en route it can explode (or just crush) other entities with its “mind.” Which this rumbling black ring of discontent very much enjoys doing, to the misfortune of various hapless humans and a few small animals. Rubber is an extended Dadaist joke that has adventurous fun with filmic and genre language. Beautifully executed as it is, the concept tires (ahem) after a while, reality-illusion games and comedic flair flagging by degrees. Still, it’s so polished and resourceful a treatment of an utterly peculiar idea that no self-respecting cult film fan will want to say they didn’t see this during its initial theatrical run. (1:25) Lumiere. (Harvey)

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) Marina. (Chun)

Super Naive, vaguely Christian, and highly suggestible everyman Frank (Rainn Wilson) snaps when his wife (Liv Tyler) is seduced away by sleazy drug dealer Jacques (Kevin Bacon). With a little tutoring from the cute girl at the comic store, Libby (Ellen Page), he throws together a pathetically makeshift superhero costume and equally makeshift persona as the Crimson Bolt. Time to dress up and beat down local dealers, child molesters, and people who cut in line with cracks like, “Shut up, crime!” Frank’s taking stumbling, fumbling baby steps toward rescuing his lady love, but it becomes more than simply his mission when Libby discovers his secret and tries to horn in on his act as his kid sidekick Boltie. Alas, what begins as a charming, intriguing indie about dingy reality meeting up with violent vigilantism goes full-tilt Commando (1985), with all the attendant gore and shocks. In the process director James Gunn (2006’s Slither) completely squanders his chance to peer more deeply into the dark heart of the superhero phenom, topping off this vaguely Old Testament reading of good and evil with an absolutely incoherent ending. (1:36) Embarcadero, California. (Chun)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Battle: Los Angeles Michael Bay is likely writhing with envy over Battle: Los Angeles; his Transformers flicks take a more, erm, nuanced view of alien-on-human violence. But they’re not all such bad guys after all; these days, as District 9 (2009) demonstrated, alien invasions are more hazardous to the brothers and sisters from another planet than those trigger-happy humanoids ready to defend terra firma. So Battle arrives like an anomaly — a war-is-good action movie aimed at faceless space invaders who resemble the Alien (1979) mother more than the wide-eyed lost souls of District 9. Still reeling from his last tour of duty, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is ready to retire, until he’s pulled back in by a world invasion, staged by thirsty aliens. In approximating D-Day off the beach of Santa Monica, director Jonathan Liebesman manages to combine the visceral force of Saving Private Ryan (1998) with the what-the-fuck hand-held verite rush of Cloverfield (2008) while crafting tiny portraits of all his Marines, including Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, and True Blood‘s Jim Parrack. A few moments of requisite flag-waving are your only distractions from the almost nonstop white-knuckle tension fueling Battle: Los Angeles. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Black Swan “Lose yourself,” ballet company head Thomas (Vincent Cassel) whispers to his leading lady, Nina (Natalie Portman), moments before she takes the stage. But Nina is already consumed with trying to find herself, and rarely has a journey of self-discovery been so unsettling. Set in New York City’s catty, competitive ballet world, Black Swan samples from earlier dance films (notably 1948’s The Red Shoes, but also 1977’s Suspiria, with a smidgen of 1995’s Showgirls), though director Darren Aronofsky is nothing if not his own visionary. Black Swan resembles his 2008 The Wrestler somewhat thematically, with its focus on the anguish of an athlete under ten tons of pressure, but it’s a stylistic 180. Gone is the gritty, stripped-down aesthetic used to depict a sad-sack strongman. Like Dario Argento’s 1977 horror fantasy, the gory, elegantly choreographed Black Swan is set in a hyper-constructed world, with stabbingly obvious color palettes (literally, white = good; black = evil) and dozens of mirrors emphasizing (over and over again) the film’s doppelgänger obsession. As Nina, Portman gives her most dynamic performance to date. In addition to the thespian fireworks required while playing a goin’-batshit character, she also nails the role’s considerable athletic demands. (1:50) Red Vic. (Eddy)

*Carancho What Psycho (1960) did for showers this equally masterful, if far more bloody, neo-noir is bound to do for crossing the street at night. Argentine director Pablo Trapero has spun his country’s grim traffic statistics (the film’s opening text informs us that more than 8,000 people die every year in road accidents at a daily average of 22) into a Jim Thompson-worthy drama of human ugliness and squandered chances. Sosa (Ricardo Darín of 2009’s The Secret in Their Eyes) is the titular “carancho,” or buzzard, a disbarred lawyer-turned-ambulance chaser who swoops down on those injured in road accidents on behalf of a shady foundation that fixes personal injury lawsuits. It’s only a matter of time before he crosses paths with and falls for Lujan (a wonderful Martina Gusman, also of Trapero’s 2008 Lion’s Den), a young ambulance medic battling her own demons and a grueling work schedule. A May-December affair begins to percolate until Sosa botches a job and incurs the wrath of the foundation, kicking off a chain reaction that only leads to further tragedy for him and his newfound love. Trapero keeps a steady hand at the wheel throughout, deftly guiding his film through intimate scenes that lay bare Lujan’s quiet desperation and Sosa’s moral ambivalence as well as genuinely shocking moments of violence. The Academy passed over Carancho as one of this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, but Hollywood would do well to learn from talent like Trapero’s. (1:47) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) California, Four Star, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

Desert Flower Based on the best-selling “model memoir,” Desert Flower spins the remarkable tale of Waris Dirie, who fled across the Somalian desert as a young teen to escape an arranged marriage. The marriage was not the most cruel tradition to be imposed on the girl, however — as a toddler, she’d been circumcised, and the crude operation (designed to keep her “pure” until marriage) caused her pain for years after. Waris (played as an adult by Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede) eventually makes her way to London, where she’s discovered by a top photographer (Timothy Spall) while mopping floors at a fast-food restaurant. Part culture-clash drama, part girl-power success story (Waris befriends a spunky Topshop clerk, played by Sally Hawkins), Desert Flower is directed (by Sherry Hormann) with the heavy-handedness of a TV movie. But the film does a powerful job drawing attention to a subject not often discussed — despite the efforts of activists like the real-life Dirie, female circumcision still affects some 6,000 girls a day — and for that it cannot be faulted. (2:00) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

Even the Rain It feels wrong to criticize an “issues movie” — particularly when the issues addressed are long overdue for discussion. Even the Rain takes on the privatization of water in Bolivia, but it does so in such an obvious, artless way that the ultimate message is muddled. The film follows a crew shooting an on-location movie about Christopher Columbus. The film-within-a-film is a less-than-flattering portrait of the explorer: if you’ve guessed that the exploitation of the native people will play a role in both narratives, you’d be right. The problem here is that Even the Rain rests on our collective outrage, doing little to explain the situation or even develop the characters. Case in point: Sebastian (Gael García Bernal), who shifts allegiances at will throughout the film. There’s an interesting link to be made between the time of Columbus and current injustice, but it’s not properly drawn here, and in the end, the few poignant moments get lost in the shuffle. (1:44) Balboa, Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

I Am File in the dusty back drawer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) wannabes. The cringe-inducing, pretentious title is a giveaway — though the good intentions are in full effect — in this documentary by and about director Tom Shadyac’s search for answers to life’s big questions. After a catastrophic bike accident, the filmmaker finds his lavish lifestyle as a successful Hollywood director of such opuses as Bruce Almighty (2003) somewhat wanting. Thinkers and spiritual leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, and scientist David Suzuki provide some thought-provoking answers, although Shadyac’s thinking behind seeking out this specific collection of academics, writers, and activists remains somewhat unclear. I Am‘s shambling structure and perpetual return to its true subject — Shadyac, who resembles a wide-eyed Weird Al Yankovic — doesn’t help matters, leaving a viewer with mixed feelings, less about whether one man can work out his quest for meaning on film, than whether Shadyac complements his subjects and their ideas by framing them in such a random, if well-meaning, manner. And sorry, this film doesn’t make up for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). (1:16) Shattuck. (Chun)

*The Illusionist Now you see Jacques Tati and now you don’t. With The Illusionist, aficionados yearning for another gem from Tati will get a sweet, satisfying taste of the maestro’s sensibility, inextricably blended with the distinctively hand-drawn animation of Sylvain Chomet (2004’s The Triplets of Belleville). Tati wrote the script between 1956 and 1959 — a loving sendoff from a father to a daughter heading toward selfhood — and after reading it in 2003 Chomet decided to adapt it, bringing the essentially silent film to life with 2D animation that’s as old school as Tati’s ambivalent longing for bygone days. The title character should be familiar to fans of Monsieur Hulot: the illusionist is a bemused artifact of another age, soon to be phased out with the rise of rock ‘n’ rollers. He drags his ornery rabbit and worn bag of tricks from one ragged hall to another, each more far-flung than the last, until he meets a little cleaning girl on a remote Scottish island. Enthralled by his tricks and grateful for his kindness, she follows him to Edinburgh and keeps house while the magician works the local theater and takes on odd jobs in an attempt to keep her in pretty clothes, until she discovers life beyond their small circle of fading vaudevillians. Chomet hews closely to bittersweet tone of Tati’s films — and though some controversy has dogged the production (Tati’s illegitimate, estranged daughter Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel claimed to be the true inspiration for The Illusionist, rather than daughter and cinematic collaborator Sophie Tatischeff) and Chomet neglects to fully detail a few plot turns, the dialogue-free script does add an intriguing ambiguity to the illusionist and his charge’s relationship — are they playing at being father and daughter or husband and wife? — and an otherwise straightforward, albeit poignant tale. (1:20) Four Star, Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Inside Job Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets). The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. The filmmaker’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof; tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. (2:00) Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) SF Center. (Eddy)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Last Lions It’s hard being a single mom. Particularly when you are a lioness in the Botswana wetlands, your territory invaded and mate killed by an invading pride forced out of their own by encroaching humanity. Add buffalo herds (tasty yes, but with sharp horns they’re not afraid to use) and crocodiles (no upside there), and our heroine is hard-pressed to keep herself alive, let alone her three small cubs. Derek Joubert’s spectacular nature documentary, narrated by Jeremy Irons (in plummiest Lion King vocal form) manages a mind-boggling intimacy observing all these predators. Shot over several years, while seeming to depict just a few weeks or months’ events, it no doubt fudges facts a bit to achieve a stronger narrative, but you’ll be too gripped to care. Warning: those kitties sure are cute, but this sometimes harsh depiction of life (and death) in the wild is not suitable for younger children. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Mars Needs Moms (1:28) 1000 Van Ness.

The Music Never Stopped Based on a Dr. Oliver Sacks case history, this neurological wild-ride focuses on the generation gap in extremis: after a ’60s teenage son rebels against his parents, staying incommunicado in the interim, he resurfaces over two decades later as a disoriented, possibly homeless patient they’re called to identify at a hospital. He’s had a benign brain tumor removed — yet it had grown so large before surgery that it damaged gray-matter areas including those handling recent memory. As a result, Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) relates to Mr. (J.K. Simmons) and Mrs. Sawyer (a terrific but underutilized Cara Seymour) as if they were still his upstate NY domestic keepers. A radiant Julia Ormond plays the music therapist who convinces them Gabe might respond to music, which had helped serially glue and sever the father-son bond decades earlier. This is an inherently fascinating psychological study. But director Jim Kohlberg and his scenarists render it placidly inspirational, with too little character nuance, scant period atmosphere (somewhat due to budgetary limitations), and weak homage to the Grateful Dead (ditto) rendering an unusual narrative oddly formulaic. (1:45) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) Albany, Lumiere. (Goldberg)

Paul Across the aisle from the alien-shoot-em-up Battle: Los Angeles is its amiable, nerdy opposite: Paul, with its sweet geeks Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), off on a post-Comic-Con pilgrimage to all the US sites of alien visitation. Naturally the buddies get a close encounter of their very own, with a very down-to-earth every-dude of a schwa named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), given to scratching his balls, spreading galactic wisdom, utilizing Christ-like healing powers, and cracking wise when the situation calls for it (as when fear of anal probes escalates). Despite a Pegg-and-Frost-penned script riddled with allusions to Hollywood’s biggest extraterrestrial flicks and much 12-year-old-level humor concerning testicles and farts, the humor onslaught usually attached to the two lead actors — considered Lewis and Martin for pop-smart Anglophiles — seems to have lost some of its steam, and teeth, with the absence of former director and co-writer Edgar Wright (who took last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the next level instead). Call it a “soft R” for language and an alien sans pants. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune When Phil Ochs was at his peak, he was one of the finest polemical folksingers to come out of the ’60s, and when he tumbled from those heights, the fall was terrible: he lost more than friends and fame — he appeared to completely lose himself, to substance abuse and mental illness. Director Kenneth Bowser does the singer-songwriter justice with this documentary, threading to-the-ramparts tunes like “Hazard, Kentucky,” questioning numbers a la “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” and achingly beautiful songs such as “Jim Dean of Indiana” throughout political events of the day, scenes from a protest movement that were inextricably entangled with Ochs’ oeuvre. Along with the many clips of Ochs in performance are interviews with the artist’s many friends, cohorts, and fans including Van Dyke Parks (who is becoming a Thurston Moore-like go-to for a generation’s damaged voices), brother (and music archivist) Michael Ochs, Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Peter Yarrow, Billy Bragg, daughter Meegan Ochs, and Ed Sanders. Expect an education in Ochs’ art, but also, perhaps more importantly (to the singer-songwriter), a glimpse into a time and place that both fed, fueled and bestowed meaning on his songs. Bowser succeeds in paints the portrait of a performer that was both idealistic and careerist, driven to fight injustice yet also propelled to explore new creative avenues (like recording with local musicians in Africa). Did Ochs fall — by way of drink, drugs, and mental illness — or was he pushed, as the artist claimed when he accused CIA thugs of destroying his vocal chords? The filmmaker steps back respectfully, allowing us to draw our own conclusion about this life lived fully. (1:38) Balboa, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? There are plenty of docs out there detailing the slow decline of the human race — self-inflicted decline, that is, thanks to our disregard for long-term environmental damage caused by our greedy, polluting ways. But unlike the recent Carbon Nation (2010), for example, which took a broad look at renewable energy, Queen of the Sun studies a far more specific issue. A tiny one, in fact: the size of a honeybee. Of course, as the movie points out, this honeybee-sized disaster is actually a global disaster in the making. The latest from Taggart Siegel, director of 2005’s The Real Dirt on Farmer John, investigates the global bee crisis, talking to numerous beekeepers and scientists to discover why bees are disappearing, how their mass-vanishing act affects the food chain, and what (if anything) can be done before it’s too late. Creative animation and quite a few characters (including a shirtless French guy who tickles his hive with his graying mustache) keep Queen of the Bees from feeling too much like a lecture; in fact, it’s quite an eye-opener. You’ll think twice before ever swatting another bee. (1:23) Roxie. (Eddy)

Rango (1:47) Empire, Presidio, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Red Riding Hood In order to appreciate a movie like Red Riding Hood, you have to be familiar with the teen supernatural romance genre. Catherine Hardwicke’s sexy reinterpretation of the fairy tale is not high art: the script is often laughable, the acting flat, and the werewolf CGI embarrassing. But there’s something undeniably enjoyable about Red Riding Hood, especially in the wake of the duller, more sexually repressed Twilight series. Amanda Seyfried stars as Valerie, a young woman living in a village of werewolf cannon fodder. She’s torn between love and duty — or, more accurately, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) and Henry (Max Irons). Meanwhile, a vicious werewolf hunter (Gary Oldman) has arrived to overact his way into killing the beast. It’s a silly story with plenty of hamfisted references to the original fairy tale, but if you can embrace the camp factor and the striking visuals, Red Riding Hood is actually quite fun. Though, to be fair, it might help if you suffer through Beastly first. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Sucker Punch If steampunk and Call of Duty had a baby, would it be called Baby Doll? That seems to be the question posed by director-cowriter Zack Snyder with his latest edge-skating, CGI-laden opus. Neither as saccharine and built-for-kids as last year’s Legend of the Guardians, nor as doomed and gore-besotted as 2006’s 300, Sucker Punch instead reads as a grimy Grimm’s fairy tale built for girls succored on otaku, Wii, and suburban pole dancing lessons. Already caught in a thicket of storybook tropes, complete with a wicked stepfather and vulnerable younger sister, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is tossed into an asylum for wayward girls, signed up for a lobotomy that’s certain to put her in la-la land for good. Fortunately she has a great imagination — and a flair for disassociating herself from the horrors around her —and the scene suddenly shifts to a bordello-strip club populated by such bad-girls-with-hearts-of-gold as Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and sister Rocket (Jena Malone). There Baby Doll discovers yet another layer in the gameplay: like a prospective hoofer in Dancing with the Stars, she must dance her way to the next level or next prize — while deep in her imagination, she sees herself battling giant samurai, robot-zombie Nazis, dragons, and such, assisted by the David Carradine-like, cliché-spouting wise man (Scott Glenn) and accompanied by an inspiring score that includes Björk’s “Army of Me” and covers of the Pixies and Stooges. Things take a turn for the girl gang-y when she recruits Sweet Pea, Rocket, and other random stripper-‘hos (Vanessa Hudgens and Real World starlet Jamie Chung) in her scheme to escape. Why bother, one wonders, since Baby Doll seems to be a genuine escape artist of the mind? The ever-fatalistic Snyder obviously has affection for his charges: when the shadows inevitably close in, he delicately refrains from the arterial spray as the little girls bite the dust in what might be the closest thing to a feature-length anime classic that Baz Luhrmann would give his velvet frock coat to make. (2:00) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Chun)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Bridge, California, SF Center. (Eddy)

Winter in Wartime (1:43) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

REP PICKS

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead Joe Cross appears in person for a special screening of his weight-loss documentary; visit www.balboamovies.com for details and advance tickets. (1:40) Balboa.

*Some Girls Do, The President’s Analyst This last double bill in the Vortex Room’s March of vintage espionage offers something silly and something sublime. The former is journeyman U.K. director Ralph Thomas’ 1969 feature, a slick 007 knockoff with Richard Johnson — a homelier Sean Connery lookalike — being pursued far and wide by foes of “the world’s first supersonic airliner.” Plus a lot of sexy girls, natch, including Ohio-born starlet Synde Rome — whose stunning filmography would include roles opposite Marty Feldman, David Bowie, and The Pumaman (1960), not to mention a Polanski movie — as miniskirted twit “Flicky,” and Israeli bombshell Daliah Lavi. The semi-spoof no doubt taxed the finances of Rank Organization, that British studio remembered for its muscleman-striking-gong logo, which had missed out on the Bond bonanza. It’s enjoyably dated disposable entertainment. By contrast, 1967’s The President’s Analyst by writer-director Theodore J. Flicker, whose non-promotion to the status of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks deprived us of unimaginable comic gold, is possibly the greatest of all 1960s movie satires. A marvelous James Coburn plays the title figure, whose privileged access to the Oval Office results in tracking by assassins worried he “knows too much,” to the free world’s peril. Parodying everything from spy flicks to emergent hippie culture, it’s an undervalued classic you’ll remain unacquainted with at your peril. Vortex Room. (Harvey)

On the Cheap Listings

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

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

WEDNESDAY 30

Decent Exposure Project One, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 938-7173, www.p1sf.com. 6pm, free. Whether you make stuff or just like other people’s cool art-things, everyone is welcome to take part in this art swap and sale. An exciting list of local participating artists are highlighted including Matt Furie, Sam Snowden, and Audrey Erickson, as well as a slew of other talents, so support local art and stock up on zines, prints, stickers and other goodies.

FRIDAY 1

Jay Howell zine release party 111 Minna, SF; www.punksgitcut.blogspot.com, www.111minnagallery.com. 5pm, free. Celebrate the release of multi-talented California-based artist Jay Howell’s new zine Punks Git Cut at a party thrown by Unpiano Books and Last Gasp. A ton of zines, original Howell t-shirts, and other fun surprises will be available for purchase.

Lawrence Waters solo show Station 40, 3030B Valencia, SF; www.station40events.wordpress.com. 7-10pm, free. Tonight, attend Lawrence Waters first solo art show, which happens to double as a fundraising event for his tattoo business. All artwork will be priced to meet anyone’s means, so come on out and help support this pillar of the tattoo community.

St. Stupid’s Day parade Meet at Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero and Market, SF; www.saintstupid.com. 12-2pm, free. Get stupid today. Whether that means dressing up in a silly and satirical costume or getting hyphy like Mac Dre is up to you, but craziness is always more fun – and slightly less creepy – when done en masse. Meet at Justin Herman Plaza and parade around to such “stupid” places as the Federal Reserve and The Tomb of the Stupid (a.k.a. 101 California, the home of several financial institutions). Check the admittedly flaky event website for further – er, confusing – details.

SATURDAY 2

Free-cycle for the planet Lake Merritt Amphitheater, Lakeshore and Grand, Oakl.; www.eastbayfreeschool.wikia.com. Noon-4pm, free. East Bay Hella Free Day is the ultimate swap meet where everything is, well, hella free. Bring whatever you want to get rid of and come get your free on. Who knows what treasures you’ll find! Plus, you’re helping to keep good, usable stuff out of landfills.

Rise Japan Gallery Heist, 679 Geary, SF; www.galleryheist.com, www.kokorostudio.com. 7pm-midnight, free. In response to the devastating disaster that has struck Japan, Heist Gallery is teaming up with their neighbors Kokoro Studios for a salon-style art exhibition and a reasonably priced sale – everything will be priced at $100 or less – where 100 percent of the proceeds will go to Give2Asia, a relief fund for Japan. Artists donating their work to the cause include Akko Terasawa, Ryan McGinness, Superdeux, and more, with artists being added daily.

Hard French El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.hardfrench.com. 3-8pm, $7 including free BBQ from 3-5pm. Everyone’s favorite queer soul dance party made some improvements to this month’s installment worth noting. Oh, the usual sweet sounds of yesteryear, artery-clogging BBQ, and babe-a-licious go-go dancers will remain the same, however to reduce that dreaded line down the block, the good folks at El Rio have decided to open the gates of soul an hour early. Now you may get yourself situated well in time for the music to begin at 3pm. They have also added a second bar out back and included a $1 coat check. Smart!

SUNDAY 3

Cesar Chavez community health celebration Healthy Hearts Youth Market Garden at the Dover Street Park, 57th St. and Dover, Oakl.; www.phatbeetsproduce.com. Noon-3pm, free. Celebrate the legacy of Caesar Chavez, the American farm worker and activist who helped found the National Farm Workers Association, at this day-long celebration featuring speakers, Aztec ceremonies, a mural installation, cooking demonstrations, and much more. This event is organized by Phat Beets, a non-profit connecting urban communities to local and healthy produce.

TUESDAY 5

Bad ass Ben Thompson in town The Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; 7:30pm, free. Ben Thompson, creator of the website Badass of the Week, a guide to the most epic heroes the world has ever known – including Hideaki Akaiwa, the dude who recently scuba-dived through the tsunami in Japan to save his wife and mother – will be presenting his new book Badass: The Birth of a Legend and telling even more stories of incredible ass-kickery. Oh yeah, and there will be free food and wine. Who’s down?

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Psychic Dream Astrology

Maria Poblet

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March 29, 2011

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March 30-April 4

Mercury goes retrograde from March 30 until April 23.

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Growth and personal development will be yours if you take a grounded approach to your life this week. Cultivate your dreams by strategizing how you can implement them quickly. Make a solid plan.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Initiate well-laid plans and do it with steeze this week. You are set to create foundations that can bring you much success. So make sure you truly want what you’re working toward — ’cause you just might get it.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

If your choices are not self-appropriate, you won’t like your life — no matter how good it looks to others. Your challenge this week is to put the needs of your body first as you pursue what brings you joy.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

You are moving though some major emotional patterns that have long lived within you. How you handle the challenges will affect those patterns as much as the immediate situations in your life. Act courageously.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

Actively pursue truth in all its forms this week. Here’s a tip: you don’t need to tell your truth from every soapbox you find. Use your truth as a blanket to keep you warm, not as proof of your prowess.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Controlling the outcome — or even the process — you’re engaged in is poorly starred, Virgo. Let go of your expectations. Instead, engage in things with the most delight and optimism you can muster.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Are your feelings real if no one else knows about them? Do you need to self-disclose in order to validate that what you’re going through is genuine? Find a self you can count on.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Whatever your case of the sads is about, it’s weighing your heart down something awful. This isn’t the time for indulging in depression, Scorpio. Take creative actions that promote feeling good — even if it’s in super small ways.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Before you going making radical changes and sweeping proclamations, make sure you’re right with your people. Strengthen your connections by letting the folks you love know what makes you so very fond of them.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

Please go directly toward what you want — but resist all urges to get so focused on your goals you become an egotistical jerk. Keep your integrity by staying emotionally present and compassionate this week.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

What’s your motive? Do you want to advance yourself on the outside, or on your insides? It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but right now what you’re doing won’t quite satisfy either side of you. Focus!

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

When you move forward, you inevitably leave something behind. Make sure you’re letting go of parts of yourself that are well moved on from instead of making the same mistakes in a new location. *

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

Print sections as they appeared in the early 2010s

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POWER BROKER

HIDDEN AGENDA?

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

ADOPT AWAY

FOSTER BLISS

VICARIOUS

A BLUNT RUMP ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

PYTHON PERFORMANCE: WHY SHOULD BRITNEY HAVE ALL THE FUN?

ALL SWEET, NO SNEEZE

CUTE COOING

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