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Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Here’s what really scares me about Republicans in Washington: they don’t want the economy to get better.

I’m not just saying that they’re wrong on the issues, or that their prescriptions — tax cuts for the rich, fewer regulations for big business, privatization of health care and Social Security — will only make things worse. I’m saying that, right now, in November 2010, the GOP leaders want continued high unemployment. They want Americans to suffer. They want conditions to get worse and worse — because all they really care about right now is defeating Barack Obama in 2012. And they know and I know and everyone else knows that if the economy improves, he’ll be a two-term president.

I’m not the only one who sees this open conspiracy. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has been Twittering about it, and bloggers have been floating it out, but the mainstream news media doesn’t’ seem to want to take the risk of saying what’s right in front of everyone’s face: Republicans are lying, outright. They’ve campaigned on the promise that their ideas and agenda will put America back to work — but they know that’s not true. What the agenda is going to be is obstruction.

The Democrats have never done that, at least not in recent history. Oh, they fought W. on all sorts of policy issues, but they never tried to make sure that the country collapsed. That’s a big difference between the two parties, and it comes down to a basic question: How many people are you willing to hurt, how much suffering are you willing to promote, just to get back in power??

I’ve been talking to a lot of political activists, elected officials, and outside agitators of late about the next president of the Board of Supervisors (with all that implies) and I keep hearing the same name: David Campos.

Campos has been one of the great success stories of the class of 2008, an effective legislator who can work with just about everyone. He’s a solid progressive, but with a gentle personality — someone who sticks to his principles but doesn’t pick personal fights. I don’t know how he puts together six votes, but he might surprise us.

I’m writing this the day before the election and it comes out the day after, by which time Jerry brown will be the governor-elect, Barbara Boxer will have won another Senate term, and the Giants will be holding their World Series victory parade. You read it here last.

SF needs a local hire law

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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SF needs a local hire law

EDITORIAL A billion-dollar hospital project, built by a public agency using taxpayer dollars, just broke ground on the edge of District 10, the corner of the San Francisco with the highest unemployment rate and some of the city’s worst economic problems. That’s something job-hungry residents ought to be celebrating — more than 1,000 construction workers will be earning steady paychecks over the next few years.

And yet, when dignitaries including Rep. Nancy Pelosi showed up for the groundbreaking ceremony, they were met with protests. Bayview residents showed up to complain that very few of those jobs are going to the people who live in the project’s neighborhood. In fact, not that many jobs are likely to go to San Francisco residents. That’s because the University of California, San Francisco, which is building the hospital at Mission Bay, has no policy whatsoever requiring its contractors to hire local residents. As Sarah Phelan reports on page 11, San Francisco residents may turn out to make up fewer than 20 percent of the people who work on the project.

That’s a problem for a significant number of local construction projects financed and managed by government agencies. A recent study released by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Office of Economic and Workforce Development found that only 20 percent of the workers on public works job sites in the city were San Francisco residents.

Obviously, private construction companies can hire anyone they want — but when San Francisco tax dollars and San Francisco public land are involved, local residents ought to get a fair share of the work. That’s not just a political argument; it’s solid economics. Just as money spent at a locally owned independent business stays in town and does more for the local economy than money sent at big chains, local workers are more likely to spend their paychecks here in town.

Sup. John Avalos has introduced a bill that would set a 50 percent requirement for local hiring on projects paid for by the city. It’s a great idea, and needs strong support. There’s resistance from the building trade unions, which is no surprise — the unions want to keep the seniority system in place and give jobs to the members who have been unemployed the longest, no matter where they live. And a significant percentage of the membership of the building trade unions live out of town.

May of the residents of low-income areas like Bayview lack the specific skills for unionized trade jobs. But with so many longtime members out of work, the unions don’t want to add apprenticeship programs to train new workers for jobs that don’t exist.

But there has to be room for compromise here. The building trades leaders need to understand that San Francisco taxpayers have every right to demand that when they finance public works projects, some of that money will stay in town. And Avalos isn’t pushing for 100 percent local hire — nor is he trying to undermine the time-honored tradition of the union hiring hall.

The UC project is trickier. As a state agency, UC is exempt from local laws — and has a long history of defying San Francisco’s efforts to hold it accountable. The Bayview activists aren’t asking for 50 percent local hire — but they are demanding that the university adopt some sort of enforceable rules to ensure that some percentage of the jobs at the new hospital go to city residents. That’s more than reasonable.

San Francisco’s state legislative delegation ought to be in touch with the UCSF chancellor and send a clear message: This is a problem that needs to be resolved, now — and if it’s not, legislation setting local hire goals for all UC projects ought to be on next year’s agenda.

California’s secret death drug

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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California’s secret death drug

news@sfbg.com

California was forced to postpone the execution of convicted murderer Albert Greenwood Brown in September because the state had run out of sodium thiopental, part of the death drug cocktail used in lethal injections.

The last batch of the drug expired Oct. 1 and the manufacturer won’t have more until 2011. So as of early October, all executions had been postponed until next year.

But on Oct. 6 the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced in a court filing that it had obtained 12 grams of sodium thiopental, also known as sodium pentothal, with an expiration date of 2014. That could mean some swifter executions.

But it also raises a critical legal question: where did the drug come from, and did the state violate federal or international laws obtaining it?

CDCR isn’t talking. Terry Thornton, deputy press secretary, refused to identify the source of the newly acquired drug. But it clearly didn’t come from the manufacturer Hospira. The company, the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium pentothol, says it has none available and is in no rush to sell it to the CDCR. In a statement released by Hospira, company spokesperson Daniel Rosenberg announced that “the drug is not indicated for capital punishment and Hospira does not support its use in this procedure.”

Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, said it would be tricky for the state to buy the drug from anyone else. “Hospira is the only approved manufacturer in the U.S.,” she said.

But there’s a hint of where California’s supply might have come from. Arizona also recently obtained some of the death drug — Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told the Arizona Republic that it was delivered from an unidentified source in Britain.

But the British press has raised questions about the deal. No European country has the death penalty and both British and European Union laws bar exporting for profit materials used for executions.

Both the Arizona and California batches have the same expiration date.

Ty Alper, associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Boalt Hall School of Law, explained that to his knowledge, “California got [the sodium thiopental] from a foreign source,” He raised questions about the possible risks of obtaining the drug from an unknown outfit.

“If the drug is not FDA approved, could it have contaminants in it? Could it perform differently?” Alper asked. “If that drug doesn’t work right then, everybody knows the execution will be horribly painful and torturous.”

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t bought that argument. Oct. 25 the court voted 5-4 to clear the way for Arizona to execute Jeffrey Landrigan, a convicted murderer. “There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe … There was no showing that the drug was unlawfully obtained, nor was there an offer of proof to that effect,” the unsigned opinion stated.

Landrigan was executed Oct 27.

However, we can’t find any evidence that California obtained the drug legally. There are no FDA-approved importers, and federal law strictly limits the ability of anyone to bring powerful drugs directly into the country. Title 21 United States Code of the Controlled Substances Act, Section(b) states: “It shall be unlawful to import into the customs territory of the United States from any place outside thereof (but within the United States), or to import into the United States from any place outside thereof, any nonnarcotic controlled substance in Schedule III, IV, or V, unless such nonnarcotic controlled substance … (1) imported for medical, scientific, or other legitimate uses”

Sodium pentothal is a Schedule III drug.

Executing a human being clearly doesn’t count as a “medical or scientific” use — no doctor is involved in administering the lethal drugs. Of course, there might be an opinion from the state attorney general concluding that killing a condemned prisoner is an “other legitimate use” but the office won’t produce one. When we asked if obtaining the drug from a foreign supplier was legal, Christine Gasparac, a spokesperson for Attorney General Jerry Brown, stated in an e-mail that “You’ll have to contact the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for a response to your questions” and that “this office was not involved in the procurement of the drug.”

CDCR hasn’t presented any import license, purchase order, chain of custody documents, or anything else to show where the deadly stuff originated. We’ve filed a written request under the California Public Records Act for the data, but have not received a reply.

That bothers state Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF), who chairs the Public Safety Committee. “I am concerned that a state agency, using taxpayer money, is buying something and refusing to disclose where the money went,” he told us.

Procuring sodium thiopental may become even harder in the future — it has only limited use in medicine.

Dr. Philip Lumb, chair of department of anesthesiology at the University of Southern California medical school, said that over the past few years the drug Propofol has replaced sodium thiopental in the majority of surgical cases. (Propofol is the same drug Michael Jackson overdosed on.)

“It is still available — we still have it,” Lumb said. “It is used sometimes for brain procedures.”

But if Hospira isn’t making much and doesn’t want to sell it to prisons for executions, and European companies can get in trouble for exporting it, California may find that a drug it relies on to kill people isn’t available from any legitimate source. Which means the custodians of our prison system could, in effect, be buying lethal drugs on the black market.

They put other people in prison for that.

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 3

 

SPUR’s Election Wrap-up

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s post-election discussion and analysis session is popular with political junkies of all ideological stripes. Although it’s hosted by a knowledgeable duo — Barbary Coast Consulting founder Alex Clemens and political consultant David Latterman — a wide variety of political analysts always show up to create a lively, insightful discussion. Bring a bag lunch and your two cents.

12:30 p.m., $5 or free for members

SPUR office

654 Mission, SF

381-8726

 

Revolution is not a Tea Party

As the dust begins to settle on the midterm elections battlefield, come discuss how the country’s political fervor affected the national discourse on issues like immigration and civil rights. Was the Tea Party an actual grass roots revolution or merely a large angry mob? How long will the virulent xenophobia and nativism continue, and what can be done to counter it?

7-9 p.m., free

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way

Berkeley

revolutionbooks@sbcglobal.net

THURSDAY NOV. 5

 

“Tranny Fest: San Francisco Transgender Film Festival”

Come one, come all: ladies and gentlemen, transgender, and gender queer. Now in its 12th season, Tranny Fest will open Thursday, with performances by Landa Lakes, Butch Tap, Thisway Thataway, and Psychobabble, among others. The festival continues Friday and Saturday with short films and videos by transgender and gender variant artists. Advance tickets will be available for the event.

Thurs.–Sat., 8–10 p.m.

$12–$15 sliding scale

CounterPULSE, SF

1310 Mission, SF

www.freshmeatproduction.com

 

Evening with our poet laureate

In addition to California poet laureate emeritus Al Young, Revolution Books will also host jazz/blues music, guitarist Trevor Michaels, and other poems and song.

7 p.m.–9 p.m., free

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way, Berk.

510-848-1196

SATURDAY NOV. 6

 

Green Festival San Francisco

Here’s more proof that green is the new black. One of the largest sustainability events in the country will be held at the San Francisco Concourse. The eco-confab includes lectures from Bill McKibben, Daniel Pinchbeck, Amy Goodman, and others. Vendors, workshops, music and an array of organic beer, wine, and vegetarian cuisine will also be on hand. Admission discounts are also available to students, seniors, cyclists and public transit riders.

Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–7 p.m.

$10–$25

Concourse Exhibition Center

635 Eighth St., SF

www.greenfestivals.org/sf

FEAST: Distilled genius

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: Distilled genius

It’s a thrilling time in Bay Area spirits. The same players who’ve made us proud in years past continue to reinvent themselves, while newcomers add flavor — literally — to the scene. In visits to four local distilleries, I came away inspired by their inventiveness and skill. And while none of the spirits I tasted use extracts or flavorings (like many of their big-brand counterparts), they do manage to fit in countless pounds of local, unexpected fruits, even natural herbs.

Even more exciting to the small batch booze enthusiast? Most of the following distilleries open their tasting rooms by schedule or appointment so the tippling public can discover for itself the motto emblazoned on the bottles of Old World Spirits: “Good stuff needs no special effects.”

ST. GEORGE’S SPIRITS

At the mighty St. George, inventiveness reigns, with a rock star attitude to boot. The distillery’s small staff experiments broadly and distillers Lance Winters and Dave Smith drive this license into genius. A behind-the-scenes journey through their labs unveiled nothing short of a wonderland apothecary: test tubes and bottles of spirits flavored with herbs, fruits, vegetables, foie gras — even beef jerky. You may (rightly) love their eaux de vie, absinthe, agave spirits, rum, vodkas, and whiskeys, but have you heard they’re toying with a carrot brandy? Clear and vegetal, it showcases the essence of the orange vegetable with a delicate hand. We can only pray they’ll bottle this one.

I also sampled St. George’s bourbon aging in charred American white oak that was a few years away from being officially bottled. Only five months young and made from the required minimum amount of corn (it needs at least 51 percent to qualify as bourbon) plus barley, crystal malt, wheat, and rye, it’s full of malty, rich promise. The same holds true of its white dog (clear-white whiskey) made from the same grains — one we could possibly see sooner on the shelves.

St. George’s next single malt whiskey, Lot 9, has been aging five to 12 years in barrels blended with 17 woods, including used American bourbon oak, sherry refills, port refills, and French oak. If you’re lucky, you soon may be able to purchase (in limited quantities) a single malt-single barrel selection that has been aged eight years in bourbon barrels then finished for four years in French oak apple brandy barrels. It is a wonder of complexity compared to their regular whiskey releases.

Only the brave attempt to down the scorching fire that is St. George’s in house habanero vodka. Grown men confessed of crying or throwing up just sipping it — only a handful of people have downed a legitimate amount and have been permitted to sign the distillery’s bottle of the burn. But my name is on that bottle — no tears, no throwing up, just a raging habanero sizzle.

2601 Monarch, Alameda. (510) 769-1601. www.stgeorgesspirits.com


CHARBAY

On a winding road above St. Helena and under peaceful Spring Mountain pines, there’s more going on than this distillery’s impeccable line of vodkas. Thirteen generations have gone into this family business, founded in 1983 and run by Miles and Susan Karakasevic, their son Marko, and his wife Jenni. The distillery’s lineage is evident to the discerning tippler who sips their port, rums, pastis, brandy, grappa, wines — even their herbaceous tequila. Charbay’s father-son distilling duo traveled to Mexico to painstakingly learn traditional tequila-making technique, which they expertly riff on to make their distinct blends.

Don’t even get me started on Release II of Charbay whiskey! 110 proof, aged six years with a pilsner beer base, it’s a stratospheric $325, but one of the most exceptional things I’ve ever tasted. From its astounding complexity, I caught everything from hops to echoes of the pine trees surrounding the distillery. I also sampled an unreleased 12-year version of Release II: higher proof, rich, a stunner.

But there’s no rest for the Karakasevics. Future whiskeys are already aging in French oak barrels — the one I’m most thirsty for, a stout whiskey, won’t be ready until 2012. If early tastes are any indication, it’s already brilliantly complex with coffee, spice, and dark chocolate notes. Made with neighboring Bear Republic’s stout in copper alembic stills, it’ll age for two years to reach 90 proof and is expected to retail around $90 — part of a younger, more affordable line of whiskeys compared with the divine but costly Release II. The bold explorer spirit that propels Charbay to Mexico to make a fine tequila shines in their future whiskeys.


TEMPUS FUGIT SPIRITS

These importers have already made waves with their Swiss-produced Gran Classico Bitter, which I hailed for reinventing classic cocktails like the Negroni. They also import some of the best French and Swiss absinthes in existence. Absinthe historians and spirits experts Peter Schaf and John Troia are the masterminds behind Tempus Fugit — and owners of one of the finest vintage absinthe poster collections in the world. It was a thrill to check out these rare pieces while tasting the history and forward-thinking vision in their bitters and liqueurs.

Tempus Fugit’s modus operandi is reinventing classic recipes and distilling them locally. Petaluma-produced Liqueur de Violettes is next up for the duo, a taste along the lines of Creme de Violette and other violet liqueurs yet somehow unlike any of them. Made with less sugar, the liqueur is a more appropriate cocktail ingredient — it’s less cloying, more purely floral and light. Each time I sample it, its bouquet blossoms like a layered wine: a sophisticated, botanical aperitif.

Tempus Fugit future project (a two-man team, after all, only has four hands) is Crème de Cacao-Chouva, a chocolate liqueur that will change chocolate cocktails the way St. George’s Firelit transformed coffee liqueur. It’s dark, lightly sweet, lush and earthy. Tasting it, I envision a resurgence of my guilty pleasure cocktail, the Grasshopper, refined and grown up with Crème de Cacao-Chouva and creme de menthe. It came alive with soda water — an elevated egg cream soda materialized in my cocktail windshield.

Keep an eye on these guys. They have more spirits and bitters as exciting as the ones I’ve listed in the works. Their dizzying knowledge of the history and intricacies of forgotten or neglected spirits, along with refined taste, suggests revelatory possibilities for the future pours of Tempus Fugit.

(707) 789-9660, www.tempusfugitspirits.com


OLD WORLD SPIRITS

Just north of San Carlos in a nondescript smattering of office buildings, is Old World Spirits, which has been in production since 2009. Davorin Kuchan, its third-generation distiller from Croatia, says family plays an irreplaceable part in the operation, as is evident from the photos lining the walls of the distillery. The whole clan is involved — Kuchan’s young daughter even drew the girl peeking out from foliage that graces Old World’s playful absinthe label. The output of both Davorin and business partner Joseph Karakas is astounding for a two-person operation, with two absinthes, a gin, a black walnut liqueur, three eaux de vie/brandies, and more liquors slotted for future release.

Old World uses custom-made German stills and local fruits like the Indian blood peach, which Davorin calls the “heirloom tomato” of stone fruit. As with the best natural fruits, the Indian blood has cracks and flaws, its lower sugar content imparting a lush understatement of taste. Though he grew the peaches himself in Croatia, in California Davorin orders in from Placerville’s Goldbud Farms. The clear blood peach eau de vie impresses with notes of ripe, juicy fruit flesh and spicy skin. I found Old World’s eaux de vies well-balanced, both the pear-inflected Poire Williams and the three- to seven-months oak-aged O’Henry Peach. I sipped a raspberry eau di vie it has yet to release: clear and lightly floral, free of the cloying sugar common in raspberry liqueurs.

Watch for Old World’s sold out dark black walnut liqueur — another batch is out in two years. Kuchan’s Blade Gin stocks the shelves of many a Bay Area bar, journeying down a nontraditional, California-inspired gin route with whispers of ginger, citrus, cilantro, lemon verbena, and black cardamom. Two kinds of absinthe, a green (verte) and clear blanche/white (referred to as Bleue, as in Switzerland), take cues from classic absinthes but resound with Davorin’s interpretation of 20 percent more herbs than what enlivens a traditional absinthe. Old World’s next release: a Cognac-style double barrel brandy aged in French and American oak and finished in Kentucky bourbon casks, which they hope to release soon. My early taste straight from the barrel yielded an already rich, spicy brandy.

Thirsty yet? Visit Davorin and Joseph during their monthly Friday Flight nights. Davorin will turn on some fine French pop tunes as both pour spirits, transforming the distillery into a warm familial party.

121 Industrial, Belmont. (650) 622-9222. www.oldworldspirits.com 

You can also find these spirits at Cask (17 Third St., SF), John Walker & Co. (175 Sutter, SF), and K&L Wine Merchants (638 Fourth St., SF).

 

 

FEAST: 6 hot C-cups

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 6 hot C-cups

A funny thing happened on the way to adulthood: hot chocolate became interesting. Remembered by most Americans as the insipid, lukewarm, desiccated powder-based drink of ice rinks (often dispensed from a machine that simultaneously squirts water and dark matter into your cup), 21st century big-kid hot chocolate has heat, depth, spice, richness, variety. It is, in short, both hot and chocolate. And let’s not forget innovations in topping technology. Today’s hot chocolatiers don’t open a bag of petroleum-based white things or spray on the ReddiWip — they make their own marshmallows and whipped cream.

Hot chocolate is also one drink you never find yourself saying, “If only I hadn’t had that last (fill in cocktail) … ” Indeed, researchers at Cornell found that hot chocolate has more antioxidants per cup than red wine or tea. So as we enter hot chocolate season — our summer, which they call “autumn” on the rest of the continent — raise a cup to your health. 

BOULETTE’S LARDER

In the third season of Dexter, top cop Maria has a pair of bonding experiences with women that are consummated with two words “ganache frosting.” Ganache — that rich, delicious, thick, delicious, dense, delicious mix of chocolate and cream — is the base element of Boulette’s singular cup of Eastern European-style hot chocolate. All day long, Boulette’s chefs keep a pan of molten ganache simmering in anticipation of its HC fans. The result is hot chocolate so thick you almost need a spoon, and so satisfying you can omit that dollop of cream.

One Ferry Building # 48, SF (415) 399-1155. www.boulette’slarder.com


COCO LUXE

This pretty-in-pink Haight Street anomaly makes eight kinds of hot chocolate (including a green tea version for serious antioxidant-counters) plus a milk-free drink for all those people who can’t, won’t, or don’t swing bovine. Billed as warm chocolate pudding, the molten concoction blends dark chocolate and hot water until it’s only navigable by spoon. Like our beloved Earth, it also retains its molten core, so it can be toyed with for some time without losing any of its hot, thick mojo. Coco Luxe also has solid chocolates, gorgeous ones that look like mini wall art. And let’s face it, we all need a little solid food occasionally to add weight and depth to our c-cups.

1673 Haight SF. (415) 367-4012. www.coco-luxe.com


CHRISTOPHER ELBOW CHOCOLATES

When the abundant novelty of SF’s innovative hot chocolate scene has worn off, head to this sleek corner store for even more innovation. The boutique chocolatier, which originated in Kansas City, Mo., has all the customary spicy, dark, and milky brews you’ll find at many of our other HC providers — along with some never-before-seen variations spiked with ginger, curry, and coconut milk. Christopher Elbow also makes powdered versions of some of its best-selling drinking chocolates, which make a lovely nyah-nyah-nyah gift for friends still living in Hershey’s just-add-water-powdered-packet land.

401 Hayes, SF. (415) 355-1105. www.elbowchocolates.com


FIVE STAR TRUFFLES

You gotta love this under appreciated one-man operation, where the one man makes your cup by shaving generous helpings of his superlative block chocolate into every liquid cup. The price is right — $2.75 for 16 ounces — and the one man always offers one of his handmade truffles on the house. The one man also exhibits a sincere liberalism about how much milkfat is really necessary for hot chocolate. If you want nonfat hot chocolate (no judgments!), so be it. With base chocolate this good, you won’t miss the milkfat.

411 Divisadero, SF. (415) 552-5128, www.fivestartruffles.com

BI-RITE CREAMERY

Although most people waiting in line at Bi-Rite see only the ice cream and soft-serve, hot chocolate heads can’t help but notice, tucked as it is on the counter behind the cookies, la machine. A combination hot plate-whirligig, Bi-Rite’s single-purpose hot chocolate machine (rumored to have been developed by SF’s own Recchiuti) keeps its brew in a perpetual state of warmth and agitation. What does this mean, besides one terrific cup? No waiting! Traditionalists all the way, Bi-Rite uses only ground chocolate, cocoa, sugar, and milk. A word of warning, though: Bi-Rite only makes HC during the winter (other people’s winter) and on unusually cold or rainy days. Pray for rain.

3692 18th St., SF. (415) 626-5600. www.biritecreamery.com


CHILANGO

Most people come to this Mexican restaurant — and rightly so — for the food. But if you’re here and have postpriandial room, you’ll notice hot chocolate on Chilango’s dessert menu, right up there with flan and churros. But like any good dessert, Chilango’s hot chocolate takes time — the chefs stir each cup over the stove. Let’s face facts, all the delicious Mexican and spicy hot chocolate around town originated from … Mexican hot chocolate. Get the real deal here. And never forget that nothing brings out the flavor of churros like dipping them in hot chocolate.

5 Church, SF. (415) 552-5700. www.chilangococina.com 

 

 

FEAST: 5 sardinerias

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 5 sardinerias

When it comes to sardines, you have to think outside the earthquake shelter. On the flavor-o-meter, the tinned food of last resort (served on tarps with Saltines and stale water) bears no resemblance to its wild, fresh self. Even a humble sardine doesn’t deserve to be jammed in like a sardine, oil slicked, and left to age in the farthest reaches of the cupboard.

As several San Francisco eateries are ably proving, sardines, when treated with respect, are a tasty addition to the dining table. And healthy. And sustainable (they’re on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Super Green list!) Everyone from Andrew Weil to the Italian grandmother we all wish we had proclaim the virtues of the pungent silver herring. And with good reason: its tiny, 25-calorie body is packed with essential fatty acids, iron, protein, and calcium.

Let’s face it, the good people of Sardinia didn’t get their beautiful skin and convivial personalities from eating schweinebraten on spätzle. They’re all high on EFAs. Sardine EFAs.

PESCE

Pesce was one of the first and finest restaurants to introduce San Franciscans to the joys of sardine cuisine. The casual Russian Hill restaurant offers small plates of fish, pasta, and vegetables (and please, can we call it cicchetti, as they do, instead of “Italian tapas”?) patterned on the cooking of Venice. Pesce serves its sardines (all from Monterey Bay) simply — grilled, on a bed of mixed greens and pickled vegetables with a wedge of lemon. The result is tart, briny, and clean. If you’re still on the fence about sardines, Pesce is the place that will convert you to a bona fide a-fishyanado.

2227 Polk, SF. (415) 928-8025. www.pescesf.com

RAGAZZA

In Provence, shmear means aoli. They put it on meat; they put it on vegetables; they put it on fries; they put it on fish. Heck, they probably put it on ice cream. At Ragazza, the new relative of Glen Park’s Gialina Pizzeria on Divis, the chefs splat a huge dollop of it on its sardines. Apart from the aoli, Ragazza takes an Italianesque approach, stuffing them with an earthy mixture of breadcrumbs, olive oil, garlic, oregano, and onion and baking them in the restaurant’s gas-fired Wood Stone oven. The result is a crispy exterior over sardines that almost melt away on the fork. Add some mixed greens and a robust Italian red and you can practically feel your arteries unclogging. Oh, Ragazza also has pizza.

311 Divisadero, SF. (415) 255-1133. www.ragazzasf.com

NOPA

There’s locavore, 100-mile radius locavore, and there’s ultra-loca, five-mile radius locavore. While most of the city’s sardine-serving restaurants get their sardines from Monterey Bay, Nopa gets its from our very own San Francisco Bay. This is great news because our local sardines nearly went extinct in the 1950s. And — sardine cognoscenti consider the Pacific sardine as flavorful as those on the Sardinian coast (take that, overpriced cans from Norway). Speaking of flavorful, Nopa serves the little San Franciscans baked in its wood-fire oven with fingerling potatoes and frisee. The only thing missing is an order of flatbread, a gems salad, wine, and the burnt honey crème brulee.

560 Divisadero, SF. (415) 864-8643. www.nopasf.com

BARBACCO ENO TRATTORIA

You have to give Barbacco credit. Unlike most of the restaurants that have rediscovered the sardine, Barbacco doesn’t seem to be operating on the principle that sardines are an after-5 p.m.-only food. Although not exactly in the let’s-have-herrings-for-breakfast! camp, Barbacco at least believes that noon is a perfectly reasonable time to start the jonesing. The bustling, suits-heavy Financial District eatery is the creator of what may be the city’s only sardine sandwich (if this isn’t true, we’d like to know). Barbacco also breaks the don’t-get-too-weird-with-sardines taboo, pairing its sardines with a hefty piece of seared calamari. Not most people’s first choicem perhaps, but the two get along swimmingly, especially when served on an Acme torpedo roll and slathered with arugula and Barbacco’s housemade “roasted tomatoe condimento.”

220 California, SF. (415) 955-1919. www.barbaccosf.com

FERRY PLAZA SEAFOOD

When you don’t want others dictating what you can and can’t have on your sardines, duck into Ferry Plaza Seafood. This celebrated purveyor of all things aquatic sells wild, locally caught sardines (and by this we mean our our SF as well as Monterey bay) when available. “We love sardines,” said one salty staffer. “Especially the local ones. They just glisten.” They recommend bringing out the glisten by brushing with olive oil, salt, and pepper; grilling a few minutes on each side; and dressing with lemon. Call first for availability, these guys swim in and out of supply.

One Ferry Building, #11B, SF. (415) 274-2561. www.ferryplazaseafood.com 

 

FEAST: 7 burrito-free late nights

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 7 burrito-free late nights

We’re spoiled rotten living in the city where if you fling an ankle boot, it’s bound to hit a taqueria open past last call. Its like a burrito vortex — go out in San Francisco and at some point you will get wrapped up in flour tortilla and snuggle in with your old buddies, carnitas and shredded cheese. But gooey and warm as it is in there, you must resist the pull to turn into a burrito. I know, I know, we’re gonna hold your hand through this one. We’ve assembled the meeting places for Burritos Anonymous: purveyors of snacks so fine — and open at least until 1 a.m. on weekends — that your frijoles negros withdrawal-twitches will subside and your post-bar, pre-bed caloric intake will rejoin your regularly programmed San Francisco culinary adventuring. We’re talking calamari bulgogi, vegan smoked duck sandwiches, chilaquiles, pambazos, and beef brisket with a side of cucumber salad. We’re talking late night. Clip this page and store it near your bus fare.

TOYOSE

There’s a converted garage in the heart of the Sunset District stuffed with carousing young’uns into the wee hours. Its charmingly narrow dining area has enough foliage and hanging screens between tables to hide 1 a.m. sloppiness — and enough Korean delicacies to entertain the most rabble-rousing group for hours. Try their noodle dishes, which can feed four with their toss-it-yourself mounds of veggies, cold rice noodles, and chile sauce. House favorites include the seafood pancake, kimchee fried rice, bulgogi, soju smoothies, and the damn largest bottles of Korean lager seen this side of the Pacific.

Open until 2 a.m. daily.

3814 Noriega, SF, (415) 731-0232


NOMBE

A hip izakaya whose name roughly translates to “he who doesn’t remember the walk over.” Nombe’s menu can be boggling, but that doesn’t detract a smidge from the table of pickled daikon, stewed onion pork belly, steaming bowls of ramen, and sake flights that is apt to materialize after speaking with the friendly serving staff. Motor skills eschewing spoons and forks for the moment? Play swords with something off the tasty skewer menu.

Open until 2 a.m. weekends

2491 Mission, SF. (415) 681-7150. www.nombesf.com

REACTION RESTAURANT

When the owners of all-ages art-punk venue Sub-mission decided to open up a dining room next door, they kept it accessible. Reaction’s got a menu full of little-seen Mexico City specialties that won’t break the bank of their underage clientele, but still don’t relapse into the boring realm that sub–$5 food often falls. Our favorite is the pambazo, a roll that’s been dipped in red sauce, grilled, then stuffed with your choice of meats or beans. You’ll also find huaraches, gorditas, and burgers — all in a sleek, red and black ambience that won’t harsh your buzz.

Open until 3 a.m. weekends

2183 Mission, SF. (415) 552-8200

J & V CAFE

There’s late night, and there’s late night. If the sun’s coming up and you’re not ready to mix and mingle with the morning suits, head to Bayview. Not that J & V will be filled with drunken sops like you — a well-turned, few-frills cafe located in the middle of SF’s wholesale produce market, the work day here begins in the dark of the night. Standard diner fare, decent espresso, a few quality Mexican specials — no b-words, but plenty of heaping chilaquiles plates to palliate that come-down.

1 a.m.-2 p.m. Mon.-Fri.

2095 Jerrold, SF. (415) 821-7786. www.jandvcatering.com

THE LIBERTIES

A place that takes no liberties with the notion of good pub food available when you need it most. The Liberties offers stomach-liners like mashed potato-topped cottage pie, bangers, and Anglo-happy chicken curry for those who’d rather have their biggest meal of the day post their biggest pints of the day.

Open until 2 a.m. weekends

998 Guerrero, SF. (415) 282-6789. www.theliberties.com

TOMMY’S JOYNT

With an exterior decorated in shades of circus tent, the 63-year old legend is a great place for Mom’s cooking at hours Momma woulda freaked had you started rustling around in the kitchen. Hofbrau service has you line up with a tray and point to which braised meat and starch you’d like heaped on your plate. Beef brisket? Buffalo stew (their specialty)? Veggiesaurus? No worries. Scoops of pasta salad, greens, and potatoes await.

Open until 1:40 a.m. daily.

1101 Geary, SF. (415) 775-4216. www.tommysjoynt.com

LOVE N HAIGHT DELI & CAFE

Stating the obvious: vegans get short shrift when it comes to late night. Seriously, how often can you order the same thing Carnivorous Carl is having … minus the protein and sauce? Unfair. Pay it no mind — with Love N Haight’s head-whirlingly large menu of vegan (and some meat) sandwiches, you’ve got the upper hand. Sure, the fake roast duck may taste similar to the fish and the chicken — but its a chewy, satisfying kind of same.

Open until 2 a.m. weekends.

553 Haight, SF. (415) 252-8190 

 

 

Psychic Dream

Andrew Lam
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Oct. 27-Nov. 11

 

ARIES

March 21-April 19

The natural flow of energy between you and someone or something you dearly love has grown stagnant and its time to deal. Step back to check your stuck emo patterns and make changes where needed.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Your ego will lead you down one-way streets going the wrong direction this week. Replace egoism with boundaries whenever you can. Be honest and direct about what you can and can’t handle without defensiveness.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Radiate the good vibes you have within you and share what you’ve got. You’ll get where you want by being a team member who supports the whole, not just the star player. Shine, but don’t overshadow.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Display patience in all you do this week. You don’t have the necessary tools to build things where you want them to be. No worries, though! You’ll get what’s needed if you wait for it.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

Clarify your understanding of what works for you in the now, Leo, not what you think might work tomorrow. Get present every way you can this week, even if that means experiencing uncertainty.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Pour inspiration into every little thing you do, sweet Virgo, even if it’s the dishes. Look for opportunities to make the little things ritualistic as a strategy for easing your path with the big stuff.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Being out of control sucks. Accept that there are blocks in your life that require tending to. Stop fretting and try to slow down long enough so you can hear your instincts amid all that internal chatter.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Fun and frivolity have their place, and that’s the spot you like to be. This week your more practical priorities need to take up the most of your time. Invest solidly in creating the outcomes you most desire.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Things are changing all around you of their own accord, and as wonderful as it is to think of what you would do if you were queen for a day, it’s not terribly helpful. Go with the flow, even if it’s not what you’d prefer.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

The path to Authentic is paved with risk and open hearts. You are being called on to stay emotionally present and honest in ways you are inclined to avoid. Show bravery as you make your dreams come true.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Don’t distract yourself from the work at hand, Water Bearer! Feeling good because you are able to believe in the potential in your life is way better than feeling good because you distracted yourself successfully. Get it together.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Don’t fight your way out of dark places, Pisces. Make allies and win the favor of your adversaries because week you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar. If you can’t play nice, take a time out. 

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.

 

 

Falling for Fallout — again

Andrew Lam
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Falling for Fallout — again

Fallout: New Vegas

(PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

GAMER Despite the reverence it commands, the Fallout series has a tortured history. The first two games (both classics) were developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay. Out of nowhere, Micro Forte and 14 Degrees East stepped in to produce a licensed spin-off in 2001. Interplay’s 2003 financial difficulties led to the demise of Black Isle, and the publisher produced a fourth game in-house before selling the Fallout name to Bethesda Softworks, which released the mega-hit Fallout 3 in 2008.

The creative core of Black Isle, meanwhile, went on to form Obsidian Entertainment, which cut its teeth on ambitious-but-flawed follow-ups to popular franchises like Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights. After the success of Fallout 3, the company got permission from Bethesda to return to its roots, producing a new game in the post-apocalyptic Fallout universe, superintended by series vets Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.

The result was Fallout: New Vegas. Though its outward appearance is defined by the wooden character models and awkward animations of the Gamebryo engine (a holdover from Fallout 3 and Bethesda’s swords-and-sorcery smash Oblivion) New Vegas feels and plays more like one of Black Isle’s isometric 1990s classics.

This distinctive sensibility is most notable in the writing, which oozes dark comedy and pulpy, hard-boiled dialogue in a way that Fallout 3 never did. Questing and character creation have also been redesigned in accordance with the Black Isle games’ core principles, necessitating difficult choices whose outcomes are not always immediately clear. The score, by delightfully named Israeli composer Inon Zur, deftly echoes the series’ bizarre, dystopian musical tradition.

There is one element of the original Fallout titles that nobody missed: the bugs. Unfortunately, Black Isle’s questionable quality assurance survived the name change, and New Vegas is not without its many hiccups. Given the sheer scope of the game, however, it’s hard to complain too stridently.

When Interplay shuttered Black Isle in 2003, many of the company’s leading lights felt that the Fallout franchise, every bit their brainchild, had been unfairly taken from them by the vicissitudes of corporate law. Seven years later, they’ve gotten the opportunity to welcome the gaming public back to wasteland. And nothing, after all, says “we’ve missed you” like a dual-mohawked psychopath with a belly full of mutated cockroach steak and a rusty machete.

 

Different walls

Andrew Lam
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Different walls

arts@sfbg.com

Palestinian perspectives are in. You know it when a major filmmaker like Julian Schnabel makes a big-budget film like Miral, based on the book by Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal (which recently screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival in advance of a general release next year).

In many ways, though, it’s the rest of the country that’s catching up to places like the Bay Area, where Palestinian voices have long been a part of the cultural landscape. The Arab Film Festival, for instance, which just closed its 14th season, once again featured several films from and about Palestine. And this year the San Francisco International Film Festival gave us a look at Port of Memory, the latest work from Kamal Aljafari, one of the most interesting and sophisticated filmmakers to come from Palestine since Elia Suleiman.

In theater, San Francisco’s Golden Thread Productions just gave a staged reading of biographical work from youth in embattled Gaza called The Gaza Monologues. For years, Golden Thread has produced works incorporating the Palestinian perspective amid a mass culture overwhelmingly slanted toward the more powerful side in a basically colonial project. And currently Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts bring the diasporic repercussions of Palestinian dispossession center stage in Habibi, a new play from a new Palestinian American theatrical voice, Sharif Abu-Hambeh.

Habibi makes its debut as the second offering in a trio of world premieres at Intersection by first-time playwrights (the first having been Chinaka Hodge’sMirrors in Every Corner). Directed by Omar Matwally, Abu-Hambeh’s play weaves together two distinct storylines that attempt to capture the inter-generational confusion and displacement experienced by assimilating Palestinian immigrants in the Bay Area. That confusion can regrettably transfer to the play itself, whose intentional deployment of ambiguity ends up, at least to some extent, being merely fuzzy rather than thought-provoking. But the ideas here are at times intriguingly subtle and the effort a promising one. Moreover, Matwally and Campo Santo give the play a strong production with various charms along the way.

At the center of this double helix of a narrative is young Palestinian American Tariq (a coolly vital and engaging Aleph Ayin). Tariq shares a small Mission District apartment and even — talk about family overload — a single bed with his loving but paternalistic father, Mohammed (a stern, sympathetic Paul Santiago). The deliberate and routine-loving Mohammed — who unlike his Americanized son speaks in accented English — is a museum guard with a strong work ethic that he’s trying, unsuccessfully, to instill in his slacker offspring. Tariq, for his part, has just happily shed his menial job at a local café and is in no hurry to find a new one. His absent mother (Nora El Samahy) apparently left them some time before, though she reappears at one point in his imagination.

This father and son dynamic, familial and almost too familiar, comes intercut with a public talk by a high-class museum curator (a sharp and funny El Samahy, dressed by costume designer Courtney Flores in esteem-grabbing Manhattan chic and sporting a very respectable English accent), who leads us through a slide lecture on the great art heists of the last century. Her talk, avid but meandering, is interrupted by simultaneously exasperating and guilt-producing phone calls from her terminally ill father, and a consequent tendency to wander into ruminations farther afield — summoned for us in pictures of dispossession that float by on the screen behind her (in video projections designed by Aubrey Millen).

Maybe these wayward ruminations aren’t so far afield after all, we come to suspect, as her theme of cultural theft warms up to its own complexities and encourages us to consider the nature of cultural transmission, loss, and hybridization in the life-and-death circumstances of exiled populations. This idea deepens as Tariq’s raucous and rebellious spirit extends to breaking into the curator’s monologue, and even smashing the fourth wall to confront us, her audience. Tariq also has a unique tendency to narrate his own actions, a self-conscious conceit that can be productive at times, especially of humor, and works as an indirect aside to the audience.

By the end, the two narratives come even closer together through a rash act of Tariq’s father that trades disastrously on the concept of family heirlooms, or the physical symbols of patrimony and place. The climax arrives too hastily, and its potential impact is muted. At the same time, the play’s departure from the more universal, shopworn gestures of “melting pot” tales verges on something rare and coruscating.

HABIBI

Thurs.–Sun., 8 p.m.; through Nov. 7; $15–$25

Intersection for the Arts

446 Valencia, SF

(415) 626-2787 

www.theintersection.org

 

 

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/27-Tues/2 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

 ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Deep Leap Microcinema:” “Zaum/Beyonsense” and work by Jesse Malmed, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” War of the Gargantuas (Honda, 1966), Ishiro Honda tribute with Japanese monster movie clips, Sat, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “15th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival,” Wed-Thurs. Visitwww.berlinbeyond.com for complete schedule and tickets ($10-11.50). •Fahrenheit 451 (Truffaut, 1966), Fri, 3:10, 7, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Lourie, 1953), Fri, 5:20, 9:10. “Mark Huestis Presents:” Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982), noon, 7:30, 9. With star JoBeth Williams in person at first two shows; 7:30pm show also features a pre-show performance. “Matinees for Maniacs: Monsters Are Coming to Town!:” •Something Wicked This Way Comes (Clayton, 1983), Sun, 2:30, and Escape to Witch Mountain (Hough, 1975), Sun, 4:30.

CELLSPACE 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. Free (donations to benefit CellSpace appreciated). “Eli Roth’s Midnight Movie Marathon:” The Thing(Carpenter, 1982), Sat, noon; Zombie (Fulci, 1979), Sat, 2; The Vanishing (Sluizer, 1988), Sat, 3:45; Pieces (Simon, 1982), Sat, 6; The Wicker Man(Hardy, 1973), Sat, 7:45; Who Can Kill a Child? (Serrador, 1976), Sat, 9:30; Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977), Sat, 11:45; Suspiria (Argento, 1977), Sun, 1:30am; Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980), Sun, 3:15am; Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981), Sun, 5:15am; Audition (Miike, 1999), Sun, 7am; Torso (Martino, 1973), Sun, 9am.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Alfredson, 2009), Oct 29-Nov 2, call for times. “Global Lens 2010:” Becloud (Bicecci, 2010), Wed, 6:45; The Night of Truth(Nacro, 2004), Wed, 9; Masquerades (Salem, 2008), Thurs, 6:45; The Shaft (Zhang, 2008), Thurs, 8:45. Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010), call for dates and times. Leaving (Corsini, 2009), Oct 29-Nov 3, call for times. My Dog Tulip (Fierlinger and Fierlinger, 2009), Wed-Thurs, call for times. Straight to Hell Returns (Cox, 2010), Mon, 7:15. With Alex Cox in person.

EMBARCADERO One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level, SF; www.sffs.org. $12.50. “French Cinema Now:” Copacabana (Fitoussi, 2010), Thurs, 6:45 and Fri, 9:30; Rapt (Belvaux, 2009), Thurs, 9:30 and Mon, 9:15; Irène (Cavalier, 2009), Fri, 5 and Sat, 1:45; Love Like Poison (Quillévéré, 2010), Fri, 7 and Sun, 9:15; Sisters (Faucher, 2009), Sat, 3:45 and Sun, 6:45; The Princess of Montpensier (Tavernier, 2010), Sat, 6:30 and Sun, 3:45; A Real Life (Leonor, 2009), Sat, 9:30 and Tues, 6:30; Two in the Wave (Laurent, 2009), Sun, 1:30; Hidden Diary (Lopes-Curval, 2009), Mon, 6:30 and Tues, 9:15; Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Nov 3, 7, 9:15.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. The Cove (Psihoyos, 2009), Wed, 7:30.

JACK LONDON SQUARE East lawn, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008), Thurs, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100 (reservations required). $10. “CinemaLit: Apocalypse Noir:” Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1958), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “Photographic Memory: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010,” Wed, 7:30. “Readings on Cinema:” Safety Last (Newmeyer and Taylor, 1923), Thurs, 7. “Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism:” Chronicle of Poor Lovers (Lizzani, 1954), Fri, 7; La Terra Trema (Visconti, 1948), Sat, 7; Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951), Sun, 4. “Shakespeare on Screen:” Macbeth (Welles, 1948), Fri, 9:05. “Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres,” slide show presentation with photographer R.A. McBride and readings with contributors to Left in the Dark, Sat, 5. “Drawn From Life: Comic Books and Graphic Novels Adapted:” Swamp Thing (Craven, 1982), Sun, 7:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:20 (also Wed, 2). Winnebago Man(Steinbauer, 2010), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat, 2, 4). The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight. Planet Terror (Rodriguez, 2007), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sun, 2, 4). The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010), Nov 2-3, 7:15, 9:30 (also Nov 3, 2).

“ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW” Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF and Albany, 1115 Solano, Albany; www.landmarktheatres.com. $9.50-10. The 1975 Jim Sharman musical plays at both theaters Fri, midnight (also Sat, midnight at the Clay).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “SF DocFest,” Wed-Thurs. Program information at www.sfindie.com.Larry Wessel’s Iconoclast: Boyd Rice (Wessel, 2010), Mon, 7. “Halloween Spooktacular:” •The Man From Planet X (Ulmer, 1951), Fri, 6:35, 9:30, and The Creature With the Atom Brain (Cahn, 1955), Fri, 8; •Corruption (Hartford-Davis, 1968), Sat, 2:30, 6:15, 9:45, and The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979), Sat, 4:15, 8; •Straight to Hell Returns (Cox, 2010), Sun, 3:15, 7, 9, and Searchers 2.0 (Cox, 2004), Sun, 5. Alex Cox in person at Sunday shows.

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $5. “Witches!”: •Season of the Witch (Romero, 1973) andSuspiria (Argento, 1977), Thurs, 7.

VARIETY SCREENING ROOM 582 Market, SF; (650) 724-5544, www.unaff.org. Free. “United Nations Association Film Festival:” Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story (Hill-Smith), Wed, 4; Kites (Dzianowicz), Wed, 5:25; “Panel Discussion: Images That Provoke,” Wed, 6:45; Secrets of the Tribes (Padilha), Wed, 8; The Rage of Images (Scharf and Duregger), Wed, 9:40.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10. “Mizoguchi and His Muse: Kinuyo Tanaka,” Wed-Tues, check website for schedule.

VORTEX ROOM 2961 16th Sf, SF; www.sfcinema.org. $10. “Remembering Dennis Hopper:” Night Tide (Harrington, 1961) with “The Wormwood Star” (Harrington, 1955), Wed, 7:30. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Muppet History 201: Rarities from the Henson Vault,” Thurs, 7:30 and Sat, 2.

 

 

Playlist

Andrew Lam
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0
Playlist

E.M.A.K.

A Synthetic History of E.M.A.K. 1982-88

(Universal Sound)

This banana-yellow retrospective comp devoted to a small collective-group of electronic musicians in Cologne, Germany offers a number of John Carpenter-like pleasures. E.M.A.K. member Kurt Mill provides two of the best. The vaguely sinister bass line, otherworldly organ, and synth stabs of “Bote des Herbstes” would fit in perfectly alongside tracks from Carpenter’s soundtrack for Christine (1983), and “Filmmusik” has a dancefloor as well as cinematic appeal. A fun document of a time when sampling was being invented and Commodore 64s were making music.


THE FRESH & ONLYS

Play It Strange

(In the Red)

A half-dozen or so listens in, this is shaping up to be the best album by SF’s Fresh & Onlys to date, thanks in part to its widescreen production (the album was recorded by Tim Green). With its Duane Eddy twang, ghost harmonies, propulsive rhythms, and dovetail lyric about bickering between dying forms of media, “Waterfall” is as terrific as it is catchy. I kinda wish the group would slow down the tempo from time to time for more variety, particularly because they seem more than capable of pulling off a big ballad. But not many groups can evoke both Morrissey and late-period Damned while sounding like themselves, and “I’m All Shook Up” offers exactly the kind of irresistible classic rock ‘n’ roll its title promises.


NICK GARRIE

The Nightmare of J B Stanislaus

(Cherry Red/Rev-Ola)

In 1970, when The Nightmare of J B Stanislas was released, Nick Garrie was young, blond, and beautiful. But one need only look to Scott Walker at the time to see that pop idol looks and ambitious melancholic talent didn’t necessarily equate to record sales. Garrie’s debut album isn’t as dramatically symphonic as Walker’s solo efforts of the time, but it features beautifully lush orchestration. His purple lyrical style — which bears some similarity to Donovan’s — and gentle choir-schooled voice meet up with strings to best effect on the plaintive “Can I Stay With You?,” a love song to a girl in his French lit class.


SMALL BLACK

New Chain

(Jagjaguwar)

Last summer I saw Small Black play after Pictureplane and before Washed Out on a chillwave triple bill of sorts that was disappointing in terms of how the sound translated to a live context. At the time, Small Black came off as the closest to an actual band, calling New Order to mind in terms of sound if not songwriting caliber. A year or so later, with a chillwave backlash in effect, Small Black’s debut album arrives amid a blogosphere’s worth of dodgy enthusiasm about the latest microgenre du jour: drag (or haunted house, or witch house). You can hear some trendy witch house elements in the production of New Chain, especially the album’s variety of woozy and wheezy speedball sounds, but Small Black is far more musical and melodic than the wretched hype-magnet Salem, and fond of vintage hi-NRG touches. A little pretty goes a long way, and at least “Search Party” and “Photojournalist” have incandescent moments.


T. REX

The Slider

(Fat Possum)

Kudos to Fat Possum for reissuing this hard-to-find 1972 T. Rex all-time great, which moves from high point to high point as quickly as Marc Bolan’s lyrics find new nicknamed characters to describe. Every once in a while — say, on “Baseball Ricochet” — Bolan’s playful language is a bit too nonsensical for its own good, but glam gems such as “Telegram Sam” and “Metal Guru” are matched by most of the album tracks. One peculiarity — how much the riff of “Chariot Choogle” resembles Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” recorded two year earlier.


VARIOUS ARTISTS

Califia: The Songs of Lee Hazlewood

(Ace)

There are all kinds of treats and discoveries to be made within this grab-bag of Lee Hazlewood obscurities. Who else could write a song called “The Girl On Death Row,” not to mention deliver it with the authority of a winking Johnny Cash? (Turns out the song was for an American International Picture that went and changed its title.) Califia also includes some squalling girl-pop by Hazelwood’s early flame Suzi Jane Hokom and his later muse Ann-Margret, and a number of guitar-themed gems penned for his buddy Duane Eddy. It all closes with a song in German by the formerly “Little” Peggy March.


WEEKEND

Sports

(Slumberland)

To hear how extraordinary Weekend can be, check out “Age Class,” a rock song of instant classic status because of its furious guitar, ghost rider breakdown, and Shaun Durkan’s vocal, which builds to a crescendo that grasps extremes of love and death from the repeated line “There’s something in our blood.” Sportsis an always-promising and sometimes powerful debut album, with a peculiar track sequence — its first half is erratic and largely opaque, but it hits stride with “Age Class” and the songs that follow. The Bay Area group’s antecedents range from Joy Division to Ride to the Wedding Present but they’re already on their own path. I’m excited to hear where they go next.

 

The. Rent. Is. Too. Damn. High!

Andrew Lam
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The. Rent. Is. Too. Damn. High!

 

As continued reports of unprecedented, record-breaking amounts of cash from corporate real estate developers and big landlords flood the Board of Supervisor races, the damaging impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is becoming more and more clear. But even worse, Thomas J. Coates, a far-right extremist Republican real estate developer and landlord, is trying to buy the Board of Supervisors so that he can end rent control. Last week, Coates made the largest donation to supervisors races in the 150-year history of San Francisco.

Who is Coates? He spent more than $1 million on Proposition 98 in 2008 trying to repeal rent control statewide. He was the largest single contributor to that campaign, which was so extreme that even Gov. Schwarzenegger and former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson opposed it. Coates gave the maximum contribution allowed by law to George Bush and Dick Cheney’s campaign and funded GOP candidates across the country. Now he’s spending more than $200,000 to elect anti rent control San Francisco supervisors: Mark Ferrell in District 2, Theresa Sparks in District 6, Scott Wiener in District 8, and Steve Moss in District 10.

With this one donation, the stakes in this election for every San Franciscan — especially renters and progressives — became even higher. By spending his fortune here, Thomas Coates hopes to erode San Francisco’s strong rent control laws by electing supervisors who are less sympathetic to renters. Through influencing the election of the supervisors, he also influences the selection of the interim mayor (since the supervisors will choose the next mayor by a majority vote if Gavin Newsom is elected lieutenant governor), which would result in an anti rent control mayor.

To make matters worse, workers and their families are already on the defense fighting Jeff Adachi’s anti-labor ballot initiative proposal (Proposition B), which would make city workers pay huge increases in their health care coverage. Adachi is mischaracterizing his initiative as pension reform even though the bulk of the cuts will come from forcing low-wage workers to pay for their children’s health care.

Wall Street speculators crashed the stock market, causing workers’ pension funds to lose billions and wiping out retirement savings. The losses require local and state governments to spend more to keep the funds solvent. So who do Gov. Schwarzenegger, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, and Adachi blame? The victims: the workers.

Renters and city workers aren’t the only ones under attack. Newsom’s cynical sit/lie initiative (Proposition L) demonizes young homeless kids. Many of these youth are queers who ran away to San Francisco because it is a queer haven, and others are abused kids who left home because it wasn’t safe. If Prop. L passes, for 12 hours a day these kids will be criminalized if they sit or lie on the sidewalk.

All this in one of the most progressive cities in America? If we are under attack from conservatives in San Francisco on some of the most fundamental issues of our city, it’s no wonder the Tea Party is raging in the rest of the country.

Now more than ever we need labor, progressives, and renters to come together to fight back by voting Tuesday, Nov. 2. Harvey Milk once said, “Give ’em hope.” Show us that hope on Election Day by voting for progressive supervisors, rejecting Adachi’s so-called pension reform, and opposing the so-called sit/lie ordinance. Remember to vote and vote for Debra Walker in District 6, Rafael Mandelman in District 8, No on B, No on K, No on L, and Yes on J and N.

Gabriel Haaland is a local queer labor activist.

 

 

Onra’s future funk

Andrew Lam
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2
Onra’s future funk

arts@sfbg.com

I first stumbled upon Onra’s music three years ago when I picked up Chinoiseries (Label Rouge), a sprawlinlg beat-tape in the line of J Dilla’s blueprint for the future of hip-hop, Donuts (Stones Throw, 2006). But unlike the late Dilla’s many lackluster imitators, Onra proves a worthy disciple. 

Chinoiseries‘ crackling intro blends hip-hop quotables over boom bap percussion, closing out with Dilla’s signature rally call, “Let’s go!” But the transition into “The Anthem” is unexpected: a bass-heavy break anchors unfamiliar horn blasts and traditional Mandarin vocals, unsteady and fissured in odd rhythm. What follows are 30 head-nodding beats culled from late 1960s and early 1970s vinyl straight outta dusty Saigon crates — some Vietnamese, some Chinese in origin. The effort certainly takes cues from RZA’s eerie psychedelic architectonics for the Wu-Tang Clan, in which he transformed Staten Island street sagas into a Shaolin kung-fu epic, but Chinoiseries is more furtive and gargantuan, scattered and undigested.

Onra, or Arnaud Bernard according to his French government papers, isn’t your typical Parisian hip-hop producer (whatever that is). He was born in Germany to a Vietnamese father and French mother and moved to France at a young age. He spent summers in the Ivory Coast where his mother lived and listened to the Caribbean polyrhythms of Zouk. But what initially hooked Onra to the beat was early 1990s American hip-hop. “I never really liked music before hearing my first rap song,” Onra tells me over an extended e-mail correspondence. “I was like, ‘This is it, and anything else is garbage.’ I had this state of mind for a few years before opening to other genres.”

Travel permeated Onra’s early life, and hip-hop gave him a common language with other wayward teens searching for a sense of themselves. “Through hip-hop, it has always been easier to connect with people because we share the same passion. So we’re pretty much on the same wavelength — at least, we speak the same language,” he says.

What makes Onra stand out is a talent not only for exploring the semantics of hip-hop’s codified scriptures, but its heavily layered emotional fabric. The MPC sampler/sequencer is his weapon of choice for recontextualizing sonic histories and mythologies. I’d even go so far as to say that he usurps tools of hip-hop to ground a sense of place in today’s widespread diaspora, where traditional and modern, distant and far, the animate and artificial grind against each other in sometimes uncomfortable, and unsalvageable, ways.

Earlier this summer Onra dropped his strongest effort, Long Distance (All City), which he considers his full-length debut. The record, a thoroughly futuristic approach to early 1980s boogie funk, helped propel the wave of recent revivalism for the genre heralded by Los Angeles’ Dam-Funk. Locally, the Sweater Funk crew has steadily unearthed overlooked boogie jams, playing original vinyl of low rider grooves and synthesized soul in the basement of Chinatown’s Li-Po Lounge every Sunday night. Somehow the cheese factor of these sounds has retained its original funky odor, and even rampant irony has given way to wholehearted appreciation for lustful forays into buoyant bass and lush melodies.

But Onra’s approach to the funk gathers inspiration from Notorious B.I.G.’s Mtume-based “Juicy” and Foxy Brown’s “Gotta Get You Home” more than the analog-minded heritage channeled by Dam-Funk. “There were so many songs in the ’90s that sampled ’80s funk and modern soul,” Onra says. “That’s the feeling I wanted to have on my album. I had to find a way of recreating their feeling, but with a fresher touch.” Long Distance manages that tension well, navigating nostalgia for Roland chord progressions and vintage drum machines with a finger on the pulse for the spacey beat-futurism cultivated by the likes of Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke.

The rolling bass lines of “Comet” and “Rock On” pick up where Parliament’s mothership landed 30 years ago — but the rusty funk machine scrapped together during the days of the cold war gets a bit of a facelift on Long Distance. The swerving slap bounce is reconfigured into a fragmented narrative of sensual ideas and indulgent desire outlined in chalk. On “High Hopes” and the title track, R&B crooners Reggie B and Olivier Daysoul wax seductive over woozy beats that sound like Dilla flipped the Prelude vaults.

Voices are distorted and guzzled through technological mediation: “Oper8tor” receives the vocoder-inflected Zapp treatment and “Girl” traces a love interest’s absent-minded confession over a fuzzy telephone voice message. Onra also ventures into uncharted intergalactic territory. “Wonderland” cruises on ecstatic altitudes higher than the intoxication of house, while “WheeOut,” featuring Buddy Sativa wilding out on synth chords, discovers the sticky underbelly of electro.

A general theme of travel, and the insatiable desires that emerge from such trips through space and time, saturates the warm sonic textures of Long Distance. Onra doesn’t care to divulge too much on the topic: “I have been traveling a lot these past few years,” he says. “This album has been inspired by my own personal experiences, by a few long distance relationships I had … I think it’s a very inspiring subject.”

I would dare trace the notion of distance back even farther, to the very impulse of Onra’s stylized hip-hop production. Whether seeking out some sense of imaginative rootedness across disparate traditions and backgrounds in Chinoiseries and other beat-tapes, or the heart of expressionistic eros in Long Distance, a sense of absence drives Onra’s work. But he doesn’t get lost in mournful nostalgia for a lost past and places already visited; some sort of dreamy future — a strange horizon where the erotic and robotic merge — seems to rise from the rubble. Desire might just find what it’s been looking for. 

ONRA

With Buddy Sativa, Sweater Funk DJs

Fri/29, 10 p.m.; $10

SOM

2925 16th St., SF

(415) 558-8521

www.som-bar.com

 

Don’t stop this crazy thing

Andrew Lam
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0
Don’t stop this crazy thing

arts@sfbg.com 

Coldcut used to brag that it was “Ahead of Our Time.” In the late 1980s, they slapped the phrase onto a host of groundbreaking forays into cut-and-past sound mathematics like “Beats + Pieces,” “Doctorin’ the House,” and “Stop This Crazy Thing,” freewheeling tunes that treated the history of sound as an enormous candy shop, copyright laws be damned.

And now? Coldcut’s long-running company Ninja Tune reflects the musical times in all its heterogeneous subgenres and variations on familiar themes. When Matt Black and Jonathan More launched Ninja Tune in 1990, it was to create an outlet for the group’s abiding passion in instrumental beats (which the British press would soon garnish with colorful nicknames like “trip-hop” and “sampledelia”). It was built on Coldcut-related productions like DJ Food’s Jazz Brakes series and Bogus Order’s Zen Brakes. Over time, the label flowered into a major indie with two sublabels (Counter and Big Dada) and dozens of artists passing through its doors, from Amon Tobin and Roots Manuva to Antibalas and Mr. Scruff. Today, it releases iconoclastic statements from the L.A. beat scene (Daedelus), the Baltimore indie/electro scene (Spank Rock and the Death Set), and London’s grime and bass worlds (the Bug).

During a phone interview from London, Coldcut’s Black says, “All the artists on the label have their own character. It’s like a collection of audibles, really. There’s a consistency in the fact that we’re all quite out there.” He adds that Ninja Tune is more “advanced” than it was in its first decade, when most of the roster — including production units like the Herbaliser and Funki Porcini — fit under the “trip-hop” rubric. “I felt that some of the early releases interpreted the Coldcut blueprint too literally, just getting some funky loops and sounds and stringing it out for a bit.” Part of this is due to maturity. The Herbaliser, for example, began making beat “loops” for discerning headz but has since grown into a full-fledged band. Even DJ Food, which now solely consists of producer Strictly Kev, has become a purveyor of soundtrack music inspired as much by David Axelrod as Marley Marl.

The mutating Ninja Tune amoeba is being chronicled through a series of 20th anniversary promotions. The deluxe box set Ninja Tune XX includes a hardcover book, six CDs, and six 7-inch vinyl records. The book, Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces (Black Dog Publishing, 1992 pages, $29.95), is also available separately as a paperback. “If you look at the arrangements and the musicality on the music on the XX set, it’s a lot more advanced than it was a few years ago,” says Black, pointing to San Francisco’s Brendan “Eskmo” Angelides as an example.

Eskmo isn’t the first Bay Area artist to record for Ninja Tune; that honor belongs to rap experimentalist cLOUDDEAD, which released the U.K. edition of its 2001 self-titled album through Big Dada. However, he gives Ninja Tune a foothold in the thriving bass and organic electronic music scene through the symphonic boom of tracks like “Hypercolor.” Eskmo says that signing with Ninja Tune, which just released his self-titled debut, has been “really inspirational,” adding, “It’s a unique thing in this day and age for an independent to be flourishing and still put out creative stuff.”

According to Stevie Chick’s book 20 Years of Beats & Pieces, Ninja Tune emerged in the wake of the music industry’s brief yet disillusioning courtship of Coldcut, who dazzled with a game-changing remix of Eric B. & Rakim’s “Paid In Full” (the classic “Seven Minutes of Madness” mix) and U.K. pop hits like Yazz’ “The Only Way Is Up” and Queen Latifah’s “Find a Way.” The label began as Coldcut’s middle finger to demands that they become another group of pop-dance hacks like Stock Aitken Waterman. “We really liked making instrumental hip-hop, fucking around, not having to make another ‘pop’ track,” Black tells author Chick. On albums such as 1997’s Let Us Play, Coldcut found an equilibrium between advocating the wonders of cutting-edge technology and vinyl consumption and promoting anticapitalist themes.

An inevitable byproduct of Ninja Tune’s success (as well as that of its great rival, Warp Records) is that its fashion-forward yet radical communal lifestyle seems more myth than reality. In 2005, the label released Amon Tobin’s soundtrack for the Ubisoft video game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Last year, Speech Debelle won the U.K. Mercury Prize for her Speech Therapy debut. A few months later, the British rapper announced that she wanted off the Big Dada label because it didn’t promote her work enough. Meanwhile, several roster artists have scored popular car commercials, from Mr. Scruff’s “Get a Move On” for the Lincoln Navigator to the Heavy’s “How You Like Me Now?” for KIA Sorento minivans.

“We’ve adapted our game,” Black explains. “We’ve got a company called Sync, Inc. and they specialize in getting sync licenses or getting our music placed in films, TV, video games, and adverts. That’s become an important part of our business.” When asked if that contradicts Coldcut’s earlier independent philosophy, he answers, “We give our artists a lot of freedom. If an artist wants to license a track to Coca-Cola, we wouldn’t necessarily block them. Coldcut has turned down a lot of syncs, particularly car ads, ever since we did one for Ford and realized that was a terrible idea.” Ironically, the song used was “Timber,” an instrumental decrying the eradication of rain forests. Even though Coldcut gave half of the licensing money to Greenpeace, says Black, “We didn’t feel comfortable with it.”

Two decades on, Ninja Tune continues to weather the rapid changes of the music industry while sustaining Coldcut’s dream of an independent haven for progressive artists. But the future ain’t free. “I believe the corporations are the Nazis of our age,” Black says. “But you sometimes have to talk to the Nazis because they’re a reality.”

NINJATUNE XX

With Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, DJ Food and DK, Toddla T and Serocee, Dj Kentaro, Eskmo, Ghostbeard, An-Ten-Nae, Motion Potion

Fri/29, 9 p.m.-4 a.m.; free with rsvp

1015 Folsom

103 Harriet, SF

www.ninjatunexx.xlr8r.com

 

 

Stage

Andrew Lam
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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.


OPENING

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Failure to Communicate The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Call for prices. Opens Fri/29, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 14. Perfomers Under Stress opens its sixth season with the world premiere of a physical theater piece by Valerie Fachman.

The Unexpected Man EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $18-25. Opens Fri/29. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 14. Spare Stage revives Yasmina Reza’s ironic comedy, starring Ken Ruta.

BAY AREA

Becoming Britney Center REPortory Company, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerREP.org. $25. Previews Thurs/28-Fri/29, 8:15pm. Opens Sat/30, 8:15pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Nov 14.Center REPortory Company presents an original musical about a naïve pop star, written by Molly Bell and Daya Curley.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/29-Sat/30 and Nov 3, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm; Tues/2, 7pm. Opens Nov 4, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Opens Thurs/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

ONGOING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Wed/27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Glory Days Boxcar Studios, 125 Hyde; www.jericaproductions.com. $30. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm (no performance Sun/31). Through Nov 7. Jerica Prodcutions and the Royal Underground Theatre company present Nick Blaemire’s and James Gardiner’s one-act musical.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Hedda Gabler Phoenix Theatre, suite 601, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35.

The action unfolds in the parlor of the newly married Tesmans, young mediocre academic George (Adam Simpson) and town beauty Hedda, née Gabler (a crisp, tightly wound and nicely understated Cecilia Palmtag), a woman of exceptional intelligence, ambition and pride—to call her fiery wouldn’t be bad either, especially since she’s so fond of shooting off her late father’s pistols. Frustrated by her paltry new life, Hedda seeks news of an old flame, Eilert Lovborg (Paul Baird), via the admiring and vaguely lecherous Judge Brack (Peter Abraham) and a timid acquaintance from school days, Thea (Joceyln Stringer). The semi-wild but brilliant Lovborg has published a new book that imperils George’s chances for a professorship. Less interested in securing George’s career than controlling Lovborg’s destiny, Hedda soon manipulates events around her with bold determination and tragic consequences. Passionate, violent and psychologically complex, Henrik Ibsen’s titular heroine is at turns sympathetic and disturbing, an independent soul trapped in and warped by a society that allows her too little scope—a modern predicament that has inspired many modern and postmodern adaptations. Off Broadway West’s straight-ahead production of the late-19th-century drama, helmed by artistic director Richard Harder, remains faithful to the period setting. This includes Bert van Aalsburg’s respectable scenic design and Sylvia Kratins impressive costumes, as well as the old if fine translation by William Archer, who first introduced Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, the quaint diction is not handled with equal grace across an uneven cast. Palmtag’s solid, at times admirable performance in the lead, however, goes a good way toward grounding an otherwise patchy production. (Avila)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Law and Order: San Francisco Unit: The Musical! EXIT Theater, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Mon, 8pm. Through Nov 15. Funny But Mean comedy troupe extends its newest show at a new venue.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*SHIToberfest Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. This special October run of PianoFight’s bowel-loosening comedy series, the S.H.I.T. Show (for acronym fans, that’s the Stop Hating Imagination Time Show), revolves dizzyingly around the subject of beer, Germans and, perhaps less explicably, flatulent dolphins, among much else in the wide open seas of poor taste. Is it hilarious? It is. And you don’t even need to smuggle in a forty to make it so, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. Fine comic acting throughout a charismatic cast (including writer-director-producers Alex Boyd, Zach Cahn, Jed Goldstein, Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty, Evan Winchester and Duncan Wold, with help from Nicole Hammersla, Gabrielle Patacsil, Rob Ready, Derricka Smith, Andy Strong, Jacque Vavroch and Dan Williams) combines here with generally solid to exceptional sketch work, video and song. Add in a permeating spirit of revelry, debauchery and irreverence and the evening becomes a diversion of the first order, culminating in an utterly sacrilicious sketch about a bunch of toasted beer-brewing monks treated to a papal visit—one of the best venial sins for your buck. When it comes to Octoberfesting this year, “Bavaria” is just S.H.I.T.–faced for Bay Area. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Thurs/28-Sun/31 include performances of The Forsaken Laboratory by the Brazilian Grand Guignol group Vigor Mortis). Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, 5pm). Through Sun/31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sun/31. This latest from Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Killer Joe) starts out as a delicious treat but a hollowness in the center of it all leaves one less than fully unsatisfied. Director Leslie Martinson’s cast shines, however, as the action unfolds in crisp, engaging scenes set in the titular run-down donut shop in Chicago’s slowly gentrifying Uptown neighborhood. Owner-operator Arthur Przybyszewski (Howard Swain) is an aging baby boomer and second-generation Polish immigrant who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft and returned years later to take over his parents shop, alienated and hesitant, though well liked by his regulars. At least most: As the play opens his shop has been vandalized. Two beat cops are on the scene, James (Michael J. Asberry) and Randy (Julia Brothers), the latter eventually displaying a visible crush on an oblivious, then discombobulated Arthur. When an impressive young African American man named Franco (Lance Gardner) comes in and charms his way into a job, Arthur gradually finds himself drawn out of his shell and faced with the challenge of valuing another human being more than his own hide—a challenge underscored by Arthur’s several monologues, in which his personal history comes to the fore. The play feels pat and a little lazy-sentimental in the end, but there’s no denying the entertainment afforded here, especially by the magnetic pairing of leads Swain and Gardner. (Avila)

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, Nov 7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead” CELLspace, 2050 Bryant; (510) 207-6101. $10-20. Fri/29, 8pm. Mangos With Chili presents a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration.

“The ChatRoulette Halloween Show” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; www.chatrouletteshow.com. $12-15. Sat/30, 7:30pm. The Illuminated Theater presents a special Halloween edition of its show.

Alicia Dattner Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; (917) 363-9646, www.aliciadattner.com. $20. Fri/29, 8pm.

“Fright Nights at the Wharf” Castagnola’s, 286 Jefferson; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of stand-up comedy by the water.

“Ghost Stories and other Horrors!” Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom; www.firesidestorytelling.com. $5. Wed/27, 8pm. Fireside Storytelling presents an evening of ghoulish tales.

“Kaleidoscope Cabaret” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of drag, burlesque, song, and aerial art by performers of color.

“Karaghiozis Saves the Economy” Hallidie Plaza, Market and 5th; 648-446, www.shadowlight.org. Free. Sun/31, 7pm. A Greek shadow theatre performance by Leonidas Kassapides.

“Make Drag, Not War!” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St; www.dancemission.com. $15-20. Sun/31, 8pm. A drag show and dance party hosted by Artist Malcolm Drake.

“MUNI Diaries Live!” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.munidiaries.com. $5. Fri/29, 7:30pm. An evening of MUNI stories.

“Road trip to Pluto” 4 Star Theatre, 2200 Clement; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $9.99-12. Thurs/28, 8:30pm. Bitter Show reprises its contribution to the SF Fringe Fest.

“Romane Event Comedy Show: Super Special Election and Halloween Edition” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.pacoromane.com. Wed/27, 7:30pm. Paco Romane’s guests include Will Durst, Casey Ley, Grant Lyon, and Pamela Ames.

Devendra Sharma CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $14-24. Thurs/28-Sat/30, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm. CounterPULSe’s “Performing Diaspora” program presents a contemporary take on Nautanki theater by Sharma.

“Stories From a Haunted Forest” Presidio’s Log Cabin, 1299 Story; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Free. Sat/30, 7pm. Bindlestiff Studio presents a one-night-only phantasmic experience.

“Teatro Zinzombie!” Pier 29 at Battery; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. 117-167. Sun/31, 5:15pm. TeatroZinzanni is haunted for one night.

Trailer Park Boys Palace Fine Arts Theatre, 3601 Lyon; 567-6642, www.ticketmaster.com. $45-58. Thurs/28, 7:30pm. The fabled boys appear live in concert.

“Twilight Vixen Revue” SOMArts, 934 Brannan; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12. A special Halloween edition.

“Upper Cut” The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; www.darkroomsf.com. $10. Thurs/28, 8pm. A weekly improve and sketch comedy open mic.

BAY AREA

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. $31-68. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. The acclaimed dance company performs some West Coast premieres.

“Persephone’s Boots” Codornices Park, Berk; www.raggedwing.org. Free. Wed/27-Sun/31, 5:30pm. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents the world premiere of a performance created by Anna Schneiderman and the ensemble.

 

 

Music

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

WEDNESDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Boom Boom Satellites Independent. 8pm, $15.

Bring Me the Horizon, August Burns Red, Emarosa, Polar Bear Club, This is Hell Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $20.

Castles in Spain, Sea of Sorrow, Gun and Doll Show, Pollux, Ol’ Cheeky Bastards, Katie Garibaldi Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

Decry, Snake Mountain, Ruleta Rusa Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Fun., Steel Train, Jarrod Gorbel Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Future Night, Blackbird Blackbird Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Get Offs, Blowie! Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5-7.

Hawksley Workman, Ian Fays, Red Verse Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Insomniacs Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Midnight Strangers, Red Yellow Blue, Nectarine Pie Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Misisipi Mike’s Honky Tonk Night Time Band, Grand Nationals, Jeanie and Chuck’s Country Roundup El Rio, 8pm, $5.

Poor Bailey, Foxtails Brigade, Il Gato Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Star Fucking Hipsters, Monster Squad, Static Thought Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Club Shutter Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Goth with DJs Nako, Omar, and Justin.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 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.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

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.

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 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Eagle, Caleb Coy, D. Lee Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

“Blues at the Grammys” Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Isobel Campbell Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 7pm, free.

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Willy Mason Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $19.

Dirty Filthy Mugs, Death Valley High, FlexXBronco, Box Squad, Rock Fight Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Henry Clay People, Dig, Hundred Days Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Jeffrey Jerusalem, Brainstorm, Safe Milk. 8pm, $5.

K’Naan, Paper Tongues Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Liberation Institute, Annie Bacon and Her O-Shen, Terese Taylor, Seedy Naturalists El Rio. 9pm, $8.

UNKLE, Sleepy Sun Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

VersaEmerge, Anarbor, Dangerous Summer, Conditions Café Du Nord. 7pm, $12.

Zinc Finger, Bigelows Treehouse, Emily Zisman Hotel Utah. 8pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

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.

Dirty Dishes 009 Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.dirtydishesdjs.com. 9pm, $3. With Gordon Gartress, DJ Diagnosis, and Jive.

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

Gigantic Beauty Bar. 9pm, free. With DJs Eli Glad, Greg J, and White Mike spinning indie, rock, disco, and soul.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

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

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

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

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

SFSU International Halloween Party DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $20. With Fans of Jimmy Century, Glass Feather, and Nervous Factor.

FRIDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Boy in the Bubble, Ready! Ricochet, Poor Sweet Creatures Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Built to Spill, Revolt Revolt, Finn Riggins Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Grady Champion Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Death Hymn #9, Midnite Snaxx Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5.

Deerhunter, Real Estate, Casino vs. Japan Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Elle Nino, Hold Me Luke Allen, Club Crashers El Rio, 9pm, $3-5.

Foreverland Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $35.

Free Energy, Foxy Shazam, Hollerado Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Grass Widow, Bar Feeders, Lou Lou and the Guitarfish Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $8. Book release party for Heart Transplant by Andrew Vachss.

Kindness and Lies, Leathers, Monbon, Mic Danja Rock-It Room. 9pm, $10. Also with Craft, DJ Madd Hatter with Rey Resurreccion, Paulie Rhyme, and Nero.

Lotus, Mux Mool Independent. 9pm, $20.

Of Montreal, Janelle Monae Warfield. 9pm, $32.

Joe Pug, Nik Freitas, Two Sheds Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

“SF Zombie Prom” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.zombiepromsf.com. 8pm, $15. With Stompy Jones and the Hi-Rhythm Hustlers.

Super Diamond, Pop Rocks Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

*Thrones, Acid King, Christian Mistress Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bitches Brew Revisited Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-65.

Dave Mihaly’s Shimmering Leaves Ensemble, Cylinder Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.davemihaly.com. 8pm, $10.

8 Legged Monster Coda. 10pm, $10.

Leo Kottke Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $32.

Kronos Quartet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; www.ybca.org. 8pm, $30.

Savanna Jazz Trio Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

All Hallow’s Eve DNA Lounge. 9pm, $13. Halloween party with Decay, BaconMonkey, Joe Radio, and more.

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

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.

Fake Blood, Huoratron Mezzanine. 9pm.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs B-Cause, Vinnie Esparza, Mr. Robinson, Toph One, and Slopoke.

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.

Icee Hot featuring L-Vis 1990, Low Limit, Ghosts on Tape, Disco Shawn, Rollie Fingers Elbo Room. 10pm. Electro.

Live 105’s Subsonic Spookfest Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF; www.livenation.com. 6pm, $50. With Underworld, Moby, MSTRKRFT, DJ Shadow, Booka Shade, and more.

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

Teenage Dance Craze Halloween Monster Party Knockout. 10pm, $4. Twist, surf, and garage with DJ Sergio Iglesias, Russell Quann, and dX the Funky Gran Paw, plus a live performance by Girlfriends.

SATURDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Apples in Stereo, Fol Chen Independent. 9pm, $15.

*Cattle Decapitation, Devourment, Knights of the Abyss, Burning the Masses, Son of Aurelius, Slaughterbox Thee Parkside. 8:15pm, $12-15.

Dead Souls, Spellbound, Lisa Dewey and the Lotus Life Elbo Room. 10pm, $8-10.

Deerhunter, Real Estate, Casino vs. Japan Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

Fucking Buckaroos, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars, Thee Heartbeats El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Love is Chemicals, HIJK, Donts, Jake Mann and the Upper Hand, ’86 Mets Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Nellie McKay Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30.

Kate Nash, Peggy Sue Warfield. 9pm, $25.

Super Diamond, Erasure-esque Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

Earl Thomas and the Blues Ambassadors Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Tiny Television, Ferocious Few, Steve Pile Band Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Justin Hellman Coda. 7pm, $7.

Omara Portuondo Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-75.

Primavera Latin Jazz Band Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

Arturo Sandoval Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-75.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Nuxx.

Big Top Hallo-Weenie Party Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.joshuajpresents.com. 9pm, $5-10. With Kidd Sysko and DJ Jinks.

Blow Up SF: Halloween Special Edition Kelly’s Mission Rock, 817 Terry Francois, SF; www.blowupsf.com. 9pm, $10-20. Jeffrey Paradise and Ava Berlin host a Haunted Mansion party.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-20. Halloween mash-ups with Adrian and Mysterious D.

Cramps Night Knockout. 9pm, $3. Halloween jams with Djs Sergio Iglesias, Okie Oren, and Lisa.

Go Bang! Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.sanfrancisco.going.com/gobang. 9pm, $5. Atomic dancefloor disco costume party with Andre Lucero, Glenn Rivera, and more.

Hov-O-Ween Medici Lounge, 299 Ninth St, SF; www.medicisf.com. 10pm, $5. Gloom, doom, and boom with DJs Voodoo, Purgatory, and Unit77.

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.

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

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

SUNDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Burned Out Basements, Trainwreck Riders, Velveteen Habit, Dead Westerns, Beet the Meatles, Human Condition Bottom of the Hill. 6:30pm, $10.

Lucha VaVoom Fillmore. 8pm, $32.50.

Mig 21 with Jiri Machacek, DJ Che Café Du Nord. 8pm, $25.

Nobunny, Uzi Rash, Apache, Monster Maus, Tumor Boys Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

Parties, Lotus Moons Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Ghosts and Jazz” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $5-20. With Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu.

Valeriana Quevado, Larry Vuckovich, Buca Necak, Sanna Craig Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Trumpetsupergroup Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.theintersection.org. 2pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Albino!, Rito Reinoso y su Ritmo y Armonia, DJ Specific Independent. 8pm, $17.

Back 40, Carburetors Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Danilo El Rio. 4pm, $8.

La Mission Band Roccapulco, 3140 Mission, SF; www.roccapulco.com. 3pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Halloween Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guests Spit Brothers with Bakir and Dubsworth.

45 Club Halloween Party Knockout. 10pm, free. Funky soul with dX the Funky Gran Paw, Dirty Dishes, and English Steve.

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?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Pachanga Coda. 5pm, $10. Salsa with DJs Fab Fred and Antonio with Los Compas.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

Trannyshack: Halloween DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $20. With special guest Julie Brown and hosts Peaches Christ and Heklina.

MONDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Asteroid 4, Lovetones, Fauna Valetta, Spyrals Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Enter Shikari, Haste the Day, Sleeping With Sirens, Ms. White Slim’s. 7pm, $16.

Ingrid Michaelson, Guggenheim Grotto Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Stone Temple Pilots Warfield. 8pm, $52.50-65.

White Denim, Zodiac Death Valley Independent. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild: Day of the Dead Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, 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.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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.

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

TUESDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aural Logic Sound System/Back Beat Coda. 9pm, $5.

Bloody Beetroots DeathCrew 77 Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

Robbie Fitzsimmons, Emily Greene Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Ian Fays, Calorifer is Very Hot Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Gary Numan Fillmore. 8pm, $27.50.

Tokeson, Candelaria Elbo Room. 9pm, $7-10. Dia de los Muertos celebration.

Laura Veir and the Hall of Flames, Leslie Stevens and the Badgers Independent. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

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

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

 

 

Dancing with the dark

Andrew Lam
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0
Dancing with the dark

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Kazuo Ohno, who died this past June at 103, probably received the broadest exposure of his long career when Antony and the Johnsons chose Naoya Ikegami’s black and white Ohno portrait as the cover art for their 2009 album The Crying Light. Shot in profile, wearing a black dress with a cluster of white flowers pinned in his hair, the visibly aged Ohno — his head tilted back, mouth slightly agape, and hands thrust forward like twisted branches — appears frozen somewhere between ecstasy and his last breath.

The image captures something of the powerful ambiguity of Ohno’s solo performances, in which he frequently embodied female characters. Beneath the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? pancake makeup and vintage rags, Ohno — one of the founders of the postwar Japanese dance-theater form butoh — could still convey great tenderness as well as sorrow, and that it was possible to laugh in the dark while struggling through it. It is Ohno’s undeniable humanism that courses through Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ retrospective of films documenting his life and practice, with an accompanying performance run by acclaimed butoh troupe Sankai Juku.

Known for its evocations of darkness and decay, butoh came about as an artistic response to the horrors of the World War II, horrors Ohno had experienced first-hand when he was held for two years as a prisoner of war in China and New Guinea while serving as an intelligence officer in the Imperial Japanese Army. Ohno’s first solo performance, Jellyfish Dance, given in Tokyo in 1949, was a reflection on the burials at sea he witnessed on board a vessel bearing captives to be repatriated to Japan. Ohno was 43 years old.

In the audience that night was the much younger artist Tatsumi Hijikata, who was entranced by Ohno’s performance. The two spent the next several years developing what was to become known as Ankoku Butoh-ha, “the dance of darkness.” Although Hijikata choreographed many of Ohno’s performances from the 1960s on, he became known for his grotesque and boundary-pushing performance style, whereas Ohno developed a more introspective, sometimes even delicate approach.

Ohno was born on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. His life changed in 1926 when, while still a student at the prestigious Japan Athletic College in Tokyo, he attended a performance by the Argentinean flamenco dancer Antonia Mercé, who would become the subject of his 1977 magnum opus Admiring La Argentina. Soon after he began to study with the modern dance pioneers Baku Ishii and Takaya Eguchi, while teaching physical education at a private Christian school in Yokohama — a position he held until the 1970s when he momentarily retired from public performance.

Although his choice of characters and costuming frequently drew attention to his aging body, Ohno was an indomitable performer. Even when he was confined to a wheelchair, late in his life, Ohno was still determined to use his body as a means of expression. The documentary An Offering to Heaven focuses on a remarkable 2002 collaborative performance with ikebana master Yukio Nakegawa, in which Ohno brought to life a dream he had in which a million tulips were cast from a helicopter, by dancing under a shower of flower petals and rain using only his upper body.

When he could no longer use his hands, he would dance with his eyes. On his death bed, he claimed that he would continue to dance with his breath until he exhaled for the final time. 

“Remembering Kazuo Ohno”

Nov. 4-21, $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

 

The Good Shepard

Andrew Lam
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0
The Good Shepard

arts@sfbg.com

This is doubtless no news to people who have TV reception, but I was disappointed to recently learn Dax Shepard is a regular on the NBC series Parenthood. Which is probably fine. But for a few minutes there it looked like he was going to become a movie star, and now that seems less immediately likely. Shepard is a fine example of talent deserving and getting breaks that boost them to the B list, but no further. (For proof life isn’t fair thataway, observe that just because she lucked into Knocked Up — a movie Shepard cameoed in, probably just for fun — Katherine Heigl now gets movies built around her.)

Shepard is goofy, off-kilter’dly attractive, versatile, capable of being subtle (yet funny) in broad circumstances. He’s shown those qualities in Without a Paddle(2004), Employee of the Month (2006), Baby Mama (2008), and When in Rome. He starred in three barely released to theaters: Mike Judge’s Idiocracy(2006), which has a cult following; Bob “Mr. Show” Odenkirk’s Let’s Go to Prison (2006), which deserves one but has a reputation for world-class suckage instead; and Smother (2008) with Diane Keaton, which nobody defends. You see the problem: this is not a winning resume. Ergo, Shepard is back where he started (as Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d minion), on TV every week.

Except this week, when he’s also at a theater near you in The Freebie. This is one of those actors-making-work projects that often turn out badly, because creating a movie to act in yourself is seldom an impetus from which greatness springs. Then again, writer-director-star Katie Aselton has spent years grooming for greatness — let us note in 1995 she snagged both Miss Maine Teen and the Jantzen Swimsuit Competition.

And in fact, The Freebie is pretty good. Not as good as Breaking Upwards, the somewhat similar New York City indie earlier this year. But among movies about long-term couples pondering Seeing Other People, it’s up there. Annie (Aselton) and Darren (Shepard) have been married seven years, in Los Angeles yet, and still they hang out and have fun, just the two of them, all the time. (We never learn what either does for a living.) It has not escaped notice, however, that their sex life has receded to the point where there’s no answer to “When did we last … ?” because no one can remember. “I still get major boners for you,” Darren reassures. “They’re just, like, snuggle boners.”

When at a dinner party Darren fervently urges a friend to sow all wild oats lest she meet Mr. Right and be doomed to never have sex with anyone else again, this low ebb becomes an issue. Should they do something about it? Perhaps by choosing a single, specific date on which they are free to (separately) do somebody else? Then return home refreshed, newly appreciative of and horny toward each other? Uh-huh.

This plan is presented so stealthily by Darren — and Shepard is one of those actors whose characters’ thought processes leak haplessly through his googly eyes, rendering fibs and scheming hilarious — that by the time it’s agreed on, Annie thinks it’s her idea. Was there ever a romantic comedy in which mutual cheating turned out a good idea? It doesn’t here, either. But getting to the “We’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake” part proves loose, amusing, credible, and briefly dead serious. (That serious bit proves that the ingratiating Shepard can do mirthless, ugly, and abusive when necessary.)

The Freebie was largely improvised. Aselton is used to such processes, being married to and sometimes cast by mumblecore leader Mark Duplass (2005’sThe Puffy Chair, Cyrus). Like many m-core movies, The Freebie — which otherwise feels too eventful to be classified as such — looks like crap. But Aselton gets a lot of other things right, from the regular-people L.A. milieu to perfect mixtape soundtrack choices by artists you’ve never heard of.

All the performances are excellent, the director herself playing naturalistic straight-woman to Shepard’s toned-down yet still slightly surreal mix of sly, snarky, and spacey. File his career next to that of Steve Zahn, Seann William Scott, or David Arquette, to name other guys who may seldom or never get movies built around them. They should, though. 

THE FREEBIE opens Fri/29 in Bay Area theaters.

 

 

 

 

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