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Huffing Internet

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Huffing Internet

caitlin@sfbg.com

DRUGS Remember those elementary school sleepovers when you’d pin your friend’s throat against the wall so they could experience a few moments of sweet, sweet asphyxiation? The heady realization that you could easily make yourself feel really weird, in an almost-good way? Well, that brilliant brand of adolescent inanity is back, and this time, it’s on the Internet! Enter I-dosing — binaural beats stripped from the Enya, trance, and Pearl Jam albums (sometimes accompanied by tacky Op art visuals) so that nerdy teens can pretend they’re doing something bad.

Bubble-headed hyperventilators on the local evening news have already declared a new drug menace. “Kelly, parents really need to listen up on this one,” warned one lushly coiffed correspondent recently on Oklahoma City’s News9, opening a sequence that cobbled together hilarious footage those crazy I-dosers posted of themselves. Headphone-clad teens — in blindfolds! — curling into balls, spastically clenching their muscles in the rec room. It doesn’t look like much fun, but when has that ever stopped anyone from trying to get high on the cheap?

Subsequent studies have shown that these tracks, basically a pair of tones played simultaneously at slightly different frequencies, aren’t really melting your face. No detectable variance in brainwaves was detected while listeners were I-dosing into insanity. But long-term experiments are turning up interesting results — daily use of the tracks (which start around 99 cents on Amazon), which have names like “Demerol,” “Peyote,” “Orgasm,” and the more benign “Quick Happy,” “Confidence,” and “Brain+,” can produce overall reductions in anxiety and other slightly positive effects.

That, and my parents are afraid of it? No brainer! For the sake of Guardian readers, who obviously don’t do drugs of any bandwidth, I dove into the search engine to try.

The bad: there’s a bewildering array of I-dose options. I went straight for the free stuff, the files that have been converted to YouTube video. Granted, these aren’t at the same sound quality as the $200 I-dosing tracks you can buy on such sites as www.i-doser.com — but no one’s footing that bill, lemme tell ya.

“Gates of Hades” seems to be the most downloaded of the bunch. And while I didn’t quite witness the “death and destruction” promised by its creators, I did rip out my headphones when the sounds, which began with a steady, grinding noise that made me want to vomit, then switched jarringly into a key more apt to rupture my ear drums. If we’re going to be faking trips, can we at least choose a good trip? You’d think the nervous Nellies out there would want kids to think drugs were like this.

The good: Some of the more mellow I-doses produced a pleasantly confusing buzz — like being happy at a sober rave. The free ones accompanied by visuals got me slightly out of my head, at least, with whirling circles, throbbing triangles, and jouncing animated penguins. I may not have experienced Timothy Leary-esque cosmic transcendence, but after a couple minutes of staring at my pulsating screen, my pupils got nice and Google-y. No dramatic seizures, though.

Conclusion: buy a Magic Eye book.

Hunan Chef

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Hunan Chef

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Many of us would probably agree that a certain sort of Chinese restaurant tends to be rather plain on the inside, with lots of linoleum, severe fluorescent lighting, and chairs that look like they were bought for 25 cents each from San Quentin Prison’s annual garage sale. Hunan Chef, on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights, gives us a variation on this familiar theme — it is ugly on the outside. It is, in truth, in a building so ugly, so faceless and phlegm-colored, that we are left to wonder how such a structure could have been conceived, let alone built.

The good news is that Hunan Chef is reasonably appealing inside. Once there, you don’t have to look at the outside anymore, so that’s a plus right off the bat. A friendly aquarium with languid gourami burbles near the front door, and an array of tchotchkes are arrayed around the dining room, including, toward the rear, a poster for Budweiser cerveza tacked onto the wall, for a hint of college-dorm nostalgia in multi-culti guise.

The better news is that Hunan Chef serves pretty wonderful food at modest prices. Most remarkable, the table service is friendly and efficient despite the bustling takeout service. This you hardly ever see, in my experience. Takeout takes priority in the same way a telephone call trumps a customer actually standing at the counter in a hardware store. If I see takeout bags being taken out in large numbers, I usually resign myself to slow, erratic service. But not at Hunan Chef.

The long menu includes many standards, and for the most part they don’t disappoint. Only the scallion cakes ($3.95) left us feeling a little deflated; the cakes — actually a single cake cut into triangles like a pizza — suffered from dryness, which can be a symptom of having been made beforehand and then left sitting around too long.

Potstickers ($4.95 for six) more than compensated. They were as big as a baby’s fist and juicy. Roasted duck wonton soup ($6.50) was also richly satisfying, a broad bowl of golden, oily broth backfilled with chunks of roasted duck and a wealth of wrinkly, pork-filled wontons. The soup alone would have made a meal for a single (takeout?) diner.

Generally I steer clear of curry dishes in Chinese restaurants. There is a yellow harshness I associate with curry powder spooned from a can. Hunan Chef’s Singapore rice noodle ($6.50) did have the golden hue that suggests the presence of turmeric, but the curry flavor was smooth and mellow, not at all metallic. Also, there were plenty of other colorful attractions on the plate, including shrimp, shreds of barbecue pork, broccoli florets, carrot slivers, lengths of scallion, bamboo shoots, chunks of green bell pepper, and threadings of egg, which looked like ganglia as seen under a microscope.

Cabbage beef ($7.50) didn’t look like much at all: pale gray-green cabbage leaves wok-fried with chunks of beef. But if ginger zing had a color, it would have been among the most colorful items on the menu. Carrot slivers helped, a little. Cabbage is a wonderful, supple vegetable that does suffer some from drabness and a reputation as poor-people food. As a boy, I hated it; now I seek it out.

The restaurant offers a range of what might be called signature dishes — dishes with “Hunan” in the name — among them Hunan chicken ($7.50). Here we found, along with chunks of boneless flesh, swaths of bok choy, button mushrooms, broccoli florets, carrot slivers, and whole dried red chilis. These last implied a sauce with some heat — Hunan being, along with Szechuan, among the spicier of China’s regional cooking styles — and there was indeed a hint of heat in the marvelous, garlicky red sauce. This was the kind of sauce that left you wishing Chinese restaurants brought you a basket of bread so you’d have a means of sopping it up. An alternative to bread is to have the leftovers boxed up. Once you’re in the privacy of your own home, you can do as you see fit.

Service was excellent. The serving of dishes was well-paced, empty plates were removed promptly, and water glasses never ran dry. I was reminded, as I so often am at Chinese restaurants, of the prep time involved in virtually every dish, the dicing, chopping, and shredding — an expense of human effort and energy that reduces cooking times and therefore the need for scarce fuel. As the child of an energy-hogging culture that burns fossil fuels to blow leaves from the sidewalk so the wind can blow them back again, I can’t help but be impressed by this.

HUNAN CHEF

Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.;

Sun., 4–9 p.m.

525 Cortland, SF

(415) 648-3636

Beer and wine

MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Lingering vermicelli

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Lingering vermicelli

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I keep finding myself in Emeryville, which is a problem. Once I was running early so I stopped at the Comeback Café and ordered a Vietnamese sandwich, pork, no mayonnaise.

The young guy at the counter wrote it all down, passed it along to the kitchen, and I picked up a Giants’ schedule from a stack by the cash register. It made me feel at home.

This is the thing about me: whenever I am running early, I wind up late. Even later than when I am running late. At least I know myself. So I called Crawdad de la Cooter, and let her know. It was a prediction, disguised as a question: “Do you want me to bring anything for the kids?”

“What do they have?”

I read the menu.

“Shrimp rolls,” she said. So good, so now I had a proper excuse for being late. And it would be in the kids’ best interest, because shrimp rolls, as a rule, rock. Everybody knows, give or take two- and three-year-olds.

It was already taking them forever to make my sandwich, and now it was going to take foreverer.

I read the whole 2010 S.F. Giants season, April to October, in one sitting, only I was standing up. And finally, my order was ready.

Not wanting to run the risk of having to share my pork sandwich with the children, I decided to eat it in the car. And that was how, just one bite in, I learned why they call the place the Comeback Café. I did an immediate U-turn and went back.

“Mayonnaise,” I said.

“So sorry, I forgot to tell them,” he said.

So they made me a new one and I was even later. The sandwich was great this time, plenty of grilled pork and fresh cilantro, shredded carrots … On the minus side, the jalapenos had very little heat, and: $5. Did I miss something? Is that the going rate for Vietnamese sandwiches these days? Even in the Tenderloin?

Well, leave it to Emeryville.

The fresh shrimp rolls ($5.50 for three) were lame. I don’t think I ever tasted a non-vegetarian Vietnamese cold roll with less flavor. Too much lettuce and not enough (if any) other green things. Cilantro? Basil? Mint?

Well, the kids enjoyed their stickiness: the rice paper wrapper and especially the rice vermicelli noodles, which they were delighted to find inside, and spread all over.

I was about to spend five days and four nights with them. In fact, I did. It’s Day 5, mom’s on the airplane home, as we speak, and I am still picking vermicelli noodles out of her two little uns’ hair and wardrobes.

Besides taking them on their first-ever BART train ride, which was the highlight of at least two of our lives, my favorite time was on Sunday when their father took us all out to dinner at Khana Peena, this great Indian restaurant at the Berkeley Hills end of Solano. I’d seen it a million times but had never eaten there because Zachary’s is just a couple doors down.

Anyway, they have this great happy hour special between I think 4 to 7 p.m. every day, where you get 50 percent off on all your food. Which I’m guessing is overpriced so maybe it comes out to “about right.”

Well, the chicken tikka masala was so good we had to order it again. And probably would have ordered it again again, if the kids weren’t starting to get fussy. Soooooo good, but I gotta say: tiiiiiny portion. Half price, order twice … Again: I don’t know, you do the math.

All’s I’m saying is I don’t remember ever loving chicken tikka masala so much. Nor do I remember ever feeling so thoroughly momlike as I did eating out with two small kids and their dad. I can’t speak for the girls, but I think I might have goofed around a little less than usual.

KHANA PEENA INDIAN CUISINE

Lunch: 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Dinner: 5 p.m.–9:30 p.m.

1889 Solano, Berk.

(510) 528-2519

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

alt.sex.column: Mixed marriage

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
alt.sex.column: Mixed marriage

Dear Readers:

I was halfway through an answer to a reader’s very interesting question when said reader wrote back and asked me not to. Instead we’re discussing fetishes and how they do or don’t mesh well with regular partnered sex. The questioner had done everything a body could do to accommodate the partner’s special interests, yet the fetish was proving a more powerful draw than the willing, accommodating live body, and the questioner was wondering if there was really room in the relationship for two humans and an object.

Maybe. But moving on, can a person with a very powerful attraction to an inanimate object, a disembodied bodily characteristic, or a specific and inflexible role ever be happy in a relationship with someone who doesn’t feel the same way about swim-caps or dirty feet, or who is just going through the role-play motions?

Obviously, people do manage to include a unilateral fetish in bilateral sex. It’s no weirder or more difficult to negotiate than one partner liking any other activity more than the other one does: you compromise, you do a little of this and a little of that, you try to make each other happy.

It’s actually rare for two people to be independently equally and identically interested in something like rubber or latex or boots or what-have-you, even if they met at the Leather, Latex, and Boots Ball. But if you don’t have a fetish or fringe-y interest of your own, you’re never really going to get it or even completely believe a partner who insists s/he must have X present or deployed for sex to feel worthwhile or even doable.

I think of fetishes and strong attractions to scenes like BDSM, water sports, or cosplay as readily sharable but not entirely transferable. Some will give it a try out of curiosity or just to be nice and discover they’ve been carrying an inner submissive or a pirate wench around, corked up like a genie in a bottle. Yay for you if this happens; it is a rare and beautiful thing.

But more often you’re going to find a situation where a regular vanilla-type person is taken by surprise at the revelation that a new love interest requires a French maid’s uniform and a pair of rubber waders to get off, and is happy to oblige but something is … off. Gradually s/he realizes that there is a love triangle here and the older relationship is the stronger and more compelling one. Eventually she wonders if the other person would even notice her absence, provided she left the uniform and the waders. Meanwhile, the waders-lover suspects the new partner is only humoring him and thinks the waders are pretty silly or even mildly shameful. Bad feelings ensue.

Communication, of course, is the blah blah blah, but we must remember that ability to communicate one’s feelings is not, in and of itself, a cure-all. “I don’t want to do that and I think less of you for being so obsessed with it ” is, after all, a perfectly clear communication.

Love,

Andrea

Got a question? Email Andrea at andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Not according to plan

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Not according to plan

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The long-term viability of eight women’s health clinics operating under regional affiliate Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) was thrown into question Aug. 6 when Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) announced that the affiliate would lose its accreditation.

The clinics — which serve roughly 55,000 clients, predominantly women living at or below the federal poverty level — will still be allowed to operate but must stop using Planned Parenthood’s nationally trusted name beginning Sept. 3.

Some news articles immediately following PPFA’s announcement referenced confidential internal conflicts to explain the break, but financial documents and the accounts of several former employees gathered by the Guardian suggest that the organization had reached a precarious financial position that made it difficult to meet accreditation standards.

“To not have a Planned Parenthood in San Francisco is like heresy,” a former PPGG employee told the Guardian. Yet this person and other former coworkers attributed this outcome to dysfunction at the senior management level of PPGG and said the national organization had little choice but to take action.

The Bay Citizen reported that 30 members of PPGG’s medical services staff sent a letter to Harrison and PPFA executives in October 2008 to raise concerns about “the misappropriation and mismanagement of PPGG’s funds.” The letter charges that “executive staff’s personal expenditures are excessive and are not aligned with the mandatory fiscal restrictions. Flagrant use of PPGG funds to pay for personal belongings, personal services, and exorbitant technology products is seemingly unchallenged and not subject to the same financial scrutiny that clinic supplies and staff salaries are, for example.”

A former PPGG staffer noted that employees had tried in the past to sound the alarm, including going to the media. Another noted that they had been made to sign a confidentiality agreement on leaving the organization, a practice that was common within PPGG.

While the current CEO, Therese Wilson, did not return numerous phone calls seeking comment, she was quoted in a fairly sympathetic San Francisco Chronicle article referencing the economic downturn and inability for many of the clients to pay as reasons behind the agency’s financial woes. While the recession, cuts to state funding to nonprofits, and other external factors have clearly had an impact, documents suggest that things were going awry before the recession hit full force.

An internal PPGG document provided to the Guardian displays the agency’s on-hand cash reserves compared with other affiliates, suggesting that the reserve ratios were at or below the minimum required by Planned Parenthood national for all but one year from 1998 to 2007 — and well below that of other affiliates of similar size. That is a key requirement for meeting accreditation standards.

When we asked Elizabeth Toledo, a Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) spokesperson, about this apparent pattern, she said she could not comment because she had not seen the documents. She also said the accreditation reviews were confidential. “Understanding the true financial picture for health care providers takes a very in-depth evaluation,” Toledo said. “PPFA and PPGG were working together over the last few years to resolve fiscal challenges.”

The Packard Foundation, a major donor to Planned Parenthood, awarded PPGG a $30,000 “organizational effectiveness” grant last year to “select a talented, external provider to help them think through some of these challenges.” The grant expires in September, according to spokesperson Dan Cohen.

In an era marked by high unemployment, economic instability, and deep cuts in public funding for health services, Planned Parenthood clinics provide an increasingly important safety net for uninsured and low-income clients in need of birth control, screenings for sexually transmitted disease or cervical cancer, abortion services, or information on sexual health that isn’t manipulated by a pro-life agenda. As things stand, women in rural communities seeking abortions often must travel very long distances to clinics, and any gap in services resulting from a PPGG accreditation loss could further broaden those geographical boundaries.

Since financial problems are at the root of the San Francisco-based affiliate’s problems, the PPGG clinics — which are located in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino counties — are in an especially precarious position without national support, despite operating as a separate entity from PPFA. Planned Parenthood affiliates Mar Monte and Shasta Diablo plan to take over some of the existing clinics or cover gaps in service area by opening satellite centers, Toledo told us. “It’s unusual to have a disaffiliation,” she said. “But it’s not unusual for national committees to have a reallocation of service area. That part is well practiced.” She added that “every effort possible will be made” to ensure continuity of care.

The Mar Monte affiliate operates clinics in the Central Valley, Sacramento, the Sierra region, the San Joaquin Valley, and Silicon Valley. The Shasta Diablo affiliate covers areas in Butte, Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Shasta, and Solano counties, with locations in El Cerrito and Walnut Creek. Depending on clients’ starting points, travel times could lengthen considerably and waiting rooms could become more crowded if the current PPGG clinics can’t stay afloat.

It’s too early to say just how PPGG staff members and patients will be affected by the loss of accreditation. However, it became obvious from Guardian interviews and more than two dozen Web comments on the Guardian’s online coverage of PPGG management woes that there was a high level of employee discontent at PPGG. Former staffers even keep in touch through a sort of club titled “PPGG PTSD” — a humorous reference to being shaken by the experience of working there. Yet while many were angered by the affiliate’s administrative problems, they nonetheless remain dedicated to the mission of Planned Parenthood.

“I’m a senior citizen who hasn’t needed birth control in quite some time, yet I remember when I was a young woman without resources who depended on PPGG for basic health care,” noted “Ellen,” a commenter. “They provide more than just reproductive services. They found an early cervical cancer, and I’m alive today as a result of the early diagnosis that they provided.

“It’s a tragedy that the current and recent trustees and management ruined such a fine organization,” she continued. “A friend of mine is a talented and dedicated nurse with a background of serving low-income women. She resigned from PPGG a year ago because she couldn’t handle the mismanagement any longer. I hope one of the nearby chapters is able to take over the PPGG clinics. In any case, current PPGG management and trustees need to go.”

Democrats divided

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Democrats divided

Update:This online article contains a correction concerning the DCCC’s vote on Sup. Sean Elsbernd’s Muni pay guarantees (Prop. G). In the print version of this article, the Guardian reported that the DCCC had voted “to recommend a no vote” on Prop. G. This is incorrect. The DCCC voted “not to endorse” Prop. G. As Elsbernd points out, “This is a key distinction.”

Sarah@sfbg.com

With fewer than 10 weeks to go until a pivotal November election, the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) approved a package of endorsements at its Aug. 11 meeting, giving the nod to mostly progressive candidates and rejecting Mayor Gavin Newsom’s most divisive ballot measures.

This crucial election could alter the balance of power on a Board of Supervisors that is currently dominated by progressives, and that new board would be seated just as it potentially gets the chance to appoint an interim mayor.

That’s what will happen if Newsom wins his race for lieutenant governor. The latest campaign finance reports show that Newsom has raised twice as much money as the Republican incumbent, former state Sen. Abel Maldonado. But the two candidates are still neck-and-neck in the polls.

Although the DCCC supports Newsom in the race, it is resisting his agenda for San Francisco, voting to oppose his polarizing sit-lie legislation (Prop. L), a hotel tax loophole closure (Prop. K) that would invalidate the hotel tax increase that labor unions placed on the ballot, and his hypocritical ban on local elected officials serving on the DCCC (Prop. H).

Shortly after the vote, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Newsom called an emergency closed-door meeting with some of his downtown allies to discuss the upcoming election. “We just wanted to get on the same page on what’s going on locally, what’s going with the ballot initiatives, where people are on the candidates for supervisor,” Newsom told the newspaper.

DCCC Chair Aaron Peskin, who regularly battled with Newsom during his tenure as president of the Board of Supervisors, voted with the progressive bloc against Newsom’s three controversial measures. But he told us that he was glad to see the mayor finally engage in the local political process.

Sup. David Campos kicked off the DCCC meeting by rebuffing newly elected DCCC member Carole Migden’s unsuccessful attempt to rescind the body’s endorsement of Michael Nava for Superior Court Judge, part of a push by the legal community to rally behind Richard Ulmer and other sitting judges.

Things got even messier when the DCCC endorsed the candidates for supervisor. In District 2, the DCCC gave the nod to Janet Reilly, snubbing incumbent Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who is running now that Superior Court Judge Peter Busch has ruled that she is not termed out (a ruling on City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s appeal of Busch’s ruling is expected soon).

In District 6, where candidates include DCCC member Debra Walker, School Board President Jane Kim, Human Rights Commission Executive Director Theresa Sparks, neighborhood activist Jim Meko, and drag queen Glendon Hyde (a.k.a. Anna Conda), the club endorsed only Walker, denying Kim the second-place endorsement she was lobbying for.

But in District 8, where candidates include progressive DCCC member Rafael Mandelman, moderate DCCC member Scott Wiener, and moderate Rebecca Prozan, the politics got really squirrelly. As expected, Mandelman got the first-place nod with 18 votes: the progressive’s bare 17-vote majority on the 33-member body plus Assembly Member Leland Yee.

Yet because Yee supports Prozan and David Chiu, the Board of Supervisors president who was also part of the DCCC progressive slate, had offered less than his full support for Mandelman, a deal was cut to give Prozan a second-place endorsement.

That move caused some public and private grumbling from Jane Kim’s supporters, who noted that Kim is way more progressive than Prozan and said she should have been given the second-place slot in D6.

A proxy for John Avalos even tried to get the DCCC to give Walker and Kim a dual first-place endorsement, but Peskin ruled that such a move was not permitted by the group’s bylaws. Then DCCC members Eric Mar and Eric Quezada argued that Kim should get the club’s second-choice endorsement.

But Walker’s supporters argued that Kim only recently moved into the district and changed her party affiliation from the Green Party to the Democratic Party, and Kim’s supporters failed to find the 17 votes they needed.

“District 6 has an amazing wealth of candidates and I look forward to supporting many of them in future races,” Gabriel Haaland told his DCCC colleagues. “I will just not be supporting them tonight.”

Wiener told the group he would not seek its endorsement for anything below the top slot. “I’m running for first place and I intend to win,” Wiener said, shortly before Prozan secured the club’s second-choice endorsement.

In District 4, the DCCC endorsed incumbent Carmen Chu, who is running virtually unopposed. The DCCC also endorsed Bert Hill’s run for the BART Board of Directors, where he hopes to unseat James Fang, San Francisco’s only elected Republican.

The body had already decided to delay its school board endorsements until September and ended up pushing its District 10 supervisorial endorsement back until then as well because nobody had secured majority support.

“I think it’s because they want to give members of the DCCC a chance to learn more about some of the candidates,” District 10 candidate Dewitt Lacy told the Guardian. “I don’t think folks have spent enough time to make an informed decision.”

D10 candidate Chris Jackson agreed, adding, “The progressives in this race have brought our issues to the forefront.”

“I think it’s appropriate,” concurred D10 candidate Isaac Bowers. “D10 is a complicated district. It’s wise to wait and see how it settles out.”

The main thing that needs to be resolved is which candidate in the crowded field will emerge as the progressive alternative to Lynette Sweet, who has the support of downtown groups and mega-developer Lennar Corp.

After the meeting, Walker said different races require different political strategies. “I think it’s hard in the progressive community, where so many of us know each other and even our supporters know the other candidates and are their supporters in other scenarios,” Walker said.

“But the Democratic Party makes decisions not just based on politics,” she continued. “So the endorsement is about being viable and successfully involved in Democratic issues. And even though I want to encourage everyone to run, and we have that ability with ranked choice voting and public financing, when it comes to straight-on politics, the goal is winning.”

Walker said the vote on D8 reflected the reality that Mandelman was having trouble getting the necessary number of votes. “I know Rebecca and I know Rafael, and Rafael was my clear first choice,” Walker said.” Rafael asked me to consider voting for Rebecca—and I voted for her as my second choice.”

Walker predicts she’ll have union support behind her campaign, while Kim, who leads in fundraising, will have independent expenditure committees that will support her campaign.

“My consultant says it’s a $250,000 race, and unfortunately the viability is based on that reality, the funds, the money,” Walker observed.

On the fall ballot measures, the DCCC voted to recommend a no vote on Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s measure to make city employees pay more for the pension and healthcare costs (Prop. B), Sup. Sean Elsbernd’s Health Service Board Elections (Prop. F,) and Newsom’s three controversial measures. And they voted “no endorsement” on Elsbernd’s measure to remove from the charter Muni pay guarantees (Prop. G). 

But the DCCC did vote to endorse a local vehicle registration fee surcharge (Prop. AA), Newsom’s earthquake retrofit bond (Prop. A), Sup. Chris Daly’s proposed legislation to require mayoral appearances at board meetings (Prop. C), Chiu’s measure to allow noncitizen voting in school board elections (Prop. D), Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s Election Day voter registration (Prop. E), former Newsom campaign manager Alex Tourk’s Saturday voting proposal (Prop. I) Labor’s hotel tax (Prop. J ), Mirkarimi’s foot patrols measure (Prop. M) and Avalos’ real estate transfer tax (Prop. N).

With just about everybody opposed to Adachi’s measure going after public employee unions, Walker observed that Adachi probably wishes he had done it differently now. But looking into the future, Walker sees opportunities for the party to come back together.

“There’s an opportunity to start a dialogue because everyone is hurting,” Walker said. “The more we don’t have a proactive solution, the more we get caught at the bottom.”

And in a feel-good vote for the frequently divided body, the DCCC also voted overwhelmingly to endorse the statewide initiative to legalize and tax marijuana (Prop. 19). Normally local party committees don’t take a position on state initiatives, but because the California Democratic Party took no position on Prop. 19, the DCCC had permission to weigh in.

As Peskin put it before the enthusiastic marijuana vote, “Raise your hands — high.”

Behind Whitman’s attack on nurses

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Behind Whitman’s attack on nurses

OPINION Meg Whitman’s increasingly high-profile war with California’s nurses poses important questions about a potential Whitman term as governor and the implications for California.

California’s nurses began pressing Whitman during the primary, when she was spending up to $21,000 an hour — more than many California families earn in a year — in a frenzy well on its way to smashing all previous campaign finance records.

Whitman’s pledge to spend up to $180 million out of her billionaire pocket by November to drown out all competition was accompanied by other disturbing trends. She refused to engage regular Californians in public events and avoided the public’s watchdog, the press. And she demonstrated a haughty temperament symbolized by her now-famous altercation with a subordinate employee to whom she paid a $200,000 settlement.

In short, Whitman was acting as if she was entitled to be crowned governor because of her wealth and privilege, a hubris also indicated by her failure to vote for much of her adult life but assumption that her billions and social rank alone qualify her to be governor.

Thus, the parody of Queen Meg was born, in which the California Nurses Association trailed Whitman to campaign events with a mock Queen Meg; her court, including chaperones Mr. Goldman and Mr. Sachs (in honor of her checkered career on the Goldman Sachs board); and nurses waving “Rich Enough to Rule” signs.

Whitman, who appears not to handle stress well, reacted with a full-scale assault on CNA and nurses. She demanded the home addresses of CNA members but refused CNA’s offer to meet with nurses in unscripted forums instead.

It turned out she just wanted to bully nurses, not actually talk to them. So Whitman began to bombard registered nurses in the state with multiple attack mailings and phone calls from a purchased outside list (is there anything she can’t or won’t buy?), and created a union-busting “nurse” website. What next, an enemies list?

In addition to reservations about Whitman’s temperament, attitude toward her opponents, and her royal pretensions, nurses have significant concerns about her policies as well, including her plans to:

• Slash 40,000 state jobs, creating hardship for thousands of additional California families in the midst of our ongoing recession, just as she sent 40 percent of company jobs overseas as the chief executive of eBay.

• Freeze regulations opposed by her CEO friends, presumably including many that will impair workplace safety rules, clean air and water requirements, and protections against food toxins.

• Suspend California’s new law to reduce greenhouse gases and the impact of climate change.

• Expand tax breaks for corporations and multimillionaires while pushing even deeper cuts in critical safety-net programs that will punish the most vulnerable Californians.

• Make new budget cuts that will likely reduce education funding by some $7 billion.

• Roll back public pensions, even for those who have sacrificed pay or other benefits for a more secure retirement.

• End workplace standards such as guaranteed meal and rest breaks and overtime pay.

All these programs have a common theme: they’re the wish list of the corporate CEOs who for the past seven years have taken residency in the governor’s office under Arnold Schwarzenegger. And they want more.

With Whitman, they would get it. Her pledges to “streamline” regulations, slash corporate taxes, and curtail workplace economic and safety standards, reflect the corporate agenda Whitman embodies and an escalation of the policies that have plagued our state under Schwarzenegger.

The troubling combination of Whitman’s sense of entitlement, intolerance of critics, and corporate to-do list are an ominous mix for California. She may be rich enough to rule, but her character and values say we should all be wary. *

Zenei Cortez is a registered nurse and co-president of the California Nurses Association.

 

Small business wins big

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Small business wins big

tredmond@sfbg.com

Six years after the Guardian filed a lawsuit accusing SF Weekly and its chain owner of illegal predatory pricing, the California Court of Appeals has issued a precedent-setting ruling that not only affirms the Guardian’s claims but strikes a dramatic blow for small independent businesses in California.

A three-judge panel concluded Aug. 11 that the state’s Unfair Practices Act protects businesses from cutthroat predators that sell a product below cost with the intent of injuring competition. The judges, Robert L. Dondero, who wrote the decision, and James J. Marchiano and Sandra L. Margulies, who concurred, directly rejected an argument that would have undermined the historic law and concluded that the state of California has every right to provide small merchants with greater antitrust protections than the federal government.

It marked the first time that a state appeals court had weighed in on whether California’s UPA should be enforced under the weaker federal standard. The ruling offers broad protections to small companies trying to survive against the market power of giant chains.

The Guardian sued SF Weekly and the New Times chain, now owned by Village Voice Media, in 2004, claiming that the Weekly was systematically selling ads below cost in an effort to put the local competitor out of business.

Evidence presented in a six-week trial in 2008 showed that the Weekly had lost money every single year since New Times bought the paper in 1995. The Phoenix-based chain poured tens of millions of dollars into propping up the Weekly, while the Weekly’s sales staff sold ads at a fraction of the cost needed to support the operation — all with the goal of taking business away from the Guardian.

“We have before us the case of an ongoing, comprehensive, below-cost pricing scheme instigated and executed conjointly by two parties,” the court concluded.

It was a classic case study in what the UPA, which dates back to 1913, was designed to prevent: a big, wealthy corporation using its deep pockets to cripple a local competitor. The court decision notes that shortly after New Times bought SF Weekly in 1995, New Times Executive Editor Mike Lacey announced that he would use the chain’s deep pockets to assault the Guardian. “The essence of Lacey’s message was that he wanted to ‘put the Guardian out of business,'<0x2009>” the ruling states. “The sales representatives were made aware that advertising could be ‘sold below cost’ if needed ‘in order to make a sale’ and the resources of New Times would cover the loses, even over a term of many years.”

The end result, trial records showed: SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, which New Times bought in 2001, lost a total of $24 million between 1996 and 2007. (The Express was sold in 2007 to local owners.)

A San Francisco jury ruled March 5, 2008 that the Weekly and New Times had violated the law and awarded the Guardian more than $6 million. The statute allows for treble damages, and Judge Marla Miller increased the award to $15.6 million. With interest and attorney’s fees, the verdict now exceeds $22 million.

New Times appealed, raising two central issues. The verdict, the chain argued, was invalid because the Guardian never demonstrated which individual accounts it lost because of which specific below-cost sales. And the law itself was dubious because it doesn’t require a plaintiff to prove that a predatory competitor had the ability to recoup its losses after driving the smaller outfit out of business.

Throughout the trial and afterward, Andy Van De Voorde, VVM’s executive associate editor, repeatedly belittled the suit on the grounds that the Guardian didn’t present individual instances of lost ads. But the court rejected that argument, saying that nothing in the UPA mandated a showing of individual below-cost sales; the fact that the Weekly lost money for 10 years, and that its overall ads prices were far below its total cost of operations, was plenty of evidence of illegal sales. The Guardian, the ruling states, was not “required to prove the precise amounts of damages attributable to the loss of individual customers or sales.” In fact, that standard would make predatory pricing cases of this nature — with thousands of sales over many years, almost impossible to pursue — particularly, the court noted, when “it is the wrongful acts of the defendant that have created the difficulty in proving the amount of lost profits.”

The recoupment argument was critical: New Times wanted the court to force the state to adopt a federal standard that since the 1980s has pretty much gutted federal antitrust law.

The appeals court justices resoundingly rejected that claim, ruling that the state Legislature has every right to pass laws protecting small businesses against acts that the federal courts may be willing to allow. And it’s clear that the UPA contains no mention of recoupment.

“We do not lightly imply terms or requirements that have not been expressly included in the statute,” the ruling states.

New Times argued, both in court and in its published reports, that laws against anticompetitive conduct must protect consumers, not businesses; if one company cuts prices, that helps consumers — and unless there’s evidence that a lack of competition in the future would cause prices to go up, then the law shouldn’t prohibit below-cost sales.

But the Appeals Court took a different approach, concluding that this particular state law was not only designed to protect consumers in the short term, but small businesses (and thus overall competition) in the long term.

That’s consistent with the history of the Unfair Practices Act, which was written during California’s progressive era, when reformers were concerned about large businesses (particularly supermarket chains) driving local markets out of business. It was, James R. McCall, a professor at UC Hastings College of Law, wrote in the Pacific Law Journal, “the first comprehensive modern state predatory pricing statute.”

In a 1997 article, McCall noted that federal courts had undermined much of the power of antitrust laws such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, such that “by 1980, the era of expansive application of antitrust acts in federal courts had ended.” However, the California law, later copied in six other states, “is precisely drawn to eliminate defined commercial practices such as predatory pricing.”

Joseph Hearst, an East Bay attorney and appellate specialist who helped write the Guardian’s appeal brief, noted that the court had taken the questions in the appeal very seriously. “It is obvious the court did an enormous amount of independent research — quoting cases neither side had mentioned in their briefs and demonstrating a mastery of the topic,” he said. “The court was clearly aware of the issues at stake, not only in this case but in future cases involving the Unfair Practices Act. They carefully explored how the UPA is different from federal predatory pricing law and pointed out that the UPA, in some respects, sets a much tougher standard than federal law, which is why they could confidently say that it does not require the federal ‘recoupment’ standard.”

Ralph Alldredge, the Guardian’s lead trial and appellate attorney, noted that “this is the most direct attack upon the viability of the UPA since its constitutionality was challenged unsuccessfully in the 1940s. By rejecting it, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that the UPA cannot be subverted by importing federal standards which have made below cost pricing claims impossible to win in federal court.”

He added: “Think of what that means for big-box retailers, which have used below-cost selling on some products to attract customers away from small, independently owned grocery, hardware, drug, and department stores.”

The Weekly has an entire section of its website devoted to the lawsuit, which it calls “stupid” and “absurd.” The trial, the Weekly argues, was “marred by judicial error and emotional anti-chain arguments.” At one point, the paper even argued that the Guardian was delaying its response to the New Times appeal briefs because we feared losing the appeal.

But as of press time, the Weekly had not published a word on the Appeals Court ruling. It’s the first time anything has happened in the case that the Weekly hasn’t covered. I e-mailed Van De Voorde to ask for comment, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.

PS The Guardian‘s legal team, which did a stunning job at every level, consisted of Richard Hill, E. Craig Moody, and Ralph Alldredge at the trial level, assisted by Joseph Hearst in the appeal and by Jay Adkisson and Travis Farnsworth on the collection efforts.

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

I suppose I should be thrilled that 40 of the richest people in the United States have agreed to give away half their money before they die. Actually, it kind of makes me sick.

The concept is called the Giving Pledge, and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet started it. The two have been on the phones this summer, dialing up other really, really rich people and asking them to sign on. I’ve got nothing against Gates and Buffet (well, Gates has always been into world domination, so that’s a problem, but Buffet seems a decent sort for a billionaire). In fact, Buffet has promised to give away 99 percent of his $47 billion, which would leave him and his heirs with just a paltry $470 million.

Even that much money fits into New York Mayor (and billionaire) Michael Bloomberg’s entirely accurate statement: “The reality of great wealth is that you can’t spend it and you can’t take it with you.”

That’s the thing: You can’t spend that much money, and you can’t take it with you, and the United States used to be the kind of country that disdained inherited monarchy. Bloomberg says he wants his kids to have to work for a living, which is nice, although even after he gives away half his wealth, none of them are likely to miss any meals or have trouble paying the rent. His children, and their children, and their children, will all be able to afford to go to good schools and colleges, even if the public education system in America completely collapses for lack of adequate funding.

The irony is that, for the most part, these exceptionally rich people who feel so good about giving their money to charities of their choosing (which then honor them with awards and testimonials and dinners) oppose the notion of raising taxes on high incomes.

The problem with charity is that it won’t ever really reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in this country. The only way you do that is with aggressive, effective government action: by taxing the great wealth when it comes in (as income) and when it goes out (as estates) — and then, through a democratic process involving elected representatives, deciding where the money should go.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is wonderful, I guess, but it won’t provide mental health care for homeless people in San Francisco. That’s a government job. It also won’t ensure that every kid in America gets quality preschool, good teachers, schools that aren’t falling apart, and access to a college education. That’s what we pay taxes for.

But wait a minute. There’s never enough money for these things, because we keep cutting taxes on the rich. Instead, these guys can give money to their own pet projects — and pay no taxes at all. It’s charity! It’s a tax write-off!

I wanna throw up.

New approach for the new U.S. attorney

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New approach for the new U.S. attorney

EDITORIAL Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney who terrorized immigrants, city employees, and medical marijuana growers, is finally out of office, replaced Aug. 13 by an Obama nominee screened by Sen. Barbara Boxer. Melinda Haag is the second female U.S. attorney in California history and the first since the 1920s. She’s taking over an office that pushed all the wrong priorities and served as an outpost of Bush administration values in Democratic Northern California, and she needs to turn that around, quickly and visibly.

President Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t want his Justice Department wasting valuable resources busting people who grow, sell, and use pot for medicine. And while the president has been slow and far too cautious on immigration reform, he has resisted the nativist movement and harsh attacks on undocumented immigrants. But a U.S. attorney has a tremendous amount of discretion on law enforcement priorities, and Haag could easily slide along, refusing to break with the policies of her predecessor.

That would be a serious mistake, one that would reflect poorly not only on the Obama administration but on Boxer, who under the traditions of Senatorial courtesy played a central role in choosing Haag.

The new U.S. attorney should:

• Disband the grand jury that’s been investigating whether city employees violated federal law by failing to turn suspected illegal immigrants over to immigration authorities. The grand jury started sending subpoenas to city agencies two years ago and raised the specter that some local juvenile justice workers might face charges. The move set off policy changes by Mayor Gavin Newsom that have led to more than 100 young people being torn from their families and sent to federal immigration detention centers.

The grand jury operates at the U.S. attorney’s discretion, and while its activities are secret, Haag could and should announce that the investigation is closed and no charges are pending.

• Inform City Attorney Dennis Herrera that no city employee will face federal criminal charges for complying with the city’s Sanctuary Ordinance. The threat of criminal charges has given Newsom cover for refusing to implement a sanctuary law that the supervisors passed over his veto. The law, sponsored by Sup. David Campos, directs city workers not to turn juveniles over to Immigration Control and Enforcement until they’ve been convicted of a felony. Herrera asked Russoniello for assurance that city employees could implement the law without fear of federal indictment, and the Republican appointee refused. Haag should give Herrera, and all city employees, written assurance that she won’t press charges over the sanctuary policy.

• Stop the pot busts — and don’t try to undermine Prop. 19. Even after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made clear that he isn’t interested in harassing medical cannabis operations, local growers and outlets remain fearful of federal prosecution. And if the state’s voters legalize pot this fall, as appears likely, the weed will still be illegal under federal law. Haag needs to let the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration know that she’s not going to take any cases involving legitimate medical marijuana operations — and that she won’t use her office to undermine state law if Prop. 19 passes.

Of course, if the U.S. attorney’s office stops wasting time and money cracking down on pot growers and immigrants, the lawyers who work under Haag may have time to do some more relevant and worthwhile law enforcement. They could, for example, start looking into enforcing a federal law called the Raker Act, which requires San Francisco to operate a public power system.

Community Congress convened

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Community Congress convened

news@sfbg.com

About 60 San Francisco citizens voted just before 1 p.m. on Aug. 15 to adopt a progressive platform of approximately 100 policy recommendations they hope will define the agenda of candidates and elected officials in coming years and offer a contrasting vision for the city to that of downtown corporate interests.

Sunday’s culmination of the 2010 Community Congress represented almost a year’s work by some 400 San Franciscans and dozens of community-based organizations, according to the Congress’ draft recommendations. The congress convened all day Aug. 14, at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Hall, where participants engaged in breakout groups aimed at addressing four distinct local policy categories: health and human services; Muni and public transportation; affordable housing and tenant rights; and community-based economic development.

Recommendations in the four areas were drafted prior to the congress and published by the Guardian (see “Reinvention of San Francisco,” Aug. 4 and “Ideas that work: a plan for a new San Francisco,” Aug. 11), but planning group coordinator Calvin Welch said between a one-quarter and one-third were rewritten and amended during the breakout sessions on Saturday and by the congress as a whole on Sunday. Representatives from the breakout groups are working to finalize all the last-minute amendments and hope to post a final document by on the congress’ website (www.sfcommunitycongress.wordpress.com) by Aug. 20.

“This is a group of left-progressive people trying to articulate a left-progressive view for the city that is distinct from the cynicism of the [San Francisco] Chronicle and [Mayor] Gavin Newsom’s message,” Welch told the Guardian after the vote.

Gail Gilman facilitated the final adoption session on Aug. 15, passing a microphone to those who wished to speak or propose amendments while pushing the group to stick to the schedule. “I think we produced a solid progressive platform that will gain traction in the upcoming supervisors race,” Gilman told the Guardian outside the congress. “We’re hoping to have actionable items implemented over the next five years.”

Some of the congress’ ambitious agenda had to be put on hold, either because consensus couldn’t be reached or groups simply ran out of time. The Muni group’s recommendation to delay the Central Subway Project and use those funds to address “Muni’s backlog of operating, maintenance, and capital improvement needs” was tabled, as was decentralizing control of expenditures in health and human services out of the mayor’s hands. However, several agencies that the congress hopes to create, including a “canopy” entity to manage San Francisco’s public health system, would have direct budgetary control over city departments.

Health and human services group coleader and Bayview-Hunters Point Foundation Executive Director Jacob Moody told the crowd about a question posed early in the congress that informed his group’s recommendations: How do we create a city where people can live, work, and prosper together?

Welch admitted that some of policy recommendations would be difficult to realize and would draw the ire of powerful political groups in San Francisco, but he insisted that creating a municipal bank, an economic redevelopment agency, and a health and human services planning agency, and implementing several of the Muni group’s recommendations, were actionable in the short term.

“Some others would need to wait until the election of a new mayor,” Welch said. “I hope we can get some mayoral candidates to endorse some of these proposals.”

Sunnydale/southeast neighborhood community organizer Sharen Hewitt said that although there were often disagreements at the congress, the most important aspect of the event to her was that everyone learned from the perspectives of others.

“Tension is not always bad,” Hewitt told the Guardian at the event. “Everybody came here with biases and interests. Everybody needs to leave here with more. I’m damn near 60 years old and I grew half an inch today.”

Sunday’s congress and policy platform were modeled after San Francisco’s first Community Congress, which took place in 1975. But Welch told us this congress was entirely new. “To the extent that there is a historical aspect, 35 years ago we tried to figure out a way to bring people together. And 35 years later, young people want to do the same thing.”

“Diamond” Dave Whittaker, a modern Emperor Norton-esque San Francisco personality, closed the congress with a poem. “The basis of real social change is happening here,” he said. “And we need to continue casting a wider net, finding the thread, and letting it flourish.”

Alerts

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alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, AUG. 19

 

Celebrating Young Activists

Mingle with environmental activists and community group members of all ages at the networking event Celebrating Young Activists: Building a Green Movement and Changing the World. The event features talks by inspirational young leaders, winners of the Brower Youth Awards, environmental and social justice organization information tables, and live jazz.

6:30 p.m., $10–$20

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater

David Brower Center

2150 Allston, Berk.

(510) 859-9100

SATURDAY, AUG. 21

 

Shoot Hoops, Not Guns

Commemorate the 25th birthday of Elliot Jemar Noble, who was killed by an Oakland police officer in 2005, at this combination march, basketball tournament, and gospel concert. The event is a benefit for the Elliot J. Noble Multiservice Family Organization, a nonprofit that provides support for families affected by violence. The parade begins at 10 a.m. at Eldridge and Darien streets, progresses to a 1 p.m. basketball tournament where players assume the names of slain or incarcerated loved ones, and ends with a gospel concert at 6 p.m.

10 a.m., $5–$10 for the concert

Ira Jinkins Recreation Center

9175 Ededs, Oakl.

(510) 895-5234

SUNDAY, AUG. 22

 

Tour Alameda Naval Air Station

Find out more about Alameda’s Naval Air Station, which closed in 1997 and remains the subject of much controversy and public debate over what to do with this prime piece of real estate. This guided tour combines a two-hour bus tour followed by a self-guided walking tour of the businesses engaged in adaptive reuse of the buildings. Reservations required.

1 p.m., 3 p.m.; $10

Meet in front of Alameda Naval Air Museum

2151 Ferry Point Road, Alameda

(510) 479-6489

 

Mobilization for Climate Justice

Get involved in the effort to stand up to big oil companies by attending this public action planning meeting for an Aug. 30 march and protest on the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The protests will target the offices of BP and Chevron for their roles in environmental and community destruction in the gulf, the Bay Area, and around the world.

Noon, free

Mission Cultural Center

2868 Mission, SF

www.actforclimatejustice.org/west

 

Nuevos Horizontes

Attend a benefit dinner and show for Nuevos Horizontes, a domestic violence shelter in Guatemala that provides long-term housing, psychological counseling, legal advice, job training, and health care for women and children. There will be vegan and vegetarian options for dinner, bands, and speakers.

6 p.m., $8–$10

Call (510) 878-8879 or e-mail bigcavecomix@live.com for Oakland location

www.ahnh.org

 

Street Food Conference

Following the San Francisco Street Food Fest, attend this conference dedicated to the exploration of food, policy and economics. Participants will engage in discussions about the creation of viable economic models that allow small-scale food entrepreneurs to bring the foods they love to the cities in which they live.

Sat. Noon-5pm, Sun. 9 a.m.–3:30 p.m., $20–$50

Hotel Vitale

8 Mission, SF

sfstreetfoodconference.eventbrite.com

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

 

alt.sex.column: Special goop

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alt.sex.column: Special goop

Dear Andrea:

Have you seen those commercial for the new K-Y product, with all the geysers going off and so on? They’re funny, but does the product work — and why? I have orgasms, but not always, Besides, anything that could make it even more fun …

Love,

Happy Shopper

Dear Shop:

It’s hard to miss those prim little couples with their giant expulsions of boiling fluids. They are pretty funny. But are they accurate?

Who knows. There are a lot of these products: warming, tingling, and INTENSE ( the geysers one) alike. All of a sudden we have aisles of female sexual enhancement products, right there across from the Preparation H and the Depends in your drugstore’s “mortifying conditions” section.

So what’s the deal with all these products? Mostly, no matter how they sell themselves, they are lube with a little Icy-Hot thrown in. The most active of the active ingredients in INTENSE appears to be niacin, a.k.a. vitamin B3, and yeah, that could work. Niacin gets a lot of press for its cholesterol- fighting properties, but it also causes an intense flushing/prickling/skin-on-fire sensation. The same capillary-dilating action that causes the flush ought to have a noticeable effect when applied to an organ that relies on plentiful blood flow to the surface to function properly. And according to the literature, it does, in about 75 percent of women who try it. But at least 25 percent feel nothing at all. My favorite of the Amazon reviews I read was titled “Special Goop for Her Whosis, But Not That Great, Again.”

Further along the gimmickiness spectrum, K-Y also offers a kit with two test tubes of special goop, one for his whosis, one for hers. The girl goop is Icy, the boy goop is Hot. Together you’d think they would achieve a nice “tepid,” but some people claim to really like it. At the same time, you can get a similar effect cheaper, more customizable, and without faintly suspect chemicals using an ice cube and a cup of hot water.

There are other, similar products out there, some of which contain L-arginine, an amino acid that regularly shows up in sex-enhancers and really does have a reasonable reason for maybe working. Whether it really works in whoopie creams, I do not know.

I can tell you what does work. All these products are meant to increase blood flow to the genitals (especially women’s). The other thing that increases blood flow to women’s genitals is a long session of light, teasing touch, alternating with more direct stimulation, applied attentively and with regard to the woman’s response. We could also call this “foreplay,” or “good sex.” I would strongly urge anyone interested in buying any of these tingle-nostrums to try the free, hypoallergenic alternative first.

I am, of course, not opposed or averse to better living through chemistry. But I’m a little irritated by these commercials for a) making women’s sexual response so cute and b) making it all seem so easy.

They seem pretty harmless, though. Go ahead and buy some but maybe look for a coupon first.

Love,

Andrea

 

Shot therapy

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Shot therapy

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Deevee and me were eating polenta with all the colorful vegetables in the world sauced up on top, and meatballs, complaining about shit. Mostly, I confess, it was me doing the complaining, but Deevee and the meatballs were getting in on it too. We all have problems.

Where some of us are better off than others is in the solutions department. For example, meatballs and me just exist, as in: do what we do. We beat our heads and hearts against brick walls and dumbass dudes and dykes then complain about the lumps … and simmer in a sauce and taste real good, respectively.

“You know what I’m going to do?” Deevee said, after dinner, after dishes, after tea. She was making chocolate chip cookies with butterscotch chips. “I’m going to buy a BB gun.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I said.

“I’m going to bring it to your barbecue on Saturday,” she said, “and we’re going to shoot cans.”

“That sounds great,” I said. It sounded, in fact, better than great. It sounded like just the thing. However, had I anticipated (and I should have, really) that shooting cans with BB guns would make Deevee want to have back her pink straw hillbilly cowboy hat that she’d technically given me, my enthusiasm for the idea would have been less unbridled. Or more bridled — however you say that.

Another thought would have been to hide the pink hat before she showed up with her hot shit new BB gun and truly brilliant ideas. But I was at a rehearsal for a 20-minute rock opera about sea monkeys that I had accidentally gotten involved with, and the rehearsal ran late, and Deevee arrived at my shack before I did with a fold-up camping chair, some beers, and, yes, the gun.

The hat, her hat my hat her hat, was sitting outside on an oil drum, where I’d left it, and — even I had to admit — it accessorized the beer, BB gun, and fold-up chair to a T.

T for treachery! I’m kidding. We’re in our 40s. We have a long history, as friends, as sister-in-laws (or sisters-in-love, as we used to say, because she and my brother were never quite married) and then as friends again. Only better. Sisterly friends, like this: If something looks better on one than the other, they can have it. And this pink straw hillbilly cowboy hat most definitely looks better on her, even without the beer can and BB gun. I freely admit this.

I was too busy making food, because people were coming over, including children and dogs, but Deevee and the Jungle set up cans under the apple trees by the street, and were shooting from the log at the edge of the driveway. Some of my guests were afraid at first to turn in. They thought they had the wrong place.

Until they smelled the baby back ribs with blueberry barbecue sauce and hickory smoke. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying. In fact, the chickens came out better than the ribs this time, I thought. As far as I know, everyone got nervous but no one got sick, which is just the way I want it, when the meat’s on me. I want it to be not only on my dime, but on my conscience.

Deevee slept over, I had nightmares, and the next morning I got to shoot cans too, which was almost as therapeutic as therapy, only 10 times more so. Then, while she and the Jungle went skinny dipping in the hippie compound pond down the road, I made breakfast: bacon, eggs, and leftovers.

In fact, I’ve been eating leftovers ever since, so you’re lucky I have anything at all to say about restaurants. Which I do, which is this:

Earl Butter’s new favorite restaurant is Kome, the enormous sushi buffet in Daly City. I went there with him, but it wasn’t for me. Cheaper than SF sushi buffets, yes ($12-ish lunch, $20-ish dinner), but not a lot of things were great there, and some were downright yucky. Plus: it’s popular! Lines! Why???

Ol’ Earl thought Kome was going to change my life, and he meant well, but was wrong. Cans did.

KOME
Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.;
Sat.–Sun. 10:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
1901 Junipero Serra Blvd., No. A
(650) 992-8600
AE/D/MC/V

Appetite: 3 gourmet cheap eats on Sonoma

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Appetite: 3 gourmet cheap eats on Sonoma

Not far off Sonoma’s idyllic town square lie these three unique gems – you can eat high quality Eastern European, BBQ or Mexican food at a reasonable price.

EL MOLINO CENTRAL: In a sea of taquerias lining Sonoma’s Highway 12, there’s a new addition I’ve been excited to tell you about that opened early this Summer: El Molino Central. I pulled over after doing a double take — it looks like a charming taqueria, but reading hand-painted “tortillas… tamales… blue bottle coffee” on the side of the building made me say, “Wait… what?”

With no dining space inside, there’s a leisurely patio out back. Inside, it’s an open kitchen where you survey Mexican street food prepared with a high level of care and quality ingredients. The staff hand-grinds corn masa and press tortillas in wood presses. There are even fresh tortillas and pre-prepared dishes to heat up at home. The menu offers merely a handful of items: chilaquiles, tostadas, enchiladas and delightful tamales (I like the white corn and cheese version).

What surprises is the Blue Bottle Coffee menu straight down to New Orleans’ Iced Coffee (perfect on a hot Wine Country summer day). You can get your individual drip or a cappuccino, happily savored with a tamale made from local ingredients.

The place looks plucked out of LA with palm trees and all, but exemplifying Slow Food sensibilities. The shock is the quality level (which costs a little more than an average taqueria, though still under $10)… and the Blue Bottle. You, too, can have your Blue Bottle and homemade tamales in a Mexican food joint. Sonoma is lucky to get this lovably quirky new addition.

Pork Schnitzel sandwich and white corn soup at Lokal

LOKAL: Just off the Sonoma square, Lokal has been getting some love lately from SF folk like Michael Bauer. I’m in when you say Eastern European and Hungarian food — difficult to find done well anywhere, much less in Wine Country.

Lokal won me over with shelves full of records and LPs in the dining room, then with sunny, back patio picnic tables. There’s a fine selection of beers making the patio beer garden-reminiscent. Service has it’s kinks, including a pricing discrepancy on their menu it took awhile to work out on my bill, but the food is a pleasure and is now a favored stop in downtown Sonoma.

Lokal makes a mean German Potato Salad ($5), sweetened by grilled red onions, punchy with mustard, maintaining a fresh profile despite starchiness. A Summer special of White Corn Puree Soup ($3.50 a cup) is sweet and bright. Count me in on the Eva Gabor’s Pork Schnitzel Sandwich/”Rueben” ($12). You almost forget there’s no pastrami in there with a breaded pork cutlet layered with mustard and sauerkraut. There’s a satisfying savoriness here reminiscent of a great Rueben. Lightly crunchy brown bread and house pickles seal the deal.

Jalapeno poppers stuffed with carnitas and cheese at Mondo

MONDO: Mondo, a short drive from downtown Sonoma, has the largest beer selection in the area: 23 on tap and more by the bottle, with a little beer garden courtyard through the restaurant. A couple years ago, this was a sausage and burger joint.

The burgers remain but there’s also the kind of bar food that puts a grin on my face: plump Jalapeno Poppers ($7.50) oozing with cheese and shreds of carnitas (pork). There’s fatty Braised Beef Brisket Sandwich ($9.50) piled with crumbly blue cheese and shaved red onion. For a little healthy balance, try specials like Sweet White Corn Salad ($5) tossed in lime, cilantro, red peppers and red onion.

This is a welcome Wine Country respite where you can break from excess wine for beer and cheap, gourmet bar fare. 

New and improv-ed

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New and improv-ed

The launching of the San Francisco Improv Festival, back in 2004, signaled a major resurgence for improvisational theater in the Bay Area, long dominated by the exceptional BATS (Bay Area Theatre Sports) and related groups, but recently joined by a host of newer outfits as well. The rollicking festival attracted eager audiences, while bringing together a somewhat disparate local and intergenerational community of improvisers with national and even international acts. There was cross-pollination everywhere, in meetings on and offstage between players and groups, in workshops and master classes, and of course in many a bar. It all contributed to the latest wave in a tradition of Bay Area improv that reaches back to the storied days of the Committee in the 1960s.

Then things got rocky as well as rollicking as SFIF organizers shifted around and founding members headed to other projects and/or climes, culminating in last year’s hiatus. The cancellation of SFIF 2009 might have been more discouraging had not the members of Crisis Hopkins, the San Francisco–based improv and sketch comedy troupe, thought fast and leaped into the breach, organizing a last-minute smorgasbord they called the Temporary Improv Festival. Still, while TIF proved a modest success, the name alone inadvertently contributed to an impression that the peak might have already occurred.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As if to prove the point, SFIF has risen once more, like a soggy phoenix from a still-cresting wave. The revival of SFIF, which comes under new Crisis-led management, frankly looks more ambitious than ever. It even comes with an iPhone app.

“Which is ridiculous,” says Sam Shaw, Crisis Hopkins member and a cofounder of SFIF in 2004. “The people I’m working with — including Anthony Veneziale from The Freeze, and Jamie Wright, Cassidy Brown, Chris Hayes, and Chris Libby — we’ve come up with these little touches that I never would have thought of. We’re going to have a food truck for primetime shows hanging out in front of the [Eureka] theater. We’ve got Solstice, this bar in Pacific Heights, [to] help us serve alcohol, so we’ll have a full bar. There’s a lot going on.”

Of course, the real meat is in the shrewd and eclectic programming. In addition to a generous number of local, national, and international troupes, SFIF 2010 is hosting workshops (including an already sold-out improv “boot camp” with Armando Diaz) and inaugurating the SFIF Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Improv Community, which this year goes to beloved veteran performer Barbara Scott of BATS, True Fiction Magazine, Tonal Chaos, and other groups.

Also among the special events is an intriguing “Look Back at The Committee,” featuring a panel discussion with founding director Alan Myerson and other unannounced guests in conversation with improv historian and Monty Python pal Kim “Howard” Johnson. Shaw says this last event, connecting the improv scene with some of its heftier roots, realizes a long-held dream.

“I cofounded the fest with Shaun Landry in 2004, and ever since then I’ve wanted to do a program on The Committee. It was San Francisco’s Second City from 1963 to 1973,” he explains. “They did topical political satire; they did sketch comedy and improvisation.” Led for a time by the wildly influential improv director-performer Del Close, The Committee also spearheaded major developments in the form, in particular an exciting long-form structure called the Harold (a name coined by Committee musical director Allaudin Mathieu). “It’s like a 30-minute riff on a topic where the audience goes along for the ride,” says Shaw. “And it was born in San Francisco.”

Half-way out in the year from SF Sketchfest, the popular comedy showcase held each January, and centered in the same 200-seat venue downtown, SFIF looks more than ever like a natural compliment to its unaffiliated cousin. “We love Sketchfest, and we love doing it every year,” says Shaw, who notes the complimentary aspects to their programming as well. As for the Festival’s performance roster, the names alone tantalize. OJ in a Sippy Cup, for instance, just sounds refreshing.

“OJ in a Sippy Cup is a pretty awesome name,” admits Shaw. “They’re a duo from New York City, and they’re very fun. I have to say that I love the name Slave Leia. That’s an all-woman improv team from L.A.” Among other highlights, Shaw points to Men: A User’s Guide, “a really exciting duo from the Netherlands. They’re very highly trained long-form performers doing a show on men and men’s issues, and it’s just hilarious.” He sheds light on an enigmatic title, The Super-Dupers: Doo-Wop-Ner. “That is going to be doo-wop small claims court improvising,” he says, clearly impressed. “Their submission just said ‘doo-wop small claims court.’ And we let them in.”

Clearly, one take-home lesson is the sheer variety of improv out there. The common denominator remains the all-inclusive collaboration in the moment, in which audiences participate to varying degrees. “The fourth wall is very porous,” agrees SFIF’s executive producer Jamie Wright, a Bay Area native who came to improv from afar while bartending at Amsterdam’s famous Boom Chicago comedy club. But he stresses that interaction shouldn’t sound intimidating. “I’m an improviser and even I don’t like getting singled out by a comedian. Improv is really inviting, a very joyful thing to go to and watch. It’s also impressive. You are going to see something completely unique, and you’re going to be part of it — one way or another.”

SAN FRANCISCO IMPROV FEST

Aug. 12–21, $15–$50

Eureka Theater

215 Jackson, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.sfimprovfestival.com

Queen Carol

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Queen Carol

Let me tell you what I think about when I think about Carol Channing: “Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never, ever, ever jam today.” And then she turns herself into a sheep.

That’s not a fever dream: it’s one of the more absurd scenes from the 1985 TV movie Through the Looking Glass, featuring Channing as the batty White Queen. Channing’s 60-year career spans film, television, and theater — she’s probably best known for her iconic roles in Broadway shows Hello, Dolly! and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And yet, in my mind, she’s waving her arms wildly and ranting nonsense at poor Alice.

In a way, that’s fair. It’s difficult to get a handle on Channing. I don’t think she could do it herself.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said when I asked about the longevity and diversity of her career. “We’re all surprised at everything that happens to us.”

At nearly 90, Channing continues to perform. She’ll be in San Francisco for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation’s 16th annual Help is On the Way benefit concert. AIDS relief is one of Channing’s longest-running causes, inspired by a longtime friendship with the queer community.

“Way back in 1950, I don’t know what, we opened in San Francisco with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” she recalled. “They tell me there wasn’t a blonde wig left in San Francisco. They all came dressed as me.”

And because of her pioneering work, the gay community has continued to support her. Well, that and her status as Broadway legend: it kind of goes with the territory. Until talking to her, however, I had no idea about the politics of being a gay icon.

“They made me their queen, for life,” Channing explained. “The empress is only for three years — but they made me their queen.”

I didn’t have the nerve to ask where Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand fit into this hierarchy for fear I’d stir up tension and incite a coup. But Channing is more concerned with her current cause, the Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian Foundation for the Arts, which seeks to preserve arts education to keep kids in school.

“This is a crisis now in our country,” Channing lamented. “Not everybody gets it.”

Luckily, she laid it out for me: “Each of us sees the world differently. All the artist does is recreate what was already created, but as they see it. And once you start expressing how you see the world, it opens up the brain.”

And you were expecting “Raspberries!”  

HELP IS ON THE WAY XVI: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

Sun/15, 7:30 p.m., $75

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

Bay Area assemblage

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bay Area assemblage

arts@sfbg.com

FILM/MUSIC/VISUAL ART Since July 9, local artist David Wilson has programmed the Friday night L@TE shows at the Berkeley Art Museum, in conjunction with “Gatherings,” his installment in the site’s MATRIX series. On Friday the 13th, Wilson concludes his summer contributions to L@TE with presentations by Jamie Stewart, the veritable prince of darkness for Oakland-based indie band Xiu Xiu, and Bay Area film critic Max Goldberg. The program is not only about gatherings in nature but also the assemblage of disparate art forms. Wilson has traversed between media to suss out the kind of aesthetics you can see, and invisible aesthetics that can only be heard. Or as he puts it in an e-mail: “I have been organizing a seasonal series of performances that foster collaborations with different artists and performers and bring people together in unique circumstances.”

Adjacent to Thom Faulder’s BAMscape — a massive orange installation that doubles as sculpture and furniture, beckoning spectators to “sit on it” but also turning them off with its uncomfortable wood seating — Wilson has placed what he calls “a large cove structure of found wood.” It works like an indoor amphitheater. This summer it has become the playing space of musicians such as Grouper and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. Wilson also has framed some works in conjunction with the interactive architecture installed in the gallery. “I’ve been making art about place and experience in place,” he writes. “Often this takes shape as a series of drawings made during explorations through the hills, or as a single drawing of a place.”

When he’s not brooding onstage or exploring childhood trauma in Xiu Xiu, Oakland native Stewart has cultivated a rather self-effacing hobby: bird-watching. “I find myself inexplicably in North Carolina,” he tells me in a phone interview. He’s been living there for about two years. “There are a lot of hunting stores … [with] rows and rows of different animal calls. A lot of these are really horrifying. The hunting bird calls sound like the environment completely exploding.”

I ask Stewart not to be totally forthcoming about his performance, as the element of mystery and the unexpected will be crucial to this event. “It’s an ambient piece,” he says. “I have a really extensive collection of gongs and animal calls and I will be using these together, but with long periods of silence. It’s an attempt to incorporate ideas of 1950s minimalist composition insofar as focusing on the pauses in sound, animal sounds, and a certain amount of physicality.”

In trying to realize the chasm between din and utter silence, Stewart cites composer Rhys Chatham’s Two Gongs (1971) as an inspiration. Of ambient music, Stewart explains, “It ends up being less of a musical experience and more of a psychological and physical experience.”

The aural and physical aspects of Stewart’s contribution — since he will be running from gong to gong — collide with the almost exclusive visual focus of Goldberg’s carefully curated selection of short films, all culled from Canyon Cinema. In the same way that the aural, physical, and visual get cozy and find a crossroads at BAM, the trio of Wilson, Stewart, and Goldberg will gather and treat BAM like a bazaar for the exchange of artistic interests.

Goldberg, a friend of Wilson’s and an admirer of Xiu Xiu (and Guardian contributer), says in an interview that the films he curated are “tuned into different ideas about recording nature. It’s not just observing. You’re in the midst and you encounter it.” For the exhibit, he sought “aesthetically amazing works” because he is “eager to capture the eyes of people who might not know about experimental cinema.”

The six shorts include films by Jeanne Liotta, Len Lye, and avant-garde household name (because there are so many of those!) Stan Brakhage. One of the most stunning works is Ben Russell’s 2007 Black and White Trypps Number Three, which turns a mosh pit into a fugue state with epileptic, chiaroscuro-heavy visuals. “They’re all films with no spoken language, and that was unintended,” Goldberg tells me. He’s curious about BAM-as-theater since it is “not a controlled environment for viewing films.” The projector will be placed right in the audience, in BAMscape’s center.

While Stewart’s performance and Goldberg’s handpicked film selection will not occur at the same time, they will operate in tandem, addressing the aesthetic concerns of place — and its, well, place in nature — while creating a multisensory experience: a disquieting yet provocative full-course feast for the open eyes, ears, and mind.

L@TE: JAMIE STEWART AND FILM PROGRAM BY MAX GOLDBERG

7:30 p.m., $5

Berkeley Art Museum

2625 Durant, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Beach fossils

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Beach fossils

arts@sfbg.com

“Live from Betty Ford, it’s the Eddie Money show!” — Eddie Money, Santa Cruz, 8:45 PM, 7/30/10

MUSIC It’s hard to convey your passion for amusement parks without sounding like the lyrics to “Lakeside Park,” Rush’s sentimental 1975 tribute to the summertime midway. Hopefully this observation should serve as a decent justification for an elegy to the unspoken muse of the group’s Caress of Steel.

Consider the beginning of summer in the Bay Area. It can’t properly be called a seasonal phenomenon; rather, summer doesn’t officially begin until you’ve been bombarded with that stupid goddamn Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk commercial — the one that’s remained pretty-much untouched since 1994 — at regular 10-minute intervals. Recall the slightly askance shot of smiling oily young people running on the beach in weirdly lurid 1990s-era one-piece bathing suits, screaming brats strapped into the Fireball, maybe some kind of close-up of a Dip ‘n’ Dots kiosk, all unfolding to the strains of “California Sun.” For better or for worse, this has become the harbinger of the Northern California summer.

Unlike the adjacent pier, another tourist destination, suspended precariously above the water by barnacle-encrusted poles, the boardwalk feels so thoroughly entrenched in its surroundings that it’s effectively become a natural feature of the Santa Cruz shoreline. Years from now, the pelican shall nest on the Giant Dipper “Scenic Coaster”‘s wooden bones while sea lions caper with jellyfish and squid in the sepulchral wrack of Neptune’s Kingdom (the big arcade with Skee-Ball, I mean).

I know it’s naïve to think the commercial hasn’t actually changed — tragically, some new versions of the iconic annoyance have been springing up, laced with recycled footage, of course. Likewise, the Boardwalk has seen a handful of new rides incorporated into its landscape since the commercial originally aired. But stepping onto it in the warm California sun really makes you feel as though you’ve unwittingly wandered into some perpetually-20-years-ago liminal zone — like Richard Linklater’s Austin, Texas, or the Los Angeles of 1987’s Surf Nazis Must Die.

The living, and their fiberglass approximations, populate the “Bands on the Beach!” series, the annual free showcase for long forgotten, mid-level, Frankensteined back together rock acts. It’s certainly hard not to feel cynical about the series after Gregg Rolie (original lead singer for Santana) amuses the crowd with a timely “Who let the dogs out?” reference. But at their core — and I’m only being slightly facetious here — there’s something awesome and spontaneous about these concerts, a judo-like grappling with the condition of being presented as a reanimated artifact.

The first set I caught this summer was Blue Öyster Cult, who I’d seen earlier this year at the Santa Cruz County Fair in Watsonville. BÖC’s facility with vocal harmony and baroque, intertwining guitar arrangement is often discounted. And while the band maintains a rightfully dedicated/defensive cult fanbase, it nevertheless picked up a different set of fans with a certain comedy sketch based on a highly, highly exaggerated cowbell enthusiasm. Multiple factors conspire to make the band’s set a one-note joke, an opportunity to wring those last few precious drops of irony out of a period that’s becoming rapidly depleted.

If this was universally the case, Friday nights at the Boardwalk would be downright sadistic. But Blue Öyster Cult takes seriously the kind of gig that numerous lesser acts would treat as some kind of where-are-they-now closing vignette from an early-period Behind the Music. The dreamy main riff and strange ersatz reggae of “Burnin’ for You” fused together with the sound of waves and ride-machinery and the permeating scent of weed smoke mysteriously radiating from the old hippies and biker couples getting down on the beach. It turned something that for all intents and purposes should be sad and creepy into something weird and beautiful.

But the obverse, and perhaps more exciting face of the summer concert series arcade token is the Eddie Money experience. If Blue Öyster Cult rises above its pigeonholing as a goofy retro spectacle, Mr. Money gleefully embraces it with a show that can only be described as a resplendent, lurid train-wreck. Eddie Money is no resurrected has-been. Quite the contrary: he is finally capable of carrying his earlier work to its full potential — sung by a “supercharged city kid with rock ‘n’ roll in his soul” (as per Journey’s Steve Perry on an episode of Midnight Special).

Staples like “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “Take Me Home Tonight” are admittedly catchy, but ultimately banal. But in the senior Money’s filthy clutches they drip with sleaze. He gingerly struts around the stage while crooning his myriad hits in a scratchy approximation of his original singing voice. He interrupts nearly every song to demand that we “shake it with the money-maker,” and to illustrate what this might look like, he opens and spreads his black suit jacket and gyrates toward the crowd. His set isn’t so much about music as it is about performing the paunchy, slightly unhinged middle-aged ’80s rocker, a staple of the free concert circuit, and a persona that Money seems to have perfected. The Eddie Money of that Midnight Special clip is dead; in his place is someone infinitely more interesting.

Classy to the end, the Money-man closes his set with a “don’t let your girlfriends drive” joke, as the 200-plus in attendance file out of the Boardwalk. Be sure to leave the beach as clean as you found it!

SANTA CRUZ BOARDWALK BANDS ON THE BEACH!

Fridays, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m.; through Sept. 3; free

(Fri/13, Spin Doctors; Aug. 20, Papa Doo Run Run; Aug. 27, Starship starring Mickey Thomas; Sept. 3, The Tubes featuring Fee Waybill)

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

400 Beach, Santa Cruz

(831) 423-5590

www.beachboardwalk.com/concerts

 

Call of the grisly

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Call of the grisly

arts@sfbg.com

LIT With volumes devoted to numerous U.S. cities and quite a few foreign capitals, it sometimes seems as if Akashic Books’ expanding line of noir story anthologies will wind up covering virtually every major metropolis on earth. Because less gritty burgs like Portland, Ore.; Seattle; and Phoenix all have entries in the crime fiction series, it’s only fair that Mexico City gets a nod.

Akashic must be commended for waiting several years until the great novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II agreed to take on editing duties for Mexico City Noir (Akashic Books, 250 pages, $15.95). Taibo, who was born in Spain but has lived in Mexico since 1958, is the author of wildly entertaining and internationally successful mysteries that push the genre’s boundaries in interesting directions. In addition to a dense biography of Che Guevara, he has written a doorstop-size book about Pancho Villa that should have been translated into English years ago.

In his introduction to Mexico City Noir, Taibo describes the capital city as having “the most corrupt police force on the planet.” (A recent guidebook cites research showing that 13 percent of the megacity’s incarcerated population are veterans of the police corps.) Taibo writes of the corruption and mayhem sewn by members and ex-members of “security” forces: “If you’re lucky, you can stay away from it, you can keep your distance … until, suddenly, without a clear explanation of how, you fall into the web and become trapped.” He concludes, “You wake up in the morning with the uneasy feeling that the law of probabilities is working against you.” If that’s not noir, what the hell is?

The stories Taibo assembles shine a harsh light on systematic injustice and dire poverty amid, as Taibo puts it, “an economic crisis that’s been going on for 25 years.” Among the book’s highlights are a street drunk who may have witnessed a police killing, a demented priest with some unsavory urges, and plenty of street-level contemplation of the violence of everyday life. There’s also enough grisly narco-related mayhem to satisfy fans of the Saw movie franchise (assuming they can read).

But while stateside crime fiction often achieves such levels of violence at the expense of a moral center, and rarely works on more than one fairly obvious (if lucrative) level, these short stories are rooted in rage at the injustice that permeates life in Mexico City. The sometimes experimental narratives lay out the harsh socioeconomic realities of post-NAFTA Mexico, where the less-than-magical realism of the market makes the rich richer and the poor poorer — and the U.S.-backed drug war provides plenty of bad men with more guns. The warped humor here, especially in Taibo’s contribution about the struggle for the soul of an embattled street corner, is part of the survival mechanism of people who have seen too much of life at its worst but must keep laughing anyway.

Akashic is complementing the release of Mexico City Noir by reissuing The Uncomfortable Dead (Akashic Books, 268 pages, $15.95), the novel Taibo wrote in collaboration with Zapatista spokesperson and strategist Subcommandante Marcos. In an interview included as part of the new edition’s supplementary materials, Taibo describes the frenetic pace at which he and Marcos wrote alternate chapters for serialization in Mexican paper La Jornada, for a total of 12 chapters over 12 weeks. That ongoing deadline pressure has produced a giddy read, and if it doesn’t deliver the kind of straightforward narrative and tight plotting that U.S. mystery readers look for, the literary pyrotechnics of these two impressive wordsmiths offer undeniable pleasures that eschew formulaic predictability.

Taibo’s chapters feature his Coca-Cola-and-tobacco-addled, one-eyed detective Hector Belascoarn Shayne on the trail of a murderer named Morales. Marcos in turn writes about a Zapatista investigator named Elias, who is also searching for a man named Morales. The two stories wind up intersecting in a sometimes surreal jumble in Mexico City, where, in Taibo’s words, there are “more movie theatres than Paris, more abortions than London, and more universities than New York.”

The 1968 Mexico City police massacre of student activists is a key reference point in both books. That bloody repression was clearly a watershed period for Taibo and Marcos, profoundly influencing both of them. In the early 1980s, Marcos went south to Chiapas and joined the guerrillas who evolved into Zapatistas. Taibo became a history professor at the Metropolitan University of Mexico City and president of the International Association of Political Writers; He also went on to write ‘68, a memoir of sorts available in English from Seven Stories Press, and the experimental novel Calling All Heroes: A Manual for Taking Power (which features a survivor of the 1968 police massacres who enlists the aid of his childhood heroes Sherlock Holmes, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and D’Artagnan to help him in a new reform movement) just reprinted by local publisher PM Press.

Both Taibo and Marcos retained their radical politics and commitment to class struggle. They also share a fondness for absurdist humor, and both display an endearing willingness to laugh at themselves. Self-effacing humor is not a trait one usually associates with committed leftists, alas. The writing of Taibo and Marcos is a fine corrective to the unfortunate association of strident humorlessness with radical activism.

Triad quartet

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Triad quartet

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM In 2008, the Pacific Film Archive did a retrospective on prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To, highlighted by his two best films to date: 1999’s The Mission and its sorta-sequel, 2006’s Exiled. Both are about hired killers going about their business — a favored To plot that allows him to explore his fascination with male bonding, particularly amid crooks who fiercely adhere to the underworld’s sticky loyalty codes.

His latest stateside release is 2009’s Vengeance; I had to double-check to make sure this was a new movie, because how could To have not made one called Vengeance already? And a casual fan could be forgiven if he or she found this film familiar. The turf is classic To: hired killers, etc. The Mission and Exiled star Anthony Wong is, of course, the chief assassin; as always, he’s a cool, stone-faced cat of the sunglasses-at-night variety. Taking orders from Simon Yam (as always, buffoonish-homicidal), Wong and his men (fellow To faves Lam Ka Tung and Lam Suet) blow away disloyal minions. There are elegantly staged gun battles, a post-skirmish tending-our-wounds scene, a daring getaway via a series of fire escapes, and lots of slo-mo.

So why not just stay home and rent Exiled instead? Well, there’s one new element here: 60-something Johnny Hallyday, dubbed “the French Elvis” in the 1960s. His Costello is a killer-turned-chef seeking revenge for the death of his Macau-based daughter’s family. He hasn’t been in the game for decades, so he hires Wong and company to help him annihilate the bad guys. Hallyday has a certain glamorous presence, but at times it feels like he’s been grafted onto Vengeance just so it won’t feel like To is repeating himself (again). Costello is losing his memory at a rapid rate, so much time is spent waiting for him to shuffle through his Memento-style sheaf of Polaroids, struggling to recall who he’s with, why he’s there, and finally, “What is revenge?”

Indeed, as another character points out, “What does revenge mean when you can’t remember anything?” Wong’s gunslingers may have just met Costello, but he’s paid for their loyalty — and earned their respect. Plus, his Paris restaurant is called “Frères,” so of course his newfound “brothers” will finish the job. Forgetfulness (for Costello) and déjà vu (for everyone else) aside, when the focus onscreen turns to servin’ up some payback, To fans will be in bullet-ballet heaven.

VENGEANCE opens Fri/13 at the Sundance Kabuki.

 

Geek love

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Geek love

arts@sfbg.com

FILM For fans of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s just-completed comics saga Scott Pilgrim, the announcement that Edgar Wright (2004’s Shaun of the Dead, 2007’s Hot Fuzz) would direct a film version was utterly surreal. Geeks get promises like this all the time, all too often empty (Guillermo del Toro’s Hobbit, anyone?). But miraculously, Wright indeed spent the past five years crafting the winning and astoundingly faithful (if slightly divergent plot-wise) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The film follows hapless Toronto 20-something Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), bassist for crappy band Sex Bob-omb, as he falls for delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), only to find he must defeat her seven evil exes — like so many videogame bosses — before he can comfortably date her. As it happens, he’s already dating a high-schooler, Knives (Ellen Wong), who’s not coping well with Scott moving on.

To address a primary concern up front, Cera plays a good feckless twerp. His performance isn’t groundbreaking, but it dodges the Cera-playing-his-precious-self phenomenon so many have lamented. Scott is the protagonist, surely, but he’s not exactly a hero. He’s a puny human, which makes his (mostly) unstoppable fighting technique all the more impressive. He’s battling larger-than-life foes imbued with real-life superpowers like self-confidence and cultural cache. The film’s ensemble cast maintains a sardonic tone, with excellent turns by Alison Pill, Aubrey Plaza, and newcomer Wong. Jason Schwartzman is perfectly cast as the ultimate evil ex-boyfriend, hipster asshole Gideon Graves — there’s really no one slimier, at least under 35.

Some of Pilgrim‘s characters operate on winking stereotypes, most notably the pronouncedly Chinese Knives and Scott’s “totally gay” roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin). The comics’ light gags can seem a tad tasteless when applied to “real” people. But for all Wallace’s comically exaggerated promiscuity, hetero Scott cheats on his partner in a truly reprehensible manner. Says Wright, speaking over the phone, “We tried, in terms of the gay characters in the film to kind of, in hopefully a progressive way, not make a big deal about it.”

The film brilliantly cops the comics’ visual language, including snarky captions and onomatopoetic sound effects, reminiscent onscreen of 1960s TV Batman. Sometimes this tends toward sensory overload, but it’s all so stylistically distinctive and appropriate that excess is easily forgiven. “It wasn’t a film where we had to strive for absolute realism like [2008’s] The Dark Knight,” Wright explains. “We had a chance to embrace the bubblegum, Pop art nature of the artwork.”

All the action in the movie is videogame-derived, with pixel-drenched effects and 8-bit bleats galore; call it the film’s mise-en-Sega. It’s hard to think of another movie that has hewed this aesthetically close to videogames as a form — maybe Tron (1982) — since game-to-film adaptations often try to mine the source material for other genre signifiers. Besides comics and games, Pilgrim finds a third frame of reference in indie rock. The characters’ bands seem like riffs on certain Canadian acts, but Wright says they’re more “a mélange of bands that [O’Malley] played with when he was in a band himself.” Among the contributors to the diegetic soundtrack are Broken Social Scene, Metric, and Beck, who are, as Wright says, “playing a part rather than playing themselves.”

If Pilgrim is a hit, steel yourself for a whole wave of candy-coated imitators. But for now, revel in the fact that we have a film that so intuitively understands its characters and its audience. It’s a killer action film, a charming rom-com, and a weirdo cult rock movie all rolled into one. As the back cover of the first volume of the comic reads, “This is Scott Pilgrim. This is your life.”

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD opens Fri/13 in Bay Area theaters.

MORE AT SFBG.COM Pixel Vision blog: Sam Stander’s complete Edgar Wright interview.

 

Windblown

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Windblown

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO I just zoomed in from Guerneville on the back of Hunky Beau’s cherry red motorcycle, losing a few wigs along the way, oh well. Guerneville, for the uninitiated, is the supergayish resort town located about 100 miles north of here along the Russian River. It’s like the Riviera, but with more fish smell and meth shacks.

It’s also a hoot. We went up there to enjoy some sunshine — finally hello vitamin D — and join in the divine hoopla of Some Are Camp, an annual kiki agglomeration of post-ironic alternaqueer parties that take over the Russian River Resort. Man, there were a lot of shredded Day-Glo lace shawls and filthy Mouseketeer hats floating in the pool by weekend’s end. Little getaways are fierce, but our own party season is heating up, so grab your Dynasty-inspired water wings and let’s dive in.

 

BRIGHTER DAYS, LONGER NIGHTS

Is the Bay Area experiencing another Berlin brain drain? My mascara dribbles at the thought of us losing yet another techno luminary to that admittedly amazing German burg. But Nightlight Music honcho and funky-minimal musicmaker Alland Byallo must move on, and this special bon voyage shindig should give him something to remember. With DJs Dave Aju, Jeniluv, Dead Seal, and loads more.

Fri/13, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $5. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

 

WE ALL WE GOT

Let’s hear it for homegrown hip-hop: this monthly showcase consciously expands the local rap palette with a slew of upcoming talent that races past the yayo. The Fillmore’s Rappin’ 4-Tay headlines, Sellassie hosts, and T-Reezy, Blaze 1’s Pyrx Band, Unafeyed Bullyz, and tons more perform.

Fri/13, 9 p.m., $10. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

BEARRACUDA 4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

One of our few small alternative queer venues, Deco Lounge, recently got cited for capacity violations, forcing many parties to temporarily find new homes. But nothing can stop large-and-in-charge bear dance hoohaw Bearracuda from barreling ahead, this time at DNA Lounge. Floss with flying fur to DJs Rotten Robbie, boyshapedbox, and Honey Soundsystem, with art by queer graffitist Jeremy Novy.

Fri/13, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $10. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

 

HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR

The Outside Lands pre-party brings back a band with thriving and complex San Francisco connections — and I’m eager to hear what this pulsating act has in store, now that its expansive deep disco and late-1980s house revivalism has become ubiquitous. All signs point to a tighter show and a brighter sound — without losing that special red-light emotion.

Fri/13, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, www.mighty119.com

 

GREEN SOUND FINALE

For adventurous audiophiles, it’s been a wonderful summer so far thanks to the biannual Soundwave Festival that’s taken over the city the past two months. The “green sound” theme has brought us illuminated forests, singing sculptures, battery drones, and blooming speakers in Civic Center trees. This closing party takes it all to the de Young for “a journey inspired by our stunning city of wind, plant life, and fog.” Expect some sonic chills. With avant-jazz band the Drift.

Fri/13, 6:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m., free. de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., SF. www.projectsoundwave.com

 

MIKE HUCKABY

I’ve been keeping an ear on this Detroit wizard for nigh on two decades now, and his mesmerizing techno-soul style is finally starting to gain major traction among dance aficionados. As the house DJ at beloved Motor City music store Record Time, his selections helped build many famed DJs secret arsenals. You can expect his influential deep-thinking, deep-reaching experience to shine when he takes the decks at the monthly No Way back party.

Sat/14, 10 p.m., $10. 222 Hyde, www.222hyde.com

SUNSET SUMMER BOAT PARTY

Can I just give it up for the Sunset kids this year? Their seasonal gigs have blossomed into true mainstays of good ol’ San Francisco love — no attitude, no trendy self-consciousness. Even the dis-aquatic among us will want to sign on to this floating blast, with classic Italian DJ Alexander Robotnick (of perma-jacking 1983 track “Problemes d’Amour”) and Germany’s Bruno Pronsato live. International wave!

Sun/15, 5 p.m.–11 p.m., $50. Pier 3, SF. www.pacificsound.net 2

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