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Gryp the surgeon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Gryp the surgeon

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC The bass. The accents. A scary little man in a hooded jacket. On first introduction to Die Antwoord via the video for their breakthrough jam, “Enter the Ninja,” I was officially freaked out: intimidated by their honest anger, rank lyrics and ultrahip haircuts. It was early February of this year when the Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, and DJ Hi-Tek of South Africa entered my life, and only days after we met on the ‘interweb,’ I was officially obsessed.

Blowing up their videos to full-screen, I inhaled their stench, injected their music-laden virus, and swallowed mouthfuls of diseased, infectious theatrical genius for hours on end, letting all that is Die Antwoord swim to my brain, pump through my veins, and wallow in the depths of my stomach. I felt sick, happy, and addicted — and apparently, so did the rest of the world.

Die Antwoord blew up almost immediately after a couple quick posts from influential music tasters. Only six months into their new-found fame, these sick bastards have already played — and wooed — Coachella, signed with Interscope, and gained shows with MIA on their first official U.S. tour. Even gross celebrities like Fred Durst and Katy Perry have typed their praises. Their show at the Rickshaw Stop sold out in less than an hour.

They’re white trash with skills: super-slick production, extra-catchy hard core beats, and personas that should be employed by the traveling carnival. Images of sexpot Yo-Landi and her tween-like frame rotate between cracked-out fiend, a shy classmate I met in the fourth-grade, and a sexy, antiestablishment Swedish lesbian. It’s probably not OK that I find her at all attractive. The tiny-lady MC is totally cool being covered in rats, freely kisses the critters, and holds them upside down by their tails. I am quite jealous of her ability to rock wicked-short bangs.

Then there’s Ninja; a rail-thin, pasty man with a mouth as rotten as San Francisco’s Sixth Street. His collection of tattoos are horrible. My favorites include a large, erect penis; his non-gangster “very secret fairy forest”; and phrases like “If you don’t like funerals, don’t kick sand in a ninja’s face.” His prime video moment: a close-up of his seemingly giant balls aggressively keeping beat to a sick bass line, hidden only under the thin fabric of his “Dark Side of the Moon” boxers.

Die Antwoord’s third member, DJ Hi-Tek, is basically mute and/or hasn’t fully developed his character quite yet. Stay tuned.

So nasty. So raw. So are they real? The Web is stocked with videos of Max Normal TV, Ninja’s, a.k.a. Waddy Jones’, former project that included Yo-Landi Vi$$er as his assistant. They’re art punks and all their projects before now simply laid the groundwork for Die Antwoord.

People’s concern with the legitimacy of the group is out of style. Since when don’t we like people who take on alternate public personas? Would we really like them more if they were, as one Videogum writer put it, “actually borderline mentally retarded poor children from ghettos covered in generic Cheetos dust and meth crumbs?” No. Because either way they’re fokken intense, intoxicating, absurd, and pumping some serious Zef flow. (Says Ninja: “Zef = flavor, ultimate style, fokken cool, more than fokken cool. A zone. A level. And we’re on the highest level.”)

What any fan needs to figure out is how to translate the crazy-thick accent and constant use of Afrikaans slang. Yo-Landi finds it hilarious that fans attempt to sing along, unknowingly screaming absurdities that would make anyone blush. The song “Jou Ma se Poes in ‘n Fishpaste Jar” translates to “Your mother’s cunt in a fishpaste jar,” which, unsurprisingly, has a corresponding picture. Just don’t go around spouting off the lyrics in front of Grandma.

DIE ANTWOORD

With DJ Jeffrey Paradise

Fri/16, 8:30 p.m., sold out

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Group think

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Group think

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL “Calder to Warhol,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s giant introductory survey of the Fisher collection, isn’t the only big summer show happening right now. With its wanted poster-style flyer design and a menacing title that could have come from a hardboiled paperback, “They Knew What They Wanted” is an exquisite corpse of a group show, pieced together and then strewn across town by four artists at four different galleries: Shannon Ebner at Altman Siegel, Robert Bechtle at John Berggruen, Katy Grannan at Fraenkel Gallery, and Jordan Kantor at Ratio 3.

Allusions to criminality aside, the artists/curators of “They Knew What They Wanted” would more likely be found on the forensics team than the wrong side of the law. All are steely observers whose art could broadly be said to share a focus on the dynamics of surveillance at work within postwar portrait and landscape photography, particularly photography that looked at what was booming outside of America’s urban centers. Although Grannan is the sole photographer in the group, Ebner’s temporary installations of handmade signage placed in public settings — which she then photographs in black and white — and Bechtle and Kantor’s photo-based oil paintings also fall under the sign of the photography.

It’s not surprising then that multiple pieces by each of the curators can be found across all four galleries, as well as certain names (Lee Friedlander, Miriam Böhm, Trevor Paglen, and Ed Ruscha in particular) whose work shares an aesthetic affinity with that of the curators. This form of cross-gallery display gives “They Knew What They Wanted” a cohesion that is often rare in group shows, while still not being so insular as to make it hard to differentiate each artist-curator’s own aesthetic sense.

Bechtle’s selections offer the least surprises, summoning the same post-1960s Western suburban milieu evoked by his photorealistic paintings of driveway-bound vintage cars. After a few rounds of viewing, though, Robert Adams’ vintage snaps of Colorado ‘burbs, Friedlander’s skewed takes on small town architecture, Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ aquatint etchings of backyard swimmers, and Tom McKinley’s oils of cool modernist interiors start to add up to the visual equivalent of tract housing.

Ebner and Kantor’s picks are more interior-minded than the mainly street-level and exterior scenes crowding John Berggruen. They also veer the furthest from each artist’s own work. For example, Sol LeWitt’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it painted electrical wall plate at Altman Siegel is just a few Home Depot aisles away from Rachel Whiteread’s stainless steel castings of light switches over at Ratio 3. Back at Altman Siegel, Fletcher Benton’s 1983 bronze tennis racket, “Adjustable Racket for Short Heavy Hitters,” leans dejectedly in a corner, in wait for a yard sale that will never come. Grannan’s grab bag at Fraenkel is the most photo-heavy, and her selection ventures furthest — with mixed success — from the thematic territory staked out by Bechtle, Ebner, and Kantor.

In a way, Ebner, Bechtle, Grannan, and Kantor have beat SFMOMA to the punch. The museum is set to restage the landmark 1975 photography exhibit “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” — which presented dispassionate documentation of parking lots, construction sites, and other forms of ex-urban development — at the end of the month. But for a sustained exploration of the meteor-like impact of “New Topographics” on the photography and painting that followed in its wake, one couldn’t ask for a better art historical crash-course than “They Knew What They Wanted.” *

 

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED

Through July 31, free

John Berggruen Gallery

228 Grant, SF

(415) 781-4629

www.berggruen.com

Through Aug. 7, free

Altman Siegel Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 576-9300

www.altmansiegel.com

Through Aug. 13, free

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3371

www.ratio3.org

Through Aug. 21, free

Fraenkel Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 981-2661

www.fraenkelgallery.com

The woman remembered

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The woman remembered

The changeover from silent to sound cinema revolutionized the world’s most popular entertainment form. As in most revolutions, some heads got lopped off. The industry saw this upheaval as a chance to clean house, getting rid of pricey or difficult talent by claiming they couldn’t make the transition. The public went along, suddenly hungry for all things talking, singing, dancing, and new, eager to dismiss yesterday’s favorites as old-fashioned.

Certainly stardom’s internationalism was largely over — those with heavy foreign or regional inflections were kaput. But myths persisted for decades about native-born stars like John Gilbert whose nasal, “light,” or otherwise unappealing voices purportedly derailed their careers. Heard today, Gilbert seems just fine — was MGM simply punishing him for being an expensive pain in the ass? If so, it worked: by 1936 he’d drank himself to death.

A similar aroma of failure hovers around Norma Talmadge, one of the biggest stars of the silent era yet largely forgotten now. Critics howled at her supposed vocal uncouthness in 1930’s Du Barry, Woman of Passion. Talmadge took equally famous, already retired sister Constance’s advice, quitting while she was still ahead — at least financially, thanks to mama’s trust fund setup. Yet clips from the era reveal nothing at all wrong with her voice. Was she a victim of simple out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new media frenzy? Perhaps an affair with actor Gilbert Roland ended the career support of her husband, powerful executive Joseph M. Schenck. Was she being punished?

She and Roland star in 1928’s The Woman Disputed, her last silent vehicle and one of many highlights in this weekend’s 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival. She’s an Austrian prostitute — not exactly named as such, of course — who barely escapes a murder charge after a seeming john instead uses her flat to kill himself in. Two wealthy rescuers then become romantic rivals for this hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, whom they help attain respectability. (The other man is Arnold Kent, an Italian actor fatally struck by a car after playing this final role.)

Directed by Henry King (an A-list Hollywood director through the 1950s), Woman moves from heavy tragedy to disarming romantic comedy and back again — then World War I intervenes. The fervency of its trio’s romantic friendship is very touching. No matter that the concept is typical Hollywood fantasy ignoring class-impasse reality: the film finesses its corn syrup via discreet handling and potent star power. Doing the most emotive heavy-lifting, Talmadge has moments that make her appeal very clear.

Thrust forward by a world-class stage mother, Talmadge was huge throughout the 1920s. According to screenwriter pal Anita Loos’ memoir, her screen retirement was addled by stupefying addiction to arthritis painkillers. It’s said she started the Hollywood Walk of Fame by accidentally stepping into wet cement. It’s also said she inspired the monstrous Norma Desmond in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, as well as Jean Hagen’s Brooklynese-screeching imploding silent star in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain. Yet again these may just be derogatory rumors that have had decades to harden into pseudo fact.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL

July 15–18, free–$30

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.silentfilm.org

666-ZOMB

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
666-ZOMB

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Yes, vampires and werewolves are getting pretty dang tired lately.

Yet even they haven’t risked getting so overexposed as our shuffling undead friends.

George Romero’s last couple Dead films felt tapped out — if you were Romero, wouldn’t you be bored with zombies by now too? We’ve had remakes of Romero sequels, fer chrissakes. Plus we’ve had so many zombie comedies (2004’s Shaun of the Dead being the gold standard) that parodying the genre has itself become a cliché. There’ve been Zombie Strippers (2004), Nazi zombies (last year’s Dead Snow pretty much completed that concept), gay zombies (Bruce La Bruce’s oddly poignant 2008 Otto), a zombie feature made by an 11-year-old girl (Emily Hagins’ 2006 Pathogen), a documentary about that (2009’s Zombie Girl) … yada, yada. Of course there’s still fun to be had on occasion. But mainstream hit Zombieland (2009) worked not ‘cuz of zombies per se, but because Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg were funnier than their routine spoofy material.

Let’s face it: zombies are a limited concept. You can make them go slow or fast (pausing naturally to debate whether “fast zombies” betray all things sacred). They can be silent, grunty, or banshee-screamy. That’s about it. Vary the formula much farther and you’re outta zombie territory.

[Rec] 2 does fudge matters somewhat. This sequel to the successful 2007 Spanish original (decently Hollywood-remade in 2008 as Quarantine) elaborates its hints that what’s going on here is not just some bite-driven viral thingie but a supernatural evil. It’s home-lab “contagious enzyme” germ warfare — meets Satan. The zombies are, indeed, recently-munched living beings who can be perma-killed with the traditional headshot. Yet they are also Exorcist-y “possessed” who speak in many voices, including the classic Mercedes McCambridge-through-Linda-Blair obscene croak. Whatever.

Explication wasn’t the first film’s strong suit. It isn’t for this superior follow-up, either, which starts with [Rec]‘s memorable final shot (which Quarantine shamelessly surrendered in trailers): last survivor Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) dragged from first-person camera range by something that surely ended her career as both glam TV reporter and living human.

Picking up moments later, [Rec] 2 then switches to the camcording POV of special-forces cops speeding to a Barcelona apartment building whose residents, responding firefighters, and fluff-story-pursuing TV news guests are now presumed undead. No one is allowed in or out save the SWAT-equivalent team whose imposed outside leader (Jonathan Mellor) turns out to be no Ministry of Health official, but a priest.

After various really bad things happen, their camera dies. [Rec] 2 cleverly then restarts the narrative from other live-video viewpoints, first wielded by three neighboring bourgeois teens who elude site barriers in search of “something really cool.” Once they realize what they’ve gotten themselves into, they do what comes naturally: panic and demand adults save them. But mummy and daddy can’t help you now.

Returning writing-directing duo Juame Balagueró and Paco Plaza know the slow build won’t work a second time, so [Rec] 2 quickly turns headlong. That it works pays testament to their screenplay — which cleverly develops original tropes rather than simply reprising them — and ability to invest the exhausted mockumentary form with visceral potency. (A couple deaths here are truly memorable despite the usually obfuscating shaky-cam format.)

There are silly ideas — otherwise invisible ephemera can be seen by night-vision cameras? Satan hasn’t covered his Radio Shack ass yet? — but [Rec] 2 proves there’s still imaginative life in zombie cinema, even if it requires bending the rules. [Rec] 3 and 4 are reportedly moving forward. This might become the rare film series — living or undead — that steadily improves.

[REC] 2 opens Fri/16 in Bay Area theaters.

 

She’s a briiide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
She’s a briiide

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO A couple of Friday evenings ago, Hunky Beau and I went out on a bourgeois love date in SoMa. It was there that I was reminded that, along with loquats, plums, figs, and fat guys on the Internet pretending they’re in armed militias, we are in the midst of bachelorette season. Children, be warned!

To kickstart our romantic rendezvous, Hunky had called me from Mr. Smith’s, a bar that still exists, where he’d gathered with coworkers for clock-out cocktails. Alas, I couldn’t hear him over all the squealing. “Always a bridesmaid. Always.” he texted. “Run for your wife!!1!” I pecked back. We sheltered ourselves in the tidy environs of Terroir (www.terroirsf.com) on Folsom Street, a chill unmarked wine bar that reminds me of Seattle’s Living Room, with a nifty furnished mezzanine and vinyl Shins and Cure on the phonograph. Settling in with a few glasses from the smart and sassy list and some fatty-licious French food cart grub from Spencer On the Go across the street, we commenced our rendezvousing. Until a look of terror clouded the cute Terroir co-owner’s face and the screaming started streaming in. No exit! Bachelorette attack! It was Sex and the City 3-D: less menopause, more claws.

Hastily, the besieged Terroirier apologized, saying “We’re not usually this back country.” I would’ve gone off, but mocking roving bachelorette parties (or BPs, ’cause that shit’s toxic and endless) is like shooting Kardashians in a barrel. Viva stereotypical drunk heterosexuals, all is full of love. So I just plugged my good ear with a Bordeaux cork and marveled at my favorite BPers: the sheepish bridesmaid of color, the childhood friend who can’t stop making toasts to hide her unfathomable bitterness, the warring former college roommates, the pushy “leader,” and — bestest— the puggy one with bad bangs and a lemon face who wanders around picking fights with random strangers, slurring, “Leave ‘er alone … sh-sh-she’s a briiide.” Snooki lives. And I want a girls night out with 10 of her.

Treasure Island preview: Get your Long John Silvers out — the lineup’s been announced for this year’s festival on Oct. 16 and 17, and it’s pretty rad. “Electronic music” highlights? Four Tet, Holy Fuck, our own Wallpaper party boys, LCD Soundsystem, and (zef yes!) Die Antwoord. Kruder and Dorfmeister will be drifting us back to the early ’00s. I am typing the name Deadmau5. Full lineup and tickets at www.treasureislandfestival.com

 

HOT WAX

An all-vinyl night always guarantees my nightlife blessing — and this regular one at 222 is too-too-too nice to pass up. This month’s installment is themed “Ladies of the ’80s,” with an all-female DJ crew that includes Sweaterfunk’s DJ Mamabear, Shred One, Chungtech, and Sabrina spinning you delightful, deep-crated retro R&B and soul shakers of the XX-generated variety.

Thu/15, 9 p.m., $5. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

DJ DRM

I’m loving the jazzy beats revival raining down this summer, spawned by the choppy R&B re-edits scene, dubstep’s more melodic turn, a Latin funk infusion, and a general interest in sparkling, danceable vibes. Killer weekly Loose Joints is bringing in Brooklyn sizzler DRM of Bastard Jazz Recordings to get swingy. Loose Joints regulars Tom Thump, Centipede, and Damon Bell warm it up.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

 

SOME THING ELSE

Fresh off its cheeky “9/11 in July” night, weekly dragstravaganza Some Thing is getting even more dangerous, with an imposters night that sends up San Francisco’s most boisterous queens of stage and toilet. Newcomers will impersonate — with affection! — old-schoolers. Expect some bewigged heads to explode as some big fish in our little pond get roasted, one birdseed boob at a time.

Fri/16, 10 p.m.–late, $7. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com

 

RAIZ

Vividly named L.A. brothers Vangelis and Vidal Vargas, formerly known as Acid Circus, have aptly switched monikers to Raiz, but still deliver the throbbing, bass-heavy minimal tech that razes the roof. They’ll be in town, accompanying local melodic thumper DJ Zenith, to celebrate the fierce monthly Tekandhaus party’s first anniversary.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Anu, 43 Sixth St., SF. www.tekandhaus.com

Pera

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Pera

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If books and movies can have subtitles, then why not restaurants? A subtitle is like a bit of extra seasoning, a way of emphasizing certain meanings, and this is particularly important at a time when restaurant names can seem increasingly whimsical or obscure.

Pera’s subtitle (printed at the top of the bill and on its website) is “a Mediterranean affair,” which makes it sound like a cheesy movie about poor, doomed Princess Grace of Monaco. “Turkish cuisine” would be a bit more exact, but “Mediterranean affair” certainly sounds a romantic note, and Pera does have its low-key atmospherics, especially on summer evenings when elongated twilight stretches over the north face of Potrero Hill and glints through Pera’s windows.

Pera opened last November, under the auspices of Irfan Yalcin and his wife, in a space held by the Chinese restaurant Eliza’s since the early 1990s. (Eliza’s still exists at its longtime California Street location.) Turkish cuisine seems to be enjoying something of a boomlet around here in recent years, and why this is so is nearly as great a mystery to me as why we have so few Greek restaurants.

As it happens, and despite the long-term tensions between Greece and Turkey, Greek and Turkish cuisines are plainly related. Pera, whose menu tilts toward foods from Turkey’s Aegean coast, even offers versions of pastitsio, the baked pasta dish that is Greece’s answer to lasagne, and moussaka, the pastitsio-like dish of layered eggplant. But chef Muhammet Culha also turns out items I haven’t seen before on Turkish (or Greek!) menus around town.

Conspicuous among these is the talas boregi ($16), whose closest relation in the American food lexicon is probably chicken pot pie. The dish arrived as a triangle of phyllo wading in a shallow pool of coconut curry sauce (I had never before come across coconut milk in Turkish cooking). Within the pastry envelope was a piece of smoked, boneless chicken breast, while elsewhere on the plate lay a garnish of green apple, sliced thin, and some currants. In a sense, this dish was the philosophical opposite of that other great Mediterranean cuisine, Italy’s. The Italian kitchen emphasizes simplicity, directness, and the primacy of a particular ingredient or seasoning. By contrast, Pera’s talas boregi orchestrated a diverse cast of characters into a bewitching harmony, a sum greater than its parts.

But Turkish cooking can be just as direct and simple as Italian. Sometimes, in fact, it can seem Italian, as with spanaki ($6.50), spinach sautéed with garlic and pine nuts just as it is in Sicily. (“Spanaki,” we should note, is the Greek word for spinach — the Turkish word is “ispanak” — and Sicily was settled by Greeks in pre-Roman times.) The condiment consisting of yogurt, cucumbers, dill, garlic, and olive oil, whether called tzatziki or cacik ($2.50) is also about as basic as it gets and shares a deep and obvious root with the Indian yogurt sauce raita.

You can get the tzatziki, along with a host of treats to dunk in it, as part of the meze platter ($14), which is a sampler and therefore irresistible. The ensemble includes dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), saksuka (roasted eggplant with bell pepper, potato, and caramelized onion in a garlic tomato sauce — a lot like caponata), and zucchini cakes, along with olives, feta cheese, and triangles of warm pita.

Since the Aegean is a sea, we might expect to find seafood on the menu, and we do, including wonderful fish patties, or balik kofte ($10), a pair of hamburger-flat disks presented with concasse tomatoes and mango dice. (Do the Turks grow mangoes?) Also quite nice was a filet of grilled salmon ($18), topped with a Meunière-like sauce of white wine, lemons, garlic, and capers and plated with vegetables and what the menu card called (in Greek) patates tiganites, or fried potatoes — sautéed cubes, really.

For dessert you can have baklava, if you like your phyllo drenched with honey, but the more compelling choice is yogurt with honey ($6), which must be counted as a dessert that is actually, definitely good for you. (Both yogurt and honey are fermented foods, rich in probiotics.) Yogurt from the eastern Mediterranean is especially creamy and rich, as here — almost like tangy-sour cake frosting. One small surprise: no cherries on the menu, for dessert or otherwise, though the cherry is profoundly — or we might even say majorly — associated with Asia Minor.

PERA

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: daily, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

1457 18th St., SF

(415) 796-3812

www.perasf.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Manageable noise

Wheelchair accessible

 

Minty fresh

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Minty fresh

DANCE/THEATER After rapidly selling out its two-week premiere in May 2009, the Joe Goode Performance Group returns to San Francisco’s lavish Old Mint for a luxurious one-month run of Traveling Light. JGPG’s haunted tour of SF’s oldest stone building, a monument to money power, unfolds as a series of made-up but history-laden vignettes scattered throughout the edifice, adding up to an inspired meditation on greed and desire, success and failure, the material and immaterial. On the eve of opening night, acclaimed Bay Area–based director-choreographer Joe Goode — who says the piece has changed only slightly since last year (“We’re filling up the space better and perhaps telling the story more clearly”) — spoke to SFBG from his East Bay home.

SFBG In addition to Traveling Light, you premiered another site-specific work last year, Fall Within, at the Ann Hamilton Tower in Geyserville. What’s the appeal with site-specific work? Do you approach such pieces very differently?

Joe Goode You have to in a way because there’s no front. People can see things from many different vantage points. Also some theatrical illusions are taken away from you. On the other hand, you have the personality, character, and history of the site, which is contributing enormous amounts of information to the moment. That is really exciting and delicious, and there’s a lot that you can do with it.

The way I work with performers—the way I elicit material from them so that it feels personal to them—[remains] similar. I’m interested in an intimate, close-up glimpse of a real human experience. Many site artists get involved with the contours of the architecture, the aural properties of the site. I’m interested in all that, too, but retain my interest in that personal narrative.

SFBG That personal aspect, though, intersects with the Mint , an edifice reverberating very strongly with a larger social crisis, namely the enormous, growing disparities in wealth.

JG That’s ultimately what the piece is all about. There’s a kind of grandeur to some of the interiors of the building, which is just a disgraceful, ostentatious display of wealth. You can’t help but feel it when you walk in there. This is the disparity that’s been present in this city since 1850! I tend to think of San Franciscans as this very egalitarian, alternative, radical, and thoughtful group of people, when in fact there’s an underpinning of those who have and those who don’t. Those who have make a lot of decisions about what happens in this city. Those who don’t, don’t have a voice particularly. [The Mint] reflects that for me.

SFBG How is that relation between social systems and personal narratives worked out in creating the performances?

JG A lot of it comes from my imagination. I spent a lot of time in those rooms. Some of the narratives don’t have anything particular to do with the history of the building, but there’s a gilded balcony or a particular corner that makes me think of a narrative—a particular time, a person, what they might have been going through. Then I begin to weave the characters, again working very intimately with the performers, asking them their stories and how they felt about this issue, what it brought to mind for them. And I go off and write it. That’s how it works.

SFBG You’ve used the term “felt performance” in referring to your work and your teaching method. Can you explain that term?

JG My theory is that I can’t make a resonant, rich, performative moment on onstage, or in a site, unless I’m having that experience. I can’t just package it. Really the job for the performer is constructing a road map, or an obstacle course even. You’re not working to create an experience for someone else; you’re working to create an experience for yourself. Human beings can share that. We have a very good authenticity meter in our hearts and minds. We [the audience] can get on the boat with you. But you have to be taking the ride as a performer; that’s what’s essential. If you’re not taking the ride, there’s no way we’re going to take it.

SFBG In your approach, dance-theater it’s sometimes called, you’ve been synthesizing forms, dialogue, movement, text, music, for over 30 years …

JG And I’m only 40! How does that work?

SFBG It’s a precocious body of work. But there must have been dance purists and theater purists who balked at the synthesis …

JG Well, there still are. Don’t suffer the illusion that those people have gone away. There are people who look at my work and say it’s not dance. There are certainly people who look at my work and say it’s not theater. It falls between the cracks; they’re unsettled by it and they don’t want any part of it. I think the contemporary viewer — I mean, we’re so much about the mashup; we’re so much about computer animation infiltrating live action. All these collisions are happening in media. For a younger audience to see dancers speak? They don’t care. “That’s cool, whatever, why wouldn’t they?” And that’s how I always felt.

There’s another element there too. When I started making this kind of work: I wanted to have some frank expression of myself as a gay man. Not in a silver jock strap waving a rainbow flag, but as a fully- dimensional human being. Not hiding that very essential part of my identity, but somehow bringing it in. I felt I needed my voice to do that. My body was going to get to an essential part of that, but there was another whole part that needed to be addressed. And pretty much from the beginning, there was a huge audience for it. I feel like I’ve definitely found my place with it. I don’t feel like there’s any going back, that’s for sure.

Free as the breeze?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Free as the breeze?

arts@sfbg.com

>>Read Robert Avila’s interview with Joe Goode here

DANCE/THEATER Walking behind the tour guide who led us through the old San Francisco Mint’s elegant rooms for the Joe Goode Performance Group’s striking Traveling Light, I kept thinking of the Medicis and the Ming Dynasty. For their own selfish purposes, these corrupt supercapitalists commandeered and bought great beauty, of which we are the beneficiaries. On a more modest scale, the Mint, as so accurately described by Goode, was a temple of money. It was also a splendidly designed locus of hope for ordinary Joes and Janes who placed their trust, and their cash, in a place that promised the security that an expanding, institution-building nation could provide.

That’s why the Mint’s exquisite architecture speaks loudest in the basement. Jack Carpenter’s magisterial lighting creates shrines to the ordinary citizens on whose shoulders the Mint — and the country — was built. Carpenter ignores the presence of chandeliers — in a basement of all places! — and places red spots along the brick walls, transforming the hallway into a gallery.

Deep inside the safes — protected by exquisitely crafted steel doors — Goode places his works of art: a woman knitting, another in a bathtub, a perhaps homeless couple, and a tea-drinking Victorian lady tied down by propriety. Masterfully, Carpenter’s murky lighting transforms them into silent witnesses of a problematic past. Yet the atmosphere feels like one of your favorite watering holes on a Friday night.

Upstairs, Goode moves his seven dancers, supplemented by eight additional ones, through the Mint’s ostentatious public rooms and stark courtyard. For the next hour, they bring to life finely designed mini-dramas that possess a diorama-like quality. Watched over by a splendidly uniformed Fire Marshall who is quite at home in the building’s opulence, Traveling Light becomes an elaborately designed machine with interlocking gears that shuttle witnesses from one station to another.

I happened to be with the people who first see wealthy and bored Damara Vita Ganley abandon her “exalted” position to mingle with the groundlings. Here, worldly goods mean clean water. At least, the thinking went, these folks have each other. Out of robust duets and trios two men peel off, sent into a better future. Noble sentiment, terrible dramatic ending.

In the courtyard, which suggests a prison yard thanks to Carpenter’s lighting and Goode’s omnipotent voice from above, Filipe Barrueto-Cabello struggles as a poor working man. Haunted and perhaps supported by female spirits, he is barricaded against the elements, but longs for beauty. Andrew Ward and Alexander Zendzian are marvelous as W.C. Fields-like storytellers. The courtyard yields one of the evening’s most poignant moments: Barrueto-Cabello hugging and losing some cabbages as a solo clarinet wails. (Jay Cloidt’s score is first rate and invaluable throughout.)

In one of the inside rooms, Carpenter covers the chandeliers and hangs empty picture frames to better facilitate a detailed trip down memory lane. Jessica Swanson, a proper middle class lady, muses about a summertime affair with a young man (Melecio Estrella) whose calloused hands linger on in her mind. Their stiff-limbed yet passionate struggle doesn’t need words to be eloquently rendered. Elsewhere, in a Virginia Woolf-like touch, Patricia West searches desperately for a quiet place to get her life on track. Buffeted by intruders, she is caught in a turmoil that has more than a current of violence. It leaves her wan, alone, with only the echoes of her own words.

The carefully-honed Traveling is a very special vehicle for Goode’s excellent dancers-actors-singers, who are well supported by the additional cast. At one point Cloidt gives a quartet a four-part a cappella harmony, and they sail through it with ease. Goode badly wants the world to be a better place, but that’s not why we keep watching him and listening to him. We go back because his work sings, dances, and speaks with rare eloquence. I think what we want — and get — is what Barrueto-Cabello hungered for: beauty.

TRAVELING LIGHT

Wed-Sun, 8 p.m. (also Fri.–Sat., 10 p.m.), through Aug. 1, $29–$44

The Old Mint Building

88 Fifth St., SF

(415) 561-6565

www.joegoode.org

 

At your cervix

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
At your cervix

Dear Andrea: As long as I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with gyno play and playing doctor. I’ve grown more and more interested in the idea of cervical dilation/cervical insertions, but have been unable to find any literature on the subject. I understand that any cervical penetration has the possibility of causing cramps and/or other pain, but I am anxious and willing to experiment with this aspect of such play. Any advice?

Love, Stretch me

Dear Stretch: Questions like this always remind me of a kids’ science show I used to watch, starring Paul Zaloom and some guy in a rat costume. In one episode Paul was in the middle of explaining how to grow a particularly odoriferous bacteria colony in an old tennis shoe when he broke off mid-sentence and said, “Don’t even do this.” That’s how I feel when people ask me about certain extreme and possibly harmless but just a little bit potentially fatal practices.

It isn’t the pain that worries me. I understand that you’re up for that, and, you know, go crazy, although having been the recipient of several antepartum “internals” I can assure you that the sensation is … let’s call it “challenging.”

So yes, cervical stretching hurts like 12 kinds of mofo but that’s not our concern here. I’m afraid you may perforate something or introduce outside-world bacteria to your insides (or both). I don’t need to tell you how badly that could go for you, and only you can decide if it’s worth the risk.

It’s not true that there’s absolutely no information on this out there — there’s just very little of it. There’s probably something in BME, the “body modification e-zine.” A place called Eros Boutique carries every conceivable type of sound and catheter, and medical books and sites with instructions for inserting an IUD could walk you through the steps necessary to prepare for messing with your cervix. That’s all I’ve got.

This is very strange for me — up until now whenever someone has asked me about inserting things into the female urethra, I’ve said, in a word, “don’t,” and for good reason. The female urethra is only a few inches long and fragile. It’s a very short trip to the bladder, which really doesn’t want you dragging in dirt all over its nice clean floor. So while I generally counsel people, to leave the urethra alone and go play someplace safe, like the vagina, I’m going to take a flier and suggest the urethra as a slightly safer alternative if you absolutely must go poking in places where you’re not invited. At least you can sort-of resanitize it by peeing afterward. You may also feel free to be cranked open with a speculum and prodded about the cervix with a gloved finger. It is possible to create some intensely painful sensations in that region without ever attempting entry. But I can’t, in good conscience, support your playing doctor in the sanctum sanctorum there.

Love, Andrea

Andrea Nemerson is on vacation. This column ran last year.

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

Bad faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Bad faith

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business allies are actively trying to sabotage the various revenue measures that have been put forth by the labor movement and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, employing deceptive rhetoric, sneaky tactics, and a refusal to bargain in good faith.

In fact, Newsom — the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — is so averse to supporting anything that could be called a “tax” that he rejected a hard-won compromise measure created by powerful developers, affordable housing advocates, a pro-business think tank, the building trades, and his own directors of housing and economic development.

Just as that story was breaking in the New York Times (produced by Bay Citizen) on July 9, members of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee discovered that Newsom’s proposed ballot measure to close loopholes in the city’s hotel tax that favored airline employees and online travel companies — a widely supported change, but one worth just $6 million per year — contains language that would nullify any increases in the hotel tax. Earlier in the week, labor unions turned in signatures on an initiative to increase the hotel tax by 2 percent, which would bring in more than $30 million per year.

“This poison pill is an intentionally deceptive, underhanded move,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which sponsored the hotel tax, told us. “It’s so frustrating. It’s not even a good faith fight. He’s trying to create confusion and fool the voters. If our measure passes fair and square, it should be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Newsom and business groups have been attacking a reform measure by Board President David Chiu that would make the currently flat payroll tax more progressive, exempt more small businesses from paying it, and create a commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden more widely than the 10 percent of businesses who now pay tax to the city.

Critics complained that the measure would hurt local businesses — but that’s just not true. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis concluded that Chiu’s original proposal would have no effect on private sector jobs and would generate $34 million annually for the city, preserving some government jobs and spending.

Then Chiu amended the measure to spare even more small businesses. Now the OEA says that the measure would actually create private sector jobs — and still bring $28 million in to the city. Yet Newsom and the business community are still withholding their support.

This trio of Machiavellian moves comes just a week after Newsom pulled out of budget negotiations with board progressives concerning about $40 million in board add-backs to programs that Newsom proposed to cut after they wouldn’t agree to his precondition that they withdraw unrelated measures proposed for the November ballot, such as splitting appointments to the Rent, Recreation and Park, and Municipal Transportation Agency boards and requiring police officers to do foot patrols.

The series of events has led many progressives to say that conservative ideological blinders — a knee-jerk opposition to anything that saves government jobs and services or that Republicans might criticize — is the only logical explanation for the intransigent stance adopted downtown and by Newsom.

“It’s ideological. It’s not economic, and it’s not even political,” said Calvin Welch, the affordable housing activist who helped negotiate the transfer tax compromise with developer Oz Erickson, San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Doug Shoemaker, and others.

That measure would have created a transfer tax on sales of properties over $875,000 and generated approximately $50 million annually for affordable housing (funds that were drastically reduced in Newsom’s proposed 2010-11 budget) while cutting in half the current requirements and fees on market-rate developers to create below-market-rate units. The plan would have stimulated both types of housing and created desperately needed construction work — an approach those involved called an elegant solution to several problems.

“To me, this was a win-win, solving two problems that are each a big deal,” Metcalf told us. “I don’t know what his reasons were for not supporting it. I was surprised.”

But Welch said, “It collapsed straight up because the mayor didn’t want to support a tax.” Although Newsom told the Times it was because there wasn’t broad enough consensus yet, “the mayor’s reason is whole-cloth bullshit,” Welch said, noting the role of the Mayor’s Office in brokering the deal. “The mayor walks away from it because everyone wasn’t in the room? Well, it’s your room, motherfucker. Show some leadership.”

Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker refused to discuss these issues by phone, responding to our written inquires by noting that Newsom opposes taxes and thinks the best way to address budget deficits are privatizing city services and pension reform (although he opposes Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s initiative, the only pension reform measure on the fall ballot).

“The mayor is opposed to the Board of Supervisors’ proposals to increase taxes because they’re not needed to balance the budget and they will strangle our still young economic recovery,” Winnicker wrote, refusing to answer follow-up questions or support a statement about Chiu’s measure that the OEA concludes is not accurate.

Like many political observers of all stripes, those from downtown and progressive circles, Welch criticized Newsom for his lack of engagement with city business and its long-term fiscal outlook, contrasting him with former Mayor Willie Brown, who met regularly with former Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano even as the two ran a bitter campaign for mayor against one another in 1999. “They dealt with the city’s business like two adults who cared about the city,” he said.

Welch acknowledged that there was still work to be done building political support for the transfer tax measure. He and other progressives would have had to win over city employee unions who wouldn’t like the budget set-aside aspect, and Erickson and Metcalf would need to placate some of their downtown allies who oppose taxes on ideological grounds. But given how downtown groups are behaving right now, that might not have been an easy sell.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business and staffer to the Small Business Commission, which was withholding a recommendation on the Chiu measure but planned to meet again to consider it July 12 (look for an update on the sfbg.com Politics blog). She said the small business community is having tough times and “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

Larger commercial interests are being even more forceful in opposing the revenue measures. While a parade of workers, social service providers, and progressive activists testifying at the July 9 Budget Committee hearing implored supervisors to place all the proposed revenue measures on the ballot, representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce were the only two speakers urging supervisors to drop the measures and focus instead on creating private sector jobs.

“You’re trying to create a little revenue here and it’s not going to work,” said Ken Cleaveland, director of BOMA SF, arguing that big banks and financial services companies — entities exempt from the payroll tax that Chiu is hoping to target with the commercial rent tax — will buy their buildings to avoid paying the tax. “They aren’t going to create more jobs and they really aren’t going to create more revenue.”

Yet Chiu noted that it was the business community and fiscal conservatives who pushed to create the Office of Economic Analysis, whose work they have regularly used to attack progressive legislation. Now that the office has concluded that a piece of progressive legislation is good for the local economy, Chiu told Cleaveland and the Chamber spokesperson Rob Black at the hearing, “I ask you to respect the work this office has done.”

Black said the Chamber board will consider Chiu’s amended legislation, but said businesses are in no mood to help the city. “How many times have you gone to your neighborhood merchant and had them say, ‘Gee, my rent’s too cheap’?<0x2009>” he said during his testimony.

Yet Chiu said landlords of small tenants (those paying less than $65,000 in rent per year) are exempt from the rent tax and only 26 percent of SF businesses would pay any city business tax under his plan. “I hope the mayor will support this proposal and the business community will give it a good look,” Chiu said as the hearing ended.

At the beginning of the hearing, Chiu framed the dire situation facing San Francisco, citing Controller’s Office figures showing this year’s $500 million budget deficit (out of a $6 billion total budget) will be followed by a $700 million deficit next year and a $800 million gap the following budget cycle as a result of a deep structural budget imbalance.

“We have budget deficits as far as the eye can see,” Chiu said at the hearing. “We have to consider measures that will provide more stable sources of revenue.”

He also noted that city employee unions have agreed to give back about $250 million in salary and had their ranks reduced by about 2,000 workers in the last two years. So he and the other progressive supervisors say it’s time for the rest of San Francisco to help address the problem.

“We, as a city, should not be trying to balance this budget simply through cutting,” Sup. David Campos said.

Sup. John Avalos, the committee chair, amended his transfer tax measure in the wake of Newsom’s rejection of the deal by making it a simple 2 percent tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million, and 2.5 percent tax on properties over $10 million. He estimates it will bring in about $25 million per year from the city’s wealthiest corporations and landlords.

“That’s who we’re socking it to,” Avalos told us, saying he was disappointed the compromise fell through. “The amendment is going to be more progressive than what was originally planned.”

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, a strong fiscal conservative who announced early in the hearing, “You want to do that [balance future budgets] by adding taxes, but I want to do it through ongoing service cuts,” later told the Guardian that he was intrigued by the amendments Avalos and Chiu made to their measures and has not yet taken a position on them.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is also sponsoring a measure to increase the city’s tax on parking lot operators from 25 percent to 35 percent, the first change to that tax in 30 years, and will include valet parking for the first time. The measure would bring in up to $24 million per year, and OEA analysis shows it would decrease the number of cars trips by 1.3 percent, another benefit.

SFMTA supports the measure, with board member Cameron Beach testifying that the money will be used to subsidize Muni and “it links the use of private automobiles and is consistent with the city’s transit-first policy.” Mirkarimi, who chairs the Transportation Authority, also has proposed a $10 local vehicle license fee surcharge that would bring in another $5 million per year for Muni.

All the revenue measures require six votes by the full Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider them July 20, after which they would need a simple majority approval by voters in November to take effect.

The mayor has the authority to directly place measures on the ballot, so the committee hearing on his hotel tax loophole measure and a $39 million general obligation bond that he’s proposing to create a revolving loan fund for private sector seismic improvements were mere formalities, so supervisors criticized aspects of each but were unable to make changes.

Avalos even grudgingly acknowledged the hotel tax poison pill was an effective way to kill that revenue source, saying at the hearing, “This is very smart. I don’t agree with it, but it’s very smart.”

Haaland was less charitable, criticizing a provision designed to confuse voters. “This kind of move means both measures won’t pass because now we have to oppose [Newsom’s measure],” he said, criticizing the mayor for running away from the hard decisions facing the city. “He won’t be around next year, when we have an even bigger structural budget deficit, to clean up this mess. Absent new revenue sources, this city starts to fall apart.”

Stage listings

David Talbot
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0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. July 29, Aug 5, 12, 19, 26, 9pm. Through Aug 26. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

Beijing, California Thick House Theater, 1695 18th St; www.asianamericantheater.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sat/17. Asian American Theater Company presents a new play by Paul Heller set in the year 2050, when China invades America.

Cindy Goldfield & Scrumbly Koldewyn in Cowardly Things New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. Cindy Goldfield and Scrumbly Koldewyn in a tribute to Noel Coward.

Comedy Ballet The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/18. Dark Porch Theatre presents an outlandish and unusual dance and theater hybrid.

Dead Certain Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 14. Expression Productions presents a psychological thriller by Marcus Lloyd.

Foresight Fort Mason Southside Theater, Building D; www.fortmason.org. $22-27. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 8pm. Through July 18. Easily Distracted Theatre presents a new play by Bay Area filmmaker Ruben Grijalva.

Gilligan’s Island: Live on Stage! The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sun, 8pm. Through August 29. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts brings the TV show to the stage, lovey.

How the Other Half Loves Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35, Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. In Alan Ayckbourn’s 1971 comedy, a night of infidelity propels two colliding couples into menacing a third, a pair of innocents unwittingly drawn into the whole affair as alibis. The collisions are made all the more kinetic by the fact that Ayckbourn cheekily drops the two principal couples into overlapping living rooms, where they continually brush by each other in ironic obliviousness. At the outset of this droll two-act, Fiona Foster (a smart, cucumber-cool Sylvia Kratins) has just slept with Bob Phillips (a brilliantly sourpussed James Darbyshire), junior colleague of her husband Frank (Jeff Garrett, exuding the animated splendor of the full-on English twit), on the night of the couple’s wedding anniversary (pure coincidence for the forgetful, loveless Fiona). In loose coordination with lover Bob, Fiona explains her late night absence with reference to a pair of vague acquaintances, the Featherstones (Jocelyn Stringer and Adam D. Simpson). Bob does the same with Teresa (a spunky Corinne Proctor), his homebound wife and a new, deeply disgruntled young mother. Naturally, back-to-back dinner parties with said alibis ensue, much to the horror and chagrin of the adulterers. Off Broadway West Theatre Company’s production, smoothly helmed by Richard Harder, makes the most of the complex staging as both time and space collapse over intersecting dining tables. If the play is slow to catch fire, it reaches a nice sustained peak that proves worth the going. Shaky accents from Garrett and especially Simpson can distract at times, but Harder’s cast is generally solid and engaging, with particularly enjoyable work from Darbyshire and Proctor as the volatile younger Phillips with their crass bickering, canned erotic energy, and barely countenanced off-stage baby. (Avila)

The 91 Owl African American Arts Cultural Complex, 762 Fulton; 574-8908, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-25. Nightly, 8pm. Through July 22. A production of Bernard Norris’s play about the life of a San Francisco bus stop.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

Piaf: Love Conquers All Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-36. Tues-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm. Through August 7. Tone Poet Productions brings a portrait of Edith Piaf to the stage.

Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park and other sites; 285-1717, www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm; also Sept 6, 2pm; Sept 17, 8pm. It may have been just a coincidence, but it certainly seems auspicious that the San Francisco Mime Troupe, itself collectively run since the 1970’s, would preview their latest show Posibilidad on the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives. The show, which centers around the struggles of the last remaining workers in a hemp clothing factory ("Peaceweavers"), hones in on the ideological divide between business conducted as usual, and the impulse to create a different system. Taking a clip from the Ari Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary The Take, half of the play is set in Argentina, where textile-worker Sophia (Lisa Hori-Garcia) becomes involved in a factory takeover for the first time. Her past experiences help inform her new co-workers’ sitdown strike and takeover of their own factory after they are told it will close by their impossibly fey, new age boss Ernesto (Rotimi Agbabiaka). You don’t need professional co-op experience to find humor in the nascent collective’s endless rounds of meetings, wince at their struggles against capitalistic indoctrination, or cheer the rousing message of "Esta es Nuestra Lucha" passionately sung by Velina Brown, though in another welcome coincidence, the run of Posibilidad also coincides with the National Worker Cooperative conference being held in August, so if you get extra inspired, you can always try to join forces there. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Reading My Dad’s Porn and French Kissing the Dog The Marsh Studio Theater, 1074 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/17. The title of San Francisco writer-performer Cherry Zonkowski’s confessional solo show gives only a little away—a passing detail from the Nordic diversions of a spirited army brat and daughter of an alcoholic father—but the rest of the narrative leaves even less to the imagination. An account of Zonkowski’s initiation into the sex party and BDSM scene, Reading My Dad’s Porn bounces gleefully between comically graphic depictions of sweaty, writhing Bay Area meet-and-greets and a childhood and young adulthood buried in family dysfunction, a loveless marriage, and the grueling teaching load of a recent English PhD. Ultimately, it’s the story of a woman finding her own identity and community, and if the outlines sound familiar they also feel that way. The straightforward plot—peppered with humorous details and asides (as well as the odd song, accompanied by accordionist Salane Schultz, alternating nights with Aaron Seeman)—lacks both urgency and characters of much complexity. The story’s patina of outré sex, meanwhile, is far from revelatory and too superficial and jokey to offer much dramatic heft. Nevertheless, the show, developed with director David Ford, draws a limited appeal from the force of Zonkowski’s extroverted personality, whose orientation sexual and otherwise skews toward fun—although her more aggressive attempts to corral the audience into participating (mainly vocally) in the show’s narrative high jinx may put some off even more than the fisting by the snack table. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through August 28. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

Young Frankenstein Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor; 551-2000, www.shnsf.com. $30-99. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, also Tues/13, July 20, 8pm; Wed/7, July 24, 21, 2 and 8pm. Through July 25.

For all its outlandish showmanship, Mel Brooks’s other movie-turned-musical is not quite as grand a beast as The Producers . Still, the adventures of Victor Frankenstein’s reputation-conscious grandson, Frederick Frankenstein—played with exceeding charm and surgeon-like skill by major cut-up Roger Bart, originator of the role on Broadway—remains a monster of a show, in more ways than one. The rapid-fire repartee, for starters, is scarily deft, the comic timing among a first-rate cast all but flawless (even when milking a line shamelessly), the fancy footwork (choreographed by director Susan Stroman) pretty fancy, and the mise en scène holds some attractive surprises as well. At the same time, and despite the fecund humor revolving around questions of size and virility, the show’s actual two-and-a-half-hour length proves a bit wearying, especially as many of the best jokes (though by no means all) are the much-loved and universally much-repeated gags from the film. Moreover, Brooks’s songs, while very able, rarely rise to memorable and sometimes feel perfunctory or a bit busy. One of the glorious exceptions is the blind hermit scene (played brilliantly by Brad Oscar), which combines the hilariously plaintive song "Please Send Me Someone" with a lovingly faithful rendition of the original spoof for a sequence that literally smokes. (Avila)

BAY AREA

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. July 24, 31, 8pm; Sun/18, July 25, Aug 1, 7pm; Fri/16, 9pm. Through August 1. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

Left of Oz Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Fri-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/18. Stephanie’s Playhouse presents a lez-queer musical comedy following the out west adventures of Dorothy.

Speech & Debate Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sun/18. Aurora Theatre closes its 18th season with Stephen Karam’s comedy about three teen misfits connected to a small town sex scandal.


PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Theatre Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, B350 Fort Mason; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. Bay Area Theatresports presents an evening of theater and comedy.

The Bowls Project: Secrets of the Apocalyptic Intimate Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sculpture Court, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Various times. Through August 22. Charming Hostess presents a series of performances in conjunction with an interactive sound sculpture.

Liz Grant Variety Pack Comedy Show Purple Onion, 140 Columbus; 200-8781, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri, 4:30pm. Through Sept 3. $10. A changing lineup of stand up comedy.

"San Francisco Olympians Festival" Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; www.sfolympians.com Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm, $10. A series of one-act perfomances by No Nude Men Productions.

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Sean Bonnette, Kepi Ghoulie, Gnarboots Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Cellar Door, Shapes Stars Make, Ventid El Rio. 8pm.

Excuses for Skipping, Lovers, Fake Your Own Death Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

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

Bettye LaVette, Milton Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $26.

Rykarda Parasol, Kevin Junior (Chamber Strings), Mark Matos and Os Beaches, Dolly Rocker Movement Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Raccoons, Red Blue Yellow, Jhameel, Alee Kharim and Science Fiction Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Rattlesnakes, Zodiac Death Valley, Electric Sister Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Wakey! Wakey!, Wave Array, Doom Bird Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

*Bardot A Go Go Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $7. Bastille Dance Day Party with DJs Brother Grimm, Pink Frankenstein, and Cali Kid.

Bastille Day on Belden Belden Place between Pine and Bush, SF; www.belden-place.com. 4pm, free. With DJs Pheeko Dubfunk, Jared F, Nima G, and Hakobo.

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

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

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

Mod vs. Rockers Make-out Room. 9pm, free. A Bastille Day dance off.

Open Mic Night 330 Ritch. 9pm, $7.

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

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

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

THURSDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Action Design, Hypernova, Yellow Dogs Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Battlehooch, Cash Pony, Wise Wives Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Jesse Brewster, Felsen, Luce, Brad Brooks Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Built to Spill, Fauxbois Slim’s. 9pm, $26.

Congress with Moon Candy, Mai-Lei, and Ge-ology Coda. 9pm, $10.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Mary Gauthier, Peter Bradley Adams Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $20.

Live Evil Make-Out Room. 5pm, free.

Lords of Acid, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult DNA Lounge. 9pm, $23.

Part Time, Sam Flax and Higher Color, Bridget St. John, Elisa Randazzo with Robinson, Amy Blaschke Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen, Olivia Mancini, AntonetteG Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Savanna Blu Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Very Be Careful, Franco Nero, DJs Special Lord B, Ben Bracken, and Phengren Oswald Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afro-tropical, samba, and funk.

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

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

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

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

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

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

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

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

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

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

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

FRIDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Antibalas, Sway Machinery Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $23.

Inquisition, Altar of Plagues, Velnias, Dispirit Elbo Room. 8pm, $14.

Maria Taylor Andy LeMaster, Foolproof Four, Morgan LeMaster Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Carlton Melton, Nothing People, Hans Keller Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Mighty Mo Rodgers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Shabazz Palaces Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $20.

Slowness, Skeletal System, Sunbeam Rd., Nuns of Justice Retox Lounge. 8:30pm, $2.

Struts, Mighty Slim Pickins!, Minks Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Teenage Bottlerocket, Banner Pilot, Complaints Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

3rdrail, Absent Society, Saint Vernon, Falling to Pieces Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

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

Chris Brown, Animal Divino Project, Chad McKinney, Joe Salvatore Li Po Lounge. 9pm, $5.

Emily Anne’s Delights Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Pieces of a Dream Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $16.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Broken Glass Beach Coda. 10pm, $10.

Going Away Party Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-$10.

Quiet Stars Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hubba Hubba Revue: Bootie Pirate Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Bootleg mash-ups and buccaneer burlesque.

Noze, Worthy, and Moomaw Mighty. 9pm, $17. Spinning electronica.

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

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

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

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

TekAndHaus Anu, 43 6th St., SF; (415) 931-7292?. 10pm, $5. With DJ Raíz.

SATURDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acephalix, Self-Inflicted, Vaccuum Elbo Room. 5pm, $7.

Bare Wires, Moccretro, Heavy Hills, Family Matters Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Drink Up Buttercup, I Come to Shanghai Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

*Halford Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $40.

Howlin Rain, Sean Smith and the Present Moment, 3 Leafs El Rio. 9pm, $8.

Igor and Red Elvises, Gun and Doll Show Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Maps and Atlases, Cults, Globes Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Sons of Champlin, Electric Flag, Fishbear Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

Stone Foxes, Mata Leon, Strange Vine Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Sweet Baby Jai Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Ben Taylor, Katie Herzig Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Hillbilly Jazbos Club Deluxe. 10pm, $5.

Pieces of a Dream Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Terry Disley Experience with Erik Jekabson Coda. 7pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Blue Diamond Fillups Thee Parkside. 11am, free.

Hillbilly Jazzbos Deluxe, 1511 Haight, SF; (415) 552-6949. 10pm, $5.

Ian Luban Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Makru Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Orquesta lo Clave The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Robert Gastelum Latin Jazz Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Justin Roberts and the Not Ready for Naptime Players Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). Noon, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie: Chernobyl DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. John!John! presents a disaster-themed stage show, plus DJs Adrian and Mysterious D spin mash-ups.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Booty-shaking hip-hop with DJ Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie music videos.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

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

Jump Up to Get the Beat Down Club Six. 9pm, $5. With live performances by All Soul, Makeshift, Sevent Day, Ophrap, and 5th P and DJs Xole and One-Way.

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15. Live dhol (drum) players, dance performers, and DJs.

O.K. Hole Amnesia. 10pm, $5. With live performances by Bronze, Altars, Jason Greer, and resident DJs C.L.A.W.S., Muscledrum, and Nay Nay.

Party Like It’s 1994 Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $10. With DJs Jeffery Paradise, Richie Panic, Deevice, and more spinning 90’s music.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

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

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul spin 60s soul.

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

Alloy Trex Project One, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 938-7173. 9:30pm, $10. CD release party with guests Cubik, Origami, Outersect, and DJ Yap.

Wet and Wild Club 8, 1151 Folsom, SF; (415) 431-1151. 9pm, $8. With DJs David Harness and Dr. Proctor and a live performance by Lady TaTas.

SUNDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Jazz Mafia Presents Remix: Live” Coda. 10pm, $10.

Shanta Loecker, Arian Saleh Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Loquat, Downer Party, Ross Sea Party, Mister Loveless Milk. 8pm, $8.

Mahjongg, Return to Mono, Actors Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

*Origin, Gigan, Brain Drill, Embryonic Devourment DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $16.

Primus Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $36.

Secret History, Jetskiis, Kids on Crime Spree, Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $10.

Secretions, Ashtray, Hounds and Harlots, Bastards of Young Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

Still Flyin’, Poison Control Center Knockout. 9pm.

Sweethead, Nico Vega Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTY

Caravan Palace, DePedro Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Ash Reiter, Fpod Bpod, Jesse Denatale, Amber Gougis Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Rolando Morales The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Watcha Clan, Charming Hostess Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. 8pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guests Roy Two Thousand and DJ Quest.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Makeup Showdown, 10 6th St., SF; (415) 503-0684. 8pm, free. With host Triple Cobra and guest DJs spinning glam rock.

Mission Creek Music Festival presents the After-Park Closing Night Dance Party El Rio. 9pm, $5. With DJs Primo, Nick Waterhouse, and Carnita.

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

Slick Idiot, Mona Mur Paradise Lounge. 9pm.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

Sunday Mass The Endup. 8pm, $15. With DJs David Harness, Leonard, Greg Yuen, and more.

Watcha Clan with Charming Hostess New Frequencies, YBCA Forum and Sculptural Court, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787. 8pm, $25

MONDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alex Band Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Dig, Amateurbation, Poison Control Center Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Semi Feral, Spider Garage, Sorry Mom and Dad El Rio. 7pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Shed House Jamboree, Pick Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Ana Tijoux, Funky C and Joya, Disco Shawn Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Con Brio, California Honeydrops, Blood and Sunshine Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Happy Birthday, Residual Exhoes, Young Prisms Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

(HED) P.E., Kutt Calhoun, Big B, Johnny Richter, Blestenation Slim’s. 8pm, $19.

*Kowloon Walled City, Rosetta, City of Ships, Litany for the Whale Knockout. 8:30pm, free.

Kevin Seconds, Emily Davis Thee Parkside. 8pm, $5.

Tan Dollar, Dash Jacket, Weed Diamond, Neighbors Sub-Mission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 9pm.

Tunnel, Tigon, Red River Choir Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Weiner Kids, 3 Leafs, Sudden Oak, Mira Cook, Danishta Rivero Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

The New Things Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alejo Aponte y Latonera, DJs Fausto Sousa and Carioca Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ Crystal Meth and DJ Motley Cruz.

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

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

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

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

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 14

Make Beer in Your Basement Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm, free. Learn to make your own beer to both save money and get invited to more parties. Home brewer Caleb Shaffer presents an overview of the beer brewing process, complete with explanations on technique, equipment, and ingredients.

Vive le Film! Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.disposablefilmfest.com. 8pm, free. In honor of Bastille Day, the Disposable Film Festival will present a collection of disposable films with a French flare. Enjoy drink specials courtesy of Hotel Rex and valet bike parking provided by Globe Bikes.

THURSDAY 15

Hayes Valley Farm Tour Hayes Valley Farm, Laguna between Oak and Fell, SF; www.laborfest.net. 3pm, free. Attend this LaborFest sponsored tour of Hayes Valley Farm, an urban agriculture education and research project, and learn about the alliance of urban farmers, educators, and designers that comprise the Hayes Valley Farm Project Team and the innovative strategies used on the farm in order to meet the needs of our planet and the surrounding communities of San Francisco. Tours of the farm are held every Thursday and Sunday.

FRIDAY 16

Free Museum Weekend Various museums in San Francisco, visit www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/target for exact dates and times. Fri.-Sun., free. The de Young Museum, Asian Art Museum, SFMOMA, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of African Diaspora, Zeum, and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival are all offering free admission days throughout the weekend for all ages along with hands-on art activities, and family friendly performances.

SATURDAY 17

“Art Show” Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8964. 5pm, $5 suggested donation. Watch interpretive drag performances devoted to the works of Keith Gaspari, who will be hosting along with the lovely Bebe Sweetbriar. Featuring works by local artists and performers, champagne toasts, a raffle, and special Bulleit bourbon cocktails to benefit Visual Aid, a non-profit that supports artists living with HIV.

“Beatles to Bowie” San Francisco Art Exchange, 458 Geary, SF; (415) 441-8840. 7pm, free. Attend the opening of this Rock n’ Roll photo exhibition displaying original photos showcasing the evolution of music from the British invasion to glam rock from 1962 to 1974. Featuring never before seen photos by Terry O’Neill.

Behind the Storefronts Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, 3rd floor, 750 Kearny, SF; (415) 252-2598. 2pm, free. Learn about how Art in Storefronts, a citywide project that temporarily places original art installations and murals into vacant storefront windows and exposed walls, from some of the artists and property owners who participated in the current Chinatown exhibition. An artist-led tour of the storefronts and murals will follow the discussion.

Night Light SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 552-1770. 9pm, $5 suggested donation. Get lost in a multimedia garden party featuring temporary multimedia, abstract sound, video, and film installation set in the garden of SOMArts. In conjunction with the current “Totally Unrealistic: the art of abstraction” exhibit.

Schools for Salone El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 648-4767. 4pm, $10 suggested donation. Enjoy an afternoon of dancing, eating, drinking, and probable sunshine to benefit Schools for Salone, a non profit that build schools in Sierra Leone. Featuring music by DJs Marcos, Eschew, SpinCycle, PMS, and Ras Kanta, African food by Bissap Baobab, and raffle prizes.

Song and Poetry Swap The San Francisco Folk Music Club, 885 Clayton, SF; (415) 648-3457. 8pm, free. Join the Freedom Song Network to help keep the spirit of labor and political song alive in the Bay Area by bringing songs or poems to share at this swap of picket line, rally, and concert songs and poems. No musical training or talent required. Part of LaborFest 2010: www.laborfest.net.

Union Square Art Walk Participating galleries along Post and Sutter streets, SF; for exact locations visit http://artwalksf.com/. Noon-5pm, free. Take a free, self-guided walking tour of Union Square art galleries at this art walk featuring artist talks, performance art, live music, film screenings, refreshments, and more.

SUNDAY 18

Lots of Abundance Meet at CCA Farm, 8th St. at Hooper, SF; www.sfbike.org. 9:45am, $5 suggested donation. Discover local projects that reclaim abandoned lots and former freeways for public use and for the purpose of restoring connections to food on this two and a half hour bike tour led by TransitionSF and the San Francisco Permaculture Guild. The tour will highlight local efforts to create community and garner support for both the environment and the economy.

MONDAY 19

Ubu Roi Theater Pub, Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. 8pm, free. Take in a one night performance of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 bawdy and nihilistic re-imagining of Macbeth, translated and modernized by Bennett Fisher. Enjoy this original work and workshop at the Café Royale bar featuring musical accompaniment by DJ Wait What.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/14–Tues/20 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-10. “OpenScreening: Free NYC 2009,” Thurs, 8. “Short Movie Revolution,” Fri, 8. Why Isn’t Chris von Sneidern Famous? (McNamera, 2009), Sun, 8. All events co-presented by the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; (510) 841-4824, www.bfuu.org. Free. Defamation (Shamir, 2009), Thurs, 7:30.

BRIDGE 3010 Geary, SF; (415) 668-6384. $10. “Rocksploitation with Citizen Midnight:” Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986), Sat, midnight.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-20. •Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945), Wed, 7, and Leave Her to Heaven (Stahl, 1945), Wed, 9:10. “San Francisco Silent Film Festival:” The Iron Horse (Ford, 1924), Thurs, 7; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: Lost and Found Films,” Fri, 11:30am (free admission); A Spray of Plum Blossoms (Bu, 1931), Fri, 2; Rotaie (Camerini, 1929), Fri, 6; Metropolis (Lang, 1927), Fri, 8:15; “The Big Business of Short, Funny Films,” with Pete Docter in person, Sat, 10am; “Variations on a Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Film,” Sat, noon; The Flying Ace (Norman, 1926), Sat, 2; The Strong Man (Capra, 1926), Sat, 4; Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst, 1929), Sat, 6:30; Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Christensen, 1922), Sat, 9:30; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: First the Bad News … then the Good!”, Sun, 10am (free admission); The Shakedown (Wyler, 1929), Sun, noon; Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929), Sun, 2:30; The Woman Disputed (King and Taylor, 1928), Sun, 4:30; L’heureuse mort (Nadejdine, 1924), Sun, 7:30. For more information, visit www.silentfilm.org.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Girl Who Played With Fire (Alfredson, 2009), call for dates and times. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009), call for dates and times. OSS 117: Lost in Rio (Hazanavicius, 2009), call for dates and times. Touching Home (Miller and Miller, 2009), call for dates and times. “San Francisco Opera: Grand Opera Cinema Series:” Don Giovanni, Thurs, 7 and Sat, 10. Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929), Mon, 7:15. With a score performed by Alloy Orchestra (tickets for this event, $15).

DELANCEY STREET SCREENING ROOM 600 The Embarcadero, SF; http://action.eff.org/ninapaley. $30. Sita Sings the Blues (Paley, 2009), Tues, 7. With Nina Paley in person; benefit for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cartoon Art Museum.

FORBIDDEN ISLAND TIKI LOUNGE 1304 Lincoln, Alameda; www.forbiddenislandalameda.com. Free. “Forbidden Thrills: Mermaid Mania!”: •Night Tide (Harrington, 1961), Mon, 7:30, and Mermaids of Tiburon (Lamb, 1962), Mon, 9:15.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Stealing America, Vote By Vote (Fadiman, 2008), Wed, 7:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Akira Kurosawa Centennial:” •The Most Beautiful (1944), and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945), Wed, 7; Seven Samurai (1954), Sat, 7. “A Theater Near You:” Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969), Thurs, 7 and Sun, 7:10. “Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi:” Salvatore Giuliano (1961), Fri, 7; The Moment of Truth (1965), Fri, 9:05; Hands Over the City (1963), Sun, 5.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:35 (also Wed, 2). Wild in the Streets (Shear, 1968), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat, 2, 4). Lolita (Kubrick, 1962), Sun, 2, 5, 8, and Mon, 7:30. Freaks (Browning, 1932), July 20-21, 7:15, 9:15 (also July 31, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-11.50. “SF Indie Presents: Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” through July 22. See www.sfindie.com for schedule.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. The Beard Club (Lukitsch, sneak preview), Thurs, 8. With free popcorn and live music.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $8-10. “Samurai Saga Vol.1: From Classic Noir to New Colors:” Samurai Rebellion (Kobayashi, 1967), Wed, 4:30; Fri, 4:15; and Sat, 7; Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron (Gosha, 1976), Wed-Thurs, 7, and Sat, 3:15; Three Outlaw Samurai (Gosha, 1964), Thurs, 4:45; Fri, 7; and Sat, 1; Twilight Samurai (Yamada, 2002), Sun, 11:20, and July 22, 4:30, 7; The Hidden Blade (Yamada, 2004), Sun, 1:50; Tues, 7; and July 21, 4:15. Love and Honor (Yamada, 2006), Sun, 4:20; Mon, 7; and Tues, 4:30. Yamazakura: The Cherry Tree in the Hills (Shinohara, 2008), Sun and July 21, 7; Mon, 4:50.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; www.lolsf.org. $10. “LOL-SF: A Celebration of Comedy On-Screen,” comedy films with celebrity presenters, through Thurs/15.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Something From Nothing: Films on Design and Architecture:” Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio (Douglas, 2010), Sun, 2.

Film listings

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

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

The seventh Another Hole in the Head Film Festival runs July 8-29 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; and Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $11) and schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Inception Christopher Nolan takes a break from the Bat-Director’s Chair to helm this Leonardo DiCaprio thriller about futuristic mind crimes. (2:30) Marina, Presidio.

*Let It Rain Well-known feminist author Agathe Villanova (writer-director Agnès Jaoui) is taking a rare break from her busy Paris life, visiting her hometown to see family, vacation with boyfriend Antoine (Frédéric Pierrot), and do a little stumping for her nascent political career. But despite the ever-picturesque French countryside as background, all is not harmonious. Antoine complains Agathe’s workaholism (among other things) is killing their relationship, particularly once she agrees to be time-consumingly interviewed for film about "successful women" by shambling documentarian Michel (coscenarist Jean-Pierre Bacri) and local Karim (Jamel Debbouze). Her married-with-children sister Florence (Pascale Arbillot) is having a secret affair with Michel, but seems more focused on old resentments springing from Agathe being their late mother’s favorite. Karim — son of the family’s longtime housekeeper (Mimouna Hadji) — bears his own grudge against the clan and brusque, officious Agathe in particular. Being happily wed, he’s further bothered at his hotel day job by his attraction to co-worker Aurélie (Florence Loiret-Caille). These various conflicts simmer, then boil over as the documentary shooting goes from bumbling to disastrous. In 2004, Jaoui delivered a pretty near perfect Gallic ensemble seriocomedy in Look at Me. This isn’t quite that good. Still, her seemingly effortless skill at managing complex character dynamics, eliciting expert performances (including her own), and weaving it all together with insouciant panache makes this a real pleasure. The problem with Agnès Jaoui: she’s so good it chafes that (acting-only gigs aside) she’s made just three films in ten years. Pick it up, girl! (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*[Rec] 2 See "666-ZOMB." (1:24) Lumiere.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Socially awkward science nerd Dave (Jay Baruchel) toils away on his suspiciously elaborate NYU physics project, unaware that he’s about to have a Harry Potter-style moment of awakening. Enter Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), a centuries-old, steampunky sorcerer who believes Dave to be "the Prime Merlinian" — i.e., the greatest conjurer since Merlin himself. (Literally) rising from ashes to provide conflict are fellow sorcerers Horvath (Alfred Molina) and Morgana (Alice Krige); signing on for romantic-interest purposes are Monica Bellucci and newcomer Teresa Palmer. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice spins off Disney classic Fantasia (1940) in only the loosest sense, though there is a scene of dancing brooms. The bland Baruchel’s rise to fame continues to mystify, but at least Cage and Molina seem to be having a blast exchanging insults and zapping each other around. (1:43) (Eddy)

South of the Border After a prolific career of dramatic films steeped in political commentary, Oliver Stone drops the pretext. South of the Border is his Michael Moore moment, a chance for the filmmaker to make a direct and focused documentary in which his bias is readily apparent. Stone travels to South American nations and meets with their political leaders, men and women — including Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa — who have long been considered enemies of the United States. His goal is to show that they are not ruthless dictators but rather democratically elected representatives of their country, cast in a negative light by a mainstream media with ulterior motives. Stone’s rapport with these politicians is intimate: at one point, he plays soccer with Morales. Even if you’re skeptical of his assertions, you can at least appreciate the unique perspective South of the Border offers. As a film, it’s somewhat slipshod, not nearly as glossy as a Moore production. But provided you’re willing to fill in the blanks, it’s a captivating and well-intentioned endeavor. (1:18) (Peitzman)

Spring Fever Shot surreptitiously and chock full of gay sex, Chinese director Lou Ye’s latest film isn’t likely to earn him any additional slack from Chinese government censors (his 2006 film, Summer Palace, got him banned from filmmaking for five years after he failed to preview it before it screened at Cannes). Using hand-held cameras, public settings, and natural lighting, Lou follows Wang Ping (Wu Wei), who’s been having a passionate, messy affair with travel agent Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao). Things get more complicated when the snoop Wang’s wife hires to follow her closeted husband winds up pursuing the two men in ways he never imagined. What Spring Fever lacks in continuity and psychological depth, it makes up for with sexual candor and a genuine frisson of risk, given the secretive conditions under which it was made. That thrill doesn’t quite last through the film’s duration, but as a document of defiance Spring Fever is commendable. (1:56) Four Star. (Sussman)

Standing Ovation Atlantic City teens form a song-and-dance troupe in this High School Musical-style family film. (1:48)

ONGOING

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Opening with the humid buzz of crickets and the probings of bug aficionados in the thick of a forest, first-time documentarian Jessica Oreck puts Japan’s fascination with insects under the microscope. Preferring to let the images and interview subjects speak for themselves, she turns a lens to young children who clamor to buy sleek, shiny, obsidian beetles, as well as the giant big city gatherings of insect collectors — events that likely are less than familiar to western audiences. Oreck’s intent is to get at the ineffable attraction behind such astonishing sales as that of a single beetle for $90,000 not so long ago, and to that end, she weaves in looks at insect literature and art, visits to Buddhist temples, and historical factoids about, for instance, the first cricket-selling business in the early 1800s. (1:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*City Island The Rizzo family of City Island, N.Y. — a tiny atoll associated historically with fishing and jurisdictionally with the Bronx — have reached a state where their primary interactions consist of sniping, yelling, and storming out of rooms. These storm clouds operate as cover for the secrets they’re all busy keeping from one another. Correctional officer Vince (Andy Garcia) pretends he’s got frequent poker nights so he can skulk off to his true shameful indulgence: a Manhattan acting class. Perpetually fuming spouse Joyce (Julianna Margulies) assumes he’s having an affair. Daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has dropped out of school to work at a strip joint, while the world class-sarcasms of teenager Vinnie (Ezra Miller) deflect attention from his own hidden life as an aspiring chubby chaser. All this (plus everyone’s sneaky cigarette habit) is nothing, however, compared to Vince’s really big secret: he conceived and abandoned a "love child" before marrying, and said guilty issue has just turned up as a 24-year-old car thief on his cell block. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta made a couple other features in the last 15 years, none widely seen; if this latest is typical, we need more of him, more often. Perfectly cast, City Island is farcical without being cartoonish, howl-inducing without lowering your brain-cell count. It’s arguably a better, less self-conscious slice of dysfunctional family absurdism than Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — complete with an Alan Arkin more inspired in his one big scene here than in all of that film’s Oscar-winning performance. (1:40) Four Star. (Harvey)

Cyrus It’s tempting to label Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus as "mumblecore goes mainstream." Yes, the mumblecore elements are all there: plentiful moments of awkward humiliation, characters fumbling verbally and sometimes physically in desperate attempts to establish emotional connections, and a meandering, character-driven plot, in the sense that the characters themselves possess precious little drive. The addition of bona fide indie movie stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, and Marisa Tomei — not to mention Hollywood’s chubby-funny guy du jour, Jonah Hill — could lead some to believe that the DIY-loving Duplass brothers (2005’s The Puffy Chair, 2008’s Baghead) have gone from slacker disciples of John Cassavetes (informally known as "Slackavetes") to worshippers at the slickly profane (with a heart) altar of Judd Apatow. But despite the presence of Apatow protégé Hill (2007’s Superbad) in the title role, Cyrus steers clear of crowd-pleasing bombast, instead favoring small, relatively naturalistic moments. That is to say, not much actually happens. Mumblecore? More or less. Mainstream? Not exactly. Despite playing a character with some serious psychological issues, Hill comes off as likeable. Unfortunately the movie is neither as broadly comic nor as emotionally poignant as it needs to be — the two opposing forces seem to cancel each other out like acids and bases. (1:32) Empire, Sundance Kabuki. (Devereaux)

Despicable Me Judging from the adorable, booty-shaking, highly merchandisable charm of its sunny-yellow Percocet-like minions, Despicable Me‘s makers have more than a few fond memories of the California Raisins. That gives you an idea of the 30-second attention-span level at work here. Thanks to Pixar and company, our expectations for animated features are high, but despite the single lob at Lehman Brothers aimed toward the grown-ups, the humor here is pitched straight at the eight and younger crowd: from the mugging, child-like minions to the all-in-good-fun, slightly quease-inducing 3-D roller-coaster ride. Gru (Steve Carell) is Despicable‘s also-ran supervillain — a bit too old and too unoriginal for a game that’s been rigged in the favor of the youthful, annoyingly perky Vector (Jason Segel), who’s managed to swipe the Giza Pyramids and become the world’s number one bad dude. When Vector steals away the crucial shrink ray needed for Gru’s plot to thieve the moon, the latter pulls out the big guns: three adorable orphans who have managed to penetrate Vector’s defenses with their fund-raising cookie sales. It turns out kids have their own insidiously heart-warming way of wrecking havoc on one’s well-laid plans. Filmmakers Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud do their best to exploit the 3-D medium, but Avatar (2009) this is not. Nor will many adults be able to withstand the onslaught of cute undertaken by all those raisins, I mean, minions. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Chun)

*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Lumiere. (Sussman)

Get Him to the Greek At this point movie execs can throw producer Judd Apatow’s name on the marquee of a film and it’s a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s hard to say whether this Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) spin-off benefits from the Apatow sign of approval or if it would be better off standing on its own, but it definitely doesn’t benefit from comparisons to its predecessor. Russell Brand returns as the British rock star Aldous Snow, and Jonah Hill, playing a different character this time, is given the task of chaperoning the uncooperative Snow from London to LA in 48 hours. Despite a great cast, including a surprisingly animated P. Diddy, the story is pretty bland and can’t match the blend of drama and comedy that Marshall achieved. Of course, none of that matters because the movie execs are right: if you like Apatow’s brand of humor, you’re going to have a good time anyway. (1:49) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Peter Galvin)

*The Girl Who Played With Fire Lisbeth Salander is cooler than you are. The heroine of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling book series is fierce, mysterious, and utterly captivating: in the movie adaptations, she’s perfectly realized by Noomi Rapace, who has the power to transform Lisbeth from literary hero to film icon. Rapace first impressed audiences in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009), a faithful adaptation of Larsson’s premiere novel, and she returns as Lisbeth in The Girl Who Played With Fire. The sequel, as is often the case, isn’t quite on par with the original, but it’s still a page-to-screen success. And while the first film spent equal time on journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), The Girl Who Played With Fire is almost entirely Lisbeth’s story. Sure, there’s more to the movie than the hacker-turned-sleuth — and the actor who plays her — but she carries the film. Rapace is Lisbeth; Lisbeth is Rapace. I’d watch both in anything. (2:09) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Four Star, Lumiere, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Grown Ups In order of star power, Grown Ups casts Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade as five fortysomething friends who reunite to attend the funeral of their high school basketball coach, and play catch-up over a long weekend together at a cabin by the lake. If you’re expecting five of America’s biggest comedy stars to form like Voltron and make the most hilarious movie of the year, you’ve got a sad day coming. Grown Ups is never the sum of its parts, it’s about on par with Sandler’s other producing/starring affairs, and probably features a lot of the same jokes. People fall in poop and little kids say cute things designed to make audiences awww, but history has shown that’s exactly what a popcorn viewer is looking for. By these standards, Grown Ups is a perfectly summer-y movie. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Whether you’re a fan of its subject or not, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary is an absorbing look at the business of entertainment, a demanding treadmill that fame doesn’t really make any easier. At 75, comedian Rivers has four decades in the spotlight behind her. Yet despite a high Q rating she finds it difficult to get the top-ranked gigs, no matter that as a workaholic who’ll take anything she could scarcely be more available. Funny onstage (and a lot ruder than on TV), she’s very, very focused off-, dismissive of being called a "trailblazer" when she’s still actively competing with those whose women comics trail she blazed for today’s hot TV guest spot or whatever. Anyone seeking a thorough career overview will have to look elsewhere; this vérité year-in-the-life portrait is, like the lady herself, entertainingly and quite fiercely focused on the here-and-now. (1:24) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

John Rabe John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) was the Oskar Schindler of Nanking: A man who, under discreetly opportunist pretenses, attempted to keep the Chinese in a safety zone from the Japanese in the late 30s. Steve Buscemi plays Robert Wilson, a surly American doctor. He’s to Tukur as Ben Kingsley was to Liam Neeson in 1993’s Schindler’s List, but without the nuance or iconic chemistry. Tukur is understated, bordering on uninteresting, and Buscemi is just over-the-top. Unlike Spielberg’s film, John Rabe grants us little access to the stories of civilians. The film is so preoccupied with people of power and those like Rabe, couched in a world of privilege, that the film lacks an emotional, human center. It’s impossible to feel much of anything because we’re never asked to feel, nor are we ever asked to endure any especially difficult scenes. Even the occasional rain of hellfire isn’t as wallop-packing as it ought to be. (2:14) Four Star, Presidio. (Ryan Lattanzio)

The Karate Kid The most baffling thing about The Karate Kid is its title: little Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) never actually learns karate. He practices kung-fu, an entirely different form of martial arts — you know, from a different country. There’s something obnoxious and absurd about the misnomer: the film seems to suggest that if you’ve seen one Asian culture, you’ve seen them all. That aside, it’s not a bad movie. Smith is mostly pretty likeable, and there’s a definite satisfaction to seeing him grow from bullied weakling to kung-fu star. And Jackie Chan gets to exercise his dramatic chops — he even gets a crying scene! But Karate Kid is a "reboot," the preferred term for the endless stream of unnecessary remakes Hollywood keeps churning out. You can’t help but think about the superior 1984 version. Jaden Smith is no Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, and kung-fu is no karate. Don’t even get me started on the "jacket on, jacket off" crap. Which, if you say it quickly, sounds a little adult for a PG movie. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*The Kids Are All Right In many ways, The Kids Are All Right is a straightforward family dramedy: it’s about parents trying to do what’s best for their children and struggling to keep their relationship together. But it’s also a film in which Jules (Julianne Moore) goes down on Nic (Annette Bening) while they’re watching gay porn. Director Lisa Cholodenko (1998’s High Art) co-wrote the script (with Stuart Blumberg), and the film’s blend between mainstream and queer is part of what makes Kids such an important — not to mention enjoyable — film. Despite presenting issues that might be contentious to large portions of the country, the movie maintains an approachability that’s often lacking in queer cinema. Of course, being in the gay mecca of the Bay Area skews things significantly — most locals wouldn’t bat an eye at Kids, which has Nic and Jules’ children inviting their biological father ("the sperm donor," played by Mark Ruffalo) into their lives. But for those outside the liberal bubble, the idea of a nontraditional family might be more eye-opening. It’s not a message movie, but Kids may still change minds. And even if it doesn’t, the film is a success that works chiefly because it isn’t heavy-handed. It refuses to take itself too seriously. At its best, Kids is laugh-out-loud funny, handling the heaviest of issues with grace and humor. (1:47) Bridge, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Last Airbender There must be some M. Night Shyamalan fans out there. How else does one explain the fact that he keeps making movies? And yet, most of his post-Sixth Sense (1999) work has ranged from forgettable to downright reviled. His latest disaster is sure to fall into the latter category: in The Last Airbender, he takes a much-loved Nickelodeon cartoon and transforms it into an awkwardly paced, poorly acted mess. Woefully miscast Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the avatar with the power to end the Fire Nation’s dominion. Along with his friends, siblings Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara (Nicola Peltz), Aang must — oh, just watch the damn show. For newcomers, the film is as confusing as Shyamalan’s equally self-indulgent Lady in the Water (2006). For fans of the TV show, The Last Airbender is nearly unbearable, condensing the entire first season into one film by removing the humor, the heart, and the complexity of the characters. There’s no twist here — we expect Shyamalan to disappoint, and he does. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Micmacs An urge to baby-talk at the screen underlines what is wrong with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film: it is like a precocious child all too aware how to work a room, reprising adorable past behaviors with pushy determination and no remaining spontaneity whatsoever. There will be cooing. There will be clucking. But there will also a few viewers rolling their eyes, thinking "This kid rides my last nerve." It’s easy to understand why Jeunet’s movies (including 2001’s Amélie) are so beloved, doubtless by many previously allergic to subtitles. (Of course, few filmmakers need dialogue less.) They are eye-candy, and brain-candy too: fantastical, hyper, exotic, appealing to the child within but with dark streaks, byzantine of plot yet requiring no close narrative attention at all. The artistry and craftsmanship are unmissable, no ingenious design or whimsical detail left unemphasized. In Micmacs, hero Bazil (Dany Boon) is a lovable misfit who lost his father to an Algerian landmine, then loses his own job and home when he’s brain-injured by a stray bullet. He falls in with a crazy coterie of lovable misfits who live underground, make wacky contraptions from junk, and each have their own special, not-quite-super "power." They help him wreak elaborate, fanciful revenge on the greedy arms manufacturers (André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié) behind his misfortunes, as well as various human rights-y global ones. So there’s a message here, couched in fun. But the effect is rather like a birthday clown begging funds for Darfur — or Robert Benigni’s dreaded Life is Beautiful (1997), good intentions coming off a bit hubristic, even distasteful. (1:44) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Predators Anyone who claims to be disappointed by Predators has clearly never seen parts one and two in the series; all three are straight B-movie affairs (though 1990’s Predator 2 takes everything oh-so-slightly over the top. Gary Busey’ll do that). And if you’ve seen either of the recent Predator-versus-Alien flicks, Predators should feel like a masterpiece. Nimród Antal directs under the banner of Robert Rodriguez’s production company, which explains the presence of Danny "Machete" Trejo in the cast. Adrien Brody stashes his Oscar in a safe place to star as Royce, a well-armed mercenary who awakes to find himself in free fall, plummeting into a strange jungle along with other elite-forces types (including Brazilian Alice Braga, playing an Israeli soldier). It doesn’t take long before Royce realizes that "this is a game preserve, and we’re the game." I wish Predators had allowed itself to have a little more fun with its uniquely skilled characters (the yakuza guy does have a nice, if culturally-stereotyped, swordplay scene); there’s also an underdeveloped "plot twist" involving the presence of the decidedly un-badass Topher Grace among the human prey. But all is forgiven when Laurence Fishburne turns up as Crazy Old Dude Who’s Been Hiding Out With Predators a Little Too Long. Fishburne’s presence also adds to the heart-of-darkness vibe the movie seems vaguely interested in conveying. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Restrepo Starting mid-’07, journalists-filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger spent some 15 months off and on embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold with steep, mountainous terrain that could hardly be more advantageous for snipers. Particularly once a second, even more isolated outpost is built, the soldiers’ days are fraught with tension, whether they’re ordered out into the open on a mission or staying put under frequent fire. Strictly vérité, with no political commentary overt or otherwise, the documentary could be (and has been) faulted for not having enough of a "narrative arc" — as if life often does, particularly under such extreme circumstances. But it’s harrowingly immediate (the filmmakers themselves often have to dive for cover) and revelatory as a glimpse not just of active warfare, but of the near-impossible challenges particular to foreign armed forces trying to make any kind of "progress" in Afghanistan. (1:33) Clay. (Harvey)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Opera Plaza, Red Vic.

*Stonewall Uprising On the night of June 28, 1969, police embarked on what they thought would be a routine raid on a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, the sleazy, Mafia-run Stonewall Inn. The ensuing three days of rioting — during which mostly young men and drag queens accustomed to being marginalized and hauled off to jail stood their ground and fought back — became what historian Lillian Faderman has called "the shot heard round the world" for LGBT activism: a spontaneous expression of street-level outrage that fueled the birth of a movement. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s solid documentary Stonewall Uprising takes a "just the facts, ma’am" approach to this historic flashpoint that makes for an information-packed, if at times dry, 80 minutes. Working around the paucity of photographic documentation of the actual riots (itself a testament to the marginalization of homosexuality in the late 1960s), Davis and Heilbroner make extensive use of period news footage and photography, reenactments, and most important, the first-person testimonies of who those who witnessed and participated in what one interviewee terms "our Rosa Parks moment." The filmmakers’ contextual groundwork is as impressive for its archival research as it is repetitive in its message: pre-Stonewall life was hell. The documentary becomes more nuanced as it zeros in on reconstructing the first night of rioting via eyewitness accounts. (1:22) Lumiere. (Sussman)

Touching Home Hometown boys (Logan and Noah Miller) make good in this based-on-a-true-story tale of identical twins who must divide their time at home between training for major league baseball and looking after their alcoholic father. The brothers, who also wrote and directed the film, aim for David Gordon Green by way of Marin, but fall short of mastering that director’s knack for natural dialogue. Ed Harris is, unsurprisingly, compelling as the alcoholic father, but the actors in the film who are not named Ed Harris tend to contribute to the script’s distracting histrionics. Touching Home has some amazing NorCal cinematography, and I could see how family audiences might enjoy its "feel bad, then feel good" style of melodrama. But while it’s awkward to say that someone’s real-life experiences come off as trite, there are moments here that feel as clichéd as a Lifetime movie. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse The only person more bored by the Twilight franchise than I am is Kristen Stewart. In Eclipse, the third installment of the film series, she mopes her way through further adventures with creepily obsessive vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson). Look, you’re either sold on this star-crossed love story or you’re not, and it’s clear which camp I fall into. Besides, Eclipse is at least better than New Moon, the dreadful Twilight film that preceded it last year. But the story is still ponderous and predictable — Eclipse sets up a conflict and then quickly resolves it, just so it can spend more time on the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle. (As if we don’t know how that ends.) Then there’s the unfortunate anti-sex subtext: carnal relations are cast as dirty, wrong, and soul-destroying. I’m not saying we should be encouraging all teenagers to have sex, but that doesn’t mean we should make them feel ashamed of their desires. And what parent would approve of Eclipse‘s conclusion? Marrying your first boyfriend at 18 — not always the best move. (2:04) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Wild Grass The premise of Wild Grass, Alain Resnais’ loopy new film, could have come straight from Nancy Meyers: an older married man finds a single, middle-aged woman’s wallet. He returns it but can’t stop thinking about her. She, in turn, is intrigued by his attentions. Both are surprised by the connection they feel growing between them, one which they nevertheless have difficulty articulating. When they finally meet, sparks fly. That purloined wallet, along with the romcom set-up, aren’t the only MacGuffins in Resnais’ Wild ride, which uses Christian Gailly’s novel L’ Incindent as a rough guide for its careening tour of the irrational courses that desire can lead us down. The man and woman in question are Georges, an embittered writer with a possibly dark past, and flame-haired Marguerite, a dentist and part-time aviatrix, both played to neurotic perfection by longtime Resnais regulars André Dussollier and Sabine Azéma. Resnais’ attempt to translate what he has called the "musicality" of Gailly’s prose has resulted in a frenetic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that tries to visually approximate Georges and Marguerites’ every internal monologue, fantasy, and increasingly risky instance of impulsive behavior, throwing in some knowing winks to classic Hollywood cinema for good measure. It’s a mess, to be sure (there are even two endings!). But like Mr. Magoo, the 87-year-old Resnais, as if by some unseen hand, steers clear of complete disaster. There hasn’t been a Gallic car crash this delightful to watch since Godard’s famous pile-up in 1967’s Week End. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Sussman)

*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.

Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*Beyond the Doors and Bigfoot This double bill in the middle of the Vortex Room’s conspiracy-focused schedule of Thursday screenings offers musings on some favorite 1970s subjects for paranoid speculation. "Our assignment: neutralize the three Pied Pipers of rock n’ roll music," recalls a government operative near the beginning of Larry Buchanan’s Beyond the Doors. Upset at Vietnam protests and drug culture, President Nixon hits on the logical solution: Jimi, Janis and Jim (Morrison) must die. Made in 1984, this late effort by Southern cheesebagger Buchanan followed three decades of such titles as Naughty Dallas (1964), Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966), Mars Needs Women (1967), and The Loch Ness Horror (1981). Having achieved modest box-office success with his tabloid-tenored 1976 take on Marilyn Monroe, Goodbye Norma Jean, Buchanan applied the same delicate brushstrokes to this dramatized imagining of what really happened to acid rock’s martyred holy trinity. Actor "discoveries" Gregory Allen Chatman (Hendrix), Riba Meryl (Joplin), and Bryan Wolf (Morrison) were, not entirely surprisingly heard from again, though the various approximations of those musicians’ sounds could be worse. In the second half of the Vortex Room bill, John Carradine helps helps various bikers, rednecks, and cops investigate the abduction of underdressed white-meat babes which Bigfoot (or rather, several Bigfoots … or is that Bigfeet?) kidnaps to chain up in a cave so that they might squirm and scream in their bikini briefs. (The original ad line was "Breeds with anything.") Leading victim is 1950s starlet Joi Lansing, a Mormon-raised Monroe wannabe whose prior career highlights were a brief run on The Beverly Hillbillies, bits in studio features and leads in Z-grade films like the glorified ’67 country-music concert compendium Hillbillies in a Haunted House. This being a 1970 drive-in feature (by Robert F. Slatzer, who’d made the rather stupendously bad 1967 Hellcats), naturally a biker club rides to the eventual rescue, pitting one group of hairy primitives against another. Add Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) star Haji, Elvis bodyguard Del "Sonny" West, some hoary Hollywood veterans, and lesser Mitchum family members, and you’ve got one weird time capsule. Thurs/15, 8 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, JULY 14

Anarchists abound


This summer in Detroit nearly 20,000 people attended the June 2010 U.S. Social Forum, a conference and collaboration to build a platform for an international political movement that unites oppressed communities. Hear about the forum from attendees Sarolta Jane, Sarah Lazare, Sam Brown, and Marshall Hillton as they discuss the role anarchists played at the forum.

7:30 p.m., $2–$5 suggested donation

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

(415) 661-1852

THURSDAY, JULY 15

"In Deepwater"


Hear about what’s really happening with the oil spill in the gulf from two experts who have been in the region since the blowout occurred: Texas shrimper turned activist Diane Wilson and Riki Ott, a marine biologist who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill. Hear about the projected long-term effects on the environment, human health, and local communities as well as more ways BP can be held accountable.

7 p.m., $10–$20 sliding scale

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston, Berk.

(510) 859-9100

FRIDAY, JULY 16

Peaceful warriors


Demand that we bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan now at this rally for peace. The total cost of the U.S. wars has already surpassed the $1 trillion mark during the worst economic recession since the Depression. Join the East Bay Grey Panthers in protest.

2 p.m., free

Corner of Action and University, Berk.

(510) 548-9696

SATURDAY, JULY 17

General Strike Walk


Tour key historical sites of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike with historian Luis Prisco, ILWU Local 10 longshoreman Jack Heyman, and others and learn why the strike was successful, how it was organized, and why the issues of the strike are still relevant to working people today. Bring lunch and prepared for a long walk.

10:30 a.m., free

Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza

Ferry Building

Embarcadero at Market, SF

(415) 841-1254

Streetsweeper for a day


Help beautify one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations by joining other volunteers and the San Francisco Department of Public Works to plant trees, work on greening projects, remove weeds, paint over graffiti, and pick up litter. Students can accumulate hours for community service.

9 a.m., free

Fisherman’s Wharf

Embarcadero at Bay, SF

(415) 641-2600

MONDAY, JULY 19

Revolution remembered

Hear Alejandro Murguia, cofounder of the Mission Cultural Center, read from his new book, Southern Front. In the book, Murgiua describes his experience fighting in the international guerrilla Southern Front of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Murguia will also read some of his poetry and discuss the legacy of the Sandinista revolution on its 21st anniversary.

7 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.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.

Fix the BART police force – or disband it

David Talbot
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0
Fix the BART police force – or disband it

EDITORIAL Who murdered Oscar Grant? Part of the equation is the years of neglect of the BART Police. — Assembly Member Tom Ammiano

We’re angry, too.

Angry that a police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man could wind up with little or no prison time. Angry that the news media whipped up such a fervor over the potential for a riot in Oakland that it almost guaranteed someone would show up and break a few windows. Angry that the jury who decided this case was 400 miles away and included no African Americans.

But mostly we’re angry that 18 months after a BART cop shot Oscar Grant, the transit agency still doesn’t have effective police oversight. And until the BART board recognizes that it still has 200 poorly trained, poorly supervised,* armed officers on the streets — and that this shooting wasn’t an anomaly, it was simply the latest in a series of criminal acts by BART police officers that led to the deaths of innocent people — and until the BART Board starts treating this like the emergency that it is, the problems are going to continue.

There are elements of this case that are historic — and very positive. This is the first time we can remember that a police officer in California has faced murder charges for an on-duty shooting. That alone sends a powerful message — and the Alameda County District Attorney deserves immense credit for taking the case to trial. And let’s not forget: Johannes Mehserle was, in fact, convicted. With the additional penalties for using a handgun, he could wind up with a sentence of more than 10 years.

Much of that is now in the hands of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry, who will sentence Mehserle later this summer. The judge in an involuntary manslaughter case has considerable discretion; he could, conceivably, sentence Mehserle to probation, and the killer of an unarmed man could walk away with no jail time at all. Perry could sentence him to five years (of which the former officer would probably serve no more than three). He could also go as high as 14 years, which seems more reasonable.

Most of the protesters in Oakland were peaceful; most recognized that the verdict was mixed, that at least Mehserle was convicted, and that there’s still a chance justice will be done. It’s hard to imagine that the patience of the community will last long in the wake of an unacceptably short sentence.

But even if Perry issues a sentence that reflects the crime, there’s still the problem of the BART Police. This isn’t the first time a BART cop has killed an unarmed person; twice before, the subway system’s finest have committed crimes just as heinous as the one that put Johannes Mehserle in the dock. The difference is that the previous shootings — which we covered in depth and the mainstream media ignored — were never caught on video. BART never took either killing seriously, never changed police oversight procedures — and shouldn’t be surprised that nothing changed.

Now the agency, with much reluctance and gnashing of teeth, has created a modest civilian oversight program. But it’s not enough — and the reason is simple: The BART directors don’t want to spend the time it takes to monitor and control an armed police force. They’ve always happily delegated that job to someone else — a general manager, an assistant general manager, a police chief — and never done the job they were elected to do.

Now time’s up. The BART directors need to take direct control of the police, including holding hearings on disciplinary action and quickly acting on complaints against problem officers. Or they need to recognize that they can’t run a police force, disband the BART police, and let a professional law enforcement agency from one or more of the BART counties take over.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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0
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Broken windows can be replaced, and in two weeks, they will be. Stolen merchandise can be replaced, and it will be. But who’s going to replace this justice system that got looted? What insurance policy takes care of that? —

Davey D Cook, Hard Knock Radio, KPFA, July 9

I’m not going to argue with the jury that convicted Johannes Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Oscar Grant. I didn’t sit through the entire trial; I didn’t hear all of the testimony; I didn’t get the judge’s instructions on the law. I know it looks a lot like murder when you take a gun and shoot someone in the back, but the law requires intent, and the jury clearly believed — based on the evidence presented at trial — that the white officer made a mistake and never wanted to kill the young black man.

Based on the evidence I’ve seen — the videotape of the shooting, which, like many Bay Area residents, I’ve watched dozens of times— Mehserle had plenty of opportunity to back off, to recognize that he was about to fire a weapon at a man who was already on the ground and under police control. And remember: a Taser can also be lethal.

But the jury didn’t see evidence of murder, and voluntary manslaughter is a strange amalgam that’s very hard to fit with this case. If the judge sentences Mehserle to something close to the maximum (14 years), then some form of justice will have been done.

I say some form because it’s impossible to talk about this case without talking about race.

If Oscar Grant had been a white guy — even a drunk, belligerent, obnoxious white guy — I don’t think he ever would have been shot. The cops deal with annoying white people all the time, and they don’t get beat up, shot, or abused anywhere nearly as often as black people. That’s just reality.

Well-trained police officers working for professional law enforcement agencies are taught to be sensitive to race issues. They’re also taught how to make sure not to confuse a pistol with a Taser. It doesn’t always work — anyone who follows the criminal justice system knows that racism is very much a part of life. (And, of course, the BART police force is not a professional operation, and its officers aren’t well trained.)

If Mehserle had been a black kid from Hunters Point who was involved in a shooting death — even if he didn’t pull the trigger, even if he never meant to kill anyone — he’d be going to prison for a long, long time. The very fact that people are discussing the possibility of probation or a short sentence for Mehserle is a statement about the unfairness of our justice system.

And that’s not going to get fixed in two weeks. *

Get rid of the water bond, now

David Talbot
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Get rid of the water bond, now

OPINION A Field Poll released last week showed decent support among progressives for Proposition 18, the $11 billion water bond on the November ballot. We shouldn’t let the bond’s cheery name fool us. Prop. 18 is a con job.

Sold as the Safe, Clean, and Reliable Drinking Water Act, Prop. 18 has been getting a lot of press recently for the “pork” that was added to it to gain votes when it went before the Legislature last November. But for progressives, the real concern isn’t the pork; it’s the other meat in the bond. Prop. 18 would maintain a status quo that’s bad for our budget and water supply.

With polls showing lagging support for the bond, Gov. Schwarzenegger asked the Legislature to delay the measure until 2012. Bay Area residents have nothing to gain from the measure — this year or in two years. We need our legislators to fight for the bond’s termination, now.

Prop. 18 provides a $2 billion downpayment for a peripheral canal to send more water from the Sacramento Delta to deep-pocketed interests to the south. In 1982, Northern Californians overwhelmingly rejected the peripheral canal; we should do the same with the bond. The Westlands Water District, Beverly Hills billionaire-owned Paramount Farms and other megafarms stand to gain immensely from any additional water these projects might bring. The Bay Area does not.

Worse, some of these landholders skip farming altogether in order to resell the water we’ve subsidized at a huge profit to real estate developers. They pay about $25 to $50 per acre-foot of water, but can easily resell the water for over $200 per acre-foot. Corporate giant Cargill is looking to buy water from landowners in Kern County to supply its proposed 12,000-unit housing development on bay salt marshes in Redwood City.

The meat of Prop. 18 is $3 billion for the construction of more dams, an expensive and inefficient way to manage water. California’s rivers already have hundreds of dams. The water that evaporates from them each year is enough to supply 4 million people.

With interest, Prop. 18 would add $24 billion in debt to the state’s General Fund — roughly $16 million a week for 30 years. Already facing a $19 billion deficit, California has made drastic cuts to vital public services like education, housing, and healthcare — and this bond will make things worse.

Although there is some money in the bond for projects that could actually benefit us, it’s too little, too late. And the state still has $7 billion available from past water bonds that has not been spent. When the Legislature passed a bill in 2009 to invest that money in regional water projects, the governor vetoed the bill. The same will likely be true here. And even if we do see that money someday, will the trade-offs be worth it?

There is no question that California needs to invest billions in rebuilding and upgrading our vital water infrastructure. Here in the Bay Area, we are already spending billions on rebuilding our sewer and drinking water systems. Unfortunately, the bond provides only a trickle of money for such important investments or to boost conservation and efficiency in the urban and agricultural sectors. It’s no wonder that the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, San Francisco Baykeeper, Clean Water Action, the California Teachers Association, and United Farm Workers all oppose the bond.

Fortunately, state Sens. Mark Leno, Leland Yee, and Ellen Corbett and Assembly Members Tom Ammiano, Loni Hancock, and Nancy Skinner all voted against placing this bond on the ballot. We now need them to step up and urge their colleagues not just to delay but to repeal this bond, now. *

Elanor Starmer is the western region director for the consumer advocacy nonprofit Food and Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org).

Jumping jack flash

David Talbot
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0
Jumping jack flash

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Rode my bike to my second favorite neighborhood, the Tenderloin. I was hoping to find the place where me and Sal the Porkchop ate crawfish and garlic noodles one night after watching dance, or something somewhat cultural, at any rate. I remember I was dressed a little dressier than usual and worried about squirting crawfish juice on my skirt.

After that my memory was erased — there’s a slight chance by space aliens. But it’s also possible that the crawfish were that spicy. That’s why I wanted to find the place. And will, another time.

This time I got distracted. Three lanes of oncoming traffic when you’re riding a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street, such as Gough Street, will do that to you. I wish that didn’t seem like a metaphor for my life, but it does.

Because I do, ultimately, want to continue living it, I zipped over to the sidewalk and there was a bike rack. I started to lock up without even looking around first. I was on the other side of Market Street. Nothing else mattered.

Then, yes, I looked around.

With every intention of still going in search of crawfish afterward, I ducked into a place called Go Getters Deli, only the "o" was a green olive with a pimento in it. Plain block letters on the window advertised burgers and burritos, but that wasn’t why I chose the place.

I chose it because all six or seven of the people inside were sitting on the same side of their tables, facing the same direction, and looking upward. So I took that to mean there was a TV, with a soccer game on it.

And there was and there was, and so crawfish would have to wait.

But I couldn’t decide which idea I liked better: eating a burrito in a burger joint, or a burger in a taqueria. Since it was already almost half-time, I wouldn’t be able to do both. So, being predictable, I went with Plan C. Which, in this case, was a chicken sandwich with "flaming sauce," red onions, and tomatoes.

Flaming sauce = chipotle, and the sandwich was damn good. The bread tasted homemade, which seemed strange, unless they are in cahoots with Go Getters Pizza across the street and down a block. And, come to think of it, why wouldn’t they be? With a name like Go Getters Deli.

Well, the chipotle sauce wasn’t exactly "flaming." But that’s why I keep a bottle of hot sauce in my purse. With which … yum, yes, hot hot hot. And a lime Jarritos.

And an exciting half of World Cup soccer, and I forgot all about the crawfish place I had already forgotten about.

While the players were still hugging each other or else lying in the grass crying, taking off their shirts, and so on, I polished off my Jarritos, put on my sunglasses, smiled at my fellow sports fans, thanked the owners and kitchen and counter people (who had all come out to watch the end of the game), and walked into the doorjamb because I had my sunglasses on.

It was one of those days: on the edge between foggy and sunny. I buttoned up my jacket halfway, saddled my Schwinn, and huffed back to the Mission. Where some guy was doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk.

Normally I would have stopped and talked to such a someone, but he didn’t look quite crazy enough for me. He looked like a really fucking normal person, in fact, dressed in a regular way. Just happened to be doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk is all. Valencia Street. Facing a telephone pole.

And who am I to argue with that? I had a big scratch on my face. It looked like I’d been in a fight with a cat, or a catfight, but in fact (and as usual) the story was much less interesting. It starred a two-year-old, with a cracker. These things happen. Crackers are sharper than you think.

I mean, it was an accident.

I mean, physical fitness is important. *

GO GETTERS DELI

Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

100 Gough., S.F.

(415) 863-4149

D/MC/V

No alcohol

Psychic Dream Astrology

David Talbot
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0

July 14-20

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Your ability, or even willingness, to deal with things is getting all blocked by fear in your noggin, Aries. Recognize your qualms so you can truly dismantle them. Be brave and proactive this week, even if you don’t wanna.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

If you think you know it all, you’re in serious trouble, pal. There is always more than one way to look at a situation, and it’s time to investigate truth in the Big Picture. Be willing to learn from others.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

This is an excellent time for bustin’ a new move, but doing it with your big head, not the tiny one. Temper your needy needs with compassion and humility so that you don’t end up creating more problems than you solve.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

No major change can be made in a minute — instant enlightenment is an unhealthy goal. Gather your willingness to go through discomfort now so you’ll be able to improve your future for reals.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

The surest path out of distress is a passive one this week, Leo. Find a physical action you find enjoyable (keep it clean, kids) and then do some old-fashioned introspection. Clarity is just around the bend.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

The more you share, the more you have, Virgo, it’s that simple. This week, share your time, money, energy, whatever you’ve got. Its not only nice, it will set in motion the laws of attraction, so everyone gets served.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Find a healthy amount of Me–ness to insert into your relationships. Too much ends up coming off as pushy and narcissistic. Don’t be nice. Be real with your honor intact.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

How identified are you with being a victim? This week get real about the ways you actually get something out of being a sufferer at the hands of bad vibes, bad hair days or bad luck. Take responsibility instead.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Your biggest problem this week is mental. You are tripping on balls, and the worst thing you can do is stew in your own brain. Talk it out, Sag! Don’t act like everything is cool when it isn’t. Trust others with your racing thoughts.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

Define where you stand, Capricorn. Now is not the time for mincing words or being wishy-washy! That doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a shut-down fool; remain open and receptive, even to being wrong in your certainty.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Sometimes disappointments are the gateways to true happiness. This week you may have an encounter with some crap you wish wasn’t true, and its in your best interest to accept it so you can finally choose to cope.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Relaxation should not be underrated, dear Pisces. You have to take a metaphysical chill pill and decompress your overactive imagination. Get back into your creative flow after you reconnect with your spirit. Choose your focus wisely. *

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 16 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com

Appetite: Don’t forget to remember — Mission Beach Cafe

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Don’t forget to remember — Mission Beach Cafe

In the wake of last year’s closings, at the beginning of the year I began reflecting on those neighborhood spots or classic restaurants we often forget are there but don’t want to lose. From time to time, I share reviews of places we’d do well to re-visit… or get to for the first time. They might be receiving a fresh infusion of flavor from recent chef or menu changes, or remain noteworthy, despite floods of new openings and (over)hyped hot spots.

Mission Beach Cafe, aka MBC, a welcoming corner restaurant many go to for brunch or incredible baked goods and Blue Bottle coffee in the morning, has maintained a rare level of quality through a handful of chef changes. I am amazed at how delicious dinners here remain: from chef Thomas Martinez (see my 2009 review at The Perfect Spot) to heartwarming Pot Pie Tuesdays. For about six months, they’ve had a new chef, Trevor Ogden, who most recently worked at Umami, at the now defunct Frisson and with Stephanie Izzard in Chicago. Though young, like former Chef Martinez, there’s inventive maturity in Ogden’s work.

A recent visit yielded literally one pleasurable dish after the other:

– MBC has thankfully kept their killer flatbread of the day ($14) on the menu. Ogden prepared ours with a goat gouda infused with hops (yes, you heard right), layered with crisp corn, caramelized ramps, chicken and two pepper purees (red pepper and padron).

– One of the stand-outs in a stand-out meal, is tea-smoked albacore tuna ($14) topped with quail eggs, caviar, chili creme fraiche and dotted with crispy lemon-saffron risotto. A visual work of art and a lightly seductive pleasure to the palate.

– Mixed baby lettuces ($10) are shaped into bowl cupping mounds of avocado, red spring onions, toybox tomatoes, herbed tofu and walnuts in a creamy cabernet vinaigrette.

Artful smokes and grilled Hodo tofu

– I’m so not a vegetarian, but one of two vegetarian entrees was a favorite of mine: smoked and grilled Hodo tofu ($17) is in good company with zucchini, toybox summer squash, eggplant, grilled corn and forbidden black rice. A little sweet comes in the form of strawberries and strawberry rhubarb glaze.

– Organic pork tenderloin ($23) is comforting with roasted German butterball potatoes, cipollini onions, baby carrots and sugar snap peas. But when it’s cooked in rosemary brown butter and drizzled with white peach pork jus, it’s downright luxurious.

– Pan-seared branzino ($25) arrives stacked over shaved fennel, summer squash and pea tendrils. The fish is delicate but the skin adds crisp and saltiness. Most addictive is the Vidalia onion/Yukon gold soubise and tomato-lemon verbena broth accenting the dish.

– Those truffle fries resting under shaved parmesan ($5) are as fabulous as they ever were.

– Alan Carter holds the crown of pastry chef extraordinaire and his pies ($6.50-7 a slice) are still mama’s home cooking and a long-awaited holiday rolled into one. It’s like coming home to his banana butterscotch cream or chocolate pecan pies, but I was especially entranced with my beloved rhubarb (thank you, summer!) in his strawberry rhubarb pie.

Alan Carter’s magnificent pies

I am happy to (continue) to say, do not forget to return to Mission Beach Cafe.

198 Guerrero Street (at 14th Street)
(415) 861-0198
www.missionbeachcafesf.com

I, in the sky

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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I, in the sky

There’s a moment during You Think You Really Know Me, the 2005 documentary on 1970s Midwest cult artist Gary Wilson, when the filmmakers acknowledge that their subject is not necessarily as weird as his music. “I thought he would be a little bit more,” says Christina Bates, coowner of the defunct Motel Records, which reissued Wilson’s 1977 jazz-rock curio You Think You Really Know Me to much acclaim. Bates’ voice trails off. “He’s really in complete control of his image.”

The same could be said of Ariel “Pink” Rosenberg. The Los Angeles musician follows a long tradition of outsiders whose recordings invite speculation on their mental stability, from enigmatic recluses such as Wilson to the late (and rumored schizophrenic) Syd Barrett. But, as Ariel Pink summarizes during a phone conversation, “I’ve never been in the closet, by myself or reclusive like everyone says. That’s a myth.”

Ariel Pink’s releases — which he began recording and issuing as CD-Rs in the late ’90s, moving to Animal Colllective’s Paw Tracks imprint with 2003’s The Doldrums — sound like a melting brain. Heartbreakingly melodic keyboard tones float around like smoke from burning embers. The songs — including “For Kate I Wait” from Doldrums, which became a college radio novelty hit — barely hang onto verse-chorus structure, and Pink’s muttered ramblings unveil feelings of warped alienation and deep melancholy.

Often issued under the “Haunted Graffiti” rubric, Pink’s aberrant synth-pop has proved influential on younger musicians, many of whom have been lumped under the semi-mocking hipster term “chillwave.” But while Neon Indian and Toro y Moi tap into the cultural zeitgeist via krushed grooves and distorted vocals, their overall tone is cool and distant, suggesting a familiar kind of postadolescent anomie. In contrast, Ariel Pink guffaws, grunts, lilts in a cooing voice reminiscent of a whining dog, and shouts nonsense lyrics, all in pursuit of a song’s emotional center. “I’m a necro-romantic! I’ll be suckin’ your blood!” he riffs on “Fright Night (Nevermore),” a track from his recent, excellent Before Today, evoking dewy memories of richly ambiguous ’80s horror flicks and John Carpenter soundtracks.

Perhaps music fans and critics occasionally call Ariel Pink a savant because he’s unafraid to look foolish. His interviews have teased and strained against that perception. “I have something to do with it, too,” he admits. “I open my mouth and say things, and certain things make it to posterity, and make it to Wikipedia, and people think they’re doing their research when they read Wikipedia. So a lot of misconceptions get repeated.”

During the interview, Pink strikes a professional tone, saying that he’s grateful to be signed to 4AD (a subsidiary of major indie conglomerate Beggars Group) after years of struggling as an indie artist. 4AD booked him on an international tour for Before Today, which reached stores in June; and he calls from Plano B, a nightclub in Porto, Portugal where he and his backing band, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, are setting up to perform. The long-distance connection leads to frequent shouts of “Huh? I can’t hear you, dude.”

Before Today marks a new, post-bedroom phase for Ariel Pink. Recorded with his band, songs like “L’estat (acc. to the widow’s maid)” and “Bright Lit Blue Skies” benefit from the type of sharply navigated time changes and vivid instrumental colors that can’t be realized through bedroom production techniques. Meanwhile, “Reminiscences,” an easygoing lounge number, draws inspiration from Ethiopian singer Yeshimebet Dubale. “Arguably the most famous type of song form in Ethiopia is tizita, the song of nostalgia and remembrances,” Pink explains.

Ariel Pink admits that past live performances were often chaotic and uninspired affairs where “I didn’t care about anything and just thought about me. That didn’t get me very far.” Musicians shuffled in and out of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, adding to the instability. He’s cautiously optimistic about the prospects for his current lineup, which features Tim Koh, Kenny Gilmore, Joe Kennedy, and Aaron Sperske. “I don’t know how long the current incarnation will be around for — we’ve only been together two weeks,” he says, noting that Kennedy just joined the group. “I’m always trying to get a bunch of guys to stay with me.”

After years spent mostly working alone, Pink welcomes the challenge of learning to perform with — and lead — others. “Ultimately it’s more fulfilling for me. It’s no fun doing it alone! Seriously, it’s boring as fuck.”

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI

With Magic Kids, Pearl Harbour

Sat/10, 9 p.m., $15

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(877) 4FL-YTIX

www.bimbos365club.com

RENE CAZENAVE, 1941-2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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RENE CAZENAVE, 1941-2010

Rene M. Cazenave died at home June 27 in the company of his wife, Sylvie, and sister, Denise. He is also survived by his son, Lucien, and two-week-old granddaughter, Drew. He was 69.

A native San Franciscan, Rene was instrumental in the creation of the community empowerment movement in the city from its modern inception in the 1970s. He was at the center of community politics for nearly 40 years. He was a key member of Citizens for Representative Government, the community-based coalition that devised and successfully campaigned for district election of supervisors in 1977, a move that led to the election of the first directly elected African American, Chinese American, and gay supervisors. He helped organize and found the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a coalition of faith- and community-based nonprofits that produce permanently affordable housing. Over the past 30 years, members of the group have developed or acquired and rehabilitated some 25,000 affordable homes and apartments in one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. He helped create and then save KPOO community radio. He loved his family, jazz, old San Franciscans (indeed, he became one himself), dogs and cats, and reading and debating history.

His dad, also Rene and also a native, spent his working life in newspapers, retiring as a Hearst Examiner editor. Rene learned from his dad — and mom, who was also a native — every parish, every street, every neighborhood, and every bar in San Francisco. He was invaluable to a movement centered on community organizing, but made up of folks who hailed from everywhere but San Francisco. He shared his knowledge of the city — and his love for the people of the city as well.

Rene’s special genius was in raising funds for the creation of a community controlled infrastructure, empowering residents of low-income neighborhoods in San Francisco. He was the master in the use of the federal Community Development Block Grants program (CDBG), and was an important part of a community effort to restructure the Redevelopment Agency, leading to the use of the agency’s tax-increment financing mechanism. At a conservative estimate, these two public sources — CDBG and tax increment financing — have poured more than $1 billion into low-income San Francisco communities since 1975. Thousands of lower- and fixed-income San Franciscans who didn’t even know Rene’s name found a home, got critical job training, played in a gym, ate a hot meal at a senior center, got treatment for an illness at a community clinic, and had an opportunity to vote for a supervisor who represented their interests as a result of his skillful and tireless advocacy.

Rene was a fully integrated political being. To an astounding degree, his moods were set by the politics of his city. He held a deep and unshakable belief in socialism and humanism. He was heartsick at the decline of working class San Francisco. But his depression and disappointment over political events never caused him to give up or give in. He loved the fight, he loved the action, and he worked harder than most to the very end.

We all know that we stand on the shoulders of giants. But every now and then we are lucky enough to actually stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Those of us who knew Rene Cazenave were that lucky. Services are pending.

Calvin Welch worked with Rene Cazenave for 39 years doing community organizing, advocacy, and politics together. He, along with hundreds of others, misses the hell out of him already.

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