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Bucharest calling

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Bucharest calling

arts@sfbg.com

FILM In the five years since Cristi Puiu’s improbable epic, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), a small group of philosophically-inclined filmmakers who were still young during the last days of Ceausescu have been disproportionately responsible for the minor masterpieces of world cinema. None of the Romanian films at Cannes (including Puiu’s follow-up, Aurora) nabbed a prize this year. But the three features in the Pacific Film Archive’s “Tales from the Golden Age: Recent Romanian Cinema” series — Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), and Police, Adjective (2009) — were all heavily garlanded. They gain power when seen in series, where their common syntax comes into focus.

All three films unfold as underground odysseys. A character is tested in a series of trials flowing, directly or indirectly, from the state. In Lazarescu, the eponymous figure is sent upon a Styx-like course of hospitals, accompanied first by reproachful neighbors and then a willful medic. By the time the doctors correctly diagnose his original complaint of the stomach and head, his neurological condition has deteriorated to the point that he can no longer form the words himself. In 4 Months, we trace a young woman’s movements through the city as she ensures a safe course for her friend’s illegal abortion (the film is set two years before Ceausescu’s fall). As more and more is asked of her promise, the film’s handheld style comes to seem charged by irreversibility. In Police, Adjective, we watch a quiet young detective trail a dead-end case: he’s been assigned to gather evidence for a uselessly punitive drug bust of a few teenaged hash-smokers. When he finally refuses to order a raid, he gets an unexpected linguistics lesson from his chief (played with appalling charisma by Vlad Ivanov, the abortionist in 4 Months; in both films he seems the very embodiment of the banality of evil) who dismantles the detective’s logic word by word.

With narratives like case histories, peeling back a social situation until its very marrow is exposed, these films take no shortcuts to empathy. Morality is specifically broached, and each centers on protracted, tangled negotiations carried off by wonderful acting. The apparent detachment of the long-take style is deceptive. In fact, the films’ scenarios are rigorously worked out to express moral quandaries with concern for those on the receiving end. The ostensible real time of the long take is easily distended by exigent circumstances; the decision not to cut gives a taste of the agony, powerlessness, and tension that meet the characters. Indeed, the observational camera is an insinuation, drawing us into the complex ethical mechanics at the level of action and plot. They induce the presence of mind required to dislodge a nasty splinter. It’s difficult to imagine an American documentary taking on health care with an unblinking intransigence on par with Lazarescu, and this, more than the formal style, accounts for critics using the language of ethics and truth to describe the film.

By positioning individual characters at the margins of a centralized bureaucracy, the Romanian films certainly do illuminate untruths. Several of the broad shorts in the new omnibus film, Tales from the Golden Age, threaten to turn the gnomic quality of the Romanian films into shtick, but in the context of the PFA series, these “urban legends from the Ceausescu era” put a gentle historical spin on some of the leitmotifs of the earlier features. The best by far is The Legend of the Air Sellers, a tender 4 Months-meets-John Hughes film in which a teenage girl joins up with a scruffy older guy for a decidedly low-tech scam: they take bottles from local residents under the premises of collecting water and air samples for the state and then redeem the glass for change. The con is revealing of a central paradox of the period: that citizens could be frustrated by the state of things while at the same time credulous that the state would fix them. The girl is a natural capitalist, farming out bottle collecting to unwitting landlords; the boy, for his part, only really wants to watch VHS tapes on a prized video player.

Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica’s found footage essay-film, Videograms of a Revolution (1992), is the outlier of the series both in terms of age and form, but in its methodical analysis of the Romanian Revolution of 1989 as a paradigmatic modern event, the film draws very close to the social relevance of the recent Romanian films — much closer than the nostalgia-tinged episodes of Tales from the Golden Age. Two sequences in Videograms loom large for the Romanian films in the PFA series. In the first, Ujica’s voice-over identifies an initial spark for the revolution in a moment of intercessional static, when an official camera trained upon Ceausescu’s scripted reality pans to observe a disturbance in the crowd, “more out of curiosity than resolve.” Then there are those bundled shots depicting newly victorious revolutionaries dug in at the political headquarters and TV station (an important location for Police, Adjective director Corneliu Poumboiu’s 2006 film, 12:08 East of Bucharest). Attempting to forge their initial reforms, they flail at the deeply ingrained restraints of institutional language.

Toward the end of Videograms, we watch dramatic embedded footage of ragtag revolutionaries and other civilians taking cover from sniper fire coming from one of the oppressive high-rise buildings that play such a prominent part in the Romanian cinematic imagination. Ujica’s voice-over takes analytical measure of the scene: that the belief in an enemy is a binding legacy, a “recollected habit,” and that the unspoken fear so long deployed by Ceausescu’s regime as “internal tactic of deterrence” will not simply vanish. The new Romanian cinema was surely born in the shadows of this phantom fighting.

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE: RECENT ROMANIAN CINEMA

June 11–June 27, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2757 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Mama Drama

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Mama Drama

FILM The unusually high proportion of non-native San Franciscans not only underlines our living in a “destination” city, but also suggests that many of us were eager to leave something behind. Certainly it’s no accident The Full Picture’s fraternal protagonists both chose to live here. Yes, it’s a lovely place. It also happens to be 3,000 insulating miles from where they were raised, and where the dragon still dwells.

Unfortunately, she can fly: sensible heels clacking militaristically across airport tarmac first clue us to the personality of monster-mother Gretchen Foster (Bettina Devin), who sweetly announces she’s off to visit “my boys” in SF, then breathes fire when that charm fails to secure a first class upgrade. Clearly it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Jon Bowden’s first feature is based on his original play, and this screen incarnation doesn’t entirely leave the whiff of stagecraft behind. It’s smart, fluid, funny, and biting, as well as a nice addition to the roster of movies that really do convey something about living here.

Braced in fighting stance for mom’s arrival is Hal (Joshua Hutchinson). He’s got a wife named Beth (Heather Mathieson), a toddler, a compulsive wandering eye, and one very jaundiced view of Gretchen’s alleged victimized past and ditto good intentions.

On the other hand, Mark (Daron Jennings) always backed up ma’s side of the story. He sports the terrified geniality of someone who’s long kept the peace by living a lie that might explode at any moment. Live-in girlfriend Erika (Lizzie Ross) is everything mom is not: supportive, truthful, transparent. But the feelings he’s repressed leak out in martial commitment skittishness, not to mention an inability to prepare anxiety attack-prone Erika for the weekend boot camp of subtle evisceration she’s about to receive from her brand-new worst frenemy.

That weekend works through a minigolf obstacle course of logistical meal disasters, temporary sightseeing balm, withering “compliments,” ugly spousal conflict, and climactic reveals about dad’s long-ago departure. Through it all, Gretchen’s frosted Nancy Reagan coif remains as rigid as her revisionist family history. But the emotions she stirs up — not without backlash — grow very messy indeed.

The Full Picture is a small picture, but it would be a shame to let its genuine satisfactions pass you by. As writer, director, and producer, Bowden turns economy into crafty virtues, and his actors are inspired. Nothing here is wildly original, yet it feels fresh — especially the way so much nervous comedy leads to screaming catharsis, only to land on a slightly zen grace note. 

The Full Picture opens Fri/11 at the Roxie.

Ruchi

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Ruchi

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE The boomlet in south Indian cuisine that began a few years ago with the opening of Dosa has now given us Ruchi — and meanwhile Dosa itself is on the march, having toted its dosas from the Mission uphill to Pacific Heights. Ruchi, like Dosa, offers dosas — pan-fried disks made from rice and lentils — but the two restaurants’ dosa styles are quite dissimilar, about which more presently.

Ruchi opened about six months ago on a stretch of Third Street in SoMa that, like so many stretches of so many streets in SoMa, is flooded with speeding traffic. The automotive torrent is certainly a hazard and almost certainly a disadvantage; (the original) Dosa, by contrast, occupies the old Val 21 space at Valencia and 21st Streets, with tons of pedestrians and a big public parking garage around the corner.

But Ruchi’s location does have its advantages. What was once an industrial neighborhood, largely empty at night, is increasingly residential, with new housing developments popping up right and left. There is even — almost — a quaint village feel to Ruchi’s block of Third. Across the way is a nice Italian restaurant, La Briciola, and if you were to wave at its patrons, it might be a little like waving at your fellow villagers across a placid creek, once a mere trickle through your settlement, that abruptly somehow became a whitewater. Still, they could see you and they might wave back.

Inside, Ruchi is a tasteful, muted modern, in earth tones. Just past the door is a length of slatted fence that looks like something to keep Spot the dog penned up in the kitchen instead of letting him run around peeing on every rug in the house. On the one hand the design is a little generic, but on the other it stands patiently in the background while the food steps up to be noticed. Our server one evening described south Indian cooking to us as “aromatic,” which for me helped explain the wonderful, pungent presence of fresh ginger in so many of the dishes.

Ginger, when combined with garlic and scallions, is strongly redolent of the wok cuisines, and whether or not Ruchi’s greens pullakoora ($8), a spicy spinach dish, was cooked in a wok, it had the sharp freshness of stir-fried vegetables you might find in a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant.

The utappam dosa ($8), a house favorite according to the menu, surely hadn’t been cooked in a wok, but it did carry a strong charge of ginger, along with scallion and green chili. If you are used to Dosa’s dosas — thin, crisp, and folded in half — then you might find Ruchi’s version, which resembles a slightly spongy pizza scattered with toppings, unexpected. We were told to cut it up like a pizza, and we did, satisfyingly.

South Indian cooking might indeed be aromatic rather than spicy, but Ruchi’s menu doesn’t lack for spicy items. The mirchi bajji ($5), in particular — serrano peppers coated in chickpea batter and fried to look like little corn dogs — is as blazing a dish as I’ve ever had. Although I like spicy food, I could only eat two before the heat, building slowly but inexorably, forced me to pull off the road with steam billowing from under the hood.

Chili overheating, like influenza, is an affliction that just has to play itself out, and there isn’t much you can do except be patient. Sips of water and beer offered moments of respite, but I had higher hopes for the yogurt sauce surrounding the lentil patties in a dish called dahi vada ($6), until we recognized that there was chili heat lurking in the apparently cool, creamy, wintry yogurt. When the water gushing from your fire hose turns out to be gasoline, you experience a setback.

Kebabs of chicken tikka ($9) — boneless cubes of a rather orange hue, like tandoori chicken — were expertly seasoned and wonderfully plump and tender. But a kachoomar salad ($5), though a colorful jumble of diced onions, cucumber, tomatoes, and cilantro, was a little too salty despite the advertised (and presumably acidic) lemon vinaigrette. The saltiness came from what seemed to me like fish sauce — another hint of southeast Asia.

And, for the second week in a row, a winning dessert makes an improbable appearance. I’ve had plenty of kulfi (a kind of ice cream) before and never been particularly wowed. But Ruchi’s pistachio version ($5), though possibly the least colorful item on the menu (it looked like a bit of ice floe), gave intense pleasure both as flavor and texture, the latter a fudgy denseness with the faintest hint of granularity. Housemade, too; accept no substitute.

RUCHI

Lunch: Mon.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Dinner: Mon.–Sat., 5–9 p.m.

474 Third St., SF

(415) 392-8353

www.ruchisf.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Whirl trade center

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Whirl trade center

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART In 2005, then-struggling Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou presented “Arts, Beats and Lyrics” at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. The oversize paintings were blinged-out-mack-daddy-baller self-portraits showing the artist on the covers of well-known and respected magazines. Within two years, his work had been reviewed and featured in numerous publications, including Art In America, Harper’s, NY Arts, Mass Appeal, and The Fader. The sheer voodoo of this act makes Pecou a formidable creative force, and coupled with his knack for spectacle, his opening at Shooting Gallery this month is rumored to be the most vainglorious of the season. I caught up with him recently on the phone.

SFBG I’m amazed by your earlier work because it seems to me that you used sympathetic magic to approach fame. You placed yourself within the context of celebrity and became a celebrity. Was that your original intention?

Fahamu Pecou It’s funny. It was kind of like the law of attraction. You can write your own narrative by believing in the messages you put out. I started doing this marketing campaign because I was frustrated with the way my career was going at the time. I really just wanted to get my name out there. Just my name. I wanted to make sure that when my name came across the desk of curator or gallery owner, they’d say, “I’ve seen this name before, maybe I should learn more about this person.” It was really sort of a joke. As it started to grow and people began to talk about it, it took on a life of its own.

SFBG Did you anticipate that it would go beyond Atlanta and become international?

FP No. It was just a clever, catchy inside joke among me and my friends. The minute I started putting out stickers and posters that said “Fahamu Pecou Is The Shit,” it was a hit. People were jumping on it. It was good that it happened that way because it allowed me to grow with it. Whether I can directly relate it to a specific style, I’ll leave that for people to write about.

SFBG Why did you call your latest show “Whirl Trade”?

FP The theme came from the idea of cultural exchanges between Africans on the continent of Africa and the rest of the African diaspora around the world, and how a lot can be lost and misconstrued when taken out of the original cultural context. We look back and forth at each other, and we do what we think is our best impression of “the other.” It comes out a twisted up and strange simulation.

I was in South Africa for residency on the Eastern Cape and spent some time in Capetown. I had a friend from Detroit with me, and a few friends from Capetown. We were coming out a restaurant and this homeless guy heard me and my homeboy talking. He said, “You guys are from America? You guys are the real niggas.”

We were both like, “Naw man, we aren’t niggers, we’re brothers.” And he said, “No. No, you guys are niggas, and I want to be a nigga too.” He was going on and on about how being a nigga was a good thing, not like these guys who come in from Nigeria and other places thinking they’re real niggas. We were the real deal. And here we are, trying to explain to him how being a nigga is not a good thing. Nobody wants to be a nigga. My Capetown friends were telling me that being a nigga is not a bad thing anymore. I started wondering, where did this come from? That’s what “Whirl Trade” is about: the cultural export of hip-hop culture and the impact it has on the rest of the world. We have this great stage, this platform, where we have the ear of the world. What are we saying? A lot of what’s being said and heard is a lot of nothing, especially when taken out of cultural context.

The response has been great and has sparked a lot of conversation around how we view ourselves and each other. What kind of impression we are making of ourselves to other cultures and, deeper still, what kind of impression do I have about African culture through this same context and my own experience? I couldn’t ask one question without asking the other. I try to be cautious about this in my work. I’m not trying to accuse or ridicule any group so much as begin to ask questions and start a dialogue between groups who think they know each other but don’t.

SFBG You do performances at your gallery shows. Costumes and everything. How does fashion play into your work?

FP In the beginning, it was more about capturing fashion that reflected a whole lifestyle. I patterned it after 50 Cent, who was the catalyst for my whole campaign. I was watching how he was packaged and wondering why a visual artist was never marketed that way. My whole fashion was based on that and Puff Daddy. Then I added my own touches with ascots and blazers and stuff like that.

With “Whirl Trade,” I’m looking at contemporary African fashion. Right now, African street fashion is a mashup of textiles and patterns, colors that almost seem disparate but come together beautifully. That and photographs of Malik Sadibe inspired me to bring in many different patterns and contrasts. It wasn’t that I was trying to copy a style as much as capture the cultural exchange between what Africans think African Americans dress like, and what African Americans think Africans dress like.

SFBG Though you reference hip-hop, I don’t really see you as a hip-hop artist. I sense a cynicism in your approach. Are you disillusioned with hip-hop?

FP I just found myself not so connected to what was being presented in early 2000s. A lot of media-made hip-hop stars came out. It stopped being so much about talent as it was marketing. It became about who was willing to come out and say they sold these drugs or did this killing. At one point that was legitimate, rappers came from the street, but then came these media guys who just said that shit to be famous, just for credibility and that’s what started hurting the integrity of the form.

It stopped being how fresh, how clever or how innovative an artist could be. It became how violent, how misogynistic, how violent a person could be. Extremes of everything — people ended being blaxploitation characters.

I’m talking about that in my next work, called “Hard To Death” — about the evolution of black manhood, and how there’s a lack of visual representation of that evolution beyond a certain point. Most of the images we see are reflections of hip-hop culture, which captures the black male between the ages of 18-25, just when many young men are working things out. It has become one of the only representations of black masculinity, which is very frustrating. My next piece is devoted to accurately portraying the evolution of black men. I’m seeing more established artists like Common and Jay-Z who have grown beyond that dangerous time.

Since my son was born, I’ve been really driven to addressing these issues around black masculinity and black manhood. I feel a sense of responsibility there because my work crosses the lines between popular culture and hip-hop culture, and I see that there’s a lack of responsible voices. My voice can work as a catalyst to start a conversation. I started a blog (passageofright.wordpress.com) to begin talking about creating systems for some kinds of rites of passage for young black boys. I didn’t grow up with a father or a whole lot of role models, so most of what I’ve learned about being a man is from the school of hard knocks. I want to prevent the continuation of that kind of awakening.

WHIRL TRADE: NEW WORKS BY FAHAMU PECOU

Reception Sat/12, 7–11 p.m.;

Through July 3

Shooting Gallery

839 Larkin, SF

(415) 931-1500

www.shootinggallerysf.com

www.fahamupecouart.com

Road rules

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Road rules

caitlin@sfbg.com

CULTURE Dear cars: I’m only doing my part to keep the air clean, and I promise you, I’m trying to stay in my lane when I have one. I’m looking as cute as I can astraddle my fly new ride, puffing up hills for health. Alas, your intermittent, unwarranted honk is a sorry companion to my bike high. “Get a car!” is a bummer too. Bicyclists sure enough have to put up with some shit.

Which is why we’re glad to have Eben Weiss, New York City’s outspoken Bike Snob. He’s won raves among the two-wheeled for his blog (www.bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com), which pointedly voices the frustrations of the biking masses. Sure, Weiss is opinionated — don’t get him started on brakeless bikes for civilian use — but in our recent phone interview, he articulated his ideas about transportation with an aplomb and wit I seldom hear elsewhere.

And by gosh, it’s only right he follow grand blogging tradition and put out a book. My chat with Weiss coincided with the start of his tour to promote Bike Snob: Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling — he hits San Francisco Thursday, June 17 — a project that compelled him to shed the cloak of anonymity under which he had blogged for years. (Turns out he’s a looker.)

Right off the bat he told me, “There’s no such thing as ‘bike culture.'” Them’s fightin’ words in SF, which reveres the idea of a biking class that generates its own social mores, political convictions, and tasty microbrews. “As far as I’m concerned, I like to ride. So my ‘common cause’ is just to be happy. You have a lot of different kinds of cyclists. They do it for fitness, they’re into the environment … It’s like anything else: a lot of people doing a lot of things for a lot of reasons.”

Weiss is of the opinion that terms like “bike culture” have been used by the cycling industry to sell us things, a ploy that leads to the type of fashion victimology so snarkily snapped and captioned on his blog. “A decent bike and a good lock,” Weiss says. “And that’s really all you need. I think part of the reason the cycling media can drive you a little bit crazy is that there’s such an emphasis on equipment. You can spend hundreds or thousands on cycling-specific sneakers, on a bike that looks a certain way. I recommend that you get a bike, any bike. Spend as little money as possible — just you and the bike, that’s it.”

It’s refreshing advice, the kind you don’t usually hear from people who have been city-biking as long as Weiss has. I also asked him about traffic laws — he’s questioned their relevance to biking in the past. Do we obey the stop signs, Bike Snob?

“I think it’s important to remember that breaking a rule because it really doesn’t apply to you is different than breaking a rule because it’s exciting,” he tells me. “Anything that involves stopping is good. People who ride bikes think putting your foot down is an admission of defeat. I think they need to get over that. You have to be nice to pedestrians. You have to treat others with the same respect you want motorists to treat you with. Not riding on sidewalks is a good rule.”

Indeed. He’s also got words for nonbikers that they would do well to heed. Avoid referring to your cyclists friends as “Lance Armstrong,” groping on their top tubes without permission, and asking them whether they’re impotent.

And for God’s sake, quit asking if bike accident victims were wearing a helmet. Weiss, in the traffic safety chapter of his book entitled “Why is Everyone Trying to Kill Me?” has gone on record about his neutrality regarding society’s “all helmet, all the time” insistence, calling it something of a misguided fixation. This is not the politically correct line to walk for a bike activist. He’s caught flack for being seen at road races lacking the proper headgear.

But unlike other prominent figures in the bike world who rally fellow cyclists under one flag or another, Weiss doesn’t consider himself an activist so much as a curmudgeon. (Albeit a curmudgeon with a hot blog, a new book, and a heady slew of good ideas.) His popularity may be a result of his non-hectoring, yet still bitingly impish, attitude — an attitude that, whether he likes it or not, jibes well with the current bike culture. Ride on, Bike Snob, we’ll be reading.

BIKE SNOB BOOK SIGNING

Thurs/17 6:30–8 p.m., free

Sports Basement

1590 Bryant, SF

(415) 575-3000

www.chroniclebooks.com/bikesnob

Cutting from the bottom

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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7
Cutting from the bottom

By Alex Emslie

news@sfbg.com

When Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposed city budget on June 1, he downplayed the severity of cuts to the city’s Department of Public Health, noting that they amounted to less than 2 percent. But if Newsom’s uneven program chopping becomes a reality, critical social services for some of San Francisco’s poorest and most vulnerable residents will be cut by almost one-third.

The DPH was able to shrink its budget by nearly $31 million, according to a budget proposal currently before the Board of Supervisors, in part by slashing community nonprofit clinics providing outpatient mental health services to some of San Francisco’s most difficult to treat mental health cases.

“It’s very possible you could see more people who are homeless, people who are homeless not getting as much care — they’ll be sicker,” said Dr. Eric Woodard, medical director of psychiatric emergency services at San Francisco General Hospital. “And you could reasonably expect more deaths on the street to occur.”

State and federal matching funding to the DPH dwarfs the amount of money the department receives from the city. What isn’t spelled out in Newsom’s budget is that every dollar cut by the city results in more than another dollar lost in federal funding for social services.

The DPH proposed a nearly 9 percent cut to outpatient community-based health services, and an 11 percent cut to residential inpatient services to meet the mayor’s request that all city departments submit a 30 percent budget reduction to his office. Newsom reversed the proposed cuts to residential services but kept the outpatient cuts.

“I believe in the efficacy of residential [treatment],” Newsom said during his budget unveiling. “I believe there are a lot of question marks around outpatient drug treatment.”

But the cuts affect more than just outpatient drug treatment. While many of the clinics that were cut focus on treating mental illnesses, they are funded through the DPH category that includes substance abuse treatment. Newsom’s office declined to answer our inquiries about the reasons for and implications of his cuts, referring us to DPH.

Walden House CEO Vitka Eisen, whose organization serves people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse in inpatient and outpatient clinics, said she was relieved that residential funding was added back. However, she is concerned about the proposed $4.1 million cut spread across several nonprofit outpatient services.

“There’s a very large cut to outpatient services citywide, and that’s obviously problematic because outpatient services are an important part of our system of care in the city,” she told the Guardian. “You can’t really cut one or the other.”

DPH Community Behavioral Health Services Director Dr. Robert Cabaj is hoping the Board of Supervisors will restore some of the cuts to outpatient clinics. “Unfortunately, they [the Mayor’s Office] left these in,” he told the Guardian. “I’m not sure why — I’m not sure what the mayor was thinking at the time.”

Citywide Case Management and Community Focus, an outpatient clinic serving some of San Francisco’s most severely mentally ill, is one of the hardest hit nonprofit clinics in the mayor’s proposed budget. The agency will lose $1.22 in federal funding for every $1 cut from the city, division director Dr. David Fariello said.

That’s how its 15 percent, $1.3 million cut proposed by the DPH and accepted by the mayor, ballooned into a 33 percent, $2.8 million loss for one of the city’s most comprehensive and best-performing community behavioral health services.

Citywide, at 982 Mission St., boasts the facilities, network, and location to serve one of San Francisco’s most vulnerable populations. The typical Citywide client suffers from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or severe depression. They are likely homeless, grappling with substance abuse, and many have posttraumatic stress disorder.

Citywide employees, doctors, and administrators, as well as physicians from outside the clinic, speculate that cutting outpatient mental health services in a city with one of the highest per capita populations of mentally ill homeless people will ultimately cost the city more money than it saves now. Use of expensive city services like psychiatric emergency rooms, jails, police, and ambulance could all rise.

“Frankly, a lot of these budget cuts do not seem to be very well thought out in terms of what the real cost is going to be,” Woodard said. “If you look into the not very distant future, you’re going to incur costs that are probably much greater than your savings were initially by making the cuts.”

Cabaj said that past funding cuts haven’t resulted in higher use of psychiatric emergency services because the DPH prioritizes funding for the most severe cases and screens for those who could possibly be moved into cheaper services. Citywide clients are consistently high users of San Francisco General Hospital acute inpatient psychiatric care, at an average cost to the city of $1,200 per patient, per day, if they don’t have insurance or Medical benefits.

Many end up in costly in-patient psychiatric care facilities or are arrested and land in the city’s Behavioral Health Court, which hears cases in which defendants have been diagnosed with a mental illness that is suspected of being a factor in their crime. More than 70 percent of the Behavioral Health Court’s mandated treatment slots are at Citywide.

“We can manage behaviors that get people thrown out of every other clinic in the city,” Fariello said. “Where is that capacity going to be picked up? These are not clients who, if they don’t get treatment, maybe their doctor will give them some medicine and it’ll be OK. These are clients who are going to continue to be high users unless we intervene.”

Citywide figures show a 40 percent decrease in violent reoffenses for clients referred to their clinic from the Behavioral Health Court. Nearly three-quarters who were homeless are able to maintain housing, and more than 25 percent of clients who were frequent users of inpatient psychiatric services have stayed out of the hospital.

“Citywide really is one of the best,” said Woodard, who works with Citywide’s Linkage Team to stabilize patients from SFGH’s psychiatric emergency room. “They provide excellent care for these really fragile, very ill patients. I would say of the community programs, they’re really at the top of the list.”

Fariello estimates having to reduce the 1,035 clients receiving treatment at his clinic by 400 if the cuts are finalized. He may have to scale back some of his clinic’s innovative and successful categories of service — such as employment support and dialectical behavioral therapy, a highly specialized form of therapy with proven success in treating borderline personality disorder. Citywide has the largest DBT team in San Francisco.

Citywide administrators are baffled by DPH’s decision-making process, given that it serves the city’s sickest, poorest, and homeless — characteristics that should have reduced its cuts, according to the department’s priorities outlined in its budget reduction proposal.

Since founding the agency nearly 30 years ago, Fariello has worked with the city to implement innovative techniques in treating San Francisco’s highest users of expensive psychiatric emergency services. And it has been consistently successful. In a review last year of 15 similar programs conducted by the DPH, Citywide received an average 92.1 out of 100, the highest score. It scored a 4.0 out of 4.0 on another recent program review.

Several divisions within Citywide contribute to its inclusive approach to mental health services. Citywide’s forensics program works exclusively with clients involved in the criminal justice system. Community Focus provides culturally sensitive therapy in several languages. The Linkage Team stabilizes emergency psychiatric patients from SFGH.

Employment support for Citywide clients helps them get and retain jobs, emblematic of the entire agency’s goal of treating clients as complete people, not just mental health patients. “What we’ve found out is that people who have an investment in purposeful activity have an investment in getting better,” Fariello said. “A lot of clients have a notion that their career is being a mental health client. What we’re trying to do is change that.”

Citywide supported employment services supervisor Greg Jarasitis told a story of one client who said she liked her job as a bookkeeper because while she was at work she felt like a “normy,” then added: “These are people who have been marginalized for so long.” *

Get involved: The Board of Supervisors holds a public comment hearing on the deep proposed health cuts, as state law requires, June 15 at 3 p.m. in Board Chambers at City Hall. The board’s Budget and Finance Committee departmental hearings for the DPH are scheduled for June 21 and June 28.

Another bloody budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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6
Another bloody budget

rebeccab@sfbg.com

In the days since June 1, when Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposal for San Francisco’s $6.48 billion budget for the next fiscal year, public sector employees and community organizations have been poring over the hefty document to determine how their jobs, services, and programs survived cuts made to close a $483 million shortfall.

For police and firefighters, a key Newsom constituency, the news is good. There were no layoffs to San Francisco firefighters, and while members of the Police Officer’s Association gave up $9.3 million in wage concessions under the lucrative contract Newsom gave them a few years ago, police officers will still receive a 4 percent wage increase on July 1.

For others, the release of the mayor’s budget signified a tough fight looming before the Board of Supervisors, one with high stakes. Cuts to homeless services, mental health care, youth programs, and housing assistance, along with privatization proposals, have raised widespread concern among labor and liberal advocacy organizations. Public input on the budget will continue at the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee until July 15, when the amended document is considered by the full board.

At a June 1 announcement ceremony, Newsom asserted that the budget was balanced “without draconian cuts,” saying, “We were able to avoid the kind of cataclysmic devastation that some had argued was inevitable in this budget.”

Nearly a week later, Board President David Chiu told the Guardian that sort of cataclysm wouldn’t be staved off for long if the city continues on the course of repeatedly making deep budget cuts without proposing any significant new sources of revenue.

“Now that the smoke has cleared, it is clear that the mayor’s proposed budget is perfect for a mayor who is only going to be around for the short term, but it does not address the long-term fiscal crisis that our city is in,” Chiu said. “Next year, we’re looking at over a $700 million budget deficit. The year after that, we’re looking at almost an $800 million budget deficit. The budget proposal that Newsom put out balances the … deficit on many one-time tricks and assumptions of uncertain revenue.”

Meanwhile, advocates said even the cuts proposed this time would bring serious consequences, especially with unemployment on the rise, state programs being cut in Sacramento, and families feeling the pinch more than ever.

“Poor and working class families, and families of color in San Francisco, are facing kind of an assault on funding and on safety net services on multiple levels,” said Chelsea Boilard, family policy and communications associate for Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “I think a lot of it is that families are concerned about their ability to stay in the city and raise their kids here.”

 

“NO NEW TAXES”

During the budget announcement, Newsom emphasized the positive. He found $12 million in new revenue simply by closing a loophole that had allowed Internet-based companies to avoid paying that amount in hotel taxes. He said 350 currently occupied positions would be cut, but noted that it was less than a cap of 425 that public sector unions had agreed to. Cuts were inevitable since the ailing economy inflicted the city’s General Fund with significant losses, particularly from business and property tax revenues.

Nonetheless, Newsom’s budget is already coming under fire from progressive leaders. For one, there are no new revenue-generating measures in the form of general taxes, which could have averted the worst blows to critical safety-net services and might help remedy the city’s economic woes in the long-term.

“There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom declared. “I know some folks just prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

Yet Chiu said many of Newsom’s assumptions for revenue were on shaky ground, prompting City Controller Ben Rosenfield — Newsom’s former budget director — to place $142 million on reserve in case the projected revenues don’t pan out.

“These budget deficits continue as far as the eye can see,” Chiu noted. “Even if those amounts come in, something like 90 percent of them are one-time fixes. So even if the mayor is right, it doesn’t solve next year’s problem, or the year after. Which is why many of us at the board believe that we have to consider additional revenue proposals to think about the long-term fiscal health of the city.”

Sup. John Avalos, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, described Newsom’s budget as “pretty much an all-cuts budget,” noting that he and Chiu planned to introduce revenue-generating measures. They were expected to introduce proposals — including an increase in the hotel tax and a change in the business tax — at the June 8 board meeting.

Because despite Newsom’s rosy assessment, many of his proposed cuts are deep and painful: the Recreation and Park Department would be cut by 42 percent (with its capital projects budget slashed by 90 percent), Economic and Workforce Development by 34 percent, Ethics Commission by 23 percent (basically eliminating public financing for candidates), Department of the Environment by 14 percent, Emergency Management by 10 percent, and the list goes on.

 

CUTS TO SOCIAL SERVICES

Progressives say Newsom’s budget reflects skewed priorities. While relatively little is asked of public safety departments, health and human services programs face major staffing and funding losses. “Poor people are being asked to shoulder the burden,” noted Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

Nearly $31 million would be slashed from the Department of Public Health, and more than $22 million would be cut from the Human Services Agency under Newsom’s proposed budget. While this reflects only 2–3 percent of the departmental budgets, there’s widespread concern that the cuts target programs designed to shield the most vulnerable residents.

Proposals that deal with housing are of special concern. “We have more and more families moving into SRO hotel rooms. We have families in garages. We have a really scary situation for many families,” Friedenbach said.

Affordable housing programs within the Mayor’s Office of Housing would get slashed from $16.8 million currently down to just $1.2 million, a 92 percent cut. Other cuts seem small, but will have big impacts of those affected. Newsom’s budget eliminates 42 housing subsidies, which boost rent payments for families on the brink of homelessness, for a savings of $264,000. Meanwhile, a locally funded program that subsidizes housing costs for people with AIDS would be cut, for a savings of $559,000.

Transitional housing would be affected, too, such as 59 beds at a homeless shelter on Otis Street, which Friedenbach says would be lost under Newsom’s budget proposal. “We’ve already lost more than 400 shelter beds since Newsom came to office, so that’d be a huge hit,” she said. Since the recession began, she added, the wait-list at shelters has tripled. The Ark House, a temporary housing facility that serves LGBT youth, would also be closed.

Overall, homeless services delivered by HSA would take a $12 million hit in Newsom’s budget, or about 13 percent, offset slightly by homeless services being increased by $2 million within the Mayor’s Office budget, a 71 percent increase.

Outpatient mental health services, such as Community Behavioral Health Services, would also be affected (See “Cutting from the bottom”), in violation of current city law. Several years ago, then-Sup. Tom Ammiano introduced legislation establishing a “single standard of care” to guarantee access to mental health services for indigent and uninsured residents.

“If timely, effective, and coordinated mental health treatment is not provided to indigent and uninsured residents who are not seriously mentally ill, those residents are at risk of becoming seriously mentally ill and hence requiring more expensive and comprehensive mental health care from San Francisco,” according to the ordinance, which was passed in June of 2005. Newsom’s budget proposes changing this legislation to enable cuts to those services, which would result in 1,600 people losing treatment, according to Friedenbach.

Unfortunately, advocates for the poor has gotten used to this ritual of trying to restore cuts made by Newsom. “There are some sacred cows that seem to survive year after year, and then we’re left fighting over what we can get,” said Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC).

The Central City SRO Collaborative, which supports tenants living in single-room occupancy hotels in the mid-Market Street area and is operated through THC, is slated to be cut by 40 percent along with three other similar programs — a replay from last year when the mayor proposed eliminating funding and the Board of Supervisors restored the cut.

“I think you’d see more fires, more people dying from overdoses. You’d see really bad conditions,” Jeff Buckley, director of the program, told us of the potential consequences of eliminating the inspections and resident training that is part of the program.

Funding was also eliminated for THC’s Ellis Eviction Defense Program, the city’s only free legal defense program with capacity to serve 55 low-income tenants facing eviction under the Ellis Act.

 

THREAT TO RENTERS

One of the most controversial proposals to emerge from Newsom’s budget is a way for property owners and real estate speculators to buy their way out of the city lottery that limits conversion of rental properties and tenants-in-common (TICs) to privately-owned condos if they pay between $4,000 and $20,000 (depending on how long they have waited for conversion), a proposal to raise about $8 million for the city.

“I went back and forth because I know the Board of Supervisors can’t stand this,” Newsom said as he broached the subject at the June 1 announcement. “I still don’t get this argument completely. Except it’s a big-time ideological discussion. It’s so darn ideological that I think it gets in the way of having a real discussion.”

Yet Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said the argument is quite clear: making it easier to convert rental units into condos will accelerate the loss of rental housing in a city where two-thirds of residents are tenants, in the process encouraging real estate speculation and evictions.

“It will encourage TIC conversions and evictions because it makes the road to converting TICs to condos that much easier,” Gullicksen said. “It’s going to be a huge gift to real estate speculators.”

Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker disputes that impact, saying that “these units were going to convert anyway, whether next year or six years. This merely accelerates that conversion without altering the lottery to protect jobs and services.”

But Gullicksen said the proposal obviously undermines the lottery system, which is the only tool tenant advocates have to preserve the finite supply of rent-controlled apartments, noting that even if the condos are later rented out, they will no longer to subject to rent control. That’s one reason why the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly rejected this idea, and why Newsom probably knows they will do so again.

Avalos said he and other progressive supervisors will oppose the proposal, despite the difficulties that will create in balancing the budget. “It’s kind of like putting a gun to our heads,” Avalos said of Newsom’s inclusion of that revenue in his budget.

To offset that revenue loss, Avalos has proposed a tax on alcohol sold in bars and Gullicksen is proposing the city legalize illegal housing units that are in habitable condition for property owners willing to pay an amnesty fee.

Some housing advocates were also struck by the timing of proposing condo conversion fees while also eliminating the Ellis Eviction Defense Program. “We’re really the only ones doing this,” Shaw noted. He said the program is crucial because it serves low-income tenants, many of whom are monolingual Chinese or Spanish speakers who lack the ability to pay for private attorneys to resist aggressive landlords.

 

PRIVATIZATION PROPOSALS RETURN

The Department of Children, Youth. and Families budget would be reduced by 20 percent under Newsom’s budget, with the greatest cuts affecting after school and youth leadership programs. Roughly a $3 million cut will result in the loss of around 300 subsidized slots for after school programs, said Boilard of Coleman Youth Advocates. Another $3 million is expected to come out of violence-prevention programs for troubled youth; an additional $1 million would affect youth jobs programs.

Patricia Davis, a Child Protective Services employee who lives in the Mission District with her two teenage sons, said she was concerned about the implications for losses to youth programs, particularly during the summer. “You can imagine what’s going to happen this summer,” she said. “I feel that a lot of kids are going to do a lot of things that they have no business doing.”

Davis, who says she’ll have to look for a new job come Sept. 30 because the federal stimulus package funding that supports her position will run out, said she was not happy to hear that police officers would be getting raises just as that summer school programs are being threatened with closure. “Couldn’t the 4 percent [raise] go somewhere else — like to the children?” she wondered.

Meanwhile, privatization proposals are causing anxiety for SEIU Local 1021 members, who recently gave millions in wage concessions and furloughs along with other public employees to help balance the budget. A proposal to contract out for jail health services cropped up last year and was shot down by the board, but it’s back again.

“When you make it a for-profit enterprise, the bottom line is the profit. It’s not about the health care,” SEIU Local 1021 organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “It isn’t the same quality of care.”

Haaland said he believes the mayor’s assumption that the proposal could save $13 million should be closely examined. Other privatization schemes would contract out for security at city museums and hospitals.

Institutional police in the mental health ward at SF General Hospital and other sensitive facilities are well trained and experienced with difficult situations so, Haaland said, “the workers feel a lot safer” than they would with private contractors.

Regarding Newsom’s privatization proposal, Avalos said the board was “opposed last year and the year before, and we’ll oppose [them] this year.”

In the coming weeks, Avalos and other members of the Budget and Finance Committee will carefully go over Newsom’s proposed budget — which is now being sized up by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose’s office — and solicit input from the public. Chances are, they’ll get an earful.

“People are scared. They are scared to death right now,” Boilard said. “As it is, people’s hours are being reduced. And it’s getting harder and harder to find a job because so many people are out of work that the level of competition has gotten really fierce. This is the time that we need to invest in safety net services for young people and families more than ever — and all those services and programs and relationships that people depend on are disappearing.”

Steven T. Jones and Kaitlyn Paris contributed to this report.

Appetite: Celebrating Sailor Jerry, tattooist and rum

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Appetite: Celebrating Sailor Jerry, tattooist and rum

What do tatooing and rum have to with each other? Well, there’s a rum named after one of the most legendary tattoo artists of all time, Sailor Jerry. It’s his own personal recipe, distilled in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and is truly a beaut. Bracingly strong at 92 proof, it’s got a spiced, caramel burn that goes down smooth on its own as it does in a cocktail (Dark & Stormy, anyone?) It lingers pleasantly while also delivering a punch. Kind of like the colorful Jerry himself?

This Saturday, June 12, marks the anniversary of Sailor Jerry’s death, a Northern California native (Ukiah, to be exact), born in 1911, making his name as a tattoo artist in Honolulu post-WWII, influenced by and fascinated with all things Asian. (He also harbored some extreme right-wing, libertarian leanings.) American flags mix with dragons and naked women in what a colleague describes as his “balls-forward, old school” tattoo style.

Celebrations for Sailor Jerry’s life are going on this week in four cities: Portland, Austin, LA and our own. RSVP for free screenings of the award-winning documentary, Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry, at the Roxie on June 9th or 10th, written and directed by Erich Weiss. Watching the 73 minute film is certainly entertaining, intriguing, and often hilarious. With rare interviews of many legendary tattoo artists, protégés and contemporaries, you witness not only the history of tattooing, but a different kind of elderly crowd: foul-mouthed, rough-and-tumble, covered in tats, full of lively stories of early days in tattooing’s U.S. popularity. Particularly engaging is the uber-crusty Eddie Funk, who’s scratchy voice and incessant swearing represent the kind of crowd that knew the paradoxical Sailor Jerry (aka Norman K. Collins) best.

Collins was ahead of his time, wandering the country pre-Beatnik, pre-Keroauc, finding his bliss in Hawaii by creating innovative tattoo art, closely mirroring Japanese tattoo masters (called Horis), earning him the moniker ‘Hori Smoku’. No surprise such a unique character created his own rum, the bottle embellished with his artwork (a hula girl strumming on a ukulele)… and it’s a fine rum at that.

Free but must RSVP at:
http://horismokumovie.com/sanfran_screening
Wed, 6/9; 6:45pm and 10pm
Thu, 6/10; 6:45pm and 10pm
ROXIE THEATER, 3117 16th Street
www.sailorjerry.com

Appetite: 3 delectable events for June

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Appetite: 3 delectable events for June

6/5-6/6 – SUNSET CELEBRATION Cruise down to Menlo Park this weekend for Sunset Magazine’s annual celebration weekend, a key South Bay event for foodies and wine lovers. Plenty of the Bay Area’s best will make an appearance, with a street food spirit pervading this year’s line-up. Our own Ryan Farr grills up special dogs for the event: Crispy Crunch FrankaRoni (deep fried mac n’ cheese squares with franks) and cheddar brats (pork/bacon/cheddar sausage). Food trucks are parked on-site, like Liba’s Falafel Truck, Sam’s Chowder House, and two of my tops: Seoul on Wheels and Gelateria CiCi. Chefs and Food Network stars host cooking demos, such as Roy Choi of the insanely popular Kogi Korean BBQ in LA. There’s wine seminars (for an additional $10; sign up ahead of time), live bands, Sunset’s special glam camping exhibit of tricked-out, funky campers, and an Artisan Food Pavilion housing cheeses, breadmakers, cured meats, sweets (like 479 Popcorn and NeoCocoa truffles) for sampling or purchase.
$16
Saturday (6/5) and Sunday (6/6), 10am-5pm
80 Willow Road, Menlo Park
More info here

6/12 – SLOW FOOD’S GOLDEN GLASS WINE EVENT Seven years running, The Golden Glass Wine Event (www.thegoldenglass.com) is Slow Food’s (www.slowfood.com) annual fundraiser with over 100 sustainable international wine producers. Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties all represent, but so do South Africa, France, South America, Italy, Spain, Greece, Australia, and so on. Golden Glasses are awarded to the best “slow” wines in the world, those that follow Slow Food principles of “good, clean and fair” production practices. Sample-size plates of local charcuterie, cheeses and other bites will flow, as will food from restaurants like Delfina, Il Cane Rosso, One Market, Thirsty Bear, A16, Perbacco, and the much-anticipated Plum Restaurant. And, yes, proceeds benefit the “Slow Food in School” programs, so you’re imbibing for a good cause.
$60 pre-purchase; $70 at door ($55 for Slow Food members) – includes unlimited wine and five food tickets (additional at $20 for 5 tickets)
Saturday, 6/12, 1-5pm
Fort Mason Center, the Festival Pavilion
www.thegoldenglass.com

6/16 – BAY AREA RISING STARS AWARDS CEREMONY StarChefs.com (www.starchefs.com/tickets) hosts their Rising Stars Revue and Awards Ceremony for this year’s Bay Area Rising Star winners at Ghirardelli Square. Hosted by Gary Danko’s (http://www.garydanko.com) chef de cuisine, Martin Brock, the night is a walk-around tasting gala featuring signature dishes and cocktails from Rising Star chefs, pastry chefs, sommeliers, restaurateurs and mixologists. Celebrate (and sample the best from) the winners, many of our local favorites, who were chosen from more than 90 candidates:

Chefs
Matthew Accarrino, SPQR
John Paul Carmona, Manresa
Maximilian DiMare, Wood Tavern
Louis Maldonado, Aziza
Thomas McNaughton, Flour + Water
Scott Nishiyama, Chez TJ

Pastry Chefs
Melissa Chou, Aziza
Catherine Schimenti, MICHAEL MINA

Mixologists
Erick Castro, Rickhouse
Brian MacGregor, Jardinière

Sommelier
Sarah Valor, Commis

Concept
Joshua Skenes, Saison

Restaurateur
Shelley Lindgren, A16 and SPQR

Hotel Chef
Josh Thomsen, The Claremont Hotel Club & Spa

$95; $150 VIP tickets, including pre-event reception with champagne and Petrossian Caviar
Wednesday, June 16; 7:30-10pm
Ghirardelli Square, 900 N. Point Street
www.starchefs.com/tickets

alt.sex.column: Eek! Eels in my …

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
alt.sex.column: Eek! Eels in my …

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend asked me to demonstrate my most unorthodox masturbation techniques, and one of my inventions is the Fly on the Island. Catch a small, lively fly. Carefully remove the wings and put it into a pill bottle. Draw a hot bath and get in.

Make your Johnson a bit hard and maneuver it so just the head rises above the surface of the water. Now is the time to introduce the fly to the island. The ideal fly has no wings so he can’t fly away but is small and sprightly enough to run franticly around the island looking for a way off. When I demonstrated this, my girlfriend said I was being mean to the fly. Is this masturbatorial creativity or animal cruelty?

Dear Readers:

Every once in a while I wonder why so few people write in anymore with ridiculous, Penthouse Forum-style stories or claims of extremely unusual fetishes or practices. Fewer jackasses seem to feel the need to try to trick what they hope are earnest or unwary advice-givers into accidentally granting the desired exposure. I kind of miss them. So I can’t blame this guy for trying. Plus, he did a really good job with the details. And — he got me to run it. At any rate, it’s not nearly as gross or horrible as the story about the Chinese eel that made the rounds of my sex-geek posse last week.

It seems a gentleman was brought in, dying, to a Sichuan hospital where it took the doctors a surprisingly long time to discover the eel lodged where no eel was meant to go. Though dead, it had been alive when inserted, and eels have teeth.

The likely cause was eventually established — he had apparently been drinking with friends and had passed out. His friends had decided it would be amusing to insert a live eel into his anus while he was comatose.

I suppose it’s churlish to chide the guy after his agonizing death and all, but it does occur to me that we do get to choose our friends and one criterion we might consider while doing so is this: does this individual seem like the kind of person who would wait for me to get plastered and then stick a live eel up my ass?

No, I don’t believe this really happened, any more than I believe the fly guy. The eel story has yet to show up on Snopes, but it bears all the hallmarks of an urban legend — no names, no dates, an exotic setting that renders it unverifiable, many uses of “apparently” and “it seems.” It seems one ought not to believe everything one reads, since, apparently, much of what one reads is nonsense.

I’d like to think I’ve done a sort of public service by passing these two disgusting stories on to you, my beloved readers. Anything else you’re likely to encounter today — stepped-in dog poop, a hair in your soup — will seem positively wholesome by comparison. No need to thank me!

Love,

Andrea

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

From freeway to favas

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
From freeway to favas

Perhaps you’ve noticed a fresh mountain of fava beans arising along Octavia Boulevard as you travel toward Market Street, in the spot where a freeway used to touch down. Don Wiepert certainly has. He’s a senior citizen who lives across the street from the rows of green sprouts, and even helped to raise the crop in his own living room.

Wiepert is one of 1,500 neighborhood volunteers who have taken part in the birth of Hayes Valley Farm, an exciting experiment in participatory urban agriculture. Started in January by three young permaculture activists, the project has converted into farmland a city block whose previous harvests were auto exhaust from the freeway on-ramp, and most recently, crime and vagrancy.

Farm organizer Jay Rosenberg explains the process as we tour the fields he helped to envision. Back in 1964, neighborhood activists from Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association and other groups organized to stop the progress of the Central Freeway that would connect Highway 101 to the Golden Gate Bridge. The show of community force was impressive, but it stranded the planned highway on- and off-ramps on a block of land between Octavia and Laguna streets. “They left them here standing like ruins,” Rosenberg said. “This was a 2.2-acre forgotten space.”

“It was a place for homeless living,” Wiepert said on a recent trip to the farm’s biweekly work party, while volunteers and a handful of paid staff buzzed about replanting seedlings and erecting a homemade greenhouse. “It was fenced off, ugly, inaccessible.” He looks around. Not to resort to a cliché, but there’s a discernible twinkle in his eyes as he says, “Now it’s wonderful.”

Although the block was in a desirable central location, its soil had been damaged from years of exposure to car emissions, which can leave behind lead and other heavy metals. But the team behind Hayes Valley Farm has a plan. The ivy that threatened to strangle the farm’s trees has been stripped, piled into heaps that are covered with cardboard and horse manure to begin a turbo-fertilization process that mimics what happens on forest floors. Once this new soil has been created, it is spread and implanted with fava seedlings, which were selected for their nitrogen-producing capabilities.

Rosenberg halts his tour of the process to pluck a bean plant from the ground and finger the white nitrogen nodule its roots have produced. “Look how well they’re doing,” he says over the nascent crop, proud as a papa. Once these plants are mature, half will be harvested as food, and half chopped at the root to speed the release of their nitrogen into the rest of the soil. Already young lettuces peek beneath the rows of beans, signs that the farm is ready to experiment with other foods.

San Francisco is a weather system unto itself, rendering the city’s ideal crops the subject of much conjecture. “This is a cool, Mediterranean-like, foggy desert,” Rosenberg says. “We’re doing lots of research on species that do well here, which will be knowledge the public can use.” The farm, like the Alameda County Master Gardeners (www.mastergardeners.org) who run a similar program, is serving as a test arena to see what urban gardeners can reasonably expect to thrive here.

The farm is now home to 1,500 plants, including 150 fruit trees, most sitting in pots on the old freeway on-ramp in what Rosenberg calls “the biggest patio garden in San Francisco.” So far, all the crops have gone into the bellies of the volunteers who raised them, putting in more than 4,000 person-hours during the four months the farm has been open.

But it’s not just the free groceries that keep neighbors returning to Hayes Valley Farm. In addition to the work parties, the site has been home to popular screenings of environmentally-themed films and a locus of outdoor learning. One group of students from the Crissy Field Center painted a mural for the farm that will soon occupy one wall of its planned on-site classroom. A weekly yoga class is planned, as are daily tours for farm newbies interested in learning more about the planting going on down the street.

In a time of uncertainty about what we’re supposed to eat, people are finding something to be sure about here. “I appreciate the opportunity to hang out with the younger people and their energy,” Wiepert says, moments before flinging a stick for one of the farm’s part-time dogs to chase after. “I think this place facilitates a feeling for a lot of people that they’re doing something meaningful.” *

HAYES VALLEY FARM

450 Laguna, SF

(415) 763-7645

www.hayesvalleyfarm.com

Spill it over

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Spill it over

I may be at wit’s end over the crude-stained feathers of everything else, but I’m more than OK with music so far in 2010. Sounds are stretching out, sonic categories are superimposing translucent wings, folks are taking chances for granted. For the past five years, the best DJs have been slowing down their sets, some to the point of blissful stasis — lightly back-pedaling in the midst of history’s traffic. This year that’s help lead to a swelling of the unexpected: indie rock fusing with ghostly rave (Delorean’s sublime Subiza, Caribou’s tricky Swim, Toro Y Moi’s soul-phasic Causers of This) and the return rush of breezy Balearic vibes, with analog synths and subtle digital dubbiness lending a just-left-of-human touch.

Casual experiment is the norm, and even cracked electro-pop stunners like Sleigh Bells’ melted-cheerleader Treats or the skitter-goth Atarics of Crystal Castles’ eponymous new disc make it seem like ultranoise just ain’t no thang. And hey, if I could marry the cinematic hypnodrome-hop of Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces to the sly live techno canter of Zurich’s Galoppierende Zuversicht — both coming to town this weekend — I would be in aural heaven. (I think that’s legal in Portugal now?)

In short, we may be entering a genre-free experiential zone. So why not step it up by immersing yourself in the two-month wonder of our very own experiential music festival, Soundwave? Trust, it’ll be amaze. There will be illuminated forests. There will be “extreme natural resonance” drones in abandoned bunkers. There will be live string duets inside famous sculptures.

This is the fourth installment of the fest, whose theme this time is “green sound.” Artists from around the world will be generating sonic experiments that play off the green ideal. Bike-powered stages, solar- and wind-powered music, real and imagined environments, fantasy creatures — all on the menu and then some.

“The green thing is so big in culture, especially in light of recent events,” Alan So, executive director of Project Soundwave (and total babe, btw) told me. “We want to showcase a full creative, innovative range of responses to the ideas of sustainability and reuse. It’s far from literal, though. There’s a spectrum of ideas. We have a sonic fabric artist from Texas, Alyce Santoro, who makes her clothes out of old cassette tape and then plays herself. She’ll be performing during our month-long Illuminated Forest residency at the Lab.

“Another great thing will be Inflorescence at the Civic Center on June 17. Brett Ian Balogh will install tiny solar-powered devices he calls ‘florets’ in the trees that will collect sound all day, and then at sunset they’ll ‘bloom’ as little lights emitting a sonic tapestry. And our opener on June 6, Resonance, gathers artists to the awesome Battery Townsely concrete military bunker in the Marin Headlands to really play with the possibilities of leftover architecture. Different perspectives, sonic ecology, that type of thing.”

So brings an installation art and design background to bear on the proceedings, insuring a 360-degree experience. The Bay, of course, has a huge experimental music history and a still-thriving scene. But Project Soundwave’s youthful programming, consciously or not, parallels a lot of local nightlife developments, from the gonzo digital culture offerings at the Tenderloin’s Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (www.gaffta.org) to the sonic vanguardism of live analog party OK Hole (third Saturdays at Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. www.amnesiathebar.com).

And Soundwave’s green attempts could provide a tingly synthesis of experiment and action. “It’s easy to assume a passive role as an artist or musician,” So told me. “Political art can be so off-putting in its bluntness or perceived negativity that, for an artist, pure abstraction is the only attractive way. We’d like to take a stab at changing that. Developing and utilizing alternative technologies to create ideal states can be both a statement and a contribution.”

SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL ((4)) GREEN SOUND June 6–Aug. 13, various times and prices, www.projectsoundwave.com

RED BULL BIG TUNE PRODUCER BATTLE with Shabazz Palaces, Rick Rock, and DJ Toomp. Fri/4, 8 p.m., $5. DNA Lounge, 375 11th Street, SF. www.redbullbigtune.com

[KONTROL] FIVE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY with Galoppierende Zuversicht and Craig Richards. Sat/5, 10 p.m.–6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

Appetite: Giant legs and Willy Wonka — adventures at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Giant legs and Willy Wonka — adventures at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic

I was one of the lucky ones, spending eight days in NY, my old stomping grounds, for the first annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic, which highlights and celebrates the art of the cocktail and its greatest talents. Or so I thought… I won’t gripe too much, though I will say that despite the stunning transformation of the already gorgeous New York Public Library for the opening gala, a scene rife with cocktail luminaries like Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders and Dave Wondrich, along with some of the country’s best bartenders, the crowds were not quite the cocktailians I expected, while some events were far from what was advertised. For example: at the May 17 “contest” at Keen‘s, the competition and notable judges had completely wrapped up and left by the listed START time of the event, leaving only a few cocktails to sample and the incomparably cool, old school Keen’s space to stand around in. I could have spent the same money with more exciting results at any of NY’s great bars.

Let’s recap a few of the best and worst moments of the racous week that was the 1st annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic:

WORST

1. Starvation : At the opening gala, despite spotting Mario Batali, the guy who had supposedly cooked up something special for the night, I never once saw his food. Every other whiff of food was devoured by the time I got near it, mainly in the one air-conditioned room in all of the NYPL, where beloved Fatty ‘Cue served up giant legs of meat, an odd “cocktail party” choice, but hilarious to watch others gnaw on a leg with drink delicately in hand. Once I finally got to the last table with any food, the line was so long it wasn’t worth the wait, despite food-less hours endured with sips of multiple drinks (many of the fruity, vodka, soda, flavorless kind)… a bite never came until I hit a diner at 2am.

A wasteland of unfinished drink & chewed-up meat at Opening Gala. Photo by Virginia Miller.

2. Non-Cocktailian Crowds at the opening gala: I expected a slew of the country’s and NY’s most hardcore drink fans, the kind that mix Jerry Thomas recipes at home, await Mud Puddle book releases, and value craft and taste above a “scene”. Um, try drunken carousers breaking glasses and leaving trash lying around in the historical NYPL? What about having your photo taken with vodka models? Seriously: you, a bottle of vodka, and sexy models in a brightly lit, LA-style photo shoot. Or maybe I’m still just creeped out by the Oompa Loompas or the giant Queen Victoria towering over us in the Hendricks’ Gin area (at least there was Charlotte Voisey mixing cocktails below the Queen).

3. Events not as advertised: I’ve already mentioned the misleading representation of the cocktail competition at Keen’s and the drunken, packed-to-the-gills mayhem of the opening gala where check-in, getting a drink or even entering a room, meant yet another 15 minute wait. And where were the fine cocktails? Several came from our San Francisco crew who manned a number of tables (negronis!), or the playful Willy Wonka-themed candy counter, but there were few even tolerable out of four floors of cocktails.

BEST

1. Astor Center bar and bartenders from around the country: The Astor Center was ground zero for many of MCC’s daily events, panels and classes. The best part was having bartenders from all over New York and the country cover varying shifts. I met mixologists from St. Louis, LA, San Fran, and NY bars like Employees Only, Clover Club and Rye House. Not only did these guys whip up some of the better drinks of the entire event, but they were friendly, chatty, engaging, making the Astor Center feel like your favorite watering hole.

The respite of the Virgin Room. Photo by Virginia Miller.

2. The Virgin Room at the opening gala: What is normally NYPL’s staid, lovely Periodicals Room became the Virgin Room, a detox refuge in the midst of the body-to-body storm of revelers, ego-tripping bodyguards and completely frazzled staff. Coolers were stocked with energy drinks while the latest copies of Interview magazine lined the tables. Never mind that one couldn’t find a bit of water anywhere. At least I could read about Madonna staying sexy in her ’50’s via lamplight.

3. Gin Masters: Let’s call this third one a tie between the gracious English class and knowledge of master distillers, Desmond Payne (of Beefeater Gin) and Sean Harrison (of Plymouth Gin), at the English Gin Seminar on May 16.

4. The Stork Club: At the opening gala, one could catch a welcome respite from the oppressive heat of the rest of the building in the rarely seen NYPL basement, dubbed the Stork Club for the night. Thanks, Diageo, for turning the room into a relaxed but funky party with brassy Budos Band and proper cocktails, including a Bulleit Bourbon Mint Julep and a Mary Pickford made with Zacapa 23 year rum.

Viva La Peña

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Viva La Peña

Here’s to you, Salvador Allende. Our governmental baddies-that-were may have helped assassinate you over the copper-nationalizing ways of your democratically elected Chilean presidential administration. But in your passing, you inspired the birth of an East Bay community center focused on the use of art for social awakening. Which we’re happy to tell you continues to be an integral part of our area’s radical cultural milieu to this day. I’m talkin’ about La Peña Cultural Center, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary Sat., June 5 — a day that will henceforth known as La Peña Day in Berkeley.

You should check it out, Mr. A. Oh wait — you’ve long since shuffled off this mortal coil. My bad. Pero no importa, mi amigo, I’ll tell you about it.

Back in 1975, things were much as they are today, with bullheaded “leaders” encroaching on the sovereignty of other countries. Rankled over the turmoil in Chile, Panama, and Nicaragua, a cadre of political activists took over the rent of a defunct French restaurant in Berkeley.

And just what were these hippies and reds up to? The budding La Peña’s aim was to disseminate information about the conflicts in a way that was not just educational but entertaining. “The core was to use art and music, because you can reach more people that way. It’s much more accessible than political speeches,” executive director Paul Chin tells me. Their model was the Chilean peñas where Allende began his political campaign — salons where art, politics, and community flowed comfortably.

I’m having this conversation with Chin in the center’s lobby. On the walls around us is the center’s 35th anniversary mural, painted by local artists collective Trust Your Struggle. It’s a contemporary take on La Peña’s frontal façade on Shattuck Avenue, an eye-popping 3-D work the center is known for. We’re light-years and several generations from the center’s first years, back before the Internet, before Bushes I and II (and Reagan!), before Shakira, even before Ricky Martin.

Back then, Chin tells me, art and music from the developing world was considered less sophisticated than their Western counterparts. So La Peña began bringing in acts from around the world, artists who could communicate the struggle in their own countries. For some, the fact that they were gracing an American stage was a political statement in and of itself. Over the years, a few got famous: Eddie Palmieri, Los Lobos, Julieta Venegas, and Isabel Allende have performed there — even folk legend Pete Seeger played a La Peña-sponsored show at Berkeley Community Theater.

The center has grown, offering art courses for youth and adults, gallery shows that include international and local artists, weekly jam sessions for immigrant communities. It has hosted cultural series in conjunction with numerous community groups, on Arab culture, on the black lesbian experience, on hip-hop. The center has multiple stages and one of the region’s few Chilean restaurants attached to the lobby so “we can provide food for the body as well as the spirit,” Chin said.

It’s a successful exercise in cross-cultural understanding through art. “I’m proud to say that our stage has been reflective of most of the oppressed communities in the U.S.,” Chin said. But it’s an ongoing process. He recounts an incident with a male-dominated weekly drum session that was reported to be excluding women from hitting the skins. The artists were told to let the ladies play or leave. (Happily, they decided the space for their music was more important than their machismo).

The kaleidoscopic lineup planned for La Peña’s 35th anniversary party, which also serves as the celebration for the newly designated La Peña Day, is a fitting tribute to the center’s accomplishments. A Friday night concert of infectious cumbia beats by Chilean musician-activists Chico Trujillo. A free Saturday street festival featuring dancers, classes, and singing. And, later that evening, a performance by Las Bomberas de la Bahia, local percussionists who play classic Puerto Rican bomba music. Las Bomberas, by the way, is an all female group.

¿Te gusta, Señor Allende?

LA PEÑA 35TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Chico Trujillo: Fri/4, 8–10 p.m., $15–$18

La Peña Day Street Carnival and Fair: Sat/5, 12–6 p.m., free

Las Bomberas de la Bahia and Rebel Diaz: Sat/5, 9 p.m., $10–$12

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 849-2568

www.lapena.org

 

The facts of Cloris

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The facts of Cloris

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE With nearly 250 credits in film, television, and stage roles to her name, Cloris Leachman is a true entertainment icon. It’s hard to believe the ever-vivacious and lively actress got her start in show business competing in the Miss America pageant back in 1946, but the now 84-year-old star has generously filled a career spanning more than 60 years.

But age is irrelevant when talking to Leachman, who continues to work with a full schedule in film and television projects as her solo stage show comes to San Francisco this week at the Rrazz Room. Speaking by phone from Palm Springs, where her former husband, George Englund lives — or as she says, her “Once upon a time” husband — “I don’t like to say my ‘ex.’ I don’t think that’s appropriate. It doesn’t mean what happened,” she said.

“A couple of years ago my family got all concerned about me. I don’t really know what it was, but they felt I wasn’t my old self. My daughter talked to her father, and they decided I should write a book, have a one woman show, do talks — and we did it all,” Leachman said, laughing in a deeply infectious and endearing way.

Incorporating spoken passages along with a little piano, singing, and a healthy dose of humor, the show promises to touch on a broad spectrum of Leachman’s career, which includes notable performances as the bombshell beauty in the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955); her Oscar-winning role as neglected wife Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show (1971); a long string of successful television appearances (which have garnered her nine Emmys) on programs including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis, and, of course, her portrayal of Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974).

The normally forthcoming Leachman demurred when asked about particulars of the show, preferring that people see it for themselves. She did stress that one of her favorite parts of this show — which has been performed in several warm-up gigs leading up to her arrival here — has been interacting and meeting with her fans.

“That’s the fun part, that’s the other half of your show,” she said. “We laugh and hug and cry — having a live audience is thrilling.”

Reminiscing about some of her favorite memories of San Francisco, Leachman espoused her love of the city’s cuisine before commenting — with somewhat embarrassed but gleeful candor — on her fling in a local hotel with Gene Hackman in the 1970s, an assignation she revealed in her autobiography, Cloris, released last year.

“We met in the lobby and he asked if I wanted to have dinner, so we had dinner. I don’t know what happened, we just got on fire, we couldn’t run fast enough to the room,” she laughed heartily. “I remember the first 10 seconds after we got in the room, but I don’t remember anything after that — isn’t that terrible?”

After this week’s shows, Leachman has an array of projects on the horizon, including a new show on Fox from the creators of My Name Is Earl and a role in the film The Fields, a psychological thriller due out in the fall. She will also appear in a movie called You Again with her friend and former Mary Tyler Moore costar Betty White.

Asked about any possible secrets to her success, her openness and self-deprecating humor showed themselves. “I always went on the Johnny Carson show after I’d done a character so people would know I wasn’t that character,” she said seriously, before cracking herself up, and laughing hysterically. “I was even worse!” 

CLORIS! A ONE-WOMAN SHOW

Through June 11

Wed-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m., $40–$45

Rrazz Room

222 Mason, SF

www.therrazzroom.com

 

Sexy, seedy, comical

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Sexy, seedy, comical

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Downwind from a sprawling industrial pig farm stands a shabby little motel under new management. It’s maybe not what Business Week would call an auspicious location, but then proprietor Asuncion Boyle (Chad Deverman) is not your average entrepreneur. His enterprise — registered in marketing decisions like a bar that serves only one drink: “The Pissed-off Son of a Bitch” — is the overthrow of capitalism, one loathsome pig farmer at a time. Moreover, his first target, swaggering Texas dealmaker Charles Masterson (an extremely impressive Keith Burkland), is far from arbitrary. Asuncion — or “Assy” as his kinky lover and Charles’ trophy wife Lola (a compelling Madeline H.D. Brown) likes to call him — stalks the man he blames for his mother’s suicide many years before.

“This is about social justice, not revenge,” insists our somewhat addled if cocksure protagonist. It’s pretty clear no one else believes him, but Lola still proves a willing accomplice, even after she learns of the origin of their affair in his plot to buy her husband’s pig farm in foreclosure and turn it into a desert park for the community. This unexpectedly straightforward and hopelessly naïve stratagem comes backed by a frame-up ploy that recapitulates the violent act Asuncion saw through a motel window as a child, as well as by an inscrutable neo-Marxist treatise he penned called The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry. The document is the fruit of 10 years of dedicated study in the Albuquerque public library. (History repeats itself indeed, but the second time is definitely as farce, a detail Assy seems to have forgotten.)

The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry, the latest effort by industrious and popular local playwright William Bivins (Pulp Scripture; The Position), is less a play of ideas than a winking bit of Texan Panhandle neo-noir, a sardonic psychodrama cum thriller, something in the vein of Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe or Dennis Lehane’s Coronado (which SF Playhouse, the producing company, mounted a couple of seasons back). If Assy’s schooling of his materialistic, sadomasochistic, platinum blonde disciple and his verbal sparring with the vigorous and canny Charles come comically peppered with Marxist clichés, it’s the surprisingly tender, tortured relationships between all three on which history will actually turn.

But in also going for something beyond just another seedy, sexy, comical thrill ride, Apotheosis, part of SF Playhouse’s intriguing Sandbox Series of new works, winds up less than completely satisfying, despite a sporadic verve and emotional complexity as well as very engaging performances by a fine cast under direction from Bill English. Circling around the subject of political and personal commitment and the real engines of social change (or lack thereof), Apotheosis can strain after meaning to the detriment of its more forceful aspects — including its merits as a seedy, sexy, comical thrill ride. You’ll have to make allowances for some awkward, even confusing plot points in this table-turner, and forgive a main character who amusingly urges his partner-in-crime to “stay in the abstract” but who is in fact a little too abstract himself to be believed.

Deverman makes it possible to forgive a lot, actually, since he applies a good deal of charm to the part. But Asuncion is simply more concept than character, especially compared with Lola and Charles, who both breath more fully onstage (the dependably astute Burkland is doing some of his finest work in the latter role). Asuncion, by contrast, seems both out of place and off the page. This is doubtless part of the point. But in the end, it’s maybe both too arch and too telling that Assy writes everything, inexplicably and improbably enough, on a manual typewriter. If you can buy that detail, there’s a pig farm next door you should consider. 

THE APOTHEOSIS OF PIG HUSBANDRY

Through June 12

Wed-Sat, 8 p.m., $20–$30

SF Playhouse

533 Sutter, SF

www.sfplayhouse.org

 

Composite material

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Composite material

MUSIC This Thursday, Yoshi’s SF hosts an experiment fusing of the border-crossing sound of songstress Rupa (best known for leading SF’s rousing global agitpop band The April Fishes) with the grand indie rock orchestrations of bassist Todd Sickafoose (who has lived in Brooklyn for the past several years while leading his band Tiny Resistors and working with Ani Difranco). What initially seemed to be a cross-country collaboration is actually taking place closer to home now that the prodigal Sickafoose has returned to the Bay Area to live part-time. Mark Orton of Tin Hat Trio lends his arrangements to this sonic amalgam.

SFBG How did you two meet?

RUPA MARYA I met Todd through Ara [Anderson] and I think I’ve heard Todd’s band play more than any other band in the last year. I love his compositions. Then I heard that he was possibly moving back to the Bay Area. So when Yoshi’s wanted to book me, I wanted to do something different. This is a chance to show the more intimate side of my music, which I don’t get to do when I’m playing with a big, raucous band. To share that with Todd is really exciting.

SFBG: Todd, you lived here in the Bay Area, then moved to New York about five years ago. Why?

TODD SICKAFOOSE: All my musical friends had migrated there. In some sense it was an obvious move. But that’s also when I started playing with Ani, and she was in Buffalo. So everything became very New York-centric.

SFBG: But you recently moved back?

TS: I’m still playing music with everyone in New York, so I’m excited to be truly bicoastal. My family still lives here. This is home. But I’m part of the scene in Brooklyn, and it’s an exciting time there. So that’s home too. Coming back here it’s great to check in, see what’s going on, and to find people to play my music with. There’s a collective of people playing my music at this point. I never meant for it to be that way, but it seems right because it requires a large band.

SFBG: How many people are playing at Yoshi’s?

RM: There will be a string quartet with Todd on bass, so a string quintet, percussion, saxophone, marimba …

TS: Then clarinet, trombone, duduk …

RM: The duduk is an Armenian flute. It makes such a beautiful sound.

SFBG: What’s the night going to be like?

RM: Instead of just playing a set of my music and then a set of Todd’s, we’re trying to figure out a way to weave the different elements together. I have no idea how it’s going to sound. In The April Fishes I’ve been playing with some of the same people for five years. So to step away and play with a completely fresh group of people is thrilling. It started out of an impetus to welcome Todd back to San Francisco. And Yoshi’s is a quiet listening room where you can have a different kind of musical exploration. I hope to always play with lots of amazing, inspiring people, like Todd.

TS: I like the idea of this collaboration because Rupa’s music sounds very inclusive to me. I think that’s her mode of operation. In New York there’s such an overload of everything — musicians, ideas, and projects — that a lot of people figure out what they are by shutting out other possibilities. What’s left becomes what they are. San Francisco has a tradition that’s the other way around. I like the idea of being a magnet for many different things. To the point where you don’t know what it’ll be in the end, but it’s a recipe for a good night of music.

RM: Basically it’s just to have fun.

TS: And sushi.

RM: Really good sushi.

RUPA WITH TODD SICKAFOOSE

Thurs/3, 8 and 10 p.m., $10-$15

Yoshi’s SF

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 665-5600, www.yoshis.com

Spirit of LCD

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Spirit of LCD

By Peter Galvin

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC It’s getting more and more difficult to talk about new music without comparing it with the work of some other band, or to whichever Stones song the guitar reminds you of. It’s useful to be able to pick a reference point and say “It sounds like that,” but you’re walking a slippery slope when you imply that all music is directly derivative. James Murphy is probably incredibly aware of this tendency to make comparisons. As LCD Soundsystem, Murphy crafts intricate, dense dance music, but a quick peek into his record bin likely indicates where his true passion lies. It is a bin well-stocked with records from Bowie, Eno, Talking Heads, and other 1970s rock icons. It is not so strange that Murphy, 40 years young, would be a fan of ’70s rock. But he does seem an unlikely figure to emerge as a 21st-century musician who not-so-subtly melds the music of his formative years into contemporary dance hits.

Murphy’s transformation into indie icon happened almost overnight. First single “Losing My Edge” on Murphy’s own DFA records was one of the most buzzed-about songs of 2002. But in the years leading up to its self-titled album in 2005, LCD Soundsystem soon found itself caught between two futures: solid, if silly, dance music and intricate explorations of genre. In those days, Murphy tended to ad lib goofy lyrics over his tracks well after the musical parts were recorded, inadvertently threatening to sabotage dancefloor-fillers like “Yeah” and “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” with self-conscious sarcasms. It wasn’t until LCD’s second album, Sound of Silver, that Murphy proved how seriously he takes his craft, displaying a happy medium between his urges for humor and reference, and allowing his songs to create their own happy personalities.

This is Happening is LCD Soundsystem’s third album and it’s all happy personality, marking it as the best representation of Murphy’s signature mix of dance and ’70s rock. The album cover showcases Murphy in a suit and tie that recalls Robert Longo’s “Men in the Cities” work, or perhaps riffs on the poster for Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads performance film Stop Making Sense. Though the cover is an urgent reference to those other works, it announces Happening as the album where Murphy fully directs his self-awareness toward creating music that recalls and riffs on, but never replicates. For every track on Happening, there is a clear ’70s counterpart (the official tally heavily favors the production of Brian Eno and the vocal affectations of David Byrne), but they all surge with freshness and originality.

Opening track “Dance Yrself Clean” exhibits mumble-mouthed vocals and a drum/bass combo that wouldn’t be out of place with the low-key meditations from Murphy’s recent Greenberg soundtrack, at least until the three-minute mark, when the song explodes with sound. If it were possible to live within a song, I’d live here, in the reverberation of drums and synths that keep the song rolling another five minutes. “All I Want” is a direct homage to Bowie’s Berlin era; Eno guitar fuzz swirls around the refrain “All I want/Is your pity” before laser show synths create the impression that the vinyl is literally melting as it spins. “One Touch” and “Pow Pow” have Murphy doing his best Talking Heads and “You Wanted a Hit” is the album’s one concession to Murphy’s meta-humor, as he snottily expounds on the band’s unwillingness to conform to expectations, but the result is a song so layered and catchy that it hardly takes away from the album’s consistent pacing.

Pacing is a big factor in This is Happening‘s success, and many of Happening‘s nine songs would not fare as well apart from the album experience. On its release in March, “Drunk Girls” struck me as a particularly hackneyed stand-alone single, one that threatened to turn off as many listeners as “North American Scum” did from 2007’s Sound of Silver. So it comes as a surprise to hear how fitting the song is within the context of the album itself. The chanty back and forth of “drunk girls” and “drunk boys,” interrupted by the silver-tongued chorus “I believe in waking up together/So that means making eyes across the room,” is likely to score the trailer for whatever terrible dating show MTV comes up with this summer. But the song doesn’t deserve that grim fate. It’s part of a tangible tone and feel that makes Happening that rare dance record that’s best enjoyed as an album rather than as a collection of singles.

It may be all the rage to reference ’70s and ’80s music these days, but Murphy isn’t that ironic hipster mashing up dance beats with dad-rock, or that London band mimicking the Clash. Playing “spot the influences” in This is Happening is easy, but I don’t believe Murphy intentionally sets out to replicate the records he grew up with — they’re an integral a part of who he is. In a 2005 Pitchfork interview, Murphy admitted, “I’m not wandering under a banner of originality or a myth of no influences. There’s no purity in what I’m doing.” But Happening emerges as an undeniably pure-sounding album anyway. Drawing from the familiar sounds of an era, Murphy has gone beyond recapturing a spark that was already there. He’s created a whole new reference point.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $35

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

100 photos in search of an exhibit

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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100 photos in search of an exhibit

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL "Furthermore" implies that one is not quite finished. There is more elaboration to come, or another point entirely will be addressed. It signals that what the speaker may have fully thought through has not yet been fully stated.

"Furthermore" is also the title of Fraenkel Gallery’s 30th anniversary show, a wonderful assortment of odd ducks and singular sensations, canonized masters and anonymous geniuses. Or as gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel puts it in the intro to the exhibit’s catalog, these are, "scrappy, tenacious, unrelated photographs that want to become an exhibition."

Fraenkel’s anthropomorphic phrasing (they "want to become an exhibition") is appropriate since these pictures have new stories to tell. Many names and images are familiar (Arbus, Lange, Warhol, Levitt), while others, like the heartbreaking anonymous photograph of 1930s starlet Starr Faithful’s suicide note, aren’t. But none of these photographs are quite finished with what they have to tell us, especially when in proximity to each other.

The pictures are hung in clusters that bring out their thematic or formal affinities while simultaneously enhancing the singular qualities of each individual piece. In one of the first groupings, the scatological mechanics of Morton Schamberg’s 1917 Dada readymade God (this study is reputedly the only known photographic print of the piece in existence) are echoed in the tubular forms of Christian Marclay’s collage Double Tuba and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson’s 1867 albumen print of a pneumatic motor.

Nearby hangs a constellation of feminine self-presentation as masquerade, with Katy Grannan’s anonymous, windswept crone (2009); Ethyl Eichelberger in Peter Hujar’s elegiac 1983 portrait of the performer in Southern belle drag; and the Deco seductress in Andre Kertesz’s Satiric Dancer (1926) emerging as Norn-like sisters from across time and space.

The more abstract groupings are no less evocative, linking up formal experimentations (Mel Bochner’s cartographic Surface Dis/tension) to the serendipitous beauty of scientific documentation (the anonymous 1930 cyanotype of a radio transmission sent from the Eiffel Tower). Wonderful stuff.

FURTHERMORE …


Candy-coating sexual innuendo is an old trick in pop music (see 50 Cent, Madonna, etc.), but the sweets served up by John DeFazio and Leigha Mason at Meridian Gallery seduce precisely because they don’t want your loving. DeFazio’s baroque reliquaries for cultural figures and Mason’s fingernail and hair-laden resin candies are memento mori for youthful fantasies and heroes; roadside tchotchkes picked up from America’s death drive.

Keira Kotler’s monochromatic paintings, with their soothing shifts in luminosity and tone, are the visual equivalent of a drone: seemingly static planes that slowly reveal their depth and subtlety through prolonged exposure. The color fields in "Stillness," her new show at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, skew more Richter (specifically his 1991 painting Blood Red Mirror, currently hanging at SFMOMA) than Rothko, but their slickness diminishes none of their auratic pull.

Well tickle me proud: it’s June. Electric Works is showing its pride with "More Glitter — Less Bitter," a career retrospective of local legend Daniel Nicoletta. If queer life in this city is a cabaret, then Nicoletta has been its unofficial in-house photographer, snapping SF’s finest LGBT freaks since he was a 19-year-old employee at Harvey Milk’s Castro Street camera store. Sparkle, Danny, sparkle! *

FURTHERMORE

Through June 25, free

Fraenkel Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 981-2661

www.fraenkelgallery.com

THE CANDY STORE

June 3– July 24, free

Meridian Gallery

535 Powell, SF

(415) 398-6176

www.meridiangallery.org

KEIRA KOTLER: STILLNESS

June 4–July 24, free

Chandra Cerrito Contemporary

480 23rd St, Oakl.

(510) 260-7494

www.chandracerrito.com/ccc

DANIEL NICOLETTA: MORE GLITTER — LESS BITTER

June 4–July 10, free

Electric Works

130 Eighth St, SF

(415) 626-5496

www.sfelectricworks.com

In the cut

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
In the cut

arts@sfbg.com

FILM "If we don’t use human DNA now, someone else will," declares Elsa (Sarah Polley), the brash young genetic scientist bent on defying the orders of her benign corporate benefactors in Vincenzo Natali’s pseudo-cautionary hybrid love child, Splice. From that moment on, it’s pretty clear that any ethical conundrums the movie raises aren’t really worthy of debate: what Elsa wants to do in the name of scientific progress — splice human DNA into gooey muscle masses to provide said corporation with proteins for gene therapy — is, you know, deranged.

A hipster Dr. Frankenstein with mommy issues, Elsa bucks both corporate policy and sound moral judgment and does it anyway, much to the horror of her husband and fellow hotshot research scientist, Clive (Adrien Brody). (His name is a sideways reference to Mary Shelley’s titular mad scientist, played by Colin Clive in 1931’s Frankenstein; hers recalls 1935’s notoriously electro-coiffed Bride of Frankenstein, Elsa Lanchester.) But the potential scientific discoveries prove too seductive even for Clive, who reluctantly plays Elsa’s sad-eyed Igor. After all, these are the type of science weirdos who can gaze upon genetically engineered mounds of unarticulated, writhing flesh and coo, "She’s perfectly formed!" Um, yeaahh.

Elsa’s genetic tinkering soon results in the dramatic birth of something akin to a homicidal fetal chick crossed with a skinned bunny. Clive is horrified by this affront to nature and suggests killing it, but Elsa wants to study its life cycle for posterity. It grows at an alarming rate, and when human characteristics become apparent, Elsa clings to it with the instinctual vigor of a tigress protecting her cub. She gives her female laboratory spawn the name "Dren" ("Nerd" backward, after the acronym for their research facility) and outfits her in oddly anachronistic Holly Hobbie-style dresses. Clive remains largely unconvinced. "None of her animal components have predatory characteristics," Elsa assures him. "Well, there is the human element," he quips.

In a matter of days, Dren develops from a shy child into a precocious teen (French newcomer Delphine Chanéac) with a typically adolescent itch to rebel. The mute, atavistic Dren is like a gorgeous autistic Minotaur, bounding around on incredibly powerful gazelle-like legs while clinging to her stuffed teddy bears and batting her doe eyes in wonder, existential confusion, and (soon enough) quizzical animal lust.

When Elsa and Clive are forced to hide Dren at Elsa’s abandoned family farmhouse to escape detection from prying corporate eyes, Splice evolves into another kind of hybrid: a genetically engineered Scenes from a Marriage (1973) crossed with the DNA of The Omen (1976) and grafted onto the most very special My So-Called Life episode ever. Eventually the movie gets downright lascivious — a particularly cringe-inducing plot twist comes to mind — but a few small moments toy with the transcendent, like Dren’s discovery of her wings on a snow-laden rooftop. Both Brody and Polley seem to be gamely slumming, and their casting does add an aura of respectability to the proceedings. But make no mistake. Splice‘s genetic imprint is pure genre-pulp sleaze and cheese.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Splice may be a ludicrous, cut-rate exercise in Brood-era David Cronenberg — Natali has clearly orchestrated an homage to his fellow Canadian’s enduring obsession with body horror — but it’s a damned entertaining one. It’s also a curious entry considering Natali’s earlier efforts, notably 1997’s relatively austere exercise in Kubrickian Big Think sci-fi nuance, Cube. The only Kubrick evidenced in Splice comes in the form of Clive’s large collection of vinyl hipster toys.

Perhaps this about-face fits somewhere comfortably between Cube and Natali’s rumored next project: a remake of Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing (1982). Splice in some Craven and pretty soon Natali’s DNA will be such a bouillabaisse of sci-fi horror tropes he’ll give his Frankenstein-aping heroine Elsa a run for her money.

SPLICE opens Fri/4 in Bay Area theaters.

Cute is what he aims for

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Cute is what he aims for

FILM Cutie pie. Kissy face. Snuggle bunny. Aren’t you just the sweetest thing ever?

The above pull quote will likely not be showing up in Sony Classics’
ads for Micmacs. Nonetheless, 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 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. You can detect influences — Chaplin, Jacques Tati, Jan Svankmajer — but the unified vision is distinctively his.

Actually it was his and codirector Marc Caro’s, through 1995’s The City of Lost Children. That uneven but impressive fantasy greatly expanded on the template introduced by their early shorts and by 1991’s Delicatessen, a perfectly self-contained first feature contraption, a live-action cartoon of the genially macabre and puckishly romantic.

These were cult films, albeit big cult films. The point at which Jeunet supersized — in both popularity and in turning a few stomachs — was his first movie entirely without Caro, plucky-as-fuck Amélie (2001). It was the world’s most ornate cuckoo clock, an entire football field of dominoes falling toward an inevitable je t’aime. Whether it is also a testament to the perils of excessive storyboarding can be argued — but say that and it’s as if you had just kicked a dog. Or "an elf with big eyes," as Jeunet described his "perfect actress" Audrey Tautou. A Very Long Engagement (2004) suggested the limits of what they could do for each other, but at least it was a step away from circusy cuteness and contrivance.

Into which puddle of cuddle Micmacs leaps back with a vengeance. It took Jeunet five years to painstakingly construct a vehicle he could repeat himself this completely? Our 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." (His love interest is dubbed Elastic Girl — though it’s Julie Ferrier’s facial contortions that really alarm.) It’s like Santa’s Gallic Toyshop, populated by chimney-sweeps and organ grinders and mimes. 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. (It doesn’t help that the sole black characters here feel like racial caricatures dropped into Cirque du Soleil.) Of course the film’s all-important design aspects are impeccably wrought. And using old Max Steiner orchestral excerpts was a terrific idea — one of Micmacs‘ few simple, genuinely charming ones.

The actors make funny faces, some (like Boon, Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon, and the villains) amusingly, others laboriously. They’re just props in a series of Rube Goldbergian set-pieces that are showy, intricate yet somehow stale. If Amelie‘s pursuit of charm could feel incongruously elephantine — like a space shuttle chasing a feather — Micmacs likewise exerts way too much effort just trying to be cute and funny. It’s so overpoweringly delighted with itself that you don’t need to be.

MICMACS opens Fri/4 in Bay Area theaters.

Green is good

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Green is good

FILM How do you make a cult movie? The short answer is, you can’t. Cult movies become what they are not by the efforts of their filmmakers; they must be elevated to second-coming status by fans, superfans who dress in costume and host semi-regular viewing parties, and mega-superfans who get tattoos tributes.

Blessed with the magical combination of terrible acting, zero-budget production values, a laughable script, and directing choices so bizarre they had to be intentional, 1989’s Troll 2 was destined from the start to either wind up in total bargain-bin obscurity or be one of the most backhandedly-praised cult movies of a generation. The documentary Best Worst Movie, helmed by Michael Paul Stephenson (also known as Troll 2‘s freckle-faced kid star), traces the would-be horror flick’s path, from filming in small-town Utah with an amateur cast and a non-English-speaking Italian crew, to straight-to-vid anonymity, to becoming a late-night TV perennial who eventually found a rabidly enthusiastic audience.

Best Worst Movie does a fine job establishing Troll 2‘s cult cred, but it’s also interested in examining what happens to people who are famous only because of their association with one singularly memorable show-biz moment. For Dr. George Hardy — an excitable dentist whose stiff, eminently quotable performance as Troll 2‘s patriarch was his only film gig — his fame, two decades after the larky experience of making a movie he thought nobody would see, is a pleasant surprise (for the most part). For director Claudio Fragasso, who has two dozen non-Troll 2-related credits on his resume, the attention is welcome but also off-putting: he doesn’t seem to grasp that the reason his movie is great is because it’s so bad. Nor is he amused by the fact that his “important film” is considered by many to be a guffaw-inducing joke.

The doc’s worth your time, but Troll 2 is essential viewing no matter what. Screenwriter Rosella Drudi (Fragasso’s wife) penned the script — about a regl’ar family on vacation who realizes they’re under siege by the local goblin population — because she was pissed off at vegetarians. The rest is hard to explain, but gloriously easy to enjoy.

TROLL 2

Fri/4-Sat/5, midnight, $8–$10.50

Lumiere

1572 California, SF

www.landmarktheatres.com

BEST WORST MOVIE opens Fri/4 in Bay Area theaters; Stephenson and Hardy in person at selected opening-weekend shows.

Vow and later

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Vow and later

FILM A friend recently opined that movies about hitched couples stumbling through matrimony were far less fun to watch than movies about unmarried couples fumbling toward commitment. There is a kernel of truth here. The question "Will they get together?" is certainly more tension-filled than "when will they finally concede defeat?"

Agnès Varda, one of cinema’s smartest and slyest observers of gender relations, disproves my friend’s hypothesis and gives matrimonial ennui a gentle ribbing in two early films: La Pointe Courte (1955), her debut, and Le bonheur (1965). Screening as part of the Pacific Film Archive’s showcase of recent acquisitions, "Brought to Light," both films nominally revolve around married couples negotiating crises. Varda, however, is far more interested in observing marriage as a social contract, one that not only frequently skews in favor of men, but that also isolates both participants from the rest of the world as much as from each other.

Arguably the stylistic precursor to what would become the French New Wave, La Pointe Courte cuts between the everyday tragedies that befall the inhabitants of a small Mediterranean fishing village and the urban married couple visiting their community. The couple complains of looking for something new and fresh (hence the vacation), even as they remain oblivious to the villagers’ dramas happening around them. When the two narrative threads join at the film’s end, at the town’s ritual jousting match, the couple’s resolution to continue on is secondary to their finally coming together with the social whole.

In contrast to the black and white pensiveness of La Pointe Courte, Varda’s third feature, La bonheur, is a cheerful affair about, well, an affair. Infidelity has never looked so painfully pleasant. Filmed in a sunny palette with a soundtrack of Mozart chestnuts, Le bonheur revolves around François and Therese (real-life couple Jean-Claude and Claire Drouot), whose picture-perfect marriage includes two adorable kids and Sunday picnics in the country. Enter Émile, a young woman who catches François’ eye. The two start an affair, and François discovers that he has doubled his happiness. Eventually he comes clean to Therese, who, in the film’s most shocking moment, steps down as his "wife," offering Émile her place.

François tries to be an honest husband and have it both ways, but has to make a choice. He chooses his happiness over Therese and the family he has made with her. Varda doesn’t judge him for it, but she doesn’t really have to: he’s effectively tied the rope to hang himself with. After all, as Varda later remarked about her film, "Happiness is a fruit that tastes of cruelty." Perhaps the problem with marriage, then, is the "happily ever after" part.

LA POINTE COURTE

Sun/6, 5 p.m., $5.50–$9.50

Le bonheur

June 10, 7 p.m., $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk

(510) 642-5249

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