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Appetite: A couple April openings worth visiting

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: A couple April openings worth visiting

Parada 22 brings some much-needed new blood to the Upper Haight. It’s cheap, tasty Puerto Rican food with Cuban influences in a bright, aquamarine space showcasing an eclectic mix of South American antiques and knick knacks, while Latin jazz plays over the speakers. The concept is current and breezy: order at the counter, eat at picnic tables or stools, or take to go. I’ve been twice so far and the food has been consistently good… it’ll will be even better once they’re serving Sangria from next door neighbor, Cha Cha Cha.

Early menu recommends: Camarones a la Criolla ($11.50): sauteed shrimp, tomato and onions in a light pepper cream sauce. Pernil Asado ($9.50): confit-like roasted pork leg in garlic and oregano sofrito. Cubano ($9): pork, sweet ham, pickle, Swiss cheese, mustard, pressed sandwich. Maduros/Plantains ($4.50).

PARADA 22
1805 Haight, SF.
(415) 750-1111
www.parada22.com

 

Lafitte’s delectable Iberian pig. Photo by Virginia Miller.

Lafitte comes with revolutionary manifesto and stunning waterside perch along the Embarcadero. The menu is a moving target as it evolves daily, not just due to available ingredients but also inspiration and vision from Dissident Chef Russell Jackson. Jackson leads his team, many who were with him during his Dissident Chef dinner days, in an open kitchen showcasing their creative style. This approach will surely not please everyone, requiring strong vision to execute with room for variance from one meal to the next. Having visited twice, for dinner and their newly launched weekend brunch, I experienced deliciousness and high quality ingredients, even if sizes were too small at brunch. Read more in The Perfect Spot.

Early menu recommends (check the website for a limited menu of the day, ranging from $8-28 – appetizers on the lower end, entrees in the $20’s): any dish with prized Ibérico Pig Jackson has shipped over from Spain; Anchovy Onion Tart;“Bangers and Mash” (sausage over mashed potatoes in duck jus; also available at brunch for $12); Fried Duck Egg over butter-grilled asparagus, Green-Eyed Monster Cocktail ($12): Hendrick’s Gin, green chartreuse, jalapeno, lemon and sage; brunch non-alcoholic drink, The Dandy ($7): lemon, thyme, bergamot zest, cream, egg white, soda.

LAFITTE
The Embarcadero, Pier 5
(415) 839-2134
www.lafittesf.com

Court to Chevron: consider climate change

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Court to Chevron: consider climate change

By Adam Lesser

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY When a California appellate court rejected Chevron Corporation’s attempt to expand its Richmond refinery without clarifying whether it intends to process heavier, more polluting crude oil two weeks ago, planetary concerns loomed even larger than local impacts.

Environmental and local groups celebrated a ruling against a project that would have fouled Bay Area air, but legal experts have pointed out that the long-term impact of the ruling may have less to do with crude oil refining and more to do with global warming.

Justice Ignacio John Ruvolo took nine pages of the 35-page decision specifically to address the fact that the environmental impact report (EIR) failed to outline how Chevron was going to mitigate the approximately 898,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions the refinery expansion would create. The Richmond refinery is already the largest emitter of CO2 in California, clocking in at just under 4.8 million metric tons annually.

The appellate court’s ruling is the first to state that it is illegal under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to defer to a later date the mitigation of greenhouse gases. Ruvolo, representing the 3-0 ruling, wrote “incremental increases in greenhouse gases would result in significant adverse impacts to global warming, the EIR was now legally required to describe, evaluate, and ultimately adopt feasible mitigation measures that would ‘mitigate or avoid’ those impacts.”

Ruvolo goes on to point out that if the greenhouse gas mitigation is worked out later, the public wouldn’t have a chance to comment on how best to offset those emissions. Or worse: maybe adequate mitigation isn’t even possible. An amicus brief filed by the Center for Biological Diversity pointed out that mitigating 898,000 tons of greenhouse gases is equivalent to taking 160,000 cars off the road. That’s a tall order, and the appellate court wants a better EIR that lays out adequate measures to offset the added emissions.

“There was absolutely no specificity on whether the mitigation could be accomplished,” said Matt Vespa, who wrote the amicus brief. “There needs to be a clear road map of what will happen.”

Possible mitigation measures include internal efficiencies at the refinery, ranging from improved heat exchangers to carbon sequestration. But Vespa and Earthjustice attorney Will Rostov, who argued the case, are hopeful that a plan could include measures that would aid the Richmond community, such as retrofitting low income homes or installing clean sources of energy like solar panels.

The issue of mitigating greenhouse gases comes as Democrats in the U.S. Senate prepare to introduce a cap-and-trade bill. Rostov expressed concern that mitigation could occur far away from Richmond, where residents could suffer environmental harm and receive no benefits from Chevron.

Chevron has not yet said what its plans are, only that it is reviewing its options. They include cooperating with a new EIR, halting the expansion, or appealing the ruling to the California Supreme Court. On the possibility of appealing, Vespa commented, “I certainly don’t think the decision was a stretch in terms of the law.”

For now, the community waits. Richmond has a 19 percent unemployment rate and there have been mixed reactions to the project ever since a Contra Costa Superior Court halted the expansion last summer. The project had support from trade unions in need of jobs, although many residents are fearful of more pollution from a corporation it views as a bad and untrustworthy neighbor.

The political fight between the city and Chevron got worse this year as a battle over how much utility tax Chevron should pay became irresolvable. The situation is heading for a showdown in November, with both sides authoring competing ballot measures and the potential for the city to lose $10 million in revenue. A proposed 15-year agreement recently has been outlined.

The conflict over taxes is another milestone in a difficult relationship between Chevron and the citizens of Richmond. The near-term victory for those living in Richmond is a legal framework for holding Chevron responsible for pollutants it puts in the air Richmond citizens breathe.

“CEQA has been around for 40 years and it’s been protecting air and water,” Rostov told the Guardian. “This case shows that CEQA is going to protect the public health from greenhouse gases.”

The sound of the city

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The sound of the city

STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO Do you have a favorite musician who plays outside in San Francisco? I’d name many, if I knew their names. There’s the kid no older than 10 who led a two-piece rock band (himself on voice-guitar) through a great show to a growing crowd at Dolores Park, then played soccer immediately after. There’s the guy at 24th Street BART who sounds like Johnny Cash. There’s the man with the white guitar by San Francisco Center, and the guy who used to sing opera by Macy’s. It’s all too easy to miss the sound of life when your ears are plugged by little headphones. With that in mind, and with Heddy Honigmann’s great 1998 documentary The Underground Orchestra as one inspiration, it seemed right to talk to some of the people who make music for those who listen. Thanks to Elise-Marie Brown, Nicole Gluckstern, D. Scot Miller and Amber Schadewald for their contributions to this piece. (Johnny Ray Huston)


Name: Antone Lee

What styles of music do you play? I play a mix of folk and modern country on my guitar. Most of my music is original.

Where are your favorite places to play? I usually like to play down here (Civic Center BART station) because of the great sound and acoustics in the hallway.

How long have you been gigging on the streets or underground? I’ve been playing on the streets since I quit my job 3 years ago. This is what I do for a living. It’s pure joy.

What do you like about it and why do you do it? I like vibing off of people as they come and go. It’s nice to play whatever I’m feeling at the moment.

What don’t you like about it? Sometimes the people walking by can be sort of distracting. I usually just close my eyes and sink into the song.

Do you have recordings or a Web site? I have a MySpace (www.myspace.com/antoneleemusic) where some of my songs are, but I have about thirty songs that I’m waiting to record.

What street musicians and other musicians do you admire? I really like Fiddle Dave. He’s got a great original bluegrass sound. I also like Federico who plays more gypsy-styled café music.(Elise-Marie Brown)

Name: Ilya Kreymer

What styles of music do you play? I play eastern European music. A lot of Klezmer, Russian and Balkan music.

Where are your favorite sites to play? My favorite places to busk are the BART stations in the Mission, and also farmers’ markets. I usually like to busk two or three times a week.

How long have you been playing on the streets or underground? For five months.

What do you like about it, and why do you do it? I like the fact that it gives me a chance to practice and I get to see how people react to the music. The acoustics in the 16th and 24th BART stations are especially good. It’s also a good way to meet other musicians.

What don’t you like about it? Obviously there’s a lot of outside noise. You never know when you might be interrupted. Sometimes I might be doing really well and no one will be there to listen, but when I mess up more people might be around.

Do you have recordings or a Web site? I’ve actually got some recordings on reverbnation (www.reverbnation.com). But I’m hoping to update it soon with more songs. I’m also working on having a band that plays Russian music, too.

What street musicians or other musicians do you admire? There’s an accordion player that plays down at Civic Center. I think during morning rush hour. He also does magic tricks and wears outfits that match his accordion. He’s a longtime busker who I really admire.

What’s been your best experience playing? I had a really good experience at the Alemany market recently. A friend of mine was working at the farmers’ market. I was busking next to her booth while she danced. People were stopping by and taking notice, so that was really nice. (Brown)

 

Names: The Haight Street Vagabonds: Peter, Bucky, Crisp and Jack

Where do you play? Fisherman’s Wharf, on the sidewalk next to Cold Stone Creamery.

What styles of music do you play? Gypsy music, folk, Russian Folk. We jam. That’s like asking what kind of music the Grateful Dead play.

What are your usual instruments? Broken mandolin, harmonica, pots and pans, guitar, hand drums, children’s toys, hands, feet.

Why do you play? For fun, to entertain, and to keep our spirits up. I don’t want the money — then I feel like I’m whoring myself out to capitalism. I want food, beer, weed, cigarettes, and the best thing — instruments!

When do you play? Everyday. Sometimes the members change. Sometimes people walking by will join for a few minutes, hours or days.

How many years have you been playing on the street? Crisp has been playing for a year, Bucky since he left home four years ago at age 14.

What’s your philosophy about music? The best music has never been recorded. The best music is played for family and friends, at night, around a campfire. Or when you’re alone. (Amber Schadewald)

Name: Benjamin Barnes

What styles of music do you play? I play guitar and viola, but violin projects better and I know a lot of repertory. I’ve got maybe 3 hours of Bach memorized. It’s a meditative thing. There are six sonatas and six cello suites, and I play the cello suites on viola and violin. They’re nice profound pieces and sometimes people will stop and listen. I was playing Bach’s Chaconne and this guy stopped and listened to the whole piece and tipped me afterward.

Where are your favorite places to play? The Mission BART stations. The acoustics aren’t bad — you get a little reverb like you would in a hall. The first place I played was Powell Street station. It was 1989. I put my can down and basically practiced and made 15 dollars. I packed it all up and went home and threw the money on my bed and laughed. I was working at a coffee shop and putting myself through school.

I had a string quartet (the Rilke String Quartet) and we used to play at Montgomery and Embarcadero. We called it guerrilla musicianship.

What do you like about it, and why do you do it? It’s fulfilling to play these great pieces. I’ve been working on memorizing all these pieces and finding new ways to interpret them.

I was just in NY and saw people busking in Central Park and Greenwich Village. There’s a famous violinist, Joshua Bell, who played in the NY subway for a couple hours, and no one recognized him or that he was playing on a Stradivarius. Most people walked by or gave him a dollar, and one kid played air violin. He made 26 dollars.

Do you have recordings or a Web site? I have a lot of songs and string quartet and solo viola stuff that I’ve written and played on my website (www.benjaminbarnes.com). You can download it for free. There’s a spot where you can make a donation. I’ve gotten about 26 dollars. (Laughs)

I’m playing a free show at Caffeinated Comics on May 16th. We’re going to play an acoustic show, with songs I wrote and Bowie covers, Beatles covers, Led Zep and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” (Huston)

Name: Anthony

Where are your favorite places to play? Montgomery Bart Station, sometimes Fisherman’s Wharf.

What styles of music do you play? Love songs.

What are your favorite songs? “All The Woman I Need” by Luther Vandross, and anything Barry White.

How many years have you been playing on the street? 10.

What are your necessary accessories? Sparkly blue nail polish, mini Bible, Newports.

How long do you play? I stay until my dick gets hard and then probably longer.

Why do you do it? To entertain people and make some money. I don’t play for my health. (Schadewald)

Name: Brass Liberation Orchestra

When was the BLO founded? 2002-ish

How many members are there? Probably about 20 at the moment. 50 or more for the life of the band.

Where are your favorite spots to play? How do you get the word out? We play for change: picket lines, street marches, demonstrations. Wherever people want to dance in the street. We mostly play at events that other people are publicizing, (but) when we do our own shows, we use email and word of mouth.

What’s been your most memorable performance? Depends on who you ask! Demos at the start of the Iraq War where the band was arrested en masse? Oakland Oscar Grant marches? Whole Foods “Hey Mackey” pro-healthcare protest?

Are there other street bands you admire? There are many street bands whose music we admire. Some bands with similar political orientation include Rude Mechanical Orchestra (NYC), Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble (Montreal), Cackalack Thunder (Greensboro, NC). We also respect the youth work of Loco Bloco in the Mission, who are currently facing a budget crisis and could use some fundraising support.

What’s your favorite song to play together? A lot of us love New Orleans Second Line, and also Balkan brass music. One song we play at almost every gig is “Roma Rama,” a simplified Balkan-style tune written for us by Axel Hererra. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Name: Federico Petrozzino

What styles of music do you play? I play mostly folk and Beatles covers.

Where are your favorite places to play? I’ve played at Mills College and Ireland’s 32. But I make my living as a street musician playing around here (Powell BART station).

How long have you been playing on the streets or underground? I’ve been out here for about 3 months since I got in to town from Argentina.

What do you like about it, and why do you do it? It’s nice when you feeling like you’re doing good and people will walk by and smile or give you a wink.

What don’t you like about it? To be honest, I love the bums. But sometimes they can be crazy, which can turn some people away. It’s a distraction, but we try to be respectful.

Do you have recordings or a Web site? I have some of my stuff at purevolume (www.purevolume.com/fefon). The next step is to play at more places in the area.

What street musicians and other musicians do you admire? Frank Lynn. He’s been down here for over 30 years and is kind of a father to all of us street musicians. He’s an amazing musician and only plays on two strings. He has such a deep voice and everyone respects him.

What’s been your best experience playing? Just watching parents teach their children to appreciate music and give money. It’s great to see them learn how to be humble and respectful of the arts. (Brown)

 

Name: Larry “Bucketman” Hunt

How long have you been playing music? I’ve playing drums for 49 years. My first kit was a set of buckets when I was three years old.

I’m not from here. I’m from Kansas and I’ve had the chance to play with some of the greats all across the United States — Jimmy Smith, Pearl Bailey, The Drifters. I played with John Lee Hooker when he opened up the Boom Boom Room. This is what I do.

Where are your favorite places to play? 4th and Market, Powell and Geary (with New Funk Generation).

What don’t you like about playing music on the streets or underground? Old Navy, the Flood Building, their security is chasing me off now. I’ve been out here for fourteen years, was in Pursuit Of Happyness with Will Smith, and now they’re trying to get rid of me. They call the cops. The cops don’t want to do it, but they have to. (D. Scot Miller)

 

Eyes of the city

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Eyes of the city

arts@sfbg.com

STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO Two packs of beer, five cameras, and a ridiculous amount of camera equipment are hauled up the narrow staircase and onto the Guardian’s sunny rooftop on Potrero Hill. The four members of Caliber, a talented group of Bay Area photographers, immediately strap on their cameras and secure their lenses.

Running to the edge of the roof, spinning in circles, pointing up, down, and side to side, they take snapshots. The sunset, the traffic, the sidewalk below — Caliber shows that it’s possible to find a beautiful angle in every direction.

“It’s like we’ve never taken a picture before,” says Caliber member Julie Michelle, smirking after a series of shots. A couple of minutes of later, beer lures the rest of the pack — Stuart Dixon, Travis Jensen, Troy Holden, and his visiting brother, Dylan — around the picnic table to talk about their love for street photography.

Photo by Julie Michelle

The group met through Flickr in October 2009, after admiring each other’s varied styles. They decided to collaborate in an independent fashion, putting up a Web site filled with genuine San Francisco moments only residents can experience. When they aren’t lurking with a camera in alleyways or roaming along sidewalks and through parking lots, Caliber’s male members work 9-to-5’s, while Michelle races around the city photographing for her own Web site. Caliber’s images are a sheer labor of love.

Dixon is all about using “weird gear” and putting a new spin on classic shots of the bridge, Bay landmarks, and traffic. The group describes Jensen as a legit street photographer who captures kick-flips, drug trades, and intimate portraits of wizened or withered people. Holden “defaults to high buildings,” abandoned warehouses, and construction zones. Michelle loves architectural details and stumbling upon “lonely” timeless moments.

Photo by Travis Jensen

“As a group, we’re not taking Hallmark postcard pictures. This is the San Francisco we live in. It’s not a sunset at Crissy Field or the Painted Ladies,” Michelle says.

“It’s the nitty-gritty city stuff,” Jensen clarifies.

Every day, the Caliber Web site features a minimum of four new photos, a click from each member caught in their digital nets while walking to work, riding the bus, or on a Sunday morning stroll. From intimate portraits to the beautiful cityscapes, Caliber’s photos capture the real San Francisco from the dirty ground up.

Photo by Troy Holden

“Getting the perfect shot is very mathematical. And this is me being nerdy, but it’s recognizing when every element is in its right place,” says Troy, noting that sometimes it takes a hundred snaps of a single scene to get it right.

“It’s like panning for gold, finding the nugget,” adds Michelle. “And all you need is one.”

www.calibersf.com

Street stars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Street stars

rebeccab@sfbg.com

A few crafty, courageous souls have learned to live off of San Francisco’s streets, supporting themselves with tips from random strangers at high-traffic destinations.

Fisherman’s Wharf is such a popular spot that the Port of San Francisco has a map dividing the sidewalk turf into specified performance locations. Between Piers 39 to 41, crowds may encounter break-dancers, spray-paint artists, musicians, or balloon sculptors. Then there are strutters and statues, clad in head-to-toe silver or gold, dancing to tunes blasting out of boom boxes, or frozen still until a tip lands in their tin.

Across the city, a writer has carved out his own street niche. Lynn Gentry pecks away at his Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter, peering through cat-eyed spectacles at the unevenly inked text. A young black poet sporting an inch or two of vertical hair, seated upon a fold-up wooden chair before a makeshift miniature desk, his gig is summed up in a hand-written sign: “Pick a subject and price then get a poem.”

Gentry isn’t the city’s only busker hocking poems off an old-fashioned typewriter, but he is a regular fixture at the famous corner of Haight and Ashbury. Rather than tailoring his work to a specific style, he spins out spontaneous, lightly punctuated poems and prose, emulating the Beats. Tourists stop often and tip generously, but the locals seem to like him too. One has dubbed him “Professor.” Another seemed excited to pick up a poem he previously ordered, about Libras.

“I chose the Haight because you’ve got a lot of different things going on right here,” Gentry explains. “The longer you sit here, the more you meet the people who live right here, and who were part of the neighborhood’s history.” When not writing, he offers tales and odd historic tidbits. He talks about the 1966 Trips Festival, acid tests, the CIA, and the Summer of Love.

A trio of skinny young women approach, dressed as if they have stepped directly out of that era, and request a poem about “Supercute.” Turns out, it’s their band name.

Gentry first encountered a busking poet when he saw Jacqueline Suskin at the Oregon Country Fair. The son of a poet, he’d written mostly song lyrics before. Now, he says, he’s making ends meet with the street gig. The toughest customer request yet? “Ode to a Menstrual Cycle,” he admits. “It’s the only one that’s taken me three tries.”

Meanwhile, back at Fisherman’s Wharf, a crowd gathers to watch the masked street performer clad in head-to-toe gold. Poised atop a gold milk crate, he shimmies forward, hips swinging, shoulders rolling, and the milk crate shimmies too. He turns a 360-degree spin, and the milk crate spins too. He pauses for a photo with two wide-eyed blond children. Vacationers pause to snap pictures and tip. They might never guess that the man behind the mask is 51 years old.

At Fisherman’s Wharf, everybody sitting on the benches nearby seems to know Shaba, a spry black man who introduces himself as Shabadaba the Gold Man. He wears a gold top hat and an enormous gold clock around his neck. He does his street strutting right across the way from the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and says he’s been entertaining at Fisherman’s Wharf since 1977.

“I even beat the Bush Man out here,” he says. (The Bush Man may have the most bizarre self-made gig of all. He conceals himself behind a cluster of bush-like boughs, and then shakes them around, hollering, to scare unsuspecting passersby. It works every time.)

Shaba wasn’t always gold. He used to be silver, but too many others followed suit, so he switched colors. There’s another Gold Man, too, who rolls his tip can up and down his arms, and a few silver performers. One, who calls himself Silver Man, paints his entire head silver — except for an off-center star, which traces across his eyes and down his cheeks — and dances to Michael Jackson tunes wearing star-print pants, a red shirt with wings painted down the back, and one white glove.

“I’m kinda like Father Time out here,” Shaba says. He notes that things have changed over time, and that some performers are now paying the city for permits to be guaranteed a slot, though it isn’t mandated. He springs up suddenly, mumbling something about being unable to sit still.

Back at Haight and Ashbury, Gentry plucks a poem from the typewriter, proofreads it carefully, and hands it over. Here’s an excerpt: “San Francisco keeps trying as I hear the accents of the old neighborhoods that left them behind years ago to start a new life as writers still praise them from afar and the locals hold dying history confused to where they are….”

Vandalism Manifesto

David Talbot
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Vandalism Manifesto

Editor’s note: An earlier edition of this manifesto was scrawled onto the walls of an abandoned underground Muni tunnel somewhere in the Sunset District.

STREETS ISSUE The magic of the word — VANDALISM — is terribly offensive. Vandalism offends all the right people and launches an offensive against all the wrong people. Wait, vandalism converts our doublemoralspeak to honesty. Vandalism affirms a number of precarious values: freedom, justice, the art of unmediated living, etc.

Vandalism is not just a word. It’s a gaseous engine powering subversion, all saturated in viscous honey. A lifestyle set on boundless hope. A toy monkey you can buy on Haight Street. A self-imagined adventure ride in your Disneyland theme city of choice. A movement determined to strategically undermine deceptive imagery in favor of immediate experience — the sort of primitive amoebic goo that inspires the gorgeous muck of truthfulness. Vandalism lives in dirt and filth — the only organic material left unadulterated.

Vandalism has a healthy diet: iIt devours the monopoly on spectacle and excretes into the vast wastelands of intergalactic oil spills. Vandalism likes thrills: It’s a hyperdérive on the brink of the familiar, gathering as much intensity as possible before fluxing the rules of the game into a vortex of momentous vision. Vandalism wants to hold your hand. Vandalism is so charged that you might already feel an electric rage surging forth while reading this. If you don’t, you will. Does it burn and singe and bend and twist into the antennae of your fingertips? Channel that rage into acts of vandalism.

Vandalism is an awfully new phenomenon. It takes up arms all over the world: in big cities like New York and London, and in not-so-famous towns like Bakersfield and Danville. Well, maybe not Danville. Just wait, Danville.

Vandalism is an awfully old phenomenon. You can see nature desecrated, I mean subliminally mysticized, in the caves of Lascaux. Since we no longer live in pure nature but in concrete labyrinths built on top of iron cage islands, we must bring the caves of Lascaux and beaches of Eden and tornados of Jupiter to bear on today’s jungle city. We must subliminally mysticize the streets. Cue air horn.

Vandalism is so important that there are white wall guardians who repress it with nervous glances and waving arms. Byzantine policies regulate it. Laws have been established to punish transgressors. Yet vandalism doesn’t go away. Too many dreams fuel it. Too many imaginations keep it vital. Word on the street is that Werner Herzog is making a movie about it.

Vandalism doesn’t insist on art. It doesn’t get involved in arguments about whether something is or isn’t art. That conversation is terribly boring. Have you been to a modern museum lately? Didn’t you get the joke? OK, I admit, that conversation is irresistible. Here’s a clarification: Vandalism is an art form even if the graffiti itself is not artistic — a shrouded word meaning ultimately, technically savvy, or educated and properly executed. To this, I summon the ghost of a severe-faced vandal, Norman Mailer: Art is not peace but war! And war ain’t always pretty, or concerned with legality, soljah.

Vandalism would prefer to mark its ephemeral existence on the city skin, gushing down the fermented joys of unsanctioned life, mummifying itself in the cold caverns of a culture mausoleum. It would prefer to make you smile and laugh and wonder mercilessly to what happens in galleries: first confusion, then self-consciousness, and finally, the lingering pain of feeling slightly cheated. (Confession: I kinda stole that from Banksy. VANDALIZED!) No, vandalism doesn’t demand legitimacy in order to die in a sea of sterilized artifacts — all rotten fish skins and busted gall bladders in excessive frames. Museums sanctify the past. Vandalism prophesies the present.

History lesson: Street kids baptized vandalism in the slums, reconfiguring our country’s criminal policies of benign neglect into an acrobatic dance. They spun windmills into the future and set their gaze on the heavens. Among buildings reduced to rubble — a bombed out third world — they flipped the script and defined vandalism as bombing. The kids crucified monotony and sacrificed the crushing industrial rhythm of authority. They called themselves writers and painted their neon-tinted altar egos onto the shining armor of the behemoth subway trains and all over the walls. The names projected a faith in identity among the noise of polluted prayers.

Writers became pseudonymous in an abysmal well of city hustlers trying to make a legacy for themselves — billboard important and newsworthy. Writers preferred this life, fleeting and necessary and beautiful in the quixotic eternity of the now. The indifferent had no choice but to reckon with the writers.

Over 40 years strong, the writers still scour the marrow of their bones to re-enchant the lifeblood of the city. They craft enigmas out of the geometric lines and curves of the alphabet, making ferocious animals out of huge letters, feral and gunning in the jungle. The animals promulgate like bacteria, spawning writers-turned-shamans who cast spells of cryptic iconography wherever they go. Mummies, giraffes, and spaceships populate the jungle. An aura of prophecy emerges in the streets.

Writers wage war against the ubiquitous icons of worship mounted across the empire: those branded images manufacturing a spectacle of insurmountable desire and Sisyphean frustration. The marketers might have the money to buy permission to assault your eyes and make you feel bad about yourself; writers have the courage to forgo bureaucratic approval, stake claim on what rightfully belongs to all of us and conjure up a moveable feast. We believe in innocent pleasures, impulsive and vibrant, in order to dismantle the tyranny of monotony! More air horn, please.

Vandalism is degenerate. It’s not here to promote cleanliness and genteel manners of etiquette. Vandalism will replace honorifics with its own stamp of affirmation: Vandal Basquiat, Vandal Futura 2000, Vandal Taki 183, Vandal Debord, Haring, Burrows and Proudhon. But more than any of that, all the lower-case vandals on Muni set to burn their names on your retina.

Vandalism doesn’t care about rights to property. Vandalism stands by this ancient principle: property is theft. Vandalism doesn’t care about copyright. Copyright smacks of self-indulgence and greed. Quote me on that. Vandalism is universal and limitless, unwieldy and unbalanced, completely unhinged and frighteningly beautiful. It’s dangerous but welcoming. Come on. Give vandalism a try. Vandalism is the new gentrification; everyone’s doing it. It’s pushing emptiness and dullness out of the city and raising the quality of life to unpredictable heights of magnanimity. Your neutral walls do violence to our integrity. Whatcha got against color?

How does one live well and good? By doing vandalism. How does one become anonymously famous? By doing vandalism. With a flick of the wrists and a swagger of the step. Til’ one can’t stop and certainly won’t stop. It’s a terrible habit, an awfully time-consuming obsession. How can one get rid of everything grotesque and in bad taste? Vandalism. How do we reassert ourselves in the midst of corporate homogeny and increasing pressure to normalize? Vandalism. By what means do we establish our will to communicate freely and openly in the public sphere? Vandalism.

Vandalism cannot be bought or sold in your local Walgreens (maybe in Giant Robot, though). No no, vandalism is a nebulous thing, an utterly cosmic thing, dirty and scurrilous and always operating in the shadows, always slipping away from sterilization and appropriation like a rat with rabies on the run. What a charming nuisance. What a credible way to live! Street credible. The streets is a mother, and good ol’ vanguard vandalism — the first lesson.

Vandalism once brought down the Roman empire. We have yet to rebuild the world in its depths. (Wooley Van Dahl)

360-degrees “Muralismo”

David Talbot
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0
360-degrees “Muralismo”

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO In the late 1960s, when the muralismo movement began gaining strength among artists and community organizers in the Mission District, or in the 1970s when pioneer female street artists Mujeres Muralistas first picked up their brushes to trick out Balmy Alley, they probably weren’t thinking about the de Young Museum and slick coffee table books.

But, to appropriate Jay-Z, street art’s got a new bitch — the fine art world. With the 2009 release of Precita Eyes’ eye-popping Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (www.missionmuralismo.com) and the corresponding year-long event series the picture book of the storied mural hood has spawned at the de Young museum, neighborhood tags and tableaus are gaining a stronger foothold in the world of high art. That is to say, the world of art that people pay big money for.

Banksy’s recent film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and the attendant media frenzy about several tie-in works appearing around town, is the hyped-out crest of spray-can crazy that’s got San Francisco in its grip. Galleries like Project One, White Walls, and 1AM are selling works for hundreds and thousands of dollars that you once saw on the wall of your neighborhood elementary school or liquor store. High class Union Square Hotel Des Arts offers visitors the chance to sleep in well-appointed rooms designed by “street” artists Apex, Shepard Fairey, and Chor Boogie. It’s hip to be street, stay up to get down, yadda yadda.

So what’s new? After all, Jean-Michel Basquiat zoomed from asphalt to canvas, sparking a meteoric career that collectors loved to cop a piece of in the 1980s. In graffiti’s early days, New York taggers struggled to retain control of their art in the face of soaring price tags, grasping middlemen, and ad execs who recognized the power of the bubble letter to sell. Past generations of SF artists like Twist and Mars One have graduated from the streets entirely. “You need money to do bigger and better things,” White Walls curator Justin Giarla told me. “Galleries are another possible venue to find yourself in history books, museums.”

Mission Muralismo offers a seductively jumbled history. Its pages, a nonlinear whirl of street art celebrated in situ, are perfect for a disparate neighborhood art movement that includes Latin American freedom songs, urban rustic neo-folk, and unapologetic civil disobedience. Editor Annice Jacoby says it took years of “digging through people’s closets” to create.

“You have to find a container that reflects the contradictions and surprises of the street,” Jacoby told me. “This whole place [the Mission] is like a gallery, proliferating and procreating.” To encapsulate the movement’s feel, she took images of temporal art — murals tend to last no more than 12 years before they start to deteriorate — and laid them alongside thoughtful essays by artists and other key Mission figures.

It would be easy to mistake the whirl surrounding Muralismo as another round of outsider art profiteering. Easy, that is, if you didn’t know Precita Eyes’ history of sponsoring social justice-based community murals. Easy, if you forget that the de Young events don’t directly commodify in the murals depicted in the book by swallowing them whole — those murals are pretty well stuck to their walls. Easy, if you’ve never seen the diverse crowds the events draw and the enthusiasm and respect shown by all sides.

“You mention Basquiat, and what happened there is that collectors started recognizing his work and showing it. This is different — we’re not bringing in the art,” de Young director of public programs Renee Baldocchi. Her museum’s First Fridays Mission Muralismo events, part of its Friday night “Cultural Encounters” series, are more than opportunistic book tie-ins. They aim to focus on the culture of the artists themselves. Key figures in the mural movement featured in the book like Juana Alicia, the Billboard Liberation Front, and Jet Martinez (muralist and artistic director of the Clarion Alley Mural Project), come in to lecture — street artists, lecturing? — to packed crowds on what they do, why it’s important, and how you can do it too. “We’re hoping that by inviting them in to talk about their art, it makes more people aware of them in the world,” Baldocchi says.

“The [de Young] events, I see them attracting a lot of young people,” says Jaime Cortez, an artist who coordinated the Galeria de la Raza digital billboard campaign in the 1990s and AIDS awareness mural projects. “I think that’s because of the big name graffiti artists the events draw.” Perhaps these functions are less about changing the meaning of the murals they celebrate than the high art venue they’re being celebrated in.

“It’s not like they’re having a show of muralists [at the de Young],” says Martinez, who has feet in both the street and gallery art worlds. Jet spoke at the Mission Muralismo event highlighting Clarion Alley. “They’re providing a forum where we can speak about this art,” he said.

Hopefully there are some lifted conversations going on, because the color and uniqueness of the Mission’s public art is pretty dope. “You’re dealing with a monumental subject,” Jacoby acknowledges. “You have to find a container that reflects the contradictions and surprises of the street.”

Debates don’t get much weirder than ones about where art “belongs.” But what’s certain is that with all the attention — the de Young events, the Banksy histrionics — more people are seeing the writing on the wall. “Oftentimes we’re in a hurry; we don’t stop to look at the murals,” Baldocchi says. “This is providing a forum so that when we do go down into the Mission, we can look at them and think about what’s being said — especially the social justice side.” *

MISSION MURALISMO

First Fridays, 5 p.m., free

de Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., SF.

(415) 750-3600

www.famsf.org/deyoung

 

Beauty lies

David Talbot
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0
Beauty lies

MUSIC Let’s get this out of the way: Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson writes beautiful music. His string sections shiver and swell, his melodies alternately soar and ache, and the electronic textures that he often weaves in amid the more traditional orchestral instruments are unobtrusively massaged into the mix. This is music that doesn’t take warming up to, but rather cocoons you with its immediate approachability and occasional familial resemblances to members of the classical canon as well as more modern film composers such as Nino Rota and Elmer Bernstein. (In fact, many of Jóhannsson’s albums started as original soundtracks, or have been used as such.)

“Prettiness is not something I strive for, even though I know that most people’s initial reaction to my work is to say that it’s beautiful,” Jóhannsson counters bluntly over the phone when I ask for his feelings on the subject. “I don’t think beauty is the main goal. I think it’s more a certain emotional quality. I work in a very visceral way and I try to make music that affects you viscerally and that affects you physically.”

This has certainly been my experience of Jóhannsson’s music, starting with Englaborn, his 2002 debut on the Touch label, and up through his most recent release, last year’s And In the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees (Type), in spite of — or perhaps because of — its beauty. Listening to these classical-not-classical albums, it is hard not to feel that familiar tug inside — the affective prelude to either laughing or crying — that often occurs when one encounters something beautiful.

Composer Benjamin Britten once wrote that “It’s cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.” Britten then cataloged the different types of cruel beauty music allows the listener to access: there is “the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom,” “the beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love,” and “the cruel beauty of nature and the everlasting beauty of monotony.”

The kinds of beauty described by Britten — beauty attenuated by pain or loss — are present in Jóhannsson’s music, enriched by the context of its conception. Englaborn’s icy and delicate arrangements were conceived as a compliment to the violence and emotional ugliness of the play it originally scored. Fordlandia (4AD), Jóhannsson’s monumental 2008 album, was inspired in part by Henry Ford’s abandoned prefabricated industrial town built in the Amazonian rainforest in 1928, itself a monument to failure. And In the Endless Pause … is an expanded soundtrack to Marc Craste’s animated eco-parable Varmints, a critique of the environmental costs of unchecked urbanization told with a cast of rodents. When asked who his ultimate fantasy collaborator would be, Jóhannsson immediately names the late, great depressive Belgian chanson specialist Jacques Brel.

Despite the unabashed emotionality of his music, with its darker spells of sturm und drang , Jóhannsson discusses his work matter-of-factly. “I think what I’m interested in is the clash of culture and nature, or of technology and nature,” he says. “I don’t write ‘absolute music.’ It always starts with a nonmusical idea.” Better to leave the gushing to the critics, I suppose — a charge that could certainly be leveled at this particular profile. But I know I won’t be the only one reaching for a handkerchief when Jóhannsson and his six-piece ensemble take to the Great American Music Hall’s stage. Yes, it is cruel that music can be so beautiful. But hearing it is nonetheless sublime.

JÓHAN JÓHANNSSON

With Christopher Willits

Fri/14, 9 p.m. (doors at 8 p.m.), $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

1(888) 233-0449

www.gamh.com

 

Secret agent “homme”

David Talbot
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0
Secret agent “homme”

NEW-OLD MOVIE The Cold War heated up a public appetite for spy adventures well before James Bond became a pop phenomenon. In fact, Ian Fleming hadn’t yet created 007 in 1949, when Jean Bruce commenced writing novels about Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a.k.a. Agent OSS 117 — eventually more than 90 of them. When Bruce died (crashing his Jaguar — what a man!) in 1963, just as the screen Bond was taking off, his widow wrote another 143. Then her children wrote two dozen more, as recently as 1992.

Needless to say, this French superspy was ready-made to join the ranks of umpteen 007 wannabes, appearing in somewhere between six and 11 films (it’s unclear whether all involved de La Bath, or were just Bruce-based) through 1970, played by at least four actors. The series remained well-known enough to get a new life in 2006 when director Michel Hazanavicius and top French comedy star Jean Dujardin sought to spoof 1960s espionage flicks a la Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).

That was a big hit, so now we’ve got a sequel. OSS 117: Lost in Rio isn’t as fresh or funny as the preceding Cairo, Nest of Spies. But it’s still a whole lot fresher and funnier than Austin Powers Nos. two (1999) and three (2002). Dujardin’s de La Bath is the very model of jet-set masculinity, twisting the night away at a ski chalet with umpteen soon-to-be-machine gunned “Oriental” lovelies in the opening sequence, flashing a pearly, superconfident smirk at the neverending stream of multinational babes elsewhere, wowing them poolside with his top-of-the-mid-1960s-line male physique (nice, but don’t expect visible abs). Of course such pleasure pursuits take place strictly between car chases, shootouts, and karate fights.

Posing (badly) as a reporter to root out Hitlerites hiding in Brazil, our lone-gun hero is distressed to discover he has help from Israeli Mossad agents, one a mere chick. “Hunt down a Nazi with Jews?” he exclaims, complaining the target villain “will recognize them … their noses, obviously.” Beyond its pitch-perfect recreation of swinging ’60s cinema clichés (Naugahyde-lounge muzak, slightly feverish Technicolor, etc.), these films’ main joke is how cluelessly, casually racist, sexist, and xenophobic de La Bath is. The joke is on him, but his charm is remaining blissfully unaware.

Agreeably silly, Lost in Rio doesn’t go for Hollywood-style slapstick and grossout yuks. Instead, its biggest laughs are usually droll throwaways, as when 117 explains a shocking sudden costume change with the unlikely declaration “I sew,” or during an LSD-dosed hippie orgy proves quite willing to go with the flow — even when that involves another guy’s groovy finger breaching security up the pride of French intelligence’s derriere.

OSS 117: LOST IN RIO opens Fri/14 in Bay Area theaters.

 

Southend Grill ‘N’ Bar

David Talbot
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2
Southend Grill ‘N’ Bar

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If “i” comes before “e” except after “c,” then “bar” comes before “grill” … well, I would have said always, but recently I came across an exception to this rule. This would be Southend Grill ‘n’ Bar, which opened toward the end of March in a Valencia Street space long occupied by Café Arguello.

The flipping of these two words from their familiar, not to say ossified, positions is more than just a bit of wordplay or a flouting of some alphabetical-order rule. When “bar” comes before “grill,” the subtle implication is that drinking is the first order of business and that food, while not exactly an afterthought, is supplemental. Eating while drunk can mean that standards loosen as to what one is eating (and, for that matter, drinking). Putting “grill” first, on the other hand, advises us that a place isn’t serving food just to help move the booze — that while the feel might seem little different from a standard B&G, the emphases have shifted.

Southend doesn’t look much changed from Café Arguello. The long, high-ceilinged box of a dining room (which sits right at the corner of Valencia and 26th streets) still has a slightly formal, slightly hushed tone; the walls have been repainted, but they’re still hung with artwork, including an impressive piece by Rafe Mischel, and candles still flicker in the evening air.

And the bar still stands, in a far inward corner of the dining room, where perhaps it serves as a kind of magnet. At dinner one night we bore stoic witness as three raucous female police officers whooped their way through the dining room to the bar, where they whooped some more before departing (with yet more whoops) in the direction of Mission Pie.

The food is very different from the Spanish cuisine of Café Arguello days, of course. Southend’s kitchen takes its cues from around the world — though not from Spain. There is a certain amount of bar food, including firmly crispy onion rings ($4), a dish I dislike as a rule, but not here, and potato skins ($7) baked with cheese and bacon and served with sour cream. If there is a food more redolent of 1980s happy hours at boîtes in the suburban Midwest, I can’t think what it would be. These were slightly underseasoned but plush to the tooth and very satisfying. Also a bit underseasoned was a bowl of (meatless) pinto-bean chili ($5), although a skin of melted cheese and a strong cumin charge made up most of the deficit; I just had to add a sprinkle or two from the tabletop salt shaker to bring the chili into trim.

Little flaws permeate the cooking, but without seriously diminishing its pleasures. The ground beef in the Thai lettuce wraps ($7) was a tick or two past well-done, but it remained tasty and quite spicy. And because the lettuce leaves were fresh and moist (as if just sprayed by one of those sprinklers you see in supermarket produce sections), the meat’s lack of moisture wasn’t fatal.

We were told that spinach ravioli ($10) was dressed with what our server described as a “creamy” pesto sauce. (You can also get the ravioli with alfredo sauce.) The pesto might indeed have been creamy when made, but when tossed with the ravioli it turned soupy. Still, the dish remained flavorful. And we did find real creaminess, along with the dulcet breath of tarragon, in a side of cole slaw ($4). The crispness of the cabbage shreds (a mix of red and green) suggested that it had been made just recently.

Bigger appetites will be drawn toward the chicken milanese ($12), a full (not half) boned breast of chicken, breaded and sautéed until crisp and golden, then served on a bed of wilted arugula. Chicken is often quietly dissed as characterless, but, as this dish proves, it can sometimes stand on its own without high-powered sauces and rubs.

A salmon filet ($14) didn’t get the breading, but otherwise it was similar, with wilted spinach substituted for the arugula and a nice pool of spicy aioli as a further enhancement. Our only squawk here was that we’d ordered the salmon burger. Our server did acknowledge the mistake and took responsibility for it; she also said she would charge us only for the burger but only knocked 20 percent off the filet instead. The multiple stories irked me more than the few dollars, but it is probably a sign of how tight things remain that those few dollars matter.

Consolation: an ice-cream sandwich ($5.50) made with oatmeal-raisin cookies. We whooped, discreetly. *

SOUTHEND GRILL ‘N’ BAR

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5–10:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5–11 p.m.; Sun., 5–9:30 p.m.

1499 Valencia, SF

(415) 648-8623

www.southendsf.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Not as noisy as you might expect

Wheelchair accessible

 

Original’s sin

David Talbot
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0
Original’s sin

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS This Cheap Eats column is going to be the most carefully researched and least relevant Cheap Eats column I ever wrote, just to warn you.

I woke up early.

I threw some clothes into a bag. I threw a half a stick of salami, a chunk of cheese, a knife, and a couple of leftover bagels into another bag, and put it into the same bag with my clothes.

I walked to BART, took BART downtown, a bus to Oakland, a train to Bakersfield, and another bus to Los Angeles, where I have spent the last 24 hours flicking poppy seeds off of my arms and legs, picking them out of my belly button, brushing them out of my hair, and grinding them out of my butt crack.

For the latter I did have help. Ladies and gentlemen, of all the straight men and German posers I have ever befriended and/or bebonked, never have I ever once been treated with more sweetness and chivalry, or fucked harder, than I was by this L.A. lesbian chick I was trying to tell you about.

Problem: I like it soft, and slow.

And there was some of that too, but I knew from the moment she picked me up at the train station with a big colorful bouquet of flowers, then raced me real fast around town in her cool, dark green sports car, talking beautifully with me and laughing and gesticulating, meanwhile receiving and responding to text messages with her other hand … I knew. I was in for a ride, a wild one, and would not be sorry I came.

Her cozy, cool Hollywood apartment was filled with tulips, my favorite — she’d asked! In fact, she’d gotten me more flowers than all my previous lovers (in this millennium) ever got me, combined. In the bathroom there was a towel and washcloth, a fresh bar of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, all piled neatly under a cute card with my name on it, and three more tulips.

Hollywood drew me a bubble bath, and I washed all those trains and busses off of me, dried, and dressed in my favorite new brown skirt and cool lacy brown print shirt, plus 2 million, 500,000 poppy seeds.

Then, as promised, she took me to Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.

But I forgot to mention that when I came out of the bathroom, she greeted me with a file folder full of information about Roscoe’s in particular, and chicken & waffles in general. Which was not only unnecessary but impressive, considering she’d never been to Roscoe’s, or had chicken and waffles together on the same plate, and would clearly have preferred to take me to Animal, or any of about a hundred other shall-we-say higher-brow L.A. eateries she’d mentioned in her e-mails and in conversation.

No, but I had to know about the legend, the original, the Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, which — I am sad, sorry, and chagrinned to report — sucks.

The waffle was mush and the fried chicken was dead-dry — and I’m talking about the juiciest of jucies, the thigh. The worst chicken and waffles I’ve ever had in the whole history of the San Francisco Bay Area was 10 times better than the legendary original Roscoe’s in Hollywood, proving yet again that authenticity is overrated, or that we do everything pretty much better than pretty much everyone else in the world, give or take pizza.

As if she needs another workout, my new friend and new favorite lover is with her personal trainer and I am sitting at her desk in my underwear, writing real fast so when she comes back we can go eat at five or six better L.A. restaurants.

Which I promise not to write about.

Tomorrow early I will wake up before it’s light out, make her bacon and coffee, make her French toast, make her drive me back to Union Station, then bus, train, bus, BART, and walk back home. And next week, I promise, you will read about at least one of San Francisco’s recent rash of chicken-and-waffle spin-offs. *

ROSCOE’S HOUSE OF CHICKEN’N WAFFLES

Daily: 8 a.m.–12 midnight

1514 N. Gower St., L.A.

(323) 466-7453

MC/V

Beer and wine

Stage listings

David Talbot
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Giant Bones Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (650) 728-8098, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Fantasy author Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)  penned the source material for Stuart Bousel’s world-premiere play.

BAY AREA

In the Wake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $13.50-71. Previews Fri/14-Sat/15 and Tues/18, 8pm; Sun/16, 7pm. Opens May 19, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees May 20, 29, June 3, 12, or 17; no show June 25); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 27. Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group perform Lisa Kron and Leigh Silverman’s drama about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown after she begins to question her faith in country, relationships, and herself.

ONGOING

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening Garage, 975 Howard; 585-1221, http://pustheatre.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through May 22. This new, relatively short play with the long title, presented by Performers Under Stress, struts and frets a wearying hour upon the stage as actor Scott Baker’s haughty and high-strung Faust, knowing he is bound for hell at the end of the evening, pleads his case before the audience, shadowed all the while by a speechless but expressive Mephistopheles (played with sly showmanship and moody animal intelligence by Valerie Fachman). The case at hand revolves around a masterwork of nonsense over which Faust (its composer) and the devil compete: a set of journals filled entirely with hatch marks. Why exactly is difficult to understand for more than one reason, not the least being the tedium of the monologue itself, which is only temporarily relieved by the arrival of some cheap canned beer. Free brew aside, there’s little merit in playwright Mickle Maher’s self-conscious rambling, which more than anything chases its own tale — running in semantic circles without progressing anywhere or landing a bite. (Avila)

Andy Warhol: Good For the Jews? Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida; 292-1233, www.tjt-sf.org. $15-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 20. Renowned monologist Josh Kornbluth is ready to admit his niche is a narrow one: he talks about himself, and more than that, he talks about his relationship to his beloved late father, the larger-than-life old-guard communist of Kornbluth’s breakthrough Red Diaper Baby. So it will not be surprising that in his current (and still evolving) work, created with director David Dower, the performer-playwright’s attempt to “enter” Warhol’s controversial ten portraits of famous 20th-century Jews (neatly illuminated at the back of the stage) stirs up memories of his father, along with a close family friend — an erudite bachelor and closeted homosexual who impressed the boyhood Josh with bedtime stories culled from his dissertation. The scenes in which Kornbluth recreates these childhood memories are among the show’s most effective, although throughout the narrative Kornbluth, never more confident in his capacities, remains a knowing charmer. But the story’s central conceit, concerning his ambivalence over presenting a showing of “Warhol’s Jews” at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, feels somehow artificial. It’s almost a stylized rendition of the secular-Jewish moral quandary and neurotic obsession driving Kornbluth works of the past — or in other words, all surface, not unlike the work of another shock-haired artist, but less meaningfully so. (Avila)

The Diary of Anne Frank Next Stage, 1620 Gough; 1-800-838-3006, www.custommade.org. $10-28. Thurs/13-Sat/14 8pm; Sun/15, 7pm. Custom Made performs Wendy Kesselman’s modern take on the classic. Eat, Pray, Laugh! Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Wed, 8pm. Through May 26. Off-Market Theaters presents stand up comic and solo artist Alicia Dattner in her award-winning solo show.

Echo’s Reach Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St; 665-2275, www.citycircus.org. $14-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 4pm); Sun, 4pm. Through May 30. City Circus premieres an urban fairytale by Tim Barsky.

Fishing Shotwell Studios, 3252 19th St; www.fishingtheplay.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through May 29. David Duman’s new play satirizes foodie culture.

Geezer Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm (Sun/9 show at 8pm). Through May 23. Geoff Hoyle presents a workshop performance of his new solo show about aging.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Thurs, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. See review at www.sfbg.com.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Starting July 10, runs Sat, 8pm and Sun, 7pm. Through August 1. Thrillpeddlers presents this revival of the legendary Cockettes’ 1970 musical extravaganza.

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

The Real Americans The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $18-50. Wed-Thurs and May 28, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 30. Starting July 8, runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm, through Aug 8. The Marsh presents the world premiere of Dan Hoyle’s new solo show.

*Round and Round the Garden American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-82. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through May 23. American Conservatory Theater offers a canny and contagious production of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1973 sex farce, one of the gems in the British playwright’s well-loved trilogy, “The Norman Conquests,” which variously lands on the same group of related characters — centered on the loveable and lovelorn reprobate Norman (a charmingly unstrung Manoel Felciano) — during the course of a single weekend spent in giddy, desperate, troubled infidelities. “Round and Round the Garden” takes place behind the ivy-covered walls of the house where the weekend unfolds, in the titular garden, as Tom (Dan Hiatt) and Annie (Delia MacDougall) meet in uncomfortable tension and bland civility, soon followed by Norman, Annie’s brother and Norman’s brother-in-law Reg (Anthony Fusco), Reg’s wife Sarah (Marcia Pizzo), and Norman’s own far-from-clueless wife Ruth (René Augesen). Stirring up these convoluted relationships is Norman’s fervent desire to seduce one or better yet both of his sisters-in-law, but plot details are really secondary to the chaotic spirit of the dance, not to mention the wonderful ensemble work underway. Director John Rando and a razor-sharp cast deliver a very entertaining evening effortlessly evoking the wandering, convention-flouting — but also still awkwardly conventional — 1970s, as seemingly sophisticated characters prowl (in some cases on all fours) amid the verdant Viagra of scenic designer Ralph Funicello’s magnificent backyard habitat. (Avila)

Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show Marines’ Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter; 771-6900. $30-89. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through May 23. Starting May 28, runs Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 27. From somewhere before the Beatles and after Broadway “Beatlemania” comes this big band cigarettes-and-high-ball nightclub act, recreating the storied Vegas stage shenanigans of iconic actor-crooners Frank Sinatra (David DeCosta), Dean Martin (Tony Basile), and Sammy Davis Jr. (Doug Starks), and sidekick comedian Joey Bishop (Sandy Hackett). The excuse, if one were needed, is that god (voiced in mealy nasal slang by Buddy Hackett, appropriately enough) has deemed a Rat Pack encore of supreme importance to the continued unfurling of his inscrutable plan, and thus unto us a floorshow is given. The band is all-pro and the songs sound great — DeCosta’s singing as Sinatra is uncanny, but all do very presentable renditions of signature songs and standards. Meanwhile, a lot of mincing about the stage and the drink cart meets with more mixed success, and I don’t just mean scotch and soda. The Rat Pack is pre-PC, of course, but the off-color humor, while no doubt historically sound, can be dully moronic — and the time-warp didn’t prevent someone in opening night’s audience from laying into Hackett’s opening monologue for a glib reference to suicide. Though talk about killing: thanks to the heckler, the actor — son to Buddy and the show’s co-producer (alongside chanteuse Lisa Dawn Miller, who sings a cameo as Frank’s “One Love”) — got more life out of that joke over the rest of the evening than any other bit. (Avila)

Speed the Plow Royce Gallery, 2910 Mariposa; 1-866-811-4111, www.speedtheplowsf.com. $28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Expression Productions performs David Mamet’s black comedy.

Tartuffe Studio 205 at Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; 377-5882, http://generationtheatre.com. $20-25. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 3pm. Generation Theatre performs a new English translation of Molière’s classic, in Alexandrine verse.

Tell It Slant Southside Theater, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Marina at Laguna; www.tixbayarea.com. $20-40. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. BootStrap Foundation presents Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen’s musical about Emily Dickinson.

Very Warm for May Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207. $38-44. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 24. 42nd Street Moon kicks off their Jerome Kern Celebration with this Oscar Hammerstein II script that features Kern’s final Broadway score.

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 30. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

Girlfriend Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $27-71. Wed/12, 7pm; Thurs/13-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 2 and 7pm. If you like Matthew Sweet’s songs you’ll probably like the spirited renditions in this new boy-meets-boy musical, which borrows its title from Sweet’s famous 1991 album. The songs, backed by a solid band in a recessed fake-wood-paneled den at the back of the stage, underscore the fraught but exhilarating emotional bond between two Nebraska teens at the end of their high school careers and the cusp of an anxious, ambiguous independence. The performances and chemistry generated by actors Ryder Bach and Jason Hite under Les Waters’ sharp direction are marvelous, delivering perfectly the inherent honesty and feeling in Todd Almond’s book, while Joe Goode’s beautifully understated choreography adds a fresh, youthful insouciance to the staging. But the story is a small one, not just a small town story, and its short, predictable arc makes for a slackness not altogether compensated for by the evocative tension between the lovers. (Avila)

Oliver! Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $24-33. Fri/14, 7:30pm; Sat/15, 2 and 7pm; Sun/16, 1 and 6pm. Berkeley Playhouse performs the Dickens-based musical.

Terroristka Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (415) 891-7235, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-20. Thurs/13-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 5pm. Threshold: Theatre on the Verge performs Rebecca Bella’s drama, based on the true story of a Chechen woman trained as a suicide bomber.

Twelfth Night La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. You’ve got to hand it to Impact Theatre: they make reimagining Shakespeare look so darned easy. To set a crass comedy about class, obsession, and mistaken identity at “Illyria Studios” in the heart of tawdry Tinseltown seems like such an obvious take, you wonder why it took someone so long to get around to doing it. True, the execution is not as vivacious as last year’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; there’s a lot of static standing around, particularly in the thus-rendered anti-climactic final act, and maybe a touch too much reliance on the karaoke machine prop (which is featured at its best during a stirring rendition of “Alone” courtesy of Cindy Im as Feste). But overall, the enthusiastic cast and timeless humor win the night. Especially strong comic performances are delivered by Valerie Weak and Jai Sahai as the troublesome twosome Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek while Seth Thygesen as Orsino maintains his now-familiar, yet thoroughly believable persona of oblivious yet jocular playboy. But it is Maria Giere as the cross-dressing, love-smitten Viola who displays the most range — from her ballsy attempts to fully inhabit her disguise as the page Cesario to her cringing attempts to have her beloved Orsino see through it. (Gluckstern)

What Just Happened? Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 9pm; Sat, 8pm. Through May 27. Nina Wise’s show, an improvised work based on personal and political recent events, extends and re-opens at a new venue.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $10-50. Sun, 11am. Through June 27. The Amazing Bubble Man, a.k.a. Louis Pearl, performs his family-friendly show.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Dis-Oriented” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri, 8pm. $15-20. A trio of Asian American women (Zahra Noorbakhsh, Collenn “Coke” Nakamoto, and Thao P. Nguyen) performs solo works.

“Raw and Uncut Choreography Showcase” Garage, 975 Howard, SF; 518-1517, www.975howard.com. Tues, 8pm. $10-20. With guest choreographer Josh Beamish, plus locals Christine Cali, Andi Clegg, Shaunna Vella, and more.

*Smuin Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard; 978-ARTS, www.smuinballet.org. Fri-Sat, and May 11-14, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm (also Sun/9, 7pm). Through May 16. $18-56. Smuin is gone, but under the leadership of Celia Fushille, the company has not yet strayed very far from his heritage. The rep is still heavy on the fast and the fun; audiences and dancers alike enjoy it. Fushille’s big addition — and it’s a good one — is Jiry Kylian’s Petite Mort, a marvelous piece of fluff with rolling hoop skirts and twirling foils, set to sublime Mozart. Since the name “little death” also refers to the result of what people do in private, you can read your own metaphor into it. Chinese-American Ma Cong’s French Twist is a hilarious dancing machine run at top speed. Tough to do, well done. Smuin’s Songs of Mahler opens a program that is balanced, fresh, and easy on the eyes. (Felciano)

“Super Hero Movies and Recycled Grooves” de Young Museum’s Koret Auditorium, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park; 750-3600, www.stagewrite.org. Fri, 6:30pm; May 21, 11am. Free. Fifth graders (from Starr King Elementary) penned the plays, inspired by de Young artwork; professional actors (from StageWrite) perform them.

 

Event Listings

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

WEDNESDAY 12

Bike-In Movie Parking lot across from the Good Hotel, SF; www.disposablefilmfest.com. Good Hotel, 112 7th St, SF; (415) 621-7001. 4pm, free. Celebrate SF Bike Week starting at 4pm with Forage SF’s Underground Market, followed by a raffle at 7pm for cool bike gear, stays at the Good Hotel, and more, culminating in a screening of the Disposable Film Festival 2010 competitive shorts at 8pm. Valet bike parking available from the SFBC.

Write/Walk Meet at Mission High School, 3750 18th St., SF; (415) 252-4655. 6pm, free. Reading at Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia, SF. 7pm, free. Enjoy a walking tour of poems by young poets from WritersCorps workshops at Mission High School that will be displayed in Mission storefronts for the month of May. Participating merchants include Candy Store Collective, Adobe Book Shop, Bombay Ice Cream, Borderlands Books, Dog Eared Bookstore, 826 Valencia, and more. Maps available at participating merchants.

Zhang Huan Sculpture Joseph L. Alioto Performing Arts Piazza, Civic Center Plaza, Larkin between the Main Library and the Asian Art Museum, SF; www.sfartscommission.org. 10am, free. Attend the dedication of internationally-acclaimed Chinese artist Zhang Huan’s Three Heads Six Arms copper sculpture that will be located in Civic Center Plaza through 2011.

THURSDAY 13

Bike Away From Work Party Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; www.sfbike.org/btwd. 6pm; free for SFBC members, $10 for non-members. Get the skinny [jeans] on cycling fashion and style at this runway show and Bike to Work Day after party featuring tips on functional finery, complimentary bike valet, DJs, and raffle prizes.

Radical Women on Asian American Heritage New Valencia Hall, Suite 202, 625 Larkin, SF; (415) 864-1278. 7pm, free. Asian vegetarian buffet available at 6:15pm, $7.50. Hear artists Mia Nakano, Lenore Chinn and Nellie Wong discuss turning art into a collective voice for social change and the importance of the visibility of Asian American queers and women to the movements.

Rock the Bike California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., SF; www.calacademy.org. 7pm, $12. Celebrate one of San Francisco’s favorite method of transportation at this cycling themed NightLife featuring fun sustainable displays, including a bike-powered blender, a bike-powered DJ stage where you can take a turn pedaling, a performance by “the bike rapper” Fossil Fuel, bike-powered and inspired art, and more.

FRIDAY 14

BAY AREA

Ferment Change Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oak.; www.fermentchange.org. 7pm, $10-30 sliding scale. Support a more equitable food system at this fermented foods, culture, and urban agriculture series event where you can taste over a hundred different homemade fermented foods and beverages. Proceeds to benefit for urban agriculture heroes, City Slicker Farms. Bring your own fermented food to share and be entered in a raffle.

SATURDAY 15

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin between Ellis and Grove, SF; www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. Celebrate Asian heritage at this street fair featuring two stages with over 100 music, dance, and other performance acts, an Anime area, a mah jong court, food and drink vendors, a cultural procession, an 8-foot high replica of a human colon, and much more.

Dawn Festival 2010 California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., Golden Gate Park, SF; www.dawnfestival.org. 7:30pm, $20. Reboot and Tablet Magazine host this celebration of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, with Sandra Bernhard, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and more.

Inner Sunset Street Fair Irving at 10th Ave., SF; www.sfpix.com. 10am-8:30pm, free. Celebrate the Inner Sunset at this inaugural street fair set to feature sidewalk sales throughout the neighborhood, live music performances, dance lessons, art, crafts, food, yoga and tai chi lessons, and more.

MASS Good Vibrations Polk Street Gallery, 1620 Polk, SF; (415) 345-0400. 7pm, free. Enjoy this multimedia exhibit by poet and musician Kevin Simmonds called MASS (Making All Saints Sebastian), where he uses photographs, music, and poetry to recast male sexuality by having a diverse range of men pose as St. Sebastian.

SUNDAY 16

Alameda Backyard Chicken Coop Bicycling Tour Meet at 488 Lincoln, Alameda. 1pm, free. Take a self-guided bike tour of the many chicken coops of Alameda and check out a wide range of chicken coops while learning about urban chicken farming, ecological issues, and slow food on this 4.5 mile route. Maps will be provided at the start location and refreshment will be available along the route.

Bay to Breakers Start lines on Mission between Beale and Steuart, SF; (415) 359-2800, www.ingbaytobreakers.com. 8am; registration $48, group discounts available, free to be a spectator. Enjoy this authentic San Francisco marathon, complete with competitive runners and Mardi Gras style revelers, who follow athletes through the city in themed costumes and floats. Call or visit their website for rules and restrictions on alcohol consumption. Don’t forget to dispose of your own trash.

 

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Author and activist Cornel West appears in Justin Dillon’s doc about human trafficking, Call + Response. It screens Sun/16 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center.

Schedules are for Wed/12–Tues/18 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7. “Other Cinema:” Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens present a new A/V performance, Sat, 8:30.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. “Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite,” Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. Iron Man 2 (Favreau, 2010), call for dates and times.

CERRITO 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.rialtocinemas.com. $7. “Cerrito Classics:” Chinatown (Polanski, 1974), Thurs, 7:15.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. Babies (Balmès, 2010), call for dates and times. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010), call for dates and times. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009), call for dates and times. The Greatest (Feste, 2009), call for dates and times. Touching Home (Miller and Miller, 2009), call for dates and times. Vincere (Bellocchio, 2009), call for dates and times. Tenderloin (Anderson, 2009), Wed, 7. OSS 117: Lost in Rio (Hazanavicius, 2009), May 14-20, call for times. Call + Response (Dillon, 2008), Sun, 6:30.

GOOD HOTEL Parking lot, Seventh Street at Minna, SF; www.disposablefilmfest.com/events. Free. “Disposable Film Festival: Bike-In Screening,” short films, Wed, 8.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Destiny (Chahine, 1997), Wed, 7:30.

JACK LONDON SQUARE PAVILION THEATER 98 Broadway, Oakl; www.oakuff.org. Free. “Oakland Underground Film Festival: Remembering Playland (Wyrsch, 2010), Sat, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Heroic Horizons: The View from Australia:” My Brilliant Career (Armstrong, 1979), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. Theater closed through May 28.

PIEDMONT 4186 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 464-5980. $5-8. “Cult Classics Attack 5:” Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984), Fri-Sat, midnight; Sun, 10am.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. The Last Station (Hoffman, 2009), Wed, 2, 7, 9:25. “Oscar Nominated Short Films 2010:” “Animation Program,” Thurs-Sat, 7:15 (also Sat, 2); “Live Action Program,” Thurs-Sat, 9:15 (also Sat, 4). It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (Kramer, 1963), Sun-Mon, 5, 8 (also Sun, 2). Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009), May 18-19, 7, 9:20 (also May 19, 2). ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. October Country (Palmieri and Mosher, 2009), Wed-Thurs, call for times. “I Still Wake Up Dreaming! Noir is Dead/Long Live Noir:” •High Tide (Reinhardt, 1947), Fri, 6, 8:45, and Mysterious Intruder (Castle, 1946), Fri, 7:30, 10; •99 River Street (Karlson, 1953), Sat, 1:30, 4:45, 8, and Shield for Murder (O’Brien, 1954), Sat, 3:10, 6:20, 9:45; •Nightmare (Shane, 1956), Sun, 2, 5, 8, and The Mark of the Whistler (Castle, 1944), Sun, 3:45, 6:45, 9:45; •The Lady Confesses (Newfield, 1945), Mon, 6:40, 9:25, and Jealousy (Machaty, 1945), Mon, 8; •The Invisible Wall (Forde, 1947), Tues, 6:30, 9:30, and Treasure of Monte Cristo (Berke, 1949), Tues, 8.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $8-10. “Kaiju Shakedown: Godzillathon!:” Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Banno, 1971), Wed, 5; Godzilla vs. Gigan (Fukuda, 1972), Wed, 7; Godzilla vs. Megalon (Fukuda, 1973), Thurs, 5; Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Fukuda, 1974), Thurs, 7.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “To the Limit: Pina Bausch on Film:” The Complaint of the Empress (Bausch, 1989), Thurs, 7:30. Typeface (Nagan, 2009), Sat, 6, 8; Sun, 2, 4.

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Barrel Riders, Fusebox, Tentacle Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Beehive Spirit, Common Loon, Alright Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Tia Carroll and Hard Work Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Jakob Dylan and Three Legs featuring Neko Case and Helly Hogan, Felice Brothers, Honeyhoney Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Fuck Buttons Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Lime Colony, Passenger and Pilot, Blood and Sunshine Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Man/Miracle, Yellow Dress, Quite Polite Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

*MDC, Restarts, La Plebe, Dopecharge Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10.

Tender Few, Spidermeow, Rabbles Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Sang Matiz Red Devil Lounge. 8:30pm, $8.

Somerville and Keehan Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

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

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

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

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

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

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acorn Project, Sourgrass Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $7.

Altars Knockout. 9:30pm, $4. With guest DJs Primo, Kat, Bertie, and Melanie Ann Berlin.

Roger Clyne and PH Naffah, Jason Boots Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Meklit Hadero, Quinn Deveaux and the Blue Beat Review Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $18.

Hydrophonic, Gas Mask Colony, Murkins Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Jugtown Pirates, Tell-Tale Heartbreakers, Project Pimento, Franco Nero, Swamees Paradise Lounge. 9pm, $7. Proceeds benefit the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair.

Bill Ortiz Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Roy G. Biv, Billy Schafer, Chi McClean, Alex Karweit Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $10.

Whitechapel, Son of Aurelius, I Declare War, Fallujah Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $15.

Zoo, Entropy Density, Didimao Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Big Possum Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

John Calloway, Loco Bloco with Claudinho Smile Roccapulco Supper Club, 3140 Mission, SF; www.locobloco.org. 8pm, $15.

Shannon Céilí Band Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afro-tropical, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

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

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

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Gymnasium Matador, 10 Sixth St, SF; (415) 863-4629. 9pm, free. With DJ Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, hip hop, and disco.

Kissing Booth Make-Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

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

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

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk, SF; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

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

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

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

FRIDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Annuals, Most Serene Republic, What Laura Says Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Apache, Wrong Words, Midnight Snaxx, Off Campus Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Café R&B Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Disastroid, Famous, Gentlemen Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Front Street featuring Stu Allen, Jugtown Pirates Independent. 9pm, $15.

Fun., Audrye Sessions, Heartsounds Slim’s. 8:30pm, $16.

Johan Johannsson Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $21.

Michael McIntosh Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 9pm, free.

Freedy Johnston Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $15.

Starfucker, Butterfly Bones, Silver Swans, Fake Drugs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

*Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue with Zigaboo Modeliste and Ivan Neville Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $75-150. Proceeds benefit Blue Bear’s youth music education programs.

Michael Zapruder, Grand Lake Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; http://snobtheater.tumblr.com. 10pm, $10. With comedians Bill Coladonato, Kelly McCarron, Kevin Munroe, and Brandon Lynch.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Bruno P.B. Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

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

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

Scott Amendola Band Red Poppy Art House. 8 and 9pm, $12-20.

Stanley Clarke Band with Hiromi Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26-32.

Terry Disley Experience Trio Vin Club, 515 Broadway, SF; (415) 277-7228. 7:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brother Lekas Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Lucha Vavoom Fillmore. 9pm, $32.50.

"That Night in Rio: A Samba Party" Café du Nord. 9pm, $15. With Grupo Samba Rio and DJ Fausto Sousa.

Wunmi Coda. 10pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Beat Market Mighty. 7pm, $10. With DJs Gravity, Jonathan W, Spirit Catcher, eug, and Al Veilla.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

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

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

Fo’ Sho! Fridays Madrone Art Bar. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris, Makossa, and Quickie Mart spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

Fort Knox Five, Breakestra Mezzanine. 9pm, $15.

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

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

Gymnasium Stud. 10pm, $5. With DJs Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, disco, rap, and 90s dance and featuring performers, gymnastics, jump rope, drink specials, and more.

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

Lawnchair Generals DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10. House, downtempo, and dub.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

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

Strictly Video 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. With VDJs Shortkut, Swift Rock, GoldenChyld, and Satva spinning rap, 80s, R&B, and Dancehall.

Treat Em Right Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop, fun, Latin, and more with DJs Vinnie Esparza, B. Cause, and guest DJs Mr. E and Relly Rels.

SATURDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Converge, Coalesce, Lewd Acts, Black Breath Slim’s. 8pm, $18.

Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, Triple Cobra, Go-Going-Gone Girls Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Kali$$ian Coda. 10pm, $10.

Billy McLaughlin Marriott, Fisherman’s Wharf, 1250 Columbus, SF; www.billymacmusic.com. 7:30pm, $20.

1995 Forever, Aerosols, Ryan Pettigrew and the Ladyboys Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7. Also with comedians Brent Weinbach and Louis Katz.

Octomutt Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 9pm, free.

Pins of Light, Moses, Boar Hunter El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Portal, Morbosidad, Sanguis Imperem, Dispirit Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $12.

Reaction Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Ruse, Honor By August, Johnny Hi-Fi Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Vienna Teng and Alex Wong Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $28.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Kathy Sanborn Borders Westfield Center, 845 Market, SF; (415) 243-4108. 2-4pm.

Sexmob with DJ Olive Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Courtney Andrews and friends Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Bernal Hill Players Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-$15.

Gas Men Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Black Nature, DJ Jeremiah Independent. 9pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bassnectar, Jef and Odd Nosdam Mezzanine. 9pm, $30.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups plus the Hubba Hubba Revue.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Club 1994 Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $10. With DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic spinning like it’s 1994.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJs Earworm and Matt Hite.

Dead After Dark Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

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

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

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

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

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $20. With Dholrythms and DJ Jimmy Love.

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

Puma’s World House Music Tour Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, $10. With DJs Sultan and Jasonn.

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

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

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

Xeno and Oaklander, Epee Du Bois, Soft Moon Milk. 10pm. With DJs Omar, Justin, and Josh.

SUNDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bullet for My Valentine, Chiodos, Airborne, Arcanium Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $27.

Clipd Beaks, Vampire Hands, Shattered by the Sun Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Crash Kings Independent. 8pm, $12.

Faun Fables, Charming Hostess, Siamese Sirens Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Ben Folds and a Piano, Kate Miller-Heidke Warfield. 8pm, $38.

*Hypocrisy, Scar Symmetry, Hate, Blackguard, Swashbuckle DNA Lounge. 6pm, $18.

Set Your Goals, Comeback Kid, Title Fight, Story So Far Slim’s. 7pm, $16.

*Shattered Faith, Harrington Saints, Stagger and Fall, Psychology of Genocide Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Sippy Cups Yoshi’s San Francisco. 2pm, $5-16.

Vienna Teng and Alex Wong Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-28.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Sheila Jordan with Steve Kuhn Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-40.

SF Jazz High School All-Stars Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $5-15.

Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet Coda. 8pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

El Deora, Rich McCully Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Marla Fibish, Erin Shrader, Richard Mandel and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bay to Breakers Breather Madrone Art Bar. 2pm, free. With DJs Kap10 Harris and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, hyphy, rap, and more.

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

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with J Boogie and Vinnie Esparza.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Michael Burns Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 9pm, free.

Meta, Stirling Says, Burnt Thumbs Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

*Nashville Pussy, Dave Rude Band, Butlers Independent. 8pm, $15.

Unnatural Helpers, E-Zee Tiger Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

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

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

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

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

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

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

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

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

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Flood, Razorhoof, Asada Messiah Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Groundation, Orgone, DJ Jeremiah Independent. 9pm, $27.

Inca Ore, Norman Conquest, Cartoon Justice, Strippers Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Jackstraw, TV Mike and the Scarecrows, Forest Fire Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $14.

Shout Out Louds, Freelance Whales, Franks Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.

Terry Malts, Dirty Cupcakes, Sydney Ducks Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

*Toots and the Maytals, Rey Fresco Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.
FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY
Brazilian Wax, DJs Carioca and Fausto Sousa Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.
Seisiún Plough and Stars. 9pm.
DANCE CLUBS
Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck and DJ Chrome Dome.
Ceremony Presents "ICB" Knockout. 9pm, $5. Tribute to Ian Curtis and Factory Records with DJs Deadbeat, Yule Be Sorry, and Melanie Ann Berlin, with a live performance by Jealousy.
Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.
La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.
Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.
Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.
Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

David Talbot
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Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

By Angela Chan


Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have publicly opposed the anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070, in Arizona. A diverse coalition of civil rights organizations — including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Central American Resource Center, Community United Against Violence, Equal Justice Society, La Raza Centro Legal, National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, POWER, and Pride at Work SF — applauds both city officials for taking a strong stand against the Arizona bill. At the same time, we urge Newsom and Herrera to firmly and unequivocally support the implementation of a local policy that protects the due process rights of immigrant youths in San Francisco.

As with SB 1070 in Arizona, the mayor’s policy of requiring juvenile probation officers to report young people to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before they receive due process has opened the door to racial profiling and torn many innocent youth from their families.

Since July 2008, pursuant to Newsom’s draconian reporting policy, more than 160 youth have been reported to ICE right after arrest, before they even have had a chance to be heard in juvenile court. That means that youth who are completely innocent of any crimes and youth who are overcharged have been reported to ICE.

Despite the veto-proof passage of a policy by the Board of Supervisors last fall that moves the point of reporting from the arrest stage to after a youth is found to have committed a felony, Newsom has insisted on ignoring the new city law. Herrera, in turn, has yet to advise implementation of the new law.

Like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy requires reporting to ICE when local officials — in this case juvenile probation officers — merely have "reasonable suspicion" that an individual is undocumented. The factors that probation officers are required to use to determine reasonable suspicion have come under fire for codifying racial profiling into law.

In March, a year and a half after the mayor’s policy went into effect, Chief Probation Officer William Siffermann admitted before the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors that the latter factor could lead to racial profiling. A few days later, Herrera stated that this factor had been removed from the policy. However, if any changes have been made to the written policy, they have not been made available to the public.

Another similarity with the Arizona bill: probation officers in San Francisco have not been properly trained and do not have the expertise in immigration law to accurately determine which youth are actually undocumented. Rather, these officers rely on race, ethnicity, language ability, surnames, and accent as a basis for assuming immigration status.
Much like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy goes well beyond any obligations under federal law by requiring that probation officers report suspected undocumented youth to ICE. Finally, as with the Arizona bill, the mayor’s draconian policy only compounds the harm to immigrant families caused by an already flawed federal immigration system, which is in drastic need of comprehensive reform. We need humane reform at the federal level. But in the meantime, Newsom and Herrera need to take swift action to restore due process and protect family unity by ending San Francisco’s draconian policy. *

Angela Chan is a staff attorney with the Juvenile Justice and Education Project at the Asian Law Caucus.

Alerts

David Talbot
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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Fix California’s budget


Ever wonder if you could do a better job balancing the California budget than the professionals? Now’s your chance to take part in a simulated Budget Challenge that mirrors the decisions the Legislature will make in the next few weeks, accounting for all revenue and expenditures, the governor’s cuts, and more. Share your responses with the Legislature.

6 p.m., free

Richmond City Hall

450 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond

(510) 286-1400

THURSDAY, MAY 13

Ride ’em, city slickers


Join thousands of SF commuters in cycling solidarity at this year’s Bike to Work Day. Slip into the commuter convoy, which provides cool company and the safety of riding in a group; stop by an energizer station, where you can fuel up with free coffee, snacks, and goodies; and use the complimentary downtown bike parking station located at Market and Battery streets.

All day, free

Everywhere SF

www.sfbike.org/btwd

FRIDAY, MAY 14

Berkeley Critical Mass


Live in the carfree world you dream of for an evening at this monthly critical mass ride promoting self-powered commuting and community. Fill the streets with human interaction and DIY transportation!

6 p.m., free

Meet at Berkeley BART Station

Center and Shattuck, Berk.

www.berkeleycriticalmass.org

SATURDAY, MAY 15

Mourning Mothers’ March


Help raise awareness for ongoing homicide violence in Oakland and the impact it has on victims, survivors of victims, and the community at large. Mourn the senseless loss of life and spread hope for the future at this march around Lake Merritt.

Noon, free

Meet at Lake Merritt bandstand

Grand and Bellevue, Oak.

(510) 581-0100

Peace Flag-raising Ceremony


Celebrate International Conscientious Objector’s Day at this raising of a second Peace flag with war resisters from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

11 a.m., free

Civic Center Park, flagpole

2180 Milvia, Berk.

www.couragetoresist.org

Stop the Tea Party


Attend "Tea Party: Corporate and Racist Politics in Disguise," a public forum on how to fight back against extremist Tea Party politics. The event features Marsha Feinland from the Peace and Freedom Party, Don Belcher from Single-Payer Now, and Mark Ostapiak from Socialist Action.

7 p.m., $3–$5 donation

Center for Political Education

522 Valencia, SF

(415) 401-7471

TUESDAY, MAY 18

"Oakland’s Health Disparities in Black and White"


According to a report produced by the Alameda County Public Health Department, "compared to a white child in the Oakland Hills, African American children born in West Oakland can expect to die almost 15 years earlier." Hear Dr. Muntu Davis, one of the authors of the report, and representatives from the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) discuss how the African American community can control of health care as part of the solution to the current community health crisis in Oakland.

7 p.m., free

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

(510) 763-3342 2

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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1
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

San Francisco has a lot of streets. Take a look at an aerial picture, or just look at the land-use statistics. More of this city is devoted to paved roads — pathways used largely and designed primarily for private automobiles — than any other single use. Parks, for example, don’t even come close.

That’s partially a matter of urban density. In more suburban-type cities like Berkeley or Portland or Seattle, the lots are bigger, yards are bigger, houses are bigger, and there’s more space between the strips of pavement.

But that density gives us a choice other cities don’t have. Maybe we don’t really need that much pavement.

I know it’s kind of a crazy thought, but imagine what some San Francisco neighborhoods would look like if we closed down, let’s say, one out of every four streets. I don’t mean open that land up for development, either — leave it as a passageway, a thoroughfare — but not for cars. Tear up the concrete, plant grass, make pathways for walking and biking … make the streets places where people can gather, kids can play, stores can enjoy the kind of traffic that only comes with a pedestrian mall, and restaurants can have outdoor seating in what would amount to a strip of mixed-use urban parkland.

Closing streets to cars creates plenty of problems, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable. Seniors and disabled people might have trouble with eliminating bus routes and parking in front of their houses, and that’s a legit concern. (Of course, the number of pedestrian seniors and disabled people killed or maimed by cars might go down too.) So maybe some streets could be turned into one-lane strips, and only people with disabled placards could use them. And ambulances and police and fire vehicles can already drive on car-free pathways in parks. And Muni could run a fleet of electric golf carts to ferry people with mobility issues up and down the grassy lanes.

Those of us who have cars would give up a certain amount of convenience; people without cars would get more of the benefits. That might discourage car use, which is good.

But even for drivers, I wonder. Would I be willing to give up the relative ease of parking near my house in exchange for letting my kids just open the front door of the house and run out and play in a safe, vehicle-free park that used to be a street? Would you?

The world is changing; the days of car culture driven by cheap oil are almost over. More and more people are going to be living in cities (that particular demographic trend is one of the most consistent in modern history). When we talk about the Streets of San Francisco, let’s stop for a moment and ask: does it all have to be about cars?

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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Muni reform that might actually work

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Psychic Dream Astrology

David Talbot
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0

May 12-18

ARIES

March 21-April 19

It takes balls to be vulnerable. You can scrutinize your feelings until they make sense to you, me, and everyone your know, but you’ll just end up creating stories to match your moods. Stop trying so hard, pal.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

The key to your well-being this week is timing, Bully LaBull. Don’t focus on three steps ahead or you’ll miss what’s going on right now! Secure your foundations, and then tend to what’s in front of your purdy face.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Just as things are getting more secure in your world, they are changing deep within you. Allow for graceful transitions by letting go of some old crappy habits. Hold yourself accountable in all you do for best results this week.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

If you are willing to take the bad with the good, you’ll actually feel freer. By accepting the cost of things, you can make better decisions, too. Get real and stay real about your choices so you can feel good about your outcomes.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

One can act douchey and not actually be a douche. Don’t define yourself (or others) by the ripple effect of your/their actions. Prioritize understanding people’s motives to understand how things got where they are.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

In the history of the world, few good decisions were ever made from the station of panic attacks, emo k-holes, and bad self-esteem spirals. Bolster your inner world before you tend to the outside one.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Your heart is a tender place, so when things get rough around the edges it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You know how you feel, but you may not know what that means or what to do about it — so don’t act like you do, Libra.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

You have to rely on yourself, Scorp. Are ya good for it? This week look into the depths of your secret self and take responsibility (without blame, guilt, or drama!) for who you have become.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Don’t shine your light everywhere just ’cause life is easier that way, Sag. Instead, turn your awesome energy onto the parts of your world you want more from. Only invest in your dreams this week!

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

In your quest for happiness, it’s important to have realistic expectations, Cap. Dream big and reach for the stars and all that, but be patient! The constellations might not be meeting you with open arms this week, but they will soon enough.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

If you are unwilling to be the agent of change, the Universe in all her sugary kindness will be more than happy to provide such an agent for you. Don’t wait till you have to — improve your life right now!

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Maintain your honor in the face of upsets this week. Dealing with stress is unavoidable, but will suck a lot less if you struggle to rise to the occasion instead of against bad vibes! Work with your situation to change it.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 15 years. Check out her Web site at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com

Appetite: 3 culinary gifts for mom

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 3 culinary gifts for mom

Last minute Mother’s Day gifts needed? Here are a few delectable possibilities:

WINE OF THE MONTH CLUB
There’s nothing like having Mom reminded of your thoughtfulness and love all year… no, not a Christmas Vacation disappointment like the Jelly of the Month Club. Something better: wine. This is the “original” (family-owned since 1972) Wine of the Month Club with a slew of gift options from 1 red/1 white per month for four months to one year of reds or whites only. The club averages $29 a month for the Classic Series or upgrade your wine selections to Vintners Series ($39) or Limited Series ($49). With hand-selected wines from literally all over the globe, the biggest plus if Mom doesn’t like one of the wines is that they promise to send out another selection, no questions asked. In trying out the club for a short time, I can say the Classic level is not for the wine expert as the red in any given month might be a 2007 Frosted Cake Merlot from Napa or a 2006 Gerard Bertrand Syrah/Mourvedre from France. So upgrade your membership if Mom is a wine snob, or if not, she’ll enjoy a broad cross-section of solid wines for every day imbibement, with descriptions, tasting notes and stories behind each region, winery and wine itself. All gift memberships come nicely wrapped so your Mother will feel like it’s Mother’s Day all over again every month.

CLARINE’S FLORENTINES
First trying local (Berkeley) Clarine’s Florentines at the Chocolate Salon, I was impressed… trying them again later, I was hooked. I think your Mom will be, too. This buttery, crispy, golden Almond Brittle on Guittard bittersweet chocolate, is a recipe from Clarine and her Mother, so even the roots of the product have special meaning for Mother’s Day. You can buy a bag at shops around town like Bi-Rite or order directly from Clarine’s to have it shipped.

KUSMI TEA
A favorite of late has been Kusmi’s luxurious teas. Founded in St. Petersburg in 1867, these Russian-style teas have been Paris-based since 1917, so there’s an Old World elegance and refinement with modern sensibilities (even Lady Gaga is a big fan, though that may not be as much of a selling point for Mom!) They’re offering Mother’s Day blends, like Rose Green Tea, though there are crowd-pleasers everywhere, from a lovely Moroccan Spearmint to Sweet Love, a blend of Black China tea, pink pepper, licorice roots, guarana seeds and spices. If Mom’s on a health kick, their Detox mate/green tea with lemongrass is particularly popular… and a rich antioxidant.

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