Print Sections Archives — Page 249 of 493 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Pantheistic party

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 5, 2010

caitlin@sfbg.com

CULTURE “I get asked by friends and family constantly about what pagan means,” says JoHanna White, president of the Pagan Alliance’s board of directors and parade coordinator for Berkeley’s Paganfest. So, hey, what does pagan mean? “I always tell them the Alliance’s definition: earth-based, nature- and justice-centered, and observant of polytheistic faiths and traditions.”

That’s a lot to wrap one’s brain around. But be it Wicca, Hellenism, shamanism, or adherence to traditional indigenous faiths, more and more people are turning to paganism these days, evidenced by soaring attendance at events like Pantheacon, an annual gathering of rituals and healing circles that has regularly outgrown venues since its inception 16 years ago. White’s colleague, Alliance cofounder Arlynne Camire, attributes the growth to “people’s awareness of what’s happening to the Earth,” concerns over climate change, and other worrisome trends.

Camire helped start Paganfest in 2000 as a way to raise public awareness about the pagan faith, to render themselves visible. That first year involved a fair in People’s Park and a procession down Telegraph Avenue. These days the fair includes several pavilions (druid storytelling, green, arts and crafts) and a dazzling array of community altars. A ritual is usually conducted and there are prizes for best kids’ costumes and artworks. “There are pagans in every walk of life,” says Camire, a Hayward city planner. “Paganfest is essentially a pride festival.”

Public manifestations are important for any minority — especially one like paganism, a belief system that many come to in solitude, not knowing that a welcoming community of believers awaits. Festival organizers regularly provide masks to pagans who haven’t yet made the decision to share their faith publicly, a process the community has dubbed “coming out of the broom closet.”

As White tells me about the anxiety that can be associated with becoming an “out” pagan, I remark that it sounds a lot like coming to terms with one’s alternative sexuality. “You should talk to this year’s Keeper of the Light, Joi Wolfwomyn. She’s a radical faerie and knows a lot about this stuff,” she counsels. I take her up on the advice. Days later, I sit in a coffee shop in Oakland awaiting Paganfest 2010’s parade marshal, realizing I neglected to ask Joi what she looks like. I needn’t have worried. In walks a person with green dreadlocks down to the small of the back, piercings galore, and leaves tattooed over a bearded face, carrying a wooden staff and a fuzzy rainbow backpack. Joi, is that you?

It is. We talk for more than an hour and, by the end, the articulate trans person STET has taught me a lot about paganism: its inclusiveness (“To me, paganism just means you honor the earth.”), its presence in pop culture (“Avatar was a very pretty piece of paganism propaganda.”), and the advantages of embracing one’s beliefs and values publicly(“By creating myself as I have, all people have to do is be within 100 feet of me to think.”)

Of course, not all pagans have etched their faith on their epidermis. Wolfwomyn is emphatic about the community’s diversity in this respect. “There are pagan Republicans, there are pagan anarchists, there are pagan everything — but we all honor the earth.” It’s inspiring to meet a person so open to the possibilities of belief. In an instant, the possibilities of such an expansive faith dawn on me. A new kind of acceptance beckons. What has monotheism ever done for our society, anyway?

PAGANFEST 2010

Sat/8 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m., free

Civic Center Park

Martin Luther King Jr. and Allston, Berk.

(510) 872-1188

www.thepaganalliance.org

Are you experienced?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

May 5, 2010

1

THEATER José Sarria is many things: performer, activist, trailblazer, legend, Latino, diva, tenor … So just how many José Sarrias are there? In the latest meta-theatrical reclamation-and-floorshow from playwright-director John Fisher (Medea: The Musical, Combat; Ishi: The Last of the Yahi) you’ll meet several but get no strict count. That’s part of the point and much of the charm in SexRev: The José Sarria Experience, a production of Theatre Rhinoceros, currently ensconced in residency at queer performance incubator Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory.

First, there’s the Sarria of memory, in the mind of our ingenuous, ebullient narrator (Donald Currie), a gay man in middle age reminiscing about his precocious sexual awakening via “the Nightingale of Montgomery Street” in a certain storied postwar/Beat-era bar known as the Black Cat Café. At one point in this fourth-wall–smashing show, staged in the round as the invitingly sleazy Black Cat itself, audience members are invited to share their own first-hand impressions of the pioneering San Francisco drag performer and gay rights activist.

Then there are the Sarrias we meet on stage, played to the hilt by Tom Orr and Michael Vega. Each actor is responsible for an aspect of the Sarria “experience,” but in the insouciant critical consciousness of Fisher’s play, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will go unchallenged. “But José Sarria was brown!” shouts a “heckler” at Orr. “You’re not brown.” The contradiction and ensuing kerfuffle provide Fisher and the audience one way into the continuing political relevance and volatility of his subject matter, of course, and some productive laughs come out of it too. Add to this the real possibility of the “real” José Sarria showing up in the audience one night, and you get a sense of the tangled politics of art, and art of politics.

Frenetically staged, often very funny, endlessly self-referential, and indeed — as one character doesn’t hesitate to complain — a bit long, “SexRev” moves fitfully back and forth across the last several decades of San Francisco queer life and politics. But as a history lesson, a widening of horizons, and a spur to political vigilance on behalf of freedom for everyone, it’s a hell of a lively night out.

“Chronic” 2010

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

1

arts@sfbg.com

LIT/NCIBA Because poetic subjectivity is by and large an exclusive undertaking

in which the poet attempts to impress upon the reader, via the use of poetic conventions, his fundamentally unknowable immanence, it often results in complete discursive failure. Those who’ve ever experienced a poetry workshop surely recall the gentle "make it more concrete" euphemisms directed at those well-meaning but misdirected poets brave enough to tackle personal catastrophe with verse — the results of which are usually a mire of intimations, associations, and abstractions that in no way resemble poetry or even, on a basic level, communication.

"If it were that easy, we’d all be doing it" is, in this case, true. Few poets can convey complex interiority with such deftness, originality, and precision as D. A. Powell. He can rework what would otherwise be affective sentiment into a lucid and devastating articulation.

With his latest and fourth collection, Chronic (Graywolf Press, 64 pages, $20), Powell offers his best work to date, the winner of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Award in poetry. Its cavalcade of lyricism keeps tempo with phonic and syntactical playfulness (Powell is often compared to Gerard Manley Hopkins. Framing the poems in the collection is Powell’s epigraph, taken from Virgil’s Ecologues (itself a reworking of Theocritus’ Bucolica): Time robs us all, even of memory: of as a boy I recall/That with song I would lay the long summer days to rest./Now I have forgotten all my songs.

The result is a brilliant use of Virgilian source material as a formal element that provides a frame of reference for Powell’s own subjective experience. Among the book’s best pieces is a "redux" of Virgil’s second Ecologue, which tells of love and erotic longing between two male shepherds:

what was his name? I’d ask myself, that guy with the sideburns

and charming smile

the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I’d expire with him

on my tongue

silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided

preacher

as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our

sleepy eyes

("corydon & alexis redux")

Even readers unaware of the fact that Powell is gay and living with HIV will not miss the dark subtext of the hemlock reference. The same themes, deeply personal to the author, are present in the book’s title poem. In "Chronic," Powell’s idiosyncratic verse structure — its syntactical breaks, lilting and elliptical sounds, lines that are unpunctuated yet entirely expressive — are employed to great effect in a lengthy, but quickly moving, rumination on ecological devastation:

and so the delicate, unfixed condition of love, the treacherous body
the unsettling state of creation and how we have damaged—
isn’t one a suitable lens through which to see another:
filter the body, filter the mind, filter the resilient land

and by resilient I mean which holds
which tolerates the inconstant lover, the pitiful treatment
the experiment, the untried & untrue, the last stab at wellness

("chronic")

No matter the overarching topic, each poem in Chronic is watermarked with Powell’s distinctive voice, one that his previous books Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails (things that, along with chronic, make for a satisfying afternoon) helped establish. The homoeroticism, pop culture references, adroitly inserted colloquialisms that lent charm and personality to past works are all present, but the scope has become more expansive and more complex. I am greatly looking forward to the next stopping points on Powell’s poetic horizons.

THE 2010 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER ASSOCIATION (NCIBA) BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNERS

FICTION

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese (Knopf)

NONFICTION

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s)

POETRY

Chronic by D.A. Powell (Graywolf Press)

FOOD WRITING

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (Penguin)

CHILDREN’S ILLUSTRATED (award to illustrator)

Zero is the Leaves on the Tree illustrated by Shino Arihara (Tricycle)

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko (Penguin Young Readers)

TEEN LIT
Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman (Delacorte Young Readers)

REGIONAL
Tamalpais Walking by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder (Heyday Books) *

alt.sex.column: I deserve a buzz

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

May 4, 2010

5

Dear Andrea:

How is it humanly possible that I, a 42 year old man, talented, accomplished, tall, and fit, cannot get laid to save his life? I have gone out on literally hundreds of dates, but nothing ever seems to go my way. I try not to act desperate, but women seem to smell it on me or something.

I have spent 12 years in therapy, tried whatever advice is thrown my way, but nothing seems to work. WTF?

Love,

42-Year-Old Etc.

Dear Etc:

Yikes. OK, you have legitimately got a problem. But do try to remember that while it may seem reasonable to feel that the universe owes you a boinking, any individual female owes you nothing of the kind. Forget this at your peril.

I won’t tell you that there is someone out there for you, although there may be. I will tell you, though, that it appears that the problem is not them, it’s you. Really, I am sorry. But a record like yours, well, I suppose it is technically possible that you are suffering the world’s most protracted streak of bad luck, scoring-wise, but it is simply not very likely.

I wonder what it is about all those dates that is “not going your way.” You do know you have to actually do something, right? Just waiting for things to go your way is a good way to end up a 42-year-old virgin.

Still, 42 is way old to still be a virgin, so I suggest quitting that. Seriously. Hire a pro or run a Craig’s List ad, looking not for luv and certainly not for anything as apocryphal as a soul-mate, but for some floozy who thinks the idea of contributing to the delinquency of a major sounds like hot dirty fun. In other words, just do it. Getting past the virginity element will dispel the stink of desperation (along with the fear of having to make an embarrassing confession), which ought to take some of the pressure off the next date.

Also, since I cannot see you or smell you or hear you laugh, you need some data I cannot provide. Do you know any women? Do you have female friends? Could you ask them if you seem, well, doable? Like if she weren’t married or not into men or whatever, could she imagine hooking up with you? If not, why not, and is there anything you can do about it?

At this point I’m assuming that you are stuck in a cycle of defeat and despair and that your dates can, in fact, smell it on you. But on the off chance that there is something else, some mannerism or failure of personal hygiene at work here, you really need to find out more about how people are perceiving you. You may not believe me, but it isn’t too late. Get yourself a nice, expensive escort and at least get some practice. She may even have some pointers — if there’s anyone who knows a helluva lot about what makes a man sexually unappealing, it will be her.

Love,

Andrea

Email your questions to andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Pigs in Oakland

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

arts@sfbg.com

LIT/NCIBA One gets the sense that Novella Carpenter can do anything. A girl from rural Idaho, she knows how to hack it in "scruffy, loud, and unkempt" Oakland, the murder capital of the United States, amid the drug deals, gun fights, and open prostitution on the urban fringe. She also maintains a healthy, active relationship with her auto mechanic boyfriend (described as "a love sponge"), her many friends, and her local community.

On top of these already impressive competencies, she probably knows as much as Laura Ingalls Wilder about farming: she can grow more types of vegetables than most of us have eaten or even heard of; harvest rainwater; keep bee colonies; make honey; and raise and slaughter chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, goats, and — Jesus Christ! — pigs. You learn all this and more in Carpenter’s urban farming memoir, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Penguin, 288 pages, $16), winner in the Food Writing category of this year’s Northern California Independent Bookseller Awards. Unlike many others who’ve published books on their stellar accomplishments, Carpenter is bitingly funny, an immensely gifted storyteller, and likeable throughout.

Carpenter always knew that farming made her happy. But recalling the solitude she felt as a child growing up on a farm in Idaho, "a place of isolation, full of beauty — maybe — but mostly loneliness," she "chose to live in the city." At first she couldn’t decide which city she wanted to live in, despite the dearth of progressive cities to choose from. Portland was out of the question for being "too perfect." Austin was "too in the middle of Texas," and in Brooklyn there was "too little recycling." San Francisco was "filled with successful, polished people." So she chose to move to Oakland, which was "just right." In Farm City, Carpenter points to Oakland’s "down-and-out qualities" — the music scene, the scruffy citizenry "who drove cars as old and beat-up as ours" — that made it feel most like home.

Moving to Oakland was the first leg of Carpenter’s journey. The next was to turn her small part of the city into a "modified, farm animal-populated version." Indeed, it is Carpenter’s relationship with her fellow animals that provides the biggest, most startling revelations in Farm City. If you’re an animal lover at heart, as Carpenter is, it seems nothing short of barbaric to raise your own animals, grow to love them, and then stoically kill them one day. But Carpenter thinks the matter through in philosopher’s terms, describing animal husbandry as "a dialogue with life." Raising her animals to be eaten is not a matter Carpenter takes lightly — she recalls the many hours spent Dumpster diving for enough food to feed her ravenous pigs — and, part and parcel, she assumes their slaughter as her responsibility. To render the experience is one of her duties as a writer.

But turning her Oakland habitat into a farm was not an easy process. Farm City, which begins with a cheeky nod to Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa ("I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto"), chronicles the obstacles, frustrations, fumbles, and profound satisfactions of achieving a major accomplishment through innumerable and successive trials and errors. Carpenter may have a clucking henhouse today, but at one point she had to use Q-Tips and, when they failed, her own fingers to remove backed-up fecal matter from the "blocked buttholes" of her baby chicks (when you have them shipped, they tend to develop digestion problems). In her learning process, Carpenter leaves no stone unturned and no detail — not even baby chicken butts — unexamined.

“Cell” out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

May 4, 2010

0

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

(Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal) PC, Xbox360

GAMER Sometimes you play a game like Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction and think, “Did the people who made this even bother to play it?” Questions begin to boil over. Why would you make a game in which you can skip some cutscenes and not others? If it’s really necessary to include unskippable cutscenes, why must they precede the three parts of the game most likely to cause the player to die and reload? My fingers got tired while playing the game, but not from the controller — from scratching my head in angry confusion.

Conviction has its satisfying moments, to be sure, nice visuals, and a distinguished pedigree of stealth-based, third-person titles. But the overall impression it leaves is of a game that is frustrating, uneven, and short. For every ambitious step that Ubisoft Montreal takes forward, it takes two in the opposite direction, mimicking the actions of the game’s protagonist, grizzled superspy Sam Fisher as he tries to creep up on a unsuspecting henchman. Clever set-pieces, like the one in which Fisher must eavesdrop on two villains with a remote-control surveillance array, are quickly overshadowed by the game’s profusion of sour notes, including a truly wretched take on the timeless “dodge the laser beam of instant death” mechanic.

The Splinter Cell series has always been about sneaking around in the shadows, and Conviction mostly hews to this dogma. Except when it doesn’t, and you’re suddenly expected to gun down enemies by the bushel while running at a full sprint. The developers seem to take a perverse pride in forcing you to unlearn the lessons of completed gameplay. Getting used shooting enemies in the head? Wait until you come up against their magical, bulletproof helmets as the game limps toward a conclusion.

Michael Ironside is a gem as the voice of Fisher, and he growls his way doggedly through a plot full of Clancyite conspiracy gibberish. Another amusing touch is the Zombieland-style floating text that shows up on the walls when the game is trying to get you to do its bidding. Less appealing, as far as pop culture goes, are the creepy, 24-style “torture is cool” minigames. We all play video games to be empowered. But if your idea of fun is bashing an unarmed prisoner’s face into the wall using the B button, please, seek help. At the very least, I can hope to avoid partnering you in the Conviction‘s entertaining co-op modes.

Space is the place

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

0

LIT/FILM “I’m a lifelong space fan old enough to remember the Apollo era and grow up on Star Trek — when I was little, the Apollo missions and Star Trek merged in my mind,” says Megan Prelinger. “I lived my life, but kept one eye on space, watching and waiting to see what would happen. As I got older I realized that the general public is disenfranchised from having an opinion about or experience of space. I thought I could make an intervention — an intervention into space.”

Prelinger’s intervention has taken the form of Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 (Blast Books, 240 pages, $29.95) a flat-out awesome full-color collection of illustrations of American aerospace coupled with a historical critique of a time when the sky wasn’t definied by fear and terror and the outer reaches were aligned with ideas about potential. Prelinger’s book is a work of Bay Area dedication and intellectual independence, akin to everything from Jacques Boyreau’s and Jenni Olson’s published collections of movie poster art to Trevor Paglen’s books on the hidden machinations of U.S. forces. It couldn’t arrive at a better time, with Carl Sagan warning us that aliens won’t be friendly, and President Obama demonstrating a marked lack of faith in the space program.

“The Obama administration wants things both ways,” says Prelinger, when the President’s most recent statements on the subject are broached. “They want to be committed in the long run but cancel everything in the short run to reformulate. The plans he’s laid out are too general. They’re almost hard to interpret. In the short run, he wants to stop spending money, and I can understand that, but the long term plans are underfunded and underarticulated. The jury is out.”

The jury may be out, but for the time being, the curious are invited to see a space-related film program that includes vintage short films selected by Prelinger. This weekend, “Atomic Age Artifactuality” brings Prelinger’s-choice archival treats such as Birth of the Orbis Electronic Computer and All About Polymophics to the screen, along with Laura Harrison and Beth Federici’s new documentary Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm. The ideas in the program should ricochet interestingly off of the recent Cold War treatise Double Take, by another Other Cinema regular Johan Grimonprez. “There’s a really complex interaction between tech and society in the Cold War, where it’s used to express utopian and dystopian possibilities,” Prelinger observes. “Those two dissonant possibilities exist side by side through decades.”

As for today, Prelinger’s vision is clear. “Our space program belongs to all of us,” she says. “We should think about what we want from it, and ask for it.”

(Johnny Ray Huston)

ANT FARM AND MEGAN PRELINGER: “ATOMIC AGE ARTIFACTUALITY”

Sat/8, 8:30 p.m., $6

Other Cinema

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890 www.othercinema.com

New York story

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

FILM The central characters in Nicole Holofcener’s new film, Please Give, Manhattan couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), display a fluency in the language of large round numbers that is occasionally disturbed by bouts of self-inflicted sticker shock. The proprietors of an up-market vintage furniture store — the hunting ground of interior designers and affluent nesters with a taste for midcentury modern — they troll the apartments of the recently deceased, redistributing the contents at an astonishing markup that occasionally leads to soul-searching exchanges like this: “How come you feel OK about this?” “Because it’s OK.” “OK.” Whether or not it’s OK, clearly it’s a living, since the couple has purchased the entire apartment of their elderly next-door neighbor (Ann Guilbert). Waiting for her to expire so they can knock down a wall, they try not to loom in anticipation in front of her granddaughters, the softly melancholic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and the brittle pragmatist Mary (Amanda Peet).

Holofcener has entered this territory before, examining the interpersonal pressures that a sizable income gap can exert in 2006’s Friends with Money. Here she turns to the pangs and blunderings of the liberal existence burdened with the discomforts of being comfortable and the desire to do some good in the world. Kate’s hand-wringing, while reflexive, keeps her up at night, and as she ably acquires the furnishings of the dead, she suffers crises of conscience about preying on the ignorance of their bereaved but busy adult children. Unfortunately, her penance is often embarrassingly misdirected. While her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) suffers the less-abstracted agonies of bad skin and low self-esteem, Kate offers her leftovers to a black man waiting outside a restaurant for a table, mistaking him for a homeless person, and presumptuously weeps over a group of developmentally disabled teenagers playing basketball.

In scenes such as this, the film capably explores the unexamined impulses of liberal guilt, though the conclusion it reaches is unsatisfying. Like Holofcener’s other work, Please Give is constructed from the episodic material of mundane, intimate encounters between characters whose complexity forces us to take them seriously, whether or not we like them. Here, though, it offers these private connections as the best one can hope for, a sort of domestic grace accrued by doing right, authentically, instinctively, by the people in your immediate orbit, leaving the larger world to muddle along on its axis as best it can. (Lynn Rapoport)

PLEASE GIVE opens Fri/7 in Bay Area theaters.

Seasonal, effective

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

johnny@sfbg.com

FILM In taking on the subject of family in the documentary October Country, co-directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher face some imposing specters, and I’m not just talking about the varied stories of the Mosher family, who step in front of the camera. If there’s any micro-genre within documentary that has become embattled over the past decade, it’s the family portrait, thanks to controversial or contentious works such as Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans and Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (both from 2003), son-of-Gray Gardens freakouts which incited claims of exploitation and sensationalism on their paths to a larger public profile.

Palmieri’s and Mosher’s movie is a quieter work, yet it isn’t folksy in a complacent Sundance manner, either. (It’s worth noting that October Country has picked up its fest-circuit awards outside of Park City.) The list of the maladies plaguing the Mosher clan — physical abuse, drug abuse, war trauma, custody battles, and abortion, to name a handful — would provoke an ambulance-chasing impulse in some filmmakers, blood ties be damned. But Palmieri (who edited and did cinematography) and Mosher (a former San Francisco resident whose photo essays on his family were shown at Artists’ Television Access) realize these are common American problems, and their treatment of them is at once deeper and more ephemeral. They use the passage of a year from one Halloween to the next to reveal the changes wrought — or evident — on a person’s face, and when they can, a person’s life.

While volatile men have left a mark on the Mosher women, October Country makes a quiet case for the family as an enduring matriarchy by beginning with introductions of its female generations: grandmother Dottie, daughter Donna, granddaughters Daneal and Desi, and infant great-granddaughter Ruby. (Wiccan sister-in-law Deniece soon hovers at the fringes of the domestic drama, in semi-alignment with co-director Donal’s Halloween framework.) Tweenage Desi is the film’s chief scene-stealer, through gruff observation rather than cutesy antics. "Videogames don’t really make you smarter, but they make your hands move faster," she observes minutes into the film, describing the hobby as "education for your fingers." The stoic and sole father of the house is Vietnam vet Don. Foster son Chris deploys his callow charm while nursing penchants for pill popping, weed dealing, and shoplifting. By film’s end his masculine good looks show signs of giving way to gauntness and gender ambiguity.

October Country has a light touch, rarely giving way to easy associations, and avoiding the reality television ploy of inciting arguments in all but one scene. Its look at Daneal’s young motherhood is just a side of a many-sided die, yet more perceptive than whole hours devoted to the subject by MTV documentaries. Cigarettes in hand, Dottie, Donna, and Daneal hold forth on life, while the camera lights upon abandoned GED books and other forms of abandonment signified by clutter. If this sounds grim, the beauty of the cinematography — attuned to the colors of fall and winter and the beauty of these people and their home — offsets the futility and depression. The structure of the story is loose enough to allow the filmmakers to sync up with Desi’s playful creativity and droll truths ("Nobody is fighting for anything" in the war, she notes later on) and the harsh American irony within Don’s fear of 4th of July fireworks.

This is the kind of documentary that looks closely enough to notice the sensitivity on a person’s face after she has been forced to break one of her creeds. Yet Mosher and Palmieri are selective as to when they allow their point-of-view to merge with that of the person on camera, only allowing this to happen once the family has become more familiar to the viewer. The story comes to a close where it began, on another Halloween, but with most everyone dressed up in costumes that hint at their true spirits, some more repressed than others. The moment brings one back to the film’s beginning, and its dedication to the Mosher family. A movie that might help its subjects understand and appreciate one another better, October Country also manages to look good in the process. All praise queer sensibility.

OCTOBER COUNTRY

Opens Fri/7

Roxie Cinema

3117 16th St, SF

(415) 863-1087
www.roxie.com

Slightly off-key

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

0

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO "I was just in the bathroom splashing water on my knob," my excitable amigo Scottish Andy breathlessly dished at a mid-Market bathhouse-disco club last Saturday night. (You have to imagine this entire anecdote related in a hyper Scottish-Californian brogue. Like Highlander on poppers.) "And I heard someone majorly tooting in the stall. Snort. Snoooort. Like that. I thought, ‘someone is really sniffing the fuck out of their baggie in there.’ But then my friend came in and swung open the stall door and no one was in the stall.

"Marke! There’s a ghost doing coke in the bathroom!"

Perhaps that’s a metaphor for what dance floors around the world have sounded like for the past three years? Not just the whole disco-house-electro-wave-whatever revivalism thing, but a kind of ectoplasmic Hoovering of all of dance music’s past into a digital flush of half-heard echoes?

I drifted, boozily, from that club up to Triple Crown to check out Boston’s Soul Clap (www.soulclap.us), for my trick money the most rewarding DJ-production duo on the planet. The pair perfectly embody the now sound — ranging in reference from Motown to French electro, early blues to micro-house (with a special emphasis on late-’80s R&B) they smoothly discombobulate retro-fetishism to the point where you suddenly realize you’re throwing down hardcore to Chris Issak. Or are you? Soul Clap’s mid-tempo, ahistorical edits are cheeky sleight-of-ear. "There’s that wobbly brass blast from that early Heaven 17 12-inch floating over that Boyz II Men bass line," you think. But when you finally track it all down, you realize your self-satisfied trainspotting was slightly off. Soul Clap is making sounds that only sound like those sounds. Simulacrum disco. They have that now, on computers.

BONER FIESTA

Look, there are gonna be a lot of Cinco de Mayo parties — right now the thought of a shit-ton of drunk Americans celebrating Mexico seems, frankly, a relief. But only one party takes a sequin-sombreroed Alf as a mascot. That is electro-rock god Richie Panic’s weekly Wednesday Boner Party, and it will truly squeeze your lime and pop your piñata.

Wednesdays, 10 p.m., free. Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF. www.beautybar.com

AYBEE

DJ Said’s soulful afro-house We & the Music monthly was off-the-chain at its April premiere (get there early) and shows no sign of stopping, this time around bringing in the fantastic Aybee of Deepblak Recordings. If you’re in the mood for dancing with a grin, I can’t recommend this enough.

Fri/7, 9 p.m., $7. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

SHOWNUFF

"I wanted to provide a remedy for music lovers who don’t usually catch live music late at night, a location that suits them, and prices that are easy on the pocket book," says promoter Conrad Schuman of his new Friday live-music happy hour, this week pumping with 11-piece funk explosion Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra, DJ Chris Orr, and Phleck. Don’t argue!

Fri/7, 5 p.m.-9 p.m., free. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

THE TWELVES

Another intriguing duo, this time focusing on new electro from Brazil. I’m sweetly humming their new poppy-cowbell redo of Two Door Cinema Club’s "Something Good Can Work," which shows their range extends quite a bit beyond the "Rio de Janeiro’s answer to Daft Punk" descriptor they’ve been tagged with.

Fri/7, 10 p.m., $15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

CHROME

The boys behind queer punk-rock extravaganzas Trans Am and Sissy Fit have revived their monthly nightlife ode to fixed-gear hotties (or whatever that new thing all the bike kids are into, I forget its name, I walk). DJs Pickle Surprise and Le Perv pump the rock and roll disco faggotry, while live electronic whiz SamuelRoy tunes the tranny.

Sat/8, 10 p.m., $5. Club 93, 93 Ninth St., SF.

Little Chihuahua

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

2

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE On the hunt for the Little Chihuahua one unsettled April evening, we came upon … a little cockapoo, or maybe a Tibetan terrier. The dog, wrapped in a coat of shaggy fur the color of milky coffee, was moored to the façade of a Lower Haight storefront and had been provided a stainless-steel water dish, which seemed superfluous. Since the storefront was occupied by the Little Chihuahua, a Mexican restaurant opened by Andrew Johnstone two years ago, we naturally wondered whether the dog was just waiting for its person (or persons) to finish eating within or was a mascot of sorts. Did Little Chihuahua’s chihuahua take the day off? The dog lay on the sidewalk, staring intently through the open door, which I interpreted as a clue that a vigil was being patiently held. Or maybe the smell of the food appealed.

Mexican food gets my vote as one of the world’s most underappreciated cuisines. Recently I made this claim to a health-nut friend, who scoffed at first but gradually warmed to the evidence. This includes: the dominance of whole-grain corn (in many varieties and cultivars), the omnipresence of beans, a light hand with red meat, a wide range of vegetables, herbs, and spices, many of them indigenous, and of course salsa, whose flavor-to-calories ratio is unmatched among condiments I can think of.

Little Chihuahua lays out an impressive salsa bar to enhance the chip-dipping experience, although the chips are pretty good naked — warm, with just enough salt to make the corn flavor pop. The salsas themselves range from a rather mainline version (tomatoes, garlic, chili, cilantro, lime), to a spicy tomatillo kind that looks like melted emeralds, to a chipotle-charged concoction with the innocent face of ketchup.

A small irony of pozole, the wonderful soup-stew of hominy in chili broth, is that it traditionally features pork, a meat brought from the Old World by the conquistadores. La Chihuahua’s pozole ($7.95) deploys pork, in the form of a small semi-slab of baby back ribs, but its most striking elements are the rich, slightly viscous guajillo-chile broth and an abundance of hominy kernels and pinto beans. It’s more stew than soup and very sustaining.

If Mexican food’s reputation has suffered on this side of the border, a good part of the blame must be attributed to the burrito, a neither-here-nor-there hybrid that emphasizes mass at the expense of just about everything else and, worse, comes wrapped in a flour tortilla. The flour tortilla must have its virtues — I’ve never seen burrito-sized tortillas made from masa — but we eat more than enough wheat flour in this country already. Having said that, the quesadilla with shrimp ($8.95) is lovely, with a blistering like that of a good pizza crust and a pronounced melody of marine sweetness proclaiming itself through the cheesy murk. For a bit of refreshing balance, the spicy cabbage salad ($3) makes a good choice; it’s basically like cole slaw without the mayonnaise (and fat) and is a bowlful of virtue, though we didn’t detect much spiciness, just plenty of lime juice.

There is a slight party atmosphere to the Little Chihuahua. Seating is mostly at long communal tables, and the clientele is young. So it’s no surprise that the nacho plates pack some real throw-weight. Even the meatless one ($7.95) will keep three or four hungry people busy for quite a few minutes. Of course it isn’t quite meatless if you get it with the refried pinto beans, which are spiked with chorizo and bacon. But there is a wealth of avocado, salsa, and sour cream, along with enough melted white cheese to make it seem like somebody spilled a bottle of Elmer’s Glue all over the chips.

The one element of Mexican authenticity the Little Chihuahua seems to lack is the presence of actual Mexicans. The crowd is heavily Anglo, and somewhere in this detail is a story about a hipster neighborhood that simultaneously resembles and differs from the city’s great hipster neighborhood — the hipster superpower — the Mission. It might also help explain why the Little Chihuahua will soon be expanding, not to 22nd and South Van Ness streets but to 24th and Castro streets — the heart of Noe Valley. That’s as dog-friendly a neighborhood as there is in this town. *

THE LITTLE CHIHUAHUA

Continuous service: Mon.–Wed., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Thurs.–Fri., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.;

Sat., 10 a.m.–11 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.–11 p.m.

292 Divisadero, SF

(415) 255-8225

www.thelittlechihuahua.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Human, nature

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE If Deborah Slater had not grown up into an artist, she might have tried her hand at science. She bases her dance theater pieces on extensive studies of physical reality. Her inspiration can come from concrete objects like furniture (Hotel of Memories) and paintings (The Desire Line) or less tangible phenomena like sleep (The Sleepwatchers), perception (Passing as … The Mathematics of Being), and death (A Hole in the World). Accessing Slater’s works can take patience, but her creations stay with you because they are formally inventive, finely crafted, and engage the mind and heart long after you leave the theater. But rarely have the many strands she weaves together resulted in a piece as sprawling, ambitious, and poetic as her 20th anniversary premiere Men Think They Are Better than Grass.

Seen at a preview performance, Men — the title is not anti-male, but refers to humankind — takes on nothing less than the destruction of the environment that started probably as soon as humans were given "dominion" over the earth. Instead of reiterating well-rehearsed arguments, evidence, and position papers, Slater and codirector/dramaturge Jayne Wenger went to poet W.S. Merwin. Excerpts of his writings provide the backbone and scenario for this evocative, richly textured canvas of sound, color, language, and movement. The poetry, heard on tape and — helpfully — reprinted in the program, was recorded by a number of well-known Bay Area artists.

Men explores human alienation from nature in a series of imagistic episodes that, though loosely structured, build momentum. They are dark (dancers rushing about in increasing desperation), funny (Justin Flores transforming himself into a man made of briefcases), and dreamy (people trying to dig up the firm ground of history that proves to be unexpectedly porous). Perhaps most remarkable was the way Men deepened its sense of entropy, barely alleviated at the end by something, at least, suggesting a way out. As the piece darkened, the confrontations between the dancers, who had stripped off their business black to reveal battle fatigue greens, became increasingly agitated. They intensified to the point where they had a Lord of the Flies aspect to them. You also wanted to gasp for air every time the dancers crushed themselves into an ever-smaller piece of terrain.

Still, at this point, the choreography worked best in the small units: Travis Rowland heaving one woman after another, Private Freeman on a "war path" to protect his potted plant, and the fierce Kerry Mehling in anything she lent her regal body to. Some of the ensemble sections, particularly the unisons, needed more of a profile; they sometimes looked tense and rushed beyond what I think the intention was. All the dancers — Natalie Green, Kelly Kemp, Wendy Rein, Breton Tyner-Bryan, Shaunna Vella, and the others already mentioned — contributed to the choreography.

Men was a collaborative enterprise in other ways as well. Thom Blum and Floor Vahn’s soundscape of natural and animal sounds beautifully evoked the natural world, so increasingly absent in the lives of these depraved-deprived people. Elaine Buckholtz’ videography added its own poetry. Allen Willner designed the dramatic lighting, Laura Hazlett the fine costumes. What did not work was Mikiko Uesugi’s metaphoric use of plastic sheets for chopped-down trees. *

MEN THINK THEY ARE BETTER THAN GRASS

Thurs/6-Sat/8, 8 p.m.; Sun/9, 5 p.m., $25

Z Space at Theater Artaud

450 Florida, SF

www.deborahslater.org

All the young Turks

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

1

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL Welcome to Hairy Eyeball, a bimonthly rundown of visual art. We don’t aim to be comprehensive, just opinionated. First Thursday is tomorrow, so enough with the introductions. On with the shows.

CCA is unleashing a new batch of Fine Arts MFA students into the wild Thursday night. With 66 artists total, this year’s MFA show (which runs at the San Francisco campus through May 15) is one of the largest in recent memory. The cream from CCA tends to rise to the top pretty quickly, so here are some names worth looking out for in white cubes, near and far, in the future.

Llewelynn Fletcher’s interactive sculptures aren’t aiming to take a particular pulse, but will probably slow yours down. For Please Lie Down, she has created several enclosures of lead, ceramic, wood, and felt that completely cover the head, forcing you, per the piece’s title, to lie down on the floor (thankfully, she’s also constructed camping-style palettes for comfort). The mini-meditation huts, evocative of beehives as well as certain medieval torture implements, have the additional effect of transforming the wearer into something of a sculpture.

Maggie Haas’ mixed-media pieces could easily be mistaken for installations-in-progress. But her arrangements and treatment of construction site detritus — sawhorses, wooden slats — cannily gut minimalism, This Old House-style, by preferring to hang out in the workshop with Donald Judd et al., turning the means of production into the piece itself. Endless Escape in particular performs a neat rope trick that yokes Robert Smithson and Yayoi Kusama with the ease of an Eagle Scout.

Hilary Wiedemann’s installations, which frequently combine sculptures and projection, are far more elusive — and unsettling. In Untitled, a plaster cast of what looks to be a bullet hole-riddled surface (glass, perhaps?) leans against the wall; on the floor, laminated sheet glass has been contorted to resemble discarded tissue. Both components record the violence of the transformational processes that have brought them to their current states. It’s not comfortable viewing — as if you’ve stumbled on a crime scene before the police tape has gone up.

Someone put Doron Fishman in touch with a textiles manufacturer, stat. His gorgeous ink-on-paper works, all black tendrils of liquid smoke, let it bleed. They’re begging to be transferred to chiffon. The witchy Mulleavy sisters, of Rodarte fame, would be smart to look him up.

Well worth the trek to the other side of Potrero Hill is Ping Pong Gallery, which is currently showing Gwenael Rattke’s dark, hypnogogic collages (through May 14). The collection’s title, “Oktogon,” refers to a street intersection in Budapest and also to the Ottoman-style “Kiraly” baths built during the Turkish occupation in the 16th century. These layers of history, architecture, exposed flesh, and power are not wholly self-evident in the psychedelic grandeur of Rattke’s straight-razor wizardry — which recalls, among many associations, the graphic punch of Tadanori Yokoo and Keiichi Tanami’s 1960s poster designs, the homo-plagiarism of Jess’ massive Narkissos (1978/91), and the profondo rosso beloved by Dario Argento. Rather, they form the deep structures to these mandala-like works in which Op-Art geometrics collide with Art Nouveau scrollwork and leather daddies are refracted into Busby Berkeley chorines. The corner in which 14 of these pieces have been hung draws you in, like some black hole. Proceed with caution, and awe.

Also closing toward the end of the month (May 22 to be exact) is Beverly Rayner’s “Accretion” at Braunstein/Quay, an elongated housecoat covered in the day-to-day paper ephemera — greeting cards, bills, receipts, inspirational quotes, correspondences — that one accumulates over the course of a lifetime. “Go paperless” is one takeaway. That such a load is too much to bear — psychically as much as environmentally — is another. *

CCA GRADUATE THESIS EVENTS

Through May 14, free

California College of the Arts

1111 Eighth St., SF

(415) 703-9500

www,cca.edu

GWENAEL RATTKE: OKTOGON

Through May 14, free

Ping Pong Gallery

1240 22nd St., SF

(415) 550-7483

www.pingponggallery.com

BEVERLY RAYNER: ACCRETION

Through May 22, free

Braunstein/Quay Gallery

430 Clementina, SF

(415) 278-9850

www.bquayartgallery.com

A roar from underground

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC When asked if it’s a good time in history to be in a sludgy, uncompromising heavy metal band, High on Fire’s Matt Pike stifles a chuckle: “It is for me, man!” Reached by phone in Los Angeles as he prepares for a show at the El Rey Theatre, Pike is far from loquacious, but clearly enjoying the arrival of hard-earned, well-deserved success. His band, a thunderous, heavily-distorted power trio, bastard son of St. Vitus and Slayer, just signed on for a string of European dates opening for Metallica.

Before they set off across the Atlantic, High on Fire will appear at Oakland’s Fox Theater to play a concert called the Missing Link, a weighty omnibus of a heavy metal bill that brings together two potent touring packages, their itineraries cleverly fused into one mammoth night of music. Pike’s band is joined by tour-mates Priestess, Bison B.C., and Black Cobra. Headliners Mastodon deploys its own retinue of support: Between the Buried and Me, Baroness, and Valient Thorr.

The bands at the top of the bill are living proof of this epoch’s friendly attitude toward challenging, underground heavy metal. Mastodon charted at No. 11 with 2009’s Crack the Skye (Warner Bros.) and Between the Buried and Me hit No. 36 with The Great Misdirect (Victory). Oakland native sons High on Fire stormed into the limelight in February 2010; Snakes for the Divine (E1 Music) debuted at No. 62. Baroness’ Blue Record (Relapse) was the critical darling of 2009 — Decibel magazine named it album of the year — and it peaked at No. 117.

Those still working their way up from the bottom are no less optimistic. Speaking on the phone while peregrinating around L.A., Jason Landrian, singer/guitarist for crushing S.F. duo Black Cobra, is loving life. “I think it’s a great time to be in a heavy band. There are a lot more people paying attention and taking the music a lot more seriously.” Black Cobra, which was recently signed by legendary label Southern Lord Records, has ample experience with and appreciation for the bands it will share the stage with at the Fox. “For us,” Landrian says, “it’s a thrill to be involved with what seems like a cross-section of what’s going on right now in the underground scene.”

Superficially, the bands on the bill are easy to circumscribe within geographical boxes. Mastodon and Baroness both hail from Georgia, a state that is quickly becoming one of the nation’s most fertile breeding grounds for independent metal. Between the Buried and Me and Valient Thorr are also from Dixie, storming out of North Carolina university towns Greensboro and Chapel Hill, respectively. Priestess was founded in Montreal, and Bison B.C. in Vancouver (in the eyes of American rock critics, everything Canadian seems related). Black Cobra and High on Fire represent the Bay Area.

Yet this sort of convenient compartmentalization is redolent of a scene-based musical analysis that is rapidly becoming obsolete. A generation that came of age during the sodden triumph of the “Seattle sound” has matured into an army of bands that defy physical space. The insidious tentacles of social networking and the exponentially expanding capacity of cheap bandwidth have enabled independent musicians to bridge vast distances, to identify kindred spirits and isolated fans. Early Black Cobra material was written while the band’s two members resided on different coasts, swapped back and forth methodically with the click of a mouse. The Internet has been a boon to concert bookers and promoters as well, allowing them to ferret out undeserved markets and spread the digitized word.

Looking back through lists of past tour dates, the connections and inter-pollinations among this underground army of heavily distorted road warriors are practically infinite. It seems as if every band has toured with every other band on the Missing Link roster at least once. “We’ve known those guys forever,” Pike says when asked about Mastodon, and it’s only partly hyperbole — the members of Mastodon met at an Atlanta High on Fire show in 1999.

Though today’s metal vanguard takes advantage of technological innovations, it’s the relentless touring that reaps rewards. And while life on the road has its costs, the new century’s burgeoning crop of itinerant headbangers can depend on a tight-knit nomadic community — bearded and unwashed — that grows stronger by the day. “It’ll be a reunion with friends, which is a cool thing,” says Landrian. “You end up meeting all these people, touring around, and when you get a show like Missing Link happening, everybody knows each other.”

Armed with vans, smart phones, and arsenals of crushing riffs, the bands of Missing Link have the entire continent at their disposal. It’s a far cry from the specter of the 1980s, poisoned by feuding thrash titans and the internecine, hair-sprayed fist-fight for scraps from the Sunset Strip table. “That’s the thing about this underground metal scene,” Landrian says beatifically. “Everyone’s working together. There’s not a lot of ‘Oh, we’re competing with these bands to be in a position of honor.’ There’s a lot of camaraderie. Everybody sees each other in the same light.”

THE MISSING LINK

Mastodon, Between the Buried and Me, High on Fire

with Baroness, Priestess, Valient Thorr, Black Cobra, Bison BC

Sat/8, 4 p.m., $35

The Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2277

www.thefoxoakland.com

Wiped clean

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS You never know where in the world you’re going to be when the time comes to regroup. Or in my case re-re-re-re-re-re-re-regroup. I keep having to have these little sit-downs with myself. Or lie-downs, if I happen to be at home alone or in the woods, where one can assume a fetal position and howl without attracting too much comment. Is it possible she knows what I’m going through?

For example: Greenbrae.

Must stop wondering. But is it a state of mind, or a suburb of San Rafael? Or Larkspur? Or is it Larkspur? Whatever the fuck, a river runs through it, or at least a creek. And there is also the Bon Air Shopping Center.

The best way to forget Angela Kreuz, according to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is to meet, make, and fall in love with new people. Since Rachel (Mila Kunis) is a fictional character, I decided to focus my attention on men again. Why not? They are reliable and brave, and, if one day Angela Kreuz changes her beautiful mind, I could just tell my future ex-husband, "Oops, I’m a lesbian."

And what could he say? He would just have to sit there and be brave and reliable — while I explained who Angela Kreuz was: some woman who doesn’t respond to my e-mails but does Google herself; someone I’d known many, many years ago who pretended to be a man but wasn’t, but it didn’t matter because I loved her beyond gender, beyond fear, who tore my heart out one New Year’s Day morning in Germany, before coffee. Then wrote to France to tell me, in some of the most poorly worded English I had ever seen in any language, that I was mentally unstable, she’d been afraid to eat with me in the end because she thought I might poison her —

"Wait!" My future ex-husband, having been handpicked by me from all the world’s really top-shelf men for precisely this purpose, would bravely, reliably interrupt me. "Before coffee?"

So, yeah, so that was pretty much "the plan" as I drove my brother’s shitty van to the Bon Air Shopping Center in Greenbrae. To meet a man I’d met online who must, I don’t know, live in Greenbrae or some such something, because why else would you drink your coffee in a shopping center?

Not to mention meeting your future ex-wife there.

But the really depressing thing is — and after this sentence it’s going to be all sunshine not only to the bottom of the page but sideways into next week, I promise — that I find myself willing to overlook all these crap shortcomings (e.g., drinking coffee in shopping centers) to potentially meet the potential doofus-of-my-dreams, because — hey — who knows? Right?

They know. Immediately. She drives … that? Wait, did she just spit getting out of her car? Is that a sunflower seed shell between her teeth? Hay in her hair? And what’s that smell?

My soccer scrapes and bruises don’t show up on photographs. I do let my adoring male public know, before they behold me in actual person, that I am essentially a chicken farmer, but what’s charming in words, and missing from pictures, breaks deals in person. Or in other words: dudes ain’t buyin’ it. Still. And I had to wonder, sitting by myself at the fake fire pit outside on the sidewalk, Bon Air Shopping Center, beautiful Marin County evening, how much longer … Who? … What? … I just had to wonder.

Which you can only do for so long, in my experience, before you need a hamburger. Or better yet a pulled-pork sandwich with fried onions on it. Besides Peet’s, the Bon Air Shopping Center has a goofy surfer restaurant called Wipeout.

Like a good faux cowgirl chicken farmer, I ate at the faux fire, dripping real pork juice and hot sauce all over my favorite jeans, and I swear, just when I started to think, Fuck Angela Kreuz, I’m going to become a man-hating old-school lesbian … my cell phone shook. An accidental poem from a beautiful woman in Hollywood: "I love your punctuation. Your sentence structure turns me on. Especially your use of colons: like this."

WIPEOUT BAR AND GRILL

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun 11 a.m.– 10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

302 Bon Air Center, Greenbrae

(415) 461-7400

MC/V

Full bar

Dude, where’s my car share?

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

2

By Brady Welch

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Owning and storing a car in San Francisco is neither cheap nor efficient, so car-sharing companies have become increasingly popular in recent years. So why can’t individual car owners share or rent their vehicles? Right now, insurance law makes that difficult, but new legislation could make it easier for people to share their cars.

California Assembly Member Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), a candidate for Insurance Commissioner, unveiled the legislation during an April 28 press conference in San Francisco. Flanked by City CarShare CEO Rick Hutchinson and Sunil Paul, chief of a car-sharing start-up called Spride, Jones outlined legislation that would allow car owners to rent their vehicles to car-sharing organizations without risk of losing their individual auto insurance. Think of the idea as a more decentralized — but not quite DIY, at least not yet — version of other successful car-sharing organizations.

Hutchinson said there would likely be little difference between current City CarShare members’ experience and these new ventures. The change would be most significant in less dense areas where economic and logistical conditions prevent companies like City CarShare from expanding. By contracting with individual car owners, Spride is proposing to cut out much of the financial and logistical overhead, bringing the benefits of car sharing to a wider array of people. Folks would still reserve vehicles online or over the phone, and the cars would be maintained and tracked using City CarShare’s technology.

Vehicle owners could potentially earn "hundreds of dollars" per month through Spride, Paul said. Although owners wouldn’t be able to set their own rates under Spride’s pilot program, Paul did mention the possibility of pricing "flexibility" if the model proves successful. Owners would set the hours for the vehicle’s availability.

California law is unclear about the insurance ramifications of individual car sharing. The snags concern commercial use of the vehicle and insurance liability. Currently, if you charge people to borrow your car, insurance companies can technically revoke your insurance. This, in turn, leads to the issue of whose insurance policy covers the person who is driving at any given time.

Jones’ bill would clarify that. "Participating in car sharing is something we want to encourage," he said. The legislation would specifically define personal vehicle sharing in car sharing organizations as noncommercial usage. This is significant because commercial insurance is more expensive than personal insurance. By "expanding what City CarShare has pioneered" with the company’s technology and network of members, Jones said that California can "take it to the next level" by promoting and expanding the practice to new markets and individuals.

Even so, the bill still doesn’t address the ramifications of person-to-person car sharing, so don’t rush off to Craigslist in hopes of renting out your Pinto for some extra scratch. It’s still legal to lend your car to friends and family for free, but if donations are offered, you might want to keep that secret from your insurer.

The Association of California Insurance Companies opposes Jones’ legislation. But according to ACIC vice president Mark Sektnan, amending it could bring the group’s members on board. "We want to make sure that people who put their cars into these operations are protected. And we want to make sure the car sharing organization fixes" the vehicle if it’s involved in a crash. As currently written, the bill only provides the car owner with liability insurance. Sektnan wants something more comprehensive. "The car sharing club has to provide appropriate insurance to the people who lend the cars," he said.

Sarah Moussa, a field representative in Jones’ office, said it’s an issue Jones is working on. "The bill only addresses liability, but they want to see more comprehensive coverage," she said. "Right now, we’re working closely with the insurance industry to make sure those amendments are addressed."

Jones noted that the legislation would play a big role in promoting clean air and mitigating traffic congestion. If this change passes and works well, it could be the first step toward getting the most efficiency out of the least green transportation option.

The voice of fun

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

0

steve@sfbg.com

In the midst of a crackdown on San Francisco nightlife, club operators, promoters, entertainers, and supporters of a vibrant urban scene have formed a new lobbying group that seeks to offer a united voice in favor of fun.

The California Music And Culture Association (CMAC), a nonprofit advocacy and education group, launches its first chapter in San Francisco this week.

Discussions about the need to organize have been going on for years among the owners of local nightclubs such as Bottom of the Hill, Mighty, DNA Lounge, and Café Du Nord. They were initially triggered by arbitrary enforcement actions by the California Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and persistent noise complaints by a handful of NIMBY neighbors (see “Death of fun,” 5/24/06 and “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/24/07).

But in recent months, conflicts between the culture-creators and enforcement agencies have come to head, driven by an aggressive crackdown on parties and clubs led by ABC agent Michelle Ott and San Francisco cop Larry Bertrand (see “The new war on fun,” March 23) and efforts by Mayor Gavin Newsom and other officials to blame youth violence on the entertainment industry.

“This is certainly as bad as it’s ever been,” said Guy Carson, owner of Café Du Nord and a CMAC board member who has run San Francisco nightclubs for 26 years. “We needed an organization that can speak for us.”

So dozens of nightlife advocates have pooled their resources to create CMAC. The organization is supported by membership dues and aims to follow a model similar to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which has more than 11,000 members and has been effective at advocating for their interests.

What’s at stake, Carson said, is San Francisco’s reputation as a vibrant, world-class city that nurtures its artists and welcomes those who come into town for parties and events.

“Do we want to look like Walnut Creek?” Carson asked rhetorically. “I came here because I like a vibrant arts scene, and that requires an infrastructure. It doesn’t happen in a void.”

He said City Hall and the enforcement agencies have lost sight of the important role nightlife plays in creating the city’s culture, and how aggressive enforcement efforts can push club owners — many who are “struggling to survive,” Carson said — over the edge.

“There is a void in the political and public perception of nightlife,” said Frieda Edgette, an employee of the politically connected firm Barbary Coast Consulting, which helped launch CMAC. Edgette added that the group’s goal is “to empower and provide a voice for a constituency that hasn’t had a voice.”

Beyond advocating for the interests of members at city and state levels, CMAC will serve as an information clearinghouse on best practices for maintaining good neighborhood relations and research into the importance of the industry to the economy.

“I’m not sure club owners do all they can to foster good relationship with their neighbors,” said Tim Benetti, owner of Bottom of the Hill, a former deputy city attorney, and current CMAC board member. “So we can play a big role in educating our members.”

Yet he said that a far bigger problem has been the polarization between the nightlife community and entities that try to demonize and scapegoat it for problems ranging from noise to drugs to violence. “There is an antagonism that has developed between nightclubs and enforcement agencies, and we want to end that antagonism,” Benetti said. “Right now, there’s no dialogue.”

Or as Edgette said, “We want to bring all the parties to the table to have a holistic discussion about nightlife.”

So far, efforts to open up that dialogue have gone nowhere. Attorney Mark Webb, who represents some of the victims of harassment and brutality by Bertrand and Ott, publicly called on Newsom to mediate the dispute in March. But he was rebuffed, so last month he filed a racketeering case against the city, arguing that police shakedowns of legal activities amount to a criminal enterprise.

“I was quite disappointed at the reaction to this case,” Webb said. “It’s fallen on deaf ears in terms of trying to get Newsom or others in power to deal with it. Now it’s just in the pile of lawsuits.”

Last week the City Attorney’s Office had the case bumped up to federal court, and Webb said he has subpoenaed police records and sought depositions from Bertrand and his supervisors. Another lawsuit, brought by promoter Arash Ghanadan after he was arrested and, he charges, brutalized by Bertrand in retaliation for filing an earlier complaint, is also being contested by the city.

“We are in a battle for Bertrand’s personnel file,” said Ghanadan’s attorney, Steve Sommers, who is also seeking to depose Police Chief George Gascón about the matter.

State Sen. Mark Leno has helped to mediate the disputes and has been in touch with ABC chief Steve Hardy. “I think we’re going to see some improvement,” Leno said. “I don’t know how aware he was of the activities at the local level.”

Those activities include citing nightclubs for not serving enough food, repeatedly harassing customers at certain disfavored clubs, pursuing noise complaints on behalf of particularly sensitive neighbors, and announcing a crackdown on bars serving infused liquors.

Leno welcomed the creation of CMAC and said that it will be an important voice for a vital and under-appreciated industry, both in San Francisco and in Sacramento, where Leno unsuccessfully pushed legislation to extend the operating hours of nightclubs a few years ago.

“I applaud this effort,” Leno said of CMAC. “There is great wisdom to advocating for this on a statewide basis.”

CMAC LAUNCH PARTY

With DJs J Boogie, Motion Potion, and more

Thu/May 6

7–11 p.m., $10

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

Crossing over

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

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news@sfbg.com

Tensions over the issue of how cities and states should treat undocumented immigrants have been simmering in San Francisco since the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Gavin Newsom began clashing over the issue almost two years ago. But they have recently boiled over in response to a draconian new law in Arizona, quickly altering the political dynamics of the issue, here and across the country.

Thousands flooded into the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District on May 1 to march for immigrant rights, part of a May Day celebration that seemed infused with collective outrage at Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, an anti-immigration measure signed into law April 23 that has touched off a firestorm of protests nationwide.

The predominantly Latino crowd waved American flags and flew banners denouncing the law, which makes it a state-level crime to be in the country illegally and criminalizes the failure to carry immigration documents at all times. The march occasionally erupted into chants of “Si Se Puede!” (Yes we can), and “Obama, escucha: estamos en la lucha,” (Obama, listen: We’re in the struggle).

While immigrant rights marches are held every year on May 1, the 2010 rallies had a tremendous turnout. San Francisco’s immigrant rights movement seemed galvanized by the new legislation, which is widely perceived as racist and ill-advised. Yet it has also been seen by advocacy groups as an opportunity for federal immigration reform.

Despite the cultural and geographic chasms separating San Francisco and Phoenix, SB 1070 also has emerged as a pivotal issue in a big election year as Latino and progressive communities gauge politicians’ reactions to a bill that has made national headlines.

San Francisco was the first city in the country to call for a boycott of Arizona. But Newsom proved out of step with City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Sup. David Campos, who first independently called for the boycott. While Campos and Herrera sent a clear message urging city departments to boycott Arizona-based companies, Newsom warned of the “complicated” aspects surrounding this idea then put forth a proposal to form a working group to analyze the idea.

“What we need is action, swift action,” Campos told the Guardian when we asked what he thought of Newsom’s plan. “We did not need a working group deciding whether or not to do same-sex marriage. We don’t need a working group to tell us what we should do here.”

SPEAKING OUT

Campos delivered a rousing speech, in Spanish, at the May 1 rally at Civic Center Plaza, saying San Francisco had to send a clear message to Congress and emphasizing his support for a boycott. As he spoke, the high-energy, tightly packed crowd waved flags, banged on pots and pans, cheered and applauded.

Ramon Cardona, a Salvadoran who directs a San Pablo immigrant outreach organization called Centro Latino Cuzcatlan and helped organize the event, said the underlying message was to urge Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. “Deportations are creating so much suffering and pain,” he said. “The captures and deportations are dividing up families, and leaving children as orphans.”

Cardona noted that the number of people getting deported has increased — in 2006, more than 180,000 deportations were carried out; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has declared a target of 400,000 for this year. But Cardona said he doubts if crackdowns or intensified border militarization would deter those with an eye toward illegally crossing the U.S. border because the economic conditions in Central America have decimated most alternative means of earning a living.

“If globalization policies were not so unbalanced, millions of campesinos [country people] and workers would not be in a position right now where they had to leave their families in order to work,” Cardona said. “When you have armies of unemployed people without a prospect … people will take desperate measures.”

Giselle Perez, a young woman who participated in the rally, said she was there in support of workers who risk their lives to come to the U.S. “As a child of immigrant parents, I feel our attention should be toward the forces that have created this destruction, and we shouldn’t be persecuting those … who are just coming here to work and to provide the services that we all benefit from,” Perez said.

But even in San Francisco, there were signs of how divisive the immigration issue is. As speakers and hip-hop groups took turns onstage at Civic Center Plaza, a crowd of at least 20 counter-protesters set up camp across the street in front of City Hall, standing behind police barricades and displaying banners which read “We need more ICE at this fiesta” and “Golden Gate Minute Men.”

A self-proclaimed white separatist organization calling itself the Bay Area National Anarchists (BANA) — pinpointed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and bitterly hated by local anarchists — made its presence known. A scuffle occurred when BANA members wound up in a physical clash with a group of individuals as they left the rally, resulting in two arrests.

In the wake of the boycott announcement, Herrera was deluged with angry e-mails from throughout the country, expressing angry sentiments toward “illegal aliens” and threatening to boycott the city of San Francisco.

CHANGING DYNAMICS

SB 1070 empowers police officers to detain and arrest anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the country without immigration papers. The bill makes transporting and employing undocumented immigrants a crime. And it allows individuals to sue municipalities where they believe law enforcement is not pursuing undocumented immigrants.

Reactions to the Arizona law continue to reverberate nationwide. And the uproar has forced the debate about federal immigration reform into the headlines and created a string of potential pitfalls for politicians just ahead of the 2010 elections.

President Barack Obama immediately called the law “misguided” and ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to determine whether the new law violates people’s civil rights. Former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano — whose January 2009 decision to resign to become Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary caused then-Lt. Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, to ascend to the state’s top post — framed SB 1070 as a “cry of frustration” from state and local officials who need federal immigration reform.

“They’ve already amended the law over the course of the week, so even the Arizona Legislature is starting to recognize there are problems,” Napolitano said last week.

But the amended bill, which is scheduled to go into effect later this summer, has already opened up a Grand Canyon-sized rift within the Republican Party: GOP officials in at least seven other red states, including Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, have vowed to introduce similar legislation. Their pronouncements have forced even some conservative Republicans like strategist Karl Rove to make statements critical of the law.

In Phoenix, opponents of SB 1070 smeared the state building with swastikas made of refried beans. Around the nation, online social media networks rocked with a gale-force response. More than 1 million SB 1070 opponents banded together on a dozen Facebook pages clamoring for boycotts, a demand championed by a galaxy of civil liberties groups.

San Francisco political consultant Bob Brigham circulated an online petition urging California’s state pension fund to divest from Arizona. “I started thinking about the State of California’s role in helping end apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa,” Brigham said in an online statement. “Then I knew the move.”

The reaction to SB 1070 turned out to be a litmus test on leadership in San Francisco. Herrera, whose father is from Colombia, and Campos, who was born in Guatemala and came to the U.S. as an undocumented youth, separately called for a boycott of Arizona within days of the law’s approval.

But Newsom, in what turned out to be a major political miscalculation, waffled, first questioning the wisdom of a boycott, then scrambling to take baby steps when his opponent in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn, authored a boycott resolution.

“The notion of boycotting a state and every business that does business in the state is an extraordinarily complicated matter,” Newsom said in an April 27 San Francisco Chronicle article.

That was the day Hahn held a press conference calling for L.A. to cut off all business ties with Arizona.

Seven L.A. City Council members and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa endorsed the measure — and Hahn was invited to be a keynote speaker at a May 1 immigration rally in downtown L.A.

Newsom swiftly sought to save face, issuing a press release shortly after Hahn’s announcement stating that he had hatched a “smart, effective” response to the Arizona legislation: the mayor was immediately banning official city travel to the state, with exceptions for essential travel related to law enforcement and public health or safety.

Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian that he did not have information on how much the city travels to Arizona. “Travel has been cut significantly, of course, because of the city budget situation. But Henry Alvarez from the Housing Authority did cancel a trip to Scottsdale set for this weekend for a housing authority conference,” Winnicker said.

Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda estimated that when it came to the annual number of official trips to Arizona, “I would doubt that it would be more than just a handful.” San Francisco has made payments to 81 companies headquartered in Arizona since 2007, totally roughly $16 million, according to a list compiled by the city purchaser.

But it was the message that seemed to matter more than the actual impact on Arizona, at least for the politicians involved.

Newsom also announced plans to assemble a working group to analyze the impact of potential boycott measures against Arizona. The working group includes city Purchaser Naomi Kelly, Controller Ben Rosenfield, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, Theresa Sparks of the Human Rights Commission, representatives from the City Attorney’s Office, the mayor’s Director of State and Federal Legislative Affairs Nancy Kirshner-Rodriguez, and Newsom’s Latino Community liaison Joaquin Torres.

“The purpose of the workgroup is to develop boycott recommendations that are smart and effective and that won’t hurt SF businesses and residents or hurt those who are the victims in Arizona of this terrible law,” Winnicker said.

City Attorney Matt Dorsey took offense at the implication that Herrera’s boycott call was premature or motivated by his own mayoral ambitions. “Dennis was thinking about doing this as early as April 23 because of the outrageousness of the legislation,” Dorsey said.

Michael Trujillo, Hahn’s campaign manager, faulted Newsom’s waffling. “If Arizona legalizes slavery, is he going to form a working group?” Trujillo asked. “It wasn’t a question of whether [Hahn] would do it or not do it. In L.A., it’s a no-brainer. In San Francisco, it requires a working group.”

The incident also served as a vivid reminder to those who support immigration reform and the city’s sanctuary city law that Newsom hasn’t been on their side for a long time.

OPENING OLD WOUNDS

Immigrant rights advocates are expressing renewed concern about Newsom’s failure to implement a Campos-authored and board-approved amendment to his policy on turning juvenile immigrants over to federal authorities before they’ve had their day in court.

Since Newsom ordered his new policy, more than 160 youth have been referred to federal immigration authorities for possible deportation. As a result, kids who subsequently see all felony charges against them dismissed or reduced, find themselves ripped from their families and in danger of being deported.

Advocates also noted that they have not seen any evidence that language they believe is an open invitation to racial profiling has been removed from the mayor’s policy, which Newsom ordered without public review in July 2008, the day after he announced his failed bid to become the next governor of California.

Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Siffermann assured the Guardian in March that such language was being removed following a contentious March 4 hearing. Campos questioned the JPD chief about the origin of language in Newsom’s policy. The language states that in determining whether there is reasonable suspicion that youth is undocumented, one of the criteria listed is the “presence of undocumented persons.”

Siffermann replied that the policy was based on review and approval of the City Attorney’s Office.

Campos asked if Siffermann could see “how something as open-ended as this could lead to racial profiling?”

“It could,” Siffermann replied. “It requires vigilant oversight. If that criterion was taken alone, we’d have a problem with that.”

That concern echoes those of critics of the Arizona law, which purports to ban racial profiling while requiring police officers who suspect people of being an undocumented immigrants to ask for their citizenship papers. Those parallels are uniting San Francisco officials on the otherwise divisive issue.

Tensions arose between Campos and Herrera’s office following Newsom’s refusal to implement Campos’ due process amendment for immigrant youth, with Campos and immigrant advocates saying Herrera should do more to force its implementation. Now Campos said a renewed push for action could be the silver lining in Arizona’s otherwise bad legal situation.

“I think there has been a respectful disagreement between my office and Herrera’s about just how far they could go,” Campos said. “We believe the city attorney can and should advise Newsom that the Mayor’s Office doesn’t have the authority to do what he is doing [requiring probation officers to notify ICE when juveniles suspected of being undocumented are arrested, in violation of Campos’s legislation]. But I appreciate what the city attorney is doing around Arizona.”

Campos and Herrera note that a boycott proved to be an effective model in forcing Arizona to rethink its refusal to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 20 years ago.

Asked if Arizona’s SB 1070 will change the national immigration debate and the city’s local policy toward immigrant juveniles, Herrera said, “I don’t think anything with respect to the state of our immigration laws could get any worse. Otherwise, we’ll probably end up with draconian policies being put forward by other states.”

Herrera also believes the national debate could allow quicker implementation of San Francisco’s sanctuary city reform, telling us, “Obviously the debate will provide the vehicle to have the discussion to clarify the distinctions between state and federal law.”

Angela Chan, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, an immigrant advocacy group, hopes the outcry in San Francisco and throughout the country will be the match that lights the fire for humane and comprehensive immigration reform. “We can no longer wait and allow states and local governments to try — often foolishly, like in the case of Arizona — to take matters in their own hands,” she told us.

Chan sees parallels between Arizona and what happened during the civil rights movement when police attacked African American demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala. “When there is gross injustice, the hearts and minds of Americans are moved by these images now, as they were then,” Chan said. “I do believe comprehensive immigration reform will come about, if not now then very soon, as a result.”

But she notes that what is happening in Arizona is not isolated.

“In San Francisco, for almost two years now, we have had a policy instituted by Mayor Newsom that requires probation officers to report youth to ICE based only on ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are undocumented,” Chan explained, echoing language from the Arizona law. “The good news is, with the mayor’s strong stance against the Arizona bill, it is an opportunity for him to reevaluate his own policies in San Francisco and do the right thing here. San Francisco can and should be a leader on immigrant rights.”

Rep Clock

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

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Schedules are for Wed/5–Tues/11 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ALBANY 1115 Solano, Berk; www.landmarkafterdark.com. $10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975), Sat, midnight.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. Letters from the Other Side (2006), Thurs, 7:30. "Feast of the Beast," experimental videos and performance art, Fri, 8. "Other Cinema:" What If, Why Not? Underground Adventures with Ant Farm (Harrison and Federici), Sat, 8:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. Donations accepted. "Palestine: Occupied Lives, Non-Violence, and Steadfastness:" Jerusalem: The East Side Story (Alatar), Fri, 7.

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. San Francisco International Film Festival, Thurs. See film listings. Call for Fri-Tues shows and times.
CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. 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. Babies (Balmès, 2010), May 7-13, call for times.
FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; (415) 666-3488. $4. Fimbulvinter, Sat, 11:15.
HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness (Salazar, 2004), Wed, 7:30.
KORET QUAD Mission Bay Campus, UCSF, 1600 Fourth St, SF; (415) 476-2675. Free. Up (Docter, 2009), Thurs, 7:45. Outdoor screening.
MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. "CinemaLit Film Series: Heroic Horizons: The View from Australia:" The Overlanders (Watt, 1946), Fri, 6.
PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. San Francisco International Film Festival, Wed-Thurs. See film listings. "Film and Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Prize Competition," Fri, 7. Theater closed May 7-28.
PIEDMONT 4186 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 464-5980. $5-8. "Cult Classics Attack 5:" Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy, 1986), Fri-Sat, midnight.
RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Terribly Happy (Genz, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:15 (also Wed, 2). House (Obayashi, 1977), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat, 2, 4). Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980), Sun-Mon, 7, 9:35. "San Francisco Opera: Madama Butterfly" (filmed performance), Sun, 2. The Last Station (Hoffman, 2009), May 11-12, 7, 9:25 (also May 12, 2).
ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Breaking Upwards (Wein, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 8:45. The Runaways (Sigismondi, 2010), Wed, 9. The Secret of Kells (Moore, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7. When You’re Strange (DiCillo, 2009), Wed, 7. "Film Racing Tour," Thurs, 6. October Country (Palmieri and Mosher, 2009), May 7-13, call for times.
VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $8-10. "Kaiju Shakedown: Godzillathon!:" Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Banno, 1971), Sat-Sun, 1; Mon and May 12, 5; Godzilla vs. Gigan (Fukuda, 1972), Sat-Sun, 3; Mon and May 12, 7; Godzilla vs. Megalon (Fukuda, 1973), Sat-Sun, Tues, and May 13, 5; Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Fukuda, 1974), Sat-Sun, Tues, and May 13, 7.
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $5-8. "To the Limit: Pina Bausch on Film:" On Tour with Pina Bausch (Akerman, 1998), Thurs, 7:30. New Kahnawaké (Bernier and Martin, 2010), Sat, 2.

Film listings

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

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

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival runs through Thurs/6 at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post, SF; Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; and the Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. Tickets (most shows $12.50) are available by calling (925) 866-9559 or by visiting www.sffs.org. All times p.m. unless otherwise noted.

WED/5

Clay Budrus 3:45. Woman on Fire Looks for Water 6:15. Hadewijch 9:15.

Kabuki The Practice of the Wild 1:30. Port of Memory 2:30. "Solitude Standing" (shorts program) 3:30. Morning 3:45. The Day God Walked Away 4:15. Northless 4:30. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno 6:15. The Invention of Dr. Nakamats 6:30. Ordinary People 7:15. Night Catches Us 9. Life 2.0 9:15. My Queen Karo 9:15. Lebanon 9:30.

PFA La Pivellina 6:30. The Portuguese Nun 8:50.

THURS/6

Castro Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work 7.

Clay Hadewijch 6. Lourdes 6:30.

Kabuki "Imperfect Unions" (shorts program) 2. The Loved Ones 3. Presumed Guilty 3:15. The High Line 5. The Wind Journeys 5:15. You Think You’re the Prettiest, But You Are the Sluttiest 6:15. Garbo the Spy 8. Making Plans for Lena 8:30. Wild Grass 8:45.

PFA Alamar 6:30. Moscow 8:10.

OPENING

*Babies Thomas Balmes’ camera records the first year in the lives of four infants in vastly different circumstances. They’re respectively born to hip young couple in Tokyo’s high-tech clutter; familiar moderately alterna-types (the father is director Frazer Bradshaw of last year’s excellent indie drama Everything Strange and New) in S.F.’s Mission District; a yurt-dwelling family isolated in the vast Mongolian tundra; and a Namibian village so maternally focused that adult menfolk seem to have been banished. Yes, on one level this is the cutest li’l documentary you ever saw. But if you were planning to avoid thinking that is all (or most) of what Babies would be like, you will miss out bigtime. Void of explanatory titles, voice-over narration, or subtitle translations, this is a purely observatory piece that reveals just how fascinating the business of being a baby is. There’s very little predictable pooping, wailing, or coddling. Instead, Balmes’ wonderful eye captures absorbing moments of sussing things out, decision-making, and skill learning. While the First World tykes firstborns both — are hauled off to (way) pre-school classes, the much less day planned Third Worlders have more complex, unmediated dealings with community. Those range from fending off devilish older siblings to Mongol Bayarjargal’s startlingly casual consorting with large furry livestock. (Imagine the horror of parents you know were their baby found surrounded by massive cows — a situation that here causes no concern whatsoever for adults, children, or bovines.) So accustomed to the camera that it doesn’t influence their behavior, the subjects here are viewed with an intimacy that continually surprises. Babies is getting a wider-than-usual release for a documentary, one cannily timed to coincide with Mother’s Day. But don’t be fooled: this movie is actually very cool. (1:19) Albany, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Good Heart Good is in the eye of the beholder — though Brian Cox’s cranky old salt of a bar owner, Jacques, is likely tough for some viewers to take. You can almost smell the booze, sweat, and tooth decay coming off Jacques, who’s cultivating an insular, boys-only clubhouse of hard drinkers and characters in his dark, dingy NYC watering hole that neu-American Gothic hipsters would likely love to dig up and belly down in. Yet even this dirty old man realizes that all good things must come to an end, and to that end, Jacques begins to plan his retirement-slash-demise by playing Pygmalion and training a sweet-tempered homeless youth, Lucas (Paul Dano), as his successor. It’s a rough and tumble transformation: Lucas is happier sleeping beneath his bed than on it, giving away coffee to his homeless friends, fraternizing with the customers, and befriending a bedraggled beauty (Isild Le Besco) who wanders into the bar than putting up a tough front and sticking to Jacques’ routine. His is obviously the good organ named in the title — though Jacques might also be considered the patron saint of all barflies and American primitives trying to eke out an honest, uncompromising existence in the big city. As a profanity-spewing force of nature, Cox gets all the best lines here, though Dano does well with what little verbiage he can poke in edgewise. Both are much more than good in the first American feature by Icelandic filmmaker Dagur Kari (2003’s Noi), a loving ode to lushes and their hard- (and soft-)edged enablers. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Good, the Bad, the Weird Not terribly bad (but not especially good, either), the biggest sin of The Good, The Bad, The Weird, Kim Jee-woon’s fast-paced, tricked-out tribute to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western supreme, is its lack of weird. Set in 1940s Manchuria, The Good, The Bad, The Weird follows the three outlaws of its title — bounty hunter Park Do-won (the Good, Jung Woo-sung), debonair assassin-for-hire Park Chang-yi (the Bad, Lee Byung-hun), and goofy small-time thief Yoon Tae-goo (the Weird, The Host‘s Song Kang-ho) — as they race to possess a hot potato of a treasure map, which the Japanese military and a horde of Chinese bandits are also keen to nab. When not barraging you with gunplay and quick-draw editing that wouldn’t be out of place in a McG or Guy Ritchie flick, Kim falls back on Song to provide the comic relief. But Song rehashing the dude-with-a-heart-of-gold he played in The Host (2006) isn’t enough to give this film what its trigger-happy desperados what they really need: some character. (2:10) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Director Tom Six had a vision, a glorious dream of surgically connecting three human beings via their gastro-intestinal systems, or as Kevin Smith would say — "ass to mouth." When two girlfriends on a road trip across Europe get a flat tire, they stumble upon the home of a mad doctor (Dieter Laser) with a similar dream, who drugs them and ties them up in his basement laboratory. The Human Centipede is an entry into the torture porn arena, but it feels especially icky because you just know that the girls have zero chance of escaping the "100 percent medically accurate!" surgery. Once hooked up, there’s nowhere for the film to go and two out of three actors can’t talk because they are sewn to someone else’s anus. Still, as one-note as The Human Centipede is, I think we’d do well to encourage more films to be as batshit insane as this one. (1:30) Bridge. (Galvin)

Iron Man 2 Robert Downey Jr. returns as the suave superhero. (2:05) California, Four Star, Marina, Presidio.

*October Country See feature. (1:20) Roxie.

*Please Give See "Do the Right Thing?" (1:30) Clay, Shattuck.

ONGOING

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

The Back-Up Plan (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio..

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

Clash of the Titans The minds behind Clash of the Titans decided their movie should be 3D at the last possible moment before release. Consequently, the 3D is pretty janky. I don’t know what the rest of the film’s excuse is. Clash of the Titans retreads the 1981 cult classic with reasonable faithfulness, though Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects have been (of course) replaced with CG renderings of all the expected monsters, magic, gods, etc. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes — as other reviews have pointed out: Schindler’s List (1993) reunion! — glow and glower as Zeus and Hades, while Sam Worthington (2009’s Avatar) once again fills the role of bland hero, this time as a snooze-worthy Perseus. You might have fun in the moment with Clash of the Titans, but it’s hardly memorable, and certainly nowhere near epic. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

*Dancing Across Borders The transformation of the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Sokvannara Sar from a gifted 16-year-old performer of traditional Cambodian dance into a promising American ballet dancer is a story of hard work, persistence, and luck. Dancing Across Borders also shows what talent, money and resources can accomplish. In 2000 dance philantropist-filmmaker Anne Bass happened to see young Sy, to use his American name, perform in Angkor Wat. She recognized his gift and brought him to the US where he received an exceedingly rigorous training at the School of American Ballet. The rest is not just history, but a charming film that traces the young dancer’s metamorphosis into a ballet dancer and his gradual acculturation to American life. It’s an astounding transformation — today he barely speaks with an accent in either his kinetic or verbal speech. Still, it’s heartwrenching to see him back home performing for his well-wishing but uncomprehending family and friends. Even under the best of circumstances the prize of emigration is high. While interviews with American teachers, particularly Pacific Northwest’s Peter Boal, excellently illuminate the intricacies of ballet, at times the film becomes bogged down in its efforts to verbally explain what the images make abundantly clear. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Rita Felciano)

Date Night By today’s comedy standards, Date Night is positively old-fashioned: a case of mistaken identity causes a struggling married couple (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) to be tangled in a ransom plot for a stolen flash drive that belongs to a local mob boss. Unfussy plots are par for the course for films belonging to the all-but-lost "madcap all-nighter" genre, and in this case the simplicity of the set-up becomes Date Night‘s greatest asset, allowing Carell and Fey free reign to joke and ad lib lines. Like it or loathe it, the pair’s trademark senses of humor are the movie, and they arrange some pretty gleefully entertaining bits on the fly. Toss in a bunch of cameos from the likes of Ray Liotta and Mark Wahlberg and you’ve got yourself a bona fide movie-film, but it’s difficult not to see what Date Night might have been with just a smidge more effort. (1:27) Elmwood, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Galvin)

Death at a Funeral Less than three years since its stateside premiere, indie Brit hit Death at a Funeral (2007) arrives as a surprising choice for a mainstream American makeover. In both versions the death of a family patriarch brings family from far and wide to a wake, where the eldest son struggles to keep things together amidst the strains of blackmail and a rogue bottle of hallucinogenic pills. But, by replacing all those stuffy British actors with the likes of Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Tracy Morgan, director Neil LaBute succeeds in creating a completely different tone for what is mostly a shot-for-shot reconstruction of the original script. The impossibly quick-moving plot is organized with a deftness that reflects LaBute’s dual career as a playwright, keeping the film even-tempered during screwball moments like Tracy Morgan getting covered in Danny Glover’s doo-doo. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

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

Furry Vengeance (1:32) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck.

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) Elmwood, Four Star, Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Presidio. (Eddy)

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

The Greatest Lofty title aside, there’s nothing particularly extraordinary about The Greatest. In many ways, it’s your standard grief porn, in that it focuses on a group of characters mourning a dead teenager for an hour and a half. On the other hand, the cast is tremendous — Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan are solid as the parents of the broken Brewer family, but the young actors give the most memorable performances. Fresh off her Oscar nomination for An Education (2009), Carey Mulligan continues to mingle precociousness and naiveté. The Greatest also showcases the very talented Johnny Simmons, whose past films — Hotel for Dogs (2009) and Jennifer’s Body (2009) — haven’t exactly earned him exposure. For its genre, then, The Greatest is actually quite good. It has plenty of charm mixed with moments of genuine emotion, often marked by much welcome restraint. But even with a slight twist on the convention (Mulligan’s Rose is pregnant with the dead kid’s baby), it’s still just a well-made tearjerker. (1:36) Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

Greenberg Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is 40, and you might think he’s going through a midlife crisis — if he hadn’t been in pretty much this same crisis for 15 years or more. Still very edgy and fragile after a nervous breakdown-sparked institutional stay, he’s holing up at the comfortable Hollywood home of a big-deal brother while the latter and family are on vacation in Vietnam. (The implication being that Roger is most welcome here when no one else actually has to endure his prickly, high maintenance company.) While in residence he reconnects with old friends including the ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) he dumped yet never quite got over — though clearly she did — and the ex-bandmate (Rhys Ifans) he burned by wrecking their one shot at a major-label deal. He also gets involved, kinda-sorta, with big bro’s personal assistant Florence (mumblecore regular Greta Gerwig), whose passivity and low self-esteem make her the rare person who might consider a relationship with someone this impossible. Like all Noah Baumbach films, especially the slightly overrated Squid and the Whale (2005) and vastly underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007), his latest pivots around a pathologically self-absorbed and insensitive protagonist who exasperates anyone unlucky or blind enough to fall into his or her orbit. Working from a story co-conceived by spouse Leigh, Baumbach’s script sports his usual sharp dialogue, penetrating individual scenes, and narrative surprises. But it also gets stuck in dislikable Roger’s rut, finding conflict easily but stubbornly resisting even the smallest useful change. For all its amusing and uncomfortable moments, Greenberg emerges a dual character slice with no real point. Neither Roger or Beth reward long scrutiny (least of all as a hapless potential couple), while the few screen minutes Ifans and Leigh get make you wish their roles had hijacked the focus instead. (1:40) Four Star, SF Center. (Harvey)

Harry Brown Shades of Dirty Harry (1971) for the tea cozy and tweed set: elegantly rendered and very nicely played, Harry Brown might be the dark, late-in-the-day elder brother to 1971’s Get Carter, in the hands of eponymous lead Michael Caine. He’s a pensioner mourning the passing of his beloved wife, his mysterious life as a Marine stationed in Northern Ireland firmly behind him. Then his chess-playing pal Leonard (David Bradley) is terrorized and killed by the unsavory gang of heroin dealing hoodlums who lurk near their projects in a tunnel walkway like gun-toting, foul-mouthed, sociopathic trolls. Harry Brown is, er, forced to forsake a vow of peace and go commando on the culprits’ asses, triggering some moments of ultraviolence that are unsettling in their whole-hearted embrace of vigilante justice. Like predecessors similarly fixated on vengeance in their respective urban hells, a la Hardcore (1979) and Taxi Driver (1976) (Harry Brown echoes key moments in the latter, in particular — see, for instance, its keenly tense, eerily humorous gun shopping scene), Harry Brown is essentially an arch-conservative film, if good looking and even likable with Caine meting out the punishment. The overall denouement just might make some seniors feel very, very good about the coiled potential for hurt embedded in their aging frames. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Hot Tub Time Machine How can you hate a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine? Even those who pooh-pooh poop jokes have to admire a movie so unapologetically upfront about its ludicrous storyline. A group of friends who’ve drifted apart (Rob Corddry plays the maybe-suicidal asshole; Craig Robinson, the emasculated never-did-nothing; John Cusack, the recently-dumped workaholic) reunite for a ski weekend at the resort that hosted the most debaucherous party of their youth. Along for the ride, which soon includes a trip back to 1986 courtesy of you-know-which device, is Cusack’s character’s internet-obsessed nephew (Clark Duke), whose terror over leaving the plugged-in 21st century is soon superceded by his realization that any disruption of the past will likely erase his very existence. Hot Tub Time Machine‘s 80s nostalgia (Chevy Chase cameo!) enfolds an homage to the Back to the Future films (Crispin Glover cameo!), as well as Cusack’s early career (see: immortal 1985 ski-slope classic Better Off Dead), but it’s very much a movie of our times. See it now while the Twitter and Tiger jokes are still timely, and before the next R-rated comedy comes along to up the ante on dick jokes. (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)

How to Train Your Dragon (1:38) Cerrito, 1000 Van Ness.

*The Joneses David Duchovny has been enjoying a nice career renaissance since designing his embarrassing-old-guy shtick for Californication, and the shtick continues to deliver in The Joneses. Duchovny plays the father of a family of four who move into a well-off suburban neighborhood and set about inserting themselves in every marketable aspect of the town’s culture. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by telling you that the family is not really a family at all, even if The Joneses does play the dynamic as a mystery for a good 20 minutes. In fact, the four are un-related members of a stealth marketing firm hired to sell products by living a desirable lifestyle. Trouble inevitably arises when the line blurs between the lie they’ve created and who they really are. It’s about as predictable and simple-minded as it sounds but The Joneses is endearing anyway, thanks to a few solid laughs and the believable will-they-or-won’t-they between Duchovny and pretend-wife Demi Moore. (1:33) SF Center. (Galvin)

*Kick-Ass Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar, whose work was also the model for 2008’s Wanted, Kick Ass is a similarly over-the-top action flick that plays up its absurdity to even greater comedic effect. High school nerd Dave (Aaron Johnson) decides to become the world’s first real superhero. Donning a green wetsuit he bought on the internet and mustering some unlikely courage, he takes to the streets to avenge wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, Dave is immediately beaten almost to death because he’s just a kid who has no idea what he’s doing, but Kick-Ass‘ greatest achievement is knowing exactly how to subvert audience expectations. Scenes that marry the film’s innocent story with enormously exaggerated violence enhance the otherwise Superbad-lite high-school comedy unfolding around them, and a parallel plot-line involving Nicolas Cage instructing his 12-year-old daughter to commit grievous murders will probably end up being the most gratifying aspect of the film. Though too much set-up and spinning gears mars the middle act, it’s hard to fault the film for competently setting up one of the most crowd-pleasing endings in recent memory. (1:58) Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Galvin)

The Losers If films like The Dark Knight (2008) and Watchmen (2009) elevated the comic book movie to a more evolved state, The Losers regresses back to the dark ages. Not every flick has to be high art — that’s why we have words like "flick" — but this isn’t even enjoyably over-the-top. The Losers is gleefully stupid, and no amount of explosions or eye-gougings can distract from that. Watchmen‘s Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Clay, the leader of an elite Special Forces team that finds itself framed for murdering a bunch of Bolivian children. Clay’s team, with the assistance of Zoe Saldana’s Aisha, go after the real culprit — a supervillain by the name of Max. Not feeling threatened yet? Wait till you find out he’s played by Jason Patric. His evil shtick is mildly amusing but impossible to take seriously: there’s never any real threat. And so we follow the bouncing boobs and bombs toward an absurd and shrug-worthy conclusion. Or we roll our eyes and wait for a movie that’s stupid and loud — but good. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*Mid-August Lunch Gianni Di Gregorio’s loose, engaging comedy is about an aging bachelor still living with his ancient mum in their Rome flat. When his landlord offers to forgive some debts in return for briefly taking in his own elderly ma, Gianni (played by the director himself) soon finds himself in cat-herding charge of no less than five old ladies who delight in one another’s company while running him ragged. Gomorrah (2008) screenwriter Di Gregorio used nonprofessionals to play those parts in this semi improvised miniature, which is as light and flavorful as a first course of prosciutto and mozzarella. It’s a solid addition to the canon of palate-pleasing culinary flicks such as Big Night (1996) and Babette’s Feast (1987), as opposed to the repulsive ones like Super Size Me (2004) or Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). (1:15) Bridge, Shattuck. (Harvey)

La Mission A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, fortysomething Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place. (1:57) Empire, Opera Plaza, Marina, Shattuck. (Harvey)

A Nightmare on Elm Street I’ll say this about the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street: it could have been worse. Yes, it’s pointless and unimaginative and producer Michael Bay should still be ashamed, but I didn’t hate every minute of it. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is not good. It’s not terrible, if only because it has a few decent scares — all of which are, of course, shamelessly lifted from the original. Mostly, however, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a waste of time, updating Freddy Krueger with an icky twist (which I won’t spoil here) and culling together more jump scares than should ever be shoved into one film. The cast is passable, with relative newbie Rooney Mara taking on Nancy — she’s fine but forgettable. Jackie Earle Haley does a solid job with Freddy, but he was doomed from the start, just by virtue of not being Robert Englund. This Freddy is more brutal, to be sure, but he’s also far less fun. One pun in the entire movie? He might as well be Jason Voorhees. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*Oceans Dried-out, just-the-facts types who like to wallow in verbiage can stay home — Oceans instead welcomes children, poetic-minded nature fiends, and opera lovers eager for sea spray and giant morays. In fact co-director Jacques Perrin considers Oceans — the second film from Disneynature, which produced 2007’s Earth — a "wildlife opera," and Perrin and co-director Jacques Cluzaud cram their marine fantasia with so many remarkable images you can’t believe they got what they did without the help of computer animation: hundreds of dolphins race through South African waters to trap a so-called bait ball of herring, while jillions of sea birds dive into the action, alongside sharks and whales — a sequence that genuinely boggles the imagination. There’s the effortless wit of a marine iguana crawling the Galapagos shore and the surreal mien of the pudding-profiled Asian sheepshead wrasse. A mother walrus cradles her cub in a heart-tugging embrace that would bring tears to Walt’s eyes. The images stream on — sans much obvious structure, explication, or preaching, though the directors obviously hope to plant the seed of activism in viewers’ minds. In the meantime, one simply marvels at the animals the filmmakers and their crew glimpsed over the course of a four-year shoot, which took them on 75 excursions, tipped by fishermen, environmentalists, divers, marine biologists, and other humanoids who love or rely on the sea. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Runaways In Floria Sigismondi’s tale of the rise and fall of a 1970s all-girl band, LA producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) proclaims that the Runaways are going to save rock and roll. It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of this pronouncement, but you can certainly hear, in songs like "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise," how the band must have brightened a landscape overrun by kings of prog rock. Unfortunately, a handful of teenagers micromanaged by a sleazy, abusive nutcase proved not quite up to the task, though the band did launch the careers of metal guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and, more famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Sigismondi’s film entertainingly sketches the Runaways’ beginnings in glam rock fandom and gradual attainment of their own rabid fan base. We get Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) lip-synching Bowie to catcalls at the high school assembly, Jett composing "Cherry Bomb" with Fowley, glamtastic hair-and-wardrobe eye candy, pills-and-Stooges-fueled intra-band fooling around, and five teenage girls sent off sans chaperone on an international tour with substantial quantities of hard drugs in their carry-on luggage. What follows is less pretty: a capsule version of the band’s disintegration after the departure of bottoming-out 16-year-old lead singer Currie. In a film darkened by Currie’s trajectory, Jett’s subsequent success is a feel-good coda, but it’s awkwardly attached and emblematizes one of The Runaways‘ main problems. When the band begins to fall apart, the film doesn’t know which way to turn and ends up telling no one’s story well. (1:42) Roxie. (Rapoport)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Albany, Embarcadero.

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

Vincere Given the talent involved, Vincere should be a better film that it is. Director Marco Bellocchio has a lengthy track record of successes, and star Giovanna Mezzogiorno is one of the biggest names in contemporary Italian cinema. The based-on-a-true-story plot is certainly worthy of being filmed: Mezzogiorno plays Ida Dalser, secret wife of Mussolini and mother of the dictator’s first-born son. When Ida begins to make trouble for Il Duce by publicly proclaiming their marriage, she is locked away in a mental hospital. But while Vincere‘s subject is compelling, the film as a whole falls flat. Moments of greatness are few and far between, and the rest of the movie gets by on mediocrity. It’s likely the fault lies with the script, which is too scattered and unfocused to maintain an audience’s focus. Why after almost two hours of watching Ida’s struggle are we suddenly left with her son’s descent into madness? How depressing that a film about a woman forgotten by history is, itself, mostly forgettable. (2:02) Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

Event Listings

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

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

WEDNESDAY 5

California Nights: Cinco de Mayo California Historical Society and Museum, 678 Mission, SF; (415) 357-1848. 6pm, free. Celebrate Mexico’s victory over invading French troops in 1862 and the continuous changes and developments in Latino communities throughout California since that time. Featuring complimentary Cinco de Mayo refreshments, DJ music, and admission to the museum’s Think California exhibit.

BAY AREA

Arctic Images David Brower Center, 2150 Allston, Berk.; (510) 550-6700. 6pm; free, RSVP at www.earthjustice.org/arctic. See the beauty of the Arctic along with the impending threats to this iconic region at this photo presentation with acclaimed wildlife photographer Florian Schulz.

THURSDAY 6

Fair Trade Wine Night Participating bars around the city, SF; www.fairtradewinenight.com. 7pm, free admission. Drink wine that tastes good and does good, where $1 from every glass you order will go to TransFair USA, a non profit dedicated to ensuring fair wages, safe working conditions, education for workers’ kids, and health care access for all workers.

Letters from the Other Side ATA, 992 Valencia, SF; (415) 821-6545. 7:30 p.m., $6 suggested donation. Watch this film that documents the realities of immigration and the families left behind through video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border, putting a human context onto the immigration debate. Sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.

FRIDAY 7

BAY AREA

Oakland Art Murmur Centered around 23rd St. and Telegraph, Oak.; oaklandartmurmur.com. 7pm, free. Wander between 19 Oakland galleries enjoying local art, free wine and snacks, occasional outdoor movies and other surprises. Participating galleries include Front Gallery, Mercury 20, Chandra Cerrito, Rock Paper Scissors Collective, and more. For a full list of participating galleries and for a map visit, oaklandartmurmur.com/map.

SATURDAY 8

Aorta Magazine Million Fishes Arts Collective, 2501 Bryant, SF; www.aortamagazine.com. 8pm, $5-10 sliding scale. Enjoy radical readings of poetry and prose, visuals, live music, and a dance party with DJ Puppet at the release party for the new issue of Aorta Magazine, Cardiac Unrest. Aorta is a self-produced, collectively-created publication that features emerging and established female, queer and transgender artists.

Art, Om, and Fortune Cookies Meet at sculpture on Patricia’s Green, Octavia at Hayes, SF; www.sfbike.org. 11am, $5 donation. Join local artists Erin Augustine and Colleen Mauer for a biking tour of the best outdoor sculptures in SF, followed by a mini-tour of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory and some light yoga. Bring a sketch book, camera, and thermos of tea.

Bacon Camp Chez Poulet, 3359 Cesar Chavez, SF; baconcamp.org. Noon, free. Share and learn about bacon in an event filled with discussions, demos and participant interaction centered around the uniting theme…bacon. Everyone is encouraged to participate by presenting food, art, demonstrations, judging contests, or volunteering.

Family Art Workshop The Imagine Bus Project, 342 9th St., SF; (415) 252-9125. 1pm, free. Explore an art exhibition from students who participate in the Imagine Bus Project’s after school programs, join in an art workshop led by Marcela Florez, and help create a short illustrated story about "The River of Things I Dream About," that will be included with the exhibit for its duration.

Meet the Animals Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF; (415) 554-9600. 11am, free. Meet a variety of interesting creatures, from rodents to reptiles to birds of prey, that the Randall Museum provides a home to because they can no longer survive in the wild, and learn about California’s diverse and disappearing wildlife. This event is happening every Saturday in May.

BAY AREA

Pagan Festival Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, Berk.; thepaganalliance.org. 10am, free. Noon parade through Berkeley. Enjoy a procession, interfaith ritual, traditional dance, music, poetry, crafts, authors circle, vendors, food, altars, and more. This year’s theme is "Spiral of Life," which focuses on the turning of the wheel through the seasons and the stages of our lives.

Sweet and Savory Festival Jack London Square, 20th St. at Webster, Oak.; www.sweetshoppefests.com. Sat. 11am-10pm, Sun. 11am -6pm; $12. Celebrate all that is sweet at this two-day confectionary festival featuring goodies from SF Bay Area pastry chefs, confectioners, cupcake fairies, local restaurants, cheese makers, and more including a Champagne Bubble Bar.

SUNDAY 9

How Weird Street Faire Centered at Howard and 2nd St, 37° 47′ 12.4? N x 122° 23′ 53.7? W
San Francisco, Earth; howweird.org. Noon – 8pm; $10 suggested donation, $5 in costume. Enjoy ten blocks of art and celebration, and ten stages of music playing electronica, downtempo, dubstep, breaks, drum and bass, and more. Also featuring performances, colorful costumes, vendors, food and drinks, and a chance to take part in the setting of a new world record at 7:40pm, when all the stages broadcast a special peace song and revelers are invited to join in on the World’s Largest Bollywood Dance.

Walk the Tenderloin Meet at Powell, Eddy, and Market Streets, SF; www.sfcityguides.org. 9am, free. Explore the Tenderloin that evolved from an isolated rural village to it’s crucial role in the start of the California movie industry. Learn about famous madams, see where Billie Holiday was busted for opium, and discover the neighborhood poker clubs.

MONDAY 10

"Leaders at the Lab" Margaret Jenkins Dance Lab, Suite 200, 301 8th St., SF; (415) 861-3940. 7pm, free. Choreographers, dancers, dance-makers, and enthusiast are invited to take part in an intimate conversation with choreographer Simone Forti, where she will discuss the innovative career choices she made in order to flourish in the ever-changing climate of dance-making.

Music listings

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

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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 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bane, Alpha and Omega, Wolves and Thieves, Streetwalkers Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

*Cannibal Corpse, 1349, Skeletonwitch, Lecherous Nocturne Slim’s. 7:30pm, $28.

Coheed and Cambria, Circa Survive, Torche Warfield. 7pm, $32.

Ferocious Few, Mississipi Man, Sermon, DJ Ted Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $5.

Flobots, Trouble Andrew, Champagne Champagne Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $15.

Guella, Soda Pop Junkies, DudeHouse Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6.

Lambs, Splinters, Honey Knockout. 9pm, $5.

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

Ronaldo Morales Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Owen Pallett, Snowblink Independent. 8pm, $16.

Street Pyramids, Watchdawg, Purrs, Symbolick Jews Kimo’s. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Country Jam Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Nathan Hamilton McTeague’s Saloon, 1237 Polk, SF; (415) 776-1237. 9pm.

La Colectiva featuring Toqueson Elbo Room. 9pm, $8. With DJs Soniada Diablo, Laonzo, and Rabeat.

Sang Matiz, Trio Paz, Gema de los Deseos El Rio. 8pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Afreaka! Attic, 3336 24th St, SF; (415) 643-3376. 10pm, free. Psychedelic beats from Brazil, Turkey, India, Africa, and across the globe with DJs MAKossa and Om.

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.

Q-Burns Abstract Message Triple Crown. 11:30pm, $5. Spinning house.

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.

Slump Night Coda. 10pm, free. Hip-hop with L.I. Aspect and DJ Centipede.

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 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Josh Clarke, Naysayers Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Dosh, White Hinterland, Baths Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Hold Steady Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Denise Perrier Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Paulie Rhyme Rock-It Room. 8pm, $5.

Reckless Kelly, Brothers Comatose Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

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

Shondes, Ex-Boyfriends, Excuses for Skipping, Bruises Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Mariee Sioux, Dead Western, Aaron Ross Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Tussle, Javelin, Bronze Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Yung Mars, Mugpush, Karmo, Double Take Coda. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Heather Combs, Elliott Randall, Alden Schell, Jeff Campbell Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Savannah Blu Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

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.

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

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

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

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

Good Foot 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.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

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

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

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

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

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

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

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

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs White Girl Lust, Ken Vulsion, and Sergio.

FRIDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Battle of the Bands" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With High Volume Dealer, Baysic Wonder, Apothesary, and more.

Trevor Childs and the Beholders, American Professionals, Headslide Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Los Campesinos!, Signals Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $22.

"Devil-Ettes a Go Go" Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $10. Dance troupe with live music by the Royal Deuces, Ron Silva and the Monarchs, and Riff Ditties Orchestra.

Fast Times Maggie McGarry’s, 1353 Grant, SF; (415) 399-9020. 9pm, free.

Here Come the Saviours, Victory and Associates, Control-R Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Mark Hummel and Rusty Zinn 8 and 10pm, $20.

Impalers, Inciters, Titan-Ups, Revival Sound System Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

J-Billion, Odd Future Wolf Gang, DJs Mally Jesus and Roost Uno Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

Menew, Lilofee, Frail Mezzanine. 9pm, $7.

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

Red Sparowes, Fang Island, Oxbow Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14. Acoustic show.

Martin Sexton Fillmore. 9pm, $26.50.

Wallpaper, Oona, DJ Morale Independent. 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

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

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

Rachelle Ferrell Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25-32.

Shotgun Wedding Symphony Coda. 10pm, $10.

George Winston Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; www.gracecathedral.org. 8pm, $36.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

JimBo Trout and the Fishpeople Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Left Coast Special Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Braza! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521.10pm, $10.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

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

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

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

Freqo de Mayo Mighty. 10pm, $25. With DJs Tipper, Motion Potion, Absurge, Mycho Cocoa, Victor Vega, Tim Dietz, Big$Bill, and Digital Rust.

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.

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

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.

Mochipet vs. Polish Ambassador and Deceptikon Elbo Room. 10pm, $10-12. Electro.

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.

Strangelove: Vinyl Night Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8965. 9:30pm, $6. With DJs Tomas Diablo, Mitch, Lowlife, Andy T, and more spinning goth and industrial.

SATURDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damn Near Dead Ireland’s 32. 9pm, free.

Aram Danesh and the Superhuman Crew Coda. 10pm, $10.

Drive By Truckers Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

Flakes, Tropical Sleep, Only Sons Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Hurricane Bells Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Illness, No Captains, Wasteland Saints Kimo’s. 9pm, $7.

*Ludicra, Kowloon Walled City, Fell Voices Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Mono, Twilight Sad Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Kate Nash Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free.

Old and In the Way, Ten Mile Tide Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $18.

Ash Reiter, Dead Westerns, Ian Fays Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Eric Sardinas Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Sioux City Kid and the Revolutionary Rambler, Fool Proof Four, High Winds Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Stanton Moore Trio, Good Band Independent. 9pm, $18.

Tied to the Branches, Aan, Upward House of Shields. 9pm, $6.

Young Offenders, La Urss, N/N, Ruleta Rusa Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

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

Beth Custer Ensemble Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; (415) 454-5238. 8:15pm, $18.

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

Rachelle Ferrell Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $32.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

Mars Arizona, Ken Will Morton Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with Loo and Placido.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $7. DJ Nuxx and guests spin for queers and their friends.

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

Electricity Knockout. 10pm, $4. Eighties jams with DJs Omar, Deadbeat, Yule B. Sorry, and guest Aidan.

Frolic Stud. 9pm, $3-7. DJs Dragn’Fly, NeonBunny, and Ikkuma spin at this celebration of anthropomorphic costume and dance. Animal outfits encouraged.

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.

Mini Non-Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. Noon-3pm, $5-10. Family-friendly dance party.

Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

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.

Spotlight Siberia, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 552-2100. 10pm. With DJs Slowpoke, Double Impact, and Moe1.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $4-10. Electro cumbia with DJs Orion, Disco Shawn, and Oro 11.

SUNDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Analog Rebellion, Mansions, Poema Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Cloud Archive, Atomic Bomb Audition, Sleepy Eyes of Death Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

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

Fucked Up Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $14.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 7:30 and 9:30pm, $15.

Sara Haze Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Tallest Man on Earth, Nurses Independent. 8pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Rachelle Ferrell Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-32.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jack Gilder, Kevin Bemhagen, Richard Mandel and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Kat Parra and the Sephardic Experience Coda. 8pm, $10.

Pa Sevilla Bollyhood Café. 7pm, $15. With DJ Sandrella spinning flamenco rock, rumba, and salsa.

DANCE CLUBS

Autobahn Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9pm, free.

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with Maneesh the Twister 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.

Lonely Teardrops Rock n’ Roll Night Knockout. 9pm, $4. Doo-wop, R&B, jivers, and more with DJs dX the Funky Granpaw and Sergio Iglesias.

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 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alexisonfire, Trash Talk, Therefore I Am, La Dispute Slim’s. 7:30pm, $16.

Besnard Lakes, Happy Hollows, New Slave Independent. 8pm, $14.

"Felonious Presents Live City Revue" Coda. 9pm, $7.

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

Rattlesnakes, Cellar Doors, Atom Age Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

*Red Fang, Hot Fog, Hazzard’s Cure Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

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 DJs Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

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.

TUESDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Embers, Ninth Moon Black, Blackwaves, Nero Order Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $8.

Fromagique featuring Bombshell Betty Elbo Room. 9pm, $8. Live music and burlesque.

Tom Goss, Dudley Saunders, Daniel Owens, Jeremiah Clark Metropolitan Community Church, 110 Gough, SF; www.tomgossmusic.com/tickets. 7:30pm, $15.

Hamilton Loomis Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

MC Meathook and the Vital Organs, Hammer Horror Classics, Trashkannon Knockout. 9:30pm, free.

Midnite Independent. 9pm, $28.

Minks, Bang, She’s Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Phantom Kicks, Skeletal Systems, Sunbeam Road Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.
*Wiz Khalifa, Fashawn, Jasmine Solano Slim’s. 9pm, $15.
FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY
Barry O’Connell, Vinnie Cronin and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.
DANCE CLUBS
Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck, H-Bomb, and Big Dwayne.
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.

Stage listings

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

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

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials, A Rock Opera Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. Opens Thurs/6, 9pm. Starting June 3, runs Thurs, 9pm. Through Sept 23. Buzz, Skycastle, and Lunar Eclipse present this original rock opera.

Fishing Shotwell Studios, 3252 19th St; www.fishingtheplay.com. $25. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through May 29. David Duman’s new play satirizes foodie culture.

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

Very Warm for May Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207. $38-44. Previews Wed/5, 7pm; Thurs/6-Fri/7, 8pm. Opens Sat/8, 6pm. Runs 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.

BAY AREA

Twelfth Night La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/6-Fri/7, 8pm. Opens Sat/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. Impact Theatre sets Shakespeare’s romance in Hollywood.

What Just Happened? Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Wy, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Opens Fri/7, 9pm. Runs Fri, 9pm; Sat, 8pm (Sat/8 show at 9pm). 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.

ONGOING

An Accident Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $25-55. Wed/5-Sat/8, 8pm (also Sat/8, 2:30pm); Sun/9, 2:30pm. Magic Theatre closes their season with Lydia Stryk’s world premiere drama.

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-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 15. 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.

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. Thrillpeddlers work their revival magic on the Cockettes’ 1972 musical extravaganza.

*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. Extended 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. Previews Wed/5, 2pm. Opens Sat/8, 7:30pm. Runs 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.

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. 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)

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $27-29. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. The musical is now in its fifth year at Shelton Theater.

Tartuffe Studio 205 at Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; 377-5882, http://generationtheatre.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 16. 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-Sun, 8pm (also Sun, 2pm; no 8pm show May 16). Through May 16. BootStrap Foundation presents Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen’s musical about Emily Dickinson.

"Wanton Darkness: Two Plays By Harold Pinter and Conor McPherson" Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason; 335-6087. $24-28. Thurs/6-Sat/8, 8pm. Second Wind and Project 9 Productions co-present a double-bill of twisted and mysterious little-big plays under the umbrella title, "Wanton Darkness." The evening begins with Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes, a pas de deux between a fortysomething couple, Rebecca (Lisa-Marie Newton) and Devlin (Lol Levy), wherein Devlin closely questions Rebecca about a certain sadomasochistic relationship and accompanying dreams, in vaguely menacing tones. The scenic design (by Fred Sharkey) suggests a psychiatrist’s office as much as "a New York penthouse apartment," which speaks to the ambiguity in the dialogue but also to the slightly heavy-handed approach taken here by the actors under Ian Walker’s direction. The touch is far more apt overall in the second play, St. Nicholas, also directed by Walker. An early effort by Irish playwright Conor McPherson (Shining City; The Seafarer), the play unfolds as a two-part monologue by a cynical drink-sodden theater critic (tell it, brother) who follows a spiral of self-loathing right down into the company of a set of fetching young vampires. With something like the quality of a gothic-styled AA testimonial, it proves a somewhat roving but intriguing yarn, nicely delivered by the capable Fred Sharkey. (Avila)

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

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Fri/7, 9pm; Sat/8, 8pm. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

Girlfriend Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $27-71. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat and Tues, 2pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through May 16. 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)

John Gabriel Borkman Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed/5-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2 and 7pm. A former bank manager (James Carpenter) who did time for illegally speculating with customer accounts to the ruin of all now paces like a lone wolf (in the operative metaphor) in his upstairs study, planning a return to respectability, as his estranged wife (Karen Grassle) occupies the rooms below along with a testy housekeeper (Lizzie Calogero), where her sister (Karen Lewis) competes for the love and loyalty of the patriarch’s grown son (Aaron Wilton), who contrary to the designs of all his elders is determined to marry a charming widow (Pamela Gaye Walker) and "live," as he is compelled to reiterate. Ibsen’s play has an enduring topicality that is hard to miss of course, but Aurora’s production, directed by veteran hand Barbara Oliver, also inadvertently suggests why this leaden, slightly ridiculous work is so rarely produced, despite some solid acting, especially from an imposing yet slyly comical Carpenter in the title role. (Avila)

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

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

To Kill a Mockingbird Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $27-62. Wed/5, 7:30pm; Thurs/6-Sat/8, 8pm (also Sat/8, 2pm); Sun/9, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s literary masterpiece.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Wy, 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

"Bare Bones Butoh Presents: Showcase 17" Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez; bobwebb20@hotmail.com. $5-20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Butoh by Bad Unkl Sister, Ronnie Baker, Liz Saari-Filippone, Vangeline, Bob Webb, and more. Workshops (same location, Sat-Sun, noon-4pm, $50-90) will also be held.

"Bijou" Martuni’s, Four Valencia; www.dragatmartunis.com. Sun, 7pm. $5. Trauma Flintstone hosts the fifth anniversary of this eclectic cabaret.

Rozelle Polido Garage, 975 Howard; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun-Mon, 8pm, $10-20. The choregrapher presents breathe;ing blue in shades of three, two, and one: tomorrow with guest choregrapher Kelly Bowker.

"See Mon, I Didn’t Forget!" Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun, 2 and 7pm. $20-30. Celebrate Mother’s Day with solo performers Julia Jackson, Thao P. Nguyen, Zahra Noorbakhsh, Martha Rynberg, and Paolo Sambrano.

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. The company performs Petite Mort, the world premiere French Twist, and Songs of Mahler.

"13th Annual United States of Asian America Festival" Various venues; www.apiculturalcenter.org. May 1-June 14. Festival events include art shows, book and poetry readings, dance performances, comedy, music, and more.

"Tender Stone" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; 1-800-838-3006, www.counterpulse.org. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through May 16. $20. Artship Ensemble performs a new work about women in ancient Persia.

Pension reform: don’t blame workers

David Talbot

-

May 4, 2010

8

By Larry Bradshaw and Roxanne Sanchez

OPINION Members of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, who make up about half of all San Francisco city employees — the lowest-paid half — are currently at the negotiating table with the Mayor’s Office working out a deal to give back $100 million toward the city’s deficit over the next two years. Last year our members gave back $48 million.

Now San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is proposing a new charter amendment to make city workers pay huge increases in their pensions and health care coverage. Never mind that he draws no distinction between the highly paid managers and the lower paid workers, between those feeding at the trough and those who toil to make and fill the trough. It’s all the rage these days to blame the economy’s woes on public workers, whatever the facts are, no matter who the culprit really is.

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

Insurance companies continue to raise premiums on health care coverage, making money hand over fist. They use those funds to lobby against reforms, from single-payer to the public option. When they win, the costs of continuing to cover workers and their families continue to escalate. Who do Schwarzenegger, Whitman — and Adachi — blame? The victims: the workers.

In an op-ed piece published last week in the right-wing Republican blog FlashReport, Schwarzenegger came out in support of a SB 919, a measure that would significantly increase employees’ contribution to the pension fund and decrease their pension payments upon retirement.

Whitman, who is spending millions of dollars of the money she made at Goldman Sachs in quasi-legal transactions, is proposing to not only double employees’ contributions to their pension fund and reduce the benefit, but to increase the retirement age and eliminate the defined pension benefit for new hires.

Into this company comes Adachi. He is concerned with the deficit since budget cuts have meant that his office has been unable to cover all the cases it is mandated to defend, and now some of those are being contracted out. Welcome to our world, Jeff.

Adachi has only two months to gather at least 70,000 valid signatures to get the required number to qualify for the ballot. It’s highly unlikely that can be accomplished without hiring signature-gatherers.

Herein lies the irony. Adachi is going to have to turn to downtown interests, the very financial and corporate interests that tanked the stock market, and the pension funds, for the money to penalize workers for Wall Street’s crimes.

Certainly San Francisco is facing financial problems. But instead of attacking workers, perhaps Adachi and his friends should join us in attacking the real problem. We are working on ideas for ballot measures that can raise new revenue for the city. Now that the city’s unions have stepped up and given back together $200 million, it’s time for downtown financial interests to contribute. *

Larry Bradshaw is a paramedic and Local 1021 vice president. Roxanne Sanchez is president of Local 1021.

Print sections as they appeared in the early 2010s

Print Sections

By Brady Welch

SPEAKING OUT

CHANGING DYNAMICS

OPENING OLD WOUNDS

By Larry Bradshaw and Roxanne Sanchez