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Polly’s sexual (r)evolution

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steve@sfbg.com

There’s been more than one Polly, the author and namesake of the new memoir Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. That may be true for each of us as we engage with different interests and identities during our sexual development, but Polly has distilled her psychosexual journey down to three distinct personas that she assumed along the way.

The Polly I’ve known for years is Polly Superstar, the fabulous hostess of Kinky Salon parties in her luscious and sprawling former Mission Control pad, community-minded sparkle pony in the Burning Man world, and a mindful feminist promoter of various sex-positive entrepreneurial ventures in San Francisco (including this independently published book, which took a massive Kickstarter campaign to get into print).

But the Polly I know passed through two previous Pollys — the Polly Whittaker she was born as in London in 1974 and the Polly Pandemonium that she became when she arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago on Folsom Street Fair weekend — on the way to becoming the woman she is today. And that woman was feeling very vulnerable as we met for lunch recently.

“I’m terrified,” she told me as she prepared to speak at Bawdy Storytelling that night and anticipated the general release of her book on Sept. 22. “I feel really exposed, I wonder what my motivation was to be so raw and open with this.”

A book that began four years ago as essentially a sassy guidebook for the Kinky Salon events that have now spread to another half-dozen cities around the world at some point turned far more serious and personal. Sure, we get to follow Polly through her crazy sexual antics, soaking in the sexy world of Mission Control.

“The crisp silhouettes of their bodies showed every detail: how the woman on all fours took his cock in her mouth, how the second guy traced his finger around his lover’s nipple, how the woman tucked underneath gently explored the body above her,” Polly wrote about a scene from Kinky Salon. “There were no wanted wandering hands, no staring eyes making me self-conscious. I became overwhelmed with a sense of pride. Fuck yes. This feels right. It feels good. These are my tribe — these crazy pleasure seekers. These brave pioneers of love.”

But those aren’t the “raw” bits that Polly referred to. No, as she wrote this book, Polly came to place her father’s slow and painful death from a brain tumor while she was a teenager at the center of the narrative, an event that propelled her subsequent sexual journey, for good or ill. She sought comfort and pleasure in the pain of the London BDSM scene, continuing that path here in San Francisco before morphing her fetish parties into sex parties that were more artsy and playful. Yet this sexual superstar still couldn’t achieve orgasms with her partners, a secret source of shame before she dealt with it more openly and honestly, helping other women along the way.

This memoir is less a wild tell-all by a high-profile libertine than intensely human story about a woman raised in a sexually liberated household (her mom was a sex therapist, her dad a hot-air balloonist, many of their friends swingers) who nonetheless struggles with her own sexual identity and ambitions against the backdrop of personal tragedy and smaller set-backs.

Polly relays and celebrates San Francisco’s storied history as the center of the American sexual revolution, from the old Barbary Coast days through the North Beach strips club, free love in the Haight-Ashbury, and gay liberation in the Castro, to the AIDS crisis, rise of BDSM, and creative ways of expressing sexuality.

But even for Polly and others who make their sexuality such a central part of their lives and personal identities, sexuality is still a nuanced, evolving continuum that regularly raises challenging questions and issues.

“It’s a complicated, really complicated, issue, and it’s at the core of the cultural shift that is happening around sexuality,” Polly said of the delicate balance between female sexual empowerment — which she’s all about — and sexual objectification, which this feminist strongly resists.

Growing up in the fetish scene and becoming a latex fashion designer, Polly can happily play the alluring sex kitten, as long as it feels playful and fun. But she’s quick to tear into scenes or situations that display women as sexual objects just to turn the boys on or sell products.

“I think one of the biggest problems on the planet is the sexual objectification of women,” she told us, noting the fine line she’s walking as she promotes a sex book with deeper themes. For example, at her book launch party, “We’re going to have a burlesque show, but you’re also going to get the lecture about sexual objectification.”

And even today, with her Kinky Salon community taking center-stage in her book, that community has been uprooted by the same forces of gentrification and displacement that are roiling the rest of the city (the monthly rent for their Mission Control space tripled after they got ousted).

“The sexual revolution didn’t happen in Oakland, it happened in San Francisco, and we are part of that lineage,” Polly tells us, noting that Kinky Salon, now rotating among temporary underground spaces, is still having a hard time finding a new home.

“If Kinky Salon has to move to Oakland, that will be telling of the state of San Francisco sex culture.”

UP THE REVOLUTION: LAUNCH PARTY FOR POLLY. With Porn Clown Posse, Trash Kan Marchink Band, DJ Fact50, and more Oct. 4, 9pm, Venue 550, 550 15th St., SF, www.pollysuperstar.com

Good bad things

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arts@sfbg.com

SEX Most of the college-aged gay guys I’ve met aren’t terribly into music, so I’m generally the one to pick the sexy-time jams. Toward the beginning of my sophomore year, I finally met a dude who was at least something of a music geek, at least in the sense that his music taste resembled that of a reasonably hip and musically open-minded straight guy. I was thrilled — until one night he had the bright idea to put his “chill mix” on shuffle while we were getting it on. The results were, to say the least, interesting. Here’s how it went, um, down.

Toro Y Moi – “Blessa.” Toro Y Moi’s Causers Of This is an album I generally associate with comfortable situations, such as walking through a park or sitting quietly on a couch in some comfy stoner den. It was the first song to appear on shuffle, and though it was awesome for when we were tearing each other’s clothes off, it honestly could have worked at any point throughout the night.

Flying Lotus – “Physics For Everyone!” I don’t know what this song was doing in a “chill mix,” but I’m (mostly) glad it was there. With its high-energy rhythm and weird, suction-y effects, it’s practically the sonic equivalent of a good blowjob, and as such, I gave the best head of my life as it was playing. I got the sense he was slightly turned off by the fact that I was doing it to the rhythm, but how could I not?

Madvillain – “Raid.” This is where things started to get really wacky. Madvillain’s MF Doom is one of those artists I generally associate with straight guys, and a very particular set of straight guys at that — the ones in my high school math class, almost all of whom I wanted to fuck and many of whom thought of me as the class “retard.” If only they could see me now, I thought as my partner went down on me and the rapper who once devoted an entire song to dissing gay superheroes spat fire from the dorm-room speakers.

Bon Iver – “Holocene.” For the duration of Bon Iver’s slowest, most starry-eyed ballad, we consciously trying to avoid one of those cheesy “moments” where we lock eyes and think about how much we like each other. Maybe if we were actually a couple I might have been OK with it, but we were strictly fuckbuddies and content to keep it that way. On the bright side, at least it wasn’t “Skinny Love.”

Wu-Tang Clan – “C.R.E.A.M.” I hear “C.R.E.A.M.” at parties so much I barely even noticed what was playing for about two minutes. When I finally processed what we were listening to, I found it hilarious — not only because it might be the all-time Straight College Boy Anthem (give or take “’93 ‘Til Infinity”), but because it was one of the best songs I’ve ever fucked to. Good sex music should be unobtrusive but still set the mood, and “C.R.E.A.M.” was the perfect accoutrement to my environment. I was on a college campus — why wouldn’t I be listening to “C.R.E.A.M.?”

Andrew Jackson Jihad – “Bad Bad Things.” If you haven’t heard “Bad Bad Things” (or are unfamiliar with Andrew Jackson Jihad and the band’s typical subject matter), it’s a song about a dude killing another dude’s family. I’ll never forget how awkwardly his boner flopped around as he ran across the room to change the song.

 

Waltz work

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cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM The New York Times called Col. Hans Landa — the sinister yet gleefully polite Nazi played by Christoph Waltz in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds — “the ultimate Tarantino creation.” In the same article, Tarantino admitted that if he hadn’t found the perfect person to play Landa, he wouldn’t have made the film at all. (Can you blame him?) The supremely likable Waltz’s elevation from German TV regular to movie star was cemented when he won Best Supporting Actor for the role. Three years later, he picked up a matching statuette for Tarantino’s Django Unchained. (In his acceptance speech, he called Tarantino a “hero” — can you blame him?)

Waltz’s ability to play loquacious characters — some evil, some crusading for justice on horseback — is undeniable. But how has this actor, having been handpicked to portray characters tailored to his strengths, fared beyond Tarantino? It’s been a mixed bag. In 2011, he did bad guys three ways, in three forgettable films (The Green Hornet, Water for Elephants, and The Three Musketeers). His best that year was Roman Polanski’s Carnage, as a tightly-wound father who’d rather check his BlackBerry than worry about his son.

His next test comes with Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem. The script was penned over a decade ago by Pat Rushin, a Florida creative writing professor. Its dystopian themes mirror Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) and 12 Monkeys (1995); an overt dig at The Matrix (1999) reflects the era in which it was written, although it’s presumably been updated to include more current-day themes, like technology’s ability to foster faux relationships and extreme loneliness.

Waltz, as gleamingly bald as his Oscars, plays computer whiz Qohen, one of “the most productive number crunchers” at mega-corp Mancom. Qohen is a stress case who dreams about black holes and refers to himself using plural pronouns, as in “We are dying.” (The affectation is as annoying to Theorem‘s other characters as it is to the viewer.) His immediate supervisor (a bewigged David Thewlis) refers him to the enigmatic “Management” (a bewigged Matt Damon), who allows Qohen to work from his home — an old church quirked up to the extreme, because, as the film’s press notes hilariously understate, “a very high standard of production design is expected from every Terry Gilliam film.” (The film’s slender budget means that most of the film takes place in this location.)

This privilege comes with a price, and Qohen is tasked with a “special project:” solving the titular theorem, a maddening beast that would drive even a stable person insane. His madness is in no way assuaged by “Dr. Shrink Rom,” his virtual psychiatrist (a bewigged Tilda Swinton), though he does get some help from Management’s genius teenage son (Lucas Hedges), who shows up at Qohen’s man cave of despair to eat pizza and share his own thoughts on the “Zip-Tee.” There’s also a romance — with Mélanie Thierry, resplendent in virtual-reality beachwear — though it proves no more “real” than anything else in Qohen’s world. Ultimately, despite Waltz’s heavy lifting (and not-infrequent nudity), Theorem sputters to sustain all its many whirring parts, including those that attempt to convey deep thoughts about the meaning of life. Maybe the meaning is “don’t overthink it.”

As for Waltz, his future slate contains a few worrisome choices (the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie? Nein!), but also some intriguing ones. This Christmas brings Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, scripted by the duo who penned Burton’s 1994 Ed Wood, in which Waltz and Amy Adams play kitsch-art impresarios Walter and Margaret Keane. To paraphrase Waltz’s Django Unchained character, how could you resist? *

 

THE ZERO THEOREM opens Fri/19 in Bay Area theaters.

Joyous blues

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By Nicole Gluckstern

arts@sfbg.com

FILM In an early scene from Maureen Gosling and Chris Simon’s documentary on the life and musical obsessions of their mutual friend Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, we see Strachwitz behind the wheel of his car, struggling to explain the common thread that joins his wide-ranging musical tastes, from country blues to Cajun Zydeco to bordertown conjunto.

“It’s just got some guts to it. It ain’t wimpy, that’s for sure. It ain’t no mouse music.”

Mouse music? In a later scene, some of his friends attempt to define the term.

“It’s music that’s cheap and not real.”

“Music that is popular.”

“Inauthentic.”

“Anything that Chris Strachwitz doesn’t like.”

Taking their documentary title (This Ain’t No Mouse Music!) from their subject, Gosling and Simon make their own attempt to define the term, following Strachwitz from the crowded warren of his brick-and-mortar, El Cerrito shop, Down Home Music, to the sultry backyards of the Louisiana bayou, where making music is just “a pure joy” — and recording it is Strachwitz’s fondest obsession.

This Ain’t No Mouse Music! is a fascinating road trip through the dusty back roads and anonymous beer joints of “the music of your neighbors.” It follows its subject from his early associations with iconic blues men Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb; his subsequent work with Mississippi Fred McDowell and the powerful Big Mama Thornton; his serendipitous acquisition of the publishing rights to Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag”; his decades-long record-collecting habit (his renowned Frontera collection alone tops over 40,000 albums); his love of New Orleans jazz and Louisiana Zydeco; and his explorations of Tex-Mex conjunto and Appalachian country.

The filmmakers don’t skimp on the soundtrack. There are close to 70 songs used in the 91-minute doc, including historically important recordings — such as Lightnin’ Hopkins’ version of Mance Lipscomb’s “Tom Moore’s Farm,” which led Strachwitz and music historian Mack McCormick (who deserves a documentary of his own) to Lipscomb’s front door in Navasota, Texas, a key discovery for all parties concerned. Taking a page from Strachwitz’s own playbook, the directors are also on hand to record a wealth of vernacular music being played on the spot: the Treme Brass Band on a New Orleans street corner; members of the musical Savoy family playing a backyard barbecue in southwest Louisiana; a front-porch accordion performance in Texas with Santiago Jimenez Jr.; and a raucous Zydeco sing-along in Strachwitz’s kitchen with youthful standard-bearers the Pine Leaf Boys. Throughout, Strachwitz appears most often in his preferred habitat, fiddling with mics and levels and capturing, for posterity, the living breathing music he deliberately surrounds himself with.

Dedicated to the late Les Blank, with whom Gosling, Simon, and Strachwitz all collaborated with over the years (Gosling and Simon as assistant filmmakers; Strachwitz as co-director and producer of several music films, including the 1976 classic, Chulas Fronteras), This Ain’t No Mouse Music! makes good use of footage from several of his films. These include 1970’s The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, and the 1973 Clifton Chenier biography Hot Pepper. Strachwitz even echoes a popular Blank sentiment in a moment when he explains his recording process: “My stuff isn’t produced, I just catch it like it is.”

Gosling and Simon, who became filmmakers directly through Blank — Gosling was his assistant for 20 years, starting in the early ’70s, while Simon was married to him for 20 years and began working with him in a variety of capacities, because “otherwise I’d never see the guy” — credit him for teaching them the importance of approaching a subject with curiosity. They were also inspired by the principle of going in “not knowing anything,” and allowing the story to emerge in its own time, creating a gentle meander through certain key moments rather than a tightly-controlled, connect-the-dots narrative.

Keeping the focus on the music and musicians Strachwitz adores rather than the man himself may be the greatest homage Gosling and Simon can offer their subject. However, this choice leaves a sometimes distracting gap at its center, not quite filled by flashes of Strachwitz’s interior world that do find screen time: a moment of pained disgust at being asked for five dollars for a lemonade made with “just one lemon;” a shame-faced recollection of not taking a stand on behalf of Lipscomb in a segregated Southern café.

Approximately 30 seconds of the film are dedicated to the fact that he never married, another 60 to his family’s flight from Silesia, East Germany (now Poland) in 1945. But never far from the foreground are the many moments that cement Strachwitz’s role as a conduit through which so many overlooked, homegrown genres and musicians have been passed through to the American public, from the days when he drove his inventory around in the trunk of his car, to the present, when he can call business manager Tom Diamant with news of his latest discovery.

“Whether we make money on it or not, we put the records out,” Diamant observes somewhat wryly, a testament not just to the current challenges facing the music industry as a whole, but to Strachwitz’s still-boundless enthusiasm for his profession that supercedes the kind of business “sense” that focuses narrowly on dollars and cents.

Despite his admitted initial reluctance to be the subject of a documentary rather than the producer, sound engineer, or “song-and-dance man” glad-handing the performers before their sets, Strachwitz emerges as a character in his own right — a “classic record man” who entered the music business with the purest of intentions, to make the records he wanted to hear. And 54 years on, we see him doing just exactly that: no compromises, no bullshit, and, most especially, no mouse music. *

 

THIS AIN’T NO MOUSE MUSIC! opens Fri/19 in Bay Area theaters.

Stream of movement

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arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Liss Fain borrowed the title of her most recent installation — the wondrous The Imperfect is Our Paradise, Sept. 11-14 at ODC Theaterfrom Wallace Stevens. But the work’s inspiration was William Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury, an often stream-of-consciousness study of the Compson family in Jefferson, Miss. She employed fragments of the text, not unlike previous works in which she explored the words of Jamaica Kincaid, Virginia Woolf, and Lydia Davis.

For Imperfect, Fain turned again to previous collaborators Matthew Antaky (installation design), Frédéric Boulay (projection design), and Mary Domenico (costume design — great, ratty overalls), as well as composer Dan Wool, who has a lovely habit of including into his own scores a quote from classical music. They feel like nods to another world.

Fain now also has a fine, stable ensemble that beautifully realizes her strong, formally contained choreography. Returning dancers Jeremiah Crank, Katharine Hawthorne, sisters Megan and Shannon Kurashige, and Carson Stein were joined by Gregory DeSantis and Aidan DeYoung. They lent a workmanlike, stoic sense of inevitability to their performances, whether staring into the void or ensnaring partners every which way. This was true ensemble work.

Imperfect communicates with its intelligence, clarity of purpose, and rich, tight choreography. Antaky added his magic by designing 12 panels that hung high above the audience on all four sides. They first suggested a sense of enclosure with brick walls, then threats from nature, stockade-like fences, and finally a dead house on a hill. The stage floor looked like dry dirt, or as if covered with leaves. It made me think of Benjy, the Compsons’ disabled son, who loved the smell of trees.

About the use of Faulkner’s text, I am of two minds. In voiceover, it was often more difficult to decipher than, for instance, actor Val Sinckler’s live performance in the Kincaid-inspired work. If text is used, it should be comprehensible. That’s why it’s there. At the same time, those fragments I did catch — primarily those from Quentin, the book’s most contemporary and most tragic character — pulled me away from Fain toward Faulkner’s narrative, such as it is. I thought it distracting rather then illuminating.

Since Fain encourages audiences to walk around the perimeter of the stage, though few people do, she meticulously designed her choreography from the periphery, into and out of the center space. In the beginning, the dancers stood immobile, staring into the void, before slowly coming to life and offering us different perspectives of themselves. I expected characters to emerge, but they didn’t.

With the exception of Hawthorne, who throughout remained something of a wild card, this was a homogenous group that was caught in what was perhaps a common dilemma. The title’s slippery Imperfect refers to something flawed, but grammatically, it also references past actions that are finished in some languages; in others, they project into the present. If Fain had overreaching themes in mind, they might have been time and memory, past and present.

The choreography asks for strength with lots of elaborate partnering — mostly male to female, yet without a trace of romantic intent. These dancers engage each other almost impersonally as something that is inevitable and that will be repeated for who knows how long. Despite the few unisons — some triple duets, a few one-on-ones — Imperfect has a churning sense of commonality about it. An arabesque can turn into a backward somersault and end between a partner’s leg. The dancers engage each other by rearranging body parts — an elbow here, a foot there — and flipping in every direction. They entangle their bodies, lift and drop them. Often they sink to the floor but pneumatically rise again.

As she has in the past, Fain makes prominent use of the arms. People yank and pull at them like tug of wars. But they also lock elbows, as if going for a stroll, but then immediately slip out of this companionship into more robust moves, becoming burdens which can be dropped or gently let go.

When Wool introduces Bach, the tall and elegant Hawthorne and Crank look like they remember the ballroom decorum of an earlier era. If there is one “character” it is Hawthorne, an astoundingly versatile and detailed dancer. She can stand on the sidelines as if watching for a prey, with a single gesture break up a couple, and again and again tear across the space sweeping the floor clean with her tornado-like whipping turns, pleading arms reaching for the light.

With Hawthorne in control, you get the sense that Imperfect contemplates time — past and time as it is passing. It may all stem from Faulkner, and the watch that the Compson family patriarch gives to Quentin, his oldest son. *

www.lissfaindance.org

Water with a price tag

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Rebecca@sfbg.com

At the tail end of a dry, dusty summer, California continues to weather the effects of an extraordinary drought.

Wildfires have swept through forestlands in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Mendocino County, and near Yosemite recently, making for smoky skies and glaring red sunsets. Meanwhile, shrinking reservoirs have prompted the state to issue formal crackdowns on watering lawns and washing cars.

These extreme circumstances may be linked to why voter support for Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion general obligation bond for water-related projects, has initially registered high. Elected officials have trumpeted Prop. 1 as a measure that will alleviate the worst impacts of the drought.

In the Bay Area, 62 percent of likely voters said they’d vote in favor Prop. 1, while that support came in at 52 percent statewide, according to a recent Field Poll. The bill that became Prop. 1 won bipartisan support in the Legislature after lawmakers struck a deal to kill an earlier $11 billion proposal and replace it instead with the slimmed-down version.

Despite the rare consensus, opponents charge that Prop. 1 won’t actually address the water crisis.

“We really don’t deal with the drought here,” said Connor Everts, executive director of the California Watershed Alliance, after reviewing the details.

Everts spoke during a Sept. 11 conference call organized by opponents of Prop. 1. They reject the water bond mainly because it dedicates a significant chunk of funding, $2.7 billion, toward new dam projects. They view this as an unacceptable tradeoff.

“We can’t conjure water out of thin air with new dams,” pointed out Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, the opposition campaign director, who runs a grassroots organization advocating for sustainable management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. More should go toward conservation measures, she said.

The Delta has suffered hefty ecological impacts from freshwater pumping to feed the state’s water-delivery system. “Protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta” is the first guiding principle to appear in a policy document establishing the basis for Prop. 1, but Barrigan-Parilla and others remain skeptical. Friends of the River has also come out against Prop. 1, as have many members the Environmental Water Caucus, a statewide coalition of grassroots organizations.

State lawmakers have been trying to pass a water bond since 2009, but earlier versions were shot down as bloated and pork-laden, failing to gain traction.

In June, Gov. Jerry Brown called for a $6 billion bond that would throw $2 billion toward dam projects, but the needle moved after Republicans — taking advantage of the fact that it needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass — withheld support unless they were promised more money for dams.

Water storage is a high priority for agribusiness farmers, whose sprawling croplands soak up vast quantities of water. A whopping 70 percent of all water rights claims issued by the State Water Resources Control Board are for agriculture, according to a University of California at Davis study.

“If these dams actually get built, we believe they will take more water out of the rivers that are dammed, and there will be less to come out of all of the environmental benefits,” envisioned by other provisions in the bill, said Carolee Krieger, executive director of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). “In the long run, we believe it would be way worse for the environment.”

Adam Scow, speaking during the conference call on behalf of San Francisco-based Food and Water Watch, pointed out that California desperately needs to invest in basic water needs, like fixing old leaky pipes. Nevertheless, Prop. 1 is “just prolonging these fights over new, silly dam projects,” Scow said.

Significant Prop. 1 funds would also be committed toward cleaning up groundwater, restoring damaged watersheds, advancing water-treatment technology, and ensuring safe drinking water access for low-income communities. The Sierra Club issued a statement announcing that while it’s supportive of these good programs, its official stance on Prop. 1 is “no position.”

Opponents of Prop. 1 noted during the call that California faces a fundamental problem that won’t be addressed by the water bond: The amount of water allocated by water rights claims is five times higher than what actual river flows provide in an average year.

“The one thing that must be done is to balance water rights claims to actual supplies,” Krieger said. The difference between real supplies and what’s promised in a contract, she added, is called “paper water.” This means many users receive less water in practice than what they’re technically promised, but those unrealistic promises make for confusing and conflict-heavy management of scarce water resources. The bizarre dysfunction is well-documented in a UC Davis study published in February. Of 27 major rivers, the study found, 16 had allocation levels “greater than 100 percent of natural supplies.”

The state “simply does not have accurate knowledge of how much water is being used by most water rights holders,” the UC Davis study noted, making it “nearly impossible” to reduce consumption or manage water supplies in a way that’s more equitable and environmentally responsible.

If voters grant their stamp of approval for the $7.5 billion water bond, the state may well move forward with important environmental initiatives, as well as multi-billion dollar dam projects that will take decades to build.

But no matter what happens, money still can’t buy snowfall in the Sierras, and it’s going to take more than cash to get to the root of California’s water woes.

Reform BART’s approach to labor

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By Christina Olague

OPINION If BART is part of your daily commute, you know how critical a reliable system is to Bay Area working people. If you don’t ride BART, all you have to do it think about all the cars that the system keeps off the road every day.

That’s why everyone — most of all the BART unions and their supporters — found last year’s strike so upsetting. And now, a new report commissioned in part by BART Board member James Fang shows how unnecessary it was for management to drive workers to walk off the job.

In fact, the report says, hiring a union-busting outside negotiator was a serious mistake. Allowing that hired gun to pursue an extremist bargaining strategy was a major cause of the labor unrest.

The report, conducted by an outside consultant, involved interviews with dozens of workers, managers, and negotiators. The document is riddled with references to war: Bomb-throwing, Vietnam, a labor “massacre.” It shows how badly the executive management at BART allowed the climate for negotiations to deteriorate — and how hard it will be to repair the damage.

Here’s how one manager put it: “This strike was not productive. We never did a course correction and then there was another strike. Two people got killed. We spent millions to end up getting creamed, and engendering hate.”

The report notes how BART executive management and their notorious chief negotiator refused to take seriously the concerns workers expressed about safety.

“Key points made about safety in bargaining sessions fell on deaf ears…because management thought the unions were just posturing and the unions thought the management was refusing to engage,” it states.

Safety concerns were a central part of the negotiations from the workers’ perspective, and by dismissing those concerns as a tactic, BART’s consultant not only made an agreement more difficult but gambled with the safety of workers and riders in order get concessions from workers.

Fang, head of the BART Board’s Labor Negotiation Review Committee, is asking that the board adopt the report’s recommendations to prevent this from happening again. These recommendations include more transparency around the agency’s finances, a much earlier start to negotiations — and if needed, bringing in mediators, not outside anti-union consultants.

Once the rest of our elected BART Board of Directors became more involved, management found a reasonable solution that both sides could live with. Why didn’t that happen at the beginning of negotiations?

That’s what the BART Board needs to be asking itself. A fair post-mortem puts much of the blame on management — a general manager who had little experience in labor negotiations and a board that failed to show leadership and independence.

Fang, who is the one board member who joined workers on the picket lines, says it’s time for management to change its approach. He’s calling for a strike-prevention plan that starts with honest, fair labor relations.

We’ve heard from some politicians looking to score easy points from frustrated riders that BART strikes ought to be banned. And it’s easy to imagine frustrated commuters, stuck far from work when the trains weren’t running, feeling sympathetic.

But if workers don’t have the right to strike, they are powerless to speak out against dangerous working conditions to a recalcitrant and, in this case, misdirected management. That leads to a more dangerous system for all of us.

Recognizing this, BART Board President Joel Keller just withdrew his suggestion that strikes be banned.

The much better approach for riders like me is to follow Fang’s prevention plan: Hold management accountable for its failures and to make sure that both sides can work together better in the future.

BART is a phenomenally successful system. Ridership has doubled in recent years, to 440,000 trips a day. With trained and experienced BART workers, the system’s on-time performance has risen to 95 percent. That’s not the result of some high-paid labor negotiator — it’s the work of a dedicated and hard-working staff.

If you ride BART every day, you deserve to know that the trains will be running, that you can count on the system to get you to work on time. Between now and 2017, when the next contract will be negotiated, the BART Board needs to learn from its past mistakes and find a different, more collaborative approach. Christina Olague is a community activist and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Bridge the housing-Muni divide

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EDITORIAL One the most frustrating political conflicts in San Francisco this election season is the schism between sustainable transportation activists and affordable housing advocates, a split that unnecessarily divides the progressive movement and one that has been cynically manipulated by the Mayor’s Office and its political allies.

We at the Bay Guardian haven’t yet decided what position we’ll take on Props. A and B — both of which would give more money to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency for Muni and other transportation needs — or Prop. K, the affordable housing measure that was heavily watered down by the Mayor’s Office. Our endorsements come out Oct. 8.

But we can say that we’ve been concerned with how housing and transportations needs have been pitted against one another — and by the political tactics that are being used to create that false choice in the minds of voters, often by those who have a financial self-interest in making misleading arguments.

San Francisco needs more affordable housing, a robust public transit system, and fully funded social services if it is to remain an efficient, diverse, compassionate city. We need all of those things, now, before we experience even more impacts from the rapid growth now underway.

Mayor Ed Lee chose to break his promise to place a local vehicle license fee increase on the fall ballot, so Sup. Scott Wiener and others placed Prop. B on the ballot instead. It would tie the city’s General Fund contributions to Muni to city population growth, but it would also allow the mayor to end that subsidy if voters approve the VLF increase in a future election.

Several local journalists have reported on the carrots and sticks that members of the Mayor’s Office have used to try to sink Prop. B and maintain affordable housing advocates’ support for Prop. K (see “Mayoral meltdown,” Aug. 5), pitting transportation and housing activists against one another, either by accident or design.

But San Francisco can’t afford this false dichotomy, and it’s high time to finally have this discussion openly and honestly. So the next Bay Guardian Community Forum — on Oct. 9 from 6-8pm in the LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street — will focus on bridging this gap. We’ll be inviting key players on both sides and we hope that you, dear readers, will join us as well.

The same players in this city who are urging San Francisco to rapidly grow as an economic and population center are sabotaging the political alliances and funding mechanisms that we need to handle that growth. It’s time for a forthright, public discussion about the city’s many long-term needs and how to finance them.

 

Deadly gamble

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joe@sfbg.com

As BART management and unions were locked in dysfunctional contract negotiations that would result in two strikes and two deaths last year, the district and the media scoffed at workers safety concerns and waged a media campaign demonizing the unions. Now, a new report commissioned by the district calls that strategy a horrible mistake.

The report from independent investigators Agreement Dynamics Inc., “Bay Area Rapid Transit Collective Bargaining Report and Recommendations,” reveals BART management perceived the Bay Area as anti-union. This guided its decision to hire Tom Hock as a contract negotiator and adopt a union-bashing public relations strategy that was then amplified by most local mainstream media outlets.

“In interviews, Tom Hock said he believed the strike would be very short and the unions would have to come back and reach an agreement,” the report, which was based on more than 200 hours of interviews of 60 BART employees, managers, and contractors, found. “He said media reports also heavily favored the management perspective.”

The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News attacked BART’s workers in their news and editorial pages, stoking the flames of anger. “As to union claims that this is all about safety — how stupid do they think the public is?” the Merc opined in a July 2013 editorial. The Chronicle struck a similar tone in its Oct. 18 editorial, blaming workers and writing “the walkout is the height of irresponsibility.”

The unions warned management not to run the trains during the second strike, but those safety warnings went unheeded. A contract deal was reached only after two men working on the tracks during the strike, Laurence Daniels and Christopher Sheppard, were accidentally run down during what was later revealed as a replacement driver training exercise — warnings be damned.

“Some in management believed they had a good media strategy that put the public on their side,” the report found. Therefore, “the public was angry with the unions for demanding too much in their contracts.”

BART approved a contract from big-time public relations firm Singer Associates in April last year. Sam Singer and his firm are well-known for pulling the strings of local journalists and using scorched-earth tactics. As a result, articles highlighted riders woes and selected employee salaries while discounting safety and other concerns raised by workers.

But BART management and its board had longstanding CAL-OSHA violations, some of which were the subject of labor negotiations leading up to the strike. Notably, BART’s now-defunct “simple approval” policy, by which workers verbally notified management they would be working on the tracks, was one that both workers and state regulators long urged the district to change. The two deaths were linked to that controversial practice, which BART has since ended (see “Tragedy follows strike,” 10/23/13).

State regulators have fined BART for that fatal misjudgment and a final report from the National Transportation Safety Board is expected in the coming months. Only The Nation, East Bay Express, and Bay Guardian covered BART safety concerns with any depth or gravity before the two workers’ deaths. It’s hard to tell who led the dance — did the mainstream media embolden management, or did management lead on the media? Either way, safety was not a priority for BART managers during negotiations.

“Key points made about safety in bargaining sessions, as reported to us, fell on deaf ears,” the report’s authors noted. “Management thought the unions were just posturing, and the unions thought management was refusing to engage.”

The unions, the report found, “voiced frustration that they have raised these issues repeatedly, and management was not responsive…The ‘simple approval’ policy was seen as indicative of management’s unwillingness to deal with safety concerns until two workers were killed during the second strike in 2013.”

BART’s next contract negotiation is set for 2017. The transit agency has much work to do to repair its lingering culture of distrust, but so-called unbiased media need to cop to their anti-union slants. It took two deaths to show how relevant safety concerns really were.

Still not sharing

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news@sfbg.com

As controversial legislation to legalize and regulate Airbnb and other short-term housing rental services operating in San Francisco headed for another contentious City Hall hearing on Sept. 15, the San Francisco Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office quietly unveiled new policies and mechanisms for hosts to finally start paying long-overdue local taxes on their rentals.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s legislation attempts to strike a balance between protecting housing for permanent city residents — including tenants in rent-controlled units who are being displaced in favor of visiting tourists — and allowing San Franciscans to sometimes rent out rooms through companies such as Airbnb. That practice has mushroomed during the Great Recession even though such short-term rentals of residential units have long been illegal in San Francisco (see “Into thin air,” 8/20/13).

Among other provisions, Chiu’s legislation would require hosts to register with the city and live in their units for at least 275 days per year (thus limiting rental nights to 90), create enforcement procedures for city agencies, and protect below-market-rate and single-room occupancy units from being used as short-term rentals.

But Airbnb has also been snubbing the city for more than two years since the Tax Collector’s Office held public hearings and concluded that short-term rental companies and their hosts are required to collect and pay the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax (aka, the hotel tax), a surcharge of about 15 percent on room rentals usually paid by visiting guests (see “Airbnb isn’t sharing,” 3/19/13).

After other media outlets finally joined the Bay Guardian in raising questions about the impact that Airbnb and other companies was having on San Francisco — and with cities New York City, Berlin, and other cities taking steps to ban short-term rentals — Airbnb announced in March that it would begin collecting and paying the TOT in San Francisco sometime this summer.

But that still hasn’t happened, even though Tax Collector Jose Cisneros recently unveiled a new website clarifying that Airbnb hosts must register as businesses and pay taxes and created a streamlined system for doing so. The office is even allowing Airbnb and other companies to register as “qualified website companies” that collect and pay these taxes on behalf of hosts.

“The law does apply to these transactions,” Cisneros told us. “And the set of requirements are the same for the hosts and the website companies.”

Airbnb didn’t respond to Guardian inquiries for this story.

Meanwhile, an unusually diverse coalition of critics continues to raise concerns about Airbnb and the regulatory legislation, including renter and landlord groups, neighborhood and affordable housing activists, labor leaders, and former members of the Board of Supervisors (including Chiu predecessor, Aaron Peskin) and Planning Commission. They penned a Sept. 15 to Chiu calling for him to delay the legislation.

“Individually and collectively, we have advanced nearly two dozen additional amendments that address the issues raised by short-term residential rentals. While we are not of one mind on every issue or every suggested amendment, we are unanimous in our belief that the process you are pursuing is rushed,” they wrote. “The City will live with the intended (and unintended) consequences of your legislation for many, many years.”

Sources in Chiu’s office had already told the Guardian that he planned to keep the legislation in committee for at least one more hearing so the myriad details can be worked out, as Chiu said at the hearing as well.

“We want to have the time to continue to vet and hear all of the perspectives, and at the end of the day what I hope to do is to be able to move forward and build incentives around something that is far better than our current status quo,” Chiu said at the hearing. “This is a very complicated issue, and we all know that we need to get this policy as right as we can.”

Planning Director John Rahaim conveyed concerns from the Planning Commission that the legislation beef up the city’s ability to regulate short-term rentals.

“The commission does believe that the law should be updated to create a legal avenue for those who do want to host,” Rahaim said. “However, currently there are about 5,000 units in the city engaging in short-term rentals. It’s very difficult to know if there are units not being lived in by a full-time resident.”

A long line of speakers wound completely around the packed chamber in City Hall, awaiting their turn to speak publicly to supervisors and city residents, from 20-somethings making a lives renting out their homes to longtime tenants fearing that home-sharing will hurt city’s character.

Airbnb was represented at the hearing by David Owen, a former City Hall staffer who is now director of public policy for the company, and he was publicly confronted by Chiu on the tax issue. Chiu criticized Airbnb for failing to start collecting those taxes as promised.

“As of now, we are extremely close and you will be hearing from us about that in the near future,” Owen said, provoking audible disbelief from many in the crowd. “We have been working diligently alongside the city. This is a complicated set of issues and those involved have all worked in earnest to facilitate this request.”

When Owen was asked about enforcement of the maximum number of nights a tenant has rented out his unit, he said Airbnb’s cooperation is “akin to the city asking Home Depot.com for a list of home care purchases to see if anyone had illegally renovated their bathroom.” But city officials say they need the company’s cooperation to address its impacts. “We don’t want data, just the number of nights per permanent resident so that we can ensure that the bad outcomes of this setup aren’t occurring,” Sup. Jane Kim said. “Airbnb profits from this industry, and therefore [is] accountable to the city.”

On the fringe

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The first show of the first night of this year’s San Francisco Fringe Festival was a local story, a confessional by a man who’s spent 27 years “irritating” his wife and “annoying” his children as a workaday clown. If this isn’t what the Fringe is all about, it’s pretty close.

As a non-curated, lottery-based affair where the artist keeps all proceeds from ticket sales (host Exit Theatre collects donations toward the larger effort, and hopes you’ll buy a beer or two to wash down the Exit Café’s always complimentary bowl of pretzels), the Fringe is a magnet for the tell-all and tawdry solo outing. This is a good part of why we like it. Technically anyone can get in, with presumably almost anything they’d like to stage for a live audience, and, as a result, shamelessness of different sorts abounds. And despite the wide net of possibility cast by the proceedings, a hefty percentage of shows tend to converge around this redoubtable — or is it doubtful? — formula, turning the theater into a kind of confession booth where, if you want to be absolved of anything, you better make it good.

Through the Eyes of a Clown is a heartfelt and not unsympathetic instance of this compulsion. It’s an “apology” by David Magidson, aka Boswick the Clown, unfolding on a small stage lightly cluttered with the paraphernalia of the profession. Using his inside clown voice, the longtime licensed balloon-tier and pratfaller speaks of getting his first laugh at a tender age and never looking back. While self-effacingly frank about the culturally suspect side of his chosen obsession, Magidson, a graduate of Ringling Brothers Clown College, also offers an implicit defense of the calling, pointing to contemporary heroes like Pickle Family alum Bill Irwin (as chance would have it, right then only a couple of blocks away preparing to open at the Geary) and Stephen Colbert (a clown by definition, according to Magidson, because, rather than merely rendering comic critique from outside, his satirical right-wing persona invites you to see the world through his own eyes).

The mix of personal and observational detail can be interesting, and probably has more potential than is admittedly realized here. There are also some intriguing admissions around Magidson’s distance from his audience, his inability to always sympathize with them, even when they’re children in hospitals. It’s the laughs he’s after, and the laughs he needs. This realization stirs an unrest or discomfort in him, but it’s mingled with a specialized solipsism that’s almost clinical.

This confusion and paradox is maybe the heart of this rambling piece — although also impressive are the few (too few) passages of deft physical comedy that show off the highly tuned wackiness and balletic precision of the professional. The writing, however, is a mishmash that needs editing to bring out a stronger arc. More urgently, Magidson could use a directorial hand, since too often the show feels rudderless and his delivery off-kilter. At the same time, the ingenuousness of his account and the boyish enthusiasm middle-aged Magidson still generates for a career choice most people would politely call ill-advised are the real thing, and they suggest that, along with the clown, there’s a better, stronger show lurking somewhere inside.

The second show of the night was a second clown, albeit in gumshoe drag. In 2 Ruby Knockers, 1 Jaded Dick, Melbourne’s Tim Motley fires a volley of one-liners in a hardboiled accent vaguely tinged with an Aussie drawl — a veritable taxonomy of the corny, bawdy similes of the iconic private eye delivered in trademark trench coat, his eyes a band of shadow beneath a well-molded fedora.

For Motley, the PI shtick is a ready vehicle for a little mind reading and a card trick or two as the lights go up on his unsuspecting audience, which gets worked into a convoluted plot involving a (titular) sinister mastermind. Off-the-cuff smarts make the quick-witted Motley’s unabashedly hokey offering an enjoyable as well as somewhat unruly ride, as he does his best to shepherd clueless audience members — themselves doing their best to play along — through a zany caper. *

SF FRINGE FESTIVAL

Through Sept 20 (no shows Mon/15), $10 or less at the door; $12.99 or less online (passes, $45-75)

Exit Theatreplex

156 Eddy, SF

www.sffringe.org

 

Rep Clock: September 10 – 16, 2014

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Schedules are for Wed/10-Tue/16 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7-10. “ATA Lives!”: “Mission Eye & Ear #6,” live music and film, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema,” works by Bryan Boyce, James T. Hong, and Sylvia Schedelbauer, Sat, 8. “Paper Circus,” animation by Luca Dipierro with a live soundtrack, Sun, 8.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $10. Duran Duran: Unstaged (Lynch, 2011), Wed, 7:30. “Thursday Night Rock Docs:” Under African Skies (Berlinger, 2012), Thu, 7:30. The 78 Project Movie (Steyermark, 2014), Fri, 10.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •If … (Anderson, 1968), Wed, 7, and The Chocolate War (Gordon, 1988), Wed, 9:05. •The Dog (Berg and Keraudren, 2013), Thu, 7, and Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975), Thu, 8:55. California Independent Film Festival, Fri, 1pm; Sat, 11am. For complete schedule, including screenings in Orinda and Moraga, visit www.caiff.org. Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013), Sun, 1. Presented sing-along style. •The Fisher King (Gilliam, 1991), Sun, 7, and Good Morning, Vietnam (Levinson, 1987), Sun, 4:45, 9:30. •Alive Inside (Rossato-Bennett, 2014), Tue, 7, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975), Tue, 8:30.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987), Thu, 8:45.

FINNISH KALEVA HALL 1970 Chestnut, Berk; www.paratheatrical.com. $10. Dreambody/Earthbody (Alli, 2012), Thu, 8:30.

GOETHE-INSTITUT SF 530 Bush, SF; www.goethe.de/ins/us/saf/enindex.htm. $5 suggested donation. “100 Years After WWI:” The White Ribbon (Haneke, 2009), Wed, 6:30.

GRAND LAKE 3200 Grand Lake, Oakl; www.sf911truth.org. $15. “9/11 Truth Film Festival,” films and speakers, Thu, 1-11.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Critics’ Choice, Classic and Quirky Americana:” M (Losey, 1951), Fri, 6. With critic David Thomson in person.

NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; http://legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org. $12 (all-fest pass, $50). “Legacy Film Festival on Aging,” shorts, features, and documentaries from around the world that take on “the challenges and triumphs of aging,” Fri-Sun.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton (Silha, Slade, and Logsdon, 2011), Wed, 7. “Activate Yourself: The Free Speech Movement at Fifty:” Berkeley in the Sixties (Kitchell, 1990), Thu, 7. “Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema:” Sympathy for the Devil (1968), Fri, 7. “James Dean, Restored Classics from Warner Bros.:” Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), Fri, 9:10. “Eyes Wide: The Films of Stanley Kubrick:” Spartacus (1960), Sat, 7. “Banjo Tales and Musical Holdouts:” Banjo Tales (Aginsky, 2014), Tue, 7:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. The Longest Week (Glanz, 2014), Wed-Thu, 7, 9. No No: A Dockumentary (Radice, 2014), Wed, 7, 9:15; Thu, 9:45. Forward 13: Waking Up the American Dream (Lovell), Thu, 5. Free screening. Metro Manila (Ellis, 2013), Thu, 7. God Help the Girl (Murdoch, 2014), Sept 12-18, 9:30 (also Fri-Sat and Mon-Tue, 7). Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering (Merola, 2014), Sept 12-18, 7, 8:45 (also Sat-Sun, 3:30, 5:15). All This Mayhem (Martin, 2014), Sun, 7.

SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. The Notebook (Szász, 2013), Wed-Thu, call for times. Take Me to the River (Shore, 2014), Sept 12-18, call for times. “Alec Guinness at 100:” Our Man in Havana (Reed, 1959), Sun, 4:30, 7:30.

TEMESCAL ART CENTER 511 48th St, Oakl; www.shapeshifterscinema.com. Free. Works by Tommy Becker, Sun, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. San Francisco Cinematheque presents: “Life is An Opinion: Films by Mary Helena Clark and Karen Yaskinsky,” Sat, 7:30. Filmmakers in person. *

 

Psychic Dream Astrology: September 10 – 16, 2014

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Sept. 10-16, 2014

ARIES

March 21-April 19

The problem with insecurity is that it can spawn all kinds of defensive and aggressive behaviors. Even if you have innocent motives, if you’re defensive it can result in an avalanche of crappy consequences. Don’t let that happen to you! Process your self-protective feelings before you act on them, Aries.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

The only way out is through it, Taurus. This is an awful week to evade your worries, no matter how gnarly they seem. Communicate, evaluate, and even debate, my friend. You need to better understand what’s going on in your head to figure your way out of the pickle that you’re in. Here’s a hint: the truth will set you free.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

You’re doing a great job of confronting your fears and laying down the kinds of roots that you want to take hold in your life. Huzzah! Why is it, then, that you have this persistent sadness? You’ve worked hard to get to this place; let yourself mourn the loss of whatever you’re leaving behind so you can move upward and onward, Twin Star.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

True strength is not about being pushy and having all bow to your will (as nice as that may sound). Be strong enough to know your limits, and the boundaries of your situation, Moonchild. Move slowly enough through whatever is important to you, so that you can make the best choices possible.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

If you’re too exhausted to know whether you’re coming or going, you’re likely to make mountains out of molehills. This week you may find yourself making connections that aren’t true because your thinking is frazzled. There are creative solutions to your problems, if you only calm down and look for them, Leo.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

You can indulge immediate impulses, or you can go for long-term gains, but it’s likely to take a very different course of action, whichever you choose. Get clear about the why in what you’re doing this week, Virgo. If you align your actions with your intentions you will be happy with your results.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

This is a great week to better understand what lies beneath your indecision. You’ve been making some real determinations lately and it’s bringing up old worries and fears. Instead of undermining yourself, investigate what you’re so uncomfortable with. Be humble and brave, and you can handle anything, Libra.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

It’s all about your relationships this week. How do you connect to the people you’re close to? Don’t walk away from problems without advocating for yourself, and please be open to hearing where others are coming from, too, Scorpio. If you want real intimacy you need to be willing to be vulnerable, even if it’s awkward.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Be the boss, Sag. You need to reorganize yourself this week, and if you wait for someone else to tell you what to do, or how to do it, you’ll fall into trouble. This is not the time to shy away from responsibility. Identify what you want and the clearest path to making it happen so you can set a course to get there, stat.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

Embrace abundance, Capricorn! There’s no productive reason to focus on what you don’t have, because you can multiply your blessings by investing in what is going for you. Look up, literally; notice the sky, look for birds, and generally get inspired by what’s above you, because it’s totally awesome, my friend.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

If you let your worries get the better of you, you’ll lose perspective and undo the excellent foundations you’ve been building, Aquarius. You need a time-out; take a break, whatever that means for you. Find a way to unplug from other people’s voices, and you’ll find some much-needed rejuvenation, pal.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

This week will give you lots of opportunities for coping with your old anxieties in new ways (aka, make you super anxious). If you’re going to make assumptions, why not presume things will go well for you? Use the support you’ve worked so hard to build, Pisces. Adjust your attitude and the rest will follow.

Want more in-depth, intuitive or astrological advice from Jessica? Schedule a one-on-one reading that can be done in person or by phone. Visit www.lovelanyadoo.com.

 

The Breeders barrel on

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esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL The first rule of interviewing former Pixies bassist Kim Deal is that you do not say the word “Pixies” while speaking to Kim Deal.

After it has been made clear to you, multiple times and in no uncertain terms, that you are forbidden from asking her about the iconic rock band she co-founded in 1986, quit, re-joined, and then quit again in 2013, it would be understandable if you were slightly apprehensive about said phone interview — worried, perhaps, that Deal might be cranky or unpleasant regardless of your following the rules, or else that you might suddenly develop a very specific and unfortunate case of Tourette’s that leads to you uncontrollably shouting Frank Black’s name or Pixies album titles into the phone as epithets.

All of this anxiety would be for naught. Kim Deal, 53, is in great spirits when she picks up the phone at home in her native Dayton, Ohio. She’s hilarious, actually. “Hellooo, how are you?” she drawls in an overly perky telemarketer accent of sorts. Then, laughing, before switching into her unmistakable real voice: “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m talking like that.”

If anything, she’s in a bit of a silly mood because she’s been cooped up in rehearsals. It’s about two weeks before she heads out on tour with The Breeders, the band she co-leads with her twin sister Kelley, whose nearly identical voice blends with Kim’s sultry, sharp-edged alto in a way that creates addictively salty-sweet harmonies — and a band whose chart-topping contributions to the Steve Albini era of early ’90s alt-rock are so significant that only co-founding a band like the Pixies, as Kim did, could relegate it to “secondary reason for fame” status.

Anyway: The Breeders have been rehearsing in Deal’s basement, like old times. Getting on each other’s nerves, like old times. Bassist Josephine Wiggs was convinced there was a weird sound coming out of her amp last night when they were practicing. “I swear I can’t hear what she’s hearing,” says Deal, like a stand-up comedian launching into a routine about his wife’s cooking. “It’s an 810 SVT bass amp, so it sounds like a big fucking bass amp. It’s distracting you? Scoot over and you won’t hear it anymore.”

“She’s British, though,” concludes Deal with a sigh.

And how about working with her twin sister day in, day out?

“I love her more than anything in the world, but she was bothering me so much at practice the other day that I took a lamp and put it between us so I didn’t have to look at her while we were playing,” Deal says cheerfully. “Once somebody starts doing something that annoys me I kind of get a red light around them. The lamp has moved around each day as we all [get annoyed at each other]. It’s subtle.”

They might piss each other off from time to time, but if there were any doubts about the place the Breeders still occupy in their fans’ hearts, last year’s wholly sold-out 60-date tour, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the band’s biggest commercial success, Last Splash, should have laid them to rest. (Two nights at The Fillmore last August saw the band playing the entirety of that album – which was recorded in San Francisco, then rode the same angsty wave to national fame Nirvana saw that year, propelled by its most catchy and most delightfully inane song, “Cannonball.” Then they left the stage for 10 minutes before coming back to play the entirety of Pod, the band’s 1990 Kurt Cobain-influencing debut, as an encore. Deal, who had just quit the power play of the Pixies for the second time, was noticeably exuberant as a frontwoman, and seemingly could not stop smiling.)

Still, not counting last year’s 20th anniversary reissue of Last Splash (LSXX), it’s been five years since the Breeders put out new material (though it’s been a much less dramatic break than the seven-year hiatus between Last Splash and Title TK, during which time the band famously imploded in part due to Kelley Deal’s heroin use).

In lieu of new Breeders records, however — and in lieu of, er, bringing up her most recent few years with the Pixies, which, it could be noted, some of us were excited about mostly because of the chance to hear “Gigantic,” which she wrote, which is arguably the best song in the entire decades-spanning Pixies catalog — Deal has quietly issued eight 7-inch singles of solo material since January 2013. It’s something she began doing when she “couldn’t find anybody who could be in a band” with her, she says, especially living in Ohio.

“The industry dropped out of the music,” she says simply. “Musicians need jobs now. There used to be enough money in music that people who played in bands could actually make their rent. Maybe they’d sling weed on the side or do some pizza delivery, but they could hit their rent. Now that’s just not possible. Even bands that people know pretty well, they need real jobs — they design websites, then they go home to their band. Unless you’re [at the star status] where you’re, like, making perfume.”

So she started making music by herself. Though she’s brought in old friends and bandmates to play along (Slint drummer Britt Walford, whom Deal ran into at Steve Albini’s 50th birthday party, makes an appearance), the songs are unmistakably hers. Their moods shift from volatile bass-driven fuzz (“Walking With a Killer”) to cooing sing-song with an almost creepy Velvet Underground edge (“Are You Mine?”).

In an age when we’re used to artists simply throwing up a SoundCloud link and announcing “I have a new single,” she’s done something increasingly rare, as well: She released each song as an old-school single with an A and a B side, a physical product, each with its own album art. Long known for her perfectionism and attention to detail when it comes to gear and a studio’s technical specs, 2013 and 2014 were the years when Deal became entranced by the physical process of distributing music.

“It makes it more real to me,” she explains. “If I just put it out as a download, I feel like I just emailed my sister the song. Nothing even happens, it doesn’t make sense to me — I’m like, ‘Where do I put the title, the song name?'” Plus, since she self-issued Fate to Fatal in 2009, she realized she enjoyed the process of calling around to research manufacturers, assigning ISRC codes (kind of like serial numbers for songs), getting physical mail back when she sent something out.

She has no current plans to compile the tracks into an album, however — for one, each has “really different levels of production.” She feels a little like she’d be ripping people off, since the songs are all out already. And somehow she doesn’t expect “normal people” to be interested in buying these tracks, anyway, though a large portion of the Internet (and the majority of music critics) might disagree with that.

At the moment, though, Deal is in full-band mode. This current Breeders tour came about when Neutral Milk Hotel asked them to join a bill at the Hollywood Bowl; the Breeders structured the rest of the three-week tour around the gig. (In San Francisco, the band will play The Fillmore this Saturday, Sept. 13.) The tour will be a chance to try out new material, though Deal seems a little nervous about that.

“We have about four new songs right now that we can really play, and I’m working on the words for this other song Josephine wrote,” she explains. “She seems so smart, and she’s English, so I can’t just go, like, ‘ooga chooga,'” you know? I want to really say something with it.” Deal’s been reading The Power of Myth, the anthology of conversations between scholar Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, and thinking a lot on the hero’s journey. Specifically, what would happen if the hero completely ignored the advice of the gatekeeper/mentor character at the beginning of the arc.

“We’ve been working on this stuff all year, so when [Neutral Milk Hotel] asked us, even though it’s way out there, we thought ‘Hey, let’s give it a shot. And hope to hell nobody records on cell phones,'” she says.

And then there’s the act of traveling together at this stage in the game, with bandmates she’s known for 20-plus years. (After a decade or so of other members, the current lineup is the original Last Splash crew: Wiggs on bass, Jim McPherson on drums, and the inimitable sisters Deal in the center ring on vocals and guitars.)

People can get snippy on tour, says Kim — especially in Florida, “things get weird…but we get along for the most part, no one’s an asshole, that’s important. There’s just really not a rude person in this bunch.”

In the van, especially, you can always put on headphones. And if all else fails, “You get lamped,” she says. “There’s always the lamp.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PghwbxtcJo8

THE BREEDERS

With Kelley Stoltz
9pm, $28.50
The Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
(415) 346-3000
www.thefillmore.com

Under fire

0

culture@sfbg.com

FOOD AND DRINK If you’ve ever tasted a fine mezcal, you know it’s a special thing. Bright, complex, spicy, smooth, smoky, minerally — mezcal is a spirit bursting with character. So it’s no wonder that after more than four centuries of distillation, it’s picked up its share of catchphrases. “Para todo mal, mezcal; para todo bien, también.” (For everything bad, mezcal; for everything good, the same.”) “Sip it, don’t shoot it.” “You don’t find mezcal; mezcal finds you.”

Mezcal seems to be finding a lot of people these days. In San Francisco, restaurants like Loló, La Urbana, and Nopalito — even Magnolia’s Smokestack, a brewery and BBQ spot — have lengthy lists of some of the world’s best mezcals, while cocktail bars would be hard-pressed to not have at least one mezcal drink on the menu. “It’s slow food, made the artisanal way, the way it’s always been made,” says Judah Kuper, a Coloradan who runs the brand Mezcal Vago with his friend and his father-in-law in Oaxaca, the southern Mexican state in which the bulk of all mezcal is made.

Produced in the traditional manner, the way Kuper’s fifth-generation maestro mezcalero father-in-law makes it, mezcal is an expression of true beauty—its basic ingredients quite literally earth, fire, and water. A predecessor to tequila (which is technically a type of mezcal, with its own protected denomination of origin), mezcal is essentially any distillate of the agave plant — although it can only be labeled as such if it’s made in one of eight designated Mexican states.

Its makers (mezcaleros) hand-harvest the heart (piña) of the agave (maguey, as it’s more commonly known in Mexico), roast it underground in earthen pits, crush it by hand or with a beast-drawn millstone, ferment its fibers and juices in wooden vats with airborne yeasts and water, and distill it in clay or copper stills, where it eventually drips off at about 45-55 percent alcohol by volume. These farmyard palenques are small operations, and many of their mezcaleros produce only a few hundred liters per year, making for a very unique and rare product, each batch different from the last.

Today, you can still buy extremely complex, completely organic, artisanally crafted mezcal on the roadside in Oaxaca for a few dollars a bottle. But that may not last forever.

 

GROWING PAINS

San Francisco’s Raza Zaidi has only been selling his Wahaka Mezcal brand since 2010, yet he’s seen his sales double year over year, and now he can hardly keep up with the demand. His spirits come in at an easier-to-imbibe 40-42 percent alcohol, making them a smooth entry point for those just dipping their toes into the mezcal world, but they still handily hold their own against the more potent stuff.

In the next year, he expects to ship about 32,000 bottles of five different types of mezcal from Wahaka’s palenque in San Dionisio Ocotepec, Oaxaca, all overseen by one maestro mezcalero, an equal partner in the company, who also grows all of his own maguey. Demand outpacing supply is a good problem for any business to have, but Zaidi is concerned nonetheless.

“There’s definitely [an agave] crisis right now. So at the end of this year, we’re going to have to buy from other farmers,” he admits. “The demand and growth was way larger than we expected.”

Mezcal is artisanal by nature, so it isn’t easy scale up. Agave — even its most common, cultivatable espadín variety — needs a minimum of seven years to mature. Some wild species can take upwards of 25 years to ripen, and their management and harvest-rights allocation usually fall to the tiny rural communities on whose property those plants lie.

Over centuries, mezcal’s legacy has been sustainably built around a spiritual and ecological balance of only harvesting what you need, when you need it (for weddings, festivals, funerals, the todo bien and the todo mal) — not for industrial production. But that hasn’t stopped large-scale spirits companies from trying. Bacardi just added Zignum, Oaxaca’s biggest factory producer of mezcal, to its distribution portfolio. Jose Cuervo is rumored to be following suit. And if that doesn’t sound bad enough, Toby Keith (who presumably didn’t get the “sip it, don’t shoot it” memo) has his own mezcal brand called Wild Shot, whose marketing team frequently employs the hashtag #BLAMEITONTHEWORM.

 

THIRSTY FOR MAGUEY

Drive through the mountains an hour or two outside of Oaxaca City, and you wouldn’t know that an agave shortage is afoot. Agave is seemingly everywhere — lining the roads in clusters, poking out of craggy hillsides, and planted row upon row in fields. But people on the ground there tell a different story.

My tour guide described how each week more and more trucks from the country’s tequila-producing region have been coming down and carting away whatever maguey they can get their hands on, no matter the type or age. This practice not only defies tequila’s own rules and legal standards for production (that it only be made from blue Weber agave, and that it’s grown in Jalisco and some small areas of nearby states), it ravages many Oaxacans’ livelihoods and taxes the region’s immensely complex ecosystem, maybe irrevocably so.

Mezcal’s uptick in popularity isn’t insignificant to its own future, by any means, but the spirit only represents a one percent drip in the still of tequila’s massive 300 million-liter-per-year output. And last year China lifted its ban on tequila importation, spurring even more demand for the mystical maguey.

On a recent trip to visit his uncle, Salomon Rey Rodriguez, who employs an ancestral method of hand-mashing agave and distilling in small clay pots, Kuper noted, “I came around the corner and saw a whole mountainside of agave that had been wiped out by Jalisco the day before. The agave wasn’t even ripe, and that hillside represented what would have been five years of work for Tío Rey.”

While mezcal has made huge strides to shed its reputation as tequila’s “poor country cousin,” in the socio-political sense it still is. Oaxaca is one of Mexico’s poorest states, and the agave shortfall is pitting farmers and mezcaleros against themselves and their communities, forcing them to choose between selling off their agave to tequileros long before it should be harvested or letting their families go hungry.

“There is a nest of issues that boil down to the question of whether Mexico wants to copy the industrialized tequila industry or foster the growth of an industry and product line that expresses the diversity of the agriculture at its base, the many different ideas of the people making the mezcal, and provides a living to a wide swath of society,” says Max Garrone, who co-authors a blog called Mezcalistas with Susan Coss. On Sun/14 at Public Works, Garrone and Coss will host Mezcal: Mexico in a Bottle, which will serve as a tasting extravaganza and summit for all matters mezcal.

“We try to tell [mezcal’s] story on several levels,” says Coss, “How it is produced, the stories of the people producing it, what issues there are impacting the industry — all in the hope to get people to love mezcal and everything it stands for as much as we do.”

 

MEZCAL AT A CROSSROADS

So what can be done to combat the crisis? Reforestation seems like an obvious place to start. Wahaka not only bought a plot of land for that purpose, but also started a nonprofit, Fundación Agaves Silvestres (Foundation for Wild Agave), to further the cause. “Our philosophy is, if we’re taking away from the land, then let’s give back,” says Zaidi, who’ll be both pouring his mezcal and speaking about the spirit’s history on one of many panels at Mexico in a Bottle. Wahaka grows its typically wild madrecuixe and tobalá varieties from seed, and after a couple of years, replants them in the mountains during the rainy season, in accordance with the strict environmental conditions under which these plants naturally flourish.

“What this comes down to is supporting the artisanal producers,” says Rachel Glueck, a former San Francisco resident and Nopa employee, who is in the process of starting a socially conscious mezcal brand with her husband in Mexico. “Finding a way to help these small mezcaleros register their product and sell it would be huge, because if they’re doing that, then they’re not going to feel like they need to sell their maguey to these industrial companies to make some money.”

Mezcal is really at a crossroads, she says. “Tequila was originally an artisanal product, but it became industrialized, and you look at the quality of tequila — it’s mono-cropped, it’s full of pesticides, it’s cloned from clones of clones of clones, and now the agave is really weak.”

But for all of these artisanal producers, there’s still a kernel of hope when it comes to building a new model for mezcal’s sustainability. “We’re kind of fortunate to have the tequila industry to study,” says Kuper. “But at the same time, never have consumers been more aware of what they’re putting in their bodies and where it comes from.”

Mezcal: Mexico In a Bottle Sun/14, 3pm-7pm, $60. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

A broad abroad

0

cheryl@sfbg.com

LIT In her 20s and 30s, Kristin Newman had built an enviable career writing and producing hit shows like That ’70s Show, How I Met Your Mother, and Chuck. But her personal life proved far less satisfying; after breaking up with her first love, she bounced between relationships while watching her friends settle down and spawn. Fortunate to have a job that allowed for months-long vacations between TV seasons, she began pursuing her wanderlust tendencies in earnest — emphasis on the “lust,” since her travels to places like Brazil, Iceland, Israel, and (especially) Argentina often included flings and what she came to call “vacation-ships” with locals and others she met on the road.

Along the way, she did some soul-searching — but fear not, her memoir What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding (Three Rivers Press, 291 pp., $14.99) is hardly a touchy-feely treatise along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love (more on that later). Instead, it’s a raunchy, witty, relatable look back at journeys that helped guide her into the next chapter of her life, at her own speed, with plenty of disasters and stirring moments along the way. I had to meet the woman behind the book, so I called her up in Los Angeles (her current project is upcoming ABC comedy Galavant, which has a fairy-tale theme and was created by Dan Fogelman, who wrote 2010’s Tangled).

SF Bay Guardian What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is an evocative title. How did you come up with it?

Kristin Newman I thought I’d just write a few funny stories, kind of as writing samples, to get my next sitcom job. All of a sudden, I had 70 pages. It all happened the same month that I met my now-husband, and my stepmother died, and it just kind of poured out of me.

As I sat down to write, I realized [with all these trips and relationships], I wasn’t just biding my time and being silly while waiting for something to start. What I had been doing was actually its own important thing: finding a new way to be happy. My friend, who has a kid by the way, suggested that I call it What I Was Doing While You Were Having Stupid Babies [laughs]. I thought that was going to turn too many people off. So we went with Breeding.

SFBG The title might lead some to believe that you don’t like children, but anyone who reads the book will realize that’s not the case.

KN I always wanted to have kids. But deep into my 30s, I absolutely was not ready yet. Biology kicks in at a certain point, and I felt like I saw so many people around me jumping into things just because of their age, after waiting so long. I knew that I theoretically needed to figure things out, but I just wasn’t feeling it yet. I was always cool with adopting, and I write about freezing my eggs, because I felt like, I can’t let this number dictate what I do. It’s too big of a decision.

SFBG The book is a personal memoir, but it’s also a guidebook of sorts. What’s your travel philosophy?

KN The biggest thing is: Go where the guidebooks don’t tell you to go. Find locals and ask them where their secret places are. Dating a local is a great way to get advice from a local — that’s why I love a vacation romance! If you’re traveling alone, don’t go for the high-end places, even if you can afford them, because that’s not where single people go. It will be all married old people who aren’t going to want to hang out with you. If you’re not 21 and don’t want to hang with the backpackers, shoot for the mid-range.

Always say yes! And then find out how many amazing things happen as a result of accepting invitations to places, or checking out something new that somebody you meet one day suggests. The best things always happen because I say yes to something. Then, it empowers you to do that when you get home, too. Even when I can’t jump on a plane, I take a book and read alone at a restaurant, which I never used to do. I’ll walk into parties alone, or take myself to a museum. I do a lot more things alone in my own town, and that changes everything. You just feel like, “I can handle it!”

SFBG Do comparisons with  Eat Pray Love drive you crazy?

KN I wrote about that book in my book, because I knew that people would compare the two. It doesn’t drive me crazy — that book touched a lot of people, and that’s great. I had a complicated relationship with that book, as I think a lot of people do, dealing with the concept of “misery of the entitled person.” I think that all kinds of people who have entitled, lucky lives can be horribly miserable — look at Robin Williams. So I don’t blame [Elizabeth Gilbert] for her self-created misery, as someone who creates her own misery on a regular basis.

But I wanted to try and take myself a little less seriously, and have a much more comic, self-deprecating approach to the silliness that was my tail-chasing. That was my goal, to have it be fun. Also, by holding off on having sex for most of that book, I feel like she missed out on a really easy way to feel better! [Laughs.] *

KRISTIN NEWMAN

Sept. 20, 1pm, free

Book Passage

51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera

www.bookpassage.com