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The silver bullet train

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› steve@sfbg.com

There aren’t many easy answers to the environmental crisis facing California, a state with a fossil fuel–dependent culture that’s cooking the planet, congesting the freeways and airports, and hastening a tumultuous end to the oil age. But there is one: build a high-speed rail system as soon as possible.

All the project studies indicate this should be a no-brainer. San Franciscans could travel to Los Angeles in just a couple hours, the same time it takes to fly, at a fraction of the cost. And the system — eventually stretching from Sacramento to San Diego — would generate twice as much money by 2030 as it costs to build. The trains use far less power than planes or cars and can be powered by renewable resources with no emissions. The system would get more than two million cars off the road and single-handedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 12 million metric tons per year.

High-speed rail is a proven green technology that works well everywhere it’s been implemented, including most of Europe and Asia. In France the TGV line from Paris to Lyon connects the country’s two most culturally important cities in the same way that Los Angeles would be linked to San Francisco — from one downtown core to the other — allowing for easy day trips and ecofriendly weekend jaunts. Advocates for high-speed rail say it’s an essential component of California going green and the only realistic way to meet the ambitious climate change targets approved last year in Assembly Bill 32.

Yet for some strange reason, the idea of high-speed rail has barely clung to life since San Franciscan Quentin Kopp first proposed it more than a decade ago as a member of the State Senate and set the studies in motion, all of which have found the project feasible and beneficial. Today Kopp, a retired judge, chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), which has fought mightily to move the project forward despite severe underfunding and sometimes faltering political support.

Growing awareness of climate change has increased support for high-speed rail among legislators and in public opinion polls (among Democrats and Republicans), leaving only one major impediment to getting energy-efficient trains traveling the state at 220 mph: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While posing for the April 16 cover of Newsweek with the headline "Save the Planet — or Else" and touting himself around the world as an environmental leader, Schwarzenegger has quietly sought to kill — or at least delay beyond his term — high-speed rail.

The $10 billion bond issue to build the LA-to-SF section was originally slated for 2004, then pushed back to 2006, then pushed back to 2008 because Schwarzenegger worried it would hinder the $20 billion transportation bond, Proposition 1B, which was focused mostly on new freeway construction.

Part of the deal to delay the train bond involved giving the CHSRA the money it needed to start ramping up the project, which included $14.3 million last year, the most it has ever received. But rather than give the authority the $103 million that it needs this year to honor contracts, set the final Bay Area alignment, start buying rights-of-way, and complete the engineering work and financing plan, the governor’s budget proposed offering the agency just $1.3 million — only about enough to keep the lights on and not fire its 3 1/2 staffers.

And now Schwarzenegger is asking the legislature to once again delay the 2008 bond measure, which would take a two-thirds vote of both houses. "Investing in it now would prevent us from doing bonds for any other purposes," the governor’s spokesperson, Sabrina Lockhart, told us, citing prisons, schools, and roads as some other priorities for the governor. "It’s not cost-effective in the short term."

The stand baffles environmentalists and other high-speed rail supporters, who say the project is expensive but extremely cost-effective over the long term (although it gets less so the longer the state delays, with about $2 billion tacked on the price tag for every year of delay).

"If the governor would get up on his bully pulpit and talk about high-speed rail to the California people, we would be starting construction in 2009," Kopp told the Guardian. "What you have is political fear instead of political will."

Asked why Schwarzenegger doesn’t seem to understand the importance of this issue — or how it relates to his green claims — CHSRA executive director Mehdi Morshed can only guess. Some of it is the daunting price tag and long construction schedule, some of it is that the governor tends to defer to the Department of Transportation for his transportation priorities, "and they’re in the business of building more roads, so that’s what they say we need."

But mostly, it’s a failure to understand the kind of transportation gridlock that’s headed California’s way if we do nothing. "It’s an alternative to meeting the travel demand with more highways and airport expansions," Carli Paine, transportation program director with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, told us. But as Morshed told us, "The governor doesn’t suffer much on the freeways, and he has his own plane."

The person doing Schwarzenegger’s dirty work on high-speed rail is David Crane, an attorney turned venture capitalist who, although he’s a Democrat from San Francisco, is one of the governor’s top economic advisers and his newest appointee to the CHSRA board. Despite thick stacks of detailed studies on the project, Crane seems to want to return the project to square one.

"There’s never been a comprehensive plan for how you’re going to finance this thing," Crane told us, noting that the LA-SF link is likely to cost far more than the bonds would generate. "The bond itself is a red herring. You could raise the $10 billion now and still not have a high-speed rail."

Yet supporters of high-speed see the Schwarzenegger-Crane gambit as mostly just a stall tactic. While Crane argues that the private sector funding — which could account for about half his estimated $40 billion in total project costs (other documents say around $26 billion) — needs to be nailed down first, supporters say California must firmly commit to the project if it’s going to happen.

"Private capital won’t be interested unless they know there is a public commitment," Kopp told us.

"You need to take a leap of leadership. When there is something that makes sense in so many ways, you need to have that initial public buy-in," said Bill Allayaud, legislative director for the Sierra Club California.

Support for that stance also seems to be strong in the legislature, where San Francisco’s newest representative, Assemblymember Fiona Ma, has emerged as the point person on the issue. She even went on a fact-finding mission in France, aboard the TGV train when it reached 357 mph to break the world rail speed record.

"We can’t do it until we have that public investment," Ma told us, noting that holding detailed financial debates right now is a diversion considering that "this project will pay for itself."

"My assembly caucus is extremely positive about high-speed rail. Right now it’s on the ballot for next year, and I think it’s going to stay there," Ma said. She isn’t sure that she can get the CHSRA the full $103 million it wants this year, "but whatever we can come up with is going to be better than $1 million."

"The governor needs to get on board. This is an important environmental issue," Ma told us. "For him not to be behind it doesn’t make sense."

Californians also seem to have a hard time fully understanding the project, probably because polls show that only about 10 percent of them have ever used high-speed rail in another country. Yet polls show climate change is a top public concern among Democrats and Republicans.

"Number one, the dollar figure is daunting," Kopp said. "Number two, we’re Americans, and we just haven’t experienced it."

Yet when the project and its benefits are explained, it doesn’t seem to have any opponents outside the Schwarzenegger administration. Morshed said not even Big Oil and Big Auto — two deep-pocketed entities with a history of fighting large-scale transit projects — have opposed high-speed rail. Once people get it, everyone seems to love it.

"The reaction you get almost every time is ‘Why aren’t we building it?’ That’s the thing that is universal, people saying, ‘Why don’t we have this? What’s wrong with us?’ " Morshed said.

For such a massive project — with construction spanning almost the entire state — it’s notable that none of the state’s major environmental groups have challenged the project’s environmental impact reports, which were certified in November 2005. That’s largely because the route uses existing transportation corridors and has stops only in urban areas, thus not encouraging sprawl.

"Environmental groups generally don’t like big projects, but they like this one," the Sierra Club’s Allayaud told us. "There aren’t a lot of negatives that we’re having to balance out, and there are a lot of positives."

Yet politics being what it is, other obstacles are likely to present themselves. The CHSRA is now setting the route into the Bay Area, either through the Altamont Pass or the Pacheco Pass, both of which have political and environmental concerns.

Morshed — an engineer who served as consultant to the Senate Transportation Committee for 20 years before heading the CHSRA — expressed confidence that the project will happen if the state’s leaders support it: "It’s moving ahead, and we have very good support in the legislature. The only soft spot is the governor, who wants to postpone it and seems to have other priorities." *

Green isn’t PG&E

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› amanda@sfbg.com

You’ve seen the ads, lime colored and screaming from the sides of Muni buses, papered to the walls of BART stations, popping up on local news Web sites. "Let’s green this city," they proclaim in a chummy, we’re-all-in-this-together way. Like any good ad campaign, these broadsides, brought to you by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., are designed to snap your eco-consciousness into thinking, "Hell yeah! I’m going to get right on that!"

And like any good greenwashing campaign, they are also designed to distract you from what’s really going on at the $12.5 billion utility company.

"There’s an advertising rule that’s based on the idea to advertise where you’re weakest," says Sheldon Rampton, cofounder of the Center for Media and Democracy, which regularly tracks corporate greenwashing. "What typically happens with greenwashing is an attempt to create a superficial image without changing anything the company’s doing that would affect their bottom line."

Yes, PG&E has the fourth largest alternative fuel fleet of any utility in the country. (That’s if you define natural gas as an alternative fuel, a resource in which this utility happens to have $9 billion already invested. It’s still a fossil fuel and only burns 30 percent cleaner than oil and coal.)

Yes, PG&E is making environmental strides with increased investments in solar, biogas, and wind energy. (But the company will, by its own admission, fail to make the state-mandated goal of selling 20 percent renewables by 2010.)

Yes, PG&E has committed $1 billion over the past three years to energy-efficiency programs. (Actually, that money isn’t a kindhearted gift from the shareholders. It’s mandated by state law. And much of it comes from the ratepayers — see the "Public Goods Charge" on your monthly bill.)

Yes, PG&E has been donating solar panels to local schools and nonprofits. (Less than 1 percent of PG&E’s power comes from solar energy.)

Yes, the folks at PG&E have been loudly announcing all their good deeds. Here’s what else they’ve been working on, a little more quietly.

GREEN IS NOT A SUPERHERO


A recent PG&E television commercial shows children playing with Renewable Energy Man and chanting, "Sun, water, wind" as the future sources of power. But consider:

• PG&E’s current power profile is 44 percent fossil fuels, 24 percent nuclear, 20 percent large hydro, and only 12 percent renewable.

• As of 2006, PG&E had planned to integrate 300 megawatts of renewable energy sources a year into its overall profile in an effort to make the state-mandated goal of 20 percent renewables by 2010.

• In 2006 Securities and Exchange Commission filings, PG&E projected it would miss that goal by a couple percentage points and is relying on the "flexible compliance" that the law allows.

• The utility is currently building 1,350 megawatts of fossil fuel–burning plants, which are permitted to emit up to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.

In December 2006, PG&E filed permit applications with the California Pubic Utilities Commission for 2,300 megawatts of conventional, nonrenewable power sources.

Renewable Energy Man is looking pretty weak.

GREEN ISN’T NATURAL GAS


PG&E is working to secure permission to build an $850 million, 232-mile gas pipeline, called the Pacific Connector, to bring one billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from Oregon into PG&E’s California customer territory starting in 2011. Some facts about natural gas:

• PG&E customers currently use 836 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, or 2.3 billion cubic feet per day. Over the past 20 years, natural gas usage in California has increased in concert with the rise in population — about 1 to 2 percent per year. The new pipeline would increase daily supply by 50 percent.

• Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is considered the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it’s still a hazardous, flammable material and can freeze-burn skin, crack ship decks, and asphyxiate.

• A "small" LNG tanker is the length of three football fields and burns 170 metric tons of fuel (natural gas and heavy-duty diesel) per day. Planners anticipate at least six to seven ships will dock per month at a new LNG terminal in Coos Bay, Ore.

PG&E recently showcased a hybrid natural gas–electricity plug-in Toyota Prius with V2G, or vehicle to grid, technology. Unlike those of other electric cars, the connection is two-way — power comes from the grid to the car, but power can also go from the car to the grid. PG&E has said that if enough people own these cars, each one will be a miniature storage unit of power for the utility to draw on during peak hours — eliminating the need for more power plants. If the utility takes too much electricity from your battery while you work or sleep, you can still run the car on natural gas. But either way, you’re paying PG&E for the electricity and the fuel, and since PG&E electricity is hardly renewable, it isn’t doing much for the ecosystem.

GREEN IS NOT A NUKE


Twenty-four percent of PG&E’s so-called nonemissions burning power comes from nuclear plants in Humboldt Bay and Diablo Canyon. When asked if PG&E is considering future nuclear power plants, spokesperson Keely Wachs said, "We’re not ruling it out." Some reasons to worry:

• One of PG&E’s newest board members is Richard Meserve, former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

• The decommissioning of nuclear power facilities is set to begin at the Humboldt Bay plant in 2009 and at the Diablo Canyon plant in 2024, at a cost of $2.1 billion, or more than $5 billion in future dollars — all of which you will pay.

• PG&E will undergo a $16 million study of the feasibility of relicensing Diablo Canyon (at your expense).

• PG&E currently has contracts out for $539 million of nuclear fuel, which you will pay for.

And, of course, PG&E spends millions fighting public power (which is almost always more environmentally sound than PG&E’s private mix). Green city or greenwashing? It seems pretty clear to us. *

The green issue

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Climate change is a global problem. A lot of the solutions, at least in the United States, are going to be local.

And a lot of them are going to start and end with the way we use land.

That’s a critical theme for this year’s Earth Day: cities like San Francisco, which claims to be (and really ought to be) a world leader in environmental sustainability, have to rethink everything from housing and consumption to open space and energy use — and particularly transportation.

Cars — private-use automobiles, the center of so much of American life and public policy for the past 100 years — are also one of the greatest threats to the future of the planet. The byproducts of tens of millions of internal combustion engines on the roads every day are a major component of greenhouse gases (not to mention other environmental pollutants). And the oil that fuels them drives a foreign policy that leads, as we’ve seen, to tyranny, instability, and millions of deaths.

It’s not enough to raise gas taxes or promote hybrids or increase fuel-efficiency standards (although all of those should be on the national agenda). Cities and states have to profoundly change the way people get around and the way they use public and private space.

Some of this is just so simple you can’t believe it’s not already happening. As Steve Jones reports ("The Silver Bullet Train"), a high-speed rail connection from San Francisco to Los Angeles would get almost two millions cars off the road and cut down immensely on the use of airline fuel. It would also pay for itself in a few years. It’s a form of public transit that would work right away: nobody likes to drive to LA. If you could take a train, get there in less time than it takes to fly, and pay less than $50 for the trip, why would you travel any other way?

Some of it requires more political vision (and political guts). If San Francisco wants to fight sprawl and encourage less car use, it has to be willing to build housing for people who work here — and that means, by city estimates, ensuring that two-thirds of all new housing be affordable.

And if San Franciscans want to reconnect to urban land and encourage bikes and walking, we have to think seriously about open space — even if it means that roads and private developments have to be sacrificed. That’s what Deborah Giattina describes ("Open Water,").

Cities and states also have to think about energy policy, and that means reclaiming energy as a public good, not a private commodity. San Francisco’s private utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., is spending millions trying to tell us how green it is; as Amanda Witherell notes ("Green Isn’t PG&E,"), that’s a big lie.

On this Earth Day 2007, the time to mess around and debate has run out. Think globally, act locally — and push for a city and state environmental agenda that is more than hot air. *

Open water

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› deborah@sfbg.com

For the casual stroller, a walk under the 101 interchange at César Chávez is none too inviting. Trucks and cars zoom off the freeway and onto the street all day long, bringing noise and exhaust with them. An atmosphere of abandonment and neglect allows crime to fester.

And if you dare to walk far enough under the highway, you might notice that water often floods the lowest point of the underpass.

That’s not rain collecting; it’s water seeping into the streets from the paved-over Islais Creek, which runs through Glen Park to the eastern neighborhoods and ultimately channels into the bay.

It’s just one of a network of creeks that flow through San Francisco, invisible urban treasures that have long since been filled in or paved over. The city has been burying the creeks since the 1906 earthquake. Back then the Board of Supervisors voted to fill the marshy lands near Islais with debris from the fires.

Standing under the overpass, Bonnie Ora Sherk, artist and founder of the urban planning nonprofit Life Frames, reaches for some leaves poking through a chain-link fence that separates the path from mostly empty islands of space. I can barely hear her through the ongoing traffic din when she says, "I haven’t been here in so long…. See those roses? We planted those."

Sherk dreams of allowing some of the water in the area to emerge from its underground culvert and fill a pond surrounded by beautiful riparian plantings such as willow trees.

With the Planning Department putting the finishing touches on its eastern neighborhoods plan and the Mayor’s Office launching its Better Streets program — which will put $20 million toward improving streets, sidewalks, and unused spaces — it’s a good time to talk about daylighting Islais Creek.

Sherk wants only a small piece of the underground stream brought back to life, but in theory San Francisco could open up much bigger stretches, allowing water to flow through neighborhoods and parks between its source in Glen Canyon Park and its outflow.

Sherk has been turning forsaken lots and concrete jungles into thriving natural areas that provide educational opportunities for children since she started the Crossroads Community art collective, also known as the Farm, under the freeway in 1974. With a colony of artists, she turned the void into a crossroad for the Bayview, Bernal Heights, and Mission District communities. During her six years at the collective, she led children from the neighborhoods in planting and gardening, built a barn for chickens and goats, and curated art shows.

Check out the photos on a Living Library Web site (www.alivinglibrary.org), and you’ll see how that area flourished during Sherk’s days as the collective’s executive director. Back then a landscape of native plants grew under the overpass. Now fences enclose these scraps of dead space to keep homeless people from setting up encampments in them.

When Sherk learned from old maps that the area was built over a watershed of intersecting creeks that feed into Islais, she tried to convince the city to uncover some of the creek water that flows under an open space next to the Farm, what is now Potrero del Sol Park.

The city built the park as she suggested but separated it from the artist community by a fence. Her idea to expose the creek wasn’t adapted either. A concrete-bottom pond fed by Hetch Hetchy water was installed instead. Soon it will be transformed into a skateboarding area, which Sherk thinks is better than constantly piping in precious reservoir water.

But she hasn’t given up on the idea of daylighting Islais at the interchange. She envisions diverting the off-ramps a bit to make way for the pond at the center of the underpass. From there César Chávez would be resculpted into a curving road, forcing traffic to slow down. Poplars could line the street, and educational artwork could be added to the mix. The fences would come down under the freeway, and the area once again would be replanted. It would be a nice place to drive and walk. Perhaps the crime and litter would disappear.

According to Sherk, the idea of an urban environment needs a paradigm shift from the days of factory-school settings. To her, it’s not just a matter of beautification or convenience. "Why do one thing when you can do 10 things simultaneously?" she asks — meaning a pond isn’t just a pool of water, it’s part of a place where nature intersects with industry, technology, and our everyday culture and where we can look at all of those elements, as she often says, "through the lens of time." *

Clean isn’t always green

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

There’s no more symbolic and tangible an issue for elected officials than clean streets.

Not everyone can see firsthand how well local schools are operating, whether nonprofits receiving city grants are spending the money wisely, or if every board and commission is complying with open-government rules.

On the other hand, everyone knows when the streets are filthy, and if a grease-soaked, wind-tossed burger bag slaps you in the face on your way to the ballot box, you’ll angrily remember it.

But clean doesn’t inherently equal green. Street sweepers don’t magically cause dirt to disappear. Where do the used condoms, food wrappers, trails of frothy malt liquor, puddles of urine, auto exhaust particulates, oil and gas residue, toxic chemical spills, and arching piles of trash go after being sucked into a street sweeper’s collection bin?

Well, two places really. When haulers and street sweepers at the Department of Public Works pick up junk from the streets, as much as possible gets recycled at a site on Tunnel Avenue.

"DPW separates materials we pick up for recycling [furniture, appliances, construction debris, etc.], which as recently as 2003 went to the landfill," department spokesperson Christine Falvey told the Guardian.

Then, however, the street sweepers all congregate at a DPW maintenance yard on César Chávez Street, where workers hose charming layers of sludge off the inside reservoir panels of the trucks and out onto two grates — little more than storm drains, which ultimately empty into the bay.

Harvey Rose, chief budget analyst for the Board of Supervisors, released a comprehensive management audit of the DPW in January. Buried on page 149 is a description of what San Francisco does with all this waste scrubbed from the city’s asphalt surfaces and left clinging to the inside of street sweepers.

For the audit, Rose’s office hired health and safety experts from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the San Francisco International Airport to conduct an inspection of the maintenance yard.

We recently requested a copy of the report, and it shows that the foul and possibly toxic liquids removed from the trucks — still swirling with smaller debris that slipped through the grates — wind up in the city’s sewers.

A capture basin below the drains, which the SFPUC cleans out once a week, gathers some of the smaller debris such as trash and gravel. But the basins lose their treatment capacity once they’re a third full, and auditors noted that the basins were almost overflowing when they visited. And despite the presumably high concentration of pollutants in the waste liquids (uninhibited runoff from the streets is a chief contributor to water pollution), no special attention was being given to their handling.

"There are no measures in place to prevent an acute discharge of a collected hazardous material," the analyst’s report concluded, "or to reduce the chronic influx of pollutants generated from this activity."

In other words, the city is cleaning crud off the streets, where people can see it — then dumping it into the bay, where it’s a lot less visible.

In the DPW’s official response to the audit, director Fred Abadi did not dispute how poorly the agency was treating discarded waste from street sweepers and vowed to link the catch basin to a multichambered oil-grit separator, as auditors proposed. Falvey admitted that sometimes night-shift sweepers dumped their entire loads at the César Chávez yard, but she said that habit stopped after the audit was released. The DPW is currently in the market for an oil-grit separator, she added, and the maintenance yard’s drains that receive material from the sweepers have been covered with metal nets.

Of course, all that flushing also requires a lot of water — and that’s in scarce supply right now. San Francisco is experiencing its fourth driest winter on record, and to fill the region’s water needs, there’s talk of diverting more precious flow from the Tuolumne River, threatening fish and wildlife (see "Draining the River").

The DPW’s "street flushers" can each hold 3,200 gallons of water and use about 15,000 gallons of freshwater every business day to cover an average of 25 routes.

In comparison, three average San Francisco households would have to cease using water for an entire month to equal the amount of water used to clean local streets each day. The DPW’s Bureau of Street Environmental Services used 5.6 million gallons of water last year, according to figures provided by water officials. The agency used 90.8 million for landscape maintenance, mostly irrigation for street medians, which during droughts in the late ’80s was temporarily outlawed to conserve water, according to SFPUC spokesperson Tony Winnicker. San Francisco is not there yet, but "for now we would just like everybody to cut back," Winnicker said, "and certainly the city has room to do that as well."

There are costs involved in not cleaning the streets. The Maryland-based Stormwater Center, funded in part by the Environmental Protection Agency, argues that it’s not clear how much street cleaners help remove surface pollution before it runs directly into the oceans. The center says, however, the runoff could be reduced by 5 to 30 percent with the right modern trucks and aggressive maintenance.

Street sweeping as a municipal function historically began as a matter of aesthetics. Unmanageable layers of trash and slime on the street are unsightly and generally not considered to be a part of good public policy, to say the least.

More recently, though, cities have looked at how street cleaning can also help green their locales. "They still want to pick up trash and litter, which was the original idea," said Jim Scanlon, a program director for the Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program. "But it’s moving a little bit more toward wanting to pick up the finer particles because of the pollutant-reduction capabilities."

To its credit, the DPW has planted several thousand trees in the city over the past three years at the direction of the mayor, helping to contain burgeoning stormwater during heavy rains that would otherwise overflow into the ocean. It’s a strategy lauded by groups such as San Francisco Planning and Urban Research. And elsewhere at the César Chávez maintenance yard, auditors noted the DPW’s good housekeeping, including its storage of toxic materials.

But scooping up noxious sludge in one place and pouring it out somewhere else isn’t exactly the sort of green behavior that Mayor Gavin Newsom likes to talk about. *

UC Extension project a bad deal

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EDITORIAL Something has to be done with the old University of California Extension site, a 5.8-acre parcel of largely unused land at Laguna and Market. The historic buildings are locked and sitting empty; there’s no public access to the site at all. That’s a huge amount of land to be essentially going to waste in a crowded neighborhood that lacks parks and open space.

But there are competing issues here: the university, which doesn’t want the land anymore, wants to get every penny it can out of the property. And that’s led the university to enter into a long-term agreement with A.S. Evans, a big private developer, to turn the site into a mixed-use project with nearly half a million square feet of mostly market-rate housing, some retail, some community-use and open space, and a lot of parking. Among the plums Evans is holding out: the project is slated to include 85 units of senior housing targeted to the LGBT community. The Planning Department points out in an environmental impact report that the public will be able to access a modest park in the project center, where Waller Street, which now dead-ends at the site, will be opened up.

But this land is and has been zoned for public use and used by public institutions for a century or more. It represents almost 20 percent of all the public space in the Octavia-Market neighborhood. And if it’s going to be turned over to a private developer, the public needs to get a lot more out of the deal than this project offers.

For starters, like so much else that city planners are pushing these days, this is going to be housing for rich people — mostly single or childless rich people. Of the 365 units that aren’t included in the LGBT housing, 304 would be studio and one-bedroom units. And the 15 percent set aside as affordable housing still means only 54 units would be sold or rented below market rate. Only a tiny handful of the new units would be any help at all to the endangered population of working-class families — the ones who are fleeing the city in droves, the ones whom the Mayor’s Office claims to be concerned about.

At the 15 percent affordability level, exactly 13 out of the 85 units of LGBT housing would be available to anyone who isn’t wealthy. So 13 very lucky queer seniors or couples, out of the entire needy population in San Francisco, would win a lottery and get a decent place to live at a price they can pay.

And for that, San Francisco would give up 5.8 acres of public space and allow the demolition of some historic structures. It doesn’t seem like such a great deal.

Yes, there will be a community center and some other amenities, but overall this a private developer’s plan to make a lot of money selling expensive condos — which are the last thing San Francisco needs right now.

Rejecting this particular deal doesn’t mean the city is giving up on a better use for the site. If the school is told clearly that the only way San Francisco will rezone this land for private use is if the new project meets (or at least makes a real effort to meet) the goals in the city’s General Plan, which require that two-thirds of all new housing be affordable, the university will have to reconsider its financial demands on the project. And if it doesn’t, that’s something San Francisco’s state legislators should take up with the chancellor and the regents. *

Green city, part one: cut back cars

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EDITORIAL San Francisco needs a real green city agenda — not something that comes out of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s corrupt propaganda operation or from the timid folks in the Mayor’s Office but a comprehensive environmental plan for the next 10 years that aims at making San Francisco the nation’s number one city for green policy.

There’s no point in thinking small: this is the year for dramatic talk about real environmental action. And it doesn’t have to be overwhelmed by global problems; there’s so much to be done right here at home.

We will be laying out a much longer, more detailed platform over the next few months, but here’s one way to start:

San Francisco ought to commit to cutting car use in the city by at least 50 percent in the next five years.

How do you do that? By making cars unnecessary and slightly more expensive.

The nation’s addiction to oil didn’t come by accident. As Thomas Friedman wrote in the April 15 New York Times, then-president Dwight Eisenhower responded to the cold war in part by building the Interstate Highway System, which allowed the military to move people and weapons quickly — but also set the nation on a path to the car-driven development and land use that are now poisoning the environment and global politics. Turning that around requires tremendous dedication and political leadership, but San Francisco shouldn’t have to wait for the rest of the country.

A citywide auto-reduction plan would involve sweeping land-use changes. Some streets, such as Market, should be closed to cars entirely. Much downtown parking should be eliminated. More bike lanes and transit-only roads, more pedestrian-friendly shopping areas, and other measures of that sort would not only help discourage car use but also make the city a more livable place.

But there’s more: a city that discourages car use has to build housing for local workers — that means affordable housing for the city’s service-industry and public-sector workforce. All new housing needs to be evaluated on that basis: will people who work in San Francisco be able to live here — and avoid long commutes? Most housing currently in the planning pipeline utterly fails that test.

To make cars irrelevant, public transportation has to be vastly improved. As Sups. Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin point out in the Opinion on page 7, that means better management. But more than anything, it means money — big money. Muni fares ought to be reduced dramatically (or eliminated altogether) — but in exchange, Muni needs a dedicated funding source. A special fee on downtown businesses makes sense. A citywide transit assessment on property owners might be necessary.

It’s not fair to place a burdensome tax on cars that makes it possible only for the rich to drive — but simply restoring in San Francisco the vehicle fee Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wiped out would cover Muni’s deficit. Assemblymember Mark Leno is working on this, and it should be a top civic priority. So should pushing high-speed rail (see page 19), which would eliminate tens of thousands of car trips between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

There are lots of ways to approach this goal; the supervisors and the mayor just need to set it and enforce it. *

Bar wars

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› news@sfbg.com

For the owners of the Hole in the Wall Saloon, the plan was simple: move their popular South of Market gay bar out of its dingy and dilapidated quarters to a much better spot around the corner. With numerous bars and nightclubs already along the stretch once known as the gay miracle mile, they assumed their place would fit right in.

But SoMa is changing — and the bar’s new neighbors in the increasingly residential district are using every regulatory trick in the book to block the move. Another bar, they say, is one too many.

The Hole in the Wall’s current location on Eighth Street frequently lives up to the place’s modest-sounding name. The plumbing stops up. The patched floor sags in places. And the bar tilts at an unnatural angle. Co-owners Joe Banks and John Gardiner, who are life as well as business partners, spent years seeking a new space for their eclectic, art-filled taproom. Last year they thought they had found an ideal spot a block and a half away on Folsom, between Dore and 10th streets.

At today’s prices, the building was a bargain — only $1.2 million. After making sure that the space, a former dance studio, was zoned to allow for a bar, Banks and Gardiner hired a local design-build firm to renovate the building. They hoped to open the new location by April 15, the bar’s 13th anniversary.

Now they just hope to open.

In early December project manager Jeff Matt was working on the build-out of the new space when a man named Jim Meko stopped by and asked him to give a letter to the owners. The letter, obtained by the Guardian, is on letterhead for the Western SoMa Citizens Planning Task Force. The task force, which Meko chairs, is advising the Planning Department on a new zoning plan for South of Market.

The letter was a copy of a five-month-old missive Meko had addressed to the real estate agent representing the building’s sellers. It warns that if the property were sold to someone who wanted to open a bar, the buyers could face "obstacles" such as protests to the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and petitions to the Planning Commission.

Silvana Messing, the agent to whom the letter is addressed, told us she never received it. The agent representing Gardiner and Banks as buyers, who asked not to be identified by name, claims he didn’t see the letter either. But if he had gotten it before the sale, he said, "I probably would have advised [Gardiner and Banks] not to buy the place."

Meko, who lives around the corner from the Hole in the Wall’s new location, told us Banks and Gardiner "tend to live right on the edge of the law" as bar owners. He charged that the place used DJs without the proper entertainment permits and that there have been reports of drug dealing and nudity on the bar’s premises.

Gardiner admitted that he and Banks have employed DJs in the past but says they did not know that a DJ requires a special permit: "We thought an entertainment license was for places with live bands…. When we found out, we stopped it." Banks and Gardiner denied that drug dealing takes place at the bar. As for nudity, several Hole in the Wall regulars recalled a time in the mid-’90s when patrons occasionally drank in the buff, but they told us such behavior died down long ago.

Officer Rose Meyer, the San Francisco Police Department’s permit officer at Southern Station, gave the bar and its owners glowing reviews. Referring to Gardiner in particular, Meyer told us, "Southern Station would have no objection to him operating [at the new location]. I don’t foresee there being any problems."

"He has always been responsible" in the past, she said.

Meko claims the letter wasn’t meant to stir up opposition to the bar’s move. Instead, he said, he was simply trying to warn Gardiner and Banks about the simmering antinightlife attitude among SoMa residents. "It’s real precarious," Meko said. "Neighbors just rise up. They become real irrational…. They can go crazy."

When 10th Street resident Damien Ochoa received notice from the Planning Department about the new bar in early January, he didn’t rise up — at least at first. But given that his bedroom window is less than 50 feet from the bar’s back smoking area, he was concerned. As a result, he said by phone, he "started to do a little bit of research about the owners." In the course of his research, he got in touch with Meko.

Ochoa said Meko informed him that "they’re potentially not good neighbors." After a neighborhood meeting, Ochoa, Meko, and several other residents pitched in money to file a petition in Ochoa’s name asking the Planning Commission to look at the project under its power of discretionary review. Other neighbors lodged protests with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Within weeks all of Meko’s warnings to the real estate agent had come true.

As a result, work on the new bar is at a standstill. It cannot begin again until the protests work their way through hearings and appeals. It could be many months until the outcome is decided. Banks and Gardiner say they have staked their financial future on the new bar, with tens of thousands of dollars in construction loans set to come due before the end of the year. Without any income from the new location, they might not be able to stay afloat.

Banks told us the opposition to the bar’s move came as a complete surprise. The Hole in the Wall, he said, is "a place where everybody’s welcome. It’s a gay bar, but everybody’s welcome." To try to resolve the dispute, Banks and Gardiner hired Jeremy Paul, an experienced permit expediter, to shepherd the project through the regulatory process and to negotiate with Meko and the neighbors. The two sides are currently in talks about enclosing the back smoking area, a change that could cost more than $100,000. Paul expressed guarded optimism that the project will eventually go forward, but he told us the rancor over the new saloon is an example of "the identity crisis" San Francisco is going through.

"The Hole in the Wall relocation is a case study in how dysfunctional this system is," Paul said. Zoning in the area allows for a bar, he said, "and if these people don’t want to live in a bar district, they should check the zoning where they’re buying a house or renting an apartment" before moving there.

Paul added that if the residents are dead set against any new bars on their block, they should work to change the zoning.

The task force Meko chairs is at work on a new zoning plan for the area, which it will eventually present to the Planning Department. Some nightlife supporters worry that the goal may be a more residential neighborhood with no room for more bars.

Meko and Ochoa strongly deny that Meko is behind the residents’ actions. "I’m a neighbor," Meko told us, claiming that he is simply working with other neighbors to prevent the noise, smoke, and litter that could accompany the bar. As for the task force’s work, Meko said he is actually trying to bring more nightlife into SoMa, but only in appropriate areas with adequate "buffers" for the residents.

"I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life trying to broker peace between" bar owners and neighbors, he asserted. He noted that the Entertainment Commission, on which he also sits, is working to clarify permit rules for clubs and bars.

John Wood, a member of the San Francisco Late Night Coalition, said the neighbors "have reasonable concerns" about the new bar but those concerns "are being overblown." Wood noted that the bar is only rated for 49 patrons at a time and that by agreeing to soundproof the building and possibly enclose the back patio, the owners have been very accommodating. "Even nightclubs don’t go through those kinds of measures," he said.

Banks told us he and Gardiner desperately want to resolve the situation. "We’re willing to do anything within our financial means," he said. "We want to save it. The Hole in the Wall is our baby." *

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/16/07): 34 Iraqi civilians killed in 6 separate bomb attacks Sunday.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/16/07): 34 Iraqi civilians killed in 6 separate bomb attacks Sunday.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 34 Iraqi civilians were killed in six different bomb attacks Sunday, according to the New York Times.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

61,391 – 67,364: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/40/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,542: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/


The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/16/07): So far, $417 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/12/07): 8 Iraqi parliament members killed in Green Zone. 10 Iraqi civilians killed in bridge bombing.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/12/07): 8 Iraqi parliament members killed in Green Zone. 10 Iraqi civilians killed in bridge bombing.

“How the president and people around him can say things are going well is really hard to comprehend,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

A suicide bomber killed at least 8 Iraqi parliament members today after slipping through the tightest security net in Baghdad, according to the Associated Press.

To read a daily reports of violence and military operations in Baghdad, click here.

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed when a bridge in northern Baghdad was demolished by a suicide truck bomb, according to CNN.com.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

61,294 – 67,243: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 8 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/39/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,526: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

Source: http://www.rsf.org/

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/12/07): So far, $416 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Keys of life

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PIANO MAN On April 13, 1957, at an assembly room in the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, George Michalski gave his first piano recital. He played John W. Schaum’s "Snake Dance" and "The Sphinx" and closed with "My First Waltz," by Bjarne Rolseth, from G. Schirmer’s Piano Solo series for students. "My mom was so excited leaving the house that she tripped and sprained her ankle," Michalski remembers. "She went to the show anyway and stayed for the whole recital — then we took care of her leg."

On April 13, 2007, Michalski will put on another piano recital in San Francisco. This time it won’t be at the library, but his mother will attend. So will some special guests — unsurprising, since in the 50 years after his first performance, Michalski’s ivory-tickling talent has led to collaborations with everyone from Blue Cheer to Barbra Streisand.

"The most exciting thing about making music is to go from Blue Cheer to someone like Streisand," Michalski says while discussing his special anniversary show, which one friend has described as vaudevillian. "Blue Cheer is so far into [pure volume and distortion] that I think of them as classical music. The biggest challenge of playing with them was peer pressure. When I worked with Streisand [on songs such as "The Man I Love" and the soundtrack to 1979’s The Main Event], I tried to get her to listen to blues. She was very open-minded."

A member of Foxtrot — the onetime house band at both Los Angeles’s Whisky a Go Go and its chief competitor, the Starwood, and also the first white group signed to Motown Records (where Smokey Robinson gave Michalski a piano and Berry Gordy’s mother, Bertha, signed his checks) — Michalski has rubbed creative shoulders with everyone from Don Johnson to some of the best-known mimes in the world and crossed paths with political figures such as Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu.

The ’70s television mainstays Shields and Yarnell, currently on a reunion farewell tour, are the aforementioned mimes. "Robert [Shields] was discovered right here in the Bay Area, in Union Square — the term street mime was invented to describe him," Michalski says, then adds some funny details that could cause someone wearing pancake makeup to become red-faced. "Robert hates most street mimes — because they’re not very good and they give mimes a bad name. I’ve seen him stand there, watch a mime, and rip the guy to shreds. And when mimes recognize that it’s Robert watching them, boy, do they get nervous."

In recent years Michalski has been making music with the original tabloid target, Eddie Fisher. "Confidential magazine got started by writing about him — he was on their first cover," Michalski says, while praising Fisher’s gentle nature. "The whole notion of the paparazzi partly started with him and Liz [Taylor]. That guy has seen a lot, and what he hasn’t seen, his daughters have — Carrie Fisher is no slouch."

To put together his anniversary show, Michalski drew from an idea he first landed on with his friend the late Vince Welnick, keyboardist for the Tubes, in which a strange array of friends stop by his apartment to perform. In addition to unconventional cover versions of songs that have made a few of the special guests famous and some dueling piano boogie-woogie interludes, the evening — presided over by MC Steve Parrish — will likely include numbers from Michalski’s most recent recordings, including San Francisco (Masia Music, 2002), which transforms his love of the city into a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, song-by-song portrait. "This show is different, but there’s no dead time," Michalski says at the end of our conversation before leaving to meet his mother. "It runs like an Italian train system." (Johnny Ray Huston)

AN EVENING WITH GEORGE MICHALSKI

Fri/13, 7:30 p.m., $20

Fat City

314 11th St., SF

www.ticketfusion.com

www.georgemichalski.com

>

We shall over come ourselves

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Nearly all the imagery we’re fed when it comes to understanding or imagining issues reutf8g to race in the United States comes from the civil rights era. No doubt that was a critical moment in American history, but it should go without saying that the road home can’t be found on an outdated map. The idea that "we shall overcome" is nice, but in reality different times have created different conceptions of who "we" are, what we’re overcoming, and how we will accomplish it.

It stands to reason that the problem tends to follow our playwrights onstage. The challenges and potential payoffs found in Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door (at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directed by actor Delroy Lindo) and the American Conservatory Theater production of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War (see "Home Run: After the War Lucidly Strikes Home," 4/4/07) are different, as if the writers had looked at the bag of tricks they’d been handed and consciously decided to make their own tools. Daily life — onstage and off — has been littered with lazy and self-serving, formulaic attempts to explore nearly every question reutf8g to race. What is most satisfying about Blue Door and After the War is that each asks fresh questions that are difficult and important.

Barfield’s multicharacter, two-actor play focuses on a troubled African American math professor struggling to deny the single fact that most shapes his interactions with the world — he’s hit bottom so hard that his white wife is pushing him to participate in the Million Man March as a way to get in touch with himself. As a result, his career is on the rocks, as are his marriage and his relationship with his family. His daily life gives way to a surreal sleepless night during which he’s visited by relatives, including some who were slaves, an experience that forces him to admit that his present and future have been shaped by the past.

Gotanda has created an ad hoc family of post–World War II refugees who share space in a boardinghouse in what was — before the war — San Francisco’s Japanese neighborhood. Six years later things are considerably different; the war’s over, and African Americans have moved into the Fillmore District housing vacated by interned Japanese Americans. As the original residents struggle to find and rebuild their community, politicians and developers have plans that don’t include black and Japanese American — or any marginalized — San Franciscans.

Gotanda’s multiracial, multinational menagerie lives under the roof of a young jazz musician named Chester Monkawa. Monkawa is a long way from today’s stereotypical hypersuccessful model minority. But although Gotanda’s created his share of outcasts and rebels over the years, what’s different about After the War is the difficulty the assembled characters have in dealing with each other. They’re a happy family when things are going well, but when the pendulum swings the other way, they go with what’s familiar — seeing race as life’s fundamental building block.

It’s refreshing to see After the War and Blue Door raise questions without ready-made answers, but that fact speaks to the problems their playwrights face. If such issues were easily dealt with onstage, we’d be doing a better job with them offstage as well. In fact, it takes a lot of money and an almost pathological reservoir of self-delusion for anyone to deny that America is a long way from addressing its ills. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see what Barfield and Gotanda — one young and black, the other a veteran Japanese American playwright — are doing. *

AFTER THE WAR

Through April 22

See stage listings for info

BLUE DOOR

Through May 20

See stage listings for showtimes, $33–$61

Berkeley Repertory Theatre

2025 Addison, Berk.

(510) 647-2949

www.berkeleyrep.org

For an interview with Delroy Lindo, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

Still evolving

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The human race either sinks or swims. That’s evolution as Charles Darwin first saw it. But flippers and a seal pelt, that’s pure Kurt Vonnegut. The novelist plays God like no other, wresting the species from its self-destruction, then sending it on its wobbly way with a childlike capacity for invention and a wry if discontented grasp of human folly. That’s Galápagos, anyway, his 1985 best-seller in which evolution saves humankind from its big and mischievous brains by sending it back to the sea. And although the transition from page to stage is probably as slippery as that first fin step on dry land, Vonnegut fans (a species unto themselves) will no doubt flock to see the book’s adaptation in the world premiere of Galáp, by San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre.

In a year that found the young company variously pitched in the sand at Baker Beach and careening onboard the Mexican Bus’s rolling party platform, it hardly surprises one to see the itinerant Boxcar pulling into the Cadillac Building at 1000 Van Ness to occupy the vacated offices of an online shoe company as it brings its inaugural season (aptly titled "Journeys") to a close. And indeed, a better-sounding setting for a play inspired by a Vonnegut story is hard to imagine.

Artistic director Nick A. Olivero wants to make the most of it too. His imaginative, kinetic staging contains continual surprises, aided by the aquatic and exotic atmosphere summoned through Lisa Lutkenhouse’s resourceful costumes, Norm Munoz’s puppets, and David Sophia Siegel’s jaunty original score. The room itself is divided into several stages, more or less enveloping the audience in the play’s fractured story line, which looks back one million years through the eyes of a ghost (Josh Truett) at the troubled but pivotal year of 1986 as several hapless tourists aboard "the nature cruise of the century" to Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands become the progenitors of the next wave in human evolution.

The six-member cast cycles through a number of characters, sometimes sharing duties in a single role. If the hardworking cast begins to win us over, it also never masters the rigors of the material or Vonnegut’s satirical style. Poor sight lines, moreover, make some scenes impossible to view from certain seats. Boxcar’s ambitious closer is a mixed bag, in other words, but like Vonnegut’s relentless survivors, the company shows it can adapt. (Robert Avila)

GALÁP

Through April 27

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $12–$28

AMC Cadillac Bldg.

1000 Van Ness, SF

(415) 776-1747

www.boxcartheatre.org

>

Six ed

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Conventional wisdom — chew before swallowing, hang on to your nine-to-five, the safety of the passengers depends on keeping conversation with the driver to a minimum — usually suffices eight days a week. But along march catastrophic events, and the rules fly out the window. Luckily, agile industry vets such as Six Degrees founders Bob Duskis and Pat Berry know how to respond to fate’s highs and lows. For instance, the label was universally warned not to release its Arabian Travels comp post–Sept. 11.

"Everybody told us, ‘You are crazy if you put this record out. People are going to be angry. Retailers aren’t going to carry it,’ " Duskis recalls at Six Degrees’ sizable Mission District office. "And we thought, you know, this is the perfect time to put this record out! More than ever people need things that transcend stereotypes — a positive representation of what comes from the Middle East." That, on top of evidence that Americans were suddenly ravenous for any information about a world they had once largely ignored, convinced them to go ahead. Turns out "it’s one of our best-selling compilations!" Duskis delivers the kicker, chuckling. "And we got a lot of mail from people of Middle Eastern descent who live in this country saying, ‘Thank you very much!’ Obviously, we feel like music is a great connector."

On the cusp of Six Degrees’ 10th anniversary celebration, sitting in a conference room atop some 20,000 CDs in the company’s downstairs warehouse with his 14-year-old hound Scout by his side, Duskis, 47, is feeling ever more optimistic about the future. On April 18 the label head will be joining the imprint’s Bombay Dub Orchestra, Jef Stott, and r:sphere of Zaman 8 on the steelers’ wheels — as he often does online via the label’s monthly radio show and occasionally does at one of many nights sponsored by Six Degrees at Supperclub, Madrone Lounge, and elsewhere. Part of the party: Backspin: A Six Degrees 10 Year Anniversary Project, which finds roster artists covering their faves (Karsh Kale takes a tabla to the Police’s "Spirits in the Material World").

Six Degrees has plenty to toast, while providing a lesson in indie survival techniques. After hitting it big with licensed bossa nova royalty Bebel Gilberto’s Tanto Tempo (2000) and subsequently downsizing amid the industry’s early ’00s doldrums, the imprint has been busily undertaking new projects, expected for a company that has always looked forward: a digital-only Emerging Artists series including Bay Area artists Stout and Zaman 8 as a way of breaking new performers with lower overhead, and a new partnership with Starbucks Entertainment to play and promote the debut by the silky-voiced, groove-obsessed, and cute-as-a-bug Brazilian singer-songwriter CeU, the first non-English-language artist to break into the chain’s Hear Music Debut series and find exposure to java junkies everywhere. "Hitting that consumer that’s outside the traditional pathways, which have been closed to us or just aren’t working anymore, it’s the kind of thing we need to do," Duskis explains. "All signs are pointing for this to be a big breakout."

Breaks and smarts have gotten Duskis and Berry this far: the two met at Palo Alto new age independent Windham Hill. Duskis had worked his way up to become the head of A&R; Berry, VP of sales and marketing. Both were united in their belief that the label should explore more global sounds, and they eventually departed to create Six Degrees under the umbrella of then-Polygram-owned Island at the behest of their genre-crossing hero Chris Blackwell, who asked the two to market the "weird stuff, all the nonpop stuff."

After Blackwell left, Duskis and Berry got out of Island with their masters in the nick of time before being entangled in yet another monstrous merger. With an infusion of venture capital, they relaunched the label as a true independent in ’98 before hitting it massive with Tanto Tempo. "From the start we treated it not like this was going to be some weird, little world-electronica record but as something for a wide range of people, from young club audiences and electronica fans to older people who had hit the first bossa nova wave to pop and Sade fans. Sure enough, it became the coffee-table world music record of that year," Duskis says. (Gilberto’s latest, Momento, comes out April 24).

The success of that album pegged Six Degrees as a world fusion label, but the founders always saw the imprint as more than that, releasing artists as varied as Michael Franti, Cheb i Sabbah, and the Real Tuesday Weld — more a global content provider with a highly eclectic palate and fingers dipped in digital distribution; podcasts; music blogs; and licensing to film, TV, and commercials before anyone else. "One thing I’d say we’ve never tried, as a label," Dukais quips, "is to be so hip it hurts." *

CEU

Fri/13, 9 p.m., $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

SIX DEGREES’ 10TH ANNIVERSARY

April 18, 10 p.m., $10

Supperclub

657 Harrison, SF

(415) 348-0900

www.sixdegreesrecords.com

NO STOPPING HIM NOW

Gone are the days when Jeff Chang churned out columns for the Guardian, but my Hawaii bud can be excused for burying himself in books such as his award-winning Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and his compelling new volume, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (Basic, $18.95). Total Chaos emerged from discussions on the future of demographics and aesthetics in the arts about three years ago and found Chang editing playwright Danny Hoch, artist Doze, and DJ Spooky, as well as essays on hip-hop and queerness. It’s a wide-angle take on hip-hop’s impact on the arts, triggering what Chang calls "crosscutting debates within the book." And without: "I’ve seen a review in the National Review complaining that there’s no center to this," Chang says on the road. "But hip-hop is about call-and-response. It’s not necessarily about people having a consensus." Expect a hot back-and-forth when Chang gathers Marcyliena Morgan of Stanford’s Hip-Hop Archive and contributors such as Adam Mansbach for a hip-hop aesthetics talk April 17 (and later on May 8).

TOTAL CHAOS HIP-HOP FORUM

Tues/17, 6:30 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

www.cantstopwontstop.com

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Assault on batteries

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The urban forager is generally looking for something to eat, but this does not have to be the case. While there is an undeniable pleasure in bringing edibles (blackberries, nasturtiums) home to the table from the metropolitan wild, there is also satisfaction in gathering up rubbish and disposing of it properly. And just as the city is a remarkably fertile place, so too is it rich in articles it would be better off not being rich in.

We have all seen the plastic water bottles rustling in the gutters like autumn leaves — husks emptied of their pricey elixirs and tossed away. They are easy enough to pick up and put in the nearest blue recycling bin, and that was how I started. But once I began to see the gutters as traps for stray Evian bottles, I began to notice that they hold other sorts of trash, less conspicuous but more worrisome. They hold an awful lot of batteries, in particular, with a decided tilt toward the AA size. I would like to think that even blithe people do not make a practice of throwing objects as thick with toxic chemicals and heavy metals as batteries on the sidewalk or into the street, but I seldom travel more than three blocks by foot or bike without finding at least one, often smashed or mangled by traffic.

My little foraging project for the past six months or so (since winter is a bleak time for urban food hunting; the weekday chef’s menus have heavily featured cabbage and broccoli) has been to collect all the discarded batteries I come across and put them in an old measuring cup on the pantry counter. When the cup fills, every few weeks or so, I take it to Walgreens and empty its contents into the recycling pail. Batteries do not belong in landfills almost as much as they don’t belong in the gutters, and by accepting them and sluicing them into the recycling stream, Walgreens is performing a large, if undersung, public service.

My hope is that once people start to notice that yes, there are AA batteries all over the gutters and yes, they can be picked up and recycled, people will pick them up and recycle them. Walgreens stores are easy to find in these parts, and a city whose streets are cleansed of old batteries will be a better city.

Paul Reidinger

› paulr@sfbg.com

Go west, young band

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Sometimes you get lucky. Every week I have to find a picture to run in the club guide, and one week I picked Low Red Land. They later sent me a self-released 2006 CD titled The Weight of Nations. The disc stayed in my truck’s deck for a week.

The trio of 26-year-olds — Mark Devito on drums, Ben Thorne on bass, and Neil Thompson on guitar and vocals — is also no stranger to intuition. Having met at Hamilton College in New York, they’d originally been a four-piece called Great American with another college buddy, Matthew Stringer. After graduating, the four moved to Boston, where they put out a self-titled, self-released EP and album. When Stringer left to go to med school, the rest of the bandmates knew they wanted to continue playing and move to San Francisco. They renamed themselves Low Red Land after a lyric in a Larry Jon Wilson song, "Ohoopee River Bottom Land."

The moniker is fittingly evocative: it speaks of the sage-and-sand-filled expanses of their journey west, of red dirt cliffs and winding rivers. This unexpectedly rangy, Western feeling fills The Weight of Nations, though being from the "totally podunk" coal-mining town of Shickshinny, Pa., Thompson can assure you that the East can be just as country as anywhere else.

While the album is "intensely personal" for Thompson, it also contains subtly penned protest songs in the fine though rare tradition of Woody Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land." "You’re Alive" is about the death of Thompson’s childhood friend, Michael Cleary, a first lieutenant in the Army, in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. And for me, that’s the key to The Weight of Nations: the protests are personal, soaked in sadness, and set against the American tapestry in a way that calls to mind the poetic scope of Hart Crane’s The Bridge. It’s easy to see why the group has been likened to Crazy Horse, though I’d pick Creedence Clearwater Revival meets the Meat Puppets. "As long as the bands aren’t bad, I’m pretty psyched," Thompson says of these comparisons. "Somebody said we sound like the Dave Matthews Band. I was bummed out for the whole day." (Duncan Scott Davidson)

LOW RED LAND

Wed/11, 9 p.m., donation to AIDS Marathon accepted

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

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Deer me

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Weathered over the years by lineup changes, tension-fueled recording sessions, and a band member’s death, Atlanta’s Deerhunter have endured their share of setbacks since forming in 2001. But wherever chaos laughs itself into a tizzy, there lurks a handsome reward just waiting to jump out and squeeze our brooding bunch from the Big Peach. Following the January release of their sophomore effort, Cryptograms (Kranky), the quintet experienced just that: their status skyrocketed to indie music darlings almost overnight.

Some who saw the outfit open for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have differed: on Deerhunter’s MySpace page, one spectator describes the group as "a pile of shit in this ‘thing’ we call the music business," while another testifies vocalist Bradford Cox "got a boner twice" while administering "false fellatio" to the rest of the band (Cox denies the allegation).

What’s certain, however, is Cryptograms’ alluring spirit. Recorded in two consecutive sessions, the album shifts from queasy art punk ("Lake Somerset") to shimmering cacophony ("Red Ink") to soothing pop ("Hazel St."). Generating a perpetual squall of numbing dissonance bristling with feedbacked guitar treatments and lulling white noise, the group collages ambient clatter and nostalgic psych-pop fraught with portraits from our past: the Creation catalog, Brian Eno, Galaxie 500, and Spacemen 3. Cryptograms‘ shuffling tone is set during its initial seconds — the lethargic sound of trickling water dissolves quickly into an electronic cackle of whirring effects pedals. Then just as the looped delirium reaches its unbearable brink, the distortion-charged title track shaves the fuzz down to a single note. "My greatest fear / I fantasized / The days were long / The weeks moved by / Before I knew / I was awake / My days were through / It was too … late," Cox mumbles.

Cox should have nothing to fear at all — his band’s tour in support of its Fluorescent Grey EP on Kranky might get the occasional heckle, but it’ll probably be too hard to hear amid the amplifiers’ roar. (Chris Sabbath)

DEERHUNTER

With the Ponys and Turn Me On Dead Man

Fri/13, 9 p.m., $10

12 Galaxies

2565 Mission, SF

(415) 970-9777

www.12galaxies.com

Endless things

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Into the past or on to the future? That’s the push-pull current that charges the Junior Boys. The tension is even casually present during an interview with the Canadian duo’s singer and veteran member, Jeremy Greenspan. Discussing the ’80s new wave influences floating through the second Junior Boys album, 2006’s So This Is Goodbye (Domino), Greenspan stresses that he discovered such sounds through dance music — Goldie sampling Japan, for example — rather than stadium rock or indie rock, and then declares, "I listen to OMD and Ultravox and Japan and Simple Minds and hear a lot of potential for new and exciting things." Yet later, when the conversation turns to So This Is Goodbye‘s lyrics, he says, "For me the central theme of the album is nostalgia."

Greenspan isn’t contradicting himself. One of the rich pleasures of So This Is Goodbye, a rare modern-day recording that keeps on giving in the manner of a well-crafted album, is the way it delves deep into music and personal memories from decades past while also crafting a signature sound. One of its best tracks, "Count Souvenirs," blooms from the instantly haunting chime motif Greenspan and partner Matt Didemus create, a melody that echoes Depeche Mode’s "Strangelove." Yet the subtlety of Greenspan’s singing and his words could give Dave Gahan a lesson in how to channel the crooner era without being as tacky as an endless engagement in Las Vegas purgatory.

"I had this idea of our record being a kind of electronic crooner record," says Greenspan, who cites the likes of Nat King Cole, Chet Baker, and Frank Sinatra as inspirations. An arctic cover of one of Sinatra’s staple sad ballads, the Sammy Cahn–Jimmy van Heusen composition "When No One Cares," is perhaps So This Is Goodbye‘s major fulcrum, with lyrics that hook backward into the titles of songs that precede it, such as the trinket-obsessed "Count Souvenirs" and the deathly call for affection "Like a Child," in which Perrey and Kingsley–like blips slowly give way to ghostly harmonies.

A mordant, morbid sensibility has long been dominant within the Junior Boys. This is a group that titled its debut Last Exit (Kin, 2004) and has now given a new EP of remixes the name Dead Horse (Domino, 2007). Loss and melancholy are a major part of the duo’s history — Greenspan’s original partner, Johnny Dark, departed before they’d finished a full-length recording, and Nick Kilroy, a friend who ran the group’s original label, Kin, died in 2005. So This Is Goodbye begins with "Double Shadow," whose core image suggests both self-recrimination and a sense of being haunted. "I suppose there is some Freudian way of reading it as a song directed inward," Greenspan says when asked about the track, which builds to a taut climax, at which its complex syncopation seems to turn inside out.

As an interview subject, Greenspan has a flair for dramatic phrasing that is comparatively subdued in his Junior Boys lyrics. He discusses styles of vocalization and the direct sensuality of his speech-based approach in comparison to current singing clichés, targeting "the U2 syndrome" (of "trying to sound as big and histrionic as possible") and "the American Idol effect" (in which "whoever can sing the loudest with the most notes" is deemed especially emotional). There is a Morrissey-esque quality to some of his pronouncements, such as his early Smiths–like notion that "love songs never accurately portray what love and sex is all about."

Morrissey could use a songwriting partner as creatively sympathetic as Didemus, whose relatively silent presence seems to have helped Greenspan as a singer and a figurehead. His voice is front and center more often and more assuredly within his own vast, spare arrangements. It’s no wonder a kindred neodisco spirit such as Metro Area’s Morgan Geist has recently called on him for vocals. "I think for modern bands of all descriptions, the tendency is to push the vocal as another instrument in the mix," Greenspan observes. "But with [So This Is Goodbye], I had more confidence. Listening to crooner records, I noticed how present the vocals can be, so I kept pushing my own voice louder and louder while mixing." Subtly rising up out of the past and away from loss — that’s the current sound, and the voice, of the Junior Boys. *

JUNIOR BOYS

April 25, 9 p.m.

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

>

Local Live

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Liz Pappademas

March 28, Hotel Utah Saloon

LOCAL LIVE "Thanks, you guys, for coming to my birthday party!" the beaming Bay Area singer-songwriter Liz Pappademas says as she sits down at the piano and sets out to kick off her West Coast tour with a bit of hometown fanfare in the tightly packed Hotel Utah performance space. "Tonight we are celebrating the birth of my CD. Afterwards we’ll all have cake — I even made it myself!"

There’s a pause. She looks out into the crowded room, filled with friends and family as well as many curious listeners. "Hmm, I hope there’s enough to go around!" she says, chuckling.

There’s good reason for Pappademas to sound so thrilled. Her new self-released CD, Eleven Songs, is an utterly beguiling collection of introspective piano-driven pop blessed with a warm-bath production and thoughtfully arranged bare-bones instrumentation. Bearing the narrative agility of a class-act storyteller as well as the unhurried precision of a poet, Pappademas writes lyrics that carry impressive weight standing alone on the page. Delivered in her smoldering alto, evoking a cross between Jolie Holland and Fiona Apple, they burn with an almost disarming poignancy. Which is why I’m here. Sure, I like cake and all, but I came for her songs.

She begins with an absorbing, gradually unfolding depiction of madness on "The Born Again April Fool" ("The walls bled at the hospitals / He buried the furniture out in the garden"). Over gently urgent piano thrusts and understated thumping from drummer Rob Sanchez, the story evolves into an unsettling but sympathetic portrait of Scott Panetti, a schizophrenic currently on death row in Texas despite a massive public outcry over the inhumanity of executing a man with severe mental illness. The song lingers in the room well after the piano sighs its final note.

Also joining Pappademas onstage is violinist-accordionist Chris Black, whose swaying accompaniment brings added tenderness to the music. His playfulness on the Aimee Mann–esque "I Had to Tell You" helps the song bob along with doses of accordion whimsy, while the artist’s lament "Desaturate It" benefits from a similar instant romanticism thanks to the instrument. A tale about a film facing cuts in order to keep its Motion Picture Association of America rating, the song is more universally about the dilemma of artists having to water down their work in order to please others: "And I was gonna be Rauschenberg / I was gonna be Pollock / But the MPAA had to save the eyes of the public." Pappademas takes her craft seriously, as these words suggest.

The evening’s highlight arrives in the form of "Keep Going West," a subtly devastating chronicle of leaving town for a fresh start after the tumultuous end of a relationship. Alone on piano, her voice delicately trembling on the edges of certain notes, Pappademas reveals, "The tires are curled on the side of the road / Sleeping off the breakup from the wheel and the road / I am curled on one side of the bed / In a Motel 6, with my independence." It’s powerful stuff, to be sure, but worth every lip-biting second. (Todd Lavoie)

LIZ PAPPADEMAS With Klum and El Olio Wolof. April 22, 9 p.m., $8. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-2888

Eleven Songs is available at www.cdbaby.com, Amoeba Music, and Aquarius Records.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul on disasters and black magic

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Whereas David Lynch at times uses all the excesses of a bad rock video to give form to the dream logic that structures his films, Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul creates quietly evocative reveries. Pierced by moments of sharp humor and unexpected beauty, Apichatpong’s movies are imbued with a sense of openness, a responsive flexibility that allows their course to be redirected by serendipitous forces: a song, memories, folk tales. On the eve of the theatrical premiere of his new Syndromes and a Century, I called him on the phone.

SFBG What sort of movies did you watch growing up?

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL In the ’70s I watched a lot of old Thai films and American films. At the time there were all the catastrophe movies, like Earthquake or Towering Inferno — I love those movies! And then there were [Steven] Spielberg’s and [George] Lucas’s films. I was really into their special effects.

SFBG In an interview you did with the Web site Criticine, you said movies are a form of black magic. I was really taken with that quote.

AW I don’t know if there’s a message there. But for me the power of film is not just to hypnotize. It’s a kind of magic for living as well. I have to be able to express [myself] as a filmmaker, otherwise it’s very hard to share my ideas or feelings. [Film is] like medicine, but it’s not. So maybe that’s a way in which there is some magic going on. (Matt Sussman)

To read a longer Q&A with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, go to the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/10/07): 36 Iraqi civilians killed. 4 U.S. soldiers killed yesterday.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/10/07): 36 Iraqi civilians killed. 4 U.S. soldiers killed yesterday.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

To read a daily reports of violence and military operations in Baghdad, click here.

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

Today Baghdad experienced some of the worst fighting since the intensified Baghdad security plan began nearly two months ago. 36 Iraqi civilians were killed in a suicide bombing, according to the New York Times.

Source.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

61,074 – 67,015: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 8 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/39/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

4 U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday, according to the New York Times.
Source.

3,524: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

Source.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/10/07): So far, $415 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Hot Lex

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Lesbians: is there nothing they can’t do? They can run a contemporary art gallery in thigh-baring Versace, tossing back their Paul Labrecqued locks as they leap from their roofless 330Ci. They can go from homeless crack addict to nude Hugo Boss model without gaining a single ounce. They can be a smokin’-hot Latina named Papi, a sassy, brassy canoodler who just happens — surprise! — to be a whiz at hoops. Astonishing lesbians!

Oh, wait. That’s The L Word — about as far from the real world of gloriously rambunctious, wild San Francisco dykes as you can get without scarfing down a gift sack of MAC Pervette lip frost, doing Pilates to Ashlee Simpson ("I am me!"), and microwaving Cheeto, your stump-tailed calico cat. Yes, yes, I know the writhing isle of televised lesbos that L makes LA out to be is one big, fat, easy, anorexic target. Don’t get your Mary Green panties in a bunch, Caitlyn. Just lie back, relax, and think of Joan Jett and Carmen Electra. It’s OK. But just as Chuck D. once bemoaned the fact that most of his heroes don’t appear on no stamps, so my homo heroes don’t appear on no Showtime.

Case in point: Lila Thirkield, the superhumanly vivacious owner of SF sapphic outpost the Lexington Club. When I first moved here in the early ’90s, I almost turned straight or something. The San Francisco my naive dreams envisioned was full of hot, scruffy, tattooed boys into hip-hop and punk, all of them on goofy, gleaming bicycles, occasionally in drag. What I got were mostly overgymed proto–circuit queens in pink spandex thongs and cracked-out twinks you could practically see through. Great if I needed to floss, but … And while all the cute ex–ACT UPers were somewhere adrift — busy shearing sleeves off flannels, maybe — it was the rough-and-tumble sistas who really dotted the t’s on my fanboy résumé. Dykes ruled it.

That was back when wallet chains were radical and FTMs were the new It girls. I’m dating myself, but who wouldn’t, hello? Alas, despite all those Sister Sledge–soundtracked strides up the rainbow of equal signs, women could still get kicked out of bars for making out. Wha? It was a gay man, man, man’s world, and the few lesbian watering holes hewed strictly to the old-school standards: alternadykes, calm down.

Thirkield, a spiky-souled kid at the time, stepped up and opened the Lexington in 1997 to give dykes of a different stripe a dive of their own. Like all bars clever enough to fill a cultural gap, the Lex galvanized its community and reinforced the new, boisterous lesbo aesthetic that combined street activism, machismo appropriation, punk rock attitude, and a winking yen for girly pop culture. And hot sex, of course.

"It seemed so important to have a space where we could be creative, where artists, street kids, and young people could hook up and express themselves," Thirkield says. "It was my first time running a bar, but it was like the whole community was running it with me."

Over the past decade the Lex has persevered in the same spirit. "The economics of the city have really changed," Thirkield says. "Our crowd has a really hard time living here now — that’s why we never charge a cover and we always support other things going on. But really, we’re doing better than ever."

The young drinking dyke crowd has also expanded, finding homes over the years in such spaces as the Phone Booth and Pop’s, as well as legendary joints such as Sadie’s Flying Elephant and the Wild Side West. New bar Stray is catering to a mostly female clientele, and, although lesbian spaces Cherry and the old Transfer have succumbed, a slew of roving dyke dance parties have taken root.

"The dyke scene has changed in the past 10 years too," Thirkield says. "It’s more diverse. Certain aspects of it are more visible in the media — some people expect different things. We get a lot more complaints from people coming in for the first time, saying things like ‘It’s such a dive!’ Well, yes, that’s exactly what it is. I mean, it’s great that lipstick types exist. I hope they find a place that makes them happy. But if you want to flick your lighter and sing along to old Journey songs with a roomful of babes from around the world — like during Pride last year — this is the place."

And what about that pesky L Word? "We get a big crowd to watch it on Sunday nights — mostly because they can’t afford cable. Then they stay for an hour afterward, drinking and bitching about it. So it’s great for business!" *

LEXINGTON CLUB 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Sat/14, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., free

3464 19th St., SF

(415) 863-2052

www.lexingtonclub.com

On the download: Plan B

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PLAN B

Who Needs Actions When You Got Words

(Cordless Recordings)

"It’s disgraceful like getting caught pissing in the sink," new British rap talent to watch Plan B spits during one of the many raw, attention-grabbing moments on his stateside debut, Who Needs Actions When You Got Words. Born Ben Drew, Plan B is the angry, guitar-strumming, Cockney-accented East End, London, rapper whose thought-provoking, hardcore lyrics are exactly what hip-hop needs. Born in Forest Gate, East London, 24 years ago, Plan B was raised single-handedly by his mother after his father abandoned them both. The ensuing hardship of growing up is repeatedly funneled into Plan B’s lyrics, including "I Don’t Hate You," directed at his deadbeat dad. Meanwhile his mom’s ex-boyfriend fares even worse in such songs as "Sick 2 Def," in which Plan B fantasizes about finding him "floating in the bathtub with his wrists slit." The rapper further lashes out at the loser sponge of a motherfucker — literally — in "Mama (Loves a Crackhead)." Plan B’s passionate outspokenness against drug addiction recurs in "Missing Links," in which he sadly writes off the countless "best friends" he has lost to "brown smoke and white lines." Musically, Who Needs Actions covers a lot of ground, including its fair share of poppy R&B production values. Plan B is at his most convincing when he simply, bleakly delivers his angry rhymes over hip-hop beats or a raw acoustic guitar. But it’s all good. (Billy Jam)

UB V2?

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› paulr@sfbg.com

The obvious question to ask about V2 is: what about V1? What happened there? Was it an experimental version that didn’t quite pan out, like one of Hitler’s 11th-hour rockets? Or is it still out there somewhere? Fearless of spirit, we put our obvious question to our server and were told that V2 — a small but spiffy Malaysian restaurant that opened toward the end of January in a rapidly changing quarter of SoMa — is in fact the younger sibling of V Café, which occupies the old Whiz Wit space on Folsom near 10th Street and serves a menu similar to its predecessor’s, with the cheesesteak at its center.

The line of descent seems a little skewed here. If you like V Café, you aren’t necessarily going to be prepared for V2, though you might like it as well or even more. Despite the laconic sleekness of the name and the modesty of the physical plant, V2’s kitchen turns out striking, full-flavored dishes at prices that almost seem as if they’re part of a throwback promotion. Virtually everything on the menu, even at dinner, costs less than $10, and portions are not small.

Tomorrow, meanwhile, rises like Kuala Lumpur a few blocks away, in the form of those huge residential pillars of glass under construction on Rincon Hill. There has already been a certain amount of hand-wringing about the self-containedness of these sky-suburb developments, but the popping up of V2 in the vicinity is a sign that the occupants of the towers are, at some point, expected to grow hungry and come forth in search of food — good food, the kind you find in your favorite neighborhood restaurant. While at the moment V2 is a neighborhood restaurant waiting for its neighborhood to take shape, its presence means the area will not be entirely given over to such chain gangers as Starbucks and Au Bon Pain.

Malaysian food per se isn’t yet a commonplace around here, but because Malaysia is part of Indochina and counts as its neighbors Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore — with China and India not too much farther away — the cooking is not all that foreign. Curry figures widely in V2’s seasoning repertoire; there is an obvious kinship to Indian and Thai curries, with the Malaysian varieties being a little smoother and richer than those of India and a little less fruity and hot than their Thai counterparts.

Malaysian curry beef ($7), for instance, consists of strips of meat and cubes of potato in a thick, reddish brown sauce reminiscent of the gravy (supposedly concocted of ketchup and cream to appeal to English tastes) that gives the Anglo-Indian dish tikka masala its endearing character. The curry nose was more pointed in (as the name implies) Indian mee goreng ($7), a stir-fry of spaghettilike noodles in a chili-fired, onion-breath red sauce. You can get chicken or (shelled) prawns for a buck or two extra, but even if you don’t, you will find items of interest folded among the noodles, among them flaps of wonton skin, like slices of gratin potatoes, and little stir-fried flour dumplings we thought at first might be tofu. There was an even sharper curry bite, along with a faint yellow iridescence, in cabbage with minced pork, one of the continually varying lunchtime specials. (You get two choices for $7.) There was a faint acridity here, and one suspected the use of commercially prepared curry powder.

If not curry, then sambal belachan (belacan is a more common English spelling), a paste of chiles and shrimp that’s used as a condiment in much of Southeast Asia. It turns up, mutedly, in a lunchtime stir-fry of chicken and neatly trimmed string beans; we detected a slight brininess and some heat, but the dish looked so Chinese that we had trouble understanding it as not Chinese. The distinctive flavor of shrimp, interestingly, also went missing in the prawn crackers ($2), those pastel-colored undulations of flash-fried rice flour that, when gathered on a plate, look like miniature versions of all those fake-rock Class M planet surfaces Kirk, Spock, and the gang were forever beaming down to. Despite the prawn deficit, we inhaled them.

One of the liveliest preparations on the menu is beef ribs in OK sauce ($6). The ribs are knuckle-size, and the meat’s a little tough — you must use your fingers for efficient separating of flesh from bone — but the sauce is sensational. It looks like cherry Jell-O that hasn’t yet set and combines elements of sweetness and barbecue savory to near-addictive effect. We were scooping up the last of it with spoons long after the final bone had been stripped bare.

Dessert means bananas, fried. We opted for honey ($2.95) rather than vanilla ice cream, on a wan theory of calorie containment. But it probably didn’t make much difference in the end, since either way you end up with a half dozen banana fritters: chunks of the fruit dunked in egg batter and deep-fried until golden. We couldn’t finish them.

V2 occupies a midblock storefront, which means it’s basically a large shoe box with a single set of windows, looking southeast. Nonetheless, the visual flavor is clean and modern, from the cinnamon-colored bamboo floors to the serene beige paint scheme on the walls, along with a few photographs of Kuala Lumpur. As in all such simple, Spartan spaces, noise is a concern; the shrieks and giggles of a trio of iPod-equipped young women several tables away filled the restaurant and actually made us flinch a few times. But that’s so often the way it is with neighbors. *

V2

Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–8:30 p.m.; Sat., 12:30–8 p.m.

518 Bryant, SF

(415) 974-1922

Beer and wine license pending

MC/V

Slightly noisy

Wheelchair accessible

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