Guardian video game reviewer Peter Galvin tests out technology designed to enhance the gaming experience.Product was provided for review purposes.
Someone once labeled current gaming headset star Astro Gaming the “Beats of gaming,” referring to the enormously successful Beats by Dre product line of consumer headsets. It’s a comparison Astro itself seems eager to encourage and, while aligning your company with such a ubiquitous brand name makes sense financially, more discerning audiophiles are quick to point out that most of the cash you shell out for a pair of Beats is for name-brand style rather than for sound.
However, Astro Gaming seems to be looking to the Beats phenomenon more as a guide to positioning itself at the top of the industry for premium gaming headphones. The market isn’t exactly teeming with game-specific headsets, so when I say the new Astro A50 (Astro Gaming, $299) headphones are some of the best money can buy in this category it doesn’t automatically mean they’re mind-blowing. It does suggest that Astro’s first big release in three years is conclusively about looking towards the future rather than playing catch-up.
A local San Francisco company, Astro has made a name for itself by selling headsets solely on its own website, and, with the release of the A50, it hopes to expand the web store into a downtown retail space. Gaming is in the process of legitimizing itself for mature players and Astro wants a place in that richer realm, not just for posterity’s sake but because we’re talking about a market that’s growing every day. As the average age of game players rises (currently somewhere between 30 and 35 years old), the industry has seen a rise in gamers and tech enthusiasts with considerably deeper pockets.
Linchpin to Astro’s success is the A50.The wireless A50 headset offers a 5.8 GHz upgrade to the A40s, the best currently on the consumer market. If you like having friends over to play, one base station supports up to 4 voice streams, and all with zero compression. Physically, the sets are heavier, so more padding makes them somewhat bulky. But the size helps comfort and noise reduction, on both sides of the velvety cups, and quality metal parts mean they don’t look or feel like cheap toys.
Set-up is simple. Plug the base station into your console (or audio tuner, and pass-through the TV, which allows you to watch movies and TV with the headset) and you’re synched and set. The set is fully rechargeable, a nice feature, though it charges via USB, so if it’s plugged into your TV or console, it won’t charge while those are off. The idea is that these headphones work right out of the box, offer few problems, and, outside of initial tinkering to get them just how you want them, you might not need to touch anything ever again.
As for sound, the set features a high number of volume stops, Dolby Digital 7.1 “surround” sound and 3 different, customizable sound modes. The faux-surround sound does a pretty good job of mimicking real surround speakers and the attached microphone turns on and off automatically when you bring it into position. There’s a lot of power in the set, a good sense of space, and I didn’t notice any distortion. The most important aspect is the quality of the wireless, something that can be tough to nail in a room increasingly packed with wireless devices. I have a lot of wireless junk, all running at the same time in the same room, and didn’t hear a single pop or click from my A50s, a problem that plagued my old Turtle Beach set.
One wireless snafu deserves mentioning: Microsoft has an exclusive deal with Tritton headsets for wireless chat, and all non-Tritton headsets require you to plug the headset into your controller. This lack of direct Xbox support may disappoint some users, but it’s not Astro’s fault and comes with the territory. Like past products, the A50 also sports detachable and customizable “tags.” The area of plastic that covers each ear is removable and replaceable with new tags that sport game logos, characters or original art. The customizable aspect of the headphones implies Astro intends the A50s to A) last, and B) be shown off.
You might say if it ain’t broke why fix it, but with three years since the Astro A40 debut, it was not unreasonable to expect something of a revolution. Perhaps the A50 isn’t for the truly discerning audiophile, but it is a refinement of everything Astro has become synonymous with: style, comfort, flexibility, and customization. As long as they continue to include quality in that list, Astro’s likely to come out on top.
In this city, you can’t walk, saunter, or sashay 50 feet without running into a drag queen. We are a queen-heavy city, and we love it. But ask the average Joe who their favorite faux queen is, and all you might get is a glazed look or a raised eyebrow.
Faux queens are drag queens stuck inside a woman’s body — women pretending to be men pretending to be women. A simple enough idea that got its due in 1995 when Diet Popstitute and Rooby Tuesday started the now-legendary Faux Queen Pageant. After a seven year hiatus, the tradition continued on September 16, bringing lashed lovelies from the deepest reaches of space who would give veteran drag queens a run for their money.
I got a chance to interview Bea Dazzler as she was briefly visiting earth from planet Faux Queen. I’ll be honest, I never met a extra-terrestrial who loved women and animals so much.
Candidates in the District 5 supervisorial race – where one recent poll showed almost half of voters undecided about a field of imperfect candidates seeking to represent the city’s most progressive district – have been sharpening their attacks on one another, learning lessons about hardball politics, and fighting over key endorsements.
Christina Olague, the incumbent appointed by Mayor Ed Lee earlier this year, has been taking flak in recent debates from competitors who are highlighting the schism between her progressive history and her more conservative recent votes and alliances. That gulf was what caused Matt Gonzalez to pull his endorsement of Olague this summer and give it to Julian Davis.
London Breed has now suffered a similar setback when US Sen. Dianne Feinstein revoked her endorsement following colorful comments Breed made to the Fog City Journal, which were repeated in the San Francisco Chronicle, blasting her one-time political patron Willie Brown. Breed, whose politics have been to the right of the district, seemed to be trying to assert her independence and win over progressive voters who have different worldviews than her more conservative endorsers.
But she may have gone a bit too far when she told Fog City Journal’s Luke Thomas: “You think I give a fuck about a Willie Brown at the end of the day when it comes to my community and the shit that people like Rose Pak and Willie Brown continue to do and try to control things. They don’t fucking control me – you go ask them why wouldn’t you support London because she don’t do what the hell I tell her to do. I don’t do what no motherfucking body tells me to do.”
Shortly thereafter, Breed said she got a call from Feinstein’s people withdrawing the endorsement. “There were just some concerns about the kind of language I used in the article,” Breed told us.
Sources say Brown has been in payback mode ever since, urging Feinstein and others to stop supporting Breed and switch to Olague. Neither Brown nor Feinstein returned our calls. On the record, Breed was contrite when we spoke with her and reluctant to say anything bad about Brown or Feinstein, except to offer us the vague, “There are a lot of people who respect and like me, and they don’t like what they see happening.”
Breed went after Olague hard during a Sept. 18 debate sponsored by the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council and other groups, blasting Olague for her ties to Brown, Lee, and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, claiming Olague is too beholden to that crew and D5 needs a more independent supervisor.
Asked to respond to the attack during the debate, Olague said, “I won’t dignify that with a response.” But it seems clear to anyone watching the race that Olague has been getting lots of support from Lee, Pak, and Brown and the political consultants who do their bidding, David Ho and Enrique Pearce, which is one reason many progressives have been withholding their support.
The Breed campaign this week trumpeted its endorsement by three prominent progressive activists: Debra Walker, Roma Guy, and Alix Rosenthal. But it has been Davis that has captured the endorsements of the most progressive individuals and organizations, including a big one this week: the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, which gave Davis is sole endorsement even though he’s straight and Olague is from the LGBT community.
Davis also snagged the number one endorsement of the San Francisco Tenants Union, a big one for D5, as well as the sole endorsements of Gonzalez, former Democratic Party Chair Aaron Peskin, and Sup. John Avalos. Assembly member Tom Ammiano also endorsed the Davis campaign, adding that to Ammiano’s earlier endorsement of John Rizzo, the other solid progressive in the race. Rizzo also got the Sierra Club and the number one ranking by San Francisco Tomorrow.
But Olague is enjoying quite a bit of union support, including snagging the sole endorsement of the San Francisco Labor Council, whose members in the trades like her controversial vote on the 8 Washington project more than progressives or her competitors, who all opposed the deal. Olague was also endorsed by the United Educators of San Francisco and California Nurses Association.
The biggest union of city workers, SEIU Local 1021, gave its unranked endorsements to Davis, Olague, and Rizzo, as did Sup. David Campos. Sup. Jane Kim – who has also occasionally parted ways with progressives after Ho and Pearce ran her campaign against Walker – gave Olague an early endorsement, but late this week also extended an endorsement to Davis.
“As someone who has championed rank-choice voting, it is important for me that progressives are thoughtful about how we strategize for victory. I have known Julian Davis a long time, and I believe that he would be a strong leader that fights for progressive values that District 5 cares about, including sustainable streets and livable neighborhoods,” Kim said in a statement given to the Davis campaign.
Another important endorsement in D5 is that of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which carried a faint whiff of controversy this year. The group gave Olague its number one endorsement and Davis its number two, but some SFBC members have secretly complained to us that the fix was in and that Davis actually got more votes from SFBC members, which most people thought was how its endorsements are decided.
SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum told us she wouldn’t reveal who got the most member votes, but she did say that the SFBC Board of Directors actually decides the endorsements based on several factors. “The member vote is one of the factors the board took into consideration,” she said, listing a candidate’s record, relationship with SFBC, personal history, and other factors. “Nothing special was done in that vote, by any means.”
SFBC has been playing nice with Mayor Lee in the last couple years, despite his broken promise of getting the critical yet controversial Fell/Oak separated bike lanes approved by the SFMTA, which he first said would be done by the end of 2011, then by the end of 2012, but which lately seemed to be dragging into 2013.
At SFBC’s urging, Olague recently wrote a pair of letters to the SFMTA urging quicker action on the project, and it seems to have worked: Shahum said a vote on that project has now been scheduled for Oct. 16, and she’s hopeful that it might now be underway by the end of the year after all. As she said, “We’re thrilled.”
BTW, in case you’re curious, the Guardian’s endorsements come out on Oct. 3.
As-yet unreviewed due to various reasons (two being: aversions to PG-13 horror flicks, and Channing Tatum overload … seriously, guy, take a vacation!), but most certainly opening today, are House At the End of the Street(alas, not the House Hunters suspense thriller we’ve all been waiting for) and high-school reunion comedy 10 Years. I didn’t make it to my 10-year reunion but I feel confident saying that NOBODY in my class (go Tigers!) showed up with Magic Mike-style abs.
But wait, there’s more! Read on for the rest of the best (and meh-st) of the week.
Hello I Must Be Going Blindsided by her recent divorce, 35-year-old Amy (Melanie Lynskey) flees New York City for quaint Westport, Conn., where she nurses her wounds, mostly by sleeping and watching Marx Brothers movies. Amy’s protracted moping rankles her perfectionist mother (Blythe Danner, bringing nuance to what could have been a clichéd character) and concerns her workaholic father (John Rubenstein). Dad’s trying to land a big client so he can “make back some of the money we lost in the market” — a subtle aside in Sarah Koskoff’s script that suggests Amy’s parents aren’t as well-heeled as they used to be, despite the ongoing renovations to their swanky home, catered dinners, and expensive art purchases. Money woes are just one of Amy’s many concerns, though, and when a distraction presents itself in the form of 19-year-old Jeremy (Girls‘ Christopher Abbott), she finds herself sneaking out at night, making out in her mom’s car, smoking weed, and basically behaving like a teenager herself. As directed by indie actor turned director Todd Louiso (2002’s Love Liza), Hello I Must Be Going is a nicely contained, relatable (self-loathing: we’ve all been there) character study — and props for casting the endearing Lynskey, so often seen in supporting roles, as the film’s messy, complex lead. (1:35) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQbM4bb6Zpk
How to Survive a PlagueDavid France’s documentary chronicles the unprecedented impact political activism had on the course of AIDS in the US — drastically curtailing its death toll within a few years despite considerable institutional indifference and downright hostility. As the epidemic here first surfaced in, and decimated, the gay male community, much of Reagan America (particularly in religious quarters) figured the death sentence was deserved. The President himself infamously refrained from even saying the word “AIDS” publicly until his final year of office, after thousands had died. Both terrified and outraged, the gay community took it upon themselves to demand treatment, education, and research. Most of this urgent 1980s overview is concerned with the rise of ACT-UP, whose angry young men successfully lobbied and shamed corporate, academic, medical, and pharmaceutical bodies into action, with the result that by the mid-90s new drugs existed that made this dreaded diagnosis no longer a necessarily terminal one. France is a journalist who’s been covering AIDS practically since day one, and his first feature (made with the help of numerous first-rate collaborators) is authoritative and engrossing. Just don’t expect much (or really any) attention paid to the contributions made by SF or other activist hotspots — like many a gay documentary, this one hardly notices there’s a world (or gay community) outside Manhattan. (1:49) (Dennis Harvey)
Somewhere BetweenFive years ago, when filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton adopted a baby girl from China, she was inspired to make Somewhere Between, a doc about the experiences of other Chinese adoptees. The film profiles four teenage girls, including Berkeley resident Fang “Jenni” Lee, whose American lives couldn’t be more different (one girl has two moms and attends a fancy prep school; another, raised by devout Christians, dreams of playing her violin at the Grand Ole Opry) but who share similar feelings about their respective adoptions. The film follows the girls on trips to London (as part of an organized meeting of fellow adoptees), Spain (to chat with people interested in adopting Chinese babies, and where the question “What does it feel like to be abandoned?” is handled with astonishing composure), and China (including one teen’s determined quest to track down her birth family). Highly emotional at times, Somewhere Between benefits from its remarkably mature and articulate subjects, all of whom have much to say about identity and personal history. Lee and filmmaker Goldstein Knowlton will appear in person at select opening shows; visit www.landmarktheatres.com for more information. (1:28) (Cheryl Eddy)
Trouble with the CurveBaseball scout Gus (Clint Eastwood) relies on his senses to sign players to the Atlanta Braves, and his roster of greats is highly regarded by everyone — save a sniveling climber named Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who insists his score-keeping software can replace any scout. Gus’ skill in his field are preternatural, but with his senses dwindling, his longtime-friend Pete (a brilliant John Goodman) begs Gus’ daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to go with him — to see how bad the situation is and maybe drive him around. Ultimately, the film’s about the rift between career woman Mickey, and distant dad Gus, with some small intrusions from Justin Timberlake as Mickey’s romantic interest. Trouble with the Curve is a phrase used to describe batters who can’t hit a breaking ball and it’s a nuance — if an incontrovertible one — unobservable to the untrained eye. While Mickey and Gus stumble messily toward a better relationship (with a reasonable amount of compromise), Curve begins to look a bit like The Blind Side (2009), trading the church and charity for therapy and baggage. But what it offers is sweet and worthwhile, if you’re tolerant of the sanitized psychology and personality-free aesthetics. But it’s a movie about love and compromise — and if you love baseball you won’t have trouble forgiving some triteness, especially when Timberlake, the erstwhile Boo-Boo, gets to make a Yogi Berra joke. (1:51) (Sara Vizcarrondo)
In a way, his first film, the experimental documentary Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006), did for Paul Festa what years of classical musical training and fiction writing never yet had: it put him squarely before the eyes and ears of the world as a serious artist. Ironically, he’d never trained as a filmmaker. He was following a musical muse, to be sure, but down an unfamiliar path.
Asking how we listen — why we listen — to music, Apparition gathered an eclectic assortment of interview-subjects (friends, drag queens, his Juilliard mentor Albert Fuller, even his old college prof, renowned critic-scholar Harold Bloom), had them strap on headphones, and then describe their reactions to Olivier Messiaen’s Apparition de l’église éternelle, the composer’s unrelentingly intense 1932 piece for organ. It was a simple notion that produced complex, and completely absorbing, results.
That unscheduled journey through film has been to the benefit of audiences literally around the world, as Apparition not only received awards and enthusiastic reviews but also toured widely in the lead-up to the centenary of Messiaen’s birth in 2008. In April of that year, it screened at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral as part of a larger program that included Festa on violin, performing the West Coast premiere of Messiaen’s 1933 Fantasy for violin and piano (only published in 2007).
It also marked a vital new turn in Festa’s career, which continues this weekend with the world premiere of Tie It Into My Hand, his new experimental documentary and a fascinating exploration of the artistic life, as rollickingly entertaining as it is insightful and stirring. The premise is again cunningly straightforward: ask a wide range of artists (but no violinists) to give the filmmaker a violin lesson. (After many years of serious study at Juilliard and elsewhere, Festa had retired from playing music in the wake of a hand injury. In the film, he attempts passages from Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.)
Going from the insular world of Juilliard, with its disciplinary rigor and institutional certitudes, to the wide-open prairie of independent filmmaking, is not a typical trajectory for an artist. Festa’s work both expresses and investigates precisely those tensions — between professionalism and amateurism, mentorship and independence, success and failure, glamor and alienation, opinion and taste, beauty and pain — stirred up in his own unconventional path through life and art. Among the film’s invariably interesting interlocutors are many local artists as well as prominent national figures, but the variety lies as much in the breadth of artistic disciplines represented: actors, drag queens, performance artists (including an uncompromisingly blunt but ever-precise Penny Arcade), poets, musicians (barring only violinists), writers (Daniel Handler, for instance, an old friend from middle and high school years in San Francisco), at least one historian, dancers, theater directors, and playwrights (ACT’s Carey Perloff and Theatre Rhinoceros’s John Fisher being examples in both categories), and painters (including the last recorded interview with the late William Theophilus Brown, for whom Festa had previously modeled and who, as part of the project, produced three color drawings of the violinist-filmmaker).
“It’s a combination of people with whom I’ve had a long acquaintance, some people I had just met at [the Yaddo] artist colony, or wherever else, and then people I was referred to. Apparition of the Eternal Church was really skewed more toward people in my circle. There were only two people in Apparition of the Eternal Church who I met for the first time at the interview.”
If Apparition of the Eternal Church asked questions about the perception of art, and specifically music, for different people, Tie It Into My Hand asks questions about the artistic impulse itself. But the conversations, culled from roughly 120 interviews, range widely, and Festa’s shrewd editing clusters the themes that arise in purposefully harmonic and dissonant clusters, while threading certain leitmotifs throughout. Tie It Into My Handscreens tonight and Sat/22 as part of a triptych of short films (the full program is discussed below), culminating Festa’s theater residency at ODC.
The filmmaker talked about his process, and his circuitous artistic career, while attending to some final color corrections at ODC a couple of days ago. Sitting in the control booth at the back of ODC’s theater, Festa admits he’s not gotten enough sleep of late, but speaks thoughtfully about the necessity of bridging strikingly different artistic terrains.
SFBGYou were saying how this project transitioned from a theater piece to a film?
Paul Festa How it went from a theater piece into this film. It’s funny. Carey Perloff has this wonderful line in the film about how men have their nervous breakdowns ten years earlier than women. Well, I had mine right on schedule, six months from my 40th birthday. It had to do with the theater piece, and it had to do with the death of three of four really central mentors to me. Three people died in a four-year period. The first one was George Dusheck, who used to be a reporter here in San Francisco and he dated my mother. He became a really central father figure and mentor. He moved up to Mendocino and introduced me to this whole group of amazing artists and musicians up there. And he died in 2005.
And then Albert Fuller, who you see in this film, who was also the star of Apparition of the Eternal Church, who was the great mentor whose philosophy and whose teaching about music, ostensibly about music, is really what created me as a filmmaker. His imagination about music, his harpsichord music — it had nothing to do with opera or ballet, it wasn’t like he was in the theater, but he had his own theater going on up here. Exposing that to us, he was the origin, and he was the first interview of Apparition of the Eternal Church. And in a sense that whole film is an expression or a crystallization of his teaching. And he died in 2007.
And then this woman Juliette died in 2009. And about three weeks later I had a conversation [about the proposed theater piece at ODC] with a guy who had helped me put on the Grace Cathedral evening. And he kind of looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What are you talking about? First you did music, and you didn’t make a debut or cut a record. And then you were a writer and you didn’t finish the novel.”
He basically accused me of being a dilettante. He said, “Wow. You’re middle-aged. Do you know that? Are you aware that it’s difficult to get funders and audiences and everyone else to take you seriously?” He didn’t phrase it in quite such a judgmental way; that’s how I took it. He was more amazed that I had the nerve to do that. He’s very wealthy, and he said, “I would be concerned about my own security. Do you have no concern for your own security?”
Well, that’s how I had my nervous breakdown. I became morbidly concerned with my own security. “Holy shit. What have I been doing? Have I been asleep for the last 25 years?” And so at that point I stopped sleeping. There were a lot of practical things [concerning me]. One of the practical things was you can’t even apply to an artist residency or a lot of different things unless you have work that is less than four years old. And Apparition of the Eternal Church, my only film, was about to age-out of that system. So I’d lay awake just trying to think my way out of this disaster that I had somehow engineered for myself. You know, kind of the worst-case nervous-breakdown anxieties.
And I thought, “OK, I’ll make a film, and I’ll introduce the theater piece with this film, and I’ll sort of kill two birds with one stone or I’ll sort of rescue the theater piece and rescue my career with this movie. And it’ll be a silent film comedy, and I’ll accompany it live on the violin. So I’ll keep all the things in the air at once. Kind of like the Grace Cathedral thing, I’ll finally bring everything together. So that became this silent film called The Glitter Emergency, which is set to the second and third movement of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. So the idea was that that would be the prelude to the theater piece.
What wound up happening was that it ended up being the conclusion to a triptych of films called Three Short Films by Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky. The first of which is this thing. The second of which is a ballet fantasy, which we’ll watch a text-based storyboard of, with me playing live, on [Fri/21]. And then there’s The Glitter Emergency. So it’s one kind of enormous short film and two 20-minute short films.
So that’s how it all came about. And every step of the way, ODC was right with me. When I told [former ODC Theater Director] Rob [Bailis] the theater piece had really evolved and would now be a series of short films, he was totally down. ODC has been a really incredible partner for the last three years.
SFBG Tie It Into My Hand does have elements of self-examination of course, which resonates with the context you describe, but part of why it is so very approachable and compelling is the way it invariably goes much further in what it explores. Did you have a sense of what you’d find?
PF It was like Apparition of the Eternal Church in that it was this big experiment. I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen when I walked into these lessons. I mean, I had an idea: I wanted to accomplish what Apparition of the Eternal Church had accomplished, which was to get people to forget that there was a camera on them. When the headphones went on, I realized that’s why you can watch Apparition of the Eternal Church and just watch talking heads for 35 of those minutes: because they’re doing something, and responding to something.
When you get the download from people, usually they become very cerebral and very careful and they speak in measured tones — and these people were kind of losing it, and that was fun to watch. So I wanted to give them something to do, and that’s what the violin lesson did — and it involved music without the headphone conceit. But also I learned, from everywhere I’d been to music school, that the best way to get someone talking is to have them teach. I heard so many great stories from my teachers.
So I hoped, and I think I was right, it would turn out to be a really productive pretext or device for an interview.
SFBG I would agree. In addition to longer conversations, there are just so many wonderful lines in the film; some very funny, others very perceptive, and often both.
PFWhat are some you remember?
SFBG For instance, one question was, “Is that as painful to play as it is to listen to?”
PF[Laughs] And the answer to that question is, actually, yes. Thank you, Mink Stole.
Originally built as an airport for flying boats, Treasure Island’s man-made four square kilometers went on to house the Navy, and now is home to wineries, environmental hazards, electronic music from time to time, 2,500 people — most of them low-income, many of them college students — and tons of unused, abandoned buildings that capture the imagination of artists (check out this video from Tiny Town Productions we posted last year.)
The latest creative type to get inspired is Matt Fisher, a photographer who captured the isle’s luminous creepiness in his shots. Now that there’s plans to build more housing on the isle, Fisher is working on turning the images into a book to capture a moment in time and structures that may not be around much longer. We caught up with him about his tangles with pollution, ghosts, and about why he didn’t shoot any of Treasure Island’s living inhabitants.
San Francisco Bay Guardian: What inspired you to take on Treasure Island?
Matt Fisher: About six years ago, a friend of mine started working for the Treasure Island Development Authority, which oversees all the properties on the island. Through visits out there and seeing some of the buildings left over from the Navy’s occupation, I became intrigued with the story behind the island. I ended up doing a short-form documentary for Current TV on the island and the location has been lingering with me ever since. I watched it become more populated with residents and businesses, and about two years ago, I finally started taking my camera out there. Current plans for redevelopment to turn Treasure Island into an eco-friendly city had me wondering what would happen to these tarnished old remnants of the island’s past. Would they be forgotten like so many other things? That was when I decided to document the island and the remaining structures as thoroughly as I could.
SFBG: There are thousands of people living out there and I don’t see any of them in your shots — why didn’t you shoot the inhabited portions of the island?
MF: I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon when a human is added to the landscape of a picture, whether it is a painting, video, or photo. Immediately, it seems like your attention is directed at the figure. Humans love to look at other humans. Take the human out of the picture and you start realizing elements of the landscape again, the buildings and the objects. I really tried to keep people out of many of these photos for that reason. The landscape on Treasure Island is so bizarre, I really tried to portray that desolate and eerie feeling to the viewers.
SFBG: I know the island is crazy polluted — did you run into any dicey situations involving waste out there?
MF: I personally didn’t run into any problems out there but most of the pollution problems come from invisible culprits, so maybe I did and just don’t know it yet. Asbestos is running rampant out there and taking out a lot of buildings. Low levels of radiation are also a factor and now the recent news of a botched radiological assessment from the past has the Island’s future looking sketchy again. I really felt like this was a critical time to do this project with all the uncertainties swirling around its growth over the last five years. My hope is that this book can serve as a historical reference to immortalize this mysterious landmass before it’s too late.
SFBG: Ghosts?
MF: I am sad to report I experienced no ghosts. The attached Yerba Buena Island may have a few lurking around though. Indian burial artifacts and other human remains have been found out there while building the Bay Bridge back in the late 1930s. They found a mammoth’s tusk as well!
You can’t talk contemporary American bass music without starting right off at Kingdom, a.k.a. LA’s Ezra Rubin. (He appears here Sat/22 at the Lights Down Low party at Public Works, in a bananas lineup that includes Kim Ann Foxman, Miracles Club, jozif, and MikeQ.)
Two years ago, his bounce-rave masterpiece “Mindreader” and the low-creeping, R&Bleepy That Mystic EP popped the top of critics’ lists and club faves, and injected some mad energy into the scene on these shores. That was followed by last year’s acclaimed Dreama EP, which blueprinted some interesting bass possibilities, swinging from cinematic vogue-warps to post-grime gamer spaciness.
Kingdom also provided a crucial link between London’s fantastic label-club Night Slugs scene, in which he came up in the late ’00s, and the somewhat scattered US bass scene that operated outside the Diploshere. His Fade to Mind touring collective and label, launched with Prince William, became a focal point for underground American fractal-bass musicmakers like Nguzunguzu and Total Freedom who could hype a club through their disparate styles, but didn’t mind getting a little arty about it.
Although Kingdom seems to tour constantly and has appeared here a few times over the last couple years, it’s been a minute since he released any new material. I wanted to catch up with him over email about what he’s got cooking, and his feelings about the current direction of the American bass music scene. Also, who cuts his hair?
SFBGThat FadeFM live set you dropped in July hit me as a bit darker than expected. We’re all eagerly awaiting the follow-up to the Dreama EP — are you being drawn in a darker or harder direction, and might your future output reflect that? Can you give us any news about upcoming releases?
KIngdom The new tracks I’m working on are just more extreme! I’ll be releasing two projects through Fade to Mind this fall. My new solo tracks are darker and more minimal than my previous releases, and on the other end, the second project will be more melodic than any of my previous work, and will feature vocals from Fade to Mind’s first official vocalist, Kelela Mizanekristos. Can’t wait for the world to hear our first song together!
SFBGThe Night Slugs scene maintains its high level of quality, but its been kicking around for what seems like an Internet eternity — a lot of other bass labels have faded in the meantime. What’s the current environment for the Night Slugs (and your own personal) sound — do you find it’s still considered “underground”? Has a different generation taken to it?
KIngdom I think it’s timeless and will always weave in and out of what resonates with a certain type of music fan. Everyone in the whole Fade to Mind-Night Slugs continuum is producing different types music, music that is true to who they are, so regardless of passing trends the music stays true to itself and its maker.
SFBGHow has the experience of being a part of the Fade to Mind collective and label been? It’s been pretty amazing to watch artists like Nguzunguzu and MikeQ gain some fame in the broader hip hop and dance worlds …
Kingdom Part of? I created the label, alongside Prince William, and its the best feeling in the world to see them doing so well. MikeQ and Nguzunguzu are also close friends from before the label existed, so that makes it even more rewarding.
SFBGHow do you feel about the “trap” moniker being attached to a lot of trippy bass music these days, including music that’s only peripherally influenced by the original Houston trap scene? I’m finding a lot of Night Slugs joints being tagged with the trap genre label, and wondering if that might help wider audiences grasp what the sound is in the dubstep-EDM pop world of these United States…. which may be a blessing or a curse.
Kingdom Many members of the collective have been listening to southern rap music forever and drawing influence from it. When people try to ride any microgenre it makes us all cringe, especially one so terribly and insultingly named. Girl Unit really pioneered the sound a couple years back, but he gave it his own twist and made sure it was produced impeccably. Most of the stuff being made now has no production value and you can tell by listening that it’s made by former hard electro and dubstep producers.
SFBGI think a big part of your image is your great (and consistent) look — can you give us some drop on any labels or designers you favor? Who cuts your hair?
Kingdom Haha! I mainly support my friends who run their own labels like Cassette Playa, Hood By Air, Telfar, and Gerlan Jeans. Aside from that I just hunt through garbage really. As for my hair, that’s a trade secret, but I by no means invented this hair cut.
SFBGYou released your own genius twist on a vogue ha track with “Stalker Ha” — and I’m sure you’ve witnessed the rise of vogue beats to the fore of cutting-edge bass music. Can you tell me a bit about the genesis of that track, and how much influence vogue beats have had over you productions?
Kingdom I wanted to make a scary and cinematic “Ha” beat. The original bootleg demo I made had Missy’s rap verse from Monica’s song “Knock Knock” which is about a dude bugging her and trying to come up to her house begging her to take him back, so it fit with the stalker vibe of the song. For the final version I stripped out the rap. Vogue beats have been an influence on my music forever, it’s crazy raw energetic music, but also off-kilter and jagged in its own way.
SFBGThe last time I saw you was in October 2010, you were playing Mustache Mondays in LA. And I was kind of blown away at how great the combination of a mostly gay freak crowd and your beats was. Do you find yourself playing many queer-oriented parties outside of NYC or LA? If so, how has the reaction been?
Kingdom I haven’t been booked at many queer events recently, mostly straight clubs, and mixed events, too. I find I get a good reaction from both scenes!
SFBG Who are you listening to a lot right now?
Kingdom R&B is always on my playlist, loving the resurgence of a lot of my favorites. Brandy has new material out right now, Missy just dropped two new singles with Timbaland, Ciara’s new song “Sorry” is an anthem, and the new Jeremih mixtape is crazy. Also listening to Beek and Divoli Severe from MikeQ’s Qweenbeat label a lot, as well as the masters we just got back for the next Fade to Mind release, which consists of five new compositions by Fatima Al Qadiri.
Where to watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers game with Idaho State today (Saturday, 9/22/2012)
Well, it was beginning to be a desperation The former Jean Dibble and I couldn’t figure out how to watch Saturday’s Nebraska football game with Idaho State on television.
We had faithfully watched the first three games on national television, a real treat, as the Huskers started up a e 2-1 record. Jean and I are both graduates of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, our grandson Nicholas Perez of Santa Barbara is a freshman mechanical engineering student at Nebraska and has season tickets, and we are now even more faithful fans.
We mentioned our predicament to Richard Boyce, a fellow Cornhusker fan aho is cheerfully addicted to college football, at the Que Syrah Wine Bar on Thursday night. (That’s where the action is on Thursday nights, with Val
crafting excellent Barcelona-style tapas and Stephanie rolling out the flights of specialty wines from small production wineries.)
Richard had the answer: watch the game at Final Final, the neighborhood sports bar at 2990 Baker St. across from the Presidio. Meanwhile, our daughter, Katrina Perez, who has suddenly become a rabid Husker fan, checked the Nebraska alumni site and emailed us the local “watch site” for watching all Nebraska football games. It was Final Final. (The name comes from the days the soldiers got their final drink before heading back to their barracks in the Presidio after a night on the town.)
Amazing. We have been in San Francisco since 1964 and we never knew there was a sports bar featuring Nebraska games.
So I called the bar to check the reports. (I have always been leery of the alleged Herb Caen rule: never check the item, you might lose it.) The owner Arnie Prien answered his own phone, just like any good Nebraskan. He confirmed the reports. It turns out that Arnie is the real thing. He comes from Lyons, Nebraska, and graduated from the university in 1964. He has been running Final Final for the past 35 years loyally broadcasts Nebraska football games every Saturday. The NU faithful, he reports, come from all over the Bay Area to see the games and enjoy NU camaderie. The game starts at 12:30 p.m. but he warns people to come an hour early to get a seat and first shot at the free popcorn and inexpensive beer.
As the Nebraska song says, “There is no place like Nebraska.” Even in San Francisco. Go Big Red!
Final Final
2990 Baker St.
San Francisco 94123
415-931-7800
P,.S. The alumni site lists three other “watch sites” in the Bay Area. Jack’s Brewing Company in Fremont. Legends and Heroes in Concord. And Knuckles Sports Bar in Monterey,
Watch the Huskers on these four Bay Area Watch sites: http://bayareahuskers.org/
Placas: The Most Dangerous Tattoo explores the numerology of loyalty
“What’s in a number,” asks the man onstage, a former gang elder undergoing a laser tattoo-removal procedure. He is middle-aged, weary-looking, and sports a huge number one emblazoned down one forearm. Americans believe in being number one. A three down the other, reference to the holy trinity. Taken together, the number thirteen—a denotation of his gang affiliation. Numerous other tattoos covering his arms, chest, back, even his neck.
“My placas are my history,” he explains, somewhat ruefully. Removing them, a condition of his parole, is an arduous process, a physical equivalence to the mental challenge of rebuilding a life free from criminal activity.
“It’s not the laser that hurts,” he’ll assert later in the play. “It’s the memories.”
Played by Ricardo Salinas of Culture Clash, himself a former Missionite of Salvadoran extraction, the character of Fausto is as tormented as his German counterpart. True, he’s made no visible deal with the devil, but the demons of his past refuse to stay away, and those that tempt his son Edgar (Ricky Saenz) to follow his footsteps into a life of crime are all too present. In a mean twist, Edgar’s solidarity lies not with the Sureño gang of his father’s misspent youth, but rather with the Norteños in whose neighborhood he has grown up, and when he receives his first placa, it’s a bold Roman numeral XIV.
Angry with his father for his abandonment of his nuclear family (due to a nine-year prison term), eager to embrace the “family” of the neighborhood gang, Edgar embodies the contradictory petulance and naïve optimism of adolescence, a likable youth with a wobbly sense of consequence. Meanwhile his strong-willed mother Claudia (Cristina Frias)—herself a former chola who still favors tight jeans and leopard-print blouses cut low to reveal her Virgen de Guadalupe tattoo on her chest — attempts to broker kinship between them despite her own reservations about Fausto as a role model.
Focusing mainly on the dynamics of family, in and out of the gangs, Mission District-based playwright Paul S. Flores spent months interviewing former and current gang members, capturing the cadence of their speech, the fierceness of their loyalties. With Placas: The Most Dangerous Tattoo, he limits the scope of the complex historia to a small circle of characters: Fausto’s extended family, Edgar’s gang familia, a smattering of officials in charge of managing various aspects of Fausto’s rehabilitation.
Flores mostly avoids politicizing his characters, though shades of illegal immigration and exile color their everyday struggles, and he also studiously avoids passing moral judgment on his fallible protagonists, choosing instead to explore their often overlooked decency and sense of personal responsibility. The play ends on a downbeat note which feels somewhat rushed, unsatisfying, but does leave open the possibility of a companion piece or sequel, while illuminating and illustrating some of the shadowy complexities of gang influence in the Mission with stage lights and temporary tattoos.
Stanza Coffee is expanding past its Haight Street, hole-in-the-wall roots and into the competitive SF coffee scene, with a badass, Bay Area exclusive espresso machine and a new location in the caffeinated-cool Mission district opening next month.
Part-owner and general manager of Stanza, young Aaron Caddel approached the vacant Haight Street building almost a year ago. Stanza Coffee opened in April, serving Redlands-based roaster Augie’s Coffee to a less-than-frenzied reception. A new coffee place in San Francisco isn’t exactly anything to write home about, after all. However, the quickly increasing business developments indicates good news for the little coffee bar that could.
While the shop’s decor has a unique dose of rustic glam more akin to a wine bar, featuring heavy red curtains, burnt red walls, wood floors, and a series of wine barrel cafe tables positioned next to the window, Caddel envisions a battalion of interior, exterior, and branding changes for a more comfortable environment. He foresees a lighter, more cohesive color scheme for the dark walls, tables that are more conducive to laptop work, a brighter outside sign, window art with Stanza’s new logo, and maybe even some couches for meandering coffee shop chit-chat.
Perhaps the most dramatic of developments is Stanza’s upcoming addition of a new, Mission district location at 3126 16th Street by early October. While Stanza’s Haight location stocks both roasts and a wine tasting room, Caddel assures me that the store is really “a coffee shop, not a wine bar.” Indeed, it seems that the rack of locally-sourced MJ Lord’s wines lining the back wall of the shop is merely a pleasant afterthought. The coffee bar menu, including a steaming cup of Ethiopian pour-over accompanied by a Mission Beach Cafe golden raisin-stuffed, vegan bran muffin, or the sweet, slow-drip-cold-brew iced coffee is enough. Luckily for self-proclaimed “coffee purist” Caddel, the Mission front will be more concentrated on the caffeine.
In fact, the Stanza team recently purchased the sole Bay Area distribution rights to the infamous Slayer espresso machine, a hulking, expensive, and wholly badass piece of coffee instrumentation manufactured in Seattle. Caddel tells me this new location will be much more focused on hosting a comfortable (think couches and a back patio) and community-oriented environment: while Haight Ashbury’s combination of hippie-punks and tourists make for a fairly transient customer base, the excited manager can barely contain his enthusiasm when describing the steady clientele he anticipates at the new location.
Caddel recently closed down a potentially lucrative Union Square pop-up cart due to the fast-paced business’ quick turnover time and ensuing lack in presentation and quality, a product degradation that he says simply “hurt [his] soul.” The vision for the new storefront focuses equally on product and presentation in order to give coffee the contemplation and appreciation the Stanza team believes it’s due.
Crafting DIY-style is already pretty punk rock — but combine it with actual live tunes, and you’ve got yourself the Rock Make Street Festival, a street celebration of music and art.
This past Saturday, 9/15, the Indian Summer sunshine rays beamed down on Capp and 18th street in the Mission, as festival par-tay goers munched on Indian burritos from the Kasa Indian food truck, ogled handmade wood ties by Wood Thumb and of course, listened to music by local bands like Permanent Collection, a punk pop band that took the stage and added some seriously rocking moments to the festival. Rock Make: a true indie celebration of what makes the Bay Area so downright beautiful.
No lines? Space to move and breathe? This can’t be a San Francisco street festival, can it?
But it was. I made a dramatic entrance at last weekend when I was shooting the 55-year old Armenian Food Festival. I floated in like a cartoon character, led by the nose. Yes indeed, I defied all laws of gravity and let my senses guide me to the sizzling kebab meats and free-flowing draft beer, not to mention the whirling dancers and, of course, Armenian eye candy.
My foodie senses were tingling, and I wasn’t the only one. The event began as a get-together for the Armenian community, but more and more people come every year to visit the festival, which is tucked away in Ingleside Heights. And bonus: the event is a benefit St. Gregory’s Church and the KZV Armenian School.
While I did most of my socializing with the kebab stand and beer truck, I did get festival board members VJ Darakjian and Zareh Sarkissian on-camera for an interview. They were big on the fact that “first and foremost, we have something for everyone.” I think they’re right — the night was pretty much summed up when I ran into an old co-worker.
It’s no surprise that we have days and weeks and months that are specifically designated to honoring things, like MLK day or Breast Cancer Awareness Month. To honor something, you have to name it and then give it some space in your life.
Sometimes we forget to give things space. I used to think days like Mother’s Day were just crafty inventions of the greeting card industry, but that’s too simplistic a view. Mother’s Day reminds us to show our mothers some love, and the sad — or maybe just practical — truth is that most of us need that reminder. Sure, we should be doing that every day, but we get all caught up in whatever it is that we get caught up in. If we want to say anything about the greeting card (and mega-billion-dollar gift) industry, we can say it capitalizes on our lack of day-to-day presence with the ones we love.
But it’s ok. We’re human, we need reminders. And if we’re smart, we’ll remind ourselves of lots of things, and often.
So here’s a big one: September is National Yoga Month. No, really.
A few years ago, the Department of Health and Human Services made this declaration to raise awareness around yoga and get people hip to the practice. This means we get to honor the practice of being present by being present to the practice for an entire month. (Say that 108 times fast.)
Even when we are passionate about something in our lives, whether it be a craft, an activity, or a contemplative practice, we can do it so much that we forget to honor it. Then, things lose luster, they lose oomph. If you’re already a regular practitioner — of yoga or anything, really — it’s a good time to consider what you do to honor your practice on a regular basis. Do you set a specific time aside for the thing you love each day or each week? Do you have a place in your home that you designate to it, an altar or bookshelf or a small strip of floor between the sofa and the wall heater?
Yoga, origami, calculus … honor the thing you love this month by naming it and giving it some extra space.
If you’re a celebrant of yoga month, there’s plenty to keep you on your toes. Check out the new listings section below.
Around the Bend Upcoming yoga and conscious living events
**The yoga clothing store Athleta is offering a bunch of free classes this month, including two this weekend: Core Vinyasa with Debbie James and Chi Walk-Run Technique (OK, that’s not yoga, but it sounds cool). Check out the schedule here.
**Did you love Wanderlust in Tahoe? Did you never make it there? Either way, the Wanderlust folks are bringing their yoga love to the city this weekend. The one-day benefit (for Yoga Aid) event features a host of local talent including MC Yogi, Les Leventhal, Pete Guinosso, and Sianna Sherman. Sat/23, 12:30-4:30, free (but donations to Yoga Aid requested), Little Marina Green, SF. sf.wanderlustfestival.com
**If you want to work hot springs into your celebration plan, head to Harbin for a sweet and affordable retreat with Pedro Franco and Chrisandra Fox. The theme of the weekend: connecting with your inner peace and calm. Oh, yes. Fri-Sun, $480, Harbin Hot Springs, Middletown. Info here
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Have an event, story, or suggestion? Just want to say hi? Send me a note at OnTheOmFront@gmail.com
Karen Macklin is a yoga teacher and multi-genre writer in San Francisco. She’s been up-dogging her way down the yogic path for over a decade, and is a lifelong lover of the word. To learn more about her teaching schedule and writing life, visit her site at www.karenmacklin.com.
The latest Forbes 400 is out, the list of the richest Americans, and a record number (according to my annual record-keeping) now live in San Francisco. This is a city with 18 people on the top-billionaires list — and since the list cuts off at $1.1 billion, there are a lot of really, really rich San Franciscans who didn’t quite make it this year. School Board candidate Sam Rodriguez told us his research shows that there are 80,000 millionaires in the city, meaning one in ten San Franciscans is worth a cool mil, and while some of that is just homeowners who bought 20 years ago and now have property worth $1 million — and I haven’t verified his data anyway — it’s hard to argue that this is anything but a very wealthy city.
(It also has, according to Forbes, the second-hippest neighborhood in the nation, and that would be the Mission, which is reaching that fully-gentrified stage where nobody young can afford to live there anymore so it won’t be hip much longer.)
The list comes out at the same time that figures show nearly 7 million Californians are living in poverty, and household income for most people has been stagnant — at best — for more than a decade.
It was a great year for the top 400, though — their median income was up rather dramatically. It seems that, whatever Mitt Romney may say in public or in private, the Obama administration hasn’t been bad at all for the 1 percent.
I keep asking, and I know it’s tiresome, but: Why, in a city with 18 billionaires, do we still have to clear out homeless encampments?
Why are the public schools holding (literally) bake sales to buy paper and pencils? Why have we cut the number of acute psychiatric care beds at SF General from 40 to 10? If San Francisco can’t even talk about taxing the billionaires, is there any hope for the rest of the country?
FYI, here’s The SF 18 (complied by Anna Sterling):
1 Riley Bechtel $2.9 B Chairman and CEO, Bechtel Corp. 2 Stephen Bechtel, Jr. $2.9 B Former Chairman, Bechtel Corp. 3 Doris Fisher $2.9 B Cofounder, Gap 4 Dustin Moskovitz $2.7 B CEO, Asana 5 Ray Dolby $2.4 B Founder and director emeritus, Dolby Laboratories 6 John Fisher $2.3 B President, Pisces, Inc. 7 William Randolph Hearst, III $2.3 B Source of Wealth: Hearst Corp 8 Marc Benioff $2.2 B Chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com 9 James Coulter $2.1 B Source of Wealth: Leveraged buyouts, Self-made 10 Gordon Getty $2 B President and Chairman, Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation 11 Phoebe Hearst Cooke $1.9 B Source of Wealth: Hearst Corp 12 Michael Moritz $1.9 B Partner, Sequoia Capital 13 John Pritzker $1.8 B Source of Wealth: Hotels, investments 14 Robert Fisher $1.7 B Director, Gap 15 William Fisher $1.7 B Director, Gap 16 Peter Thiel $1.4 B Partner, Founders Fund 17 Thomas Steyer $1.3 B Founder & Co-Senior Managing Partner, Farallon Capital Management 18 Jack Dorsey $1.1 B CEO, Square, Inc.
On the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy San Francisco also celebrated its birthday.
Demonstrations throughout the day Sept. 17, focusing on a variety of topics, converged at 5pm at 555 California, Bank of America’s west coast headquarters. A lively march of about 600 became a street festival down the block. There, protesters stopped for a circus of birthday activities. In one corner, people saddled by debt wrote their debt information on pieces of paper, explained their situations to the crowd, and dropped the papers into a trash can for a symbolic burning. One person also burned cash. “Hell no, we won’t pay,” the crowd chanted.
A few feet over, protesters painted the street with a bright yellow sun declaring “democracy not debt.” Volunteers then fed a free meal to the hundreds in attendance and wheeled in a video screen to watch some recaps of the year’s best moments. Around 8pm, the group left as peacefully as they had come.
In the darkness, a few hundred headed east on Market. When they arrived in Justin Herman Plaza– or Bradley Manning Plaza, as Occupy SF has christened it, in honor of the whistle blowing soldier- a few police stood guard around the perimeter. Undeterred, protesters walked in, and shouts of “happy birthday” gave way to “welcome home.”
The birthday party continued with a night of music. Five tents were pitched, sleeping bags were brought out. Police vehicles carrying truckloads of barricades drove by, but police told protesters they would have to leave the park by 6am, the hour the park opens.
30 or 40 spent the night. In the morning police came back. As ukelele and drums continued to play, tents were dutifully broken down. A few went back to sleep.
Video by Eric Louie
Last fall, Occupy SF could basically be found here. The camp was at Justin Herman Plaza. The ever-expanding list of working groups sometimes met somewhere else, but Occupy was at camp. But after a series of police raids, from Oct. 5 to the raid that finally brought the camp down in December, this camp was no more.
Now, Occupy SF is found all over the place.
As longtime Occupy SF activist Vi Huynh said while celebrating the anniversary: “I think it’s good to honor these milestones because, unlike the mainstream media would have us believe, we haven’t gone away. We’re not dying either. They’re writing our obituaries, but we’re very much alive. And we’re doing things every day.”
Here’s an uncomprehensive list of active groups from Occupy in San Francisco.
101 Market. This is the old camp of Occupy, “re-occupied” in February in response to a national call. At least 30 sleep there every night, and the camp is a veritable fortress of furniture and belongings. They’re mere existence is a refusal to humor the concept of private property. General Assembly meetings occur at 101 Market Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm.
Action Council. Action Council is a forum meant to connect Occupy with unions, non-profits, and community groups. They played a big role in planning demonstrations like the Jan. 20 shutdown of the financial district and the May Day solidarity demonstrations. Action Council meets weekly, Sundays at 2pm at Unite Here headquarters, 215 Golden Gate Ave.
All Streets Yoga. Since last winter, All Streets Yoga, formerly known as Decolonize Yoga, has been transforming part of the sidewalk at the 16th and Mission BART station into a yoga studio free for all. Volunteer yoga teachers lay out rugs and lead personalized yoga sessions for anyone who chooses to join. They transform space and creating calm in the busy city landscape. Join them Fridays 5-7pm.
Community Not Commodity. Also known as Bay Occupride, this group formed to protest commercialization of the Pride Parade. On the Sept. 17 anniversary they did a march on the Castro banks and a sit-in to protest sit-lie at Harvey Milk Plaza. CNC describes itself as “a collective assembly of queer/trans-focused community groups with established reputations in the Bay Area that have come together to strengthen and unify our diverse communities. We have come together to confront the 1% within our movement. We work for complete liberation of queer and trans people!” They meet Sundays at noon at Muddy Waters Café, 521 Valencia. See more at www.bayoccupride.com.
Direct Action working group. Direct action is a central tenant of Occupy. It means taking action to prevent something bad or create something good without permission or help of those with political power. In a 1912 essay titled Direct Action, Voltairine de Cleyre cited the Boston Tea Party as an example and wrote that “Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. All co-operative experiments are essentially direct action.” The direct action working group meets Wednesdays, 6pm, at the Redstone Building at 2940 16th Street.
Environmental Justice working group. The environmental justice working group keeps the pressure on the corporations that exploit the planet. They’ve protested hydraulic fracturing and the nuclear industry. They meet Tuesdays at 4pm at 101 Market.
Food bank of America. Occupy SF set up the first Food Bank of America to feed thousands of hungry protesters and passers-by on Jan. 20. A Market Street Bank of America branch locked its doors when volunteers set up a food table and passed out hot meals. Now, Food Bank of America continues in front of the mega-bank’s 23rd and Mission branch, where volunteers pass out produce, mostly donated from farmers’ markets, along with literature on switching to credit unions. They’re usually there Thursdays 5-6pm.
Ideological Liberation working group. This working group has produced pamphlets explaining Occupy, trading cards of especially greedy bankers, and postcards summarizing issues like the foreclosure crisis and the National Defense Authorization Act. They also created the Occupy SF Declaration. Brainstorm and write with them on Tuesdays, 7:30-9pm, at the decidedly ideologically un-liberated meeting spot of the Starbucks at 27 Drumm.
Occupy Bay Area United. Occupy Bay Area United spent the night outside 555 California on the eve of the Occupy SF anniversary, an occupation complete with tents and signs. They are “committed to non-violent direct action.” They meet on Sundays, 5-7pm, and post meeting locations on their website, www.obau.org.
Occupy Bernal. This neighborhood-based group is largely considered one of the most effective and desperately needed parts of the Occupy movement in San Francisco. Occupy Bernal is in the business of stopping foreclosures and evictions. “Since January no one we worked with has had an auction. People we work with who already had auctions, we’re stopping their evictions. We’ve stopped six of them so far. So we’re almost done with all the evictions, and we can go back to just stopping the auctions. We have 60 people in line to get loan modifications from Wells,” said Occupy Bernal organizer Buck Bagot. On the anniversary, Occupy Bernal hosted a rally highlighting the disproportionate effects of the foreclosure crisis and veterans and elderly and disabled people. “There were about 100 of us at the protest and five people, all over 80, veterans who are all at risk of losing their homes because they don’t have very much income,” said Bagot. Occupy Bernal meets 7-9pm on the second and fourth Thursday of each month at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center at 515 Cortland Ave. See www.occupybernal.org for more information.
Occupy Forum. Occupy Forum started up in early June in the Women’s Building, and has since moved to Justin Herman Plaza. The well-attended forums, usually around 70 people, are a time to discuss issues that concern people in Occupy. From the beginning Occupy has been said to have “no focus”– maybe that’s because those involved saw that everything from greedy banks to income inequality to homelessness to discrimination in loans to healthcare to racism to wars were all connected. The forum is a chance to focus in on a different topic every week. Check them out Mondays at 6pm at Justin Herman Plaza, at Market and Embarcadero.
Occupy the Richmond. A philosophical Occupy. If you’ve ever gotten sick of decrying problems in society and yearned to discuss creative solutions, Occupy the Richmond may be your cup of tea. A philosophical Occupy. Saturdays at 4pm, Occupy the Richmond gets together at 11th Ave. in Mountain Lake Park “to talk about what kind of society we want to organize together,” according to Occupy the Richmond participant Alex Zane. “Occupy opens up the possibility for talking about that. Otherwise, people would be stuck behind their screens freaking out about what kind of society we should organize. We should get together and talk with real, living people about how we’re supposed to reorganize our society,” said Zane.
Outreach working group. A group that spreads the word about Occupy and speaks with people and community organizations about working together. They meet Wednesdays at 7pm at One Rincon Center, also known as 121 Spear.
This article has been corrected. Bradley Manning served as a soldier in the Army, not a marine
At this point, the dragon dildos have become a personal archetype. Since Bad Dragon came onto my Internet psyche, the Arizona company’s vividly colored sci-fi/fantasy sex toys have lingered around the corners of my mind. The mental exertion that designers had spent on what a cockatrice’s penis might look like and on how an orca’s vagina would feel to stick yourself into. The craftsmanship (made in the USA.) The lovingly-written, exciting character bios and comic illustrations that let you know that your Moko the Liger toy is embodied by a feline dojo master who favors wearing revealing tunics.
At some point, we realized it was perfect for this week’s Sex Issue and we made a flow chart in celebration. (You can check the chart in our digital edition, page 29.) Once again, the Bay Area has cause to fulminate on which characters from LOTR, Brian Jacques’ Redwall, and outer space it’d most like to meet outside the pages of their fan fic.
But Bad Dragon’s a slippery slope. Make a flow chart, and you want to know the whole story behind the company. Hence, this email interview with Varka, the mysterious CEO and founder of the company, who dips occasionally into third person in a way we found endearing. Read on for office catfights, and about the supremacy of the werewolf race.
SFBG:Who started Bad Dragon and why?
V: The initial idea to produce fantasy-themed adult toys happened in 2007, when Varka was first learning to sculpt in clay over Skype with other fantasy enthusiasts. These accidentally created fantasy cocks were amusingly well recieved when photos were posted online. At this point Varka realized that if these toys were to become available for others, significant help would be required to turn the prototypes into a viable business.
As a result, Bad Dragon was founded in June 2008 by Narse, Raith, Varka, and Athus, out of a shared love of all things fantasy. At the time there was a very poor selection of fantasy-themed toys available, and so they focused their enthusiasm and talents towards filling that niche. Since the very beginning Bad Dragon has grown at an astonishing rate, starting with just four people and growing to nearly 30 people, all working towards the goal of making fantasies real.
Varka is a computing science graduate and systems designer from Scotland that loves to tinker with prototypes, produce proof of concepts, and pursue new ideas.
Narse is an esteemed fantasy artist whose love for his favorite characters knows no bounds. His art can be seen today in the character art that accompanies most of the products that BD sells.
Raith is a talented craftsman, whose contributions in mold making and model finishing were instrumental in BD’s success.
Athus was a talented and driven illustrator and 3D sculptor, who created some of BD’s finest designs. He sadly passed away in 2011, and is missed by all.
SFBG: What is the most popular model?
V: Our most popular model is David the Werewolf, closely followed by Natascha the Anthro Husky. Bruiser the Fusion also gets a lot of love from customers.
SFBG:Who came up with the idea for the liger edition?
V: It was a team effort; we got a lot of requests for something feline-ish through our forums, and that combined with a lack of decent anthro feline toys on the market persuaded us that it was about time we developed something to meet that demand. We ended up deciding on a tiger-lion hybrid — mainly because there was no clear winner in the tiger versus lion versus panther “catfight” that took place via staff emails!
SFBG: Does the Bad Dragon community exist offline? Are there gatherings for the fantasy-sexual?
V: The community exists in little pockets offline. We sell at conventions, but often our customers will meet up with one another and host their own small-scale gatherings, particularly at conventions. So far we’ve not seen many large gatherings mostly because of the wide geographic dispersion of our customers. We’re hopeful that with wider exposure and awareness of the fantasy-sexual community (as well as other events which draw in new people such as fantasy/sci-fi conventions) that there’ll be more in the future!
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors officially received the official misconduct case against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi yesterday, starting the clock on the 30-day deadline that the City Charter provides for that body to take action. Board President David Chiu announced a special meeting to consider the case on Oct. 9 at 2pm.
“The last day the Board of Supervisors can act on this is Oct. 17,” Chiu told his colleagues yesterday, reiterating the schedule the board had previous agreed to: a 10-minute presentation by the Ethics Commission, 20 minutes by representatives of Mayor Ed Lee (who brought the case), 20 minutes by Mirkarimi’s side, a five-minute rebuttal by Lee, public comment (which could last for hours), and then deliberation by supervisors.
In addition, attorneys for both sides have until Sept. 25 to submit any legal briefs they want the supervisors to consider, and Mirkarimi’s attorneys are expected to raise objections to an Ethics Commission summary they considered “one-sided,” as well as getting into the issue of whether Lee committed perjury during his sworn testimony in June.
It takes at least nine of the 11 supervisors to remove Mirkarimi, and there is an open question about whether some supervisors should recuse themselves from voting because of conflicts-of-interest, which would essentially count the same as a vote in Mirkarimi’s favor.
Lee was asked on the witness stand whether he spoke with any supervisors about removing Mirkarimi, which he denied. But Building Inspection Commissioner Debra Walker said her longtime friend and political ally Sup. Christina Olague told her Lee had sought her input on the decision. Confronted by journalists, Olague denied the charge but said, “I may have to recuse myself from voting on this.”
Lee was also asked whether he tried to get Mirkarimi a city job in exchange for his resignation, which Lee denied, but former Sup. Aaron Peskin has said that permit expediter and Lee ally Walter Wong (who has refused to answer questions from the media) extended that offer through him, which Mirkarimi didn’t accept. The Ethics Commission refused to consider the perjury allegations, calling them beyond its purview, but Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner said he plans to submit sworn declarations by Peskin and Walker to the supervisors.
Another possible recusal from the vote would be Sup. Eric Mar, who just happened to be called as a juror in Mirkarimi’s criminal case before it was settled with a plea bargain. There have also been rumors that Board President David Chiu spoke with Lee about Mirkarimi at some point. Last month, Waggoner told the board that he wanted each supervisor to declare whether they have spoken with anyone about Mirkarimi, but their team is proceeding cautiously and wary of offending the supervisors who will now decide the fate of their former colleague.
“We’re going to respectfully ask each member of the board to state under oath who they’ve talked to about the case,” Waggoner told us.
Normally, jurors would be extensively questioned during the voir dire process, and those who had served on an elected body with a defendant for years would almost certainly be removed from the jury pool, which seems to have been the case with Mar’s disqualification on the criminal case. But that’s just one more example of how this unprecedented process is anything but normal, with city officials basically making up the rules as they go along.
Mirkarimi’s wife and alleged victim, Eliana Lopez, has consistently maintained that she was never abused, except by city officials who have sabotaged and humiliated her family and taken away its livelihood. She told the Guardian that the thin charges in this case shouldn’t warrant the removal of an elected official: “You can have different opinions about Ross’s behavior, and people can have different opinions about that, but the people of San Francisco should decide who represents them.”
Lopez said she’s been dismissed and mistreated by Lee, the Ethics Commission, and domestic violence advocates: “These self-appointed white women that are part of the Domestic Violence Consortium are doing everything they can to attack me and insult me while claiming to help me, and never once reaching out to me.”
But she said that she’s hopeful the supervisors will resist political pressure during an emotionally charged election season and do the right thing: “What we need from the supervisors is brave and honest supervisors. The people of San Francisco need that.”
In the spring of 2008, I was invited to give a briefing on human rights to a Bush-appointed US ambassador scheduled to be posted to the Middle East. But the ambassador had little interest in talking about human rights.
“What I want to know is this,” he said. “Is Islam the problem here? Is Islam retarding progress—economically, socially, politically?”
I tried to steer the meeting back to human rights but the ambassador kept persisting. “I mean you’re a Muslim…so do you think Islam is standing in the way?”
I had participated in enough of these discussions to know that in agreeing to meet, both us were checking off boxes: He could say he was listening to the concerns of a human rights advocate; I was able to say I relayed the concerns of my employer, Amnesty International, to a US ambassador.
Most of the ambassadors I met were like this: They thought it neither important nor virtuous to understand—let alone to love—the people of the Middle East. The role of the ambassador, they reminded me, was not to listen to people’s ideals and hopes but rather to convey to people America’s ideals and hopes for them.
When I learned of the killing of the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens last week, I mourned the sad irony that a US diplomat who wore his love for the Middle East and North Africa on his sleeve would be killed serving the very people who inspired him.
In a YouTube video posted soon after his murder, Ambassador Stevens is seen standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the cherry blossoms in full bloom behind him, introducing himself to the Libyan people.
“As-salaam alaikum,” he begins using the traditional Islamic greeting that means “Peace be upon you.” He looks happy, giddy almost.
“Growing up in California, I didn’t know much about the Arab world,” he says. “Then after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I traveled to North Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer.” He taught for two years in the mountains of Morocco and “grew to love this part of the world.”
Colleagues and friends who knew him spoke about his passion for listening. French writer Bernard-Henri Levy admired his “great capacity to listen and his strategy to speak last.” Elizabeth Dibble, his colleague at the State Department, spoke about Stevens’ unique diplomatic style.
“It takes a lot of tea,” she said. “You don’t rush into talking points, you develop a relationship and a personal connection, and a series of connections becomes a network.”
In a moving tribute published on CNN’s website, his friend Judith Drotar spoke about Steven’s remarkable judicious restraint. “What really made Chris exceptional to me, however, was his ability to distance himself,” she writes. “Not the aloof kind of distancing that you might expect from someone in his position, but the kind where one puts emotion and ego aside in order to truly listen, to understand, and then to find a way to build bridges.”
But in the aftermath of Stevens’ death, we are tearing down those very bridges that he worked so hard to build.
The cover of this week’s Newsweek features a close up photo of two bearded, turban clad Muslim men, clutching an Egyptian flag, shouting to the camera under a headline that reads, “Muslim Rage: How I survived it and how we can end it.”
In the article, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, “In the age of globalization and mass immigration, such intolerance has crossed borders and become the defining characteristic of Islam.”
Stevens would be ashamed. He worked his whole life to add nuance to our understanding of the Middle East and North Africa. To suggest that one film—or the religion of Islam—alone caused the violence that swept across 16 countries is as incomplete as suggesting that the LA riots of 1992 were sparked only by the Rodney King verdict.
But it’s easy to blame the protests that erupted in 16 Muslim majority countries as a reaction to a film. It is more difficult to examine the policies of our government that have sparked this resentment.
A week before Stevens died, the US fired two drone strikes 80 miles southeast of Sanaa, Yemen. One hit an Al Qaeda operative; the other missed its target, hitting a commuter mini-bus. Fourteen were killed, including three women and a child.
Mansoor al-Maweri was nearby when the attack happened. “You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being killed for no reason,” he said. “This attack is the real terrorism.” Hundreds of angry people took to the street. Few cameras were there to beam these protests to television sets in America.
It is attacks like this, as well as the film, that sparked the current outcry. The tragedy is that Stevens would have understood this perhaps more than any other diplomat. Sometimes the explanations are painful; sometimes we do not know what is happening; and sometimes the best course of action for the United States is to pour a cup of tea and listen.
Zahir Janmohamed recently completed a fellowship at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and is writing a book about Juhapura, the largest ghetto of Muslims in India
So the state auditors have determined that City College is in serious financial trouble, which we knew, and has ascertained the reason: There are too many teachers, and they get paid too well.
Damn. That sounds like a terrible situation. Too many teachers! Horrors! Let’s fire some of them today!
Seriously: I know the district has problems, and I know that a lot of people inside the district feel that department heads have too much power, and there’s an awful lot of political patronage going around. It’s been a nightmare for more than a decade, with too many incompetent and corrupt people controlling the College Board, protecting their allies in administration, and treating the place as a personal fiefdom.
I think things have gotten a little better since the ascension of a more progressive majority on the board and the departure of Chancellor Phil Day and his crooked crew, but it’s still a mess.
But isn’t it a sad statement on San Francisco, and California, and the United States today that an auditor could look at a college that serves working-class and poor kids, immigrants, people who need jobs skills, and a broad, diverse community and say: You have too many teachers? Isn’t is sad that the auditors, in a city that has about the highest cost of living in the Western United States, think teachers — teachers — are getting paid too much money?
Makes you want to throw up.
Yeah, let’s get the City College house in order, and recognize that expenses have to meet revenues, and make the tough decisions. But along the way, let’s ask ourselves: Is this what we really want?
BIBI TANGA AND THE SELENITES 40 DEGREES OF SUNSHINE (NAT GEO MUSIC)
From the bright electro-funk pulse of the opening track, “Poet of the Soul,” sunlight infuses Bibi Tanga and the Selenites’ latest album, 40 Degrees of Sunshine. An upbeat melange of esoteric samples, funky bass lines, polyrhythmic percussion, soulful, multi-lingual crooning, and Walt Whitman poetry, the twelve tracks distill the best of an array of influences into a potent brew.
Neither the vibrant Afrobeat-ish “Band a Gui Koua,” sung in Sango, the nouveau jazz inflections of “Attraction,” nor even the unsettling tone poem “Happy Dust Man,” would be out of place on dance floors from Bangui or Boston, despite their refusal to be neatly categorized. To this refusal, Bibi Tanga and crew offer a preemptive explanation, perhaps apology, on “Dark Funk”. “If you find a name for the music we’re doing…just call us.”
If there is one thing that some feminists like to do, it is tell each other that they are not really feminist — or, judging from the Internet over the past weeks, that’s what newsmedia enjoys paying them to write about. Imagine that two competing “waves” at an NFL game crash into each other and their wavers begin hurling epithets involving biological primacy (“the wave’s appeal lies in the rolling motion of the womb experience!”) and unacknowledged privilege (“our wave does not rely on fancy running shoes for buoyancy, or expensive snack bar items for flourish!”)
Naomi Wolf wrote a book called Vagina: A Biography, and is now being torn apart, bit by bit, by representatives of various feminist waves in nearly every vaunted publication in the land. I’m saying: she did write a book called Vagina, though.
Recently, I did an email interview with Wolf about the merits of her book. I sent her the questions before most of the more scathing reviews of Vagina hit the Internet presses, so most of them revolved around which pieces of her research she found the most compelling. When asked to summarize the shortcomings of research publicized heretofore on vags, she wrote to me:
It is stuck in the 1970s, when Masters and Johnson concluded that men’s and women’s sexual responses were basically the same proces (arousal, plateaue, climax, resolution) and when Shere Hite (admirably for the time) concluded that the vagina and clitoris were unrelated, and everyone thought the vagina has little innervation.
New data show that women and men are very different in what arouses them and brings them to orgasm and that even their pelvic wiring is very different.
Men’s nerves in the pelvis and penis and fairly simple and regular — but women’s ‘pelvis innervations’ is like lace, compared to the male “grid.” There are neural terminio [sic] for women in the clitoris, as we know, but also in the walls of the vagina, the mouth of the cervix, the G-spot, the anus, the perineum — and every woman’s wiring is different! So the takeaway is that if you want to make a woman happy, whether you are male or female, you need to learn each woman’s patterns and responses anew and pay careful attention and engage is very attentive exploration. And listen to what she likes.
Read Wolf’s book and you’ll get an amazing lesson on female biology, and perhaps even more interestingly, the social history of the pussy. From ancient worship of goddess-whores up to references to the cunt in 20th century jazz in the US, this is stuff that really helps to contextualize our current struggles with those who would penalize us for having anatomy.
Wolf visits 1900s dance routines choreographed by Lois Fuller in her exploration of the history of vaginal representation
But, as other reviewers have mentioned, she does founder a little when she starts hypothesizing.
From a passage asserting that eye contact is important for sexual satisfaction:
Page 299: “Might it be that some new mothers – starved of deep gazing from their husbands – are more at risk of being drawn into a charmed circle of mutual gazing with their babies, which leaves out the man?”
And on the loss of self-awareness during climax:
Page 284: “The findings could be read as hinting – not by any means confirming – that the ages-old fear that sex makes women into something like witches, or into maenads who have no moral boundaries at the moment of orgasm, may have a bit of truth to it.”
No snap moral judgments made at the height of your climax, witches! You can imagine now, why people have been reacting poorly to some of Wolf’s “findings.” (I would love to see the owner of a penis make any kind of decision at all while climaxing. No really, send videos.)
Other charges leveled at Vagina have involved heterocentricity, although Wolf admittedly trys to explain why the book is focused on penis-loving women in her introduction. She says she thinks women of all sexualities deserve books focused on their vaginas. And next time she’ll do more, she said in the email: “in the next edition I will expand the info that there is for lesbian, bisexual, and transwomen, even given its scarcity, because of the extreme interest from my readers across the spectrum.”
I’m not denying the book’s got issues. But then, this weekend, as I lolled on Dolo’s Gay Beach shelf above that brave new Disneyland of a playground, I read my copy of Vagina. Muttering middle-aged men shot death glares at the spliff dangling from my fingers (I moved downwind as requested.)
And all of a sudden, I got weirded out. I think it had something to do with the big red “vagina” written in red cursive letters on the book I was reading. In Dolores Park, really! It felt like I was engaged in something untoward, and not to be dramatic but in that moment I realized that no matter the woman-stealing babies and witch-producing orgasms contained in the pages of Vagina, it is still: a feminist book. And a heavily-researched book about vagina, with history lessons on vagina, and a frank discussion of the importance of the female genitals.
Perhaps sadly, that’s still a big something. Not to get all maenad, but at Wolf’s upcoming SF dates I’d like to shake her hand and say thanks for putting it out there.
This year’s Toronto International Film Festival showcased 289 films. I attended 32. Mark down any titles that sound interesting, because this upcoming year is gonna be one to remember.
Outrage Beyond (Takeshi Kitano, Japan) The sequel to Takeshi Kitano’s return-to-gangster-form Outrage (2010) sports the same no-nonsense editing that matches extreme violence with perfectly primed pauses. Kitano’s knack for offbeat crime films began almost 25 years ago with his nasty neo-noir classic Violent Cop (1989). Since then, he’s found a perfect blend of humor and artistry over the years, with such masterpieces as Sonatine (1993) and Hana-Bi (1997). Even his more eccentric deliveries, such as the sentimental Kikujiro (1999) and Brother (2000) — his American crossover, co-starring Omar Epps — have the power to make fans out of first-time Takeshi viewers. Outrage Beyond methodically introduces (then destroys) main characters, creates tons of twists and turns that mangle the melodrama, and will either hypnotize you to all its inverted genre glory or leave you completely cold, confused, and unaffected. Either way, Takeshi is his own boss and I will watch everything he touches.
Rhino Season (Bahman Ghobadi, Iraq/Kurdistan/Turkey) This beautifully political narrative is a terrifying tribute to outspoken Iranian artists who find themselves threatened with decades of prison if they dare to question the contradictions around them. Ghobadi himself had to leave Iran a few years ago just so this film could actually be made; fellow film festival fave Jafar Panahi, director of The White Balloon (1995), Crimson Gold (2003), and Offside (2007), is still incarcerated under house arrest and is banned from writing and directing for what looks like 20 more years.
Panahi’s situation brings an extra importance to Ghobadi’s Rhino Season. The casting of Italian superstar Monica Bellucci and Behrouz Vossoughi (one of Iran’s most popular and prolific actors) could make this Ghobadi’s most accessible film since his 2004 Turtles Can Fly. This is cinema of the now — and combined with Ghobadi’s lyrical images, it solidifies him as a leading cinematic voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqqgrUna28w
Dredd 3D (Pete Travis, US/UK) The new and improved Judge Dredd adaptation (which was presented in the Midnight Madness category, and opens in Bay Area theaters Fri/21) takes a much different approach than the uneven (yet under appreciated) 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle by making the obvious choice to darken the mood (and not to take Dredd’s helmet off.) By bringing in the screenwriter of 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007), Alex Garland, the story kicks into absolute overdrive, saving an origin script for the already much-anticipated sequel.
While the special effects are spectacular and the deadpan one-liners are delivered with an enjoyable amount of irony, Dredd’s voice (which is quite reminiscent of a certain superhero in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster franchise) reminds you that every decade has its own dated elements. Perhaps Danny Cannon’s 1995 Judge Dredd is just as representational of its own era as this rambunctious Escape from New York-meets-The Raid homage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI3uhHh3DgM
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, US) For those who were wishing Terrence Malick would explore relationships sans dinosaurs and throbbing solar systems, look no further. Utilizing recognizable techniques like a glorious Steadicam shot gliding through golden fields at dusk, To the Wonder is in fact much more spiritual and even overtly religious than anything else at TIFF.
Especially after 2011’s polarizing The Tree of Life, Malick has become a loaded name for haters and lovers alike — bringing unfair expectations to a filmmaker who is clearly attempting to create ethereal art. To the Wonder features a stunning performance by Rachel McAdams and a curiously perfect, Robert Bresson-esque role for Ben Affleck. This film has to been seen in an actual movie theater.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0sxqycgYNA
The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, US) When Rob Zombie took the stage for the world premiere of his fifth feature film (also a Midnight Madness selection), audience members greeted him with a standing ovation. “Are you guys ready to see a bunch of sexy dancing naked witches?” Zombie yelled. When the audience erupted with “YES!” he replied, “Well … this movie doesn’t have any of that!” and humorously walked off the stage.
What followed was hands-down the most terrifying opening sequence of Toronto (much less 2012). It literally left the entire audience dumbfounded. And when the title The Lords of Salem appeared, you could feel the subconscious collective bracing themselves for what going to be yet another disturbingly brilliant Zombie horror classic.
Let’s take a step back to remember Zombie’s debut House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and sequel The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Both films caught both horror critics and music fans by surprise with how powerful his filmmaking aesthetics are. He arrived on the horror scene smack dab in the middle of the “torture porn” craze; in my opinion, Zombie was tops in the “Splat Pack” (amid Eli Roth, James Wan, Alexandre Aja, etc.) due to his Tarantino-style cinephilia (casting horror icons of the past in major roles; paying homage to genre classics like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre series), but more importantly his contemporary understanding of music. With his remakes of the Halloween series (2007 and 2009), which many horror fans may need to revisit, Zombie further proved himself a filmmaker who has a lot to say to his audiences.
Which brings us to The Lords of Salem, a contemporary witch tale influenced by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973). Showcasing serious suspense, a psychotic soundtrack, and purposeful pacing, the film also boasts one of the most deliciously diabolical denouements in years. Avoid all spoilers and add this creepfest to your must-see list. All hail Salem!
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University and hosts Midnites for Maniacs, a film series devoted to underrated, overlooked, and dismissed cinema.
And so, after the Guardian started the public power movement in 1969 with the pioneering Joe Neilands expose of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, after three initiative campaigns to kick PG&E put of City Hall and enforce the public power mandates of the federal Raker Act and bring our own Hetch Hetchy public power to our own people, after hundreds of people worked for years inside and outside City Hall for public power and clean energy, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday to formally launch a CleanPowerSF project that would for the first time challenge the decades-old power monopoly of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.
It was a historic moment. And it was a historic veto proof vote that Ed Lee, the PG&E- friendly mayor, and his ally and mentor, former mayor Willie Brown, the unregistered $200,000 a year PG&E lobbyist, will have difficulty snuffing out this time around.
The CleanPowerSF 8 were Sups. David Campos, who sponsored the legislation, Scott Weiner, who cast the deciding swing vote, David Chiu, Eric Mar, Christina Olague, Jane Kim, Malia Cohen, and John Avalos, all of whom made helpful remarks during the debate. They also voted down an attempt by the PG&E bloc to continue the vote for a week and voted against crippling amendments.
The PG&E 3 were Sups.Mark Farrell and Carmen Chiu, who tried to dilute the legislation with the crippling amendments, and Sean Elsbernd, who was strangely silent during the debate.
I use the phrase CleanPowerSF 8 and PG&E 3 to dramatize the crucial political point and toss in a bit of Guardian history on the story. For years, as clean energy/public power proposals were routinely voted down as a result of PG&E political muscle and power lobbying, the Guardian would use variations of the phrase. PG&E l0, San Francisco l or whatever was the PG&E margin of victory. The phrase was accurate, pin-pointed the good and bad guys and gals, lifted our spirits, and sent the message that the battle was far from over.
The hero of the afternoon was Ed Harrington, the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission who delayed his retirement to complete the project. He got a standing ovation after his testimony backing up his legislation and deft handling of all questions. As Campos said, Harrington’s legislation was as “good as you are going to get.” No one seriously questioned his plan, figures, marketing strategy, or key argument that his plan was fiscally and environmentally sound.
PG&E was never mentioned during the discussion and it was difficult to determine its lobbying strategy. After the vote, I asked Eric Brooks, the crafty clean power leader at the meeting, what happened to PG&E and its strategy. He said that PG&E, after the San Bruno disaster and other notable mishaps, was not the monopoly power it once was and that perhaps the company had decided it would rather face the slower pace of CleanPowerSF rather than another clean energy initiative it would have a good chance of losing
Thanks and congratulations to the CleanPowerSF 8, David Campos, Scott Weiner, John Avalos, David Chiu, Eric Mar, Chritina Olague, Jane Kim, and Malia Cohen, who voted themselves into San Francisco history. Five of them will face the electorate and PG&E in the November election (Campos, Avalos, Chiu, Mar, and Olague.) and they acted and spoke as if voting for CleanPowerSF would be a significant advantage to their campaigns in their districts. And thanks and congratulatons to former Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who carried the public power flag as the unpaid campaign manager during the first two unsuccessful public power campaigns and then carried the CCA plan inside City Hall during his seven years as supervisor. When he was voted in as sheriff last November, he handed the CCA baton to Campos who pushed the proposal through with style and solid argument that the issue was choice and providing necessary competition to PG&E’s monopoly.
The vote to start public power in San Francisco comes none too soon. The tear-down-tne-Hetch Hetchy dam forces have put the nice-sounding Proposition F to study draining the Hetch Hetch reservoir.on the fall ballot. This is the first step toward tearing down the dam. The problem for the city is that it could ultimately lose the dam, if it isn’t moving to public power, because the Raker Act mandates that San Francisco have a municipal system to distribute public power to its residents and businesses because the act allowed San Francisco to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The Guardian’s position is that the dam is in place and should only be torn down after the city has real public power and is able to find and afford an adequate new source for the city’s water and power supply. And that, let me emphasize, will be a massive undertaking involving billions of dollars and incredible political challenges. .
Much more to come in this saga that never ends, b3
Here is Guardian City Editor Steve Jones’ account of the vote: : http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2012/09/18/historic-veto-proof-vote-launches-cleanpowersf
And some Guardian background on the PG&E/Raker Act Scandal in my advance story: http://www.sfbg.com/bruce/2012/09/17/historic-pgeclean-energy-vote-today
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today cast an historic vote that was more than a decade in the making, approving the CleanPowerSF program – which challenges PG&E’s monopoly by offering 100 percent renewable energy directly to city residents – on an 8-3 vote that would be enough to override an implied veto threat by Mayor Ed Lee.
The outcome was far from certain throughout the two-hour hearing as conservative Sups. Mark Farrell and Carmen Chu led efforts to undermine the program, which was the final work product of retiring San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Ed Harrington, who previously served as the city’s controller for 17 years.
The pair of supervisors offered a series of amendments challenging the state requirement that city residents must proactively opt-out of such community choice aggregation (CCA) programs if they want to remain with PG&E, offering convoluted language that would have required people to opt-in to the program before its launch, and requiring that the $13 million in reserve funds from the SFPUC be covered entirely by CleanPowerSF customers, which could increase its rates.
“It looks like the amendments would be harmful to the success of the program,” Sup. Eric Mar observed, prompting Farrell and Chu to flash broad conspiratorial smiles at one another.
Sup. Scott Wiener, who was undecided and considered a key swing vote in reaching a veto-proof majority, said he also had concerns about the opt-out requirement and wanted to better understand how the amendments would work and whether they were legal. “For me, I’m not interested in putting any poison pills in here,” he said.
Wiener posed questions about the amendments to Farrell and to Harrington, who said it was possible for the SFPUC to have CleanPowerSF customers repay the initial allocation of reserve funds over time but that he wasn’t sure how the opt-in change would work without sabotaging the program.
“It harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people,” Harrington said, noting that rates are based on the number of customers in the program, so it would be nearly impossible to survey everyone’s potential interest without being able to tell them how their bills would be affected.
As it is, the SFPUC has already done extensive surveys of which neighborhoods and demographics are likely to be interested in taking part in CleanPowerSF, initially paying about $10 more per month for 100 percent renewable energy (PG&E’s portfolio includes less than 30 percent renewable). “We’ve done extensive surveys already,” Harrington said. Based on that research, the city is initially rolling out the program to less than a third of city residents, who will be repeatedly notified about how to opt-out, anticipating about 90,000 customers remain in the initial program.
The program has been repeatedly tweaked over the last eight years that it’s been in development, during which time Marin County launched a successful version of the CCA concept that was developed in San Francisco by legislators Tom Ammiano, Carole Migden, and Mark Leno.
“I feel pretty comfortable trusting Ed Harrington on whether the numbers add up,” said the measure’s chief sponsor, Sup. David Campos, arguing against the Farrell/Chu amendments, later adding, “With Ed Harrington leading this charge, this is as good as it gets. If you don’t like CCA under Ed Harrington, you’re not going to like CCA.”
Farrell claimed to support CCA in concept, but he strenuously objected to the opt-out requirements that Migden included in the enabling state legislation, which she had argued was the only way to make CCAs viable against PG&E’s proven willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars to sabotage would-be competitors.
“It’s the wrong way to legislate, the opt-out. It smells of coercion,” Farrell said. Campos countered that, “The best thing we can give the consumers in San Francisco is a choice, a meaningful choice.”
Wiener ultimately made a motion to delay the item by a week, something Mayor Lee yesterday told the Chronicle he wanted, in order to further study the opt-out issue, telling Farrell that his amendment “feels a little seat of the pants to me.”
Campos and other progressive supervisors who were supporting CleanPowerSF argued against the continuance, noting that it has been years in development and sitting in board committees since January, while the Farrell/Chu amendments weren’t offered until this meeting had already begun.
“This is not going to change because we wait a week to make a decision,” Campos said. “The terms of this deal are not going to change.”
The motion for a continuance failed on a 4-7 vote, with Wiener joined by Farrell, Chu, and Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who offered no comments throughout the hearing).
Then, as the vote on the Farrell/Chu opt-in amendment came up for vote, Wiener said, “I don’t feel comfortable voting for amendments that I don’t know what they’ll do,” and it failed on a 3-8 vote.
Sup. Malia Cohen had earlier indicated a willingness to support the other Farrell/Chu amendment: saddling CleanPowerSF customers with paying the SFPUC back for reserve fund costs – which Harrington indicated could be dragged out over many years to minimize the impact on rates, and which might not be necessary at all if the initial program exceeds expectations.
That amendment was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Jane Kim, Christina Olague, and John Avalos opposed. Another set of amendments that would keep low-income city residents out of the initial rollout and take other steps to reduce their rates if they opted in – which was developed by Kim, Cohen, and Sup. Eric Mar – was unanimously approved by the board.
Then it was time for the big vote on creating the CleanPowerSF program, approving the contract with Shell Energy Northern California to administer it, and authorizing the initial $19.5 million expenditure. Would there be eight votes to override a veto by Mayor Lee, who has been under pressure by PG&E and their downtown allies to kill the program?
“To be perfectly candid, I struggled mightily with this contract,” Wiener said, reiterating his concern about its opt-in requirement, noting that the measure wasn’t perfect, even though it was significantly improved from earlier versions. It sounded as if he were about to vote against it.
“What we have the opportunity to do is move forward with clean power,” Wiener said, noting that even Marin County supervisors who initially opposed its CCA have come around to supporting it. “This is something I believe we should try.”
And with that, the board voted 8-3 to launch the program in mid-2013, with Chu, Farrell, and Elsbernd opposed.
Campos said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the vote, while key supporters say they are cautiously hopeful it will stand up during next week’s final supervisorial approval on second reading and in a veto override vote, if that becomes necessary. Campos said he was thankful for the work of Harrington, who got a standing ovation after the vote as the board recognized him for his long service to the city.
Earlier in the meeting, Harrington told supervisors that while the program isn’t perfect, and it contains some risks that he considers reasonable, there is no other way the city has identified to meet ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals it has set for itself over the last decade. It is city policy to reduce emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2017 and 80 percent below those levels by 2050.
“This program before you has the only chance of reaching those goals. There’s nothing else,” Harrington said. He also said “it’s an incredibly efficient way to spend money,” noting that the city has spent $90 million on solar and other renewable energy projects that power fewer than 7,000 homes, whereas this $19.5 million will power 90,000 households, possibly without ever tapping into that $13 million reserve fund set aside to cover any losses by Shell, which will buy renewable energy, a role the city hopes to eliminate as it develops its own projects.
Harrington said the ultimate goal of CleanPowerSF is to develop a large enough customer base that the city could use revenue bonds to finance a wide variety of renewable energy projects – many using solar arrays along city-owned property connected to its water system stretching all the way to Hetch Hetchy Valley – that would pay for themselves.
“The real issue is can you build a facility that will have this rate structure support it?” Harrington said.
That’s the real power and potential of CleanPowerSF – finally taking action to address global warming, which will have a huge impact on San Francisco and future generations – as supporters noted in a rally outside City Hall before the meeting. Sen. Mark Leno said that he doesn’t usually weigh in on proposals before the board, but that, “This is an exceptional time and this is an exceptional vote. This is the time that we need to address our inconvenient truth.”
