SFBG Blogs

Different galaxies of hip-hop at Paid Dues

Tony Robles
-
0

Under the sweltering San Bernardino sun this past Saturday, more than 40 artists came together to pay homage to hip-hop at the Paid Dues Festival.

Odd Future grilled raw meat on stage, intermittently lighting the bloody slab with a cucumber–sized blunt. Tyler the Creator sputtered out dribbles of water in between his lines — casually yet methodically, right as the camera appeared — making one wonder if there really is a synchronized reasoning behind the madness. Moments later, he leaped off the stage and sailed deep in to the moshing crowd, which accepted the Goblin with elation.  


On the other side of the festival — which felt like a completely different galaxy — Brother Ali captured the roots of spoken word hip-hop, performing a refreshingly simple set on an empty stage with just his DJ spinning behind him. Contrasting this profoundly tranquil execution was the whirlwind energy of Three 6 Mafia, which jumped from one side of the stage to the other, arms swaggering, voice booming, and collars popping.

Hip-hop has gone through many cycles since its origins as a social and political outlet for underrepresented minorities, and the sheer diversity of the performers at Paid Dues Festival showed just how broad the genre has become.

During a Guardian interview, Los Rakas member Raka Dun explained that he views the creation of subgenres within hip-hop as a “progressive evolution,” comparing Drake’s “R&B hip-hop” to Odd Future’s “punk rap” as merely a stylistic difference. Raka Rich, the second member of the Panamanian duo, added “that hip-hop has always been about expressing yourself, so you can’t tell someone that their music is or isn’t hip-hop.” 

DJ Paul of Three 6 Mafia agreed that the growth of hip-hop is a positive development, yet admitted that the genre has lost some of its vigor. He holds politics responsible, stating that “hip-hop used to be harder back in the day, but the government wanted the world to be in peace, so they made the music be more in peace.”

Thes One of People Under the Stairs says corporations are at fault for taking critical substance out of mainstream hip-hop, as “music is a lot more marketable when you don’t have to cosign a message.” Double K (also of People Under the Stairs) feels that young people do not have the same insightful experience listening to music anymore. “In school, we were taught the same lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. year after year, but it was from hip-hop that we learned about people like Marcus Garvey and H. Rap Brown,” he added.

The role of women — specifically the rise of female MCs — is significantly influential in how the current road of hip-hop is being paved. Nicki Minaj, although nowhere in the Nos Event Center’s vicinity, was a looming presence throughout the night. The general consensus over the self-proclaimed Black Barbie was that she has undeniable talent, but there were contrasting opinions on how extensively her sex appeal influenced her success.

The members of Hieroglyphics said they feel the issue of sex in music should not be marginalized to a gender issue, as “the industry as a whole is exploiting sex to promote music.” The crew contemplated over whether you have to be as visually appealing as Minaj for people to appreciate your talents — finding it ironic that a lot of artists are actually unwilling to give her credit for her lyricism because of her overt sexuality.

There was a collective nostalgia over non-pink-wigged women rappers the artists grew up listening to — such as Queen Latifah and Ice Cream Tee — who rapped wearing just a hoodie and baggy jeans.  As essential as it is to have prominent women that the female audience can identify with, artists questioned if current women MCs were truly communicating a positive message to young girls.

Luckyiam of Living Legends gave a final word of advice for all burgeoning artists bedroom producers, regardless of gender:

“When I lived in East Oakland, I thought there was a glass ceiling there. Now, with the Web, there’s no reason you can’t get your content out there. But don’t just be Tumblr famous. Go out to the streets or in the clubs, and pay your dues. And stop rapping over your vocals and wear some looser fitting jeans.”

Green shopping guide: 6 earth-conscious fashion outposts

Andrew Lam
-
21

We’ve been shopping green for a week now — check out our previous guides to housewares, kid’s stuff, gardening resources, and local beauty

Let’s face it. Finding an oversized sweater in your mom’s closet that looks good on you tends to make you feel better than purchasing one at a corporate retail store because (a) you hate homogeneity, (b) you like saving money, (c) you’re rocking something straight out of the 80s, and (d) you’re relieved of the guilt associated with buying an item produced overseas. Here are a few suggestions on where to shop locally for you tree-hugging, fashion-conscious souls.

Static

Static showcases an extensive collection of vintage clothing, shoes, and accessories from the 1920s to today. We’ve never seen so many fur-lined jeans jackets, wearable pieces of grandma jewelry, and rad, antiquated boots in one spot.

Sunday-Thursday 12pm-7pm; Friday-Saturday noon-8pm. 1764 Haight, SF. (415) 422-0046, www.staticvintage.com

No

If you’re looking for a vintage sweater that says, “I just threw this on haphazardly because I don’t really care how I look” (but you actually look awesome in a mysteriously sexy, I’m post-showing cleavage way) look no further than No. This is one of those places where you take 15 things into the dressing room and, annoyingly, like most of them. 

Monday-Sunday 11am-7pm. 389 Valencia, SF. (415) 252-9982

Foggy Notion

Alissa Anderson of mittenmaker opened the doors of her Inner Richmond shop last month. She sells her own eco-conscious creations as well as green products from other, mostly Western United States-based designers and craftspeople — like Captain Blankenship fragrances made with local biodynamic grape alcohol and Daughter of the Sun recycled leather crystal pendants. 

Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday 11am-6pm; Friday-Saturday 11am-7pm. 275 Sixth Ave No. 101, SF. (415) 683-5654, www.foggy-notion.com

Mystery Mister

The apparel and accessories at this Haight Street gem span the eras between Victorian and ’80s. You may feel the urge to buy a lace-trimmed bonnet. Indulge it. 

Monday-Sunday 11am-7pm. 1506 Haight, SF. (415) 552-4226, www.mysterymister.com

Retro Fit Vintage

An ideal place to piece together a costume for Halloween, Bay to Breakers, or your average Friday night in San Francisco. 

Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 12pm-7pm; Friday-Saturday noon-9 pm. 910 Valencia, SF. (415) 550-1530, www.retrofityourworld.com

General Store

A carefully curated clothing and handmade craft shop located in the Outer Sunset. Locally made items include Tellason denim, Joshu+Vela backpacks, and Tanya Maydoff natural fiber wool caps and hand warmers. 

Monday-Friday 11am-7pm; Saturday-Sunday 10am-7pm. 4035 Judah, SF. (415) 682-0600, www.visitgeneralstore.com

In their words: Oakland locals from this week’s Guardian cover

Charles Russo
-
24
In their words: Oakland locals from this week’s Guardian cover

This week, the Guardian examines the issue of whether San Francisco is experiencing a cultural and economic exodus to the East Bay, especially Oakland. Our cover features creative folks from all over Oakland proper. They were asked the question “Is Oakland cooler than San Francisco?” and in return we got some pretty surprising answers (though, spoiler alert: the general consensus was “Hell Yes!”). Have a listen to their responses…

(Photos by Matthew Reamer)

 

Ali “Chief Saba” Ar Rasheed, Business Manager Easy Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club
“People often call Oakland ‘gritty’ compared to San Francisco… what I think they actually mean is more working-class.”

 

Adam Hatch, Owner Hatch Gallery/Co-founder Starline Project
“San Francisco is a visually appealing city but as far as where I’d want to live it’s Oakland.”

 

 

HOTTUB, Disco/Rap band (Clockwise from left: Jaysonik, Ambreezy, Lolipop, Funky Finger Mark, and CoCo Machete)
“Oakland in some ways is overshadowing San Francisco because artists can afford to live here,” Jaysonik.

Austin Barber, Guitarist and vocalist for Saviours
“I’ve always been more attracted to Oakland, mostly because of the music.”

 

Jessica Hobbs, Co-founder Flux Foundation
“I’ve found more openness to the art that I do… San Francisco is kind of a pain in the butt!”

 

Tanya Holland, Chef and Owner, Brown Sugar Kitchen/B-Side BBQ
“You actually know your neighbors which is a different experience than I had in San Francisco.”

 

Alfonso Dominguez, Architect/Owner Tamarindo Restaurant and Era Art Bar and Lounge
“It’s like comparing apples and pomegranates.”

 

Sam Strand, Artist/Co-founder Starline Project
“It’s a little rougher… but the fight is what makes it cooler. It’s like Detroit.”

 

Tyranny Allen, CEO of Marketing Kings
“We’ve got a lot more going on in Oakland. It’s the ultimate place to be in the Bay Area.”

Free speech and Fidel Castro in Florida

Zelda Bronstein
-
40
Free speech and Fidel Castro in Florida

The First Amendment protects your right to say just about anything, but doesn’t insulate you from the consequences. And there’s a difference between the right to free speech and the responsibility to be held accountable for saying something truly offensive.

So it’s no surprise that the manager of the Florida Miami Marlins, a team with a spankin’ new publicly financed ballpark in Little Havana, would get himself in deep doo-doo by saying that Fidel Castro maybe wasn’t such a horrible guy after all. As Dave Zirin, my favorite sportswriter, notes:

Short of a hurricane or an armed taxpayer revolt, this had to have been Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria’s worst nightmare. … Casual kind words for Castro in Miami is akin to looking at a leaky bottle of kerosene and thinking it could use a match.

I get it — Ozzie Guillen offended a sizable portion of the community in which he does business, and he’s supposed to be a community leader and bring Cuban Americans into the ballpark, and whether he misspoke or was having trouble expressing a complex political thought in English, he can’t really get out of this one without taking some hits.

Still, the AP story that ran in the Chron was a bit over the top:

The suspension recalled the punishment given to Marge Schott, the late owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Schott so embarrassed baseball in the 1990s with inflammatory racial remarks and fond recollections of Adolf Hitler that she was suspended from ownership duties for a season.

Wha-what? I’m not trying to defend ol’ Commie Fidel here, and I know he was a dictator who has political prisoners and didn’t tolerate dissent, but seriously? We’re comparing an offhand comment about Castro to support for Adolf Hitler?

As far as I know, Castro was never guilty of mass genocide. He didn’t systematically murder 6 million people. He didn’t invade Europe and attempt to take over the world. Hell, he couldn’t even “export the revolution” very far off his tiny island.

You don’t have to support every policy of the Cuban government to acknowledge that Castro took an impoverished nation controlled by a savage U.S. puppet and turned it into a functioning country where everyone gets enough to eat and has free education and medical care — and has done it up against a total boycott and for many years a secret war waged by the most powerful nation on Earth.

Hitler he ain’t.

In fact, I think that (possibly outside of Miami) it’s possible for sensitive, politically correct Americans to discuss Castro with a bit more nuance and subtlety than the ownership of the Marlins is willing to allow. You can respect the guy, as Guillen apparently did, for surviving for 65 years when the U.S. was doing just about everything, including planting an exploding cigar in his stash, to get rid of him. You can say that he was, and is, one of the most important Leftist leaders in the Western Hemisphere, and inspiration to revolutionaries from Nelson Mandela to Hugo Chavez. You can have a reasonable argument about whether he might have become more open to democracy and free speech if the U.S. wasn’t constantly trying to overthrow him.

You can say things here — because this is America — that you can’t say in Cuba. Except you apparently can’t say them in Miami.

 

 

Editorial: The flight from San Francisco

-
23

EDITORIAL There is no simple free-market solution to gentrification and displacement. There’s no way a crowded city like San Francisco can simply rely on the forces of supply and demand to protect vulnerable populations. And there’s no way the city’s flawed housing policy can prevent the loss of thousands of San Franciscans — particularly young, creative people who help keep a city lively — from fleeing to a town where they can actually afford the rent.

Richard Florida, the famous social and economic theorist who coined the term “creative class” argues that artists and writers and geeks and musicians are the forces that drive modern economies. His pioneering 2002 essay in the Washington Monthly was titled “Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race.”

Florida’s something of an elitist and he ignores the contributions that tens of thousands of others (including retired people, union members and nonprofit workers) make a community. He idolizes tech culture and often ignores issues like class and race.

But he’s got a point: Nobody who’s doing anything cool wants to live in a city where everyone is rich and everything is clean and boring. And that’s the danger San Francisco faces.

Just go over to Oakland for a few days and talk to all the people who were once part of this city’s cultural scene. They’ll tell you what anyone with any sense knows: You don’t attract creative people to a city by giving out tax breaks for corporations and building fancy office space. The rock bands that Florida talks about aren’t going to stay in a city because it has high-end jobs for people with advanced degrees. Artists need a place where they can afford the rent.

San Francisco is still a great urban center, by any possible standard, and has all the qualities of diversity, openness, energy, politics and fun that have made generations of immigrants from all over the world want to make it their home. But at a certain point, housing becomes more important than all of the other development issues that local government can address.

Take Andy Duvall, a musician we interviewed who was part of San Francisco for 15 years before he was literally priced out of town. For half of what he was paying in the Mission, Duvall has more than twice the space in Oakland — and the situation is just getting worse. While most of the country is still mired in a deep housing slump (and parts of San Francisco are facing a foreclosure crisis), rents in this town are soaring, beyond the affordability of almost anyone who currently lives here. According to the city’s own statistics, only about 10 percent of San Franciscans can afford the rent on a median market-rate apartment. That means if they’re evicted or lose their homes, they have to leave town.

The supervisors held a hearing April 9 on affordable housing, and the message was profound: “Affordable housing preserves the neighborhood in more ways than one; residents are the foundation on which the economy is built. From any angle, if we can’t afford to live here, there is no city,” observed Val Sinckler, a Western Addition resident.

But while the mayor is working to attract companies that will pay high-end salaries to people who can afford to pay far more rent than the average San Franciscan, he’s a long way from coming up with the money to even begin to mitigate the problem.

An effective policy to preserve San Francisco requires strict regulation (to prevent evictions and displacement), a mandate that commercial developers build housing for their workforce and that residential developers meet the needs of low- and moderate-income residents — and a large investment of public money in affordable housing. If Lee isn’t willing to talk serious about those three crucial elements, then he’s presiding over the decline of one of the world’s coolest cities.

 

 

Localized Appreesh: The Buttercream Gang

Tony Robles
-
5
Localized Appreesh: The Buttercream Gang

Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

The Buttercream Gang is pretty much based on good deeds. That is, the San Francisco-based, Napa-born group initially formed as a loosely defined do-gooder crew (read all about that below) and this week, it does another mitzvah: the band will play a benefit for the San Francisco Food Bank at CELLspace.

The Gang’s music is feel-good as well, a playful mix of upbeat sun-soaked California indie pop with jangly guitar, jumpy African inspired percussion, and multi-part harmonies. There’s even some sax in there – the ultimate party instrument, at least, according to ’80s movies. Sonically, it’s somewhat in line with pals (and fellow Localized Appreesh-ers) Waterstrider, and has gained a few worthy comparisons to the likes of Vampire Weekend and others leading the celebrated Afro-pop charge.

So now that you’re versed, lick the sugary frosting off your lips, because it’s Buttercream Gang time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKE1VQYrCWM

Year and location of origin: We formed in a garage in Napa in 2003. We had a different name then and were just a cover band. About a year and a half later we were writing original music and changed our name (for better or for worse) to The Buttercream Gang. Our first show was on New Years, we played Devo’s “Whip It”.

Band name origin: The Buttercream Gang was a movie that our group of friends thought was really funny in high school. We formed our own real life version of The Buttercream Gang and did a couple half-assed good deeds, in imitation of the protagonists of the film. We decided on The Buttercream Gang because, in a weird way, we see playing music as the good deed that we supply to listeners.

Band motto: We make ya move an twist with the flick of a wrist.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Infantile adults dancing aimlessly to the sounds of the world.

Instrumentation: Pete Davies, Bobby Renz, Robinson Kuntz, and added to the band in 2011 for our album release were Max Bonick and Alex Garcia. We are all multi-instrumentalists and rotate around drums, guitars, bass, organ, keys, percussion, vocals, saxophone.

Most recent release: Our third full length album, Polite Men. Working towards releasing new material by the end of summer.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: There are many good bands to be inspired by.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Getting noticed amongst so many good bands.

First album ever purchased: Pete: Kris Kross – Totally Krossed Out; Bob: Green Day – Dookie cassette tape; Robinson: MC Hammer – Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em; Max – Beastie Boys – License to Ill.
Most recent album purchased/downloaded: Pete: Tanlines – Mixed Emotions; Bob: Chantells – Waiting in the Park ; Rob: Wye Oak – Civilian ; Max: Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Rip, Rig, Panic.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Pete: French Laundry; Bob & Robinson: San Tung’s Dry Fried Chicken Wings; Max: The pastor burritos from Tacos Labamba in Sonoma
 
Vupes, Vulpes – a Silverfox Concert for Good
With the Buttercream Gang, Mahgeetah, Sun Life
Thu/12, 7pm, Use the code “SFBG” for $20 entry (50% off), includes open bar
CELLspace
2050 Bryant, SF
vulpesvulpes.eventbrite.com

And just for kicks, here’s some clips from the direct-to-video movie that inspired the band name:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOWW-r0AWr8

Calvin Trillin: The situation

-
0

So Mitt’s officially an Etch A Sketch,

And Rick says JFK’s speech made him retch.

Ron Paul’s a ditz, and Gingrich is a letch.

Though nets are flung as far as tthey will stretch,

There isn’t any white knight there to fetch.

Republicans thus sit around and kvetch.

Calvin Trillin: Deadline Poet: The Nation (4/16/2012)

Heads Up: 6 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
-
0
Heads Up: 6 must-see concerts this week

In the days leading up to veritable sweaty behemoth Coachella, many national acts are cooling their jets, taking breathers, stretching their hamstrings before the big back-to-back weekend shows.

Those in the Bay Area smart enough to avoid that desert feather clusterfuck are to be rewarded this week with some mighty fine local and touring acts; musicians preferring to opt out of the chaos (or those that are simply stopping by on their way to the fest).

In that latter mix – bands dropping in before plopping down in the desert sun – a few ’90s big sellers and underground giants of the same era are indeed here this week, but their shows are, naturally, already long sold-out or too damn near it to call (Jeff Mangum, Mazzy Star, Radiohead, fIREHOSE). But if you already have tickets, mazel tov!

With that, I present your must-see (and might actually have the chance to catch) Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Emily Jane White
The gloomy finger-picking folk songstress just returned from a tour with fellow local Jolie Holland (the two kicked it off during Noise Pop with an enchanting night at the Swedish American); and she’ll likely play new tunes of her equally enchanting new release, Ode To Sentience, out June 12 on Antenna Farm.
With Foxtails Brigade, Paula Frazer
Wed/11, 9:30pm, $10
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-fJcO52LFw

Sepultura
Playing a pummeling, hardcore-influenced mix of thrash and death metal, Sepultura put Brazil on the metal map with a run of vaunted albums that culminated in 1996’s sublime Roots. (Ben Richardson)
With Havok
Wed/11, 7:30 p.m., $25
DNA Lounge
375 11th St., SF
415-626-2532
www.dnalounge.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oRsw1wuhaA

Trust, with Blood Orange
Buoyed by rolling dark wave synth, pulsating ’80s beats, and danceable rhythm, Trust’s debut full-length, TRST, is both beautiful and eerie – much like the music of Toronto contemporary Austra (which shares member Maya Postepski). The band opens for that soulful burst of flavor, Blood Orange (aka Lightspeed Champion, aka Dev Hynes).
Thu/12, 9:30pm, $12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
Trust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tc1xj7Nblc
Blood Orange
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ew9nwn1HY

Festival of Resistance
Psychedelic farmageddon witchcraft act Future Twin (also a featured On the Rise band), Apogee Sound Club, Black Swans, and the Rabbles play this daytime benefit for the 99 Cent Print Committee – a group of writers, musicians, and artists who support activism through print. While a good cause, it’s also your last chance to see Future Twin for the next few months as it’s about to embark on a national tour.
Sat/14, 3-8pm, $5-$10
El Rio
3158 Mission, SF
(415) 282-3325
www.elriosf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFH4Ehi74d0

Art Beat Bazaar
Presented by the nonprofit Art Beat Foundation, it’s a pop-up indie craft mart set to the twist-worthy ’60s beat of Francophone Brooklyn-based pop act Les Sans Culottes (“Allo Allo”), and local all-girl garage rock band Female Trouble.
Sun/15, 3-7pm, free
Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck, Berk.
(510) 841-2082
www.starryploughpub.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fb5uxIWPfg

Ximena Sariñana
Sariñana is a sweetly-piped, Mexican singer-songwriter who bounces between exuberant youthful pop and crisp jazz standards. She made a handful of those requisite SXSW who-to-know-now lists in various pop culture publications this year – and for good reason.
Sun/15, 8:30pm, $18
New Parish
579 18th St., Oakl.
(510) 444-7474
www.thenewparish.com

Social liberalism beats economic populism?

Zelda Bronstein
-
13
Social liberalism beats economic populism?

Eric Alterman, who writes on media for The Nation, has a book out on the history of liberalism in America and a fascinating essay in The New York Times on how progessives lost the economic war. It’s hard to make a case this complicated in a few hundred words, so he sounds as if he’s somewhat downplaying the importance of civil rights. And American history is, of course, complicated and the post-War era one of the most confusing times to understand and analyze. But Alterman seems to come down on the side of those who argue that the fight for what he calls the “rights agenda” undermined the battle for economic equality:

In other words, economic liberalism is on life-support, while cultural liberalism thrives. The obvious question is why. The simple answer is that cultural liberalism comes cheap. Supporting same-sex marriage or a woman’s right to choose does not cost the wealthy anything or restrict their ability to become wealthier.

He also disses incompetence, always an easy target, since the economic crises that post-War liberals addressed — from inner-city and rural poverty to energy prices and inflation — defied easy solutions and there were bound to be mistakes. But here’s his basic hit:

“The great liberal failing of this time,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed as early as 1968, was “constantly to over-promise and to overstate, and thereby constantly to appear to under-perform.” This not only alienated key constituencies, but it also diminished the trust between the governing and the governed that previous generations of liberals had worked so hard to earn.

Caught in the crosswinds of so many simultaneous crises — I have not even mentioned Vietnam — many liberals chose to focus, rather perversely, on a “rights” agenda and the internecine fights it engendered within their increasingly fractured coalition. They lost sight of the essential element that had made the coalition possible in the first place: the sense that liberalism stood with the common man and woman in their struggle against economic forces too large and powerful to be faced by individuals on their own.

In other words, if we’d just been willing to throw the gays and the women under the bus (or do what so many “liberals” so often suggested, and move more slowly on things like abortion rights, comparable worth and same-sex marriage, which are so easy for the Right to use as wedge issues) we might have held on to the coalition that was able to wage the War on Povery under LBJ.

Okay, that’s not fair — Alterman is a lot more nuanced than that. And I agree with him entirely that it’s easy (particularly in a place like San Francisco) to support same-sex marriage, and that cultural issues can give fiscal conservatives cover with a left-leaning electorate. It drives me nuts. And I completely agree that Obama needs to return liberalism to an economic populist agenda.

And a lot of this discussion has been done before, starting with Thomas Frank and What’s the Matter with Kansas?

But would we really be better off in the long run if we’d abandoned the “rights” agenda in favor of economic equality? Or is it possible that the Right is losing steam on the Culture War and in the process discrediting its economic ideas? Do women who heard Rush Limbaugh call a law student a “slut” start questioning what he says about taxes?

I dunno. Interesting questions.

Why Wall Street loves the War on Drugs

Zelda Bronstein
-
46
Why Wall Street loves the War on Drugs

The raid on Oaksterdam has just about everyone in local politics engaging in a little head-scratching: What possible reason would the Obama administration have to crack down on medical marijuana in an election year? How does it help the president, who will be facing an unsettled and angry electorate in a still-tough economy, to alienate the pot smoking liberals of the world, who were at one point among his most loyal constituents?

What a fucking idiot.

Here’s what make it worse: I don’t think anyone at Goldman Sachs talked to the White House about this, but the 1 percent clearly have a lot to gain from the drug war.

And it has nothing to do with drugs.

Let’s be logical here. There’s only one possible way to increase economic equality in this country, and it involves government intervention. With union membership at a fraction of what it once was, government is the only institution with the power these days to enforce income redistribution. The wealthy have to be forced to pay higher taxes, and that money has to be spent on public education, affordable housing, economic development, public-sector-driven job creation and other programs that are proven to narrow the wealth gap.

But that’s tricky, since the Right has done such an effective job (with the help of corrupt politicians of every stripe, including liberals) of making Americans mistrust government. How do you get people to vote for higher taxes when they think the money’s going to be wasted on pointless wars and crony contracts — and on sending federal agents to roust pot clubs?

The two factors that most accounted for the fall of economic liberalism in the 1960s were Vietnam and pot. My parents generation saw the government as the nation’s leaders who got us out of the Great Depression and won World War II. My generation saw government as the assholes who were sending us to die in Southeast Asia and putting us in jail for smoking weed. That’s why when Ronald Reagan announced that “government is not the solution, it’s the problem,” so many of my peers nodded (through the haze) and said: Right on.

There are more progressives in the Bay Area today who distrust and dislike the federal government than there were before the raids began. We’re going back to the days when “the feds” became a dirty word. And it’s undermining everything that Obama is tyring to do with the economy.

Yeah, Wall Street, which is trying to get rid of pesky regulations, loves this — if you hate the feds in Oaksterdam, it’s hard to love them at the IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s what the 1 percent relies on. And it’s working.

 

 

GWAR honors deceased guitarist’s return to the home planet

Tony Robles
-
1

Those sleazy, salacious scumdogs of the universe in GWAR wasted no time in unleashing their riotous brand of musical mayhem on Friday night before a packed audience at the Regency Ballroom, with fake blood spraying and splattering the audience as quickly as the first notes came screaming out of the amplifiers.

Singer Oderus Urungus strode out onto the stage wearing his usual wardrobe of outrageously oversized armor and tattered fishnets. While the rest of the band began taking their positions, the band leader and a cloaked figure began miming to the first hapless victim of the impending carnival of carnage, a creature holding a document that read “Deed To The Castle.”

With loud encouragement from the audience — which had already been whipped into a frenzy from an excellent opening set by Bay Area favorites Ghoul — a sword was produced, and with a mighty swing from Oderus, the blood started squirting from the decapitated freak, who ambled about the stage, drenching everything and everybody, as GWAR launched into its first song.

From then on, it was the always entertaining live show from GWAR that fans have come to expect after more than 25 years of trashing venues and leaving concertgoers covered in every manner of fake bodily fluid imaginable — some kids even wore homemade shirts, taking a plain white tee, writing the words “GWAR 4/6/12” in pen, and coming out with a custom gory tie dye job and beaming smiles.

The only people who didn’t look like they were having a blast were, of course, the helpless security guards in front of the stage, who were all wearing rain gear, and had to deal with untold gallons of fake blood raining down on them in addition to the crowd surfing kids coming over the barricades, and the passed out girl who had to be carried out from the front barely five minutes into the set.

The theatrical terror ended its regular set with the signature sing-along song, “Sick Of You” before coming back out for an encore that paid tribute to departed bandmate, Corey Smoot, aka Flattus Maximus, who died last November while on tour with the group (GWAR had to cancel its last scheduled Bay Appearance as it fell during Smoot’s memorial service).

With Smoot’s custom Schecter guitar placed upon the top of an amp stack, lit by a white spotlight, Dave Brockie —  aka Oderus — introduced the last song, “The Road Behind,” by telling the crowd that one of GWAR’s members was called back to the home planet.

Amid all of the prosthetic pandemonium and controlled chaos, it was probably the most appropriate way to deal with their grief, and to honor a real human being, friend, and bandmate. Seeing Smoot’s guitar sitting alone, while the surviving members of the group performed around it, actually made for a touching moment, something that has to be an exceedingly rare event in the sordid history of the band — but yet another example of how GWAR is still the best at what it does.

Aren’t we glad the Blue Angels still fly over SF?

Zelda Bronstein
-
47
Aren’t we glad the Blue Angels still fly over SF?

I understand that the Angels are supposed to be the best pilots in the Navy, but still: These things crash, and when they do it really sucks. At least seven still missing in Virginia Beach. Imagine if that happened in, say, the Mission, or Telegraph Hill?

I’ve never been a big fan of the Blue Angels — what a waste of money and fuel in a celebration of military might — but every time we see a crash like this, I have to ask: For safety alone, is this still a good idea?

The shape is turning me on! See the Apple-rejected “Geometric Porn”

Andrew Lam
-
2

In a world where iFart is an acceptable product, you would think that pretty little abstractions of bodily functions would pass muster. But multimedia visual artist Luciano Foglia encountered resistance in Appleland when he tried to make his “Geometric Porn” app available via iPhone — it was rejected on the grounds of being “excessively objectionable or crude content.” Check out this preview video of GP to see the shapes Apple deemed too hot for your phone screen. And rejoice: the controversy hasn’t stopped Foglia from making T-shirts. Or you from buying them, you sleekly dirty dog, you. 

So you want to be a time traveler!

Sue Vaughan
-
0
So you want to be a time traveler!

If you’re an aspiring time traveler, you need to pick up a copy of the brand-new how-to book So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel (Berkley Trade, 326pp., $15). If you are already a time traveler, you should probably pick up a copy, read it, then go back in time till before you time-traveled in the first place, and use your new knowledge wisely.

Wait, does that make any sense? Time travel is some intense and tricky stuff. I got ahold of authors and time-travel experts Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch for further intel on the matter.

SFBG The book contains several film references (Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Terminator, etc). In your opinion, which film offers the most accurate depiction of time travel? Which is the least accurate?

Phil Hornshaw Back to the Future is a pretty reliable resource for the perils of time travel, even if it does take a few liberties in the service of being awesome. Granted, you can’t go into the future and find yourself there — how could you be there in the future if you left from the past? — but the ideas of timelines being corrupted and for the most part, of needing antecedents in the past in order to create the future, is handled pretty deftly in Back to the Future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SrV13F3x7Y

McFly: accurate.

Conversely, Terminator is a pretty terrible time travel movie, even though evil robots are super-cool, because of the problem of Kyle Reese going back, creating John Connor, and then getting sent back by John Connor in order to create John Connor in order to get sent back by John Connor. Those kinds of stories can work, but they make your brain ache. And that’s just not very nice, James Cameron. But really, there’s not really a “worst” time travel movie because they’re pretty universally terrible at being time travel movies. That was a big reason for the Time Traveler’s Guide in the first place.

Nick Hurwitch Agreed. You can’t go wrong with the Holy Trilogy — that’s Back to the Future, not Star Wars, kids. But the time travel movies that always bug me are those that send their characters to the era during which the film was made for the rest of the movie. For example, in Time After Time, the movie starts out in the late 19th Century, but the hero and the villain are quickly sent to San Francisco, 1979. The movie was made in, you guessed it, 1979.

That’s to say nothing of all the hundreds of movies and television shows that get time travel completely wrong — but at a minimum, don’t be lazy. Hopefully after reading this guide, the audience at large will have a better grasp of what works in a time travel movie and what doesn’t.

 

SFBG The book points out that time travel can have catastrophic results when executed improperly. Which rule of time travel is the most important?

NH You should never, under any circumstances, visit yourself in the past. History is easy enough to screw up simply by hopping around through time, but any interactions with other versions of yourself increase the risk of paradoxes exponentially. You could prevent yourself from traveling back in the first place, get yourself killed, be mistaken for yourself, or, more often than not, engage in hand-to-hand combat to the death with yourself. If you’re going to mess up time for the rest of us, at least stick to stepping on butterflies.

PH Yeah, that’s a good one. Also don’t make out with your mom or dad. That actually applies all the time. You don’t have to be a time traveler to apply that to your life.

 

SFBG Is time travel an activity suited for beginners? What kind of pre-training do you recommend, and will a montage be necessary?

PH The biggest danger of time travel is getting killed within the first 10 minutes of your arrival, so if there’s one thing a novice time traveler should be good at, it’s running. We also recommend bringing along a firearm, so if you’re looking for a montage, I’d recommend track-running and then gunplay. We don’t recommend them at the same time as that’s generally frowned upon no matter what time you’re visiting, but both are useful skills.

NH Many idiots less prepared and less intelligent than your readers have shot off through spacetime and managed to make it back alive, or at least only partially maimed. That’s a crapshoot, though. The best way to get your feet wet (or singed by electricity, as the case may be) is to sign up for the Qualified Users And Negotiators of Time Travel Universal Ministry (QUAN+UM) internship program, WEDGIE (the Wormhole Educational Development and Guided Internship Experience). It’s the bottom rung of time travel, sure, but you learn the ins and outs of quantum physics, proper shotgun etiquette, laboratory-mopping, and sandwich-making. 

 

SFBG Two of the most obvious reasons to attempt time travel are the “do-over” — re-living some important past event — and the “betting on sports games/lotteries in the past after learning the final score/winning number in the future.” The book strongly discourages both. Can you elaborate on why?

PH Do-overs never go all that well. When you head to the past to do over something you already did, you have your past-self to deal with. He or she is, you know, there — doing the thing. Doing it poorly, usually. How do you get rid of yourself in order to do something over? You can’t kill them or really remove them from the situation because you risk further complications. Plus, you’re Old You and they’re Younger You and it gets all complex and confusing. It’s generally inadvisable. As for time gambling, it has to do with the Biff’s World Effect — which is that acquiring a bunch of money through time travel generally makes you a jerk.

 

SFBG If a time traveler finds your book mid-journey, which is the first chapter he or she should read?

NH That of course depends on what era they find themselves in. The survival guide portion of the book is organized by era, so should they be in Prehistory in need of shelter or a dino pal, then the Prehistory chapter is for them. Or, if they’re next up to joust at the Renaissance Festival — an actual festival during the Renaissance — the chapter on medieval times might just get them out alive. For general panic on the run, however, Chapter IV: The Perplexing Pandemic of Potential Paradoxes, is your one-stop shop for things you’re likely about to screw up.

PH There’s a lot of generalized knowledge right at the front of the Survival Guide portion of the book. Really, though, you should never time travel without reading the whole book. And you should always have a copy. And a backup copy. As many copies as you can comfortably carry. The more copies you have, the safer you probably are. We have no science to back that up.

 

SFBG Which do you prefer, traveling forward in time or backward? Why? And what is the time and place of your favorite or ideal destination?

PH There’s a period right before the Robot Uprising and subsequent Robopocalypse when things are pretty great. Robotic butlers, plenty of technology, food for everyone — generally, everything is beaches and mai tais. Immediately after this comes the Robot Uprising, life underground and the near destruction of humanity, and after that comes peace between robots and humans, immediately after which aliens arrive and subjugate Earth for quite a while. But after that — things are pretty cool. Especially if you like space adventures, which everyone does, obviously.

NH Riding dinosaurs is one of the most underrated facets of human existence, sadly underserved due to a lack of time travel. It’s also pretty neat using just a single leaf as a blanket. But if you put a gun to my head, nothing beats forming a ragtag team of castoffs and space aliens and bounding around the universe as a smuggler and/or freedom fighter.

 

SFBG QUAN+UM is a mysterious entity often referenced in the book. What are you at liberty to reveal about the organization? Why are the official colors purple and orange?

NH Only that they have the best damned bowling team this side of the Cretaceous. As for the colors: it’s a science-y thing. You wouldn’t understand.

PH Purple and orange are great colors for intern time travel test jumpsuits because they stand out when you’re trying to recover bodies, but have you seen them together? It’s so horrific, it has been known to drive people insane. Also, as it happens, purple and orange are radioactive when combined.

 

SFBG Do you think time travel will ever be an option for uber-rich tourists like Richard Branson and Ashton Kutcher, a la space travel? Would this be a disastrous business venture that would ultimately require a hero or machine-man to travel back from the future to prevent?

NH If we learned anything from Jurassic Park, and we did, it’s that tourism and playing God with science do not mix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5gbNtYw9KA

“Hold onto your butts.”

PH QUAN+UM exists because of jerks with money and crazy people in their basement, making radioactive mini-fridges and trying to ride in them to visit the Wild West. We’re not really supposed to talk about it, but to answer your questions, yes. And yes. Repeatedly. In fact, that’s kind of what we’re doing in 2012 right now. We won’t say who needs a strict talking to, however. He knows what he did.

 

SFBG What’s the most dangerous foe (dinosaurs, wizards, Nazis, alien overlords, etc.) one might encounter while traveling through time? What’s the most important thing to know about them?

NH Yourself. No other foe is as dangerous to you or to the sanctity of the timeline. The most important thing to know about them is that they know everything about you. The second most important thing to know about them is that they will turn hostile, inevitably. It’s best to be unpredictable and use moves and tactics that you would never use, otherwise they’ll have a leg up in the battle. Or … a leg even, anyway.

PH Also dragons.

***

Bonus round:

SFBG This sign appeared last year outside of the Guardian offices. Please advise.

NH Uh-oh. What was the date, exactly? Looks like another intern is trying to “take matters into his own hands.”

 

Check out Hornshaw and Hurwitch’s web site for more info on So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel, which contains extended discussions on riding dinosaurs, the Robot Uprising, and other topics.

Burning Man awards art grants and resolves final ticket issues

Sasha Cuttler
-
14
Burning Man awards art grants and resolves final ticket issues

It’s been a tough year for Black Rock City LLC (aka the Borg), the SF-based company that stages Burning Man, particularly with its ticket fiasco, the heaps of criticism that followed, and uneasiness about what this year’s event will look and feel like. As word of its annual art grants has gotten out over these last couple weeks, the grumblings of discontent have returned, this time mixed with early twinges of excitement about the event.

On the positive side, the Borg is giving away more than $700,000 – its most ever and a $100,000 increase over last year – to 47 art projects, many of them to Bay Area artists such as Michael Christian, Zac Carroll, Gregg Fleishman, Krysten Mate/Jon Sarriugarte, Otto Von Danger (whose Burn Wall Street project was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement), Flux Foundation (whose 2010 Temple of Flux we profiled), and David Best (the original Temple-builder who will do this year’s Temple after a three-year break).

Yet with 349 applicants seeking almost $5 million, there are lots of great local projects and artists that didn’t make the cut who will now be forced to aggressively raise money or consider scaling back or abandoning their plans. Among those are longtime artist Charlie Gadeken, Marco Cochrane (who for two years has been trying to complete Truth is Beauty, his follow-up to the spectacular Blissdance, the 40-foot tall nude woman who currently dances on Treasure Island), and the all-hands-on-deck Bottlecap Gazebo project that has been the subject of near-constant work by dedicated teams in San Francisco and Oakland.

The Bottlecap Gazebo crew has already been tapping its communities to collect and process about 100,000 beer bottle caps that are being smashed, stitched, and shaped into an ornate gazebo that incorporates the caps’ colors into its swirling design. Now they also need cash to complete the project, which you can give here.

Same thing with Cochrane, who is offering a unique opportunity tonight for you to help and watch how this amazing artist works. “Art & Politics: A Fundraiser for Truth is Beauty and Alix Rosenthal” will feature Cochrane doing a live sculpture of Rosenthal, with proceeds split between the project and Rosenthal’s DCCC campaign (she’s also a longtime burner, Borg volunteer, and friend of mine). Such sculptures are the first step in making his larger pieces, like Blissdance and his new 60-foot-tall nude woman. The event, which also features some great burner DJs, is 7pm-midnight at Project One.

Bettie June, who runs the Artery program for the Borg, said they had some very hard choices to make this year. “We had a huge jump in the number of people who applied for art grants, and the quality was really high. They were really strong and well thought out proposals,” she told us.

The Borg should be officially announcing its grants anytime now, but the applicants have all heard. My Flux family is hurriedly finishing other projects in its bay at American Steel in Oakland so it can focus on Zoa, which will combine fire-spewing steel seedpods with a wooden exterior that will burn away (in truly colorful and spectacular fashion, I hear) halfway through the week to reveal the inner core, which will go through it own metamorphosis, making it three sculptures in one. Yet, like most of the funded projects, they still have fundraising to do to cover the full project cost, and they currently have a Kickstarter campaign underway.

Bettie June singled out Zoa as one of the pieces she’s most excited about, also mentioning Burn Wall Street, Pier 2 (a bigger version of last year’s Pier by Carnelian Bay artist Matt Schultz, which this year will have a galleon crashed into it, which visitors can explore), Universe Revolves Around You (the latest kinetic project by Zachary Coffin using large boulders), and Circle Of Regional Effigies (35 installations by regional groups, up from 23 last year, that will burn simultaneously on Thursday night).

Some of the projects that got funded this year are updates and modifications of existing artworks, including Carroll’s Front Porch and Serpent Twins by Mate/Sarriugarte, although Bettie June said both have great new features (the latter project, a pair of mythical serpents that travel the playa, will have new lighting and sound systems to better tell the story of their interactions with one another).

“It was a big discussion and we’re pretty pleased with the results,” Borg board member Marian Goodell said of the art grants. “They’re funding a lot of great art.”

As for her other major preoccupation of the year – dealing with the fallout of a new ticketing system that left many veteran burners without tickets – Goodell said they’ve been sorting out that situation as well: distributing the final 10,000 tickets, which were going to be sold generally, through established theme camps.

Some sources have told us that demand from the theme camps had actually been less than anticipated, but Goodell said they still need to get tickets to various performers, volunteers, and art car crews. “We have a lot of people to take care of,” she said.

She also said that she’s been pleasantly surprised by the number of tickets that are being sold through the STEP ticket resale system that the Borg hurriedly established to redistribute tickets, with more than 500 being offered so far. “It’s a trickle, but it’s not stopping,” she said.

Yet there could still be a bit of grumbling to come over the tickets. The final decision for the Borg to make was whether to require ticket holders to register by name to control scalping – a decision it would need to make before tickets are mailed out in June – and sources say the Borg has decided not to do so.

With demand for tickets far exceeding anyone’s expectations this year, tickets selling out for the first time last year, and with a new system that many said could easily be gamed by scalpers, the unknown factor is how many were snapped up by scalpers who are charging exorbitant prices. The Borg has maintained that they think that number is fairly small, but we’ll see this summer.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see the anguish over tickets now starting to give way to excitement about the art projects now getting underway throughout the Bay Area, many of which are still looking for help. So go make some art.

 

Steven T. Jones, aka Scribe, is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture. He’ll be doing a reading and leading a discussion on the state of Burning Man from 6-7:30 pm on April 25 at the Bay Guardian office, 135 Mississippi St., SF.  

 

Here’s the complete list of this year’s funded art projects:  

Project Name

Artist Name

Hometown

Almost

michael christian

Berkeley, CA

Arc Harps

Jen Lewin

Boulder, CO

bapteme de feu 2.0

Anton Vidtiz-Ward

Telluride, CO

Bicycle Arpeggio

George Rahi

Bellingham, WA

Burn Wall Street

Otto Von Danger

Oakland, CA

Char Wash

Christopher Schardt

Oakland, CA

City of Lights

Gary Long

Los Angeles, CA

Dragon Smelter

Daniel Macchiarini

San Francisco, CA

EGO

Laura Kimpton & Michael Garlington

Vineburg, CA

Front Porch

Zac Carroll

Mill Valley, CA

Fusion Fire

Team What-Dat-Do

Seattle, WA

Harmonic Fire Pendula

Matthew Dockrey

Seattle, WA

Labyrinth of Colorful Cloud

Rob Fischer

Brooklyn, NY

Luminous Passage 2.0

Predock/Frane Architects vs Anderson/Predock

San Francisco, CA

Lune & Tide

Sarah Cockings, Laurence Symonds

London (UK)

Man Pavilion Pistil

Gregg Fleishman

Oakland, CA

MetaMorph

Chelsea Jenkins

Alta Loma, CA

Mooving Sculpture

David Boyer

Reno, NV

Murmuration

Jeff Maguire

Santa Monica, CA

Neverwas Haul

Shannon O’Hare

Vallejo, CA

Otic Oasis 2.0

Gregg Fleishman (Artist) and Melissa Barron (Conceptor)

Oakland, CA

Perception in the Absence of Reality

David Clay (Playa Name: Egg Shen)

Seattle, WA

Pier 2

Matt Schultz/ The Pier Group

Carnelian Bay, CA

Pins

Tom Woodall

Kennewick, WA

Pyropodium

Noah Rosenthal and Nathan Clark

Cleveland Heights, OH

Remembering Cap’n Jim

Dave Power

Pagosa Springs, CO

Reno Star

Mark Szulgit

Sebastopol, CA

Serpent Twins 

Jon Sarriugarte , Kyrsten Mate

Oakland, CA

Singularity Transmissions

Troy Stanley and TEAM RX/TX

Houston, TX

Star Seed

Kate Raudenbush

New York, NY

Starport 2.012 (Cafe Portal)

Carey Thompson

Novato, CA

sub-Sonarium

Benjamin Carpenter / Daniel Yasmin

Oakland, CA

Sun Bugs

Adel Kerpely

Brooklyn, NY

Super Street Fire

Seth Hardy & Site 3 coLaboratory

Toronto (CANADA)

Tesseract

James Reinhardt, Scott Chico Raskey

Seattle, WA

The Temple of Juno

David Best

Petaluma, CA

Third Space at Burning Man

ALEXANDER REHN & GREUTMANN & BOLZERN

San Francisco, CA

Through the Gorilla Glass

GUILD — Spencer Rand, Johnathan Wong, Andrea Ling, Patrick Svilans and Jonah Humphrey

Toronto (CANADA)

Timing is Everything

Charlie Smith

Atlanta, GA

Transcendental Cube

Joseph Quinn

Los Angeles, CA

Tree of Transformation

Dadara

Amsterdam (NETHERLANDS)

Tree of Transmutation

Kevin Christman

Talent, OR

Universe Revolves around You

Zachary Coffin

Atlanta, GA

Yoga Robot

Scott Harris

Telluride, CO

Zoa

Flux Foundation

San Francisco, CA

Zonotopia and the Two Trees

Rob Bell

San Francisco, CA

Green shopping guide: 8 sources of weekend-ready, enviro-friendly beauty

Andrew Lam
-
3
Green shopping guide: 8 sources of weekend-ready, enviro-friendly beauty

Beauty is said to only be skin-deep — but the businesses that use holistic, organic, and plant-based ingredients want to demolish this age-old idiom. You can simultaneously rejuvenate yourself and the planet by ditching those toxic, harmful products once and for all. Think of it! With their products and services, self-care is no longer akin to being vain or selfish. These eight local spas, soapmakers, and producers of flower-based essences align nature, commerce, and beauty so that the world can sustain that perfect summer glow. Check out the rest of this week’s guides to local sustainable shopping, in honor of our Green Issue. 

Illuminata Skin Care 

Rather than using harsh chemicals to camouflage damages, Illuminata believes in a holistic approach to clarifying the skin so that you don’t have to hide anything. Natural botanical products are used in an array of services like extractions, enzyme exfoliations, waxing, and purifying masks to create effective treatments for even the most sensitive skin types. The warm staff, and the even-warmer space, will have you relishing your own dewy radiance.  

Office hours Mon. and Thurs. 12:30pm-8pm; Tue. 1pm-8pm; Wed. 10am-8pm; Fri. 11am-6:30pm; Sat.-Sun. 10am-6pm 977 Valencia, SF. (415) 971-3943, www.illuminataskincare.com

Nectar Essences natural stress relief 

Flowers can light up a room but flower essences can uplift your mind. Nectar Essences is a local company making floral remedies made with flowers from the Atacama desert in Chile, wildflowers of North America, and the Amazon rainforest. They are concocted by trained practitioners and crafted to address sleeplessness, mental alertness, and stress.

Phone customer service hours Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (415) 617-5589, www.nectaressences.com

Grateful Body food for the skin

Grateful Body’s no-fuss online store provides organic, vegan, natural, chemical-free, and synthetic-free skin care treatments for virtually all skin types and issues. Products are made with nutrient-rich elements like fresh fruits, mushrooms, herbs, seaweeds, and botanical oils to nourish the glummest under-eye circles, salvage the most parched skin, and remedy even the nastiest of toenail infections. 

Phone customer service hours Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (510) 848-9292, www.gratefulbody.com

The Joys of Life organic shea butters 

This Oakland-based beauty product online store specializes in unrefined, organic shea butters and fine organic oils. Their handcrafted products are made with natural ingredients from Uganda and Ghana, and help detoxify, hydrate, and naturally enhance your skin.  

(510) 465-5065, www.thejoysoflife.com

Epic Center MedSpa  

MedSpa intertwines nature and science together through effective organic, light-based, non-toxic, crystal-free skin rejuvenation approaches to skin tightening, laser hair removal, and skin resurfacing treatments. Their space itself is a sustainable green-phenomenon made of eco-paints, recycled fabrics and wood, water conserving plumbing fixtures, and energy-reducing lighting.

Spa hours Mon. and Sat. 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.; Tues., Wed., Fri. 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thurs. 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. 450 Sutter, Suite 800, SF. (415) 362-4754, www.skinrejuv.com

Apotheca 

This teeny wellness practice will surprise you with how many holistic approaches and services they can pack into their space. Personalized to meet each individual’s needs, Apotheca will have you in a therapeutic massage one minute, practicing Ayurveda yoga the next, and botanically waxing your brows before you leave their rustic-chic downtown space. 

Spa hours Mon.-Sun. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. 582 Market, Suite 612, SF. (415) 573-9077, www.apothecasf.com

Transcendentist  

That usual cloying odor of chemicals that accompanies the dentist disappears in this calm, eco-friendly practice. More so a wellness spa than a traditional dentist office, they will treat your pearly whites with biocompatible materials while giving you a healing foot massage to the relaxing beat of meditative tunes. 

Office hours Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. 3030 Ashby, Suite 101, (510) 841-3040, www.transcedentist.com

River Soap Company  

Dad is in charge of retail orders, mom is the national sales rep, and two sisters deal with daily operations in this natural soap shop. Their soaps are all vegetable based, biodegradable, cruelty-free, and are triple French-milled for a long-lasting, extra-lathering, non-gooey, velvety hand-washing experience. 

(800) 694-7627, www.riversoap.com

Was the cyclist who killed a pedestrian reckless?

Sasha Cuttler
-
215
Was the cyclist who killed a pedestrian reckless?

San Francisco’s bicycling community is bracing for a backlash following the second recent case of a cyclist hitting and killing a pedestrian, particularly given a callous online posting by someone claiming to be the cyclist, whose 71-year-old victim this week died of injuries sustained a week ago at the intersection of Castro and Market streets.

The case was a hot topic at last night’s monthly Carfree Happy Hour, a gathering of cyclists, transportation professionals, and alternative transportation activists, many of whom had unearthed new information about a case they’re all grappling with. And the consensus opinion was that the cyclist seemed reckless and may deserve to face criminal charges.

Yet activists also sought to place this case in context, noting that an average of almost three pedestrians are hit by cars everyday in San Francisco, even though that rarely makes headlines. There were 220 pedestrians killed in San Francisco from 2000-2009, the vast majority hit by cars whose drivers rarely faced criminal charges. In fact, the same week that Sustchi Hui was killed there was another pedestrian killed by a motorist and another one by a Muni bus.

But that doesn’t lessen the importance of this latest bike-vs.-pedestrian fatality, which is sure to make news precisely because it’s so rare, and because it comes just weeks after 23-year-old Randolph Ang pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter for running a red light at Embarcadero and Folsom Street in July 2001, hitting a 68-year-old woman who later died from her head injury.

San Francisco Police Department won’t identify the cyclist in the latest incident unless he’s charged with a crime, and its investigation is still ongoing, said SFPD spokesperson Albie Esperanza. “It’s a tragic accident,” he told us, noting that the cyclist was cooperating with the investigation. Once the investigation is complete, the District Attorney’s Office will decide whether to bring criminal charges against the cyclist.

Someone who identified himself as Chris Bucchere posted a note on the Mission Cycling Google group on the afternoon of the incident, March 29, describing an accident that apparently took place at the same time and place. And the description that Bucchere gave of the accident is not likely to garner much public sympathy for him (We contacted Bucchere by e-mail and telephone, we’re waiting to hear back for him, and we can’t independently confirm the authenticity of the message or its contents).

“I wrecked on the way home today from the bi-weekly Headlands Raid today. Short story: I’m fine. The pedestrian I clobbered? Not so much,” the message began.

The post then goes on to describe the incident, which matches the details of other reported accounts of the fatal crash: “Around 8 am I was descending Divisidero Street southbound and about to cross Market Street. The light turned yellow as I was approaching the intersection, but I was already way too committed to stop. The light turned red as I was cruising through the middle of the intersection and then, almost instantly, the southern crosswalk on Market and Castro filled up with people coming from both directions. The intersection very long and the width of Castro Street at that point is very short, so, in a nutshell, blammo.”

Another member of the Carfree Happy Hour group who is a regular competitive cyclist said that Bucchere was a member of the website strava.com, which tracks minute-by-minute data of cyclists for training purposes. And this source said he was able to use the site to determine that Bucchere was traveling through the intersection – which is at the bottom of a steep hill – at approximately 35 mph at the time of the collision.

Bucchere’s message continued: “The quote/unquote ‘scene of the crime’ was that intersection right by the landmark Castro Theatre – it leads from a really busy MUNI station to that little plaza where The Naked Guy always hangs out. It was commuter hour and it was crowded as all getup. I couldn’t see a line through the crowd and I couldn’t stop, so I laid it down and just plowed through the crowded crosswalk in the least-populated place I could find.

“I don’t remember the next five minutes but when I came to, I was in a neck brace being loaded into an ambulance. I remember seeing a RIVER of blood on the asphalt, but it wasn’t mine. Apparently I hit a 71-year old male pedestrian and he ended up in the ICU with pretty serious head injuries. I really hope he ends up OK.

“They asked me a bunch of stupid easy questions that I couldn’t answer, so they kept me for a few hours for observation, gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way.

“Anyway, other than a stiff neck, a sore jaw/TMJ, a few bruises and some raspberries, I’m totally fine. I got discharged from the hospital during the lunch hour. The guy I hit was not as fortunate. I really hope he makes it.

“The cops took my bike. Hopefully they’ll give it back.

“In closing, I want to dedicate this story to my late helmet. She died in heroic fashion today as my head slammed into the tarmac. Like the Secret Service would do for a president, she took some serious pavement today, cracking through-and-through in five places and getting completely mauled by the ragged asphalt. May she die knowing that because she committed the ultimate sacrifice, her rider can live on and ride on. Can I get an amen?

“Amen.

“The moral of this little story is: WYFH”

Several members of the newsgroup took issue with the lesson Bucchere claims to have learned : WYFH, or “Wear Your Fucking Helmet.” One poster wrote, “I’m not sure that’s the moral of the story,” to which several others agreed. Another poster wrote: “What were you thinking ? As a 15 year sf resident and a 10 year cyclist and a pedestrian at that intersection every weekday .. I’m kind of embarrassed to wear my mc kit anywhere nearby now. I truly hope you’ve learned your lesson but I’d have to say this is not the end of the story for you, and yes you should get yourself a lawyer.”

Recent studies have shown that San Francisco is a dangerous city for pedestrians, but not as dangerous as many other cities on a per capita basis given our density and high pedestrian populations. A study released in January by the Alliance for Biking & Walking concludes San Francisco has the third highest biking and walking levels among major US cities, but ranks eighth in bicycle and pedestrian fatality rates.

A 2011 study by the group Transportation for America, “Dangerous by Design,” analyzed factors associated with pedestrian deaths – some of which seem to be at play in this case – and concluded, “Especially when combined with unsafe street and road design, vehicle speed presents a deadly threat to pedestrians.”

Hot sexy events April 5-11

Andrew Lam
-
0

Oh sweet, fluffy bunny rabbit. In other, less frisky climes, your ilk is heralded as the perfect harbinger of spring. And also though we respect your frenetic rates of copulation, we humbly suggest a more apropos sign of the season: radical faerie Cobra’s new art show at gay health center Magnet, featuring both carvings and tapestries devoted to that (second)most fertile of creatures, the penis. 

Yay or nay? Whatever your response to this humble re-branding suggestion, this week brings just the exultant sex event for you. Hunky Jesus contests? Drinking til you barf with your fellow leathemen? Read on, bunny dearest, for this week’s sex events.  

Act Up Resurrection March

Happy Good Friday! It’s time to storm the oldest Catholic Church in town, deliver the ashes of AIDS victims to its doorstep, and have a bunch of queer nuns exorcise them of the evils the Pope has commited by restricting access to condoms! Today’s march, a commemoration of 25 years of AIDS advocacy rebels Act Up, will start at the Wells Fargo by the 16th Street BART station to highlight the bank’s predatory role in gentrification (a phenomenon that regularly unhouses AIDS patients), then go by the church en route to the Castro, where a list of the names of activists who died during the AIDS era will be read.  

Fri/6 4pm-7pm, free

March start: 16th St. and Mission, SF

www.thesisters.org

“Sacred Cocks: Cobra’s Erotic Nature Based Carvings & Tapestries”

Word on the street is that Cobra has been whittling away at willies since he was but a babe, all part of an effort to bring to light “ancient faggot history, which is intertwined with nature,” says the artist himself. Come for looks at lustful satyrs, and a break from all the hard body party flyers that blanket the Castro.

Opening reception: Fri/6 8pm-10pm, free

Magnet

4122 18th St., SF

www.magnetsf.org

“Pretending to be Free of Time: Phyllis Christopher”

… Or really take a break from the hard body party flyers that blanket the Castro at this exhibit of erotic photographer Phyllis Christopher’s work. The well known shutterbug will be showing her close-up snippets of the heavy-breathing BDSM life. A flexed wrist here, a drop of blood there — when the act itself left up to the imagination of the beholder, Christopher is lucky that this show is taking place at one of the centers of SF perv culture. 

Through April 29

Opening reception: Fri/6 6pm, free

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

Easter Bunny beer bust

Someone oughta do a study on condom sales during Catholic holidays. We’re just saying. At any rate, one of Folsom Street’s finest is having this all-you-can-drink booze-a-thon in the hopes that your altar boy guilt will translate into titillating party repartee. 

Sun/8 3pm-7pm, $8

KOK Bar

1225 Folsom, SF

www.kokbarsf.com

Pumps and Circumstance

They’re 33 years old and still hanging out at Dolores Park — so what’s there to commemorate? This isn’t your crusty roommate we’re talking about, this is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The purveyors of white face majick, radical queer protest, and lotsa yucks want to celebrate 33 years of troupe-dom with their “traditional” performance at Hipster Beach, and damned if we’re not going to humor them to the best of our abilities. The presentation will be marked by the ever-fresh “Hunky Jesus” contest, so even that roommate of yours has something to celebrate. 

Sun/8 11am-4pm, free

Dolores Park

Dolores and 18th St., SF

www.thesisters.org

Salacious Underground 

After the success of the alternative live sex show Cum and Glitter, it’s clear that the Bay is ready for some onstage hijinx past the standard offerings at the Penthouse Club, or even our foxy babes over at the Lusty Lady. Enter Salacious Underground, a brand-new neo-burlesque event. What does neo-burlesque entail, you ask? Dial up the darkness and the daring on a standard Burly Q tassel-twirl — for more specifics, you’ll just have to head to Brick and Mortar on Sunday.

Sun/8 7 p.m., $7-$15

Brick and Mortar Music Hall 

1710 Mission, SF

Facebook: Salacious Underground

“Bawdy Storytelling: Geeksexual”

Everyone’s trying to cash in on the tech dollar these days, including the sexy storytelling shows. Or maybe Bawdy’s not taking that big of a leap from its typically scheduled programming — after all, as one Bawdy bard said: “I really think there’s a lot of overlap between geeks and perverts. Most of the geeks I know are pretty pervy and most of the pervs are pretty geeky.” At any rate, tonight’s stories will revolve around the art-science of dildonics and an engineer’s view of sex. 

Wed/11 7pm-10:30pm, $12

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

More wonders from David Hall’s ‘Beneath Cold Seas’

Charles Russo
-
0

Shot in the Pacific Northwest and featured on the cover of the Guardian’s Green Issue this week, David Hall’s ‘Beneath Cold Seas‘ is the first photographic book to show the colorful and exotic sea life of North America’s cold waters.

Hall spent 15 years diving in British Columbia to gather the images and as he explains in this week’s issue the animals depicted in the book can also be found by our NorCal shores because they “don’t recognize international borders.” We were only able to fit a few images into the print edition so here are some more for you to feast your eyes upon. Dive in and go to www.beneathcoldseas.com for more.

 

CPMC strike linked to new hospital

Zelda Bronstein
-
13
CPMC strike linked to new hospital

I stopped by the picket line outside Davies hospital and chatted with the members of Operating Engineers Local 39, who have been working without a contract since October, 2010 — and I heard a story that ought to be part of the discussion over CPMC’s plans to build a shiny new hospital on Cathedral Hill.

The striking engineers (who operate and maintain machinery and equipment at the hospitals) say the only remaining issue in the dispute is pay scale — and the last, best offer that CPMC, a Sutter Health affiliate, has put on the table is lower than what Sutter pays members of the same union at other Bay Area hospitals. Why? According to Joseph Klein, Local 39 business rep, the CPMC negotiators were pretty specific:

“They told us they need the money to build their new hospital.”

The CPMC negotiators, he said, “don’t even question whether they can afford to pay us comparable salaries. They just say they want to spend the money on that project.”

Wow — that’s the first time I’ve heard anything so detailed and specific about CPMC essentially using lower wages to help fund the Cathedral Hill medical palace. So I called Kathie Graham, spokesperson for CPMC, and asked her about it.

“The primary reason for our offer was that the wage we proposed was comparable to the raises that our other hospital workers got,” she said.

Okay, but was the cost of the new hospital a factor? Actually, yes.

“The primary issue is equity,” she said. “But do we have a billion-dollar rebuild that we have to fund? Yes. Because of the whole way health care is going — and because we need to rebuild — we have to be very careful stewards of our nonprofit dollars.”

Both sides want to go back to the bargaining table, and I know labor talks are always complicated, and I hope it gets resolved quickly. But I think it’s fair to say that all CMPC workers need to take a lesson here: It’s going to be hard bargaining for quite some time to come.

And I hope the supervisors who are reviewing this consider where the construction money is coming from.

 

 

Dick Meister: The temples of baseball

-
1

By Dick Meister

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist and former semi-professional baseball player. You can contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

Baseball season again. Time to re-enter the temples of baseball. Temples? Yes, temples.

To most people, baseball is merely a game. But to some others, it’s virtually a religion, a game played in temples – the temples of baseball, be they Major League stadiums or any other baseball park at any level from the Major Leagues to the little parks at much lower levels where I played in hopes of making it big as a professional. But that’s another story.

Of course baseball is a game. But it is indeed a game that is played in temples. Baseball parks are places of myth, superstition and legend, no less than the temples where the great myths, superstitions and legends of religion hold sway. Even the most casual fan is likely to know the myths and legends that make up baseball’s storied history – Babe Ruth’s called-shot home run in the 1932 World Series, for example. His whole career, in fact.

Temples are places of tradition and veneration, and ritual and order, of wisdom being passed from generation to generation, in baseball’s temples from older players and managers to younger players.

Temples are also places in which to pay reverence to beauty. And what’s more beautiful than the graceful motion and timing of baseball, its unique rhythm, the exquisite ebb and flow of action and anticipation, action and thought.

A ballpark also is very much like a temple in that it’s a place to demonstrate faith – faith that your team can win, that there’s always a chance of winning, whatever the odds. No Major League team, anyway, has ever lost all of the games it has played. Nor have many teams at baseball’s lower levels, though I’ve played on some teams that came close.

So, those entering the temples of baseball know there’s always a chance for their team to win. They can legitimately believe t it could happen. Fans know that the games are not over until the very last out of the very last inning, that the innings and the game can go on for as long as the players perform well.

The commandments in baseball’s rule book promise that. There are no clocks measuring off quarters and halves, no point during a game when there is not enough time left to win, no rule saying how long it should take to make three outs and complete an inning, or how long it should take to win or lose a game.

Certainly life outside the temples of baseball may not offer quite so much hope. But if it did, who’d need religion? Who’d need baseball?

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist and former semi-professional baseball player. You can contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

 

Guest opinion: It’s not about Mirkarimi, it’s about us

Zelda Bronstein
-
70
Guest opinion: It’s not about Mirkarimi, it’s about us

Virtually unmentioned in the torrent of words that have flowed over the Ross Mirkarimi false imprisonment, suspension and pending vote to determine his removal by the Board of Supervisors is any reference to what should now be the most important issue to be considered as the sad saga unfolds: the fact that Mirkarimi was, just four months before his removal, elected by a majority vote and his removal from office would simply set aside that vote, diminishing all of our cherished beliefs about “majority rule.”

Mirkarimi didn’t just win, he won big. He beat the second place candidate by nearly 19,000 votes, winning outright without the need for the magic of instant run-off. Mirkarimi got more first place votes than did Ed Lee (70,204 vs. 59,663). Moreover, Mirkarimi’s election was without controversy, complaint or charge of illegality, unlike Ed Lee’s, which resulted in a total of 25 misdemeanor convictions for illegal campaign contributions by a city contractor with a pending contact before a commission appointed by the mayor.

Since the 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court to give George Bush the election in 2000 after Al Gore won a majority of the popular vote, there has been a distressingly frequent willingness by the media to accept executive and judicial actions that set aside popular votes. The conservative governor of Michigan has simply taken over local governments that he deems financially “irresponsible” setting aside the votes of local residents. In California, a tiny minority of Republican legislators, elected by a comparative handful of voters, yearly stymie the overwhelmingly majority elected legislators, forcing deeply unpopular budget cuts — and the media simply goes along.

Majority rule, the very bedrock of representative democracy, seems unnervingly easy to set aside now days. Majority rule is our bedrock because it’s the only way in which our system has to define the political will of the people. Let’s be clear, the very City Charter that is being used to remove Mirkarimi from office rests on the power given by “the people of the City and County of San Francisco,” (Preamble to the Charter) and was itself adopted by a majority vote. Setting aside majority votes is a dangerous business for us all; it risks substituting the will of a few insiders for the will of the people.

The political riskiness of the move has been entirely incorrectly cast by the San Francisco Chronicle, the main voice to overturn the expressed will of the people. The Chronicle asserts the political risks as now falling on the supervisors who most vote to sustain the mayor’s action with nine votes. Indeed, the ace vote counter at the “Comical,” former Mayor Willie Brown, who went zero-for-ever in the last four years of his term in votes at the board, confidently predicts that the vote will be 11-zip to sustain the mayor because of the fear of voter retribution.

But facts indicate that “fear” will play the other way. Last November Mirkarimi won in six of the 11 supervisorial districts (D3, D5, D6, D8, D9 and D10) . In two of them (D8 and D10), he won more first-place votes than the current supervisor. In these same six districts he outpolled Ed Lee by some 18,000 votes. By what measure, other than the huffing and puffing of ex-Mayor Willie, C(onsistenly) W(rong) Nevius, and the two stooges, Matier and Ross, does any political risk fall on these supervisors to vote with their constituents?

Chances are nine votes will NOT be there and that Mirkarimi will remain sheriff, where the people put him.We will have gone through a divisive fight addressing none of our deep problems, Mayor Lee will squander the good will of the supervisors and voters for nothing and we will be exactly where we are now.

We have a way to remove Mirkarimi from office that is far better for our democracy. It’s one of the great inventions of the Progressive Era. It’s called recall, and it puts the matter where it should be: before the people. It’s really not about Mirkarimi anymore. Its about us, the meaning of our votes, and the responsibility of supervisors to understand in whose name they govern. All power to the people!

Calvin Welch lives, works and plays in San Francisco.

Cosmic Japanese punk band Peelander-Z announces tour

Tony Robles
-
0

The weird and wonderful comic Japanese punk band Peelander-Z announced a tour on Brooklyn Vegan this week; and yes, those dates include a visit to the Bay Area. The futuristic cosmic space Teletubbies (who live in NYC) will be in SF on May 6 at the DNA Lounge.

In the meantime, take a “four-minute vacation” as a commenter aptly described this newish video for the band’s song, “Star Bowling.” What just happened?

By the way, color-coded band’s eighth spazztastic full-length, Space Vacation, falls from the sky April 10.

Green shopping guide: 7 shops for kids and housewares

Andrew Lam
-
0
Green shopping guide: 7 shops for kids and housewares

Children, don’t let your parents grow up to throw away aluminum foil. Now that you’re a big kid, with attendant home cleaning and offspring-maintaining concerns, there’s little reason to stop paying attention to the environment — in fact, what with the better-world-for-the-little-ones hope, you might find yourself doubling down on decorating motifs that will save the world.

Here’s a passel of stores (locally-based online enterprises and brick-and-mortar both) in the Bay where you can shop with a clean conscious for housewares and kid’s items. We’re guiding around enviro shopping all this week — check out yesteday’s guide to garden stores.

Eco-Terric

This store bills itself as “natural beauty for natural homes,” and does indeed provide a wide selection of gorgeous homewares. Offering everything from Earth Weave bio-floor carpeting to Pacific Rim Woodworking furniture, Eco-Terric allows you to furnish your whole home tastefully and in good conscience. After you’re all done with the hard work of home decorating, lounge around in one of its organic cotton robes and have a spa day with the Coyuchi organic bath products you picked up.

1401 16th St., SF. (866) 933-1655, www.eco-terric.com

Ambassador Toys

With an exciting stock of sustainably-produced toys, this progressive West Portal spot is a child’s dream come true: a shiny, colorful extravaganza of different ways to play. From science kits and board games to stuffed animals, there’s no shortage of great gifts to be found here. Best of all, it’s locally owned and operated, a nice relief for parents used to shopping in the horrific, fluorescent-lit warehouses of the chain stores.

186 W. Portal, SF. (415) 759-8697, www.ambassadortoys.com

A Happy Planet

Everything sold here is organic, non-toxic, and beautiful in a simple, clean way. Untreated wood furniture, natural drapery, and hemp shower curtains are just a few of the things that an eco-shopper can find here. Happy Planet stocks three different types of organic mattresses: rubber core, inner spring, and woolen, as well as futons. Organic Egyptian cotton baby blankets make a great shower present for your latest crop of knocked-up friends in Noe Valley.

4501 Irving, SF. (415) 753-8300, www.ahappyplanet.com

Cisco Home

This stylish Hayes Valley shop specifies its goal as “sustainable living,” using only natural and environmentally-friendly materials. Regardless of its lofty and admirable ideals, its stock is simply beautiful. The furniture is delicately crafted and striking, the lighting is hand blown by local artisans, and the beds are luxuriously upholstered. Anyone, no matter how much they may deny global warming, would shop here if they were in the market for stunning home décor.

580 Hayes, SF. (415) 436-0131, www.ciscohome.net

Giggle

This Cow Hollow boutique is specifically geared towards new parents, exclusively featuring products that are allergy-free, non-toxic, socially and environmentally conscious, and well-designed. Since they stock only the best, there might be some sticker-shock, but rest assured that for those price your baby will be growing up in a soft, organic cotton bubble of adorably patterned textiles and safely-made pacifiers.

2110 Chestnut, SF. (415) 440-9034, www.giggle.com

Woodshanti

A worker-owned furniture and cabinetry building cooperative, Woodshanti uses only responsibly harvested lumber materials and natural finishes. The results are unique, the sort of furniture Thoreau might have had in his shack in the woods. From the shop’s economic utopianism, to its emphasis on creativity and quality craftsmanship, you might feel a happy little glow of saintliness while filling out your online order for a solid cherrywood kitchen island. Don’t worry, this is a normal reaction, it will fade as soon as you order another Starbucks.

909 Palou, SF. (415) 822-8100, www.woodshanti.com

Bella Luna Toys

This Petaluma store specializes in the sort of toys that leave a little something to the child’s imagination, encouraging creative play. A spare wooden sword and shield set for jousting and make-believe quests; a set of simple, colorful wood building blocks, some featuring the rough natural bark of tree branches for constructing fantastic cities; a wooden horse and wagon on wheels for trips to a fictional market. The sort of toys Amish children might play with, classically crafted and pretty enough to decorate a well-appointed living room.

921 Transport Way, Petaluma. (707) 782-0727, www.bellalunatoys.com

1...135136137...597Page 136 of 597

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org