SFBG Blogs

McGoldrick to challenge Fang for BART Board?

Zelda Bronstein
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McGoldrick to challenge Fang for BART Board?

The calls are already going out: former Supervisor Jake McGoldrick ought to challenge James Fang for BART Board. Bruce Balshone reported enthusiastically on the draft Jake effort in the Examiner, and when I called McGoldrick tonight, he seemed open to the idea. After all, Fang has been on the board 20 years, is the lone Republican elected official from San Francisco — and frankly, hasn’t done much of anything important in terms of improving transit (or controlling the BART police).


I called McGoldrick tonight to ask about it, and he told me he’s open to the idea. “I’m just juggling and weighing parts of my life,” he said. “I’m a teacher, the president of a union, the president of the Richmond District Democratic Club and a grandfather.” But he added: “The one thing that’s absolutely true is that James Fang need to be replaced. It doens’t have to be me, but I’m giving it serious consideration.”


Of course, he said (in typical McGoldrick fashion) that his family has to sign off: “I finally got home after eight years at City Hall and made some soup instead of being a supe,” he said. “I asked my wife about it, and she thought I was talking about Bart Simpson or something.”


Stay tuned.

SFBG Radio: Meg’s taxes, Jerry’s campaign, Linda’s music

Zelda Bronstein
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4
SFBG Radio: Meg’s taxes, Jerry’s campaign, Linda’s music

In today’s episode, Johnny and Tim talk about why Meg Whitman wants to avoid paying taxes, why Jerry Brown is so late in getting a campaign started … and why the oldies stations never play Linda Rondstadt songs. You can check it out after the jump.

sfbgradio7/21/2010 by johnnywangel

The Performant: When I die I will be offcenter

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Scoping out the local arts and culture scene …

If there were a Best of the Bay category for performance space with the catchiest moniker, I’ve always felt that Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory had a clear lock on the title. That’s just one of the many things about the place I’ll miss when it shuts its doors, possibly for good, at the end of this month (though a loose association of affiliated artists including acting MCVF director Ernesto Sopprani, have announced their intention to continue as Theoffcenter, so look for future programming from them in an as-yet-undetermined location).

Speaking of clever monikers, for a last show in a vital location, you couldn’t ask for a better than Alicia Ohs’ dance-theatre production, “When I Die I Will be Dead.” But walking into Mama Calizo’s, instead of death’s muffled pall, a scene of lively chaos immediately unfolded. Each member of the oddience was given a number upon entering the space, split into two groups, and taught a quick dance routine that none of us mastered in the few short moments we were given to try.

As the casting director, Alicia Ohs, dressed in a white button-down short exhorted us to “Eat Nails!” we shuffled our feet and flopped our arms around lamely. Clearly Broadway bound we were not. Mercifully allowed our seats after about five minutes, the rest of the mostly comical “New York, I Love You! I Hate You…Now Dance” ensued; a “Chorus Line” send-up complete with a “One” finale. The evening’s second piece, “Dokuen,” was more nuanced. From the physical comedy of an auditionee being locked in a trunk of memories (Hana Erdman), to the raw anguish of dancers José Navarrete and Ay.Lin hurling paint at the walls, flowers across the floor, and abuse at each other, the self-revelatory vignettes spoke voluminously of loss though few words were used. The reappearance of Erdman as memory’s avatar made the act of saying farewell a study in grace—an appropriate finale for yet one more casualty in the trenches of the art wars.

Meanwhile, across town, in the crowded Café Royale, loss of life, limb, and the last tattered shreds of (in)dignity were being explored by San Francisco Theatre Pub with their free staged reading of “Ubu Roi” — adapted by company member Bennett Fisher. As the oafish would-be-king of Poland played by Sam Leichter cursed, spat, and clawed his way to the top, his power-hungry wife Mere Ubu (Catherine Lardas) gave the term Machiavellian a feminine touch as she urged him forward, then stood out of the way of his inglorious fall. Though it initially seemed that as many people came to hear the guest deejay (DJ Wait What) spin as to see the classic forerunner of absurdist theatre (overheard: “I think it’s about a king. It’s set in France.”), the café crowd soon became a cheering, catcalling, mass of enthusiastic participation. Directors of reading series take note: a spoonful of alcohol helps the medicine go down. And bartenders: a spoonful of Ubu can only help the alcohol sales go up.

Café Royale
800 Post, SF
(415) 441-4099
www.caferoyale-sf.com
sftheaterpub.wordpress.com

Work and play with the Shout Out Louds

John Elberling
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Work and play with the Shout Out Louds

By John Lambert Pearson

Does life on the road effect the music of the constantly-touring Shout Out Louds? “I guess it does,” says singer Adam Olenius. “You know, I think you’re sorta living a different life on the road and you think about home and being away and returning and of course that effects you. You meet a lot of people. People that you meet and things that happen while you’re traveling and things we do as a band become [what] I sing about. I’m not sure it’s being at a certain place, it’s just…being away, and trying to figure out your life.” On the eve of the group’s recent show at Great American Music Hall in support of their new album Work, I sat down and talked with Olenius about the pleasure and the work of being in a band.
 
SFBG Your existence as a band is constantly battled by traveling, you’re always together, but you’re also trying to remain individuals at the same time. I’m wondering if there’s anything you do that helps you. Do you stay together, or do you do things by yourself?
AO It depends if you have friends or crew or other people coming along. On this tour we have Henrik [Jonzon] with us, an old childhood friend. I haven’t had time to see him for awhile and now on the road we’re catching up a lot. He’s filling in for Ted [Malmros, on bass] who got a baby a few days ago.
 
SFBG I heard.

AO That’s kinda why we took a break after the second [album; Our Ill Wills]. We felt that we should try and find ourselves a bit. It’s not that we were tired of hanging out together. As you said, you’re a band all the time, and people just need to sort of think about what they want..  We agree that we still want to be in a band, so it was great that everyone was on the same boat.

SFBG Do you think a fourth album is coming?
AO Absolutely. And I think it’s gonna be coming sooner than the others. We have a lot of ideas, a lot of things we want to try — to start doing things by ourselves, I think. I want the next one to be more… schizophrenic. I love [Work], but there’s always a reaction to what you do.
 
SFBG People have said [Work] was quite a change from your previous work, but going back to some of your older work I can hear it in the older stuff. It’s interesting that it took you quite a long time and two other albums to get to this sound that I heard a long time ago. I’m wondering if there’s something that made you want to do that.
AO I think having two albums to look at while you’re working on the third one you can see what you liked on every record. We went back to ideas and back to the way I felt about certain songs. People kept saying we found our sound – I don’t think we found our sound, but we found ourselves.

SFBG I was thinking about your music in terms of an environment and a landscape. Our Ill Wills had a kind of maritime or nautical theme, and I was wondering if you thought Work had a specific place to which it belonged.
AO We wanted every song to be like a train – we talked about very straight roads, an escalating train. When we did the arrangements for the songs, they start slow and accelerate, and end in a bombastic way. That was something we didn’t really plan, it just happened. I think [Work] belongs more in a factory, with those belts…

SFBG You talk about books and libraries a lot – are any of you big readers?
AO Bebban [Stenborg] and Carl [von Arbin] are  I read a lot, but Bebban reads like 10 books a month. She is a good writer as well, she’s writing short stories. Everything — art and music and a lot of films – inspires us. Our songs, we can talk about them more [in those terms] as well.
 
SFBG Photography seems very important to you guys.
AO Yeah, it is because we also are very involved in all the artwork. and Carl was talking about how we took a lot of inspiration from Irving Penn and his photography on this record. The title came from many different ideas, but it has to do with Warhol’s Factory, and how Lou Reed and John Cale did a song called “Work.”

SFBG So that’s an example of where your ideas for the covers of your albums come from?
AO We’ve always been negative about showing ourselves too much, even though we have a lot of photography on the homepage. There isn’t a typical band photo.
[Work] looks very nice when you have it, especially on vinyl.  Very ’70s, and because Irving Penn passed away last year, it was a tribute to him. 
 
SFBG You have a lot of people that I love remixing your songs, like Kleerup and Russian Futurists and Studio. Is there anyone you’re still looking to get?
AO Of course. I would love Daft Punk. There’s some British guys doing one right now, Punks Jump Up.

SFBG They recently did a really good one for Lykke Li. What bands are you listening to right now?

AO I saw Caribou, I like that album. I haven’t really been listening to new stuff, but I bought the new National record, and last year I liked Girls a lot.
I saw them in a small club in Stockholm about six months ago, I think they’re really good. I’ve been listening to a lot of old stuff like Todd Rundgren and old early-’70s songwriter stuff.

SFBG Do you listen to a lot of Swedish music?
AO On tour we listen to a lot of Swedish bands. But we’ve listened to a lot of Fleetwood Mac on this tour – Rumours.

SFBG How would you describe your live show in comparison to your album?
AO It’s more explosive. This record sounds better live, because we didn’t have to change the songs to make live versions.
It took a couple months to find a live sound for the songs [on Our Ill Will].  

SFBG What is the song “Time Left For Love” about?
AO It’s a story. I remember writing the first sort of lines. It was a long time ago, when we recorded the first record. In Stockholm they have this truck that cleans the streets and it comes in the middle of the night, once a week — especially in Stockholm, cause we use a lot of sand in winter to get the streets dry. A lot of things had changed in my life, and that truck, that sound, every night put me to sleep.

SFBG Do you have a favorite song from Work?
AO My favorite song to write was “Throwing Stones.” It’s a song I started writing right before flying home from Melbourne, and I finished just 3 hours after I landed in Stockholm, so it’s an important song for me. It has a freedom to it. I like “Walls,” too. That was the first song I wrote for the album. Bebban actually played that piano melody on glockenspiel — I think the first time she played that was in Columbus, Ohio
I listened to the demo of “1999” recently, it’s got a more electronic and sharp sound. I think I liked the demo version more. But I like how we do it, like “Hard Rain” from the second album, that [also] has that beat with rushed melodies on top

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01oqzy-C7zw

SFBG I think “Hard Rain” and “1999” are the two closest songs from your two albums.
AO Yeah, and that’s why we made [“1999”] song number one, because it puts those two together, if you listen to our albums in a row. But who does that? Haha, I did that when I was fourteen with Guns ‘n’ Roses.  

SFBG Are you close with any other bands in particular?
AO The Stockholm scene is tight, you know.  We’re good friends with the Concretes, and Peter, Björn and John. We spend a lot of time with Swedish ones. Lykke Li, she’s a neighbor — I mean when she’s home. I can hear her when she’s writing songs and she can probably hear mine, cause we don’t have day jobs and you can hear through the walls

Sunset for Suncal in Alameda

Mary Magee
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Alameda Island resident and community organizer Gretchen Lipow says the effort to oust developer SunCal, which threatened to sue the city last night when it was clear the jig was up, began two years ago.

“We divided the city into grids and went out and walked the streets, starting when SunCal brought their initiative out,” Lipow recalled, referring to Measure B.

SunCal, which was Alameda chose in 2007, after other developers including Lennar pulled out of the competition to be the island’s next master developer, succeeded in alienating many city residents, when it introduced Measure B, which included multiunit housing, a provision that violated a 1973 law banning anything larger than a duplex on the island.

And SunCal then succeeded in alienating city staff over its failure to provide promised transit plans and financing details, as the Measure B vote approached. In the end, Alameda Mayor Beverly Johnson and Councilmember Frank Matarrese both withdrew their support for SunCal’s measure, which bombed in February, losing by 85 percent.

Meanwhile, Lipow and other community members began working on an alternate plan, in recognition that it’s hard to fight a plan if you don’t have a counter plan in its place.

“I won’t call it a vision because that word has become horribly abused in this process, but we have been working on an alternate idea that we felt was much more compatible with the nature and land out there, in what is a somewhat isolated area,” Lipow said.

She recalls how at the time the community first got together to fight SunCal, the developer had not yet put what she calls “their anti-slow growth measure” on the ballot, but that when they did, the move only helped to crystallize all that was wrong with the developer’s approach.

“They tried to take the political decision-making out of the hands of the city,” Lipow said. “Talk about a land grab.”

Lipow says the community she represents did not agree with the developer’s “vision” for the former Alameda Naval Air Station.
“We do not see it as a condo village,” Lipow said. “That makes no sense. It’s a Superfund site that is still being cleaned up.”

Lipow said that along the way, folks on Alameda Island began to ask who was going to pay for SunCal’s proposed redevelopment plan—and realized that payment for a plan they didn’t want was going to end up coming out of their own pocket, and yet, there was little certainty if anything would ever end up being built.

“It’s all based on redevelopment bonds and speculation,” Lipow said. “And we see what’s going on in San Francisco, where the city is now saying they can’t get anyone to invest in the [Candlestick Point-Shipyard] deal.”

Lipow recalls how the community investigated SunCal.

“We found that its financial background is abhorrent,” Lipow said. “Since 2008, SunCal has filed about 30 bankruptcies and there are a hundred lawsuits against them. They collapsed with Lehman Brothers.”

Lipow points to a disturbing lack of information about SunCal’s financial partner, D. E. Shaw, who allegedly runs an underground hedge fund.

“No one knows this guy,” Lipow said. “There has never been on a single piece of correspondence between Shaw and the city.”

Asked if Alameda’s ouster of SunCal opens the door to other and perhaps equally spurious developers, Lipow said, “The community is now organized enough to have meetings, and we understand we need to come up with something.”

Trashy art: Recology’s 20 years of shoving artists into heaps

Andrew Lam
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One thing I learned yesterday about the artist in residence program at the Recology dump; Sirron Norris and other alums were not wading through the mountains of lightly used diapers and rotting carrots to cull the materials for the flights of foraged fancy they produce in the program, a 20-year retrospective of which opens today, Wed/21, at Intersection 5M. No no, they pick through the goods turned up by the city’s curb-side and drop-off recycling program, which you think would be a little cleaner. I mean, look at the art they made from it. But you’d be surprised…  

“That section anyone can drop something off is where you garbage pick,” artist Sirron Norris tells me when I called him up for comment on the sweet gallery show Recology’s assembled. He assured me that the dump’s program changed his artistic trajectory, and yet “You will come across rotting food — vegetables and rotting stuff. They’ll dump fish in the styrofoam cases, a lot of vegetables — a lot. Ive seen all kinds of stuff, nasty stuff and trippy stuff, a box full of stuffed animals; a box you could fit a loveseat in [note: here Norris commenced with a story about said box I don’t feel comfortable relating to my gentle readers. Ask him for details when you see him, dear ones]. Tons of pills, so many pills. Cough syrup.” 

“It’s up to them if they want to wear a respirator,” says dump advisory board member (and program director for Intersection for the Arts, who let us into the building even though I blatantly got the day wrong of the exhibit’s opening reception – thanks!) Kevin Chen. Artists, who spend up to eight hours a day at the recycling facility, are encouraged to wear not only steel toed boats, but also steel soled boots. Tre rugged, no?

But judging from the gems assembled at the Recology retrospective, the experience is more than worth the sanitary incursions. A kicky dress made from bottle caps and junk food wrappers by Remi Rubel hung next to Sandy Drobny’s intricately woven “Caution” tape apron. I wanted them for my own, just like I wanted to sit and finger Linda Raynsford’s saws carved to resemble their enemies in nature, the majestic fir tree, every day before I head to work. 

What I saw yesterday

The retrospective provides a lot to look at, nearly all of it made from things that otherwise would have been crushed into recycling. Packard Jennings created a “Terrorist Alert” board during his 2003 residency, which he installed on Division Street to warn post- 9/11 automobile drivers of threat levels approaching the ominous “pineapple” or “far-fetched” measure of urgency. David Hevel’s trio of bright fascinators – which he reverse-melts with a blowtorch in a video installation included in the gallery – baffled me with their preciousness until Chen cleared up their providence. “Sometimes a party store will drop off a whole bunch of stuff,” he said. Ah, streamers and sparkles, got it. 

Perhaps for obvious reasons, the residency program is an SF exclusive in this country. Chen says a similar program is being plotted for Portland, Oregon, but the set up – which allows artists free range in the recycling area in exchange for giving Recology temporary ownership of the pieces created, plus a few for their permanent collection – is mainly made possible here by a dump administration who, Chen told us, “really loves art.” Thanks guys! The whole thing left me stoked to check out the actual trash heap itself, where a sculpture garden lives and where regular gallery openings give people a chance to see their waste in a whole new light. 

Just like Norris did. “You’d see these piles and the piles would have these really great stories,” the artist told me, speaking as a man who knows the worth of another’s cast-offs. “I furnished my entire apartment from that place — cool stuff too, like old displays from Radio Shack.” 

 

Art at the Dump: 20 Years of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology

opening reception: Wed/21 6-8 p.m., free

through Sept. 25

5M

925 Mission, SF

www.sunsetscavenger.com

Redevelopment requires “duty of loyalty” from Arc Ecology

Mary Magee
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Redevelopment requires “duty of loyalty” from Arc Ecology

As a longtime member of the Mayor’s Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), Scott Madison took exception to a “duty of loyalty” clause in Arc Ecology’s most recent contract with the Redevelopment Agency.

This new requirement in Arc’s contract came up for discussion during the CAC’s July 12 meeting, Madison said.The rest of CAC did not rise up in support of his concerns, Madison adds. But he is convinced the requirement will harm the community that surrounds the 770-acre area that the city and Lennar want to develop with their massive Candlestick-Shipyard redevelopment plan.

The Board of Supervisors will consider that plan at their July 27 meeting, along with suggestions that Arc and the Sierra Club have been making for years. These suggestions include strengthening the terms governing the transfer of Parcel E-2, the most polluted shipyard site, and removing what Arc and the Sierra Club believe is an unnecessary bridge over the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough.

Arc has been monitoring the environmental impacts of the shipyard since 1984, and has provided neighborhood groups with information and technical support related to cleanup and redevelopment since 1986. And more recently, Arc Ecology opened a “community window on the shipyard cleanup” on Third Street, which is also accessible online, to provide information and resources for more meaningful community involvement in the cleanup.

Arc hosts environmental education discussions and community workshops and submits written comments to the Navy about the cleanup and to appropriate agencies on related shipyard redevelopment and reuse plans.

“We are working with the BVHP community to ensure that the transfer, redevelopment, and reuse are to the maximum benefit of the neighboring community,” Arc’s website states.

But in the past few years, as Lennar’s political Candlestick-Shipyard juggernaut has been gathering speed, Arc has ruffled feathers in the Mayor’s Office by developing Alternatives For Study, a document that explores detailed alternativesto the current Candlestick-Shipyard plan.

None of ARC’s alternatives are opposed to the development, but they all suggest ways to improve it, including an option that would not involve building a bridge over the slough, or a stadium on the shipyard, and would prevent the taking of 23 acres of state park land which Lennar wants so it can build luxury waterfront condos in the middle of the current Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, a plan that would be unthinkable if it was proposed for Crissy Field.

But the city, and in particular Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor, view these alternatives, as signs of disloyalty, as they seek to rush Lennar’s massive 770-acre redevelopment plan over the finishing line, while arguing that any further amendments will make the plan more difficult for Lennar to shop around to investors, especially in light of the depressed economy.

The growing coziness between the city and the developer was put on full public display last week, when Sup. David Campos asked the project’s proponents to step forward at the Board’s July 13 hearing on the project’s EIR.

As Lennar Urban’s Kofi Bonner began to rise from his seat in the public seating area, Cohen, who had just finished answering Campos’ questions about the bridge and the project’s financing liabilities from the city’s bullpen in the Board’s chambers, raced over to the podium before Bonner had a chance to speak.

This uneasy closeness between city and developer, along with Arc’s extensive background in shipyard related matters, are why Madison believes the city’s residents are best served when Arc can express its opinions freely, even if that involves critiquing plans that the city seems to have grown increasingly defensive about, ever since it entered into a partnership with the Florida-based Lennar.

“Yes, it’s true that the city is paying for this contract with Arc, but it seems to me that this particular contractor’s responsibility should be primarily to the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, and not the city,” Madison said. “What if Arc reaches a conclusion that is odd with the developer, city agencies and other consultants? Would Arc be prohibited from making it public?”

Madison says the city has claimed that Arc would not be prohibited from such activities, and that the contract contains standard language. But he also adds that certain parties who are boosters for the city’s redevelopment plan object to what Arc and Bloom are doing in terms of raising valid science-based concerns.

“At the meeting, Al Norman said he hopes the Redevelopment Agency handcuffs Saul, not just by the hands but by the ankles,” Madison claimed.

And Bloom said that after his group made a video of him walking around wearing a “Can I buy your park?” billboard to illustrate what Lennar’s plan will do to the only state park in San Francisco, he was told that if Willie Brown was still mayor, Arc would have lost its contract, and all department heads who had been supportive of awarding it to Arc, would have been fired, too

Bloom notes that under Mayor Brown, he was awarded several contracts and helped author Prop. P, the measure that voters approved in 2000, which called upon the Navy to clean up the shipyard to the highest levels practical.

“Even Willie understood the need for balance,” Bloom said.
 
Bloom protested the city’s “duty of loyalty” requirement at the CAC’s July 12 meeting, but has apparently decided that the clause isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, because he has apparently since signed the contract. UPDATE: I just spoke to Bloom who told me that he has not yet signed the contract and is still working to get Redevelopment to see the problem with this requirement.

“At the CAC meeting, the committee endorsed the proposal to give us the contract,” Bloom explained. “But it’s up to the Redevelopment Commission to approve the contract, something they are set to consider at their September 7 meeting. We are making the argument that they need to think about the contract in broader terms.”

And Madison notes that it’s common sense that if you want a truly independent voice advising Redevelopment on the shipyard cleanup plan, then that voice should be allowed to be genuinely independent.

“The fact that the city is paying the bill for the contract shouldn’t require an organization to sign an extraordinary Duty of Loyalty, which conflicts with its true loyalty to the surrounding community,” Madison said.

The Guardian’s recent immediate disclosure request to Redevelopment should reveal the exact terms of Arc’s Duty of Loyalty requirement. And Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office says such clauses are rare.

“We are unaware of any confidentiality requirements being made, except in very rare circumstances, such as contracts related to the airport where there may be terrorist concerns,” Dorsey said. Stay tuned.

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: “Protektor” and “A Small Act”

Sue Vaughan
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San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: “Protektor” and “A Small Act”

(For more on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, check out the two articles in this week’s Guardian.)

Protektor (Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic, 2009) Marek Najbrt’s pomo period piece — spiced by switches from color to monochrome, soundtracked DJ mashups, and other bendy tropes — provides an elegant yet energetic reprise of some familiar themes. Rising Czech film actress Hana (Jana Plodkova) refuses to leave Prague despite the considerable danger posed by her (secret) Jewish identity. Husband Emil (Marek Daniel) is a popular radio host who struggles to protect her as he nonetheless rises in favor under the wartime Nazi “protectorate.” But Hana proves uncontrollable as wife and (eventually boycotted) thespian, unable to keep her libido or boredom safely wrapped. And Emil’s bosses soon enforce a cruel choice. Protektor is self-conscious, but also surprising — the highly stylized presentation lends what could have played as an ordinary, earnest victim scenario an edge more seductive than distracting. Mon/26, Castro, 4:30 p.m.; Sat/31, 9:45 p.m., Roda. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk_5Oi5PFzs

A Small Act (Jennifer Arnold, United States, 2009) Ain’t gonna lie — I settled in to watch A Small Act thinking I’d be bored by a well-intentioned but manipulatively “uplifting” story. Boy, was I wrong. This is a complex, layered tale that features all the elements a compelling documentary requires, starting with its fascinating subjects. Born into poverty, Kenyan youth Chris Mburu was able to pursue his education thanks to Hilde Back, a Swedish woman who donated a few dollars a month to sponsor his education. Though they’d never met, he could not forgot the stranger who’d enabled him to finish high school (he ended up going to college, then Harvard Law School, and now has a prestigious job at the United Nations). Years later, Mburu named a foundation after Beck to give scholarships — and hope for a future beyond teenage pregnancy and a life of back-breaking labor — to Kenyan kids from his home village. Now, the joyful moment where Mburu and Beck meet for the first time comes pretty early in the film, which is when I realized that filmmaker Jennifer Arnold was going to dig way deeper with her doc than I originally suspected. First, there’s a whole plot thread about three bright kids who are frantically studying to take Kenya’s national exam (high marks would qualify them for one of Mburu’s scholarships), plus one about Beck’s life in Sweden (and her past as a Holocaust survivor), plus yet another about post-election unrest in Kenya that threatens not just the children we’ve met in the movie, but Mburu’s own family. It all unfolds with the urgency of real life, and the message that emerges is summed up best by Mburu: “Education is a life and death issue.” Sat/24, Castro, 11 a.m.; Sat/31, CineArts, noon; Aug 5, Roda, 4:30 p.m.; Aug 8, Rafael, noon. (Cheryl Eddy)

The 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24-Aug 9 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; CineArts@Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real Bldg Six, Palo Alto; and Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 118 Fourth St, San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $11) are available by calling (415) 256-TIXX or visiting www.sfjff.org.

What radio stations did the armed nut-case listen to?

Zelda Bronstein
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What radio stations did the armed nut-case listen to?

The Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys  and Glenn Becks of the world are quick to point at Muslim religious leaders and schools and say they’re inciting violence against the United States. But you have to wonder: What incited Byron Williams to decide that he could start a revolution by killing ACLU and Tides Foundation workers? I don’t know anything about his background or psychology, but given all the increasingly violent hate speech directed at Obama, the progressive movement and the American left, is it fair to at least ask:


What radio shows was this guy listening to? What TV stations did he watch? His mom said he was upset by TV news stories about the “left wing agenda.” Did the ultra-right-wing rhetoric drive him to what would have been an act of domestic terrorism?


Sean? Rush? Glenn?

Newsom’s extortion

Zelda Bronstein
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3
Newsom’s extortion

The mayor really wanted the supervisors to get rid of two reform measures that would have shifted to the board some of the appointments to the Recreation and Park Commission and Municipal Transportation Agency. The landlords really wanted the board to scrap a plan to reform the Rent Board. And both got exactly what they wanted.


I agree that the budget has some good news, that Newsom has agreed to fund more than $40 million worth of necessary services that he initially wanted to cut. But the price was high: The supervisors had to go along with Newsom’s attempt to undermine structural reforms at two city agencies. The mayor essentially held the board hostage: If he didn’t get his way on issues totally unrelated to the budget, then he’d refuse to pay for a long list of things that the supes wanted. (And these weren’t pet projects of board members; we’re talking about life-saving essential services. The mayor in effect said that he’d allow desperately sick people to die on the streets for lack of a bed at SF General if the board tried to take away his ability to pack Rec-Park and MTA with his favorite political hacks. Sweet guy, huh?)


Is balanced representation on two important city agencies worth the price of $43 million in cuts to essential programs? That’s a nasty question, and the mayor put the board in a very bad position. In the end, the supes could have stood up to his extortion, and didn’t.


Meanwhile, the landlords threatened to spend millions to defeat a measure reforming the Rent Board — and then they threatened to also pour money in to supporting Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension measure, which labor is really nervous about. And there was always the implied threat that landlord money would go into the district supervisor races. So progressives decided that they couldn’t win that battle and the rent board measure died


And, of course, Newsom’s sit-lie law and his plan to kick members of the Board of Supervisors (but not himself) off the Democratic County Central Committee are both still on the ballot. He didn’t give up a thing.


So the landlords and the mayor won this round, but the supes can still fight back. What Newsom did was unconscionable; it’s not as if he was negotiating a tax hike measure against cuts, or a measure that would have mandated new spending against reductions somewhere else. He took two items that had nothing to do with finance and made them bargaining chips in the budget discussions.  If the supervisors did that, they’d be violating state law, which forbids vote trading.


So what San Francisco needs now is a law that bars the chief executive from vote-trading, too. Let’s get that introduced and approved — and see if Newsom wants to veto it.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Yuichi, Powell and Ellis

Tell us about your look: “I like comfortable fashion.”

 

 

Hot sexy events July 21-27

Andrew Lam
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1

 

“What was that video about Eric? Wow! Girl’s butt in your face and everything!” I hope not too many of you are keeping tabs on FOX News, because in terms of sheer entertainment value we here at the SFBG simply cannot compete with Glenn Beck and his cronies’ 2009 commentary on the SF’s pervert art scene. Just watching him pump his blonde little eyebrows up and down while saying the words “the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror flick, complete with four men, three women and one gorilla,” – hey Beck, stay the hell away from my beat!

Yeah yeah yeah, what the hell am I talking about. So the National Endowment for the Arts kicks down some precious ducats from their $80 million stimulus pot to SF org’s like Cinematheque, Frameline Films, and CounterPULSE, whose series Perverts Put Out was honored with a name check on the fair and balanced news channel. What are they so tantalizingly riled over? Well my friends, check it out for yourselves when PPO hits the Center for Sex and Culture stage this weekend as part of its traditional, pre Dore Alley Fair show (Sat/24). 

 

Alex Ironrod

The semi-retired leather champ-author talks about his Leather Masters and slaves series, which follows the adventures of Tarquin and Paul and their buddies in the L.A. leather scene.

Thurs/22 7:30 p.m., free

A Different Light bookstore

489 Castro, SF

(415) 431-0891

www.adl-book.blogspot.com


Bay of Pigs

For all the fun of the street fair without the gawkers and sunshine, head to the Bay of Pigs. This is the UYA’s official Saturday pre-party, and you can bet your well oiled, mid-shin-high boots that there’ll be enough visuals to keep you stimulated; dancers, demos, and spaces to cavort and carouse like you wouldn’t believe.

Sat/24 10 p.m.-4 a.m., $50

525 Harrison, SF

(415) 777-3247

www.folsomstreetfair.org


Perverts Put Out For Dore

As seen on FOX news! Philip Huang, Steven Schwartz, and Gina de Vries will leave their hangups at the door, and Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard host.

Sat/24 7:30 p.m., 

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, Suite 1

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


Up Your Alley Street Fair

Swing your partner round and round! Take your kinks down to SoMa for an leather SF tradition: UYA has been rocking Dore to its very soul since 1987. Just be sure to walk that fine line of legality. Nudity’s no crime, but lewd behavior, the festival website says, will get you the boot. Well, after a couple verbal warnings… 

Sun/25 11 a.m.-6 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF

(415) 777-3247

www.folsomstreetfair.org


Sex Positive Sex Workshop

Dr. Carol Queen doesn’t sleep. In a good way. Today she’s hosting a class for all those considering, or currently delving into, sex work. She’ll be breaking down the inter-sniping that can too often occur between divisions of work (dancer vs. escort vs. street worker), and sharing the reasons for solidarity if you’re gonna be up on that pole or on your back for cash. Hint: they’re important.

Sun/25 6 p.m., $10

Femina Potens gallery

2199 Market, SF

(415) 864-1558

www.feminapotens.org


The Art of Female Ejaculation

“The Fountain of the Goddess” is the subtitle for Sheri Winston’s primer on how to get your favorite va-jay-jay (ugh, no props to your proto-linguistic ingenuity, Oprah) gushing that sweet, sweet Amrita. Oh yes, she goes there. Winston will take you back into ancient India’s reverence for the “Nectar of Life,” which sadly today has been reduced to fodder for Amsterdam sideshow-porn star shooting competition. Learn how to evoke your inner squirting goddess with her.

Tues/27 6- 8 p.m., $25-30

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com 

 

SunCal threatens to sue, as Alameda votes to kick out base developer

Mary Magee
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It took until 1 a.m. for the Alameda City Council to vote 4-0 (councilmember Lena Tam abstained) to deny SunCal’s “modified optional entitlement application,” and take the first step towards ending its four-year relationship with SunCal, an Irvine-based developer that planned to build 4,800 homes, a 60-acre sports complex, a ferry terminal, parks, schools and offices at the former Alameda Naval Air Station, which accounts for one-third of this island city.

Along the way, SunCal threatened to sue, a move that elicited boos from the 200 or so people crammed into Alameda’s City Hall chambers for the showdown.
“We are entitled to go to the end of the road on this thing,” SunCal attorney Skip Miller said. “If not, we will be in court seeking very substantial damages.”
The vote came after City staff cited a long list of concerns, including fears that the project would cause traffic congestion, lacked solid financial backing and would not deliver on jobs.

“We think there are a lot of risks, “ Alameda deputy city manager Jennifer Ott said.
Local unions expressed support for the plan, as did some environmental advocates, while opponents attacked SunCal’s poor financial record and voiced concerns about how thousands of new residents would block the island’s underground tubes, which are the only way to exit the ibase-side of the island, other than a ferry terminal,

The city council’s vote came five months after 85 percent of Alameda residents voted against excluding SunCal from the island’s ban on multi-unit housing. Since then, the relationship between the city and the developer has become increasingly hostile, city staff reported. The move leaves the city wide open to offers from other developers, although staff said at this point they have no plan to hire another master developer for the abandoned base.

 

 

Benefits: July 21-July 27

David Talbot
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Benefits: July 21-July 27

Ways to have fun while giving back this week


Thursday, July 22

“Battles Yet to be Won”
This benefit for political prisoner Marie Mason, who was sentenced to 22 years in 2009 on charges of property destruction related to her involvement in animal rights and environmental activism, will feature speakers Jeff Luers, Linda Evans, and Karen Pickett and tunes by KUSF DJ Carolyn Keddy. The speakers will contextualize Mason’s severe sentence with the U.S. governments past attempts at supressing the Black Panthers, the American Indian movement, Chicano rights, Puerto Rican Independentistas, and other political movements.
7:30 p.m., $5-$20 sliding scale
Submission Gallery
2183 Mission, SF
www.supportmariemason.org

Beer, Bites, and Bikes
Eat organic and locally made sausages and drink fine brews at this fundraiser for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Green Streets Project to improve Market street for cyclists.
6 p.m., $20
Show Dogs
1020 Market, SF
www.sfgreatstreets.org

Saturday, July 24

Pet-a-palooza
Help raise funds for the Alameda Animal Shelter, the Northern California German Shorthaired Pointer Rescue, and Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter at this annual benefit party featuring an afternoon street fair from 1pm-6pm with a photobooth, a doggie fashion show, vendors, and more and an evening silent auction with entertainment.
1 p.m.-9 p.m., $20
Autobody Fine Art
1517 Park, Alameda
(510) 865-2608

Tuesday, July 27

Vote Health
Attend this 25th anniversary party for Vote Health, an Alameda based public health care advocacy group that supports a universal, single payer health care system for both the state and national levels. Featuring guest speaker Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a founding member of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and renowned advocate for a  national single payer health system.
7 p.m., $15 suggested donation
California Nurses Association
2000 Franklin, Oakl.
(510) 658-1147

Quick Lit: July 21-July 27

David Talbot
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Quick Lit: July 21-July 27

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Classic SF Noir, Cooking from the Farmer’s Market, sustaible design in the California Academy of Sciences, holistic tips for the  mind and home, Richard Walter, Yogiraj, and more.

Wednesday, July 21 

Cooking From the Farmer’s Market
Jodi Liano presents her book that helps home chefs identify, select, and prepare over 100 types of fruits and vegetables fresh from the market.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., Berk.
(510) 525-7777

Deep Medicine
Surgeon and holistic healer Dr. William Stewart explains how to tap into the mind’s power to heal the body.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Laurel Village
3515 California, SF
(415) 221-3666

Share This!
Deanna Zandt discusses the importance of social media as tools for change.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Marina
2251 Chestnut, SF
(415) 931-3633

Trust
Australian journalist and author Kate Veitch discusses her new novel about one woman’s journey to define what it means to her to be a “good woman,” balancing being a daughter, sister, wife, and mother.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

Thursday, July 22

“A Roof Full of Wild Flowers”
As part of the Bone Room Presents natural history lecture series, California Academy of Sciences Senior Curator and Botanist Frank Alameda will talk about the living, growing, 2.5 acre roof on the new California Academy of Sciences building. Alameda will discuss the construction of the roof and the part that it plays in the sustainability of the museum as a whole.
7 p.m., free
Bone Room
1573 Solano, Berk.
(510)526-5252

“Down with Stereotypes”
Alison Owings will read from her two books, Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray and the forthcoming Indian Voices / Listening to Native Americans, and discuss how the tales of Beulah Compton, a waitress union leader in Seattle in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and Tom Phillips (Kiowa), a powwow emcee and drug counselor at the Friendship House American Indian Healing Center, have in common.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

Essentials of Screenwriting
Veteran screenwriter and legendary professor at UCLA’s film school, Richard Walter will read from his new book filled with his tricks of the trade that have led to many award-winning films.
7 p.m., free
Borders
400 Post, SF
(415) 399-1633

Feng Shui Your Mind
Holistic healers Jill Lebeau and Maureen Raytis share their strategies for decluttering and destressing your life.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., Berk.
(510) 525-7777

San Francisco Noir 2 vs. Los Angeles Noir 2
Hear from the editors of the lastest installments in the Noir series, San Francisco Nior 2 and Los Angeles Noir 2: the Classics. Featuring San Francisco Noir 2 editor Peter Maravelis, contributor Eddie Muller, and special guest Cara Black and Los Angeles Noir 2 editor Denise Hamilton.
7 p.m., free
Cantina
580 Sutter, SF
www.akashicbooks.com

The Thousand Autumns of Jocob de Zoet
David Mitchell brings us a new novel, set in coastal Japan in 1799, that follows a Dutch accountant that loses himself in a world of Japanese intrigue and danger.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

Saturday, July 24

“The Bard in Bollywood”
Shakespearean scholar, Gitanjali Shahani, will explore the many adaptations, manifestations, and appropriations of Shakespeare in popular Hindi cinema using clips from Shakespeare Wallah, Maqbool, and Omkara to illustrate how Bollywood has re-imagined Shakespeare through the ages.
7 p.m., $8-$10 sliding scale
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
www.thirdi.org
 
“Fly Trap Theater”
This kid-friendly presentation by staffers from the Conservatory of Flowers offers an up close look at carnivorous plants and how they attack and eat bugs. There will even be a fly trap dissection, so onlookers can see the plants’ trapping mechanisms, followed by bug and plant puppet crafts.
2 p.m., free
Paxton Gate’s Curiosities For Kids
766 Valencia, SF
(415)252-9990

Himalayan Kriya Master Yogiraj SatGurunath Siddhanath
Attend this gathering where Yogiraj will discuss life from an enlightened viewpoint and share his mission of Earth peace through self peace.
7 p.m., $20 suggested donation
St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church
500 DeHaro, SF
1-866-YOGI-RAJ

Redstone Labor and Culture Walk
Learn about the history behind the murals in the lobby of the Redstone Building, a building that was the headquarters of the 1934 General Strike, followed by a guided walk through the vibrant surrounding neighborhood highlighting the Mission’s art, ethnic history, and class struggle.
1 p.m., free
Meet at Redstone Building
16th St. and Capp, SF
RSVP at (415) 841-1254

Sunday, July 25

Barak Obama and the Jim Crow Media
Author Ishmael Reed will read and discuss his new book, Barak Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers, about how Obama’s opponents use modern reincarnations of the ugly demons of slavery-era tactics to “break” black people.
2 p.m., free
Koret Auditorium
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
(415) 557-4400

Laborfest Book Fair and Poetry Reading
All day long, the Mission Cultural Center will feature multiple rooms where authors, activists, educators, and organizers will present labor themed panel discussions, book discussions, poetry readings, historical lectures, tabling, socializing, and more.
9:30am-5pm, free
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
2868 Mission, SF
www.laborfest.net

Tuesday, July 27

Death is Not an Option
Suzanne Riveca’s new collection about girls and women in a world where sexuality and self-delusion collide.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., Berk.
(510) 525-7777

Found in Translation Book Group
Once a month, Scott Esposito of the Center for the Art of Translation and the Quarterly Conversation hand-selects fiction from around the world for a spirited discussion. Learn about the classic novel by Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet, and his epic 100- book series Comedie humaine which provides an immense panorama of post-Napoleon France.
7 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

“Jesse Schell: Visions of Gamepocalypse”
Hear game designer and CEO of Schell Games Jesse Schell discuss the social, cognitive, and technological trends in computer game design and use.
7:30 p.m., $10
Novellus Theater
YBCA
701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787

The tax poll is seriously messed up

Zelda Bronstein
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The tax poll is seriously messed up

Chuck Nevius, who doesn’t seem to like any taxes, weighed in this morning on a poll paid for by the city’s Transportation Authority that, the way Nevius puts it, “[cast] doubt on whether it would be wise to put some tax issues on the ballot in November.” His analysis of the numbers:


[W]hen it comes to the hotel, parking, business and real estate transfer tax, the voters had four responses: no, no, no and hell no.


His ideological soulmate over at the Ex, Ken Garcia, had a similar report. “San Francisco,” he wrote, “is not in a tax-supporting mood.”


But that’s not how I read the poll at all.


You can see the actual document here. The first thing I’ll note is that 67 percent of the people who responded were over 40. That’s not a surprise; telephone polls skew older these days. (How many young people have land lines, which are the numbers primarily called by pollsters?) The second is that some of the questions are pretty close to incomprehensible. Imagine someone reading this to you over the phone and asking for a quick answer:


To provide loans to pay for seismic retrofits of certain multi-story wood structures at significant
risk of substantial damage and collapse during a major earthquake and funded by a qualified
governmental housing finance agency for permanent or long-term affordability, or single room
occupancy buildings owned by private parties, and pay related costs, shall the City and County
of San Francisco issue up to thirty nine million one hundred forty thousand dollars of general
obligation bonded indebtedness, subject to citizen oversight and regular audits?


But the most important thing is that the tax questions were more than misleading; they’re phrased in a way that almost begs for a No. Here’s the real-estate transfer tax question:


Shall the City and County of San Francisco increase the real property transfer tax on certain
properties by between $3.75 and $10.00 per $500.00 of value, depending on the overall
property value and exempting rent-restricted affordable housing units from the increased tax rate?


That sounds like the average person trying to buy or sell a house is going to get hit with more taxes. Actually, nobody’s proposing a tax on low-end sales. If you asked the real question — should people or businesses that sell property worth more than $5 million pay a slightly higher transfer tax — you’d get a very different answer.


Here’s another one:


Shall the City and County of San Francisco establish a progressive payroll expense tax rate
structure and impose a gross receipts tax on the rental of commercial real property?


My immediate response: What the hell does that mean? It sounds like higher taxes on payrolls and a new tax on rents. Sounds like it’s bad for small business. Actually, that’s an utterly inaccurate representation of the tax the Sup. David Chiu is proposing. How avbout an honest question: Should the city cut taxes on small businesses and make banks and insurance companies pay their fair share? I suspect that would poll a little higher.


You want a real snapshot of how a conservative, older groups of voters, the ones represented in this poll, feel about taxes? Check out question 13, which asks people if they agree or disagree with this statement:


It is crucial to have high quality streets, roads and public transit, even if it means raising taxes.


A full 71 percent said they agree.

I’m not arguing that it’s going to be easy to pass any tax proposals on the fall ballot. But if you put the question the right way, and explain that these revenue measures impact primarily the wealthier residents and businesses and that they money is needed for essential public services, I think most voters are going to say Yes.



Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

David Talbot
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2

A new proposal to make the flat payroll tax more progressive and exempt more small businesses

EDITORIAL It’s rare to see a fairly conservative city agency, created in part to make it harder for progressives to push measures that might affect business, come down in favor of a new business tax. But the San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that the proposal by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to change the local payroll tax and impose a new tax on commercial rents would actually help local businesses, particularly small businesses. The proposal presents a crucial opportunity for progressives to make the case that the Chamber of Commerce and big downtown corporations are not advancing the interests of small businesses — and local merchant groups need to pay attention.

Chiu has taken on a problem that has lingered in San Francisco for decades. The city’s business tax is terribly regressive: Only 10 percent of the companies in town even pay the payroll tax, in part because banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms are exempt under state law. That means the burden falls the heaviest on small and medium-sized companies — the ones that provide most of the net job growth in the city.

The new proposal would make the flat payroll tax more progressive and would exempt more small businesses. It would also raise $28 million more a year for the cash-strapped municipal coffers by taxing commercial rents of more than $60,000 a year.

The commercial rent levy would force the big outfits that now pay no city taxes whatsoever to take on at least some of the burden of financing San Francisco government. Smaller companies with modest leases, and small commercial landlords, wouldn’t pay the new tax at all.

Chiu originally had proposed an even broader tax, which would have raised more than $35 million. But after the Small Business Commission expressed concerns, he changed the measure, reducing the burden on small business even further. And at this point, Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist at the Office of Economic Analysis, reports that the tax would lead to greater job creation in the private sector (because of the reduction in the payroll tax) as well as greater job creation in the public sector (because of the additional revenue to the city).

It’s the kind of idea that ought to have broad-based support — progressives looking to fund crucial services see it as a way to bring in money, and small businesses ought to see it as a way to cut taxes and create jobs in the sector of the city that most needs economic stimulus.

Unfortunately, the response from small business leaders hasn’t been encouraging. The commission hasn’t taken a stand on the measure; on July 12th, the panel deadlocked 2-2, with one member absent and two slots still vacant (the mayor hasn’t filled them). That lets the big downtown players — the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on JOBS, etc. — in a position to claim that the Chiu proposal is anti-business.

We’ve seen this pattern far too often. Small business groups allow big corporations, which have no interest in the real issues that impact local merchants, stick the little folks out front on political issues. We’ve seen it over the years with public power, commercial rent control, downtown development, and taxes — and it needs to stop.

The Small Business Commission, the Council of District Merchants, all the local community merchant groups, and anyone else who really cares about the interests of small business in San Francisco should support the Chiu measure. It’s a tax plan that’s good for small business. And if the advocates don’t realize that, they’re hurting themselves, the customers, and the city.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Perpetua, Harlan and Grant

Tell us about your look: “Eclectic — a mix of styles.”

Trash Lit: Doo-dah, hoo-hah, winkie, and cooter with Janet Evanovich

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Trash Lit: Doo-dah, hoo-hah, winkie, and cooter with Janet Evanovich

Finger-Lickin’ Fifteen
Janet Evanovich
St Martin’s Press, 318 pp, $27.95

I’m just going to come right out and say it: Janet Evanovich is the funniest writer to come along on the scene since Carl Hiassen, and in some ways, she’s got Hiassen beat. He writes about Florida, where unreal people do some bizarre stuff; her turf is Jersey, where the characters are pretty close to normal life. Which is to say, totally strange and fucked up. She is my favorite living writer, and after fourteen previous novels, the tales of Stephanie Plum and her cohorts just seem to get better.


Finger Lickin’ Fifteen is among the best of the series. Before you even get to page five, there’s a decapitation, witnessed by Lula, the ‘ho turned bounty hunter who works with Plum. And not just any decapitation: A guy swings a meat cleaver, the head hits the ground, blood spurts up like Old Faithful, Lula tells the story in vivid detail, Stephanie throws up … it’s glorious.


The scene in Trenton hasn’t changed much since the last book, except that Plum has temporarily broken up with her boyfriend Morelli. She’s still working for her cousin’s bail bonds agency, still trying to make a living catching deadbeats, still trying to figure out which hot guy she wants more, Morelli the cop or the mysterious (and even hotter) Ranger, who’s an insanely cool and tough private security mogul.


It turns out that the headless guy is a celebrity chef, and Plum and her gang think the hit may be all about barbecue sauce, and wind up investigating, sort of. And of course, Plum’s Grandma Masur, one of the great characters in the history of American literature, gets deeply involved.


I’ll just give you a few tidbits of why I love Janet Evanovich. Here’s Lula on men: “You don’t want to go around thinkin’ shit is your fault. Next thing you know, they got you makin’ pot roast and you’re cutting up your Mastercard.”


Grandma Masur on a neighbor girl: “She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until the fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day.”


Some of the things that happen in this book: An exploding back yard gas grill sets off a huge fire in her family’s back yard. A toxic barbecue sauce gives everyone horrible diarrhea. An exploding pressure cooking puts a dent in Plum’s ceiling. A cross-dressing chef works days in a chicken outfit. Plum goes on a blind date with a man named Peter Pecker. Two guys in Zorro masks toss a fire bomb into her building. A car bomb blows up Lula’s ride. Grandma Masur shoots a guy’s ear off. Lula is stuck in a car window until she farts for a minute straight. There’s a lot of talk of doo-dah, hoo-hah, winkie, cooter, wangers, boners, and the knicky-knacky.


It’s enough to make me proud to be an American.

Nice boats, Carly

Zelda Bronstein
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7
Nice boats, Carly

Carly Fiorina’s got herself a couple of nice boats.


Barbara Boxer, that damn liberal, is making fun of poor Carly just because she has not one but two yachts, one in Sausalito and one in DC. The Chron’s got a pic of the 70-foot Dyna Craft, which looks a bit small in the photo. There’s also a 56-foot Sea Ray.


Of course, as her spokesperson points out, it makes perfect sense for her to be part of a two-yacht family; after all, she has two houses. And if you’ve got two houses, you need a boat (which costs more than most houses) near each of them.


So let’s check out the craft. Here’s what the interior of the 70-foot Dyna Craft Laguna looks like. Here’s one going under the Golden Gate Bridge.  A few of the features:


The D70 has a powerful yet elegant Italian-Designed profile. This is a superb large-size model with a high level of sophisticated design and luxury equipment. All surfaces are decorated with the highest grade materials that are pleasing both to the eye and to the touch. Like all DYNA yachts, it has a very high degree of customizability and is built with the most fastidious attention to detail and quality. This model is available in open flybridge, skylounge, and hard top version.


I’m partial to the flybridge, myself. The standard model is done in teak, maple or cherry wood, although it has (gasp) “synthetic leather headliners.” I’m sure she tossed those out and got real leather. And I like that king-sized bed. The galley’s got a full-size refrigerator, granite counters and a convection microwave, which I bet she doesn’t use much, but I’d be making some mean mac and cheese in it.


Now here’s a 56-foot Sea Ray, which is probably a little more my size. There’s a nice slide show on the Sea Ray site; check it out. I like the galley a little better on this one that on the Dyna, and the accomodations, though not as luxurious, are fine for the likes of me. Check out the bath and shower. This baby has only 1,100 gallon fuel tanks, and the Dyna’s got 1,300 gallons, but the Dyna’s a beast and must use a lot more gas.


The Chron says the Sausalito yacht is valued at about $1 million, but unless she’s had some serious interior work done, that seems a little pricey to me; you can get these things at a pretty steep discount these days. Last summer I met a guy who was ready to let go of his 60-foot Yacht for less than $200,000. Like a lot of the former HP folks that Carly laid off, he lost his job and couldn’t afford the gas.


On the other hand, Carly’s never had much business sense. She probably overpaid. 

SFBG Radio: Wall Street and the Dead Kennedys

Zelda Bronstein
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0
SFBG Radio: Wall Street and the Dead Kennedys

Today, Johnny talks to Johnny Venom about the state of financial reform — and to D.H. Peligro about his time with the Dead Kennedys and his new punk version of Purple Haze. You can listen after the jump.


sfbgradio7/19/2010 by johnnywangel

Pro-Mehserle rally breaks out in Walnut Creek

Mary Magee
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7

Supporters of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle rallied in Walnut Creek this afternoon, eleven days after protests and violence erupted in Oakland July 8, when Mehserle was convicted July 8 of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting unarmed Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009 on a BART platform in Oakland.

The rally occurred outside the Superior Courthouse in Walnut Creek on Ygnacio Valley Road.  

Witnesses say the supporters were outnumbered by the cops and the paparazzi, and outnumbered and outvoiced by the “Justice for Oscar Grant” counterdemonstrators by about 2:1.

“While helicopters whirled overhead and riot police stood by, counterdemonstrators chanted ‘Justice for Oscar Grant’ and ‘Oscar did not have to die – we all know the reason why.'” a witness told the Guardian. “They flanked the Mehserle supporters, who stood mostly silent, holding up signs like ‘Understanding will permit healing’ and ‘Thank you for keeping my streets safe.’ There was no sign of open antagonism between the camps, although a bystander reported that words were exchanged initially and things were about to get heated when the police closed ranks and made it clear they would shut the whole thing down.”

Anticuchos and picarones spice up Festival de Comida Peruana

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2

Anywhere you go in the world, people like to eat. This weekend there were a lot of people in the Civic Center doing just that, but they were all eating Peruvian food.

There were abuelitas slurping down huge bowls of steaming soup, and kids chowing down on anticuchos (grilled meat on a stick) and piping hot picarones (Peruvian doughnuts made with pumpkin and sweet potatoes). Beyond the large amounts of food and huge lines, there was also live entertainment to enjoy, including salsa music and traditional Peruvian dancing. Being the first annual Festival de Comida Peruana, it was impressive to see such a large and enthusiastic turn out. It seemed like everyone had a great time, and no one, I suspect, left with an empty stomach. Buen provecho!

Flash! Bang! Girl-on-girl aerial hula!: Scenes from the Fire Cabaret

Andrew Lam
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There are some who say that the Bay Area is the birthplace of modern fire arts. Regardless of the pedigree involved, we look damn good getting our sparks off.

Since we gave you a sneak peek of the fire safety measures behind this weekend’s HEAT: A Fire Cabaret at West Oakland’s Crucible, it only seemed right to share some of the night’s most sparkling backbends, hip thrusts, Tatu-like riffs on circus, and of course, skillful application of flameburst. Do enjoy. All photos by Erik Anderson



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