SFBG Blogs

Conspiracy Con will set you free

Andrew Lam
-
0

Hair standing up on the back of your neck when you watch the news these days? Perhaps a little shiver of doubt when it comes to how our world’s being run? Trust no one, baby – Conspiracy Con 2010‘s coming to town, Sat/5-Sun/6. Buy your tickets now, before the government’s drones read your thought patterns and freeze your computer.

A word of intro from the website from executive producer, Brian William Hall™ (thought you were going to steal his identity huh, you succubus! You thought wrong – that thing is trademarked!):

There is a bumper sticker out there that sums up the “waking-up” process on this planet perfectly… “The truth shall set you free, but first it’ll piss you off!” And, I for one am pissed off. If you aren’t, then you’re either dangerously ignorant as to the way this world is truly run and controlled; you’re in complete denial about this reality; or you are a willing pawn in this global game of chess played by the worst of tyrants.

If you fall under that last category, I feel compelled to quote a line to you from the TV miniseries “V” in which a rebel declares, “Congratulations on selling out your race to a bunch of night crawlers.”

Well, there’s just no way, no how I’m selling out to the night crawlers. You shouldn’t either, so here’s a handy rundown of the skeptical geniuses who’ve cracked the code that you’ll find at Conspiracy Con X (tenth anniversary!) this year, their scam of expertise, and time slot so you can plan your weekend included:

 

Time slot: Sat/5 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Dr. Michael S. Coffman, PhD

Scam he’s wise to: The global warming scam

 

Time slot: Sun/6 3:15-4:45 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Dr. Bill Deagle, MD

Scam he’s wise to: The mankind-is-unadaptable-to-the-coming-apocalypse scam.

 

Time slot:Sat/5 5-6:30 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Dr. Leonard Horowitz

Scam he’s wise to: The H1N1 virus scam

 

Time slot: 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Ron MacDonald

Scam he’s wise to: The federal reserve “total slavery” scam

 

Time slot: Sat/5 1:30 -3 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Texe Marrs

Scam he’s wise to: The Rothschild-Obama-Palin-McCain-Bush death cult scam.

 

Time slot: Sat/5 9 -10:30 a.m.

Conspiracy cracker: H. Michael Sweeney

Scam he’s wise to: The new identification cards-systems scam (or “The Mark of the Beast” scam)

 

Time slot: Sun/6 9 -10:30 a.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Michael Collins Piper, featuring a live call to expert Jim Tucker

Scam he’s wise to: The Bilderberg Group scam

 

Time slot: Sun/6 1:30-3 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Michael Tsarion

Scam he’s wise to: Mind control through popular media scam (or the “Don’t Watch Avatar” scam)

 

Time slot: Sat/5 3:15- 4:45 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: William White Crow

Scam he’s wise to: Unclear from program – possibly the government-alien mind control scam? White Crow is also well versed in “waking up the sheep.”

 

Time slot: Sun/6 5-6:30 p.m.

Conspiracy cracker: Special surprise guest, who “must remain anonymous up until the time of the conference for his own protection because of the nature of his research.”

Scam he’s wise to: The scam to stop the use of alternative energies

 

Conspiracy Con X 2010

Sat/5 (through Sun/6) 8 a.m. – 9 p.m., $99-129

Santa Clara Marriott

2700 Mission College, Santa Clara

(408) 988-1500

www.conspiracycon.com

A public power landmark — and the battle to come

David Talbot
-
0

CCA allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses

EDITORIAL It’s been 97 years since Congress passed a landmark law mandating public power in San Francisco, 67 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city was violating the law by allowing Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to operate a private monopoly in town, and 42 years since the Guardian first broke the story of the Raker Act scandal and launched a campaign to bring public power to the city. And now, even operating under a tight PG&E-imposed deadline, the San Francisco is moving very close to establishing a modest type of public power.

Community choice aggregation (CCA) isn’t what John Edward Raker and his supporters had in mind in 1913 when they allowed San Francisco to build a dam in Yosemite National Park, breaking John Muir’s heart. The idea — which the city explicitly accepted in a formal written agreement — was to use the dam not just for water but for electricity, specifically to create a public power beachhead in Northern California that would prevent any private company, specifically PG&E, from getting control of the electricity grid.

CCA leaves PG&E’s private grid in place and allows the investor-owned utility to continue to sell power in the region. But it also allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses.

Since 2002, when the state Legislature passed a bill authorizing CCAs, the concept has slowly started to take hold. Marin County launched its CCA this spring. San Francisco last week reached an agreement with PowerChoice LLC, a vendor that will oversee the procurement of electricity, to begin service here, and the contract is headed to the SF Public Utilities Commission and the Board of Supervisors for approval.

That’s a huge step forward for public power — but the city faces a tight deadline. PG&E has placed Proposition 16 on the June 8 ballot, which would require a two-thirds vote before any local agency could get into the electricity business. That’s an almost impossible threshold (see: the state Legislature). Prop. 16 may still go down to defeat, despite PG&E’s $45 million campaign to pass it.

But even if it passes, any existing agency — that is, any community that has its CCA in place before the election is certified — will be grandfathered in.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera argues, with good authority, that San Francisco is already protected from Prop. 16. The city already has taken enough steps to implement CCA (the implementation plan has been approved by the supervisors) that the inevitable lawsuit by PG&E will probably fail. But every step the city takes to bring the process closer to completion provides more protection, and the stakes could not be higher.

With CCA, the city will have control of its own energy future, be able to offer power that doesn’t contribute to global warming — and be able, at long last, to take a step toward complying with the Raker Act. (And remember: the law says, and the Supreme Court confirmed, that the federal government can move at any time to seize the Hetch Hetchy dam and uproot the city’s entire water system for failure to comply with the 1913 agreement.)

It seems almost certain that by June 8 the city will have a contract with a vendor and state certification that defines San Francisco as a CCA. Then, whatever the outcome of Prop. 16, the city needs to move forward with the program. And if PG&E sues to block it, then every official in San Francisco will have to be prepared to wage the legal and political battle of all time. PG&E can and probably will take the city to court — and the city can immediately start talking about breaking the 1930s-era franchise agreement that gives PG&E a low franchise fee in perpetuity, and enforcing the Raker Act, and taking the corrupt utility to task on every possible front.

Street Threads: New York City

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Street Threads: New York City

Today’s Look: Fancy Nancy, Times Square

Tell us about your look: “Put it on!”

The Daily Blurgh: Out of Bolivia, park-ing lessons

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Out of Bolivia, park-ing lessons

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Today in animals: Former circus lions from Bolivia plan SF stopover before cold chillin’ the rest of their days away in sunny San Andreas, crocodile mummies are returned to UC Berkeley, and the American Kennel Club allows mutts (aka “All Americans”) to compete in their own category.

*****
Rescue 911 — not so great from a cell phone.

*****

What better way to fight the war on terror than to discredit your enemy than by leaking a “video” of his supposed child-raping conquests?

*****

So, you wanna build a parklet...
*****

Headline of the day: “‘I am a predator’ – ruin follows him everywhere“

*****
Crack is whack! (via SFist)

 

And it was over before it really began

Sasha Cuttler
-
1
And it was over before it really began

MoveOn.org co-founder Peter Schurman has dropped out of the governor’s race. What, you didn’t know Schurman was in the governor’s race? Well, you aren’t alone, but it is true that he was seeking the Democratic nomination, jumping into the race in March “in response to a widespread call for a stronger, more issues-based campaign than Jerry Brown was running at the time,” he wrote today in his withdrawal announcement.

I was among those at the time pointing out that Brown wasn’t exactly bringing his A-game, but Brown was still a lock for the nomination and Schurman never really did get much attention or run a very strong campaign. Yet he says that his work here is done, so he’s getting out and endorsing Brown: “Jerry Brown has begun to do what it will take to win: speaking up on issue [sic] like green jobs, reaching out to voters, and confronting the Republicans on their ties to Wall Street.  At the same time, the Republicans in this race are tearing each other apart.”

And speaking of work, Schurman closes his announcement with an appeal for some: “Of course, this means I’m looking for regular work again.  Please let me know if you hear of anything.”

Dems in Sacto want to raise taxes — what about Newsom?

Zelda Bronstein
-
0
Dems in Sacto want to raise taxes — what about Newsom?

Well, the Democrats in Sacramento have finally decided that they aren’t completely terrified of tax hikes; they’re proposing a $5 billion package to help make the bloody cuts for next year a little less horrible. It’s mostly stuff that a majority of the voters would approve — a modest income tax hike on high earners, an increase in the vehicle license fee, and the reduction of some corporate tax breaks. And it’s nowhere near enough — but it’s a start. In fact, politically it’s a huge deal, because it puts the debate in the right place: Tax cars and rich people, or devastate public education, public safety and social services.


So here’s the question: Now that the leaders of the not-terribly-progressive state Senate are willing to talk about new sources of revenue, where is the mayor of San Francisco?

I am going to this thing

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
2

I don’t know what you’re planning for your long weekend ahead — Carnaval? Himalayan Fair? DEMF? Rehab? — but I’m heading back up to Arcata and Eureka to peep the Kinetic Sculpture Race, the “triathlon of the art world.” It is truly one of the wonders of California — and yes, those things have to go into the water.

Trash Lit: ‘Reckless’ could be ripped from headlines (minus a couple murders)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Trash Lit: ‘Reckless’ could be ripped from headlines (minus a couple murders)

Reckless
Andrew Gross
William Morrow, 404 pages, $25.99

Imagine if the head of a powerful banking company with close ties to the federal government conspired with some shady Saudi billionaires and a cruel Serbian ex-military thug to bring down the American financial system in a Darwinian plot that would allow the one firm with insider knowledge to emerge even stronger. How would it play out? Well, minus a few murders, more or less exactly the way the financial-sector meltdown of the past couple of years has played out.

That’s what makes this such a fun book. It’s not the most brilliant thriller ever – the structure involves a lot of flicking back and forth between parallel plots, and gets confusing at times. But the premise is delicious, and the execution is good enough to make it eminently enjoyable.

Reckless starts off nicely, with a Middle Eastern banker set to launch world economic ruin, an American private dick fucking his girlfriend as doom approaches, a Greenwich, Connecticut society divorcee fucking a sexy European stud with a dubious background and a brutal, bloody murder of a securities trader, his wife (who was an old pal of the PI) and one of their kids.

It slows down a bit after that, but not much.

Turns out the dead guy was way underwater in a complex deal. A few more traders, also underwater and scrambling, wind up dead, too. And then the economy really starts to fall – AIG goes under. Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac go under. There’s panic at every level of government.

Meanwhile, the bad guys try to kidnap the mildly retarded son of the PI’s girlfriend after a hockey game, leading to a spectacular hockey-stick-and-knife-in-the-locker-room fight that ends with the PI shoving a sharpened skate into the kidnapper’s chest (neat trick; I always wondered if that would really work).

By the time it all gets sorted out, there’s railroad trestle gun play, a federal agent who’s bleeding to death but still makes a spectacular shot, and an utterly predictable power-out, stuck-in-the-elevator sex scene. Maybe even worth forking over the hardcover price.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Jai, SF State

Tell us about your look: “I’m an exchange student from China. I’m studying finance.”

Lefty protesters greet Obama in SF

Sasha Cuttler
-
6

President Barack Obama arrives in San Francisco this afternoon (5/25) for a fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel, where he’ll be greeted by protesters from at least two realms of the progressive movement: immigrant rights activists unhappy with his administration’s reluctance to take on immigration reform, and anti-war activists angry that Obama has continued President George W. Bush’s pro-war and anti-civil liberties policies.

Both groups have been increasingly unhappy with a president whose candidacy they supported for the most part. In particular, the coalition of immigrant rights groups that will gather on the steps of Grace Cathedral starting at 3:30 pm say Obama hasn’t done enough to counter rising nativist extremism or Arizona’s SB1070, and that his administration has essentially nullified sanctuary city ordinances by extending the federal government’s Secure Communities, which allows immigration officials direct access to information on arrestees in jails throughout the country (see our story in this week’s Guardian for more).

“We are gathering to lament the intolerance and extremism that are setting back the national discussion on immigration. We need real solutions that uphold our values of fairness and compassion, and we pray for the President to take leadership to stop this heart-breaking separation of families,” Rev. Debbie Lee of Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights said in a press release.

Meanwhile, Code Pink, World Can’t Wait, and other groups will also gather near the hotel starting at 3:30 to protest what it calls ongoing war crimes by the administration, including the escalation of war in Afghanistan, predator drone assassinations in Pakistan, Obama’s continued use of extraconstitutional war powers claimed by Bush, opposition to efforts to expose and redress imperial excesses by the Bush Administration, and denial of due process rights to those labeled enemy combatants.

World Can’t Wait has even made a point of calling on Obama supporters to hold him accountable with the slogan, “Crimes are crimes not matter who does them.”

Attendees to Obama’s Fairmont fundraiser are shelling out $17,500 each to Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, while an even higher roller affair will be held later that night at the home of Ann and Gordon Getty.

The politics of sit/lie

Zelda Bronstein
-
91
The politics of sit/lie

It’s no surprise that Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to put a sit/lie law on the ballot, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the supervisors are moving slowly on his proposal. It has nothing to do with any facts — the cops could enforce existing laws and address the problem.


No, this is all about politics. Newsom never wanted the supervisors to approve a sit.lie law; he and his operatives want to put it on the November ballot, so they can use it as a wedge issue to attack progressive candidates. They can also use it to raise money, which can be spread around through slate cards to support his supervisorial picks.


Remember, this is how Newsom got elected mayor: He picked a wedge issue (general assistance payments to homeless people), created a slogan (“care, not cash”), raised a ton of money, and made it his signature campaign strategy. It worked, so he’s trying again.


Before Arthur Evans leaps in and attacks me, let me say: I know there are people in the Haight who want this law. (There are also people in the Haight, including the venerable Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who oppose it.) But I don’t think Newsom really cares about that; if he did, he’d work with the supervisors on a compromise or alternatives. Instead, he’s refusing to participate in the board’s debates.


This is all about November’s board elections. Sorry, Arthur, but your pet cause is now the mayor’s political tool.

Sit/Lie: The Movie

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Directors Ricky Angel and Samuel Hernandez sent over this energetic and colorful short documentary about the screwy rationale — and possibly devastating impact — of the proposed sit/lie law that Mayor Newsom now intends to put before voters, bypassing the Board of Supervisors. Local activists and San Francisco citizens express dismay and hope.

The battle over Muni reform

Zelda Bronstein
-
1
The battle over Muni reform

Sup. Sean Elsbernd is getting a lot of attention for his plan to change the way Muni drivers are paid, and although he’s going to have a hard time getting 70,000 signatures for a Charter Amendment, the fact that Muni’s unions have given back to the city less than the other major employee unions gives he move a boost. There are arguments in favor of the current salary structure, but as long as it’s set in the Charter this way, it’s hard for the city to get any leverage on work-rul changes, which are really what Elsbernd is after.


But if you want to look at reforming Muni, you have to go beyond this one issue — and that may be the battle that takes place this fall. Sup. David Campos, along with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar, has put together a comprehesive Muni reform Charter amendment that includes some of the changes Elsbernd is proposing — but addresses Muni governance and funding, too.


The Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees Muni, is now run by a seven-member board, with all the members appointed by the mayor. That’s hardly created the sort of political independence that the supporters of the system wanted. So under the Campos proposal, three members would be appointed by the mayor, three by the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors, and the final member, the potential swing vote, would be appointed jointly by the mayor and board president (boy, that meeting will be fun). All seven would be subject to board confirmation.


The MTA would also be guaranteed a stream of income equivalent to 2.5 cents for every hundred dollars of property tax valuation.


The reform plan creates an Office of Inspector General in the MTA, and gives that person the authority to conduct audits and monitor waste and fraud — something sorely needed in the agency. And it would allow the supervisors to reject the MTA budget by a simply majority vote.


It’s likely that Campos, Mirkarimi and Mar will get the six votes they need to put this on the ballot, so they won’t have to go out and get signatures. Which means that even if Elsbernd’s ambitious grassroots effort is successful, the voters won’t be deciding whether to accept or reject a Muni reform measure; they’ll be choosing between one that only addresses pay for Muni workers and one that changes the pay system — but also seeks to overhaul how the system is run.

East Oakland’s peaceful Youth Uprising

Andrew Lam
-
4

Six months ago, Javae Reed could hardly have pictured himself as part of the solution to the problems that plague the East Oakland community where he grew up. Fresh off an incarceration in Reno (Reed had relocated temporarily to be with his mom) on charges of robbery, the 19 year old didn’t have a history of positive association with the system. But thanks to Youth Uprising, a youth advocacy non-profit — which celebrates its fifth anniversary with a gala fundraiser Tues/25 — Javae has landed a job, and got his driver’s license. Not to mention the fact that he’s performing policy work that will make a real difference for other young people like himself.

“I always had this potential in me,” Reed told me over the phone as he sat alongside YU director of strategy and investment director Maya Dillard-Smith. “I just needed that guidance to find it.” After hearing of  Youth Uprising through a friend upon his return to Oakland, Reed went to check out the program. The next day, he found himself heading out for a Youth Uprising LeaderShift retreat with 29 other young men, a trip which focuses on teaching individuals who are already leaders among their peers how to use their charisma and intelligence in a constructive direction.

Reed, a naturally outgoing guy, immediately found his niche. “By the second day, everybody was social, I got comfortable, the staff showed me support, we had fun. I became a part of the YU family,” he recalls. 

It’s indicative of the community-driven nature of YU that Reed was able to connect so readily. The organization celebrates a multi-pronged approach to youth empowerment, focusing both on physical (they operate the most used health clinic in Alameda County) and interior needs (a full purpose media lab gives participants a chance to use their voices artistically, and YU sponsors dance, theater and fine arts programs).

Reed was chosen to become a workshop facilitator, and the organization got to work helping him overcome the obstacles to employment for a young black man in Oakland. Through the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program, they placed him as a janitor, enrolled him in a computing class to further develop his potential.

And then he was tapped to play a larger role. East Oakland is one of the 14 neighborhoods Building Health and Communities, California’s largest health care foundation, has chosen as a major aide recipient through 2020. Research was needed, however, to identify just how that money was to be allocated.

Who better than the area’s youth themselves to figure that out? Youth Uprising, the lead agency on the project, put Reed and a team of his peers in charge. They were tapped to draw up a survey for their neighborhood that touched on health and safety issues, then gathered responses, and presented their findings to BHC stakeholders (perhaps not surprisingly, national health care reform topped the list of concerns they uncovered). Their conclusions would drive $10 million in social investments.

It was an empowering experience. “You know these things are right, but you’ve never walked in my shoes,” Reed tells me. Although he’d never located himself in politics before, he can now say confidently “I speak for myself — and my generation.”

Reed’s lightening quick transition from disenfranchised youth to community leader is just the kind of change that Youth Uprising wants to keep on the country’s to-do list. “Some people believe the investment should be on the back end with incarceration,” says Dillard-Smith. “But we’re building up social enterprises.”

Which hasn’t been easy in an era of social service mass murder — but YU is pulling through. “We’ve got to have a diversified funding strategy, because the needs of this community are not going away when the funding does,” Dillard-Smith says.

YU’s developing ways to get businesses involved in a way that touches more than just the youth they served. They’ve teamed up with Silicon Valley corporations to keep their data entry programs from being outsourced overseas. “The young people we work with are incredibly computer literate, even when they can‘t read and write,” says Dillard-Smith. They’ve set up their own youth run Corners Café, which gives chosen program participants a chance to develop job skills in a real life environment, and is set to cater your next event.

With all this self made empowerment, it should be no surprise that YU was lauded by US attorney general Eric Holder as a “perfect example” of how change can happen in our beleaguered country. Check out their anniversary on Tues/25, featuring civil rights activist Lateefah Simon  — you’ll join the Uprising, too.

Youth Uprising 5th Anniversary Event
Tues/25 6:30-8:30 p.m., $50 donation
8711 MacArthur, Oakland
(510) 777-9099
www.youthuprising.org

Chris Daly’s progressive primary

Zelda Bronstein
-
3
Chris Daly’s progressive primary

Sup. Chris Daly’s proposal for a progressive primary — and his pledge for candidates who want to participate — is starting to get attention in the mainstream media. The Chron had an item on it that, not surprisingly, makes it look like some sort of commie-style litmus test. (“I pledge allegiance to the Progressives,” the headline read. And even by Chron standards, the comments were pretty harsh.)
 I’ve never been personally too fond of the idea of the progressive primary, particularly in its rather elaborate manifestation. (You can see what some of the D6 candidates think of it here.) I think the whole thing could have been done as a caucus, and cost a lot less money. And I told Daly when he first suggested this that he ought to make his “pledge” into a scorecard: Let the candidates answer the questions, then decide how much you like them based on their answers. That’s what the Guardian does in its endorsements. The pledge term just doesn’t sound very good, and it leaves progressives open to the charge that we expect purity and will somehow blackball candidates who don’t follow the every whim of one supervisor.

Truth is, Daly just compiled his list of 30 questions from the endorsement questionnaries that a bunch of progressive groups put out for Democratic County Central Committee Candidates; he used a copy of ours, too. And the positions on the list are pretty much representative of the general consensus of progressive San Francisco. So it’s less a “purity test” than a determination whether someone generally adheres to the positions that the Tenants Union, the Sierra Club, Local 1021 and the Milk Club promote. There’s no big secret here, and nothing terribly alarming — all of these same District Six candidates are going to appear before all of those organizations and answer, in one way or another, all of the same questions. Daly just put it all in one place.

And if we had an umbrella progressive organization in San Francisco, which Daly, among others, has tried but failed to create, what this would be is the basic platform of the city’s left. There may be some in the progressive camp who disagree with some of it, and others who think it should be longer, stronger, etc., but it’s pretty basic stuff.

The problem, really, is that it’s not coming from an organization — it’s coming from Chris Daly. And the winner of the progressive primary gets Daly’s endorsement. I like Chris, and he’s been solid on almost every issue (PDF), and taken on causes nobody else will touch — but any one individual politician who tries to establish this kind of standard is going to set himself up for bad press.

The Daily Blurgh: Blue in the face, Twain lives

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Blue in the face, Twain lives

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Blue is beautiful, but Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue is especially so. Local experts explain why.

*****

John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996, is back the news. This time, he is the subject of, “an unofficial nationwide manhunt,” in the face of allegations that he, “has been trying to create a cult of JonBenet Ramsey lookalikes he is calling ‘the Immaculates’ — blond girls as young as 4 years old with small feet — and has been threatening harm to one of the girls, whom he used to recruit others and who escaped from his influence.” Yikes! And the topper: Karr claims to have had sex reassignment surgery within the past two years.

*****

Mark Twain’s autobiographical writings to be released after century-long wait.

*****

Small mammal fossils excavated around Shasta County demonstrate that climate change has impacted biodiversity for thousands of years.

*****

Jews for Jesus founder (and SF resident) Moishe Rosen dies at 78.

*****
People on poppers.

Cross-post Monday: I do SFist. Hard.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Cross-post Monday: I do SFist. Hard.

It was a true honor — nay, a true honor and a privilege — to participate in SFist’s great “will blog for food” guest-writer program, Day Around the Bay, this evening. Check it out, and inundate SFist editor Brock with requests that he guest-write my Super Ego nightlife column. (He will mention drinks with chic lesbians at Orson.)

SFBG.COM Radio: Johnny and Tim on the collapse of the GOP

Zelda Bronstein
-
1
SFBG.COM Radio: Johnny and Tim on the collapse of the GOP

Today Tim and Johnny talk about all the nutty candidates that the Republican party will be fielding in the fall, from Nevada to Kentucky — and how that will alter the midterm elections. Listen after the jumpSFBGRADIO5/24/2010 by SFBG

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Stan, SF State

Tell us about your look: “These shorts I got yesterday at Buffalo. I’ve never heard of the brand. I think they’re from Japan.”

Lovely fade: Elisa Randazzo teams with local musicmakers for ‘Bruises and Butterflies’

Site Mover
-
1

Love and loss and an unfaltering creative spirit appear to inform Elisa Randazzo’s new album, Bruises and Butterflies (Drag City). Her marriage to ex- Josh Schwartz, once of Beachwood Sparks and her partner in Fairechild, may be over, but Randazzo has found plenty of other talents to commune with.

The fashion designer and onetime violinist and vocalist for Red Krayola befriended British folk cult icon Bridget St. John three years ago, and their friendship has led to such haunting songwriting collaborations as the fluttering, autumnal “He Faded.” Randazzo — the daughter of ‘60s songwriters Teddy Randazzo (“It’s Gonna Take a Miracle,” “Hurt So Bad”) and Victoria Pike — found her ideal accompanists among like-minded Bay Area musicians such as Wymond Miles, John Hofer, Shayde Sartin, and Joe Goldmark.

Swept away with pedal steel, dobro, and cello and urged along by Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, and a legion of acoustic guitars, Randazzo sounds as if she’s shooting for the kind of pop transcendence that her father could understand on such songs as “Colors,” as she intones, “I could ask every friend in sight / Jump a plane, so I could travel light / But who would know the color of my love? / Remind me of the things I’m givin’ up.” But from the lightly levitating sound of Bruises and Butterflies and its cover image of a serene idol licked by flames, I have the feeling she’s aiming even higher. 

What would Woods do?

Site Mover
-
0

The slow sweep of summer break, sunlit days that yawn out into infinity, and the pock of a single snare — those are some of the sleepy, sweet vibes coming off Woods’ At Echo Lake (Woodsist).

The New York combo made an impression on moi at 2009’s South by Southwest, thanks to its gently experimental tendencies — its fuzztone favoritism, love o’ noodling, and interest in dabbing odd dashes of electronics over otherwise unassuming rock. At the time Woods provided a down-low yet daring counterpoint to the lo-fi poppiness going down all around.

This time, the group seems to be taking notes from the twee pop contingent. Backward-masking style touches, folksy acoustic guitar, and little candy-colored shards of noise are added to the lightly pensive nostalgic mood. Picking up the triangle and hosting a small cavalcade of handclaps, Woods wonders, “Who knows what tomorrow will bring / And it shows,” on “Suffering Season” — and you can’t help but echo the sentiment. What would Woods do, next?

Woods perform June 11 at Slim’s, 333 11th St., S.F. 8 p.m., $16. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com. Woods also play June 12 at the Woodsist Festival at Henry Miller Memorial Library, Highway 1, Big Sur. 3-11 p.m.,$22.50. www.henrymiller.org

 

The Daily Blurgh: No monkey business from Hollywood

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: No monkey business from Hollywood

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Boooo! SF-set Planet Of The Apes prequel probably won’t be shot in SF.

*****
Sea lion thinks it’s people!

*****


See San Francisco in glorious color, thanks to the wonderful online archive of Charles W. Cushman’s Kodachrome slides of the city, shot between 1938 and 1969 (Caliber SF via Eye on Blogs).

*****
The origins of Mission Carnaval.

*****
Things women in the news have done recently: impersonated an FBI supervisor, smuggled meth inside a bible, and hid in a coffin to escape custody.

*****
Richmondsf takes a tour of the architectural marvel that is the Neptune Society’s Columbarium.

*****

In honor of the upcoming Harvey Milk Day, here’s a clip of Harvey schooling local, former News Talk host Juana on religious hypocrisy and the Briggs Initiative with plenty of passion and charm:

Deadline Poet Calvin Trillin writes on the Gulf oil spill

-
1

 

On the Gulf oil spill

Because of this spill

That “Drill, baby, drill,”

Which always seemed shrill,

Now seems shriller still

And certainly will

When we get the bill.

Calvin Trillin, The Nation (5/24/10)

1...284285286...597Page 285 of 597

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