SFBG Blogs

Back to the future: Handcar Regatta

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By Dan Abbott


Video of last year’s Handcar Regatta by Mike Sloat of Roaring Mouse Productions

Do you ever get the feeling that we’re totally screwed? I do, but I’m kind of into it. I’ve been consuming dystopian science fiction most of my life. I don’t remember the last time I read or watched speculative fiction that saw the future as being better than the present. That may be one of the fundamental differences between the Boomer generation and their children; up until the early 70s, people actually believed the world would be better in 20 years. I grew up watching The Terminator and The Road Warrior, and at this point anything better than fighting wasteland mutants for a dented can of Dinty Moore will be a pleasant surprise. And considering the widespread interest in being actually prepared for a zombie apocalypse, I am not alone.

This is indicative of a deep distrust of progress, which is really the fundamental belief of modernity. The idea that there is a trajectory for the human species, that mistakes are learned from and that we are slowly but surely improving ourselves. Before the mechanized bloodbath of World War I began to throw it into question, this belief in the inexorable march of progress was iron-clad. The technological wonders of the 19th century inspired writers like Jules Verne to envision a future made utopian through invention, a world of crackling Tesla coils, bicycles and iron gears powered by steam. While this vision was drowned in a sea of bubblin’ crude at the dawn of the 20th century, there is a revival of this sort of speculative engineering going on. Some of the Bay Area’s best and brightest gearheads will be showing off their technological prowess this Sunday, Sept. 27, in Santa Rosa at The 2nd Annual 2009 Great West End & Railroad Square Handcar Regatta & Exposition of Mechanical & Artistic Wonders!

Health care reform, in simple terms

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By Tim Redmond

My old friend Dan Roam, a former Guardian associate art director and the author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures, has taken on health-care reform.

He’s done it the Dan Roam way — by outlining the issue and the various problems and proposals with colored markers on napkins. It’s a fun and useful demonstration — although he doesn’t explain why a single-payer option would make so much more sense than everything else that’s on the table.

Remarkably enough, Fox News has given him a platform to explain his ideas — and on the air, he makes a very good point. This isn’t about health-care reform; it’s about insurance reform. And maybe if Obama had started off saying that the issue was insurance companies instead of letting the right wing drag doctors and death panels into this, we’d all be a lot better off.

Will Arnie’s ‘park closure solution’ save Candlestick Point?

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Text and photo by Sarah Phelan

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Does San Francisco really need to sell Candlestick Point park for Lennar condos?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has unveiled a plan to allow for all state parks to remain open without increasing Parks and Recreation budget appropriation. Does this mean the Bayview’s only major park can be saved? Developers are arguing that if the state sells a chunk of the waterfront property for $50 million, the rest of the park can be saved. But environmentalists disagree, noting that Lennar simply wants the land for luxury condos.

“Working closely with my Departments of Finance and Parks and Recreation, we have successfully found a way to avoid closing parks this year,” Schwarzenegger said in a press release today. “This is fantastic news for all Californians.”

But does this mean that Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 792 is no longer necessary?

Leno’s bill would allow the state to sell a chunk of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area for $50 million, so that developer Lennar, which has entered into a nebulous public-private partnership with the city of San Francisco, can build luxury condos on this waterfront parkland.

Leno’s bill, which the Assembly and the Senate have approved, is sitting on Arnie’s desk awaiting the governor’s signature. But it has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups in recent months.

And their neutrality was only recently secured, based on the spurious argument that, without the bill’s approval, Candlestick Point SRA would have to closed in its entirerity.

But now the Governor is proposing to reduce ongoing maintenance for the remainder of 2009-10, eliminate all major equipment purchases, and reduce hours and/or days of operation at most State Park units, expenditures on seasonal staff, and staffing and operations at State Parks headquarters.

According to Arnie’s proposal, some facilities could close weekdays and be open on weekends and holidays, or portions of a unit could be closed, such as the back loop of a campground. For a park with multiple campgrounds, one whole campground or day use facility could be closed while the rest of the park remains open, while parks that already close due to seasonal conditions could see longer closures.

“Service reductions will be planned to minimize disruptions to visitors, achieve cost savings and maintain park fee revenues,” the memo says.

Hmm. Seems like Arnie’s memo just gave Candlestick Point park supporters more ammo in their ongoing quest to challenge Lennar’s plan to take 23 acres of Candlestick Point SRA.

Lennar never spelled out this plan to take a chunk of the Bayview’s only major park, when they asked voters to approve Prop. G in 2008.

Instead, Prop. G was billed as a way to clean-up the abandoned Hunters Point shipyard and “create” hundreds of new acres of parkland.

It wasn’t until after Prop. G passed, that Lennar began publicly arguing that they would need 42 acres of the existing parkland, if the rest of their plan, which involves building 10,500 housing units on 770 acres of former industrial/ military land, is to pencil out. As for the new acres of parkland, that turned out to be acres of polluted shipyard that Lennar was proposing to cap with a cement cover and convert into a park.

Understandably angered, park advocates beat Lennar down to 23 acres, this fall, during the most recent round of the “parks for condos” battle.

Now, in light of Arnie’s plan and the soon-to-be released environmental impact report for Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan, those battlelines are perhaps, once again about to be redrawn. Only this time in favor of the park.

Stay tuned.

Getting blurry and cross-eyed at Tauba Auerbach’s Deitch Projects exhibit

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By Spencer Young

SF-gone-NY artist Tauba Auerbach, who has a keen obsession with language systems and structures, departs (slightly) from the well-worn two-tones of her 50/50 series in the current anagrammatically-titled exhibit “HERE AND NOW/AND NOWHERE.” Showcased at the ever-so-hip Deitch Projects, these new works dazzle with optical trickery and viewer interaction. The stars of the show (aside from the elephant-like organ that stands obtrusively in the gallery’s center) are the seemingly innocuous “Crumple Paintings” that hang all the way in the back. I say seemingly because at first glance the canvases look crumpled, but deeper inspection of their disorienting visual static reveals they are rife with polka dots.

In a previous exhibit, Auerbach explained this work as a confrontation of the “threshold between order and chaos, or between pattern and randomness,” wherein “it’s never a discreet line” and “maybe these states overlap or maybe they don’t really exist in a pure way.” She also suggests a 2-D and 3-D interactive experience new to her work that develops between viewer and object. Hence the need to be near or far to see both sides.

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Tauba Auerbach, Crumple VII, 2009, acrylic and inkjet on canvas, 96 x 128 inches

If I understand correctly, from a distance the “Crumple Paintings” are meant to represent chaos/randomness and a contoured 3-D experience, but up close bring orderliness/pattern, flat/2-D. However, neither is necessarily accurate, because it’s all a matter of perspective, based on where you’re standing. In other words, it’s all relative. Check. But isn’t this too easy and rigid of an analysis — much like the clean nicety of an anagram where nothing gets left out, just rearranged? If so, isn’t it then a return to the same formulaic structure of her 50/50 pattern pieces? Or has a blurring evolved between the two, as exemplified in the actual visual blur that happens when physically approaching the work?

Dewy decibels: Asthmatic Kitty’s ‘Library Catalog Music’

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VARIOUS ARTISTS
Library Catalog Music, Volumes 1-3
(Asthmatic Kitty)

By Kimberly Chun

Remember the to-do concerning the Shins’ “New Slang” on a McDonald’s commercial? Those days of outrage seem so far away now, in the throes of the continuing recession and ever-deepening music-biz woes. Licensing your sonic slang out to TV, film, and commercial endeavors has become a way of life — and a genuine ticket to recognition for many: Chairlift, whose “Bruises” popped up on an iPod commercial, is just the latest beneficiary of that success narrative.

So perhaps one of the oddest little musical artifacts to emerge amid those fading cries of “sell-out!” is this three-part series produced by Asthmatic Kitty. Library Catalog Music looks the phenom squarely in the eye, as its promo literature queries, “Are you a major multi-national corporate conglomerate looking for quickly recognizable audio branding?” I wish. Actually, I don’t wish. But like so many others, I can use the cash, and apparently Asthmatic Kitty can, too — though not without a certain level of integrity. These overt entries into the marketplace wouldn’t be too out of place among some of your more enticing Euro-ambient discs. Vol. 1, Music for Lubbock, 1980, dares to tug on the tails of Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas, while Vol. 2, Music for Measurements, brings the funk to imagined buddy cop flicks, and Vol. 3’s Music for Drums yearns to set the beat to sci-fi fantasies. Who dreamed these ready-made scores up? Bellevue, Wash., band Law of the Least Effort takes the credit — led by sometime Pedro the Lion and Seldom member Casey Foubert. Quality aural wallpaper — coming right up.

Prison report: Who are the bad people?

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By Just A Guy


Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches appear twice a week.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner was recently quoted in the Sacramento Bee saying: “You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison. So I’m opposed to releasing people who are dangerous, absolutely opposed. That’ s no way to balance the budget.”

I’m curious to know what Poizner thinks everyone is in prison for. Does he even realize that at least 18 percent of the population is in prison for drug crimes? If so, then is he saying that all people in prison for drugs are “really bad people?”

As if the stigma of being an addict and in prison isn’t enough.

I wonder if Poizner thinks alcoholics are “really bad people” — or just people who need a 12-step program.

What is a “really bad person” anyway? Are the many of you who have done some stupid things in your past but just didn’t get caught “really bad people” too? Or does the stereotype apply only to people in prison?

I’m opposed to the early releases of people who are dangerous, also. But how does one determine who’s dangerous? Is the 80-year-old infirm man in a wheelchair a danger? Let’s be honest — who doesn’t have the capacity to be dangerous? Prisoner or not?

Poizner says this is no way to balance the budget. But what about the consequences of cutting even more money from other services? (See my most recent blog here.
Has he considered that the industrialization of prisons in California with the three strikes, archaic laws and sentencing, is no way to create jobs?

The other Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, said “the most important role government has is public safety. It’s very important to be consistent.” She’s also opposed to early releases and prison reform. Odd that the former CEO of Ebay is so short sighted about the long-term effects of the current budget and prison situation. Isn’t this a women who had to please stockholders and a board of directors and had to have insightful long-term visions planning Ebay strategy — which she did quite successfully? I guess your strategy changes drastically when you’re selling a service as opposed to selling fear.

The only things consistent about California prison policy are lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key strategies. Most politicians are also consistently spouting tough-on-crime policy against their better judgment because they are consistently afraid of the Willie Horton syndrome.

A couple of gubernatorial candidates from the Democratic side are, amazingly, looking at prison reform as a way to alleviate some of California’s budget problems.

The biggest threat to public safety is not the people in prison or their releases (most of them are going to get out anyway). It’s consistently cutting money for health care, education, welfare and myriad other programs that help to create a brighter future for Californians. Public safety also means maintaining roads and bridges, supplying water, educating citizens etc. The best way to have public safety is to have an environment that creates hope, not antipathy.

Finally, the Canadian government is considering creating a prison system similar to California’s — and a rather scathing indictment came out from opponents who say doing so is a bad idea.

The majority of first world countries see California and its prison policies as insane — why can’t we see that for ourselves? It’s like we have “prison addiction.”

I wonder if people with prison addiction should be consistently labeled “really bad people.” The rest of the world seems to think so.

Dick Meister: The steelworkers’ bloody battle

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In September of 1919, angry steelworkers launched one of the most fierce, most bloody, and most important
of the many battles that created the American labor movement

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former San Francisco Chronicle labor editor and labor reporter for KQED-TV’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author, and commentator.)

It was 90 years ago this month – September of 1919 – that angry steelworkers launched one of the most fierce, most bloody and most important of the many battles that created the American labor movement.

Just 10 months earlier, the United States and its allies had emerged victorious from World War I. The steelworkers whose labor had contributed much to the war effort — and much to their employers’ huge profits – had set out to organize a union, so as to gain some control over their working lives and increase their miserly share of the profits their work brought employers.

Black gold? Oil doc “Crude” opens today

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By Laura Swanbeck

If the Amazon is the “lungs of the world,” the exhausted natural resources and indigenous people who have lived there for centuries are in need of some serious oxygen. Crude, a candid, even-keeled documentary by Joe Berlinger (1996’s Paradise Lost; 2004’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) examines the class-action lawsuit filed by 30,000 Ecuadorians who charge that Chevron, who bought out Texaco in 2001, is responsible for dumping 18 billion gallons of toxinogens into the Amazon between 1972 to 1990. However, the oil conglomerate counters that state-owned PetroEcuador, which has since taken over, truly ravaged the countryside, polluted streams, and killed off inhabitants and livestock. Although the film’s opening — in which the lead prosecutor, Pablo Fajardo, accepts the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco — suggests closure, Berlinger realizes that this battle is far more complicated than your average David vs. Goliath story. A study in perseverance and public perception (Trudie Styler and Sting make cameos to drum up support), Crude delves into political strategy, American entitlement (on both sides), and the frustrating bureaucracy that has plagued this ongoing case.

Crude opens today at the Lumiere and Shattuck.

Energy efficiency gets a boost, but foxes still guard the hen house

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By Rebecca Bowe

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The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a $3.1 billion budget yesterday for statewide energy efficiency programs that will be in place until 2012. California’s powerful investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric Company, and Southern California Gas Company — are in charge of implementing the programs, while the funding is derived from ratepayers.

While the decision marks the creation of the largest energy-efficiency program in the country, some question the wisdom of the colossal investment, because it relies on utility companies to implement dramatic reductions in energy use.

It’s the greatest financial contribution the state utility commission has ever pledged toward energy efficiency. According to the CPUC, the potential energy savings will negate the need for three new 500-megawatt power plants, and avoid 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. The funding from this decision could create between 15,000 and 18,000 green jobs, the CPUC estimates.

The decision will provide $260 million for local efforts such as municipal building retrofits. It also requires utilities to track progress toward goals and strategies established in a long-term statewide plan for reducing energy use. Included in the effort is an ambitious home-retrofit program, which sets a goal of 20 percent energy savings for up to 130,000 homes.

“This investment in California’s clean energy economy is just what we need to create new jobs for our communities and fight global warming pollution,” said Lara Ettenson, director of California Energy Efficiency Policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a prominent environmental organization.

Not everyone shares NRDC’s optimism, however.

The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA), an independent consumer advocacy division of the CPUC, warned that the powerful utility companies should be closely monitored to see how they make use of such a tremendous sum.

In a statement released this morning, the DRA highlighted “a continuing need for stronger mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability in the utilities’ use of the billions of dollars of ratepayer money.” Utility giant PG&E has been criticized in the past for misuse of energy-efficiency funds.

Solidarity shown during UC walkout

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Story and photos by Sarah Morrison
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“No cuts, no fees, education should be free,” chanted thousands of UC Berkeley faculty, staff, workers and students as they protested in Sproul Plaza against state budget cuts, increased fees, lay-offs, and poor management of the UC system during yesterday’s campus-wide walkout.

While the protests began at 7.15 am yesterday with strikes initiated by the University Professional and Technical Employees union (UPTE) and the Coalition of University Employees (CUE) throwing up a picket line at the campus, by midday the plaza was crammed full with an estimated 5000 protestors in a scene reminiscent of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.

Outlining how budget cuts have led to staff shortages, reduced pay, and a lack of vital university services, UC Berkeley professor of art history Timothy Clark, who has taught at the university for more than 21 years, stressed how the Berkeley community felt they had been let down by the UC Board of Regents and the California Legislature.

“The UC won’t wear us down and if they think we won’t fight back then they are mistaken,” he said. “The crisis is real but from crises comes choices. The fight is begun and the fight will continue.”
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Media reformers welcome new SF voice

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By Steven T. Jones

The Bay Area News Project – a new media collaboration that will be formally announced tomorrow, but which we wrote about earlier today – is already generating excitement from San Franciscans who have long been concerned about the journalism industry’s decline.

“I very much like the idea of another locally owned and edited news voice in San Francisco. The Guardian and I wish them well,” Bay Guardian Editor and Publisher Bruce B. Brugmann said.

While principal investor Warren Hellman discussed the project with the Guardian, none of the other local partners – KQED, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Media Workers Guild, and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which is handling the managing editor hiring process – returned our calls or were willing to discuss the project before its formal announcement in the morning.

Yet the long-rumored news was greeted warmly by local media innovators, including some who have been closely watching the scene and waiting to see what Hellman and company would do. “I’m absolutely thrilled that significant resources are being put into an alternative business model for the local media because it’s sorely needed,” said Michael Stoll, project director for The Public Press, a noncommercial news outlet that launched earlier this year after years in development. “It represents the first hopeful sign in a long time that watchdog journalism is on the rebound.”

Tubular: Vitalic’s “Poney” and Crystal Castles’ “Vanished”

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By Johnny Ray Huston

By no means brand new, yet still worth a view: Even if the music is Daft Punk cloning 101, there’s no hating the video by Pleix (whose “Astral Body Church” project intrigues) for Vitalic’s “Poney Part 1.”

Vitalic, “Poney Part 1”

By no means brand new, but still worth a view, part II: As TV Carnage maniacs wait with baited breath for Cop Movie, we have to make due with occasional viewings of Pinky’s music video for Crystal Castles. Considering the quality of the song and clip, the wait is better than it is long.

Crystal Castles, “Vanished”

Snap Sounds: Crocodiles

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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CROCODILES
Summer of Hate
(Fat Possum)

If it’s 1988 all over again, Crocodiles are our Spacemen 3, ready to deliver the perfect prescription: drum machines. vintage organs, drugs = god lyrics. They’ve got the best Jesus and Mary Chain death anthems too, and the occasional burst of energy, trading ’ludes for upper-spiked punk on “Soft Skull (In My Room).” The poise and epic production here are surprising for a debut.

Crocodiles, “Summer of Hate”

Snap Sounds: Blues Control

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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BLUES CONTROL

Local Flavor

(Siltbreeze)

A hot dog made Patty Duke lose control, but on this album Blues Control makes me lose control. Local Flavor is kinda like a short version of Daydream Nation minus the annoying vocals. “Tangier” is the track that hypnotizes me with an effectiveness akin to that of Jacques Bergerac in 1960’s The Hypnotic Eye. Cameo by Kurt Vile on one track.

Blues Control, “Rest On Water”

Hellman and partners to launch Bay Area newsroom

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By Steven T. Jones
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Warren Hellman was featured in the Guardian two years ago.

San Francisco financier Warren Hellman – in partnership with KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, and perhaps even the New York Times – is about to launch a nonprofit, locally focused, online news organization with a medium-sized newsroom of full-time journalists, Hellman has confirmed to the Guardian.

Hellman says he will provide $5 million in seed money for the Bay Area News Project, which is about half the annual budget for a projected staff of about two-dozen journalists, and he expects to get foundation funding and perhaps even government grants for the rest. They are currently interviewing for a managing editor, which they hope to hire in the next month or so, and expect to go live sometime next year.

“We’re forming a new media news center. Basically, it will be a not-for-profit 501c3 that will be source of Bay Area news,” Hellman said. “It will focus on local news events, including politics and the arts, the kind of thing that is just dying at the Chronicle.”

Expo for Indie Arts gets to work

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By Caitlin Donohue

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Burlesque pistol Bunny Pistol gets more comfortable on the Expo for Independent Arts stage on Saturday

In a world where Rupert Murdochs and Borders Books cast their shadows over the city streets, where rent payments and the IRS hovers over upstanding creative citizens — in a world that tries its best to homogenize and monetize its art and artists, the bat signal is permanently alight for cape crusaders like the Independent Arts & Media producers’ co-op. The group was started in 2000 to provide resources and support to autonomous voices in art and media and lucky us, their centerpiece event of the year, the Expo for Independent Arts, is this weekend and it’s gonna kick ass. Dig the scene – whether your bag is selling your indie art, copping some indie art or just checking out what’s going down with Bay creatives.

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Four Corners Mural Project South Bay by Expo artist Andy Gouveia

On Friday Berkeley will play host to the Symposium, the learning segment of the massive shindig. There’ll be experts champing at the bit to teach about everything from DIY career planning and low budget marketing techniques to how to self- pitch fast (in an elevator, no less!).

Kinky talk: Midori on how to eat a peach, more

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Interview by Juliette Tang

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Midori, photographed by Constance Smith. See more hot local women of BDSM in our “Submission Possible!” cover story this week.

Sex educator, artist, writer, and diva, Midori, is currently showing her latest installation, Plastics, at Femina Potens (2199 Market St). I stopped by Femina Potens to chat with Midori as she was setting up and was faced with a turbulent sea of blow-up dolls, plastic breasts, knives, razor blades, and syringes. We quickly relocated to the more conventional setting of a cafe down the street, where we had a nice chat about avocados and what it means to be kinky, over coffee cake and Earl Gray.

SFBG: So, what kind of classes do you teach?
Midori: With 60 to 70 different topics, I have a wide range to go from general sexuality to the sexual subcultures of Japan to kinkier topics.

SFBG: What are you working on right now?
M: I have a couple of books I’m way behind on that I need to get done. One’s about how to eat a peach, and it’s really funny and a lot of fun.

SFBG: How to eat a peach? Can you elaborate?
M: So we have this idea that if you can tie a cherry stem into a knot, that means you’re good at oral sex. Tying the cherry is not that practical when it comes to our clits. You’re not going to take the clit and tie it into a knot. But if a tongue can do a nice, deep thrust and a curl-in, and do that for like, 5 sets of 10: that’s practical. You know, I’ve got a shortish, average tongue. It’s not necessarily the equivalent of size. It’s how you move it.

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From “Silken Sleeves,” a short film by Maria Beatty featuring Midori

SFBG: There’s a lot of food imagery in that description.
M: One’s attitude to sex and life is like one’s attitude to food. Food is something you need. However, you can overindulge. You can have a very strange relationship with it. You can have an abusive relationship with it. You can have a market manipulated, media manipulated relationship with food. You can cook it and consume it carelessly, or you can consume it mindfully. You can end up sharing food with a stranger or with someone you absolutely love head-over-heels. Food and sex… the attitude is very similar.

SFBG: Can you give us a food recipe you find particularly sexy?
M: So imagine you’ve been out all day, on your feet. It’s hot and all that, and you come home and your sweetie has one of those beautiful shallow Chinese goldfish ceramics, with pebbles in it. So, hot day you’re tired, your feet are swollen. And you have cool water, pebbles, mint leaves, and citrus slices, and your sweetie takes brown sugar and scrubs your feet.

Erotic comics extra: Harry and Dickless Tom

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By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week’s Sex Issue here. Below is another extra special one-hander.

HARRY AND DICKLESS TOM
Brad Rader
(self-published)
www.flamingartist.com

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This erotic graphic novel is both brilliant and completely unique. I certainly don’t know of any other gay porn comic that features such huge, well-drawn, splash pages of vaginas.

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Two homophobic truckers are crossing the country screwing fags in truck stops and then beating them up, when the Goddess decides to teach them a lesson. Tom wakes up one morning with his dick replaced by a vagina, and his relationship with his buddy Harry, himself, his family, and the rest of the world is changed instantly. His new pussy humanizes him and when he finally gets his dick back, he finally knows how to really use it.

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Harry and Dickless Tom is a very personal book by an extremely talented cartoonist. “My sole erotic release [when I was young],” writes Rader, “was my jerk-off sketchbooks. I would draw in them for hours, making love to the pages with pen and ink, pouring my angst, lust and longing into images I hoped and feared the world would someday see, and that I might somehow realize.” Rader has worked on everything from Batman to King of the Hill, and he puts his considerable illustration abilities to use with this book, drawing each section of it in the style of a different famous cartoonist. It starts off with an homage to Herge’s Tin Tin and winds up imitating Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. In every style, though, Rader makes sure that his odd cast of characters stay sexy, especially Tom, the balding, bespectacled, daddy muscle bear with a pussy. Check it out at Raders’ site www.flamingartist.com.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Chynna, Judson and Forester

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Tell us about your look: “I work at Crossroads and these are all secondhand.”

The mayor’s race begins

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By Tim Redmond

So now it’s official: Just when San Francisco political junkies needed something other than the generally dull November election to talk about, Bevan Dufty has done us all a favor and fired the opening gun in the 2011 mayor’s race.

It’s no surprise, really — everyone knew that Dufty was running. Just as everyone knows that City Attorney Dennis Herrera and state Senator Leland Yee will be in the race, and that Assessor Phil Ting is looking at it, and that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Public Defender Jeff Adachi are mulling their prospects.

With public financing in place, and ranked-choice voting, the race will be fascinating. Dufty has never run citywide, but he’s a nice guy who can be funny and charming and he’s built a reputation as a nuts-and-bolts supervisor who takes government seriously. “Ross Magowan [of KTVU] asked me what my biggest single issue was, and I said Muni,” Dufty told me today. “He said that Muni was getting better, but hey — crime is down 30 percent citywide and still up on Muni.”

Fixing Muni is a Dufty kind of thing — not a grand civic vision, but a basic public service that people use that has problems. (A classic Dufty story: When the city got rid of the crossing guard at the school my kids go to a couple of years ago, which is in Dufty’s district, the principal called Dufty, and the guard was back the next day. He loves that sort of thing.)

“What I try to be is a collaborator,” he said. “I’ve never had the luxury of knowing I had six votes on the board, so I’ve had to reach out to people.”

He also promised that Mayor Dufty would always show up for question time at the board. He joked that “it’s easy for me to promise that because Chris Daly will be off the board by them” but in the next breath told me how much he likes and respects Daly, who he called “incredibly talented.” (Again, classic Dufty.)

It’s going to be a challenge for him to stand out in this race. He’s not going to get a lot of progressive support; he simply hasn’t been there on a lot of progressive votes and issues. It’s rare to see him defy Mayor Newsom and he’s been on the wrong side of many of the key battles of the past ten years.

He has a lot of support in his district, and among the more centrist parts of the gay community. But he’s not a big downtown guy, not a prodigious fundraiser and won’t be the next Newsom, who ran the first time with the unwavering support of the big-business community and all the money he could ever need.

And Herrera and Yee — both with a proven track record of raising money, both with citywide name recognition — will also be sitting in that political center. Neither of them can claim the support of the majority of the progressive supervisors (although Herrera will no doubt have former Board President Aaron Peskin on his team).

If Mirkarimi or Adachi runs, they’ll take the left flank. Yee will be the more conservative candidate, especially when he’s working the west side of town. I don’t see how Dufty finds his niche.

He doesn’t either, right now — except to say that “I’m not running for anything else. I have no desire to go to Sacramento or Washington. I’m humble and I’m going to run a grassroots campaign.”

What he has, clearly, done is given a kind of shit-or-get-off-the-pot push to the other candidates. The race is a long way away, but with Dufty out there, raising money and seeking endorsements, Mirkarimi is going to have to decide if he’s serious, and if not, the progressives are going to have to decide if Adachi is their man, and the race is going to start firming up. There won’t be a Matt Gonzalez late entry this time around. What you see is what you get, and the late-comers will be at a disadvantage.

UC walkout could ignite a larger movement

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By Sarah Morrison
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UPTE’s logo for tomorrow’s UC walkout.

While UC Berkeley might have a long history of noisy protests and student activism, tomorrow’s UC-wide faculty and student walkout and worker strike seems unprecedented even within its own tumultuous history.

As a coalition of faculty, staff, students and workers across all of the UC campuses arrange to walk out of scheduled classes first thing tomorrow and protest against state cuts in funding, fee hikes, and changes to the traditional UC system of shared governance, the Berkeley community is expecting thousands to congregate in Sproul Plaza, the university’s traditional hub of student activity.

“The walkout tomorrow is just one milestone on what is likely to be a pretty long road to recovery,” said UC Berkeley professor of theatre, dance and performance studies, Catherine Cole. “It’s a moment to make visible the cuts and changes that are happening in our University – changes that are of profound importance and not yet necessarily made visible to all.”

At last, the “Keep f*cking that chicken” remix

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By Marke B.

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In the grand tradition of the genius Christian Bale freakout remix (not to mention Pwak-Pwak Pelosi and several takes on this century’s greatest living hero of all time) — and oddly right after I discovered the Castro’s renewed fetish for the 1996 Armand Van Helden remix of Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow,” the backing track here — comes this, the pithy motto of our generation set alight. Taylor, I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but watch this first and dance around.

Erotic comics extra: The 40 queers of Ali Baba

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By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week’s Sex Issue here. Below is an extra special one-hander.

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ALI BABA Y LOS 40 MARICONES
“Ali Baba and the Forty Faggots”
Nazario
(La Culpula, 1993)

Nazario, the godfather of underground Spanish comics and a dissident artist during the dark times of Franco, is best known for Anarcoma, his deadly, cock-loving, tranny detective. But while her adventures are truly breathtaking in their bizarre, violent and sexy extremes, Ali Baba is the work of a more mature and sophisticated cartoonist. Like similar underground, gay, pervert artists John Waters and Almodovar, the early works are exciting, but the later stories are better made.

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Ali Baba is a series of interlocking stories about the goings-on at the Ali Baba bar and the three apartments above it, all filled with outrageous maricones based on the denizens of Nazario’s home Barcelona. The artwork is wonderful, incredibly detailed and textured but cartoony all the same. Unlike most erotic cartoonists who draw the same man of their dreams over and over, Nazario is clearly interested in many flavors of menfolk, from young twinks to hairy daddies to chubby fems to square-jawed hunks, all of them having good, hot sex. Sex in his hands is primal, captivating and uncontrollable, and his characters dive right in.

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Unfortunately, Nazario’s comics are hard to come by in English. There have been a few attempts at translations, but all of them are well out of print. He’s still kept in circulation by Spanish comics publisher La Cupula, however, so check out their collection at www.lacupula.com.

Dive in: What’s in a name?

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Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column.

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Ha-ra ra, sis boom … nevermind. Don’t get too cute at this Tenderloin dive, or bartender Carl might get more surly than usual.

The term “dive bar” is difficult to define. The label tends to be subjective, used to conveniently describe myriads of diverse drinking establishments. According to the ever-so-accurate encyclopedic knowledge of Wikipedia, a dive bar is a “down market drinking establishment frequented by a poor or working class clientele.” A slightly more trustworthy source, the Oxford English Dictionary, simply considers a dive to be a “disreputable nightclub or bar.” And just in case I haven’t been keeping up with the jive street jargon of today’s young folk, I consulted Urban Dictionary, which says the term can be used to describe anything from a “comfortable-but-basic neighborhood pub” to the “nastiest swill-slinging hole.”

Pretty general, right? In the name of journalism, I’ve taken it upon myself to put on my drinking shoes and sling back beers with regulars at this city’s great (or not so great) dives. I’m willing to cause irrevocable damage to my liver in order to bring you a weekly review of places that fit my dive bar criteria, so you don’t have to waste your precious brain cells on places populated by neckerchiefs and skinny jeans. Here’s what I consider important for determining the “divey-ness” of the watering holes that pepper the city like cockroaches refusing to be squashed. You can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but I’m going to take a page from the typical dive bar patron and let you know I could care less what you think. Besides, that which we call a dive bar by any other name would smell just as…questionable.

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