SFBG Blogs

The Legislature’s all-nighter fails

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The state Legislature wrapped up its session around 7 a.m. Saturday, after officially stopping the clock on the midnight deadline and pretending it wasn’t the next day yet until 120 elected officials endured a sleepless night and a lot of critical work didn’t get done. The really bad all-nighters in college were the ones when you felt like hell the next day and didn’t finish the term paper anyway.

There’s a pretty good roundup here and hereon a couple of the bills.

It’s remarkable: Governor Schwarzenegger is going to veto the very bill he initially proposed. He’s going to sign a prison reform bill that doesn’t even come close to doing what he agrees has to be done to cut prison costs. And unless he calls a special session of the Legislature to deal with water issues, there will be nothing to stave off the near-collapse of the Bay/Delta estuary.

Meanwhile, of course, the Republicans refused to back down and approve a tiny $16 million allocation to save domestic violence sheters (which literally save lives).

At least the Senate refused to exempt a bizarre sports stadium plan in Southern California from CEQA; it looked for a while there as if the legislators were going to cut a huge hole in the state’s landmark environmental law just to please a billionaire.

Hell of a session. Can’t wait for the fall.

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: Lilly, University of San Francisco

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Tell us about your look: “I thrifted this dress and the bag is from Forever 21. I’m a student, so I mostly buy cheap clothes.”

Sonic Reducer Overage: Edward Sharpe, Vieux Farka Toure, Chris Garneau, and more

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Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros – “40 Day Dream”

By Kimberly Chun

Strap yourself in for more musical thunder as San Fran girds itself for fall – here’s more of what floats the city’s boat.

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Glitter Wizard
Wah-wah wow. Hard rock meets glamazon psych in the paws of the SF-Oakland combo. Sat/12, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

The Honey Brothers
Adrian Grenier of Entourage yucks it up from behind the kit. With Soko and His Orchestra. Sat/12, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.

Dick Fogel, journalist and FOI legend, 1923-2009

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Scroll down for B3 comments on Dick Fogel.

San Francisco’s Bay City News Service reported today that Dick Fogel, co-founder with his wife of the service, died Wednesday in Thousand Oaks.

Wayne Futak, a key member of the original founding group and now the general manager who has taken the helm,
told me that Dick “was passionate about the importance of journalism in society and he passed that on to the hundreds of young journalists who have come through Bay City News, including me.
In describing Dick’s newsroom philosophy, perhaps the best tribute is the Bay City News Service Credo he established, which was given to all new employees.” Futak sent along the Credo:

“It shall be the constant intention of Bay City News Service reporters and editors:
–to pursue and write the news with fairness, accuracy and a sense of professional detachment;
–to be purposeful and searching in the quest for information; and yet,
–to avoid arrogance and instead maintain a reasonable concern for the personal dignity of sources and contacts.”

I asked Wayne if the BCN obit ought to have a byline. No, he said, it was a collective effort and should just say from the Bay City News Service. Here it is:

Richard Henry Fogel, 86, longtime newspaper editor and co-founder of San Francisco’s Bay City News Service, died on Sept. 9, 2009, in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

A passionate advocate on issues relating to the public’s right to access government information, Fogel worked tirelessly with other prominent journalists and news organizations across the country to craft the basic principles of what would later become the landmark Freedom of Information Act (Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383).

Regarded as a legend among San Francisco Bay Area journalists, Fogel received the prestigious Northern California Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Born April 29, 1923, in Santa Monica, California, Richard Fogel, known to friends and colleagues as “Dick,” was the younger of two sons of Moe Miller Fogel and Syndie Aileen Gardner Fogel.

Ici, here’s your favorite new ice cream joint

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By Kimberly Chun

Revelation time: a woman cannot live by Bi-Rite Creamery alone.

And along comes Ici, the Francophile’s wet, creamy dream over in Rockridge, right off Ashby. I checked out this lovely, tiled, Gallic-flavored spot recently, on a steamy, humid day – the kind that Bay Area types are never prepared for, sending us scurrying in vain for air-conditioning. The line wound out the door and snaked down the street, but it moved surprisingly quickly. Efficiency and beauty – who could ask for anything more?

Inside what is probably the most stylish and attractive ice cream shop in the Bay, were baked alaskas, bombes, ice cream sandwiches, and an ultra-tempting counter of treats and marbled homemade cones. A gold star for the nice, icy pitcher of sparkling water to sip while you wait.

But, man, it was the ice cream – kitted out in unique flavors – that swayed us and slayed us: verbena, sweet corn and chili, Earl Gray, hazelnut praline, raspberry verbena, pluot sorbet. (Pictured, a shot of mint fudge with burnt caramel sauce.) If I were you, I’d get two delectable scoops in a cone that comes with a truly delish little surprise of a chocolate tip. You’ve been warned: incoming deliciousness, Ici.

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ICI
2948 College, Berk.
(510) 665-6054

SF Street Art: Leave home

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By Kimberly Chun

Sighted in the Mission District at 23rd and South Van Ness: one of my fave murals in the barrio, El Immigrante by Joel Bergner (2005).

Enter our LIT123 contest!

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An oldie but goody from the the Early Office Museum

Hey SF scribes! Tell us a story — fiction, nonfiction, or poetry — that reflects life in the Bay IN EXACTLY 123 WORDS. Our 10 favorites will be printed in our 10/7 issue and the writers will win a gift certificate to Books, Inc.!

(Send your entries to culture@sfbg.com by Tuesday, September 22. Put “Lit123” in the subject line, and please include your name or nom de plume and city. See more details here.)

You’ve only got a little over a week left, so get to scribblin’! Here’s an example, written by our Executive Editor Tim Redmond, to get your gears lubricated:

Moon and I are walking through McLaren Park, looking for the dog run with the pond so she can chase ducks. But I have no sense of direction, so we wind up wandering toward where the park turns into a neighborhood where old white hippie-type men tend to be way out of place. And along come two young guys out of gangster central casting — tough, big, tats, baggy plants and puffy coats, and I’m maybe just a little bit nervous, until I notice that they’re … holding hands. So then I smile nice, and they smile back and we go on walking as I wonder: Is it homophobic of me to just assume that gay men are unlikely to be violent thugs?

It’s time for a Bad Brains reignition

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By Tony Papanikolas

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Most Bad Brains fans can remember where they were the first time they heard the DC hardcore legends’ self-titled debut (ROIR, 1982.) For me, it was during an extended drive through Utah with my parents, a trip made memorable by a fortuitous stop at a strip mall with a Sam Goody. (My Damaged story is a lot cooler, I swear.) The album did nothing to improve my PMA during the car ride, but I vividly remember finding Bad Brains’ sheer unhinged speediness awe-inspiring, and not a little disorienting. Though somewhat of a cliché at this point, it bears repeating that Bad Brains — all 34 breakneck minutes of it — started an arms race of speed and aggression that would germinate into the hardcore movement. The other side to the record, however, was the handful of incongruous reggae/dub tracks, measured interruptions to the album’s typical rock ‘n’ roll onslaught. By their third album, I Against I (SST, 1986), Bad Brains had begun mixing the two genres more fluidly, resulting in what would become the band’s trademark style.

Aside from establishing themselves as genre pioneers too singular for flat-out imitation, Bad Brains have also gained the reputation of being some of rock’s most volatile live performers, with all the pros and cons that title carries. Stories of vocalist (or "throat," as he’s memorably identified as in the liner notes) H.R.’s epileptic stage presence are the stuff of punk rock folklore, making concerts unpredictable affairs to be sure. Lucky for us, he’ll be anchored by the original lineup: Darryl Jennifer on bass, Earl Hudson on drums, Dr. Know on guitar, natch. Our Summer rager-mode has deactivated; it’s time for reignition.

BAD BRAINS With P.O.S., Trouble Andrew. Tues/15–Wed/16, 8 p.m. (doors 7 p.m.), $26, all ages. Slim’s, 333 11th St. (415) 255-0333. www.slims-sf.com

Outside Lands: another take — Pearl Jam, Tom Jones, Lucinda Williams, and more

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Sean McCourt reflects on Outside Lands. For Kimberly Chun’s takes, click here and here. You can find pics of the festival here and here.

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Oustide Lands windmills

Midway through Pearl Jam’s headlining set on the opening night of Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Eddie Vedder apologized for his voice not being in tip top shape, due to the strain of his band being on the road for several months. He invited the audience to help him out on several tunes, which they enthusiastically did, but that feeling of not quite firing on all cylinders set the tone for much of the rest of the festival; though many of bands on this year’s lineup were quite good, only a few really gave the impression of belonging on the large stages they were given. The crowds didn’t act like they minded all that much, however, seeming to be fine with wandering the wide expanse of the park and festival grounds, checking out various acts and sampling the wide variety of food and drink that organizers provided for this year’s outing.

Autolux kicked off the festivities on Friday, and though they were good, they didn’t seem to possess either the stage presence or the discography to perform on the main “Lands End” stage. There were probably a few thousand people there to watch the set, but on the immense landscape of the Polo Fields, it appeared to be a sparse gathering at best. Built To Spill and Silversun Pickups garnered larger audiences, generating the first tinges of genuine electricity that a festival of this stature should produce.

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Gooferman

In between several of the larger acts’ sets, a small outdoor stage and a tent structure near the back end of the Polo Fields nicknamed “The Barbary” featured a variety of entertainment such as self-proclaimed “micro circus and band” Gooferman, whose bizarre clown and kabuki influenced make up and outfits perfectly matched their unique sound, a cross of rock, funk, electronic, and a host of other influences. Several women members of the troupe danced around the band on stage, and even climbed above them on the curved metal scaffolding crisscrossing overhead.

UPDATE: Prison reform squeaks through

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By Tim Redmond

Well, the state Senate just approved the Assembly’s version of a prison reform bill, which is too weak but at least it’s something. It will go back to the Assembly tonight.

By the way, if you want to watch all the end-of-session madness — the bills flying through, the impassioned speeches and the outright nuttery (I was just enjoying the debate in the Assembly over limits on mail-order ammunition — good God, these Republicans are strange), you can get streaming video here.

Give Kamala Harris credit for integrity

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By Tim Redmond

The San Francisco district attorney is running for attorney general. Statewide candidates, especially Democrats, tend to get hammered as “soft on crime” if they so much as utter of word against locking up more prisoners and killing more murderers.

So on the surface, it doesn’t make much political sense for Kamala Harris to announce that she won’t seek the death penalty in a high-profile (and particularly nasty) murder.

She still insists that, while she personally opposes the death penalty, she looks at every case individually. But right now, she’s doing the right thing, and refusing to go against what she knows is the right position on the issue. And she’s going to take some political heat for it.

In the end, though, it’s not going to cost her the job. If anything, in a race and a season when everyone is going to be pandering and trying to make cheap political points, she’s going to look good.

At least I hope so.

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: Janet, Arguello and Balboa

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Tells us about your look: “Pretty much I go for comfort and cheap.”

Will prison reform survive?

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By Tim Redmond

The governor agreed to cut $1.2 billion out of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilition budget this summer, but ducked the tough question of how to do it, leaving that up to the Legislature — which also can’t quite reach an answer. A moderate, watered-down bill that Speaker Karen Bass pulled together scraped through the Assembly, but is stuck, like so many other bills, in battles over the final language. As Brian at Calitics puts it:

The Assembly plan doesn’t have enough cost savings (or enough spine) and the Senate seems reluctant to pull the trigger on a half measure

Some weak Democrats, including Fiona Ma, refused to vote for the moderate bill, and now the Senate leaders are saying they want a stronger bill, which gives some of them a reason to vote against it. It takes political courage (and common sense) to recognize that most inmates are getting out anyway, and that early, supervised releases of nonviolent prisoners isn’t going to harm the public in any way.

So if nothing happens here, we’ll be stuck this fall with a big problem: A $1.2 billion hole in the state budget, and no plans to fix it.

11 hours to go, and no agreement on water plan

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By Rebecca Bowe

whiskey water.jpgMark Twain said that whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fightin’. Which one do you think Sacramento lawmakers will be thirsty for by the time they adjourn?

The California Legislature is scheduled to adjourn at midnight tonight, but many items on its to-do list have yet to be checked off. One of the biggies is a new plan for the state’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water system, a contentious mess that seems to defy political solution. The plan would address looming issues like unstable Delta levees, and unsustainable pumping of water exports are crippling fisheries.

California’s water conference committee signed off on a five-bill package to address Delta water issues, moving it out of committee in time for a floor vote, but without any Republican support. Nor do the bills include a plan for financing water projects, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he would veto anything that doesn’t include new bonds for water-storage initiatives. Lawmakers on the right are withholding support and calling the package a proposal that “ignores the need for a reliable water supply and only caters to the interests of extreme environmentalists.”

Then again, some environmental organizations are highly skeptical of the bills, too, so it’s hard imagine how a plan can be hashed out — by the end of the day — that would satisfy both sides.

Remembering — and forgetting — 9/11

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By Steven T. Jones
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Do we really know the full truth about what happened on 9/11, the devastating attacks that occurred eight years ago today? Based on my research and assessment of the inquiries that followed that horrific event, I don’t think anyone can claim to know the full truth. But that hasn’t stopped conservatives and know-it-all pundits from demonizing and belittling skeptics of the official 9/11 theory in an aggressive fashion in recent weeks.

The most disturbing example was the truly scary right-wing propagandist Glenn Beck’s successful crusade against Van Jones, forcing his resignation from the Obama Administration mostly for having signed a letter calling for an investigation of whether the Bush Administration ignored warnings about the attacks and then used them to further their foreign policy goals.

Why is that suggestion so outrageous? As even the ludicrously narrow 9/11 Commission investigation (which Harper’s Magazine and other respectable voices dismissed as a whitewash) showed, top Bush officials were warned of impending al Qaeda attacks in the month before they occurred, they did nothing, and then used the attacks to launch their so-called “War on Terror,” even discussing invading Iraq (which wasn’t involved in 9/11) as the World Trade Center still smoldered.

Snap Sounds: DatA

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By Daniel N. Alvarez

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DATA

"Skywriter"

(Ekleroshock/Naive)

While much has been made of the Sebastien Grainger-sung, electro-disco tracks "One In A Million" and "Rapture," “Skywriter” is full of that classic, synth-slathered French house sound that so many fell in love with when they first heard Daft Punk. Some hooks here will stay lodged in your head for weeks.

DatA, “Skywriter”

Brownell: On moral leaders and successful adulterers

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A timely primer on how to become moral leaders and successful adulterers at the same time. The first rule: Spend your own money.

By Jess Brownell

(Jess Brownell, the Voice of the Midwest, operates out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a freelance writer.)

Friend of mine dropped by, said he was out walking the other day and happened to pass a local hotel. Noticed a number of well-dressed men, most with a touch of grey at the temples, not all exactly good-looking, entering. Asked the doorman what was up, and was told a highly regarded motivational speaker was appearing in the ballroom. Being a fellow always in need of motivation, he slipped in and lingered in the shadows. If the recording device he carries with him is to be believed, this is what he heard:

Welcome, gentlemen, and thank you for coming. Our time today is short, and I’m going to get right to business. No beating around the bush. Ha, ha.

Yes, in an ideal world, moral leadership and adultery would not be mutually exclusive. We acknowledge that. But we don’t live in that world. In the real world, people have funny ideas – some of which we’ve helped them to develop – and those people, sad to say, are often inclined to vote. Keep them in mind as we continue.

Stiglitz: GDP Fetishism

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Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

GDP Fetishism

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – Striving to revive the world economy while simultaneously responding to the global climate crisis has raised a knotty question: are statistics giving us the right “signals” about what to do? In our performance-oriented world, measurement issues have taken on increased importance: what we measure affects what we do.

If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that don’t exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy.

Sexcipe: Pork ribs with a side of rubber gimp

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By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF

After I met my nutrition coach Matt Lascala, (in my spanking class at Good Vibrations no less), I was told that eliminating all sugars, dairy, and grains from my diet would be helpful to me. I was somewhat skeptical to say the least – okay, I thought, I’ll try it for a week or two, and then maybe let it go. After only three days I had much more energy, slept well at night (I had tendencies towards insomnia), became more productive and basically regained a new sense of pleasure in life! I was sold.

I have always been interested in cuisine and decided long ago not to become a chef because I was afraid of losing my creative compunctions in the kitchen from working long hours for other people. So I became a Dominatrix. The PaleoZone diet has opened up a new sense of creativity for me as far as foods I can and cannot eat and how to get that crazy Provencial Gourmande feel from such a paltry sounding diet. It has been a phenomenal inspiration. I liken its rustic feel to Medieval debauchery, and since I love playing as well as eating, I decided to start “pairing” my meals with my play.

Modifications:
Technically, one does not drink wine while dieting, but since this regimen is for optimal health and not for weight loss (though I have lost 10 lobs or so in the first six weeks), I keep wine because it gives the Mistress a certain quality of life she enjoys. You may wish to modify things as well, depending on your dietary and quality of life needs.

Menu:

Pork Spare Ribs Braised with Beets and Onions
Collard Greens and Baby Daikon
Cirtrus Peaches with Filberts

Paired with: Rubber Abduction, Electrical Play, Forced Release

‘Best of British Noir’ bonanza of shadiness

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By Max Goldberg

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Lady, It Always Rains on Sunday

That undisputed champ of repertory programming, film noir, is getting a good workout during otherwise sunny September. Elliot Lavine combs the Columbia vaults for a 22-film Roxie bonanza, while the Castro Theatre and Pacific Film Archive look across the pond for a touch of "tea and larceny." Even if it’s disingenuous to label these Anglo entries as noir — the camera angles are right, the mannered scripts not so much — the down-and-out British crime films make for a fascinating mirror image to their American counterparts, not least for the visible evidence of World War II trauma. The rarity-heavy PFA series will better satisfy the buff, but only a fool would pass up a week’s worth of Rialto restoration prints at the Castro. Three of the five films are Graham Greene affairs, including a long-overdue re-release of Brighton Rock (1947). The real discovery of the series, however, is Robert Hamer’s It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), an unusual mélange of kitchen-sink drama, Dostoyevskian moral tale, and on-the-lam thriller. If the steady downpour is pure noir, the film’s narrative is less typical. Instead of concentrating trauma and repression into a single (male) figure, Hamer spreads it around an entire East London neighborhood. There is a escaped convict at the center of the story who looks every bit the seductive part, but in spite of a stylish chase finale, Hamer is more interested in the drab corners of ordinary deceit. His resourceful dramatizations of working class spaces — and specifically their lack of privacy — are consumed with an anxiety far in excess of the film’s serviceable plot.

RIALTO’S BEST OF BRITISH NOIR Sept. 11–16, $10. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120, www.thecastrotheatre.com

Better than sex? ‘Architecture and and the City’

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By Marke B.

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I don’t know whether this is awesome or boring, but one of the most perverse pleasures to be had in the Bay for the last decade has been fantasy house-hunting — dressing like you can afford more than a rent-controlled railroad flat’s closet and hitting the Sunday open-house real estate orgy circuit, mostly to decry the recent penchant for tacky recessed lighting and cheap beige granite counter-tops. The ’80s are back! If you’re a premium architecture and design junkie, though, you’ll be swooning all September — launching your intellectual and tactical fantasies into the clouds with the Architecture and the City festival, presented by AIA San Francisco. The sixth annual celebration of unique builds, the nation’s largest, not only takes you on the San Francisco Living: Home Tours drool-a-thon (Sept. 12-13) focusing on smart sustainability, but also explores a bonanza of exciting, dialogue-stimulating Bay design ideas through presentations, investigations, demonstrations, and more. Prepare to push up your teeny octagon-shaped eyeglasses and scream, "Build it! Build it NOW!"

ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY Through September 30. Check Web site for locations, times, and prices. www.aiasf.org/archandcity

Vaginas and insurance: Billboard wars

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By Tim Redmond

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The group Consumer Watchdog is going after Mercury Insurance. Absolut Vodka is going after guys, I guess, with what appears to be a giant vag in the sky.

And guess which image the billboard company removed?

Steve Lopez at the LA Times says “its funny what passes for offensive these days.

Now, I don’t find pictures of vaginas offensive (it’s supposed to be a mango, but WTF?). But I agree with Lopez that removing a billboard critical of an insurance company is, at the very least, a free speech issue.

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