SFBG Blogs

Treasure Island lineup announced: Flaming Lips, MGMT, Beirut, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, and more

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This just in from the folks at Another Planet:

July 13, 2009 – San Francisco , CA – San Francisco ’s Indian summer is around the corner and with it brings the 3rd Annual Treasure Island Music Festival, the West Coast’s most anticipated boutique music festival. Set against panoramic views of the city by the bay, Treasure Island Music Festival will stick true to form in offering an electronic and dance centric lineup on Saturday, October 17th and an indie rock lineup on Sunday, October 18th. With two stages and no overlapping sets, fans can enjoy every note of every act. Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment are pleased to announce the following lineup…

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

MGMT
MSTRKRFT
Girl Talk
Brazilian Girls
The Streets
Passion Pit
LTJ Bukem feat. MC Conrad
DJ Krush
Federico Aubele
Dan Deacon
Murs
Crown City Rockers
The Limousines

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The Flaming Lips
The Decemberists
Beirut
Grizzly Bear
Yo La Tengo
The Walkmen
Bob Mould
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down
Vetiver
Spiral Stairs
Sleepy Sun
Tommy Guerrero
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

In only its third year, Treasure Island Music Festival has garnered national acclaim and become a must see on the United States ’ festival circuit. SPIN described it as a “full blown love affair,” while the SF WEEKLY claimed, “NorCal has its own Micro-achella” and declared that Treasure Island boasted “an impressive lineup with bands from all over the world.” PASTE MAGAZINE said, “For the second year in a row, a 70-year-old, man-made island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay was home to some of the finest live bands in the country.”

Treasure Island Music Festival will continue its tradition of exposing emerging and critically established artists to the tastemakers and fans of independent music… all going down smack-dab in the middle of the San Francisco Bay . In addition to the tunes, there will be a multitude of activities for the audience including a 60-foot tall Ferris wheel, an interactive art tent, a vendor village showcasing local designers and an array of healthy and affordable food and beverages.

“Treasure Island has a unique feel for a music festival due to its intimate size and beautiful setting. It’s very much a communal experience with artists and fans sharing similar moments together,” says Bryan Duquette of Another Planet Entertainment.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with this year’s line-up,” adds Noise Pop’s Jordan Kurland, “It’s a well-balanced cross section of established veterans of the independent and electronic music communities alongside some of the most celebrated breakout artists of the last couple years. It’s also a chance to spend a day on an island with the Flaming Lips and a 60-foot Ferris wheel.”

A limited quantity of $99.99 2-Day tickets and VIP Single Day 2-Packs go on sale on Tuesday, July 14th at 12pm PST through www.treasureislandfestival.com. A VIP 2-Pack includes 2 VIP tickets to one day, 1 parking spot on island, preferred viewing area with bleachers, lounge with full bar and other amenities. Single Day tickets go on sale on Friday, July 17th at 10am PST. To off-set traffic congestion and the limited amount of parking on the island, Treasure Island Music Festival will be providing shuttles on and off the island to ticket holders at no additional cost.

Your Treasure Island experience is brought to you by your friends at Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment.

For more information on Treasure Island Music Festival please visit
www.treasureislandfestival.com

Bedazzler: Beyonce at Oracle Arena

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Dangerous curves ahead: Beyonce and company and “Crazy in Love.” All photos by Charles Russo.

By Kimberly Chun


I’m bedazzled by Beyonce – bewitched, bemused, checked in and down for the night at the Knowles family’s B&B. ‘Nuff said.

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I resort to the Stan Lee comicbook equivalent of “end of discussion” because I’m just too tempted to toss in the towel after taking in Ms. Knowles’ Thierry Mugler-imbued show (she tellingly selected him as her tour’s costume designer and “creative advisor” after discovering his handiwork at the “Superheroes” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute last year). Have mercy, my robotic leopard woman. Because despite it’s tough, sleek surfaces, Beyonce’s “I Am… Tour” is an organic, ever-morphing, slippery organism, judging from the timely Michael Jackson/“Halo” tribute and seemingly impromptu birthday singalong that closed July 10 performance at the Oracle Arena.

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Genius avant camp. Heaven-bound goddess-gown diva perfection. Down-on-the-floor earthy air-humping along to a guitar solo. Warm moments of communion with the fans. Obama love juxtaposing the Civil Rights marches, **Cadillac Records,** the ‘09 inauguration celebration, and “At Last.” Aerial flips and hood-ornament poses on a trapeze eliciting shrieks of delight from the audience. All were welcome, all were included. And the curvaceous, rump-shaking, and robust Beyonce held up throughout, looking like an ace super-trooper while dancing, kicking, and singing in her minis, hot pants, and sparkly heels ala a young Tina Turner, and whipping around Shakira-esque curls with the fury of go-go dancer scorned.

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From the photo pit: Tamia Pitts, 7, was front and center.

Sonic Reducer Overage: ‘American Idols,’ Slumber Cats, Slayer, and more

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By Kimberly Chun

Entombed in SF gloom? Silly, rabbit, this is the best weather to get your musical kicks in a dark, cloudy bar.



A-Frames and Climax Golden Twins
Three guitars and a rhythm section and soaring gamelan-sludge rawk? We’re talking ‘bout the real team players, Raider Nation. With Hank IV and Fresh and Onlys. Sat/11, 9:30 p.m., $7. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325.

American Idols Live
Haven’t had enough? Sample A-Lam in the flesh as Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai, Kris Allen, Lil Rounds, Matt Giraud, Megan Joy, Michael Sarver, and Scott MacIntyre provide. Sat/11, 7 p.m., $38.50-$66.25. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. (415) 421-8497.

S.F. helipads generate a whirlwind of controversy

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by Rebecca Bowe

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The Children’s Hospital at UCSF in Mission Bay won’t be completed until 2014, but the debate about the helipad proposed for the facility’s roof has been simmering for several years, and the project is headed to the Board of Supervisors for approval in the next several weeks. Meanwhile, controversy surrounding a proposed helipad at San Francisco General Hospital flared anew this week, thanks to a piece of proposed state legislation that was working its way through policy committees in Sacramento. That bill, AB 1272, would have required that provisions for air transport be included in all statewide trauma system plans.

AB 1272, authored by Assemblymember Jerry Hill of San Mateo County and co-sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, was opposed by a host of San Francisco organizations. Staffers in Hill’s and Ammiano’s offices described it as a bill that would merely make it easier for trauma centers to install helicopter landing pads, rather than a mandate that any helicopter-landing facilities be built. But Loretta Lynch, a member of opposition group Neighbors of San Francisco General, characterized the legislation as a sort of back-door method of requiring a helipad, a move she said was an attempt to dodge local opposition by introducing policy at the state level.

The state legislation was downgraded to a two-year bill this afternoon, Lynch told us, so it’s a moot issue for now. But the organized, early opposition to it highlights the fact that efforts build helicopter landing pads at city hospitals is a highly sensitive issue in San Francisco.

Three possibly relevant sex studies

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By Juliette Tang

A new study conducted by researchers at Oxford University and the University College of London argues that, should a woman want to get pregnant, her chances are better with man who’s unattractive.

The logic goes as follows: attractive males have more sex. Because attractive guys have more partners, they have to allocate their sperm carefully from partner to partner, in order to maximize chances of knocking up more women. Whereas because unattractive guys don’t have as many partners, they can afford to blow it all, if you will, on the few they have.

What exactly constitutes “attractive” versus “unattractive,” the study does not say. However, the study does draw an entertaining comparison between human beings and “animals such as the domestic fowl, and fish such as the Arctic charr.” It concludes by admitting, “The model should also be expanded to include the effects of short-term sperm depletion, which is known to affect ejaculate content” (i.e. the study needs to consider the case of frequent masturbators). Relevant? You decide.

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Sex therapist Ian Kerner revisits the 1974 Shaky Bridge Study, which reveals that, when exposed to larger amounts of adrenaline and stress, people are more prone to sexual attraction and romantic attachment.

Psychologists Arthur Aron and Donald Dutton used two bridges, a solid one that rose 10 feet over sea level, and this one, the Capilano Canyon Suspension Bridge which is 5 feet wide, 450 feet long, and sways 250 feet above the river below, as the setting for their research. For the first part of the study, they had an attractive woman stand at the middle of the sturdy bridge, asking random passerbys to fill out a short psychology survey. She then gave the men her phone number, asking them to call if they were interested in finding results. The next day, she repeated the routine, on the more dangerous suspension bridge.

No ethics in Ethics Commission

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By Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Ethics Commission has long been accused of corruption, selective enforcement, and gross incompetence – charges supported by knowledgeable activists, whistleblowing employees, and Guardian investigations – but a pair of recent developments shows just what a public liability this agency has become.

When the District Attorney’s Office this week brought felony charges against three City College officials for laundering public funds into a slush fund and campaign account, the very thing that Ethics is supposed to regulate, it highlighted just how incompetent the agency is. After all, as the Guardian reported two years ago, Ethics Commission Executive Director John St. Croix admitted that he knew about the violations way back in 2005 – even before the Chronicle broke the story — and he did nothing.

Yet St. Croix (who has not returned our call for comment) and Deputy Director Mabel Ng – who should have been fired back in 2004 for illegally ordering the destruction of public documents that revealed another money laundering scheme, this one involving Gavin Newsom’s first mayoral campaign – have been actively trying to get rid of the agency’s most public spirited employee, Oliver Luby (the guy who first discovered the City College shenanigans), in the process opening the city up to legal liability by retaliating against a whistleblower.

Ken Garcia’s wilderness

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By Tim Redmond

Wow, and environmental issue that Ken Garcia can actually get excited about! The Examiner’s house curmudgeon, who loves to beat up on progressives, is outrages that the supervisors might consider putting parking meters in Golden Gate Park:

Our fabled greenbelt is about to become a money belt. Our forested treasure is about to be turned into a treasure chest.

The idea of sacrificing the beauty of Golden Gate Park to feed the fiscal hole created in part by the mayor and the board is ridiculous. Planting metal posts in our parks is a crime against nature.

Um, sorry Ken, but the “fabled greenbelt” is already a bit tainted — by thousands of cars that park along those “forested” streets every day. You want nature in the parks, fine — I’m with you. Close most of the East End to vehicle traffic and get rid of all the parking spaces. But no, Mr. Garcia never wants to mess with cars; he’s the most pro-automobile columnist in town.

He just wants people to be able to park in, and befoul, this urban treasure — for free.

(And by the way — I’m all for charging money for parking in GG Park — but I continue to wonder how long those nice, juicy meters plump with coins will last when it gets dark and hungry, and every creative, folks start thinking about all that spare change.)

Remembering “Creature from the Black Lagoon” star Ben Chapman

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By Sean McCourt

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Courtesy of Ben Chapman

Having roared and clawed its way into the hearts of film fans around the world when it was first released in 1954, the Universal monster classic Creature from the Black Lagoon has endured for generation after generation, seeming to grow in popularity with every passing year. Filmed in glorious black and white, the tale of the ancient half-man, half-fish — better known as the Gillman — cleverly uses the unique aspects of the colorless medium to effectively create a creepy atmosphere, particularly with the manipulation of shadows and lighting. Believable cast interaction, a monstrous musical score, and above all a great story make Creature a picture to remember — and it’s clear from the multitude of collectibles, video releases, actor appearances, and screening events that faithful fans have done just that.

The iconic and intricately designed Gillman suit was brought to life in the scenes above water by the late Ben Chapman, who gave the character a sympathetic feel through his body language and natural motions — a feat that no modern CG effect could hope to recreate. Chapman, who passed away last year at the age of 79, visited San Francisco in October of 2006 for a special event at the Castro Theatre celebrating Creature, meeting fans and sharing memories with the audience. I had a chance to speak with him then.

“One of the things that made [the film] successful — and it shows — is that we were all very happy. It was a great crew, great people. I would get up in the morning and I couldn’t wait to get to the studio,” he said.

Dick Meister: The just rights of workers

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based freelance columnist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.

Those seeking to guarantee workers the unfettered right to unionize have a compelling new example of how it can be done: An agreement reached in June by representatives of organized labor and the Catholic health care system.

It wasn’t easily reached. It took more than a decade of dialogue and sometimes hostile confrontations as union organizers tried to win collective bargaining rights for the 600,000 workers in the Catholic Church’s 600 hospitals and 1,200 other health care facilities across the nation.

Honduras: Nostalgia for the gorillas

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By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (July 9th) — The June 28th coup d’etat in Honduras that toppled leftist president Mel Zelaya invokes nostalgia for the bad old days of the “gorillas” — generals and strongmen who overthrew each other with reckless abandon and the tacit complicity of Washington during the last half of the past century.

Perched on a hillside in the Mexican outback, we would tune in to these “golpes de estado,” as they are termed in Latin America, on our Zenith Transoceanic short wave. First, a harried announcer would report rumors of troop movement and the imposition of a “toque de queda” (curfew.) Hours of dead air (and probably dead announcers) would follow and then the martial music would strike up, endless tape loops of military marches and national anthems. Within a few days, the stations would be back up as if nothing had happened. Only the names of the generals who ruled the roost had changed.

Guatemala was the Central American republic par excelencia for such “golpes.” Perhaps the most memorable was the overthrow of General Jacobo Arbenz by Alan Dulles’s CIA in 1954 after Arbenz sought to expropriate and distribute unused United Fruit land. Like Mel Zelaya, the general was shaken rudely awake by soldiers and booted out of the country in his underwear.

Coups in Guatemala continued unabated throughout the 1970s and ’80s. General Efrain Rios Montt, the first Evangelical dictator in Latin America, who had come to power in a coup himself, was overthrown in 1983 by the bloodthirsty Romeo Lucas, a much-decorated general. In 1993, the Guatemalan military brought down civilian president Jorge Elias Serrano, the last gasp of the Gorillas until Zelaya was deposed last week. It has been 15 years since the generals have risen in arms in Central America.

Zelaya’s overthrow has stimulated generalized repugnance throughout the world. The Organization of American States, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the European Union, virtually every regional organization in the Western Hemisphere, and the presidents of 33 Latin American republics have condemned the Honduran Gorillas — yet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can’t quite get her plumped-up lips around the word “coup,” preferring to describe the low-jinx in Tegucigalpa as an “interruption of democracy” or some such euphemistic flapdoodle.

One wonders what descriptives Hillary would have deployed if she and Bill had been aroused from a deep snooze in the White House master bedroom on a Sunday morning by gun-toting troops and put on the first plane for Ottawa in their pajamas?

Prison report: Detached from humanity

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By Just A Guy

This morning, as the officers prepared paper trays with cold, soggy pancakes from a serving cart outside of my cell, I overheard a female officer chatting with a fellow officer. She was telling him that she had visited various historical sites, like the book depository in Dallas and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that going to these places made her very emotional, so much so that when she was visiting Oahu she refused to visit the site of the U.S.S. Arizona because of the feelings such a visit would engender in her.

When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh at what she’d said as I considered where she works from the confines of my graffiti-scrawled 6-by-9 cell in which the view of the outside world through the 6-inch-by-4-foot window has been purposefully obstructed except for about half an inch along the edges.

A short while later this same officer was going from cell to cell picking up trash. When she arrived at my cell, she asked me if I was new. I asked her why. Was it obvious, because I had no personal property to speak of? She said no, that it was my mood—which probably wasn’t chipper. I then asked her if I might ask a question and told her that I’d overheard her discussion with respect to visiting tragic historical sites and was curious to know if she was aware of the irony of getting emotional at such sights, when going to work in a prison, specifically the “hole” in a prison, didn’t get her emotional.

Her answer, to me anyway, was a sad and tragic condemnation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation system, and quite frankly, of society’s outlook on things as a whole. Also, her answer was quite disturbing—this I’ll explain further as I go on.

What she said to me is that she “detaches” herself when she comes to work. She then said that when talking to fellow officers, she can be herself, but then motioned toward me and said that when she’s dealing with us, meaning inmates, she detaches.

ESFAC’E: The face of pop culture, redefined

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By Mayka Mei

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There are lifestyle brands. And then there are lifestyle brands. While the likes of Paris Hilton are “working” to expand their “businesses” in empowering consumers to turn heads with obnoxious celeb perfumes, Dele Sobomehin and his friends are running youth camps and making political statements with the most socially conscious fashion label in the Bay.

Sobomehin (“Dele” is short for “Oladele”) literally works in a brotherhood of friends and family as ESFAC’E’s first full-time employee. Sobomehin, his brother, and friends from Stanford and Santa Clara University founded the brand with a mission to make popular culture positive. And thus, in 2002, a movement was born.

ESFAC’E (pronounced “es-fah-chee”) is actually an acronym for the heart of their label’s movement: Education and Service through Fashion, Athletics, Community, and Entertainment. ESFAC’E’s urban-styled screened tees are just the face of their efforts.

Hot sex events July 8-14

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

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“i wanna give you my ass” and other works by Nicoz Balboa, as well as three more visual artists, are on display at Femina Potens through July.
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>> Rubber
The Rubbermen of SF Bay present their monthly party at CHAPS, featuring $3 Trumer and Big Daddy drafts, $2.50 Prohibition bottles, $4 Skyy cocktails, and $5 for those made with Junipero Gin – plus go gos and the bootdog on duty.

Fri/10, 8pm. Free.
Chaps
1225 Folsom, SF
www.chapsbarsanfranciso.com

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>> Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Orgasms
Take a tour among America’s obsessions with spanking, erotic literature and fetishes! Discover why handcuffs have more than one meaning when we examine the American cultural landscape through the use of the media, current events and court cases. This interactive, fun and thought provoking workshop examines your sexual rights and erotic potential, before they are stripped away.

Opening Sat/11, 1-3:30pm. $25-$30.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
(415) 267-6999
www.sexandculture.org

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Snap Sounds: Desire

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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DESIRE

Desire

(Italians Do It Better)

Sorry, but I can’t hate: Johnny Jewel’s latest disco project is too lost in emotion to be dismissed as a hipster poseathon. The 1980s touches dig below irony the same way Glass Candy’s cover of "Computer Love" gave that icy-by-definition track a successful heart transplant. "Don’t Call" is my jam of the summer so far, not least because of its live "Beat It" rhythm.

Port of Oakland seeks authority to regulate truckers

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By C. Nellie Nelson

Last weekend was the 75th anniversary of “Bloody Thursday,” when two men were killed by police gunfire while protesting in the West Coast Waterfront Strike, prompting the San Francisco General Strike. These days, it’s the port truckers who can barely keep food on the table, or hospital bills paid.

Last month, the Guardian reported that a lawsuit by the trucking company lobby group American Trucking Association against the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is inhibiting the efforts of the Port of Oakland to get a better clean truck program. By making truckers employees instead of independent contractors, West Oakland could also see a reduction in pollution with newer, cleaner company trucks replacing the aging diesel rigs that now dominate the port.

On Tuesday night, the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports expected the Oakland Port Commission to vote on a resolution that would support a Beacon Economics study showing that hiring truckers as employees would improve working conditions and reduce truck emissions. But the Commission declined to vote on the resolution, instead introducing a new one calling on Congress to update laws governing ports.

Silent Film Fest gets Lupe

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By Dennis Harvey

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Ms. Lupe Valez

According to (disputed) legend, the 1944 death of 36-year-old Lupe Velez was far from glamorous, yet had classic Hollywood form: face-down in the toilet, choked on the pills she was regurgitating in a suicide attempt that succeeded, albeit not as planned. That sad end — she was despondent over a married lover and their unborn child — provided high contrast with her live-wire persona on and off-screen. The latter included high-drama involvements with legendary hunks Gary Cooper and Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller. In movies, she both defined and transcended a "Mexican Spitfire" stereotype (the actual name of her popular B-flick comedy series) with manic comic energy reminiscent of a Latina Clara Bow on one hand and a blueprint for Charo on the other.

Two features in this year’s Silent Film Festival find her minus speaking voice, but hardly muzzled. She was just 18 (and a convent school dropout) when picked to star opposite superstar Douglas Fairbanks in 1927’s The Gaucho. As his highly temperamental, jealous sweetheart, she gave as good as she got, frequently engaging his rakish hero in knock-down fights — a rehearsal for notorious later public spats with short-term husband Weissmuller, perhaps? Two years later she’d assumed a title role herself in Lady of the Pavements, a very late silent (its added "part-talkie" sequences have been lost) and one of D.W. Griffith’s last films. She plays a 19th-century Parisian cafe dancer who gets the Pygmalion treatment by a duplicitous countess seeking to humiliate her ex-fiancée. Material better suited to Lubitsch or Von Stroheim, this sophisticated seriocomic fluff wasn’t ideal for stuffy Griffith; and he couldn’t (or didn’t want to) tap Velez’s natural rambunctiousness as Fairbanks had. But this rare antique is still worth a look.

Other festival program highlights include Josef von Sternberg’s Oscar-winning gangster tale Underworld (1927), Victor Sjostrom’s poetic melodrama The Wind (1928), Gustav Machaty’s scandalous Czech Erotikon (1929), early W.C. Fields vehicle So’s Your Old Man (1926), and delirious Russian sci-fi exercise Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924). Live music will accompany each program.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL July 10–12, free–$20. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF.

(415) 621-6120, www.silentfilm.org

Pro-pot TV spot censored by stations

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By Steven T. Jones

The Marijuana Policy Project has produced a great new 30-second television ad calling for the legalization and taxation of marijuana and presenting that as a partial solution to California’s financial collapse, but many television stations – including KGO-TV and KNTV in the Bay Area — have refused to air it.

“Instead of being treated like criminals for consuming a substance that is safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share,” says a middle-aged female pot smoker in the ad. Assembly member Tom Ammiano’s AB 390 – which is expected to have its first hearings in October – would raise billions of dollars by decriminalizing and taxing pot, making it all the more troubling that stations would refuse to run an ad on this relevant political issue.

MPP’s Bruce Mirken said most Los Angeles area stations – including KABC, KTTV, KTLA, and KCOP – have refused to run the spot (just one, KCBS, will start running it on Saturday) and offered little explanation why. Guardian calls to the KGO and KNTV station managers have not been returned, but we’ll run their responses in the comments section if and when we hear back.

But the ensuing censorship controversy has made news, including a segment featuring the ad on this morning’s Today Show, which ran on KNTV.

Board approves sale of CTs – but there’s a twist

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By Rebecca Bowe

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve the sale of four city-owned combustion turbines, with a final vote on the matter still pending. But an amendment to the ordinance built in some wiggle room for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to reconsider as strategies advance to shut down the Potrero power plant.

The CTs — which can be used to produce electricity during periods of peak demand — were nearly used to develop in-city electric generating facilities last year that would have replaced the existing Potrero power plant. Those plans were ultimately abandoned, the units have been sitting in storage in Texas ever since, and the Potrero plant has continued running 24/7. When Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced his interim budget in June, he included the sale of the turbines for $10 million — much lower than market value, but the maximum amount the city is entitled to under the terms of a settlement agreement that turned them over to San Francisco in 2003.

During last year’s debate over the construction of the city-owned power plants, it seemed like the city had no choice but to live with either the Potrero plant or the city-owned peaker plants in order to satisfy the requirements of the California Independent System Operator, a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the electricity grid and determines the amount of power needed to ensure reliability during worst-case scenarios. But in May, Newsom, SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington and several others sent a letter to the Cal-ISO outlining a plan to have it both ways: They proposed closing down the entire Potrero plant and employing upgraded transmission lines, instead of in-city generation, to bridge the electricity gap.

If that plan is accepted by the Cal-ISO, all four CTs can be sold off, and the Potrero plant could finally be shut down. But whether or not the Cal-ISO is open to that idea remains up in the air.

All sex, no plot: The new porn?

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By Juliette Tang

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Yesterday saw an interesting piece in the New York Times on the slow disappearance of plot-based porn flicks in favor of films comprised solely of sex scenes, without any narrative structure, that can easily be broken up and presented online. According to the Times, the DVD sales and rental industry was $3.62 billion in 2006 (a number estimated by Paul Fishbein, president of the AVN Media Network) but has fallen as much as 50% since then. Rather than solely filming feature length, plot-based movies, like Pirates XXX, which was released in 2005, studios are focusing more attention on filming vignettes instead — series of sex scenes that occasionally share a theme, like “Girls ‘n Glasses”.

While some are alarmed at the changes afoot in the industry, it’s a fact that studios are focusing less and less attention on making feature DVDs and that interest is only going to decrease from here. In this NYT video, Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Entertainment, states that while it wasn’t that many years ago that all of Vivid’s income was dependent on DVD sales, now, less than half of their income is generated from DVDs, largely due to the nature of the internet. Vivid now offers an online membership that users can subscribe to, that allows them to view video clips and photos simply by logging in.

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Written on the body: Raging Stallion’s Ink Storm offers a different definition of “porn script”

I sent an email to Ben Leon, a director at Raging Stallion Studios, a major gay porn studio located in San Francisco, and asked for his perspective on these changing trends. The NYT article doesn’t discuss gay porn, which has historically been much less attached to the plot-paradigm than straight porn. [You couldn’t fit much more on those old Super8 one-reelers! -Ed.]

He made an interesting point linking the new web model of porn with the uptick of interest in fetish material, which the NYT article didn’t really touch on either. Said Leon, “I also think that porn is changing as the culture changes. A new trend in porn is a heavy swing toward fetish material. This trend is not that different than the wider trend toward making internet content. The new fetish stuff and the internet sites are marketed to a very specific audience. This specialization is both a widening of the market but also a contraction in certain ways. Like mass media-as it becomes more pervasive it also becomes much more targeted. People are now able to find the information (or porn) they want filtered through whatever bias or glass they choose.”

Chicks with dicks on top (NSFW)

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By Marke B.

I’m gonna count this as a local story — because, hey, Google’s right down the peninsula. And I’m gonna count this as research — because, hey, it’s my job. While casually looking up photos, for work, associated with the new kinda boring HBO series “Hung” — about a lengthy middle-aged hustler which takes place in my hometown Detroit, at least a suburb of it, and has served for critics who should know better as nothing but a big ol “shit on the Motor City” punching bag — I was pleasantly surprised to find that this image came right up at the top of my safe-mode-off Google Image search this morning:

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: Mateo, Castro and Clipper

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Tell us about your look: “My boyfriend got me this shirt.”

Top City College officials charged with felonies

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By Steven T. Jones
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Former City College Chancellor Phillip Day

Former City College of San Francisco Chancellor Phillip Day and two other top administrators were today charged with several felony counts of misappropriating public funds and steering them into political campaigns and a secret slush fund controlled by Day, who faces nine years in prison.
The indictment by the District Attorney’s Office was reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Lance Williams, who originally broke the story about City College officials laundering payments to the college into a bond campaign. Guardian reporter G.W. Schulz later furthered the story by uncovering the role the City College Foundation played in the money-laundering scheme and how the San Francisco Ethics Commission ignored gross violations of campaign finance law.
But the indictment – fueled by subpoenaed testimony and a raid in May – goes even further, uncovering a Day-controlled slush fund that he used “to pay for alcohol for parties he hosted, parking tickets run up by wealthy alumni and for his membership at the City Club of San Francisco in the Financial District,” according to Chronicle reports on the indictment.
While the report says elected trustees didn’t know about the slush fund and none were charged with crimes, the Guardian has long criticized veteran board members such as Natalie Berg with colluding with Day to misuse bond money, avoid public accountability, and cover up for a corrupt administration.
Now that District Attorney Kamala Harris has confirmed that the shenanigans that have long marred City College were criminal in nature, that’s just the beginning of the house cleaning that needs to take place within this important institution.

Screw design: Jimmyjane’s Ethan Imboden works the vibe

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Ethan Imboden, center. Photo from the blog of Rose Apodaca. The vibrator, in its evolution, has come a long, long way. The first vibrators, which debuted in the late 19th century, look nothing like sex toys as we know them today and everything like like the kind of power tools you’d find in the basement lair of a serial killer. They also came with sexy names like the “Shelton Deluxe-Wayne Vibrator” and “Dr. Ocara’s Pulsocon,” though more appropriate names for these toys run along the lines of the “Pleasure of Pain” and “Use me if you don’t want a clitoris by the time we’re through”. As the decades progressed, vibrator manufacturers continued to struggle with design. The design of 1950s-era vibrators were not a great improvement on the vibrators of the 1890s, as evidenced by this toaster on wheels-made-of-hot-rollers known as the Chic Glorifier. Though utilitarian vibrators have existed for over a century, it hasn’t been until recently that sex toy manufacturers have started realizing that while having an orgasm is sexy, having an orgasm with a something that looks like a power drill is not. Having sex with a person is generally more satisfying if you are attracted to the person in the first place, so why can’t the same philosophy be applied to the act of having sex with a toy? So along came Jimmyjane. Founded by Ethan Imboden in 2003, Jimmyjane is a local company headquartered in Potrero Hill that sells high design vibrators, with price points starting from around $100 to an almost inconceivable $2,750 for the Little Gold Eternity, a gold vibrator adorned in diamonds and etched with hearts that looks like something you’d find on rich cougar’s bedside table (if you were lucky). An expensive vibrator isn’t for everyone (I myself cannot fathom spending over $100 on anything that doesn’t involve a week’s worth of groceries or a plane ticket), but for those who want an aesthetically pleasing vibrator and have the money to spend, Jimmyjane is a nice little oasis in a world of scary vibrators. Even for this skinflint blogger, spending over a hundred dollars on Jimmyjane’s beautifully designed Form 6 is not beyond the realm of possible futures. Ethan sat down with the SFBG to talk about Jimmyjane and the changing future of vibrators. jimmycase0709.jpg

SFBG: You went to Johns Hopkins and got your degree in electrical engineering, and then you went to Pratt for industrial design. So it actually really makes sense that you’re doing what you’re doing. But do you recall the first moments, in your history as a designer and engineer, when you realized you wanted to make vibrators?

EI: Yes absolutely. It’s etched indelibly in my memory. I was visiting a sex toy trade show with a potential client. That was really the first time I really entered into the world of sex toys and accessories. I was immediately struck by the fact that design had not touched the category and there was such an opportunity to take the same discipline in my background and apply them here. I had some experience with sex toys, but not a whole lot to be honest. And I had no idea how much experience my peers had with these types of products, but when I got back that’s all anyonen wanted to talk about.

SFBG: Looking at your vibes, there’s a perceptible aesthetic. It’s minimal, it’s modern, and definitely ‘less than more’ when it comes to ornament. But what, in your own words, is Jimmyjane’s design philosophy?

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: Bruce, Castro Theatre

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Tell us about your look: “It’s opening night of the gay and lesbian film festival so I just had to dress up!”

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