SFBG Blogs

Prison report: letters from the inside

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. He’s going to be sending us regular reports on conditions behind bars, discussing the myths and realities facing the 170,000 people who the state of California has locked up. There’s not much reporting on what goes on inside, since the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has always tried to keep the press from reporting honestly on prison conditions. We hope this helps shed some light on the gigantic taxpayer-funded California prison system. You can post questions in the comment section, and Just A Guy will try to answer them. (If it takes a while to see responses to your comments, be patient — Just A Guy has to communicate with us from prison, and the lines out aren’t always easy.)

He suggests you might get yourself in the right mindset by listening to this first.

I’m sitting on my bunk in my dorm that is over 80 degrees and humid, because it’s in the 90’s outside today and there is no air conditioning. In fact, there is no air conditioning in most prisons run by CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) — yeah, seriously, rehabilitation. … But this is nothing like what the temperature will be like in the buildings in August and September, I have seen as high as 94 degrees on the thermometer in the building.

You have all probably seen shows on TV and think you have a general idea of what it’s like in prison in California. You don’t have a clue.

You have been misinformed by the media, which has been mislead by CDCR and the prison guard’s union as to what prisons and prisoners in California are like. Believe it or not, we’re not all axe murdering, rapist, armed robbers frothing at the mouth with your children in our sights. In fact, the largest percentage of us are addicts and alcoholics in prison for the possession or dealing of drugs or crimes related to the pursuit thereof.

Being in prison makes one abundantly aware of the need for prisons. But it’s also very frustrating, because it makes one abundantly aware of the need for someone to be the voice of the prisoner and let the public know what it’s really like, beyond the fantasy that’s been sold to you by the media and the powers that be. If you knew what it’s really like, and if you came to see prisoners as people, then your voices might yearn to speak out a little bit against the reported “reality” that isn’t.

My aim here is to provide you with a forum to ask questions about prison life. I have nothing to gain nor am I getting paid to do this, but feel moved to report from the inside because I can’t bear the lies being told to, and believed by, the general public.

Here are a few untruths I would like to clear up:

Nite Trax: Kush Arora’s ‘Dread Bass Chronicles’

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By Marke B.

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I’ve been living with SF dub stalwart Kush Arora‘s new release Dread Bass Chronicles in my headphones for a week now — partly out of addiction to its golden production and throbbing bass (this shit will truly bang the dancefloor), but also because it’s given me a lot to think about. Kush is part of the Surya Dub collective, which has become a Bay classic by melding bhangra raveups with dupstep wigouts at its monthly parties at Club Six. A couple years ago, Surya started throwing around the phrase “dread bass” to describe its direction — more aggressive, more dancehall-oriented, less electronically psychedelic than other “worldly dubstep” nights — and here we have the most definitive statement of dread bass to date. (OK, OK, dread bass was also a miniature jungle movement in the early ’90s, but nevermind that.)

Suitably, that statement comes from Surya’s most audio-aggressive member, who claims death metal and punk among his early influences, and who told the Guardian‘s Tomas Palermo last year that he believes his family’s roots in the often-volatile Punjab region between India and Pakistan breathe through his music. “That’s why I like bhangra. It has an element of aggression and sadness,” he said.

In this, Kush’s seventh release, however, most bhangra references are almost completely subsumed into ornate background decorations to the 11 tracks’ insistently energetic thudding and boasting. Yes, there are some bubbling tablas and burbling, looped flutes — but it’s Kush’s other Bay nightlife association, with Sunday night dub and dancehall mainstay Dub Mission, that’s more telling here.

So you’ve decided to do a juice cleanse

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By Paula Connelly

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Click here to read the Spring 09 Feast article, Get juiced: Fresh, healthy alternatives to the Master Cleanse.

I asked Carolynn Kraskouskas, owner and operator of Be Whole Again! bodywork and nutritional therapy (Be Whole Again!, 3150 18th Street Mlbx 511, Suite 536, SF; www.bewholeagain.net) to help lay out the basics of planning a detox:

It is important to remember that each person is unique and each cleanse should be designed to work towards your personal goals. Your first step should be to set a goal and figure out the organs you’d like to target in your cleanse. Specifically, what you want to move, slow down or remove. Most people cleanse for weight loss and greater regularity, when they feel like their system has become sluggish, generating a feeling of a lack of health. They are interested in digestive cleanses, which allows their organs to rest and cleanse themselves. However, it is crucial to remember that if you cleanse anything you often take the good with the bad. That is why one of your primary goals in cleansing should be rebuilding. Cleanses need to be sandwiched with a program that rebuilds the organs as well as cleanses them. Rainbow grocery sells popular cleanses in a box that also rebuild.

Keep in mind that our eliminative channels for waste and toxins function in a hierarchy: bowels, kidneys, lungs, skin, and, for women, menstruation. Spending some time cleaning out your bowels before you detox can help to lessen the stress on your other channels during detox, and considerably lessen adverse detox symptoms during your fast, like headaches, rashes and diarrhea. Then you can tackle your targeted organs. It’s good to do some gentle exercise like walking or yoga and a sauna or steam room can help you to sweat out some of those stubborn toxins. Also, you should be aware that you might have to deal with surfacing emotions. This is also a mental cleanse. Food, and the habit of eating food, provides a comfort zone that distracts us from fully experiencing some emotions. Most of the time this is a good thing because we need to function productively and not dwell on negative things. However, every once in a while it’s good to “clear our cache” to lighten the accumulated mental load of every day life. Expect to go through highs and lows and don’t attempt any cleanse for less than two weeks because you’ll likely experience more negative effects than positive.

Happy Birthday, Allen Cohen

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Ann Cohen, wife of the late poet Allen Cohen, writes,

“This morning when I woke up my first thought were of Allen Allen Cohen and all of us are part of the world community. Allen, the San Francisco Oracle Staff and All our friends were and are about people working together
Embracing each others differences This brings strength to us, A world community.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLEN WE MISS YOU.”

Cohen, founder and editor of the legendary Oracle of Summer of Love fame, would have been 69 today (4/23/2009). Ann and his friends are meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at the Bocci Cafe in North Beach where Cohen always celebrated his birthday. His friends will sit where he always sat, near the stage. Cohen died April 29, 2004, at the age of 64.

Ann sent along the poem Allen wrote to celebrate his 56th birthday.

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On my 56th birthday

It is a warm spring day.
Our pre-school children
are playing barefoot
in the backyard.
Cleo, the Siamese cat,
is chasing squirrels
in the branches of the Ash tree.

Last night at the moment
of my birth 56 years ago
the mocking bird
was calling for its lover.

While driving to San Francisco,
the sky became overcast with grey clouds.
As the sun filters through them
a silvery light illuminates the city
The hills of Marin are
wearing a white fog hat.

We are on our way to meet
the Vagabond Poet at
the Muddy Waters Café.
Later we will meet some friends
for dinner at the Bocce Cafe

As I write this in the car
passing through the streets
in the warehouse district,
there is a quietness in the air.
Few cars are in the streets but
people amble along the sidewalks.
It is still good to be here
in this body creating.

Allen Cohen

Read more or Allen Cohen’s poems here and here.

Tentacle talk: “Squidbillies Vol. 2” DVD

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By Natalie Gregory

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Adult Swim’s Squidbillies is a bizarre world of ghoul-like creatures set in nowhere Georgia, whose characters speak with the most hideous Appalachian dialect. I just watched three episodes from the recently released Squidbillies Vol. 2 DVD, and you have to admire the show’s animators. Their sense of humor and imagination has no bounds for the ridiculous, or just plain weird. Again, Adult Swim veterans, bear with my naiveté; everyone else, take note: Squidbillies stars a family of what looks like an alien, octopus, human crossbreed. The patriarch is Early, a fast-talking, shotgun-happy bullheaded type who always knows best. His son, Rusty, is a little more mild-mannered and sweet but devoted to his father. Both are devoid of logic, especially Early. And then there’s Granny, whose behavior seems more inappropriate with each episode. Watch what happens when Early and Rusty kill multiple animals to give her new skin.

Obviously, animation is not constrained by plausibility, and for Squidbillies, this is crucial. Early shoots someone multiple times each episode. It usually happens after someone says something he disagrees with. I found myself laughing at the frequent use of violence to solve problems when things don’t pan out as planned. While some people may glorify the show’s constant use of sadism (the family’s tanning bed stand-in: roasting on a spit until they accomplish third degree burns) as condoning violence, I dare say it’s a subversive attack on the American tendency to solve problems through gun use, and the previous administrations’ tendency to oversimplify complicated political situations. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. But I enjoyed Squidbillies, and laughed heartily at its ridiculousness, whatever the intention may be. The DVD, available here, contains special features including Dragonbillies: Squidbillies Circle Jerk 2: Return of the Self-Congratulation. Yee-haw!

Snap Sounds: Camera Obscura

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By Marke B.

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Morrissey may have crapped out of his stint at the Paramount, Belle and Sebastian are probably off looking for 20 more band members — and whither the classic Bluebells, I ask you?

But at least on this overcast break from yesterday’s heatwave we have the 13-year-old and much overlooked Scottish popsters Camera Obscura — no, not this camera obscura, although the music has the same ethereal shimmer — to keep us melancholically sunny with their new, lushly orchestrated My Maudlin Career (4AD). Somehow the 11 slightly countrified gems on this release seem like the ones that got away from both Neko Case and Rough Trade …

Camera Obscura, “French Navy”

Bonus! Bluebells (Hey, I’m in the mood for jangly Scottish maudlin today)

The Bluebells, “I’m Falling” (much better sound quality here)

What do you know? The singers look quite a bit alike ….

View the previous Snap Sound here.

Sunset solar project moves forward

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By Tim Redmond

The Examiner claims the Sunset Reservoir solar project has run into problems, but actually, the supervisors Budget Committee sent it forward to the full board yesterday on a 2-1 vote. That means the board will vote on it this Tuesday.

I’ve got problems with the project — I’m not sure it’s a good idea to sign a long-term contract with a private company to do something the city ought to be able to do itself. And I have a suspicion that 15 years from now we’ll look back at this as a bad deal.

At the very least, the city ought to take the position that it intends to exercise its right to buy the plant in seven years. But it’s going to be harder to amend language like that into the contract at the full board.

Interestingly, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the Budget Committee, has been opposed to the current deal and wants it amended; he asked the chair, Sup. John Avalos, to continue the item, since Mirkarimi, whose son was born Tuesday, was a bit distracted this week. Avalos got Sup. David Campos, who is also a critic of the project, to take Mirkarimi’s seat for the hearing.

But when the vote came down, Avalos voted to send the matter forward without a recommendation. “The room was full of people who had come to speak on this, and I didn’t want to send them away thinking we’d just continued it,” Avalos told me. “I thought we should act on it.”

Avalos said he’s not gung-ho on the deal, but is a “soft supporter.” He promised that he would look at it again at Tuesday’s board meeting and consider resending it to commitee.

That’s what ought to happen — there are two many issues on this to just approve it without more discussion and amendments.

Movie mania: “Reflections” and Kuchar brothers

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By Johnny Ray Huston

The next two nights bring a pair of great treats for movie maniacs. Tonight, Gallery Paule Anglim hosts “Reflections,” a program of short films that includes ones by Pat O’Neill, Stan Brakhage, a rarely-seen James Whitney work, and some Tarkovsky. At the heart of the program are selections from Dean Smith‘s ongoing video project thought forms. If Smith’s drawings are any indication — and they should be — his contribution to the evening alone should be worth the trip. Smith’s current exhibition is one of the best I’ve seen this year, and even better when paired with Dean Byington‘s painted reconfiguring of collage aesthetics in an adjoining room at the gallery.

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Dean Smith, thought form #11, 2005, colored pencil on paper, 37.5 by 50 inches
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Mike and George Kuchar, from the documentary It Came From Kuchar

Friday night, Baer Ridgway is home to an hour-long program of films by the Kuchar brothers. (That last sentence deserves a !!! ending more than standard punctuation.) George is showing Jamboree Journey and Portrait of Genie. Mike is showing four movies: Vortex, Stolen Sweets, Tattle Tales, and Witchery. I got a lucky peek at one of Mike’s recent movies a month ago, a romantic idyll as gorgeous as its leading man and leading lady — love at first sight stuff. Wanna be where the cinematic fun is? Be there. And it’s free.

REFLECTIONS
Thurs/23, 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Paule Anglim
14 Geary, SF
(415) 433-2710
www.gallerypauleanglim.com

FILM SCREENING: GEORGE KUCHAR AND MIKE KUCHAR
Fri/24, 7 p.m., free
Baer Ridgway Exhibitions
172 Minna, SF
(415) 777-1366
www.baerridgway.com

Cruising Craigslist: Smelly fingers, fast food, and straight guys who like to watch other men masturbate

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Each week, Justin Juul combs the SF Craigslist Personals and Missed Connections for true gems that prove there’s enough love for everyone. View his last installment here

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Sex is cool and all, but sometimes it’s just too much work. That’s why so many of us masturbate. It’s easier, safer, cleaner, and –if you can find someone who looks like Picard from Star Trek to watch you do it or lend a hand — 10 times as fun as regular intercourse. You can even win national recognition for your talents! The only problem is, where are you gonna find someone like that? Hmmmm.

Jack-U? (downtown / civic / van ness)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-04-15, 6:55PM PDT

Handsome older gentleman, Picard-like, seeks good-natured hwp ns/nd to jerk off. Zero receiving. No senior nudity. I’m compact at 5-3 126. This is jack-u-off only.

Help me understand something – w4m – 21 (Bradford)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-17, 8:32PM PDT
Hello guys, I’m not looking for sex, so don’t ask. I need help understanding something. My boyfriend says that all men masturbate all the time. I’ve been married and have had several other relationships and have never been with a man that said he has to jack off everyday. Even days when we’ve had sex, he still sometimes does it a couple of times. I don’t mind putting on a show for him while he does it, and that’s led to some great sex, but if I’m busy, he just looks at erotic porn and does it anyway and that kind of bothers me. I’ve never been into it, unless I’ve been without sex for a long time. In my whole life, I’ve probably masturbated to orgasm less than a dozen times. He says that the other men I’ve been with did it regularly too, but just did it in secret. Is this true? Do all of you still masturbate, even when you’re getting regular sex? Do you ever outgrow it? If you do, can you explain why? Do you have to look at images of women too? I’m serious about this. Thanks for your honest input.

Pics: Lines Ballet tingles, lights up YBCA

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Text and Photos by Ariel Soto

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Evocative African beats and spine-tingling motion are filling up Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts all this week as the local dance company Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet takes the stage. The company, which has been in San Francisco since 1982, breaks away from traditional, stuffy ballet by adding modern movements and contemporary music, with each dance creating a story about the struggles and reality of everyday modern life. It is obvious why they are called Lines Ballet — the dancers’ bodies seem to stretch across every inch of the stage, constantly in fluid movements, keeping the audience’s eyes glued to the tip of their toes and the ends of their fingers and making them come back for more, year after year.

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Beer Fest blues? Wash ’em down …

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By Molly Freedenberg

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It’s Beer Fest time again, which means those lucky enough to have scored tickets to the always sold-out event are prepping their drinking pants for three hours of madness — and those who’ll miss the affair are prepping to, well, drip tears into their (non-festival-acquired) beers. We can’t blame their lachrymosity. The festival features more than 300 varieties from a mind-boggling number of breweries and brewpubs, from locals like Anchor Steam to internationals like Guinness. Then there are the hard ciders and nonalcoholic options. Oh, and the food from the city’s best restaurants. And a commemorative stein to use for tasting and then take home. It’s enough to make a beer fan weep like the condensation on an ice-cold pilsner glass.

We’re sorry to say there’s not much we can do for the people who don’t already have tickets — but we can recommend ways to ease the pain. How about staging your own tasting? Pick up a variety of ales, lagers, pilsners, and more from the dizzying selections at City Beer Store (1186 Folsom, SF. 415-503-1033, www.citybeerstore.com), Healthy Spirits (2299 15th St., SF. 415-255-0610, healthy-spirits.blogspot.com), or New Star-Ell Liquor (501 Divisadero, SF. 415-567-7900). Or let the experts choose unusual, exciting Belgian varieties for you at La Trappe (800 Greenwich, SF. 415-440-8727, www.latrappecafe.com), Monk’s Kettle (3141 16th St., SF. 415-865-9523, www.monkskettle.com), or the Trappist (460 Eighth St., Oakl. 510-238-8900, www.thetrappist.com). Granted, these options aren’t the Beer Fest, but they’re all pretty fantastic as alternatives go. And remember, there’s always next year.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL BEER FESTIVAL 7-10 p.m. $60. Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF

www.sfbeerfest.com

Isabella Rossellini and “crazy animal sex”

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By Juliette Tang

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Isabella Rossellini is a woman who wears many hats. Actress, model, writer, philanthropist. Now, Rossellini can add “filmmaker specializing in animal pornography” to that already impressive list. “When needed, I can have an erection six feet long and stick it inside a female,” exclaims Isabella Rossellini, clothed not in her standard designer fare, but in a paper mache whale costume, of which the defining characteristic is an attachment of a giant pink penis in full erection.

Hallelujah, season two of Green Porno is underway!

Rossellini writes, directs, and lends her acting chops to the quirky Green Porno series, which features the actress, donned in hilarious animal costumes, describing the various mating habits of members of the animal kingdom. The series is winsome and fun, not just because of Rossellini’s infectious charm, but also because of the wonderful craftsmanship of Andy Byers, a Brooklyn-based artist who created all the sets and costumes. His costumes are hand-made, crafts-influenced, and seeped in an adult’s residual nostalgia for bad elementary school Halloween costumes meticulously made by well-intetioned mothers hungry for Kodak moments. There’s also the fact of Rossellini’s sexy, ambiguously European accent, with its traces of Italian and Swedish, which lends richness and whimsy to phrases like “Penises, different penises, all trying to get as close as possible to my eggs!” The series is peppered with Rossellini’s cheeky and good-natured translations of beastial intercourse, and pronouncements like “we are sequential hermaphrodites” reminds me very much of a Polish biology teacher I once had, who always confused the term “organism” with “orgasm,” to jocular result.

Gudrun Gut beguiles with a missing essence

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By Brandon Bussolini

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Now two years old, I Put A Record On (Monika Enterprise, 2007) is a record worth lingering over. In addition to being the first solo release from Berlin-based musical gadabout Gudrun Gut, it’s remarkable for how unhurried Gut was in getting around to it: she’s been appearing on recordings and taking part in bands, including a very early incarnation of industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, for more than 25 years. Her intervening projects give her the aura of a post-punk Zelig: the all-female punk band Malaria! formed in 1981, toured with the Birthday Party, put out records on Belgian boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule, and performed with Nina Hagen at Studio 54. That the group’s "Kaltes Klares Wasser" would later be covered by Chicks on Speed was a foregone conclusion.

The synthy Matador followed Malaria!’s collapse, but Gut’s ear eventually led her, like any good punk, to techno. With typical great timing too: Berlin had just undergone a techno surge, spearheaded by local duo and label Basic Channel. Abandoning the constraints of playing in a rock-derived idiom in favor of more uncharted territory, Gut also had the good fortune to run across Thomas Fehlmann, a producer with post-punk roots who had recently collaborated with Alex Paterson’s downtempo pace-setters the Orb. The two founded Ocean Club, producing a weekly genre-stomping radio show as well as parties that paired up the likes of experimental techno producer Thomas Brinkmann and splay-shirted southern gothic aficionado Nick Cave.

Gudrun Gut, “Move Me”

None of this is new information, yet all of it is useful in figuring out how something like I Put A Record On came to be. It’s beguiling, though free of big emotions — a left-field album that functions as an homage to the hypnotic state that arrives when you’re sucked into your favorite records. The best indication of its intentions is provided by the sole cover, of Smog’s "Rock Bottom Riser." Gut’s multitracked delivery, over a pistoning and downtrodden bass drum, is affectless enough to make Bill Callahan’s stoic delivery on the original seem fraught. But by the end, she’s wracked by giggles, as flecks of color appear like dried spittle around the monochrome production’s edges. Gut is not an innovator: both she and Callahan are committed to the old, inexhaustible pleasure of listening, regardless of genre. And this is exactly what allows them to give back to their respective genres, if we care to name them, some missing essence.

FIRST PERSON MAGAZINE BENEFIT PARTY FEATURING GUDRUN GUT with Thomas Fehlmann, Grecco Guggenheit, and Nate Boyce. Fri/24, 10 p.m., $10-$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880. www.firstpersonmag.com/events.htm

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: Milana and Viana, 24th Street and Noe

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Tell us about your look: “It’s always important to look fashionable.”

SF Weekly’s anti-porn prude

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By Tim Redmond

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The New York Post — whoops, it was actually the SF Weekly — was shocked and horrified by the concept that a state-funded training program might help video tech folks who work at kink.com. Here’s the lead:

California taxpayers have paid $46,791 so that employees of the San Francisco pornographer Kink.com might produce more perfect web-based depictions of motorized dildo impalements …

I don’t need to go on.

The thing here is, so what? Kink.com is a legitimate, legal San Francisco business that employs 100 people, treats them and pays them well, has transformed a wasteland of an empty building into a going concern … and I think it’s great that the people who work there (who also happen to be part of the film and media industry in San Francisco) got to use a state job-training program.

This is good for the local economy. “We are training San Francisco’s workforce for the film and televison industry,” said Kink’s Ilana Rothman. “People who have worked for us are winning awards at film festivals.”

The story is remarkable in its prudishness, and it takes the insulting tack of implying that the models who work at Kink are somehow forced into their jobs. “We couldn’t be more explicit about how safe and consensual our work is,” Rothman told me. And every indication I’ve gotten from every Guardian staffer who’s visited Kink and talked to the workers agrees.

The real scandal here is that Matt Smith personally busted Kink and cost a good employer its training money.

Peepshow: The Masturbate-A-Thon cometh

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Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

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Who: Last year, a Japanese man named Mr. Masanobu Sato came to San Francisco and masturbated in public for nearly ten hours straight. Had he done this in any other city, he might have been thrown in jail or at least laughed at relentlessly. But this is the sexiest place on earth so Mr. Sato got a gold medal instead. He also got a lot of media attention for the toy company he works for, Tenga, Japan’s premier manufacturer of disposable and reusable wank cups. Obviously, becoming a world champion has done wonders for Sato’s career (sales are up, employee-of-the-month certificates are hanging, etc) and so he has no choice but to defend his record. That’s why he’ll *probably be coming back to our city again this year for The Center for Sex and Culture’s annual Masturbate-a-thon. Join Mr. Masanobu Sato, Sister Roma, Fellatio Brown, Dr. Carol Queen, and other famous wankers as they play with their junk in the name sex positivism. Exhibitionists, porn-addicts, and totally normal people like you and me are encouraged to ogle, vote, and even participate in this year’s exhibition/contest.

Film review: “Lost in the Fog”

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By Natalie Gregory

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The need…for speed.

If you’re into horses or horse racing, go see John Corey’s Lost in the Fog — Lost in the Fog being a famous steed who cleaned house in 2005. The film follows the success of the horse’s short career as told through the experiences of owner Harry Aleo and trainer Greg Gilchrist. Aleo is a semi-famous San Francisco local. He has pictures of President Reagan in his front office in Noe Valley and terms the neighborhood “Looney Valley.” (Guess who he probably voted for.) At any rate, the guy has owned horses for about 39 years. Fate brings him Lost in the Fog, a seemingly unstoppable horse that was born to run. The film doesn’t exactly explain the whole industry and sport of horse racing. But it’s fun to watch Lost’s rise to the top. The more he dominates, the more I understood why people go so nuts for these animals.

Lost in the Fog is now playing at the Roxie.

Homeless rally against budget cuts at City Hall

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By Rebecca Bowe

Proposed cuts to homeless-services programs drew a crowd of around 200 homeless people and service workers to the steps of San Francisco City Hall this afternoon. The Coalition on Homelessness, the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, Tenderloin Health, the SRO Collaborative and other organizations set up an outdoor drop-in center and handed out bagged lunches to rally participants. A line of tents that had been set up on the lawn was labeled as the city’s homelessness plan.

“These are not times to cut any services,” said Laura Guzman, director of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, which assists homeless people by providing case management, housing or shelter placement, and other needs. Her organization has seen some 1,500 additional visits per month since the recession hit, Guzman noted, and that they’re constantly at full capacity.

“There’s just not enough bed space to go around,” noted Mission Neighborhood Resource Center staffer Cyn Bivens.

Snap Sounds: Dan Deacon

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

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Dan Deacon
Bromst
(Carpark)

Dan Deacon’s latest album forfeits one-man prowess for a more expansive sound — realized on tour by a 15-piece ensemble — that swaps electronic exclusivity for a tightly woven tapestry of bleeps, samples, and acoustic instruments like the guitar, glockenspiel and marimba. The resulting sound is less alienating-irritating than on previous releases.

Bromst still has endorphin-inducing tracks, like “Woof Woof,” a bouncy, buoyant opener that spazzes out with animal calls that loop backward as the rest of the song moves forward into catchy cacophony. Deacon has honed his skill at building suspense all the way up to a climactic finish, as in the standouts “Build Voice” and “Paddling Ghost,” which crescendo and then plummet like a roller coaster ride. I imagine the noisy culminating track “Get Older” as a scene in Fantasia 3.0, filmed shortly after the apocalypse, in which abstract butterflies and birds repetitiously stream through a realm of light and darkness before lightness finally wins out.

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Dan Deacon gets a hand. Photo by Josh Sisk.

All of Deacon’s work possesses an inherent sense of humor, exemplified by the fold-up tent that is central to his current iconography. But Bromst taps some emotional depths, thanks to “Slow Horns/Run For Your Life,” with its moving staccato piano break, and “Snookered,” with its poignant lyric, “We’ve done this so many times before…but never quite like this.” Such new hints of maturity leave me anticipating the next act by this mad scientist of electronic noise.

DAN DEACON
With Future Islands, Teeth Mountain
Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $13
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
www.gamh.com

Deacon talks about Bromst, after the jump:

“Open Endless” views by David Wilson tonight

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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David Wilson’s new show “Open Endless” includes a 22-foot watercolor of the ocean, and a very small rendering of the sand. I’m going to the opening tonight, because I really like Wilson’s art, which was on display at Eleanor Harwood Gallery last year.

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WIlson has a kinship with Nathaniel Russell, another Bay Area artist who knows how to make a lot out of just a little line or two. Curated by Brianna Toth, this show collects drawings he’s made over the past eight months at the ocean and at the Rodeo Cove cliffs in the Marin headlands. Anyone who has attended one of the happenings Wilson has put together under the Ribbons rubric knows tonight should be sweet, not just because it’s at Tartine.

OPEN ENDLESS
Wed/22, 9 p.m.
Tartine
600 Guerrero, SF
(415) 487-2600
www.ribbonsribbons.blogspot.com/

Beach demon Wavves baptizes SF

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By L.C. Mason

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Even though I’m in my twenties, I feel firmly stuck in teenagerdom, where absolutes reign supreme, the world is always about to end, and indifference is not only allowed, but is a right. Evidently, so does fellow 22-year-old Nathan Williams, the mastermind of the SoCal noise-scrubbed punk project Wavves. At Bottom of the Hill on April 13, his arty, minimalist gospel of hazy boredom and elation churned the sold out spitfire crowd like the hippest TV evangelist with a guitar, drumset and one Herculean Marshall stack in the middle.

The genius of Williams’ sermons are the one-line gems of angst-ridden pubescent sentiment (“Everything’s so fucked”; “You see me / I don’t care”; “I’m getting high / to pass the time / no reason why”) he deftly delivers under a mask of cool ennui –the elusive equilibrium that every teen strives for, but few achieve. Therein lies Wavves’ universal charm: the music gives us a chance for emotional redemption, cleansing our minds of the hormone-fueled confusion that plagues our youth.

R.W. Ulsh and Nathan Williams of Wavves
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Williams and his bespectacled drum-wizard R.W. Ulsh unleashed their set with “Beach Demon,” a speed-ridden amp-sizzler with a lean riff and meaty drums serving up a clanging two-step beat. Usually awash in snaps, crackles and pops, Williams’ on-stage vocals were crystal clear, showcasing his San Diegan drawl. He wailed words we’ve lived by for the past eight years: ”Nothing to do / nowhere to go / everything’s wrong / everything’s wrong,” and his rapid-fire chorus of “Going nowhere / going nowhere / going nowhere” propelled the audience into a maelstrom of fist-pumps and matted hair. Williams’ fuzzed riffery during the extended breakdown not only got the house sweaty but also smelly in its reverie.

The Wavves-brand slow jam was “Side Yr On,” a mournful tune about missed phone calls. Williams’ stony, soaring falsetto and dirge-riffs vividly evoked the sobering brutality of the kind of rejection that hurts at any age.

The night’s coda, “Wavves,” started with gratuitous bass drum and snare beats and whimsical, falsetto Beach Boys croons with a singalong quality that the ladies on the floor couldn’t resist. Williams clearly enjoyed it; a mischievious grin painted itself across his face when their chirps rose above the noise. His boyish string of declarations “I wanna be with you / I wanna be a punk / I wanna see the sun / I wanna be your daddy-o,” reference past pop-punk classics and condense life’s most simple pleasures into music. The one-man juggernaut’s seething, feedback-laden guitar freak-out closed the set, only to leave the rest of us panting for more. The anointing of the San Francisco sect of fervent Wavves fan had taken place.

Tiger Beat-for-punks pic of Williams
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Live Wavves clips after the jump:

Sex-children of the Throb

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By Marke B.

Throbbing Gristle, “Discipline” live at Kezar, 1981

“Like always I persuaaa-aade you.” My audiophile pals have been burbling for weeks about Throbbing Gristle’s return to the Bay Area — an event of enormous sonic-historical magnitude that both Brandon Bussolini and Nicole Gluckstern write about in this week’s issue. And they’ve mostly been taken by the series of vids recorded at Kezar Stadium (“the stadium of dead souls”) in 1981 that documents the raw, uninhibited mind-warp of the group at the time — a perfect tonic for our still-obsessed post-punk indie-bop era. It’s pretty amazing, and I’m loving the obvs tripped-out audience. Also, it looks to have much more in common with composer John Adams‘ Berkeley music-concrete happenings than the overloaded, multimedia Wax Trax spectaculars that industrial would soon veer into, livewise.

The above extended cataclysm, plus this one below by Germany’s Liaisons Dangereuses from 1982, tells a seedy, sweaty, and dirty-sexy industrial story, with a space for women even (“are you ready boys, are you ready girls?”), that I wish had been pin-patched and bedazzled onto Haight Street kids’ jackets rather than the hypersteroidal/paranoid-pop Skinny Puppy-Nitzer Ebb-Ministry one (and hey, doesn’t Depeche Mode have a new album out?)

Liaisons Dangereuses, “Los Niños Del Parque”

It’s a wonder to me how all those macho mid-80s big-time industrial acts could simultaneously be so testosteronal and yet so castrated. Maybe it was all the trying too hard (and it kind of happened again in the 90s with, ew, rap-rock). But, you know, I shaved off my devil lock and fled the industrial dance floor once KMFDM’s “Control” became inescapable. Now that was torture, even though now I find them quite adorable. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of crowd shows up at the TG show on Thursday, to say the least, and whether they’ll have the spikes to ride the experimental thrust into polysexual purgatory, industrial’s true Valhalla (not hell at all), with barest, brief release.

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From the LA Times Coachella blog: “I think I’ve had three orgasms already,” Genesis P-Orridge said after the first song of Throbbing Gristle’s set. All right, so we know it was good for the fair-haired, transgendered leader of the British industrial act, but how was it for us?

Ammiano for governor?

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t see why not — after all, Tom Ammiano as a supervisor was responsible for the two main accomplishments Mayor Gavin Newsom takes credit for in his slick campaign video.

Newsom says that San Francisco is “well on our way to universal health care.” Yes, that’s true — and it’s because Ammiano — with zero help from Newsom — pushed through the Healthy San Francisco law.

The mayor also claims that the city’s bond rating is up and that San Francisco is relatively fiscally sound because of the Rainy Day Fund. Again — that was Ammiano’s bill, and Newsom did absolutely nothing to help pass it.

“He want to be the governor of appropriations, because he appropriates everyone else’s ideas,” Ammiano told me.

Truthfully, Newsom has very little in the way of actual accomplishments (except for same-sex marraige, which is a major accomplishment he can take a lot of credit for, but isn’t pushing and doesn’t even mention in his campaign video.)

What a fucking fraud.

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