SFBG Blogs

Fashionable Francophiles: Meet Please Dress Up!

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By Justin Juul

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Please Dress Up! is a clothing company run by Grant Doolittle and Judy Berbarian, two artists who live in near the Panhandle. If you’ve noticed all the girls rocking stripy shirts and pencil pants in the last few months, it’s because of them.

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Judy Berbarian: My name’s Judy Berbarian and this is Grant Doolittle and we make up the label Please Dress Up! We’re custom clothiers/fashion designers.

SFBG: What’s the general idea behind Please Dress Up!?
Doolittle: Well, it’s just as the name states, really. We want people to dress up and we want to create unique pieces that are timeless in both style and in construction so they can do it. The name Please Dress Up! came to us after realizing what direction we wanted to take our clothing. It’s clear and direct and people get the message right away, I think.

SFBG: Do you fit in with any fashion trends, like a specific school of fashion or whatever?
Berbarian: Our work is rooted in the tradition of French couture: custom made-to-measure garments all available in different fine fabrics. We don’t pay much attention to trends, but we do admire other designers. Some of our favorites are Balenciaga, Viktor and Rolf, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, and John Galliano.

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SFBG: What about local designers? Are you part of an indie fashion movement or something?

Berbarian: We’re pretty separate from any scene, but we do admire some local designers. Al from Al’s Attire in North Beach is our favorite. He’s a true craftsman and his work is just amazing. We’d love to have a shop just like his once we get a little more settled. As far as us fitting in to the design scene here, it’s been kinda hard. San Francisco used to be a Mecca for designer and high-quality clothing, but the industry has sort of disappeared and so have most of the resources for designers like us. All we have is each other to push our creativity further. On the flipside though, the indie designer scene here is special because it’s so raw. Also, people here really want to support locally made crafts. That’s why all the indie festivals have been doing so well lately.

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SFBG: So how did you guys get into the fashion thing? Did you go to fashion or design school or anything?

Doolittle: Nope. No school for me.
Berbarian: Me neither. I’ve been sewing since I was 14 though. I always wanted to do this, but my Aunt discouraged me. It’s was kind of weird because she always made all my clothes, yet she wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. But I just wanted to be like her and make clothes. I was doing it on my own for a while and then Grant came along. We’ve been friends for seven years now, and we’ve been living together for like a year.

Dear Mayor Newsom: pertinent questions on Clean Energy

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I am doing a special set of Pertinent Questions on the Clean Energy Initiative (Prop H) for all the persons and organizations that PG&E enlisted to front for its multi-million dollar campaign of Big Lies to defeat H. My first pertinent questions go to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is in the unenviable position trying to be Gavin the Green while standing with PG&E and against the residents and businesses and environmentalists and neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Dear Mayor Newsom, (via press secretary Nathan Ballard):

I see that PG&E is using you as its major poster boy for its multi-million dollar campaign against the Clean Energy Initiative on the November ballot (Prop H).

I would like to ask you the following questions for my Bruce Blog on the Guardian website at SFBG.com. I am doing a series of questions for persons and organizations that PG&E is using to front its campaign against H, the most expensve initiative campaign in city history.

+How can you represent yourself as the “green mayor” and be a “green talk show” host on green 960 radio when you are standing with PG&E and against the residents, businesses, the environmental community, the Democratic party, the City and County of San Francisco, and the federal Raker Act of l9l3 (which mandates San Francisco become a real public power city?)

+How can you, as mayor, representing thousands of city employees, allow PG&E as a private power company to in effect say that city workers and managers are too dumb, too incompetent, too reckless, and too lazy to run an electric system?

+How can you, as mayor, allow PG&E to in effect control the city’s Hetch Hetchy public power system and the city’s energy policy and thus jeopardize our entire Hetch Hetchy water and power system because the city is in violation of the public power mandates of the Raker Act?

+How can you, as mayor, allow the dirty Potrero Hill power plant to keep pumping away because PG&E controls the city’s energy policy? (I see the fumes every day from my office window on Mississippi Street.)

I would appreciate answers or comments by 5 p.m. today that you could either put on my my blog yourself or give to me to put up on my blog. Thanks very much.

Sincerely yours,

Bruce B. Brugmann, editor and publisher

P.S. No answer as of blogtime on Friday. I’ll keep you posted.

Entroducing… James Lavelle at Mighty

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By Brandon Bussolini

If the name James Lavelle rings familiar, think back: this is the guy behind UK label Mo’ Wax, which in its heyday endtroduced DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Tommy Guerrero. He’s also the mastermind behind UNKLE, the collaboration-prone production team that paired him with Shadow for their five-years-in-the-making debut, Psyence Fiction (Mo’ Wax, 1998).

More talked about than actually heard — the first album included contributions from Thom Yorke, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, and Mike D, among others — UNKLE went on to replace Shadow with Richard File for 2003’s less compelling Never Never Land (Mo’ Wax) and 2007’s virtually ignored War Stories (TBC).

But focusing on Lavelle’s lofty ambitions as a music maker doesn’t give credit to his considerable contributions to hip-hop and house music in the UK; with his boutique label and club nights — That’s How It Is, with Gilles Peterson, lasted a decade — Lavelle helped midwife trip-hop by establishing hip-hop as a living tradition, one whose boundaries weren’t strictly musical.

Bare your breasts for Justice

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OK, I took a lot of shit for my recent velvet-gloved smackdown of French electro duo Justice and their cavalier ways, despite my total support of the local banger scene — but, really, with their new movie A Cross the Universe about to hit Blu-Rays near you-rays, I must say I completely stand by my assertion that hardcore electro is the new hair metal.

Paraphrasing that indespensible Chroniblog Of Our Times, Hipster Runoff: “will public chick b00b ratio to meaningful tour driving road scenes = 1?”

BONUS: EDGY! Total mindfuck mid-90s-like gay-grabbing ploy for cred/attention! C’est francais!

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BONUS BONUS: Everyone’s doing it! (And yet I lurf it.)

CFAC’s Sunshine and Darkness awards

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OPEN-GOVERNMENT GROUP GIVES “DARKNESS” AWARDS ZAPPING ORANGE COUNTY
JUDGE, CAPISTRANO SCHOOL BOARD, SAN BERNARDINO ASSESSOR

The California First Amendment Coalition has named the 2008 recipients of its “Darkness Award,” given in recognition of conduct that thwarts freedom of speech and the public’s right to know. The awards, to be presented Saturday, October 18 at UC Berkeley, are given to:

— Riverside Superior Court Judge David C. Velasquez, who attempted to bar the Orange County Register from covering public testimony in a lawsuit against the paper. His attempt to impose government censorship in the form of a prior restraint was quickly knocked down by the Court of Appeal.

— San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus, a former chairman of the Board of Supervisors who: 1) refused to disclose his activities and e-mails during a two-week period when wildfires raged in the county, 2) as assessor hired an “executive support staff” that, according to the Grand Jury, did “public image work for him, and 3) employed an aide who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney for alleged destruction of public records.

— The Capistrano Unified School Board, which was so indifferent to anti-secrecy laws that the Orange County District Attorney issued a public report outlining the board’s many violations of the Ralph M. Brown public meetings law. In a follow-up inquiry, the District Attorney found further violations and concluded that the board had proven itself “incapable or unwilling” of complying with the law.

In contrast to the Darkness Awards, CFAC also today named the 2008 winners of awards that affirmatively honor service in the cause of free speech, open government and the public’s right to know. Attorney Hal Fuson, the Chauncey Bailey Project, the San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press reporter Linda Deutsch, and legislative advocate Jim Ewert are being recognized for their dedication to First Amendment principles.

—Hal Fuson, vice president and chief legal counsel of Copley Press, will receive the annual Bill Farr Award, presented jointly by CFAC and the California Society of Newspaper Editors. The award recognizes Fuson’s career-long contributions to the principles of free speech,
free press and public access to government.

—The Chauncey Bailey Project and the San Francisco Chronicle will receive CFAC’s Beacon Award. The Chauncey Bailey Project, representing 25 journalists from multiple Bay Area news organizations and journalism schools, produced more than 140 stories that
illuminated the circumstances around the 2007 assassination of Chauncey Bailey, an editor for the Oakland Post who was investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery. Working independently but likewise relying heavily on public records, the San Francisco Chronicle generated 103 stories and probed deeply into the case.

—Linda Deutsch, the legendary court reporter for the Association Press, is a Beacon Award winner. Ms. Deutsch has not only brought some of the nation’s most celebrated trials to our doorsteps, she has fought valiantly for openness and press freedom, earning among other things the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award.

—Jim Ewert, legal counsel and legislative advocate for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, is being honored with a Beacon Award. Ewert is in his second decade of protecting reporters, standing up to censorship, and elevating the rights of student
journalists and their advisers.

The awards will be presented at CFAC’s annual Free Speech and Open Government Assembly, to be held this Friday and Saturday at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The award presentation is on Saturday. The program and free online registration are available here:

The full citations for all awards follow.

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act!

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By Dick Meister

The chances of independent candidate Ralph Nader winning the presidency are as remote as ever in this, his fourth try. But he has important things to say about vital matters that mainstream contenders virtually ignore.

Democrat Barack Obama professes to be ­ and undoubtedly is ­ a strong supporter of organized labor. Like most other Democratic office seekers, he’s endorsed the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which is designed to reverse the steady decline in labor’s fortunes.

But neither Obama nor any of labor’s other Democratic allies has called for the step beyond enactment of the Free Choice Act that is essential if labor is to grow and prosper. Ralph Nader demands it: “Repeal Taft-Hartley!”

STOLEN: Art by Margaret Kilgallen

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A message from Vanessa Blaikie of Gallery 16:

“Yesterday, two Margaret Kilgallen pieces were stolen from Gallery 16. These paintings were included in our current Fifteenth Anniversary exhibition. The works were not for sale, but belonged to Griff and were given to him by Margaret back in the mid ’90s. Needless to say they are of great value to him personally.

Easy was approximately 7″ x 12″, and the Untitled (profile) was approximately 17″ x 12″, both enamel on wood panel. There is very little of Margaret’s original work out there for sale, if any, and so we are asking that everyone please keep their eyes and ears open with respect to these two works. Should they resurface for sale, or should you see these in a private residence, we ask that you please contact us immediately. Any information would be much appreciated.”

You can reach Vanessa at vanessa@gallery16.com and Griff Williams of Gallery 16 at 415.626.7495.

The new old-school: Stone Foxes rock the blues

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By Kat Renz

It’s rare to visit a MySpace site or see an opening band and say, “Holy crap, they’re gonna be huge.” Had I been on the scene in the ’60s or old enough to drive to Seattle in 1989, the exciting shiver of finding a band in their infancy reeking with inevitable promise would feel perhaps more familiar. Today, not so much.

So I was totally unprepared for the Stone Foxes. Though I know it’s a fatal blunder for music writers to prophesize, I’ll do it anyway: the Stone Foxes are gonna be huge. They’re the least pretentious band I’ve heard in, like, forever, which means everything in a modern music scene tainted by image-obsessed emo-tiveness and outsider status posturing.

First I loved their name and second appreciated their MySpace page’s photographic homage to blues-rock influences of yore (the Who, Sabbath, the Faces, Neil Young, et. al). But such attractive details were immediately trumped by their music: pure rock ‘n’ roll, so heavily and blatantly rooted in the blues, augmented with a hearty helping of country’s paradoxical blend of naiveté and grit.

How to make sure Obama wins

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Yeah, the debate went well, and Obama looked cool and together while McCain looked like he was losing it, but the election is still three weeks away, and this is by no means a sure thing.

I got a great letter today from Paul Loeb, the author and activist who I’m proud to count as a friend, and his message is both inspiring and important.

Go to the jump to read how you really, really can change the outcome of this election.

Obama vs. the Penguin

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As is increasingly often the case, Kos had the best debate wrap up — McCain needed a game-changer and he didn’t get it.

What he got was more reinforcement of what people don’t like about him — he’s nasty and he spends too much time trying to attack Obama instead of offering his own ideas. (That, of course, is because his ideas suck, and everyone knows it.

But I have to say, this is uncanny (thanks, Kilian):

Again, Kevin Ryan carries the day

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Once again, Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to be letting his Bush Administration crime advisor, Kevin Ryan, , call the shots on a key policy measure. Either that or it’s his political flak, Eric Jaye.

Because Newsom used to support the idea of a municipal ID card for immigrants. Now, despite a major court victory he wants to delay it.
The truth is, the mayor has no right to put this program on hold; ten supervisors voted for the legislation, Newsom signed it, the courts have upheld it and now it’s city law. What — other than the pernicious influence of Ryan and the mayor’s desire to become governor — could be the reason for delay?

Ammiano on the Mary KayKK

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Sarah Palin rejects notion of veiled racism but does admit to wearing a special makeup: Mary KayKK. Love your thread count.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, saved for readers to combat pre-debate jitters.) B3

No more stolen elections!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

John Nichols lays out the case for the “No Stolen Elections campaign on the Nation.com blog.
He says: “The bottom line from both 2000 and 2004 is this: Smart, engaged activists from across the country were caught unprepared for monumental struggles over not just clean elections and electoral votes but, in a very real sense, the future of the republic.

“Good people tried to intervene. But it was too little, too late. Mistakes made in the hours and days after the presidential elections in each of those two years would haunt the process to its conclusion–or, to be more precise, to an inconclusive moment when power would be allocated without legitimacy.”

To learn more about the campaign, visit the www.nomorestolenelections.org website and sign on “for a democratic election, an honest vote and a legitimate president.”

Click here to read the Nation.com’s blog post by John Nichols titled, No More Stolen Elections!

Downtown’s dirty tricks

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By Steven T. Jones

So everyone knew that downtown financial interests (such as the Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, Police Officers Association, the Association of Realtors, BOMA, PG&E, etc., not the mention their enablers at the Chronicle and Examiner) would be spending big money this election to try to buy the Board of Supervisors. And we knew they’d fight dirty, particularly in the swing districts of 1, 3, and 11.

But a couple of revelations from the past 24 hours show that the attacks that are filling mailboxes and the airwaves aren’t simply dirty – they’re dishonest, unethical, and perhaps even illegal. The Fog City Journal stumbled onto a great story that appears to show illegal political collusion between Dist. 11 supervisorial candidate Ahsha Safai (the real estate developer candidate of Mayor Gavin Newsom who refused our request for an endorsement interview and won’t return our phone calls) and the POA.

And the Chronicle reports on the complaint that Dist. 3 candidate David Chiu filed with the Ethics Commission after a television ad falsely claimed that he supports legalizing prostitution, despite his consistent opposition to Prop. K, the ballot measure that would do so. The commercial and several mailers also falsely claim that Dist. 11 candidate John Avalos still works for Sup. Chris Daly, who downtown is trying to make the poster child for all that’s wrong with San Francisco.

Of course, PG&E and downtown’s bagman, attorney Jim Sutton, have already been the subject of the biggest fines that the Ethics Commission has ever levied for illegal campaign behavior. So perhaps they’re content to just keep lying now and worry later about paying fines with their seemingly bottomless reservoirs of cash.

The wonders of the Bible

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This morning’s Chronicle has an article about religious supporters of Prop. 8, and it included a chart of Bible verses that relate to homosexuality. Matthai Kuruvila, the Chron’s religion writer, tried desperately to be “objective” about what both sides say on the issue. She quotes Leviticus 20:13, for example:

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

According to the religious right, she says, “The injunction against homosexuality is timeless law, though Jesus changed penalties for sin.” (And thank God for that — it seems as if Jesus had some good reasons to oppose the death penalty.) The other side says “Times have changed, and the verses applied to those times only.”

Ya know … I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I realize my school was run by the Carmelites and my parents’ friends were Jesuits and it was, after all, the Sixies … but nobody, not even the priests, took the Bible at its literal word. When I asked one of the nuns during science class how God could have created the world in seven days and she said “don’t worry about that, honey, God’s time is a little different from our time.”

So in that spirit, I thought I would quote a few of my favorite Bible verses that demonstrate how utterly silly it is to believe that this particular collection of writings has any relevance to the discussion of same-sex marriage.

There’s loads more at Thebricktestament, one of my favorite Biblical sites.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Patti Smith, Kings of Leon, M.A.N.D.Y., Hubba Hubba Revue

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Jesus: Patti Smith in The Black Generation in 1979.

So much to do, so many to see. Here are the notables that didn’t make print.

HUBBA HUBBA REVUE
Every third Friday, the frocks come off and the old- ‘n’ new-school burlesque is ahn. Loved Lady Satan’s recent toy-gun-humping Sarah Parlin striptease – she’s here at this Oktoberfest edition, along with Trixxie Carr, Sparkly Devil, Alotta Boutte, and Calamity Lulu. Lee Press-On and the Nails provide the live tunes. Check the show out every Monday eve at Uptown Nightclub, too. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $10-$15. DNA Lounge, 375 Eleventh St., SF. (415) 626-1409.

Pop Montreal part three: Ratatat, Beach House, Wire, and more

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Rah-rah: Ratatat.

By Laura Mojonnier

A snapshot of the Pop Montreal festival, Oct. 3, 4, and 5.

Day 3

Ratatat and Panther at Club Soda, 10:30 p.m.

I began Friday night, Oct. 3, with the second most-hyped show of the festival: Ratatat. (First place goes to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who played Metropolis on Thursday night – not even my press pass could get me in.) It was sold out weeks before Pop began, but somehow Club Soda managed to not feel like the inside of a wet diaper in mid-July. So props to whoever was in charge of air circulation.

I saw opening act Panther over the summer with maybe 30 people in the room at an Oakland gallery smaller than my apartment, so naturally I assumed that seeing them six rows deep in a huge downtown venue was bound to disappoint. But the Portland, Ore., art-rock duo, composed of multi-instrumentalist Charlie Salas-Humara and drummer Joe Kelly, actually managed to pull it off, oozing enough delirious energy to fill the 800-person room.

Secrecy: a root cause of the financial crisis

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This piece by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, is one of the best I’ve seen on the financial meltdown. Scroll down to register for the free CFAC assembly this Saturday at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley.

Disclosure–or the lack of it–is a root cause of the current financial crisis

By Peter Scheer

Economists and historians will be debating for years the causes of the financial crisis that, like a global array of dominoes, now threatens to take down the “real” economies of countries big and small, both “developed” and “emerging,” in a massive flight from investment risk unlike anything experienced since 1929.

To the experts’ lists of causes, let me add a lack of information–specifically, the systemic failure of lenders to disclose ample information about the risks of the mortgage loans being made to thousands of borrowers whose homes have since tanked in value, resulting in unprecedented rates of default. These defaults leave the holders of the affected mortgage investments–primarily banks around the world–with sizeable loan portfolios that they can’t value and for which there is no functioning market.

Click here to continue reading.

Ammiano leaves out the best part

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Yada yada yada, leave a message.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008.)

Personal note to Tom: you left out the best part of the joke, you didn’t mention the Bisque. To the viewers: Check the link above for yada yada yada joke on the Seinfeld episode.

Reality 1.1: Sara Kraft’s ‘HyperReal’ provokes with little analysis

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

The opening: a long-haired lady dressed in black – this is Sara Kraft – walks to the center of the stage and breathes. She breathes louder than one normally breathes, as if she’s attended an excess of yoga classes, and just huffs for several minutes. During this long introduction, Kraft has already bored me – and is beginning to annoy me. I could go to a yoga class if I wanted to hear this. The episode concludes as her arm slowly trembles upwards – rhythmically in step with her gasps.

In the next scene, I discovered Kraft’s voice to be as annoying as her breathing, sometimes more affected than other times, but always in a know-it-all tone that reveals the clearly scripted nature of the performance piece. The major motif of HyperReal – presented Oct. 10-12 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – revolves around “a formative experience I experienced at 4,” as Kraft puts it: the first ocean image she witnessed was in one of the first movies she ever saw: Jaws.

From here she explains the confusion between the real real ocean and the ocean she learns about from Jaws, which includes terrorizing, man-eating sharks. Scenes, like the first two, with Kraft sitting or standing alone onstage, often speaking into a microphone, explaining experiences such as going to Universal Studios and encountering the mechanical Jaws shark or reading the dictionary definition of “reality,” were juxtaposed with scenes performed behind a thin curtain.

Back to Bush

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McCain’s new economic plan is all about getting the government out of the financial industry:

“When that is accomplished,” McCain said, “government will relinquish its interest in these private companies. We’re going to get the government out of the business of bailouts and equity stakes and back in the business of responsible regulation.”

Oh, and he’s going to give tax breaks on capital gains. That will help most of us.

A new New Deal

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I like Obama’s call for a moratorium on foreclosures, although it doesn’t go far enough. But The Nation has been running some great stuff on what a real plan to overhaul the U.S. economy and get us out of this crisis would look like.

William Greider has a clear, coherent explanation of what went wrong and a prescription for how to fix it here. Howard Zinn talks about how to spend the money on the middle class, not Wall Street.

Paul Krugman talks about partial nationaization of the banks here. Funny how even the mad privatizers of the Bush Administration are being forced to accept at some level that idea that the public ought to own part of the financial institutions that we’re bailing out.

Will Ivy makes us itch for more

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By Jen Snyder

Man, San Francisco, you are a very musically incestuous city.

On Friday, Oct. 10, I traveled to Chinatown’s Li Po Lounge for a show. I really appreciate any reason that sends me to Chinatown, be it a mission as a tour guide for house guests or a dire need for new China Flats, but this was a particularly promising trip. Li Po Lounge is a totally legitimate dive bar, plus it has one of those excellent creepy basement show rooms that you usually only can find in Oakland. The sound isn’t super-great, but the lighting (there basically is no “lighting”) and the mood is perfect. To top it off, Will Ivy of Bridez was performing his solo material.

I knew it was going to be good: I’d already listened to a few of Will Ivy’s lo-fi tracks on MySpace and totally dug them, particularly the song “Scrap Plastic,” but my hunch was based slightly more on the fact that most good bands have members with excellent side projects. I’ve always been a fan of songwriters and the diary-style lyrics and the mood that’s created when you’re writing things alone in your room.

Obama and the ’60s

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By Tim Redmond

When I read all the crap about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers — Jesus, Obama was a kid when the Weather Underground was active — it reminds me of a story we ran back in 2002, when the Symbionese Liberation Army was back in the news and the history of the violent radicals of the 1960s was in the headlines.

Tommy Tompkins, our arts editor at the time, wrote the story, which we called “Burying the 60s with the T-Word.” It got buried in a web crash we had a few years ago, so it isn’t on sfbg.com, but I’ve pulled it out of our archives and I’m going to post it here.

Warning: It’s long. And it’s six years out of date. But it offers some insight into how the powers that be want us to think about the Sixties.

You can read it after the jump.

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