SFBG Blogs

Althousing odyssey

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Marianne Moore takes you on a guided tour through the often confusing, always thrilling world of Bay Area alternative housing

We all know San Francisco housing is murder, with median rent for a one-bedroom apartment going for nearly $2200. So when I came home from college for my sweet but unpaid SF Bay Guardian internship, I knew I would have to be resourceful. I was prepared to live anywhere and do (almost) anything, as long as it was cheap. If you’re a local reading this via free wireless in your rent-controlled apartment (enjoy it while it lasts!), you may find this information irrelevant and stressful; or maybe you’ve been through it all. But if, like me, you can visit the beautiful Bay only for too-short summers, or you’re passing through or in transition, read on.

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Home sweet hostel? Not if you’re local.

The USA hostel on Post, like most hostels, will sometimes let you work a certain number of hours per week in exchange for a free bed. You have to work at least 24 hours and the nightly rate is $25 for paying guests, so it comes out to about $7.50 an hour, well below minimum wage in San Francisco. When I tried to arrange things over the phone from New York, I was told by the bored-sounding receptionist that I would just have to show up for a couple nights so they could “see if they liked me.” That made me a little nervous, but since I’m not totally unlikable I still thought it was worth a try. When I checked in and presented my California driver’s license, I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to stay unless I could show an out-of-state ID. Apparently the company has a policy against boarding California residents, a policy specifically designed (it seems to me) to keep out homeless people. This isn’t typical for hostels; places I’ve stayed in New York City are regularly used as stopgaps by people between apartments. I couldn’t help but think that the hostel shuts out native Californians to protect their guests (mostly drunk-ass Eurotrash on holiday) from the realities of life in SF, presenting a tourist experience in line with trips to Ghiradelli Square and Pier 39.That, plus the popularity contest application process, had me heading straight for the nearest internet café and the dizzying wilderness of options that is Craig’s List .

Lit: Interview with Favianna Rodriguez

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By Liam O’Donoghue

Favianna Rodriguez is from Oakland and she lives there today. She is the co-editor, along with Josh MacPhee, of Reproduce and Revolt: A Graphic Toolbox for the 21st Century Activist (Soft Skull Press, 192 pages, $19.95). On the eve of the book’s release party, she recently spoke about the project’s origins, forging connections between groups and the Bay Area’s role in activist art.

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Cover of Reproduce and Revolt

SFBG: Even in the socially conscious art world, it’s usually men who get the most spotlight.So, first of all, I want to give you props for raising the profile of so many radical womyn artists with this book. Can you tell me about any challenges or goals specifically related to gender issues that you had with this project?

Favianna Rodriguez: I’m a first generation woman of color. My parents were immigrants. So it was very important to me for the book to represent not just women, but women of color. We’ve got lots of artists from Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Argentina in this book.
My co-editor, Josh MacPhee, is a white male – he’s cool, very anti-racist – but he understood that with a project like this, which involves getting global artists to submit royalty-free art, it was very important to have a woman of color in a leadership position. Of course, the political art world is male-dominated, so some of the sections, especially the “war and peace” chapter, were overwhelmingly male, and we really had to work on creating the balance of perspectives that we wanted [throughout the book].
But women of color aren’t the only ones that are generally under-represented – black men are another example. This book is just the first phase. We’re just getting started, because we’ve got a good selection of Latin American artists [featured in the book], but we want to expand to include more Asian and African artists with the next editions. It’s all about building networks.

SFBG: What inspired you to start this project?
FR: Josh was collecting graphics and I’d been talking with Bay Area women artists about doing something like this, so we decided to merge our projects. I wanted to make it a multilingual project and I brought in tech people so we could make this all happen online. This book was totally compiled and edited online. We did artist authorization documents and design and had political discussions online.
The book has over 300 images from 12 countries, and the Web site that will launch on July 1 is also going to be bilingual. It’s going to have all the graphics in high-resolution, available for download, because nobody wants to scan images anymore if they don’t have to.

Politics and sausage

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Last night, I was reminded of the old joke that people who like sausage and appreciate politics shouldn’t watch either one being made.
Less than a week after winning a majority of the seats on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, the progressive-minded “Hope Slate” candidates (all of which were endorsed by the Guardian) descended into bitter infighting over who to back for the powerful chair of the DCCC.
The acrimony began when Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, whose 23,049 DCCC votes was second only to David Campos (whose run for supervisor this fall would conflict with running the DCCC), resisted calls to run for the chair, much to the consternation of progressive stalwarts such as Chris Daly and Robert Haaland.
Some Hope Slate candidates, such as Laura Spanjian, were apparently supporting a play by Assembly member turned Senator-to-be Mark Leno to have moderate Scott Wiener continue as the DCCC chair, despite the fact that he wasn’t part of the winning slate and he finished in 10th place in the DCCC District 13 race.
And for awhile there, Peskin seemed to be going along the Leno’s play, arguing that progressives should adopt a conciliatory posture. So the candidates gathered together last night at the 500 Club to hash out their differences, and I had a front row seat for a discussion that turned nasty – with Daly shouting at Peskin and Spanjian and then storming out of the room.
But today, as cooler heads prevailed, Peskin has decided to run, telling me, “Yes, it is true, I am running.”

Local Artist of the Week: Tara Tucker

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LOCAL ARTIST Tara Tucker
TITLE Double Trouble
THE STORY “My work is about natural history and human psychology. All the animals in Double Trouble are from Africa. The secretary bird eats snakes. The snake in Double Trouble is a green mamba, a really dangerous part of the cobra family. The baboon is ‘me,’ and I’m hanging with my friend that is a bit of a user, but eats snakes.”
BIO Tara Tucker lives in Berkeley and teaches at Creative Growth in Oakland. She has an MFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts and is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery, where she had a solo show in 2007.
SHOW “Resisting Dominion: Nature and New Political Narratives,” Thurs/12 through August 16. Wed.–Sat., noon–5 p.m. Opening reception: Thurs/12, 6–8 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Art Gallery, 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 554-6080. www.sfacgallery.org
WEB SITE www.taratucker.blogspot.com

Stunning doublespeak on electricity rates

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While PG&E is requesting the California Public Utilities Commission allow them a 6.5 percent electricity rate hike over the next six months, ostensibly to cover skyrocketing natural gas prices, they’re telling local citizens they’re expecting prices to drop.

In Marin County, our neighbors to the north have been listening to PG&E lobbyists criticize their county’s plan to provide 100 percent renewable energy to residents through Community Choice Aggregation. Their CCA plan, called Marin Clean Energy, will offer customers 25 percent renewable energy by 2009 twice what PG&E offers, and for the same rate. Customers who want to pay a little more can go 100 percent renewable right out of the gate. Ultimately, they’ll scale the 25 up to 51 percent by 2013, and 100 percent thereafter.

Marin argues that 100 percent renewable energy is a more fiscally responsible way to go – precisely because natural gas prices are volatile and will continue to rise. But PG&E says Marin’s plan is too risky and too costly. You can read PG&E’s critique of the plan, and Marin’s apt rebuttal, here.

But recent testimony from Dawn Weisz, MCE’s planner, sums it up pretty succinctly.

“Their [PG&E’s] main criticism is that we won’t be able to achieve the cost benefits,” Weisz told a May 23, 2008 meeting of San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission, who had invited her to brief them on their CCA’s progress. Weisz said they had an independent third party analyze the CCA plan and PG&E’s critique.

The analyst found a key flaw in PG&E’s logic. “They’re using a gas forecast that assumes gas will be 14 percent cheaper in 12 years,” Weisz said.

At this, the entire LAFCO board broke out in laughter. Any sane person knows that isn’t going to happen. As Weisz pointed out, natural gas prices rose an average of 30 percent over the last five years, and as the San Francisco Chronicle reported today, they’re 63 percent higher than they were a year ago. Natural gas is a fossil fuel just like crude oil, and speculators are having their day with it, too.

But PG&E is using their estimate to contend their prices will be cheaper than MCE’s over the long run, so you best not switch services. And as we can see from the awkwardly placed chart to the left, PG&E”s rates have only and ever gone up.

As PG&E continues to cling to their fossil fuel infrastructure, and combats communities who attempt to prove viable, renewable alternatives are possible, we should expect to see PG&E pleading at the CPUC for more and more rate hikes.

Lit: Beautiful Children and what doesn’t stay in Vegas

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By Todd Lavoie

The notion that Las Vegas is a playground for complete id-indulgence certainly holds resonance for a nonstop onslaught of tourists. But what is the city like for folks who work and live in such an environment?

It’s a question worth considering. Unfortunately, many answers are prone to the hypocritical grandstanding trotted out by self-described moralists such as William Bennett (whose fondness for Vegas’ betting tables, once it became public, ultimately proved more than a bit inconvenient for such posturing). Truth be told, one could probably gain more meaningful insight from the storylines of CSI: Las Vegas than from the wild-eyed Sodom and Gomorrah depictions of the city whipped up by preachers and political pundits. At least the TV show explores motives and surrounding circumstances rather than summarily damning everyone to hell.

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The glitter-glue cover of Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children

A more valuable contribution to the dialogue has arrived with Charles Bock’s debut novel Beautiful Children (Random House, 417 pages, $25), a sweeping portrait of the author’s home town which strips away the city’s glittering veneer to reveal a degraded core. At the epicenter of Bock’s troubled Las Vegas landscape sits twelve-year-old Newell Ewing, a coddled, almost joyless boy — comic books are his chief source of comfort — who suddenly disappears from his affluent suburban home. Newell’s parents, Lincoln and Lorraine, are both haunted by personal compromises. They also have never bridged an understanding with their only child.

Scottish SF

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By Phil Eil

San Francisco may be a long way from Scotland, but the fingerprints of our kilt-wearing friends are all over the Bay Area. Between John Muir (of Muir Woods), and “Uncle John” Mclaren, the Golden Gate Park superintendent who vowed, “There will be no ‘Keep Off the Grass’ signs,” Scotsmen have San Francisco-area parks covered. And then there are the seven San Francisco public libraries—including my local branch in the Mission — financed by the Scottish-born steel baron Andrew Carnegie. If that’s not enough, consider each Scottish Terrier in Bernal Heights Park, all the Scotch Whisky in town, and every stitch of plaid clothing … ever. Now you’re on your way to giving the craggy country “North of the border” its proper due. Yes, Guy-Who’s-Seen-Trainspotting-Twenty-Four-Times, I’m talking to you.

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$2.8 million for Newsom’s Community Justice Center? Hell, no.

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“There are so many things on the chopping block that this seems out of whack.”

So said Sup. Tom Ammiano at yesterday’s Board hearing on the Mayor’s Community Justice Center, sounding diplomatic compared to some of the pointier comments that his fellow supervisors made, as the Board voted 7-3 to send Newsom’s $2.8 million CJC back to committee.

But then again, all the supervisors sounded outspoken compared to Sup. Geraldo Sandoval, who recused himselffrom the discussion , on the grounds that he is running for judge. (Sandoval’s absence felt even more ironic as the hearing progressed and a couple of sitting judges spoke in favor of the center.)

Now, everyone knows that wannabe governor Mayor Gavin Newsom has been itching to add the CJC t to his political resume ever since visiting a similar one in New York.

The public power initiative: let’s roll

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Coming home after almost two weeks in Sweden with the annual World Association of Newspapers (WAN) assembly and study tour, I was struck once again how nothing seems to change in San Francisco when it comes to the PG&E/Raker Act scandal.

PG&E was still firmly in control of the city’s energy policy in the mayor’s office. Mayor Gavin “The Green Knight” Newsom had capitulated spectacularly to PG&E and had reversed his policy of supporting a plan by his PUC that would have given the city control over some local power generation at the Mirant power plant (the peaker proposal.) The mayor had met secretly with PG&E executives and stiffed representatives from the Potrero Hill neighborhood and the environmental, environmental justice, public power, and community choice aggregation (CCA) movements.

The Hearst-owned Chronicle continued its long corporate tradition of blacking out the real story of the accelerating PG&E/Raker Act scandal. The utility was beautifully executing its divide and conquer strategy it has honed ever since the days that John Muir and the Sierra Club fought in vain to stop the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park for the city’s public water and power supply. (In that battle at that time, the Guardian would have stood with Muir.)

Amanda Witherell laid out the latest sorry episode in her story in Wednesday’s Guardian. Her lead: “Green City Mayor Gavin Newsom finally outlined what he calls a ‘more promising way forward than the current proposal’ of building two publicly owned power plants in San Francisco. The way forward: retrofit three existing diesel turbines at the Mirant Potrero Power Plant, while simultaneously shutting down Mirant’s most polluting smokestack, Unit 2.”

Our editorial laid out the political context: “The politics of the deal are complicated, but the driving force is clear: PG&E didn’t want the city moving even a small step toward public power, and as usual, the big utility is getting its way…PG&E has been trying for months to derail the peakers–not, of course, out of any concern for the environment, but because the city would own the power plants. At first Newsom stuck by his SPUC but when seven PG&E lobbyists came into his office and gave him the facts of life (see ‘PG&E offers Newsom a blank check‘), he backed down.

“And now, after meeting with the CEOs of PG&E and Mirant, Newsom is pushing the worst possible alternative: he wants to retrofit the Mirant plant and let the private company operate its own peakers. Same fossil fuel plants in the Bayview. Same type of air pollution. And the facility would be owned by a private company.”

Repeating for emphasis: When PG&E spits, City Hall swims. When PG&E spits, the mayor swims.

And so PG&E and Newsom have set the stage for the next phase in this great battle to kick PG&E out of City Hall, enforce the federal Raker Act mandating public power for San Francisco, and bring our own cheap, clean Hetch Hetchy public power to the residents and businesses of San Francisco.

The next stage is the emerging new public power initiative that Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin are working on, with a wide swath of neighborhood and public power forces, aimed for the November ballot as a charter amendment.

This would be the third go at taking on PG&E head-on on the November ballot. This time it has a good chance of succeeding since PG&E and Newsom have gone out of their way to make the case for public power in 96 point Tempo Bold for all to see and savor. The measure will also be helped by massive turnout with Obama, seven supervisorial races, a clutch of solid progressive measures, and a smart, aggressive Obama like grassroots organizing campaign.

Let’s roll. B3, who wonders when he will no longer see the fumes from the Mirant plant from his office window at 135 Mississippi Street at the bottom of Potrero Hill

Click here to read this week’s article, Newsom’s power play.

Click here for this week’s editorial, A vote for public power in November.

Uh-oh: Lennar’s $25 million shipyard funding gap

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Sup. Chris Daly wants an immediate hearing into the fiscal health of Lennar’s construction project at Hunters Point Shipyard, (you know, the one where they repeatedly messed up the asbestos dust monitoring).

Daly made his request at the June 10 Board of Supervisors meeting, following the discovery that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency has applied for, but has so far been denied, a $25 million grant to subsidize infrastructure costs at the site.

The agency filed its grant application with the California Department of Housing and Community Development in April 2008. During that same period, Lennar spent an estimated $5 million to successfully persuade voters to support Proposition G, which will allow Lennar to develop luxury condos at Candlestick Point, as well as at the Shipyard.

(At the last minute, Lennar appeared to sweeten Prop.G’s terms, by negotiating a community benefits deal with the San Francisco Labor Council, including promises of 32 percent affordable housing and job creation investment. But tthe deal stretches the definition of “affordable” to way above what your average Bayview Hunters Point resident earns. And it only becomes legally binding, if, and when, something gets built at Candlestick/Hunters Point.)

Holding up a big fat binder, stufed with spreadsheets, financial data and grant applications, Daly read aloud to his fellow supervisors from documents that suggest that there is a serious financial shortfall at the Parcel A site, where Lennar graded an entire hillside in preparation for developing a 1,500 unit condominium complex.

“This raises questions about Parcel A and the mixed use project,” said Daly, citing from documnents that claim that the receipt of gap funding, “will restore the ability of the SFRA and the Developer to continue the development.g

As the agency’s own grant application states, “The Gap Funding in the amount of $25,021,079 provided by the infill infrastructure grant will enable the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the land master developer to continue the development of the Shipyard.”

“The infill infrastructure grant will be instrumental in moving forward the Capital Improvement Project in light of exisiting market conditions and increased construction costs.”

“Without the receipt of the grant, it will face delays in the timing of the completion of the infrastructure and creation of much needed parks.”

Hmm.

Daly’s cache of documents also reveal that the Shipyard Legacy Fund has shrunk from $30 million to $5 million. This raises serious doubts about the City’s ability to deliver on a list of promised community benefits at the Shipyard.
According to the SFRA’s own documents, “The Legacy fund is charged with reinvestment of the Agency’s proceeds from net land sales back into the BVHP community with an emphasis on employment, housing and financial/asset development, youth development, elder services, arts/culture & recreation and environment/safety.”

Stay tuned.

Kerchiefs out, again, for Phyl and Del

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Dammit, this picture does it to me every time:

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Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the first couple to get married in City Hall, 2004, in a great photo by Liz Mangelsdorf of the Chronicle

Kamala (left), I know exactly how you feel. And my once radical queer eye teared up again, dammit dammit, at the news that Phyllis and Del will officially be the first legally married same-sex couple in San Francisco on June 16. (The flood of betrothed others will be ball-and-chained starting the 17th.)

Phyl, aged 83, and Del, 87, who of course are legendary for their incredible contributions to the community, met in 1950 and moved in together in 1953. That means they’ve officially been together for more than 55 years.

As I read the news last night next to my Hunky Beau, I realized that time might be against us for reaching such a milestone anniversary together — but still our hands squeezed a little tighter. Romantic fools! Thank you, Phyllis and Del. You completely deserve this. Whatever reservations I and many other queers may have about marriage, you’re an inspiration of feisty longevity and dedication.

Happy birthday, pardner … splash!

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This Wednesday at 6pm: Is there any better way to celebrate both John Wayne and the warm weather?

Yelp is on the way

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By Dona Bridges

Sometimes I want to give you my heart, Yelp.com. I want to praise you in typo-ridden prose and give you that highest of all honors, the five star rating. You are a star, a soapbox, a great leveler of the playing field, where the voices of the people at last ring loud and clear, audible above advertisers and bullshit merchants.

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Sure, some of my friends talk shit about you. They say that you’re too influential, and we now have to live and die by the sharply worded textual swords wielded by Laura B. or other (less hilarious) Yelp members. My restaurant co-workers click through your reviews and say, “What if I came to your workplace, then wrote about it on a highly trafficked website? While not bothering to fact check?” I might agree sometimes, especially when there’s a new review of my workplace that uses words like “slow,” “annoying,” or – how ’bout this —”bitch.”* I might roll my eyes, get all red in the face, and join the hating party: “Yeah! You come in here and do my job! Then I’ll yelp you until you cry!”

How much is that dead guy in the window?

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By Phil Eil

Some guys collected baseball cards when they were little. Martin Economou collected skulls. Nowadays, he doesn’t just collect skulls, he sells them three days a week at his store, Martin’s 16th Street Emporium. “It’s a skull shop,” Martin told me, pointing out raccoon skulls, electric light-up skulls, skulls with human hair, and skull rings as we toured his shop. “Skulls are big,” he explained, passing a glowing blue plasma skull, “They weren’t five years ago. The kids are wearing them—they’re everywhere.”

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“Don’t mind me, I’m just admiring the shape of your skull…”

The bicyclist vs. the oil industry’s best friend

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As I prepare to attend next week’s International Towards Carfree Cities Conference in Portland (from which I’ll be doing daily posts on this blog) — traveling up by train with a big group of bicyclists and alternative transportation activists from San Francisco — the newsgroups and carfree living websites have been abuzz over this simple image:
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Why go gaga over a presidential candidate on a bike? After all, John Kerry rode one and President Bush reportedly takes regular mountain bike rides. The difference for those who promote bicycling as a viable urban transportation option is that Obama rode in a big city, in street clothes, on an inexpensive bike, and was even hauling something (probably his daughter, although that isn’t clear). And he chose to spend his downtime cycling through Chicago with his family shortly after saying this in Portland: “If we are going to solve our energy problems we’ve got to think long term. It’s time for us to be serious about investing in alternative energy. It’s time for us to get serious about raising fuel efficiency standards on cars. It’s time that the entire country learn from what’s happening right here in Portland with mass transit and bicycle lanes and funding alternative means of transportation.”
Contrast that with today’s news that Senate Republicans have blocked legislation that would have taxed the obscene profits now been reaped by the five big largest American oil companies, which took in a staggering $36 billion in just the first three months of this year. Just imagine how many bike lanes and transit improvements could be funded with the proposed 25 percent tax on unreasonably high profit levels? Or by getting out of Iraq, with its price tag of more than $250 million per day?
Forget the detailed analysis of their economic plans; the differing visions of these two men couldn’t be more clear. We either keep cooking the planet, fighting the world, and begging the rich for crumbs and spare change, or we try something different.

JROTC: This is never going to work

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Wouldn’t a martial-arts program be a better option?(Photo of Master Jung from Koreanmartialarts.com

Okay, I’m all for getting rid of JROTC in the public schools. But I also recognize that there are some kids — about 1,600 — who like the program and get something out of it.

So the School Board has been looking around for an alternative — and I’m sorry, but this is never going to work.

Ethnic studies is a great idea, and ought to be part of the SFUSD curriculum. But the kids and parents who support JROTC aren’t going to see it as a viable alternative. And it’s pretty clear why.

Ethnic studies sounds like a class. JROTC is popular in some circles because it’s not just classroom education. It’s physical activity, it’s fun, it’s leadership development and it has a community-building element. The most popular part of the program, I’m told, is the marching band.

You need something that offers the same sort of attractions, but isn’t a military recruitment tool. And it seems to me there are plenty of options.

School Board members have talked about trying to find a program that feeds into the San Francisco Fire Department or even the Police Department. I don’t love the police option, but hey: Better to get kids interested in law enforcement than in the Army (and it might actually help San Francisco recruit some local people with community roots to be police officers). And a junior firefighter-paramedic program would have all kinds of benefits. The district hasn’t been able to work anything out with those options, though, in part because there’s no existing infrastucture; you can’t send 14-year-olds to the Police Academy, and the city’s paramedic classes are limited to people 18 and older.

But there’s another solution, too — and it seems pretty obvious to me.

San Francisco already has at least 50 good martial-arts schools and clubs that teach kids. I’ve been involved in Tae Kwon Do for almost 20 years, and my son is now a student at the Korean Martial Arts Center , and I can tell you that these classes offer physical fitness, confidence building, leadership development, and create communities and team spirit. You get uniforms. You learn to respect yourself and others. Good programs, and there are plenty around, teach conflict resolution and nonviolence.

And it’s fun and really cool.

Best of all, the infrastructure already exists.

The SFUSD spends $800,000 a year on JROTC. Most martial arts clubs in San Francisco are financially modest operations, and most instructors aren’t in if for the money. Getting a group of local martial arts clubs to set up satellite programs in the schools would be cheap. (The schools already have facilities and insurance, and the uniforms and equipment are — by the standards of what we spend on JROTC — inexpensive.

The kids now get phys ed credit for JROTC — another big attraction — but that’s a stretch anyway, since the state now requires phys ed teachers to have a California teaching certificate and none of the JROTC instructors qualify. Figure out a way around that for martial-arts instructors and you’d have it made.

I called Jane Kim, a school board member who’s on the curriculum committee, and she told me she was a little startled by the Ethnic Studies proposal, too. “We’ve been pushing the district to create an Ethnic Studies plan for a long time now,” she said, “but I was surprised to see that they combined that with replacing JROTC.” She’s a little dubious about this plan, too.

“We’re going to keep the marching band, though,” she said. “That’s a given.”

Which is a start.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Judy Mowatt, Wolf Eyes, Styrofoam, and more

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Singer through the wringer – and at Rickshaw Stop this week.

Bo Diddley’s passing has bummed me out – leaving me in a drifting, low-level depression-style funk. But know what, B-Diddley wouldn’t have wanted you to sit around and sulk. You got options – some very intriguing ones, in fact.

HELOISE AND THE SAVOIR FAIRE
Kylie added them to her top MySpace chums. The NY electro-rock sensations smash it up with Solid Gold references, trash, rats, and, oh yeah, microphones. Tues/10, call for time and price. Trannyshack at the Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 252-7883.

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JUDY MOWATT
The crucial member of Bob Marley’s I-Three is born again but word has it that she retains that Jamaican fire, backed by the Yellow Wall Dub Squad. Wed/11, 9 p.m., $25. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.

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The pedigreed Chicago combo comes bearing a new LP on Drag City, Unhistories, and all sorts of challenging musical notions: what else would you expect from US Maple’s Todd Rittmann and 90 Day Men’s Robert Lowe? With Sic Alps and the Fresh and Onlys. Thurs/12, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

Compassion and class: Billy Bragg

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By Laura Mojonnier

Twenty-five years into his career, Billy Bragg has solidified his position as England’s most sensitive soul, crooning about every fresh wound with a characteristic urgency that allows even his sparest compositions to engulf entire rooms. He sings his stark but tender, often overtly class-conscious folk songs with a punk rock urgency, as if Joe Strummer and Jeff Mangum fused for just long enough to cover Phil Ochs.

In the early ’80s, Bragg rarely bothered to incorporate instrumentation beyond his crudely played electric guitar, heightening the already-bleak lyrics of songs like “To Have and To Have Not” (“The factories are closing and the army’s full / I don’t know what I am going to do”) and “It Says Here” (“Those braying voices on the right of the house / Are echoed down the street of shame / Where politics mix with bingo and tits / In a strictly money and numbers game”).

As the decade progressed, Bragg began to add instruments, outside musicians, and even the occasional vocal overdub to his distinctively stripped-down style, a trend that would continue throughout his career. By 1990, he was writing full-on orchestral arrangements and collaborating with members of REM and the Smiths. While Bragg maintained his political edge, his increasingly complex compositions began to overshadow the sonorous coarseness that made his earlier work so deeply moving.

3 Good reasons to hate Meghan McCain’s blog (besides the obvious)

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By Marianne Moore

Meghan McCain, the senator’s young, hot, keffiyeh-wearing daughter, has taken to blogging from the campaign trail, and the media is lapping it up: depending on who you read she’s alternately “hilarious,” “refreshing,” or even “adorable.” Lest you be seduced by the blog’s seemingly innocent, light-hearted descriptions of bad campaign food or the Governator’s neckwear, find below the tools you need to remain ruthlessly scowling at Meggers and her Daddy.

1. Revolting Fake Hipness

In addition to sharing her observations and insights from the road, Meghan also graces us with her iTunes playlists, a sure way to show us that she’s down. The playlists are a truly bizarre mix of predictable indie bands (Architecture in Helsinki, Neutral Milk Hotel, Broken Social Scene: seriously, it’s like she hired a consultant) older artists (David Bowie, Stevie Wonder), shite (Rod Stewart), and music a Republican just has no business listening to (Joni Mitchell, Iggy Pop). Really, she can listen to whatever she wants; I guess what I object to is Meggers turning some of my favorite artists into hollow McCain shills, just like I generally object to the pollution and degradation of things I hold sacred.

According to a hysterically enthusiastic article in Britain’s The Observer, Meghan has single-handedly “reinvented the campaign blog” and “injected [McCain’s] political persona with some much-needed street cred.” Right. Because nothing says street cred like private jets, ditzy gushing over mass murderer Henry Kissinger’s loafers, and “self-deprecating” admissions of Starbucks addiction.

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Shannon Bae shows us What Asian People Like: Soda! John McCain!

Cheap beer and rubber band balls

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By Justin Juul

San Francisco has the best liquor stores in the country. Oh sure, you could make the argument that New York City, with all it’s bodegas, and bullet-proof-glass-lined 24-hour sandwich shops is the real leader in this race, but come on. They don’t even sell beer at those places, and well, most of them just don’t have the personality of the shops you find here.

SF liquor stores got class, yo. There’s The S&W Market in the Lower Haight where the Pakistani couple spends all day bitching about the neighbors and stink-eyeing anyone who walks in the door. There’s The Transfer Market on Divisadero where you can barely hear yourself think over the Bhangra tunes blasting from the clerk’s surround sound speakers. There’s Mama’s in Noe Valley with the cool sign, Papa’s in The Castro that always smells like rotten meat, and a whole slew of other mom ‘n pop joints throughout the city where you can enjoy cheap beer, cool people, hot sauce, and some straight up weird shit. But none of these places is as awesome as Pride Superette on the corner of 22nd and Guerrero.

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Photo from the SF Chronicle

Is it me or the Marina?

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Today, while walking down Union Street in the Marina in my green She-Bible mini dress, I got hit on twice in one block. And not just a whistle or a “damn, girl, you look good,” or even a “that’s a great dress,” (which I got earlier at the SFMTA office on Van Ness), but honest-to-god pick-ups. A tall guy in a baseball hat sitting outside a bank told me I was beautiful and asked where I was headed. “Working,” I said, and smiled as I walked quickly away.

Half a block later, a man on a motorcycle with an orange Mohawk helmet stopped his bike and asked where he was taking me to dinner.

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I blame it on She-Bible, the local design team who made my badass green version of this dress.

Good riddance to SF Zoo director

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This weekend came the long overdue news that Manuel Mollinedo has finally resigned as executive director of the San Francisco Zoo. Our sources say he was forced out by the San Francisco Zoological Society Board of Directors after the union representing many zoo workers overwhelmingly approved a no confidence measure against Mollinedo, who has presided over the steady deterioration of employee morale and the conditions under which the animals are kept. But it’s been difficult to get anybody talking on the record because of legal warnings about how loose lips could hurt the society’s efforts to fight lawsuits related to the fatal tiger mauling in December, which Mollinedo couldn’t have handled worse.
The Guardian has been warning for many years that the privatized zoo was bad for the city and worse for the animals. Unless the Zoological Society can use this opportunity to take the zoo in a drastically different direction — with more focus on animal welfare, greater pay equity between the director and employees, and a commitment to more public accountability — maybe it’s time to start talking about reclaiming the zoo as the public institution that it once was.

SPORTS: Green (and gold) with envy

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Image from the late, perhaps lamented, giantsvsas blog.

By A.J. Hayes

This coming weekend, the Giants will host the A’s for the 12th year of inter-league play. While San Francisco fans have typically viewed the cross bay series with a shrug and a ho-hum, to Oakland management and their fans, this cross-bay face off is serious business.

The clubs have been competitors for the affection of Bay Area baseball fans since 1968, when the A’s moved to town – but over the past decade the Giants have also become Oakland’s biggest rivals on the field.

Even during exhibition games, the A’s have historically played the Giants with an extra spring in their step. And don’t forget green and gold’s four game sweep of the Giants in the 1989 World Series (A’s fans certainly haven’t). Since inter-league play began in 1997 Oakland and holds a 34-28 advantage against San Francisco.

These Bay Bridge series (the series moves to Oakland June 27-29) also gives the A’s a chance to vent their long simmering resentment towards for all things orange and black.

Check out the copy of this promotional flyer for the A’s games this month:

“June. The Month of Champions. Teams representing 16 World Series titles since 1968. The Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, New York Yankees, Florida Marlins, Philadelphia Phillies…and the San Francisco Giants.”

The A’s and their fans never miss an opportunity to promote the fact that in the Giants have yet to win a World Series during their 50 years in San Francisco. It doesn’t matter how many home runs Willie Mays and Barry Bonds hit – where are the rings?

We can understand their bitterness. Because despite winning four world titles since coming to Oakland 40 years ago, the A’s have always played second fiddle to the Giants.

Dethklok fired up? Cancelled show rescheduled tonight

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By Kat Renz

It’s official: San Francisco is too brutal for the world’s most brutal band – or at least, Adult Swim’s most brutal band. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, I was fully prepared to go forth and die, as promised, to the eagerly awaited, sold-out Dethklok show at the Fillmore. Instead, I went forth and left.

Opening band Soilent Green, who performed as the crowed continued arriving, was awesome: supertight – and frontman Ben Falgoust, who windmill headbanged along, had great energy. It boded well for the night. Then, in the midst of the third or fourth song, a Fillmore employee took the mic, calmly announcing there was a “slight big emergency” and we all had to exit the building – just as we were settling in, getting our cells resonating at the speed of some grinding Louisiana metal. Thankfully I had yet to buy beer.

So, 10 minutes after getting patted down and hand-stamped, we filed out of the building – a herd of bratty sheep. Young boys gave their full cups of beer the college chug and the curious, confused, and complaining fans were, to say the least, vocal at the offense of the inconvenience. Stepping a steel-toed foot into the chilly outside (damn, why did I coat-check my hoodie?!), I knew the sirens, with their reverse Doppler effect, were destined for us. Fire at the Fillmore. How metal is that?

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