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CMJ 2007: If it’s Wednesday, it must be Celebration, Fool’s Gold, the Cool Kids, and Birthday Suits

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October 19, 2007

Passing out lane: Birthday Suits at Cake Shop. All photos by Michael Harkin.

By Michael Harkin

It’s been in the high 60s and low 70s out here in New York City, and while that is set to change pretty soon – the rain was set to start Thursday, the day I write this – the indie-rock sun shan’t set till early Sunday morning! A lot of shows went off Wednesday, Oct. 17 (Tuesday was a bit more low-key) – here are a few that I checked out and enjoyed:

Celebration – good times.

CELEBRATION AT PIANO’S (BROOKLYNVEGAN SHOWCASE)

I was lucky enough to catch a set by Celebration, a Baltimore band whose organ-heavy psychedelic shoegaze-beat was a real treat to take in. Vocalist Katrina Ford explained that, because they were playing in New York, the group was larger than usual, boasting an additional fellow on the congas and a stellar saxophonist who added an element of voodoo jazz freakout to the occasion. Their material had a real infectious, danceable pulse and channeled the space-rock catharsis of Spiritualized on more than one occasion. I’d advise checking them out when they play at the Independent in San Francisco on Nov. 11.

Cool Kids go bump in the night.

FOOL’S GOLD SHOWCASE AT HIRO BALLROOM

A-Trak, Montreal DJ and head of the new Fool’s Gold label, spun a closing with DJ Mehdi of the Paris’s Ed Banger Records, bringing about clever collisions between electro, old-school booty rap and French filter disco. Kavinsky, also associated with Ed Banger, was slated to “perform,” but primarily appeared to be standing around looking cool alongside the aforementioned DJs as they played a few of his 12-inch singles. He couldn’t do it himself?!

The Cool Kids were the flat-out business, man: old-school, oft-808-based breaks and rhymes about gold, pagers, cell phones, and being off the wall like the logo on Vans – you know, the skater kicks? Visuals scrolled behind them of BMX jumping, breakdancing footage, and lotsa Michael Jordan dunks. It was 1993 all over again! Their DJ was called DJ V.I.P.J. – pretty cool. The Fool’s Gold Showcase comes to the Mezzanine Saturday, Oct. 20.

Steamy Birthday Suits.

BIRTHDAY SUITS AT CAKE SHOP

This Minneapolis two-piece was super-thrashy and catchy, pushing miniature, manic bits of punk spazzcore into the basement space of the Cake Shop on the Lower East Side. Guitarist Hideo rolled about on the floor for a bit, while Matthew – who drummed and sang with Hideo – was a whirring thunder behind the kit. Pretty neat-o stuff, and a blinding reminder that rock really ought to be a lot noisier than it often is.

A.J. Roach, why d’ya gotta look so young and sound so wise?

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October 19, 2007

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By Todd Lavoie

I suppose it all stems from my childhood fascination with Yoda, but older-than-the-hills voices seem to sucker me in without fail. It’s especially intriguing when those sounds come from folks whose faces look far too young to creak out such ancient wisdom, such heaving doses of world-weariness.

Sure, I’ve tended to hang on every word during listens of late-period releases from elder statesmen like Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen, but I love the head-scratching incongruity of silver-haired croaks and warbles drifting forth from the pipes of youngish guys and gals. Singers like Will Oldham, Vic Chesnutt, David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower/Woven Hand) – how do they do it? Here I am, knee-deep and beyond into my 30s, and yet I still seem to carry as much bass in my register as a 16-year-old girl. Sagely advice, from these lips? Don’t count on it, love. This little voice of mine carries about as much gravitas as it did in high school. Needless to say, I stay clear of any serious oratory action.

And yet there goes Oldham, a.k.a., Bonnie Prince Bill, carrying the weight of the world atop that stiff upper lip, sounding old enough to regale us with tales of what it was like in the days before dirt. Oh, did I mention he was born in 1970?! Wow, what a fossil. Chesnutt and Edwards – same deal. Both are only around 40 years of age, but their voices have always inhabited the earth, if their records are any indication.

Looking for another name to add to the list? Then a trek down to Amnesia this coming Monday, Oct. 22, is in order, friends: local singer-songwriter A.J. Roach will be throwing a record-release party to celebrate the arrival of his latest collection of mountain music missives, Revelation (Waterbug). Trust me, the disc’s a stunner – I’ve nearly memorized the damn thing already, I’ve played it so much! If you too find yourself giddily a-fluster at the thought of bourbon-soaked backwoods folk with the jagged edges left firmly in place, then Monday’s hootenanny ain’t one to be missed. Oh, and did I mention that admission is free?

Sex cakes for you

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October 18, 2007

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Jerry Carson, the proud owner of The Cake Gallery in SOMA, which specializes in erotic cakes, is one of the nicest dudes you will ever meet. It wouldn’t be so weird if you bumped into him on the street or saw him at the grocery store, but when you’re standing in his tiny den of cock-cakes and pussy-pops, his demeanor seems a little out of place. Carson serves as a walking, breathing challenge to our stereotypical assumptions about x-rated bakers. He doesn’t wear chaps — at least not to work — and he doesn’t have a handle-bar mustache. In fact, he actually looks and dresses a lot like my high school history teacher back in Michigan. Hmmm.

SFBG: So what’s your deal? How’d you find yourself in San Francisco?
Jerry Carson: Well…when I got out of the Army in 1972, I decided I didn’t want to live in Pittsburgh anymore, and I had always loved San Francisco, so I just sort of packed up and moved. I’ve been here ever since.

SFBG: And that’s when you decided to fulfill your lifelong dream of owning an x-rated cake store?
Carson: Yeah…well, I bought this shop from a gay couple about twenty years ago. They used to run a normal cake-shop, but when I got a hold of it, I looked around at the neighborhood and thought these people need something different. I also wanted to have an excuse to talk dirty to girls on the phone.

SFBG: When you say “something different,” are you referring to the gigantic cock/ass cake with spunk-icing in the glass case over there?

After the jump: Safe for eating, but NSFW!

Influential fashion designer dies

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October 18, 2007

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Clothing designer Tiffa Novoa — whose neo-tribal aesthetic transformed the fashion sense of the Burning Man world, starting with the El Circo tribe that she was a part of, and trickled out into the larger Bay Area urban culture — has died at the age of 32. Unconfirmed reports indicate that she had a fatal drug reaction in Bali, Indonesia, where she was staying recently. You can read remembrances of Novoa here and here, and I’ll update this post in the comments section if I hear of any local memorials. Novoa’s Onda Designs influenced a generation of San Francisco clothing designers and had just started to push from the margins into the mainstream with stores like Five and Diamond in the Mission District.
Three years ago, while I was working on a series about Burning Man and in particular one article on how it influenced nightlife in San Francisco, local members of El Circo (which formed in Ashland, Oregon and largely transplanted itself in San Francisco) sang Novoa’s praises and credited her with not just their fashion sense, but in part, their entire culture.

Jerry Brown gives City green light to sue Jew

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October 18, 2007

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Photo by Charles Russo

The sun may be shining, but it’s raining legal cats and dogs for suspended Sup. Ed Jew.

On the eve of a preliminary hearing by the City’s Ethics Commission into charges of official misconduct by Supervisor Jew, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. has granted City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s application for leave to sue in quo warranto to remove Jew from the Board of Supervisors for failure to comply with the City Charter’s residency requirements .

The ruling comes a little more than three weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom initiated official misconduct proceedings against Jew and suspended the District 4 supervisor, replacing him, at least for now, with political rookie Carmen Chu.

City Attorney Herrera says that in llight of the Ethics Commission’s preliminary hearing tomorrow, he intends, “to carefully evaluate” the legal options.
“In the coming days, I will decide how best to represent the City’s interest in concluding a crisis that has clouded the legitimacy of San Francisco’s representative government for too long,” Herrera said in a press release.

Tomorrow’s preliminary Ethics Commission hearing takes place at 1:30 p.m. in Room 416, City Hall.

Hey gay Arabs, get down

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October 18, 2007

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One of my favorite parties of the year, Bibi, is having an encore this Saturday — a sultry, kitschy, haremesque masquerade! Bibi is a raucous party for gay Southwest Asian and North Africans (SWANAs) — not just those of Arabian persuasion, of course — and their friends (my Jewish bf had a blast — unity on the dance floor!). The last one was out of control — the promoters only expected a few people, and yet hundreds crammed their beautiful, hipshaking female, male, and other asses into Club Eight for a pre-Pride Arab hoedown. Alalalalalalala-y!

DJs BaBa Q., Bahman, and Emancipacion take you to funky motherland with a fusion of Middle-Eastern North African & International Beats, and, yes, there’ll be wild bellydancing sendups by drag queens SooozhyQ & Freyja. Nazli Hanem & Femme Fuego host, and Rostam and J. Maximillian put it all together. Plus it’s a masquerade — so wear something extra fab. I’m telling you it’ll be hot — and not just cuz I’m a naughty Lebanese homo. Here’s a little taste of the tunes:

Bibi
Sat, Oct. 20, 9pm – 2am, $15
Club Eight
1151 Folsom, SF.
www.myspace.com/bibisf

More parking = more cars = gridlock

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October 18, 2007

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I attended a Transportation Authority workshop last night on its new Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study (which, among other things, might recommend a fee to drive downtown, just like London, Rome, and Stockholm have) — and I came away more convinced than ever that San Francisco is screwed if downtown greedheads fool people into approving Prop. H and defeating Prop. A.
Ours is one of five U.S. cities selected to collectively receive almost $1 billion in federal money to study and implement ways of reducing traffic congestion. Why? Because we’re the second most congested downtown in the country after Los Angeles. Preliminary studies show traffic congestion cost San Francisco $2.3 billion in 2005 (in delays, fuel, health impacts, and slowed commerce), congestion consistently ranks as people’s top concern in surveys, traffic has slowed our transit system to a crawl, congestion roughly doubles travel times, and half our city’s greenhouse gas emissions come from cars. And if Prop. H is approved, there will be unfettered new parking construction, putting up to 20,000 new cars on our clogged roads, according to the Planning Department. This is madness!
I’m baffled why the Chamber of Commerce supports this because the evidence is clear it will hurt business (perhaps they’re just blinded to reality by their slavishly doctrinaire devotion free markets and hatred of all things government). Study after study shows that more parking draws more cars, and in our built-out city, where there’s no room for creating more lanes, that means more traffic congestion. And therefore slower Muni, which will cause more people to want to drive or ride bikes, which will cause even more congestion — a feedback loop that leads to gridlock. C’mon everybody, think about this stuff for a second because it isn’t rocket science. You can support more traffic or better transit, your choice.

The late great Jim Rivaldo

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October 17, 2007

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Jim Rivaldo, who was Harvey Milk’s first campaign manager and was involved in progressive politics in San Francisco for more than 30 years, died last night. He was a remarkable guy, a rare political consultant who had high ethics, a real sense of progressive political ideology, and a sweet personality. He never had a mean word to say about anyone.

There’s a good story about him here. I’ll have a lot more this week. Meanwhile, his many friends all over San Francisco miss him.

My Bloody Visuals

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October 17, 2007

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In response to last week’s Super Ego column about rave visuals and the techno-optical dance floor wizardry of young projectionist 3, I received a very cryptic e-mail from one Woolsey Kitty, that read simply:

i took “lsd” more than 5,000 times.

and then directed me to a mindblowing Flickr account that contained hundreds of lysergically lovely imagery.

Woolsey is an artist in his 50s who claims to have have at one point amassed a 10,000+ drug research library (I don’t really know what that means, but I suspect … ) and to have only officially earned $2,143 in his lifetime. All the incredible details are here. Let’s just drop back and enjoy ….

After the jump: More trippy pics PLUS shoegaze videos!

Private perils: Elliott Sclar

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October 17, 2007

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Elliott Sclar, economics professor at Columbia University and the author of You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization is one of the nation’s leading experts on the consequences of turning public-sector programs over to private businesses and nonprofits. In an extensive interview with Amanda Witherell, he discusses the central theme of our our anniversary issue.

Wow! SF is expensive!

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October 17, 2007

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The Chronicle has discovered how expensive it is to live here. I have exactly one thing to say:

Years and years of refusing to promote affordable housing — refusing to enact effective rent control, allowing evictions to go on without effective limits, building housing for the rich and not the rest of us — has come back to haunt San Francisco.

And on all of those battles, the Chronicle was on the wrong side.

Cornell trio: three cubed views

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October 17, 2007

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Cuckoos, kindred spirits, flying machines, and Lauren Bacall all crop up in Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes, windows into his exquisitely finite yet infinitely malleable world, now on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We asked three Guardian writers to piece together a few thoughts on the boxes that resonated.

JOSEPH CORNELL: NAVIGATING THE IMAGINATION Through Jan. 6, 2008. Mon.–Tues. and Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m.; $7–$12.50 (free first Tues.). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Untitled (Renee JeanMarie in La Belle Au Bois Dormant)

Framed by the tangled branches of a darkened wood whose blue-tinted foliage alternately resembles billowing clouds and tufts of feathers, a hazy image of a ballet dancer appears within a cerulean haze, her feet and hands extending into a Y whose end points — right hand, both feet — disappear into the blue ether. Have we come upon Titania in her bower in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Venus in her mountain stronghold in Tannhäuser?

As the title of Cornell’s 1949 piece informs us, the dancer is Renée "Zizi" Jeanmaire, a glamorous ballerina of the 1940s known for the daring exuberance she brought to her roles. Cornell was a balletomane who compiled personal dossiers and dedicated shadow boxes to ballerinas both living and dead. Although he never met his beloved 19th-century diva Fanny Cerrito, Cornell made Jeanmaire’s acquaintance, but the 25-year-old remained aloof to her shy fan’s platonic advances. It is fitting, then, that the image of Jeanmaire used by the artist for this box is from her appearance in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Behind a veil of briars, in her crepuscular crystal cage, the dancer is transformed into the slumbering heroine of the Charles Perrault tale: an ethereal beauty suspended in time and inaccessibly distant. Only in Cornell’s retelling there is no prince to break the enchantment. (Matt Sussman)

Nuns of the Above

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October 17, 2007

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The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make the archbishop squirm

I stopped going to Mass the minute I got my drivers license. At first it was kind of a goof — my brother and I told my devout Catholic partents that we wanted to go to a different church in town, where we liiked the priests better, and on Sunday morning, when they set off for their parish, we set off for ours … only we’d stop on the way at a deli where the German owner had never respected the drinking-age laws, and we’d pick up a six of beer. Then we’d go sit in the park and drink for an hour, come home a bit dizzy and answer my mother’s interrogation:

“How was mass?”

“Good.”

“What was the sermon about?”

“Sin.”

What did the priest say about it?”

“He’s against it.”

We all tried not to laugh, and lunch would be served.

Soon we stopped pretending, and didn’t even bother to get out of bed. A Catholic-school education never quite worked; I think I was born with the Atheist Gene, not the God Gene.

But 16 years of exposure teaches you a few things, and when I read about the ridiculous furor over the archbishop of San Francisco apologizing for giving Communion to two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I had to laugh.

Wee butts a-Wogglin’

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October 17, 2007

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By Duncan Scott Davidson

If they could bottle the Woggles, the world wouldn’t need anti-depressants.

The wriggly Woggles

I arrived at 12 Galaxies not exactly depressed, but just having one of those decidedly non rock and roll, rapidly-approaching-middle-age moments: fuck, it’s late. I’m tired. Maybe I should’ve stayed home, went to bed early. The place was more than half empty, which burned me a bit, as it’s the fucking Woggles here, people. From Hot-lanta, G-A? You may have heard of them? The Guardian’s own Cheryl Eddy wrote a pick about them last week, I guess that wasn’t enough. The next time they’re in town, I’m making damned sure the mayor is sober enough to declare it “San Francisco Woggles Day” or some such shit. I mean, I overcame my “adult moment” to get my ass to the club…what’s your excuse?

Opening act Top Ten, featuring the always entertaining Tina Lucchesi (Bobbyteens, Trashwomen, Deadly Weapons, et al) on vocals, was onstage, so that was a plus. The guitar player, or should I say bad-azz axewoman, Erin McDermott, had on this most awesome denim vest that looked heisted from Neil Young’s closet circa ’73, but like tailored to be sexy and not Canadian. I just checked their Myspace, and her favorite band is Cheap Trick, so, you know, that cements my marriage proposal right there. I missed openers Les Hormones, who I heard were fab, which is good, since they’re fighting an uphill battle with the French appellation. French Appalachian? Now, that’s another story. That shit would be hot.

But really, it was all about the reigning kings of the garage, the Woggles, and once again, they didn’t disappoint. Thankfully, the club was more crowded by the time they came on. The Woggles are the type of band that are so cool, they make you think shit like “I can totally rock a three-tiered, blood red, silk ruffle shirt with matching ruffle cuffs. Chicks will totally dig me in that.” And the next thing you know, you’re wondering what the fuck this thing is doing in your closet.

Come as you are Kurt Cobain biographer Michael Azerrad: On “Kurt Cobain: About a Son”

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October 17, 2007

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By Sean McCourt

As singer, songwriter, and frontperson for Nirvana, Kurt Cobain helped lead a musical revolution in the early 1990s whose effects on popular music and culture are still felt today. Yet after his death in 1994 at the age of 27, he continues to remain a figure somewhat shrouded in mystery. The new film Kurt Cobain: About a Son aims to show a more personal side of the gifted musician, told in his own words.

Director A.J. Schnack has taken interview tapes of Cobain done with music journalist Michael Azerrad for his 1993 book, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana – considered by many to be the definitive biography of the band – and filmed scenes of the places that played an important role in Cobain’s life, including his hometown of Aberdeen, Wash., along with Seattle and Olympia, to accompany the introspective and revealing words of the late musical icon.

Michael Azerrad.

The project came to fruition when Schnack was working on a documentary about They Might Be Giants, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, and he included an appearance from Azerrad, who in addition to the Come As You Are has written hundreds of articles about music, along with the excellent tome Our Band Could Be Your Life, a look at some of the most influential underground music artists of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Martians for Fred

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October 17, 2007

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Who knew the scramble of the Republicans for the White House in 2008 would yield such icky comedy? From lovey-dovey phone calls in the middle of NRA advocacy speeches to bizarre backbends over evolution, I’m pretty much betting that instead of rapping Bush twins at this year’s Repub convention, there’ll be a full on circus — with elephants dressed as showgirls, and dancing macacas of course. Maybe their strategy is to put Jon Stewart out of business? Hey, it just might work!

Fred Thompson

This morning’s hilarity comes from a graphic in the NYT of (wide) candidate stances on global warming (pace, laureate Gore!) accompanying a sadly funny article on Republican candidate ungreenness. Fred Thompson, who believes there’s “no scientific consensus on global warming” spilt this gem on the Paul Harvey show in April:

“Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto. NASA says that the Martian South Pole’s ice cap has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

Making naked pretzels

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October 17, 2007

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By Justin Juul

I heard about this Naked Yoga thing via my part-time gig at going.com where I have to scan websites and magazines looking for quirky festivals, art openings, open-bars, etc. When I find a good event, I do a little write up, find a good image to accompany the text, and then I post the whole thing on the site. It sounds like a pretty easy job, I know, but it’s always hard to find things that haven’t already been posted by another stringer. So when I found the catalog for One Taste in SoMa, I was thrilled.

Upward kitty?

Their mission statement claims that “One Taste is an urban retreat center dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. They embrace all levels of being; our bodies, our emotions, our minds and our spirits — while promoting a healthy balance between them.” It sounds kinda corny, but I had a hunch that all the new-age rhetoric was a just a gloss the organization was using to put a positive spin on their obsession with sex. The catalog’s cover featured a huge black and white shot of a naked woman and the calendar inside, which I was going to suck dry for material, was full of classes like “naked yoga,” “exploring our lust,” and “prostate massage w/ live demonstration.”

Normally I would have just picked a few events, written a few blurbs, and cashed my check, but as fate would have it, the editor at another one of my freelance gigs sent out a query to see if anyone knew anything about naked yoga. I do, I said. And with that, my fate was sealed. At nine o clock the very next morning I was pedaling toward SoMa, yoga mat in hand, mentally preparing myself to be naked in front of strangers.

As I approached the corner of Folsom and Seventh my mind grew heavy with doubt. Am I packing enough heat? I wondered. Is my belly too big? Are my poor arms too thin?

Alex Ross brings the noise

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October 16, 2007

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New Yorker critic Alex Ross surveys the many faces of 20th-century classical music
By Max Goldberg
lit@sfbg.com

“In the classical field it has long been fashionable to fence music off from society, to declare it a self-sufficient language,” Alex Ross writes in the preface to his new opus, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. “In the hyper-political twentieth century, that barrier crumbles time and again…. My subtitle is meant literally; this is the twentieth century heard through its music.” This is a bit of a misrepresentation, since The Rest Is Noise is first and foremost a review of composers’ lives, but Ross is indeed working on a grand canvas, stitching together innumerable discrete innovations in a seesawing account of modern classical music’s volatile politics of style.

Smart and cute? Hubba hubba …

Which is to say that while The Rest Is Noise may be telescopic as a political history — the 20th century here belongs to Central Europe, Russia, and America, with only minor walk-ons for whole continents — it’s entirely effective as a history of ideas. Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker, guides us with a generalist’s passion for connections and large-scale developments. He revels in the coincidences and overcrowding of the 20th century: in the way Richard Strauss’s life bridged Wagner to “American soldiers whistling ‘Some Enchanted Evening’” in Germany’s decimated cities; in the fact that two diametrically opposed titans of European composition (Schoenberg and Stravinsky) came to live miles apart in a Los Angeles teeming with émigrés (their neighbors included Thomas Mann, Theodor Adorno, Alma Mahler, and Aldous Huxley).

Running through these overlapping microhistories are the categorizations that define 20th-century music as a realm of ideas: dissonance and tonality, zeitgeist and heartland, modernism and pastiche.

Ken Garcia is right!

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October 16, 2007

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Wow, never thought I’d write that sentence.

But Garcia picked up on a story today that I’ve been following, too, and he’s got the point basically right: A property owner whose case is coming up tomorrow before the Board of Appeals claims that Clear Channel tried to shake him down, demanding he accept a lousy contract — and when he didn’t, the company pulled a billboard off his building and made sure that he could never lease the space to anyone else.

The building owner, Cheon Hool Lee, isn’t exactly an impoverished victim; he’s a retired dentist who owns several commercial properties in the city and lives in Hillsborough. He’s a Korean immigrant who has done well in the United States, and one of the things he did was buy a piece of property on Market Street that had a billboard on top — a valuable billboard in a prime location. In legal papers, Lee and his son Tony assert that they’vbe been told similar billboards in similar places rent for $10,000 – $15,000 a month (and that’s about what I’ve seen from my experience watching the cost of political ads on billboards, too.)

Clear Channel had a lease on the billboard at 2283 Market and was paying the Lee family $697 a month.

Lee wanted more, and when the lease expired, he tried to raise Clear Channel’s rent. According to the legal briefs, Tony Lee contacted other competing billboard companies and other industry professionals who told him that comparable properties rented for “in excess of 10 to 30 times” what Clear Channel was paying.

“I spent hundreds of hours in the last few months trying to be reasonable with them,” Tony Lee told me.

And here, according to the legal filings, is what Clear Channel said: Take our deal — or you get nothing at all.

That’s because city law says that no new billboards can be constructed in San Francisco — and if an existing billboard comes down, it can’t be replaced. So Clear Channel one Sunday evening showed up with a crew and took the billboard structure on Lee’s building down. Now he gets no rent at all — and can’t replace it.

Although Lee technically owned the structure and the building it sat on, and could have rented it to a Clear Channel competitor, it’s gone now — and unless the Board of Appeals supports the Lee’s plea, it will be gone for good.

The message: Mess with mighty Clear Channel, refuse to accept our bad contract, and we’ll screw you.

There are, of course, complicated legal issues here: Who exactly has the “right” to a billboard, the building owner or the company that leases the space and resells it? Did Clear Channel have the right to put a crew on top of Lee’s building without his permission and take down a structure? Does the city’s ban on new billboards apply even when a billboard was improperly taken down?

I’m no fan of billboards, and I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to try to sort that all out. I’ve called Clear Channel’s lawyer, who said he can’t comment and sent me to the company’s government affairs office, where I’ve left a message and haven’t heard back. I’ll keep trying to get the company’s response and will update this post when and if I get it.

But I will say that at this point, it sure looks like one of the biggest media companies in the nation is doing something pretty damn sleazy.

Whack-a-Murdoch

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October 16, 2007

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This is really brilliant.

Examiner sells out San Francisco

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October 16, 2007

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The San Francisco Examiner called Prop. H “a veritable minefield of unintended consequences. It could actually take away parking, harm business, reduce new housing and drive out neighborhood retail. By now, Californians should be wary of unexpected mischief unleashed from propositions that legislate by direct referendum.”
We should also be wary of self-serving Republican billionaires like Don Fisher, who is sponsoring Prop. H, and Phil Anschutz, who owns the Examiner and has used its editorial page to attack progressives values like smart planning and reasonable regulation of greedy capitalists who would harm the public interest.

Why would I say such things about the Examiner, whose editorial also noted that “If the initiative organizers had faced harder questioning, they might have recognized that merely adding parking to a fast-growing downtown is likely to make already-bad congestion dramatically worse.”? Well, because it wrote this honest assessment of the measure back on Aug. 2, and even though Prop. H hasn’t changed since then, the Examiner yesterday used its front page endorsements to urge a “yes” vote on Prop. H. There was no explanation or arguments, just a simple position change on the most heinous and far-reaching ballot measure in years.

Not dead yet

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October 16, 2007

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Guardian photo by Charles Russo
Chicken John Rinaldi’s quest to become the first San Francisco mayoral candidate to qualify for a grant of taxpayer money is still lumbering along like the zombies that attacked him last week, more than a month after the Aug. 28 deadline for raising $25,000 from at least 250 city residents. The Ethics Commission last night voted unanimously to allow Rinaldi one more submission of proof that those who gave to him through PayPal are city residents, overruling Ethics director John St. Croix that Rinaldi doesn’t qualify. At issue are whether to count contributions from city residents whose current addresses doesn’t match their drivers license addresses, a fairly common circumstance for the artists and techies who make up Rinaldi’s base. If the campaign can satisfy Ethics, it gets $50,000, and so its quest inches forward like the undead.

Sprechen Sie Hubba Hubba?

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October 16, 2007

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By Amber Peckham

Mag ich ein Bier haben, bitte?

That’s German for “May I have a beer, please?” Memorize it, because burlesque-style Oktoberfest has come to San Francisco at last, thanks to the combined efforts of the Hubba Hubba Review and the DNA Lounge. The lederhosen-clad lovelies of Hubba Hubba will kick off the festivities around 10:15 this Friday with the best burlesque show this side of Bavaria, followed by magic and comedy acts, a DJ, and the swing stylings of local band Lee Presson and the Nails.

Mein Gott! So hot! Sparkly Devil and Kingfish strut their stuff onstage during a performance.

When US soldiers phone home

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October 16, 2007

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Today’s New York Times features a photograph of soldiers phoning home from Iraq.
My son this summer before he deployed to Iraq
I feel cheered and churned when I get those calls.
My emotions don’t resemble “300”‘s Queen Gorgo , who tells her her husband, the Spartan king, “Come home with your shield or on it.”

Lena Headley plays the wife of Spartan King Leonides in “300”.

I am not Volumnia, the mother figure in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, who tells her daughter-in-law, “had I a dozen sons, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.”

But as a mom whose son chose to serve in the US military, I understand that my son is following his passion.

My son studying a medal he was awarded
I respect the courage and discipline that he and his fellow soldiers are showing in going into a war zone.
I recognize the need for troops in some situations, given that we are not living in a perfect world.

The 143rd Field Artillery’s farewell ceremony at Camp Roberts, California, earlier this summer
So, for me, it’s not about ending the war in Iraq just so my son come can home.
I know he’s likely going to be there for 12, 15, perhaps 18 months.
What bothers me is that there are no guarantees that the troops won’t be sent right back for a second or third tour No guarantees that they’ll get a break that’s at least as long as the time they’ve just served.
No guarantees of adequate care for veterans or adequate, functioning equipment for active soldiers.
And then there’s the fact that the US had no business invading Iraq in the first place.
Every day, I think about my son and what he is experiencing and what his presence in Iraq means for the Iraqi people, the US and the rest of the world.
Every day, I wonder if today, maybe, he’s going to be able to call home.
Every day, I hope that this nation will have the courage to talk about bringing our troops home.
And most of all I hope that one day I’ll be able to drink tea with my son in the garden, again.

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