SFBG Blogs

Profiling those who rely on HANC, which the city is evicting (VIDEO)

Sasha Cuttler
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Profiling those who rely on HANC, which the city is evicting (VIDEO)

The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council’s (HANC) Recycling Center has fought for the past decade to stay in its tiny corner of Golden Gate Park, behind Kezar stadium, and it may be days from closing. It’s been served with eviction notices from the city and weathered political tirades from politicians on pulpits, and most recently, saw its eviction appeal denied by California’s Supreme Court.

The recycling center, which has been in operation since 1974, wouldn’t be the only loss to the Haight either. Both a community garden and San Francisco native plant nursery are on the site, under the umbrella name of Kezar Gardens. After an eviction for the recycling center, all three would go.

So in what may be their last days, the Guardian decided to take a look at  who is a part of the recycling center’s community. What keeps them coming back – even in the face of eviction? While the final eviction date is nebulous, the reasons for it are not: as the Haight gentrified, more and more neighbors complained about the site’s surrounding homeless population, the noise the recycling center makes, and every other NIMBY complaint in the book.

Contrary to the usual complaints of the recycling center and gardens attracting numerous homeless people, the people detailed in the stories below reflect a diverse community. And there were far more stories that we didn’t include: the busy head of a nonprofit who gardens to keep his sanity, or the two brothers who bring in their recyclables every week as a way for their parents to teach them responsibility. And they’re not the only people who depend on the recycling center and gardens.

“One of the problems [with evicting HANC] is that the small businesses in the area depend on the service of the center,” Sup. Christina Olague, who representing the area, told us. “We don’t want to see it relocated out of the area.”

Olague said that although ideas for a mobile recycling center or a relocation have been batted around, nothing is concrete yet. The Mayor’s Office, the Recreations and Parks Department, and HANC were all going to have more meetings and try to come to a solution that would benefit all sides, she said.

The recycling center and gardens aren’t going down without their supporters making a clamor. They developed a feature documentary about their struggles, titled 780 Frederick. Directed by Soumyaa Kapil Behrens, the film will play at the San Francisco International Film Festivals “Doc Fest” on Nov. 11.

Until then, here’s a glimpse at some of the people who make up the community at the HANC Recycling Center and Kezar Gardens.

 

Greg Gaar, Native Plant Nursery Caretaker

Longtime groundskeeper and recycling guru Greg Gaar will soon be out of a job, only a year after single-handedly starting a native plant nursery in the Haight Ashbury that serves more than 100 people.

Gaar is the caretaker of the Kezar Garden nursery. He raises Dune Tansy, Beach Sagewort, Coast Buckwheat and Bush Monkey –  all plants originally born and bred from the dunes of old San Francisco.

“I do it because I worship nature, to me that’s god,” Gaar said. He spoke of the plants reverently.

The native plants aren’t as bombastically colorful as the rest of Golden Gate Park, he said, which Gaar calls “European pleasure gardens,” but they’re hearty and durable, like Gaar himself.

Gaar has a weathered face from years of working in the open air, and he grinned large as he talked about his plants. His grey beard comes down a few inches, giving him the look of a spry Santa Claus. Gaar has a history of embracing the counterculture, much like the Haight itself. In 1977, he made his first foray into activism.

At the time, wealthy developers in the city wanted to develop buildings and houses on Tank Hill, one of the few remaining lands of San Francisco with native growth. “Two percent of the city right now has native plants,” he said. It’s a travesty to him, but he did his part to prevent it.

Gaar led the charge against the redevelopers by putting up posters and flyers, and fighting them tooth and nail for the land through old fashioned San Francisco rallying.

In the end, the counterculture activists won, and the city of San Francisco bought the land back from the developers, keeping it for the public trust. The long-ago battle over Tank Hill was a victory, but the fight for the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center may already be lost.

Gaar has deep ties to the recycling center. Among his friends are two ravens, Bobbie and Regina, who recognize Gaar since the first time he fed them 16 years ago. Occasionally, he says, they’ll accompany him on his rounds around the park. The ravens aren’t the only friends he’s made through the recycling center.

They have many patrons looking to make a few bucks off of cans and bottles, many of which are poverty-struck or homeless. Gaar darkened as he spoke of them, because over the years he has lost many friends he’s made through work. The recycling center is a community, and those that are lost are often memorialized in the garden that Gaar grew with his own hands.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist C. W. Nevius frequently calls out the nursery as a “last ditch effort” on the part of the recycling center to stave off closure and legitimize its own existence. In reality, the nursery was brainstormed years before the controversy through Gaar’s inspiration.

Though Nevius may not agree with the ethos Gaar has brought to the recycling center, the city of San Francisco must trust him. The Recreation and Parks Department has offered him a job planting native plants around Golden Gate Park, which is Gaar is welcome to after the recycling center closes. But taking care of native plants is more than a job to Gaar, it’s a calling.

“Isn’t it amazing that we exist on one of the sole planets we know of that supports life?” Gaar said with wide eyes. He sees his job as preserving the natural order, working to keep alive the plants that were part of the city before the first arrival of the spaniards.

Gaar, much like his plants, is part of a shrinking population of the city: the San Francisco native. When the recycling center closes, he’ll be able to spread native plants across Golden Gate Park, another rebel cause in a life of green activism.

 

Kristy  Zeng, loyal daughter

Kristy Zeng, 30,  talked about everything she does for her family in a matter of fact tone, as if none of it took effort, patience or loyalty.

As she talked, Zeng unloaded over six trash cans worth of recyclables into colored bins. At home, she has two young girls waiting for her, ages three and one, she said. The money she gets from the recyclables is small, but necessary – not for herself, but for her mother.

“My mom’s primary job is this one,” she said. Zeng’s mother is 62 and speaks no English. In the eight years she’s been in San Francisco since immigrating from China, she hasn’t been able to find a job.

“People look at her and say she’s too old,” Zeng said. “She’s too near retirement age.”

So Zeng’s mother hauls cans in her shopping cart every day to earn her keep. She’s one of the folks you can spot around town foraging in bins outside people’s homes, collecting recyclables from picnic-goers in parks, and asking for empties from local bars. The money she earns is just enough to pay for her food.

Even between her husband’s two jobs, Zeng said her family doesn’t have quite enough to fully support her mother. The recyclable collecting is vital income, Zeng said. She and her extended family all live in the Sunset and Outer Richmond, though she wishes they could find a place big enough to live together.

The Haight Ashbury Recycling Center is just close enough to make the chore worth the trip. Zeng was surprised to hear that the center was near closure.

“I would have to find a job,” she said. She usually watches her infant and toddler while her husband is at work. “Mom can’t babysit them, her back isn’t so good. It’s too hard.”

It’s not so bad though, she said, because at 30 years old, Zeng is still young and can handle the extra work. But if the recycling center closed, Zeng and her mom would both have to find a new way to make ends meet.

 

Steven and Brian Guan learn responsibility

At about five feet tall, wearing an oversized ball-cap and dwarfed by the man-sized jacket he wore, Brian Guan, 12,  definitely stood out at the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center. All around him, grisly old men hauled bins full of cans and bottles – but he didn’t pay them any mind.

Brian had his older brother Steven Guan, 14, to look out for him. Together they hauled in four bags worth of recyclables in plastic bags, walking straight to the empty bins as if it were a routine they’d done a dozen times before.

Which, of course, they had.

“I’ve been doing this for at least a year,” Steven said. Though he looks totally comfortable, the chore definitely introduced him to a different crowd than he’s used to.

The recycling center’s clientele of homeless folks, and people generally older than 14, don’t really bother him, he said. “It’s kinda weird, but it’s no big deal.” Besides, he said, he’s happy to help out his family, who spend a lot of time working.

“My mom works in a hotel, and she collects the cans and stuff there.” His dad does the same.

Their mom is a maid, and dad is a bellhop, working in separate hotels downtown. Steven didn’t know if the money they collect each week was vital for his family’s income, but he does know that the haul isn’t very much.

“It’s usually only like $10,” he said.

So was it even worth the trip? Steven said that if he wasn’t helping out his parents by bringing in recyclables, he’d probably be “at home doing nothing.” A Washington High School student, he doesn’t play on any sports teams and isn’t in any clubs. He spends the majority of his time helping out his family.

The way he figures it, he said, the chore is meant to teach him responsibility.

It looks like it worked.

 

Dennis Horsluy, a principled man

A lot of the patrons haul cans and bottles to the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center out of need: to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and live. Dennis Horsluy, 44, does not count himself as one of those people.

“It’s pocket change,” Horsluy said. But despite the cost, he’s going to get every red penny back from the government that he’s owed through the California Redemption Value charges on cans and bottles. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Horsluy said that Sunset Scavenger, now known as Recology, has a stranglehold on San Francisco’s recycling and trash.

“If you leave your recyclables on the curb, it’s like taxation without representation,” he said. You pay for it whether you want to or not. In his own version of “sticking it to the man,” Horsluy makes sure his recycling dollars get back into his hands.

Horsluy is a displaced auto-worker who has only just recently found work again. “I made plenty, and now I make nothing,” he said.

A family man, he has a daughter at Lowell High School, and a son at Stuart Hall High School. He thinks San Francisco has problems much weightier than closing the recycling center, such as the school lottery system that almost had him sending his kids far across town for school.

Horsluy wasn’t surprised that some of the Haight locals had managed to finally oust the recycling center, considering they’ve been complaining for years about how it attracts many of the local homeless population to the area. “I’m sure it’s a problem for the neighbors with their million-dollar homes,” he said.

But the homeless were a problem long before the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center, Horsluy said. San Francisco has a history of generosity, and so it draws more of the needy. Horsluy will be fine without the recycling center, he said, but the more poverty stricken patrons of the center may not be.

“They’re just trying to survive.”

 

Chris Dye, gardening his troubles away

Some people drink to forget. Chris Dye, 44,  does something similar — he gardens to forget.

While watering the plot of greens he calls his own, Dye spun a yarn that sounded like a San Francisco version of a country song. His ex-wife bleeds his paychecks dry, and he had to leave his dream job at the National Parks Service to make ends meet in Information Technology, a job he pictures as the last place he’d like to be.

He regained a bit of peace in his ordeals through a hardcore passion for San Francisco native plants. “I found a rare kind of phacelia clinging to life in the cement at City College,” Dye said. “You know, down by the art building? When I saw it, I sketched it.”

A day later though it was gone, he said. He fell silent in what was almost a reverent moment for the rare native plant he spotted. Dye is on a personal mission to revive native San Franciscan plants.

The Kezar Gardens give Dye a chance to grow for himself all the interesting native plants he’s interested in. Inspired by the native plant nursery’s caretaker, Greg Gaar, he rattles off all the near-extinct species he’s been able to see and raise. “For me, it’s a personal experiment to figure all this out.”

It’s not all about leafy activism though. Sometimes, it’s just about a good meal. Dye snapped off a leaf and crushed it with his fingers. “This is Hummingbird Sage,” he said, holding it up to his nose for a sniff. “Mix this into a little olive oil, and rub it all over your pot roast, or whatever. It’s fucking amazing.”

 

Lael and Genevieve Dasgupta

Four-year-old Genevieve marched around the table by the garden, watching as a woman carves a pumpkin for Halloween.

Genevieve and her mother, Lael Dasgupta, recycle there in the Haight once a week, as part of Dasgupta’s hope to get her to learn at a young age about eco-responsibility. They don’t use one of the garden plots in the community garden, because they have a communal backyard at home. They do use some of Greg Gaar’s native plants in their garden, for decoration.

Dasgupta has mostly practical reasons for recycling. “It brings us about $40 to $50 a week… That’s a lot of money,” Dasgupta said.

But despite the location of several other recycling centers in the city, why does Dasgupta bring Genevieve here?

“Dirt, dirt dirt,” she said. “Its just good for her to play in the dirt, and build a healthy immune system. The other recycling centers aren’t as charming.”

Dasgupta said that if Kezar Gardens and the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center were to close, she wouldn’t relish taking her daughter out to the Bayview recycling center. She’s been there, and didn’t enjoy the experience. It’s easy to see that the two are comfortable at Kezar Gardens. Folks around the gardens all seem to know Genevieve, who marches around the place without fear.

The woman who was carving the pumpkins handed one to Genevieve for her to play with. The young girl promptly set to the pumpkin with a marker, making what could be either a set of incomprehensible squiggly lines, or the Milky Way galaxy, depending on your perspective.

 

 

‘Cloud Atlas’ and more new movies, plus one new-old movie (‘Wake in Fright’)

Sue Vaughan
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‘Cloud Atlas’ and more new movies, plus one new-old movie (‘Wake in Fright’)

A couple of potential Oscar contenders open this week: The Sessions, which could earn a nomination for John Hawkes’ portrayal of a paralyzed man seeking to (finally) lose his virginity; and Cloud Atlas, an sprawling, interesting-yet-flawed epic from Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, and Andy Wachowski that might win some technical notices, though probably won’t earn any acting nods (however, the Many Faces of Tom Hanks could sneak in there). Short reviews of both films below.

In this week’s Guardian, read up on unsettling 1971 Australian film Wake in Fright, finally hitting US theaters this week, and the San Francisco Film Society’s “French Cinema Now” series, including a film starring Jane Fonda as an American expat in France (speaking flawless French, and looking pretty flawless, too).

Other new movies this week: Gerard Butler battles big (Bay Area!) waves in Chasing Mavericks; a teen (Nickolodean starlet Victoria Justice) chases her rascally little brother from one end of Halloween night to the other in Fun Size; a king (Korean dreamboat Byung-hun Lee) hires a lookalike actor to body-double him in Korean hit Masquerade; and people … uh, run shrieking from spooky stuff in video-game sequel Silent Hill: Revelation 3D.

Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable “fabricant” server to the “consumer” classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after “the Fall,” an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant “impossible adaptation” screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zu8lX8BA2w

Nobody Walks In Ry Russo-Young’s LA-set film, from a screenplay co-written with Lena Dunham, an alluring young woman named Martine (Olivia Thirlby) is welcomed into the Silver Lake home of psychotherapist Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and sound engineer Peter (John Krasinski), who has agreed to help Martine with the soundtrack for her film, destined for a gallery installation back in New York. While Martine’s film constructs a fiction around the fevered activities of the insect world, Russo-Young’s drifts quietly through the lives of its human household, offering glimpses of the romantic preoccupations of a teenage daughter (India Ennenga) and Julie’s interactions with one of her patients (Justin Kirk), and revealing a series of relationships hovering tensely on the border of unsanctioned behavior. The uncomfortable centerpiece is the intimacy that develops between Peter and Martine; tracking their progress through the family’s sprawling home as the two collect sounds for her project, the camera zooms in toward the sources, making the spaces the pair inhabit seem ominously small. Their eventual collision is unsurprising, but Peter hardly comes across as a besieged, frustrated family man. He tells Martine that “marriage is complicated,” but against the warm, appealing backdrop of his and Julie’s home life, it sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse for kissing a pretty, proximal 23-year-old. As for Martine, she seems not to need any rationale. But even factoring out the callousness of youth (or at least the genre of youth presented here), the film offhandedly suggests that the tipping point away from domestic happiness is depressingly easy to reach. (1:22) (Lynn Rapoport)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywxrqt7so9s

Pusher A pusher has been pushed to the limit — this time around in a charm-free, deal-driven London. This remake of the Nicolas Winding Refn’s 1996 Danish hit was given the seal of approval by the Drive (2011) auteur, who took a role here as an executive producer, with Luis Prieto in the director’s seat. Prieto does his best to keep the pressure on at all moments, as small-time heroin dealer Frank (Richard Coyle, resembling Dominic West in urban-hustler safari mode) undergoes the worst week of his life. He appears to have a tidy little existence with goofy, floppy-haired cohort Tony (Bronson Webb) by his side and delicately beautiful stripper Flo (Agyness Deyn) providing sexual healing and safe harbor for his dough. He has just hooked up drug mule Danaka (Daisy Lewis) to bring back a batch from Amsterdam when acquaintance Marlon (Neil Maskell) hits him up for a large order. Frank goes to his supplier Milo (Zlatko Buric, reprising his role in the original), an avuncular sort who pushes baklava in space sprinkled with wedding-cake-like gowns. Frank already owe him money and can’t cover the heroin’s cost, but this is a business built on trust, as fragile as it is, and Milo likes him, so he goes along, provided Frank returns the money immediately. Those tenuous ties of understanding are tested when cops bust Frank and Marlon and the former must dump the dope in a park pond. He refuses to give up his connections to the cops but finds that the loyalty of others is being tested when it comes to threats, cash, and even love. Prieto is a more self-consciously lyrical moviemaker than Refn, choosing to a vaguely Trainspotting-style cocktail of lite surrealism and slightly cheesy low-budg effects like vapor-trail headlights to replicate the highs and lows of Frank’s joyless clubland hustle. Still, he makes us feel Frank’s stress, amid the fatalistic undertow of the narrative, and his sense of betrayal when Pusher’s players turn, despite a smalltime pusher’s workman efforts to shore up against the odds. (1:29) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qc2fwGNLv4

Question One Question One goes behind the scenes of the 2009 campaign concerning the referendum which reversed legislature granting same-sex couples the right to marry in Maine. The film investigates both sides of the story, including marriage dreams of queer families and confessions of regret from the appointed leader for the Yes on One Campaign, Marc Mutty. Though listening to preachers and activists devalue love between two men or two women might make you cringe, the inclusion of these moments creates an emotionally tense experience that will remind you how important it is to bounce back from defeat. It shows that the next step will have to be more than just rallying voters, it will require a change in ideology — an understanding that gays who wish to marry deserve equal rights, not religious salvation. As Darlene Huntress, the director of field operations for the No on One Campaign says, “I want to sit down and break bread with these people. I want to sit down and say get to know me — open your mind up enough to get to know me.” (1:53) (Molly Champlin)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy2y7UIpgP4

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) (Dennis Harvey)

The Clear and Present Danger to Prop. 30 (and all of us)

Zelda Bronstein
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The Clear and Present Danger to Prop. 30 (and all of us)

This is suddenly getting serious, very serious. A secretive super PCA out of Arizona, where all bad things seem to originate, just put $11 million into a No on 30/Yes on 32 operation, and while it’s likely not enough to pass 32, which is trailing pretty far behind in the polls — and might actually benefit from news that a group allegedly pushing for campaign transparency is living off shadowy money, the money’s already hurting 30.

Let us remember: If Prop. 30 goes down, the state goes off a fiscal cliff. Schools get his with cuts so brutal that the school year my have to be cut by a couple of weeks or more. The University of California and California State University systems will cease to function in anything remotely resembling their current state, which is already a disaster. Cities and counties will get hit, social services will suffer, more parks will close — it’s almost too awful to think about.

I didn’t write Prop. 30; I would have left out the sales tax and hiked the rate even more on the wealthiest. But it’s a compromise deal, and it’s not only good for the state it’s absolutely essential. And the Big Boys out of the state of Joe Arpaio are trying to undermine it.

Add that in to Molly Munger’s unconscionable efforts to take down Prop. 30 (at this point, it seems like nothing but sour grapes since her Prop. 38 is clearly going to lose) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Look, we all know Obama’s going to win California, and some of us don’t have a contested supervisorial election. But there’s lots of stuff on the local ballot that matters — and if Prop. 30 goes down, nothing else is going to matter because (unless by some miracle the Dems get a two-thirds majority in both houses and can pass other taxes) this state’s going down the tubes.

So go vote Yes on 30. Vote yes on 38, too, if you want, although a lot of people are mad enough at Munger to vote no. But 30 is the one that matters. Vote early and often.

 

Who needs candy? Get your Halloween fix with creepy crafts!

Sue Vaughan
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Who needs candy? Get your Halloween fix with creepy crafts!

Crafters! Ghouls! Two adorable books appeared in the mail recently: Chris Marks’ Horrorgami: 25 Creepy Creatures, Ghastly Ghouls, and Other Fiendish Paper Projects (Running Press, 128 pp., $13) and Hannah Simpson’s Knitmare on Elm Street: 20 Projects That Go Bump in the Night (Running Press, 127 pp., $17).

Horrorgami comes with a pack of papers to help you start “bending the normal folding techniques of origami to your evil will,” and begins with symbols that are used throughout the directions of the various projects. (I don’t recommend you skip these, no matter how awesome of a cootie-catcher maker you already are.) Each project is rated, or “rat-ed,” by degrees of difficulty, from one rat (“easy”) to four rats (“fiendish”).

Easy projects that even an all-thumbs type (like myself) can master include the “Friendly Ghost,” though the book quickly escalates in difficulty to trickier (trickier-or-treatier?) fold-ups resembling an “Evil Witch’s Cat” (pretty cute, actually); the “Hooded Grim Reaper” (with scythe); a “Ghastly Ghoul;” and a “Stupefying Spider.”

Some of the shapes require multiple sheets of paper, scissors, and glue sticks, so you may need to assemble additional materials beyond what’s included with the book. The instructions (complete with detailed diagrams) are easy to follow, though noobs will likely need practice before ascending to four-rat status.

Knitmare‘s beasties are far more dynamic than Horrorgami‘s (no offense to origami, but yarn allows for much more expressiveness than paper), but they’re also more complicated, and the book doesn’t come with any materials to get you going. “This book assumes a basic level of knitting skill,” warns author Simpson, who nonetheless includes a brief knitting 411 (“Basic Stitch Variations,” etc.), and explains each project with careful, cleverly-illustrated (are those witch hands holding those needles?) instructions.

And for those who know their knits from their purls, the stuff you can make from Knitmare is cuuuuute. But, like, spooky-cute: “Monkey With Miniature Cymbals” sculpture; “Necronomicon iPad Cozy;” the name-changed-to-prevent-copyright-issues-but-we-know-he-lives-on-Elm-Street-and-wears-a-striped-sweater “Ferdy Hand Puppet;” the truly “Creepy Clown Cushion Cover;” the LED-deploying “Light-up Ghost;” and the “Creature from the Black Lagoon Sleep Mask” — which, not to mingle my holidays too much, but if I had any knitting skills at all, that’d be the numero uno Christmas gift I’d give to all my spooky-minded buddies this year.

This week in sex events: Free Internet anti-porn and sex nerd heaven

Andrew Lam
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What to do when Halloween rolls around, but you’re already slutty 365 days a year? Up the ante with one of this week’s sex events, because you’re more than just an awkwardly-gender-coded bag of crap from Spirit.

Quickies Indie Erotic Short Film Festival

Once a year, locally-born sex toy behemoth Good Vibrations gives us an opportunity to don a Halloween costume, kick back in a historic theater, and watch ourselves have sex. This would be Good Vibes’ annual erotic short film competition, which welcomes sensual submissions featuring sexualities of all stripes, vanilla and kink alike, and all manner of core, rock-hard to whisper-soft. This year, sexologist-about-town Carol Queen and drag cinenova Peaches Christ host the affair, whose audience-selected winner will take home a cool $1,500.  

Pre-party 7pm, $10; screening 8pm, $10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

Australian animated genitals await you at Quickies

Good Vibrations Sex Summit

And the fun need not end in the Castro. “Sex nerd” is becoming one of those that’s-so-San-Francisco identities, right up there with “proud wearer of cock rings.” Bawdy Storytelling based an entire show ‘n’ tell session around the concept this year, and now you can spend an entire Saturday (bonus if it’s bright and sunny out) getting into the nitty-gritty of desire, lecture style! Good Vibes hosts this day of panels and keynote talks by all kinds of sexperts. Topics up for discussion include “Regulating Pleasure: Sex, Politics and Censorship,” “Outspoken/Unsaid: Sex and Media,” “Pills, Profits and Pleasures: Sexual Health and Pharmaceuticals,” and “Sexual Stargazing: Sex and Pop Culture.” Attendees get in free to Friday night’s erotic film festival at the Castro. Make a weekend of it, nerd!

Sat/27 8:30am-9pm, $69-99

Marriot Marquis Hotel

www.goodvibessexsummit.com

XXX Apocalypse Funhouse 

This Halloween season, hightail to the one haunted house where you don’t have to be embarassed about getting the pants scared off you (and yes, this is the perfect opportunity to look at those photos again.) Kinky Salon hosts a spooky, two-night edition of its vampire kink orgy (all orientations, all the time.) This weekend look for zombie strippers, Satanic rituals gone sexy, and tunes by DJ Fact 50.

Fri/26 Sat/27, 10pm, $25-35

Mission Control

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org

Poetry class for sex workers

Poet Zhayra Palma is teaching four sessions (they started Oct. 23) of writing workshops for people in the sex industry, because really who has better stories than them? (Sorry, Muni drivers.) Come if you’d like your poetry demystified, your voice unleashed, your writing workshops taking place in the most amazing library of sex lit in San Francisco. 

Tuesdays through Nov. 13, 4-6pm, free 

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

As this trailer of Somebody’s Daughter clearly shows, when women become sex workers they become mice.

White Ribbon Against Pornography Week

Through some odd vagary in conservative PR-think, I am on the press list for Morality in Media, a batshit crazy anti-porn organization who sends me important tidings like the fact that adult filmmakers are voting for Obama. Thusly, I have been alerted to the fact that next week will be chockful of free livestreams of sure-to-be-hilarious-if-you’re-not-terrified anti-porn flicks (like this documentary of a real-life pastor’s son who “felt a call from God” to marry a sex worker. Lucky her), seminars on how to spy on your child/limit their ability to access information, and psuedo scientific talks on porn addiction. I suggest masturbating to all of it. 

Various online events, Sun/28-Nov.4, free

www.pornharms.com

Protest the Weiner bill

Though public nudity is currenty legal in our fair city, your right to strut like a peacock may be in danger — Supervisor Scott Weiner has submitted an anti-nudity piece of legislation that woud make everyone put their clothes on. Should that rub you the wrong way, join this protest in the middle of the city to show your true colors. Clothing very much optional. After the chanting, head to the Center for Sex and Culture to estatic dance the night away with Seattle DJ Jules O’Keefe. 

Protest: Tue/30, noon, free

City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett 

After-party: Tue/30, 7pm, free (all-ages)

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.mynakedtruth.tv


Trans activists honored in Clarion Alley mural

Andrew Lam
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It was important to Tanya Wischerath that the crowds who came to last weekend’s Clarion Alley Block Party got to see the latest addition to its collection of murals. The new piece is a stirring tribute to transwomen activists, done in jewel tones on a background of night sky and stained glass. “I was told nine days before the street fair [that I got the wall], and I was adamant that I would have something finished by then,” the artist said in an email. We’re glad — it’s lovely. 

Wischerath’s deities, clad in robes and golden halos, are comprised of steller tranladies from California’s past and present. They are: 

Mia Tu Mutch: Youth activist and panelist in the Guardian’s “SF Feminism Today” discussion that took place this summer. Tu Mutch is chair of the Housing LGBTQ and TAY committee of the San Francisco Youth Commission, and is a program assistant at Lavender Youth Recreation Information Center (LYRIC).  

Alexis Rivera: Actively fought HIV/AIDS — which affects one in three transwomen in San Francisco. Was the staff community advocate for the Transgender Law Center, and helped found LA’s Female-to-Male Alliance. Rivera died this year. 

Janetta Louise-Johnson: Works on recidivism in trans communities of color through her job at the Transgender Gender Varient Intersexed Justice Project. 

Tamara Ching: Award-winning “God Mother of Polk” well-known for her consultant work on transgender and commercial sex worker concerns.

“Painting this was humbling in all respects, and the work these women are doing and have been doing for a long time is bigger than one mural,” Wischerath told the Guardian in an email interview. The mural focuses on activists who are close to the Bay Area community for a more immediate feel, and was inspired by the fierce queens in Paris is Burning, a 1990 documentary of ball culture in New York. 

Here’s the dedication that Wischerath inscribed on the wall, along with bios of each of the women portrayed: 

The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded transgender riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Although San Francisco continues to lead in the struggle for equal rights for the LGBTQI community, trans women are often left behind and in the fight for visibility. This mural is a dedication to the work of just a few trans activists out of many who have tirelessly committed themselves to paving the way for a more just, accepting, and righteous San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the work had already been tagged by the time we headed over this morning to take photos of it — but given the nature of Clarion’s infamous taggers, perhaps the community-sourced creativity should be viewed as an initiation ritual. Let the battle for upkeep begin! 

The Milk Club’s strange endorsement vote

Zelda Bronstein
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The Milk Club’s strange endorsement vote

The Harvey Milk Club has decided not to rescind its endorsement of Julian Davis for supervisor in District 5 — although the vote may say more about the geopolitics of the race than the way the club members feel about Davis.

The club members had two resolutions in front of them Oct. 22, a night that also featured the third presidential debate and the do-or-die Giants game. The first resolution would have withdrawn the club’s support for Davis, who lost most of his progressive endorsements after he was accused of groping a woman at a campaign event six years ago. The second would have given an unranked three-way endorsement to Sup. Christina Olague, John Rizzo, and Thea Selby.

Of course, the second resolution wouldn’t even come up unless two-thirds of the club members voted in favor of the first.

And while a number of club members are as unhappy as the rest of the left about Davis’s behavior, the real drama involved the efforts of other candidates in the race to prevent Olague from getting the nod.

Rizzo, president of the Community College Board, told me he showed up and voted against the first resolution. “I didn’t campaign, I didn’t organize, I just showed up for 15 minutes and voted no,” he said. Rizzo’s not supporting or working with Davis — so why try to protect the guy’s Milk Club endorsement? Well, Rizzo knows that Olague is a much bigger threat to him than Davis, whose campaign is on the ropes. So he voted in his own self-interest. 

Rizzo agreed it was “very odd” for him to be in this position, but said he was campaigning to win and didn’t want to see a front-running competitor getting a major club endorsement.

Gabriel Haaland, a longtime Milk Club member who supports Olague, wasn’t happy with that. “In the end, I want a progressive supervisor,” he said. “John and Christina are my top choices, but I don’t want to see London Breed get elected.”

Ah, that’s the subtext here — and it’s a serious one. The left is worried about Breed, who’s the beneficiary of a well-funded independent expenditure campaign by the San Francisco Association of Realtors. That group, which is also pushing hard to oust Eric Mar in District 1, wants to weaken the power of tenants on the Board of Supervisors, and sees Breed as friendly to that agenda.

Breed’s a serious contender — a lot of observers think that she and Olague are in a two-way race, although with ranked-choice voting, Rizzo is also very much in the running, as, potentially, is Thea Selby.

Breed’s supporters didn’t want to see the Milk Club go with Olague, either, and some showed up to vote against rescinding the Davis endorsement. Breed told me she wasn’t actively involved: “I just wanted to stay out of it,” she said. She acknowledged, though, that some of her supporters had told her about the meeting and “there were some people that went there.”

In the end, Club President Glendon Hyde told me, the vote was 53 yes, 42 no — far short of the two-thirds needed to reverse the endorsement.

There were, by all accounts, plenty of Davis supporters in the room. But it’s likely that the combination of Breed supporters and Rizzo supporters was enough to sway the vote and ensure that the Milk Club retained Davis as its only choice.

Both Breed and Rizzo denied working together — but the result was the same: The Milk Club is now about the only significant progressive group in the city still siding with Davis.

 

Skipping Bridge School: a happenstance Saturday in San Francisco

Tony Robles
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For me, things usually go better when the unexpected happens, like this past weekend when my half-assed plans to attend Saturday’s installment of Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert fell through. Instead of seeing Axl, as he reportedly flubbed the lyrics to “Welcome to the Jungle,” I stayed local to witness part of a San Francisco tradition and later, one of the more sensory provoking and delightfully weirdo art performances I’ve seen in a while. This surprise night out-on-the town turned out to be a success.

First, I headed to the 20th Annual Clarion Alley Block Party (much later than I had intended) after taking note that both Swiftumz and Apogee Sound Club had daytime sets. By the time I got there, it was nightfall. Most of the bands had already played and I missed the only acts I was familiar with.

In a rush to catch whatever I could, I whizzed by the famously muraled alley’s perimeter so I could enter from Valencia Street. I was surprised to hear what sounded like 1990s grunge leaking from the crevices between crammed houses; I entered the free event and joined the crowd for what was apparently an unannounced performance by Two Gallants.

People perched on a rooftop, much like the audience below, were treated to songs I recognized from their first album in five years, The Bloom and the Blight. I’ve been told their live shows are really good and after listening to them deliver a heavy, yet melodic set for my first time, I too was convinced. The guy standing next to me said it was cool for the duo to come back and play Clarion for free after blowing up, considering they’re both so symbolic of San Francisco.

This, however, would be a mere snack before the main course that was to come. Sure, I stopped off at Arinell’s for a slice, but that’s not even what I’m talking about. My next stop would be The Lab on 16th  Street for night two of San Diego performance project Cathedral X’s weekend residency. My only frame of reference was that I was in for some eerie frequencies and that there was the potential for nudity.

Since I was already in the Mission, I headed to the art space at 9:30 (that unfashionable time when it’s too early for people to go to a show). Right off the bat, I heard ESG rotating from a chic Lucite turntable stand and took it as a good sign of where the night would go. Next to the DJ was a young woman in what looked like a witches hat giving tarot readings. I had time to kill and the vibe was already awkward, so I figured, why the hell not?

I sat down and trusted that the oracle would have some kind of mystical wisdom for me. I ended up paying a hefty price (I didn’t see her $20 suggested donation sign until halfway through the reading) but definitely got some good feedback on how to look into my past in order to move forward. That may sound generic, but it’s because I’m sparing you the in-depth details of what virtually ended up being a therapy session.

Oakland’s Straight Crimes opened; both the drummer and guitarist did a fine job, but I couldn’t help but notice how out of place the duo seemed in such a sterile environment. They admitted it felt like being an art installment (in a sense they were) and said just the night before they’d played a squat in the East Bay; which I assumed matched their punk aesthetic far better.  But the night’s theme was experimentation and by stepping out of those pre-conceived constructs, the event pushed boundaries – and with Cathedral X, that’s exactly what we got.

The spirit of Yoko Ono records from some 40 years ago were recalled when jarring shrieks coming from a blindfolded woman entered the room. She was joined by her fellow blindfolded performers, a man and another woman, as they stumbled around the room while the audience politely moved out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, an unassuming man dressed quite plainly in jeans played drone synthesizer and aforementioned eerie tones from the sidelines.

It took me a while to get into it and I thought I was in for a night of performance art clichés, but once I noticed there was substance to the music and that the interpreters were more than just props going through the motions and were integral to the group’s overall sound, I started to enjoy myself.

Highlights included the climactic moment when two women emerged bare-chested, faces obscured by hoods, but connected by bondage. Music every bit as moody as Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack to Firestarter played in the background while they attempted to separate from one another silently, but the chains would not relent. Ultimately they failed and collapsed out of exhaustion accepting a fate of sensory deprivation and togetherness for what could be eternity.

If it takes a visit from a San Diego group to help keep San Francisco weird, then I’m all for supporting this. The audience seemed to like it too.

Dick Meister: Missing a vital election issue!

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By Dick Meister 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act!  That’s a cry working people and their unions very much need to hear, but have not heard in this year’s election campaigning.

It’s hardly surprising that Republican candidates are silent, since repeal would be a great boost to labor. But if only for that reason, President Obama and other pro-labor Democrats should demand immediate repeal.

The law was passed in 1947 in response to a wave of strikes that were called just after World War II by workers attempting to make up for pay lost because of wage controls during the war. President Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley, but Congress overrode the veto to enact what unions of the time denounced as “the slave-labor bill.”

Taft-Hartley drastically amended the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which was enacted during the Great Depression to encourage unionization. It reversed the NLRA’s intent by authorizing employers to take a wide variety of anti-union actions.

Most significantly, employers were granted the legal right to intervene in union organizing campaigns. Rather then remaining neutral as before, employers are allowed to wage anti-union campaigns that include requiring workers to listen to their arguments against unionization during working hours, often at mandatory meetings.

Taft-Hartley seriously limits workers’ ability to act in solidarity with others by prohibiting workers from waging sympathy strikes – secondary boycotts – in support of striking members of other unions.

Another key provision outlaws the closed shop, which required workers seeking jobs with unionized employers to join the union representing the workers before they could be hired. The law does allow the union shop, which requires workers to join the union after being hired, but allows states to enact so-called right-to-work laws that ban the union shop.

Twenty-two states, including Texas, the country’s second largest, have such laws. They greatly weaken unions by allowing workers to reap the benefits that unions get in negotiating contracts with unionized employers, but without having to help pay the unions’ costs by joining the unions and paying dues.

Taft-Hartley denies union rights to workers designated by employers as “supervisors,” a category of workers that has been growing steadily. What’s more, employers can fire supervisors who nevertheless try to unionize.

Employers also can use a wide assortment of devices to delay for months, sometimes for years, negotiating contracts with unions that win representation elections.  They also have the right to call for new elections to take away the union rights of election winners.

Unions calling strikes with potentially great national impact face the prospect of the federal government moving in to require an 80-day cooling off period while mediators try to bring about a settlement.

There’s more, none of it designed to further the basic civil right of unionization, but rather to hinder it. Repealing Taft-Hartley obviously should have been a prime issue throughout the 2012 election campaign.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

 

 

Appetite: Portland cocktailing

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Appetite: Portland cocktailing

More than 50 places in one week…  I may not have covered all of Portland this May, but I certainly made a dent. So much so that my Portland reviews are broken up in a four part series. Soaking wet half the week, I biked out to neighborhoods East, West, and North with my usual (if grumpy, cold, and irritable) tenacity to dig in and taste the soul and breadth of a place rather than its veneer. Join me as I drink, and eat, my way through the rainy town up north.

As cocktail bars are required to serve food in Portland, cocktails and food are intertwined – and strong – at many a locale. Though I separate out cocktails and restaurants, there are numerous places where both are worth making your way to so you’ll see some restaurants listed here and in next issue’s Portland restaurant article.

Brendan Wise of Beaker & Flask filled me in on a couple cocktail projects launching just after my visit: Corazon from Chris Israel (chef-owner at Gruner, which I review next issue), and the Beaker & Flask team created a drink menu for popular PIX Patisserie http://www.pixpatisserie.com/ featuring cocktails and sherries to go with their sweets.

RIFFLE NW

Visiting Riffle NW in its opening week, I was struck immediately with fresh seafood, friendly service and some of the best drinks of my Portland week. It was opened by Dave Shenaut (former president of the Oregon Bartender’s Guild) with bartenders Emily Baker (formerly of Rum Club), and Ricky Gomez (formerly of Teardrop Lounge) – SF bartender Brandon Josie of Bloodhound recently moved to Portland to take over as bar manager for Gomez who is moving on to a new project. Riffle’s spare, modern decor displays seafaring inspiration in wood ceiling panels made of reclaimed shipping docks, while the name refers to a rocky shoal or sandbar below the surface of a waterway.

I came for the drinks but was not disappointed in the food. Black bass tartare ($10) is punctuated with dill, squid Carbonara ($17) is meaty with guanciale, while an overflowing, fresh crab roll ($21), and a huge cut of rare Copper River sockeye salmon ($32) is grilled, its salty skin subtly sweet with a bourbon maple glaze.

Emily Baker offered the best service of my entire time in Portland. After I was there a couple hours, we began talking industry connections and drink, but long before she knew I was a writer, she went out of her way to ascertain our taste preferences and make sure we were comfortable at the bar.

On the menu, a Riffle Collins ($11), made of gin, lemon, lime, celery, absinthe, salt, is the perfect starter, garden bright, light and appropriately savory with celery and salt. Room D ($9) delighted with rye whiskey, the spice of Becherovka, while quinine and citrus imparted punch.

Off menu, Baker suggested and created just what I was craving: Art of Choke (a Violet Hour creation by Kyle Davidson), mixing Cynar, mint, Bacardi white rum, and Green Chartreuse. Herbaceous, bitter, and vibrant, it hit all the right notes. Similarly, a Self Starter (a Jamie Boudreau drink) balanced Lillet with Old Tom gin, absinthe and Orchard apricot. Not too musky but crisp, sweet, boozy. All around, hand cut ice perfects each drink.

It was a treat sampling Jack Rudy Tonic from Charleston, a bottle I noticed on ice behind the bar and had to inquire about. A small batch syrup (available in SF at Bi-Rite Market), it makes a lovely tonic, set apart with lemongrass and orange peel.

CLYDE COMMON

So much has been said about Clyde Common and Jeffrey Morgenthaler since opening that it’s almost needless to point it out as a Portland “best”. In fact, for one who almost never repeats places in the same trip (ever with an aggressive agenda), I returned to Clyde Common three times in one week. Morgenthaler was only there one of three stops, offering cheeky, impeccable service. But service was warm and accommodating both evenings I dropped in – only during a weekday visit did I experience lackluster, abrupt service from one bartender.

Cocktails are a reasonable $7-9. Morgenthaler’s famed barrel aged cocktails ($10)  – his Negroni and one of my all time favorite cocktails, an Old Pal – rotate but were completely out all three visits. What pleased most were his bottled and carbonated cocktails ($8).

Though I’ve seen a lot of these the past year  – one was a basic Americano (Campari, Dolin Sweet vermouth, water and orange oil) – the Broken Bike was possibly my top drink on the menu, fizzy and vivaciously bitter with Cynar, white wine, water, lemon oil. Both were well balanced, refreshing and more importantly, fun.

Elsewhere on the menu, a Kingston Club exhibited subtle balance of fruit and herbaceous notes with Drambuie, pineapple, lime, Fernet, Angostura, and orange peel. The Nasturtium cocktail was unexpectedly too sweet for me, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur hitting heavier than the Dolin Blanc vermouth and Bonal. A Spiced Dark & Stormy is a brilliant idea – and went down all too easy. Rum (Gosling’s dark, in this case) infused with Chinese five-spice, a spicy, house-brewed ginger beer, finished with lime, made for another winning drink.

Clyde Common was the Portland bar that for me most upheld its reputation: centrally located, serving understated drinks, strong on precision.

BEAKER & FLASK

It goes without saying that Beaker & Flask, opened by Kevin Ludwig of Park Kitchen, has been one of Portland’s hottest cocktail bars since debuting in 2009. Despite large groups in the spacious restaurant, bar seats free up often, even on a weekend, and we were able to chat, unhurried, with the bartenders, lingering over drinks.

Menu cocktails ($9) like a soft, woody Walk in the Woods (Old Tom Gin, Stone Pine liqueur, lemon, sage syrup, egg white) and elegant Cricket Club (Pimm’s, rose port, Bonal, amargo bitters, cucumber soda) please but going off menu in the hands of talented Chicago transplant Brandon Wise (now President of Oregon Bartenders Guild) and Neil Kopplin, who also makes Imbue Vermouth, is where the real action is.

Wise mixed a Rose Americano cocktail, bright with Martin Miller’s Westbourne Gin and grapefruit, earthy-sweet with Amontillado sherry. Kopplin goes with a recipe from neighboring Rum Club, the Begonia, utilizing his Imbue vermouth, aged Novo Fogo cachaca, Benedictine and velvet falernum. Sweet, spiced apple notes hit first, with a beautifully subtle bitter on the finish.

Seek out Neil’s new product, Petal & Thorn, a gorgeous gentian liqueur using homegrown beets for Campari color, cinnamon, menthol, and other intriguing elements.

RUM CLUB

Depending on which direction you’re approaching, enter Rum Club either on the front or back side of Beaker & Flask. The cozy bar is roughly one year old, conceived by Beaker & Flask’s Kevin Ludwig and Michael Shea of Doug Fir. Affordable $5-10 cocktails, chic wallpaper, low wood ceiling, the bar in the center, and a small patio you can smoke in if you’re nowhere near the door, make it an appealing place to gather with friends until the wee hours.

Though packed and noisy, I was won over by well-crafted drinks like the Hi-Lo Split ($8), vivid with Old Grand-Dad Bonded whiskey, Cynar, lemon, passion fruit syrup, grapefruit bitters – a stunner, actually. Also by Road to Ruin ($8), with a rye whiskey base, dry vermouth and bitters, set apart by cardamom notes from Cardamaro Amaro and texture from lemon oil.

TEARDROP LOUNGE

Despite the widespread respect garnered for this chic, centrally located bar in downtown Portland, Teardrop Lounge was the one disappointment of my bar excursions. It’s long hyped as being one of PDX’s best, and depending on the bartender, I’m sure it could be. The space centers around a dramatic round bar, open air windows ushering in a gentle breeze on a nice day. Even with well-prepared drinks, I found touristy clientele and disinterested bartenders during my visit soured the experience.

The menu reads well, including a glossary of terms educating non-cocktail geeks on terms like oleo-saccharum (a traditional punch base of lemon peels macerated in sugar to extract oils) and Batavia Arrack (an early 16th century, palm sugar-distilled spirit tasting of spice, citrus, anise – often used in punches).

There’s sections of House Cocktails, Classics (like Sky Rocket from 1919 or a Morning Glory Fizz – from the Savoy Cocktail Book, 1933), and one called Friends highlighting bartenders’ drinks from other cities, including SF locals: Kevin Diedrich’s Whiskey Wallbanger and Ryan Fitzgerald’s Rodriguez).

Though intriguing, a Wanderlust ($12), made of Banks white rum, a house sherry blend, Marolo chamomile grappa, medjool date bitters, orange bitters, and flamed absinthe was musky sweet without the hoped-for layers jumping out. However, Of Praise for Tulips ($9), was a brightly elegant aperitif, floral with Clear Creek pear brandy, dry and bitter with Cocchi Americano, Dolin Dry vermouth, Barenjager, Boston bitters and Pacifique absinthe.

THE DRIFTWOOD ROOM

They had me at ’70s wood-paneled walls, cocktails ($9-12) named after classic actors (e.g. Sydney Poitier, Elizabeth Taylor), and old school, Rat Pack bar vibe. When asking bartenders at “mixology” havens around Portland where they liked to drink off hours, more than one of them said The Driftwood Room. Granted, it’s in Hotel deLuxe (opened in 1912 – the bar opened in the ‘50s) and forget catching a cab from the hotel any time after 11:30pm when the train isn’t running (apparently, neither are cabs), but for a mellow, retro vibe with boozy-but-crafted drinks, Driftwood is a welcome respite.

Both Bittersweet Symphony ($10 – Temperance bourbon, Punt e Mes vermouth, Pelinkovac http://www.wineglobe.com/13047.html, Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters) and Old Tom Cocktail ($11 – Ransom gin, Agwa de Bolivia coca leaf liqueur, Krogstad Aquavit, lime juice, barrel aged bitters) pack a punch while maintaining balance.

CIRCA 33

Another bartender off-hours favorite is Circa 33 in Southeast Portland. For me, flat screens and sports interfered with a vaguely retro, laid back vibe. A library-like wall of American whiskey and bottles line the back wall with wood ladder for easy access. Easy-going bartenders can create cocktail classics, even if they don’t know them. I requested a simple but perfectly classic Old Pal, executed solidly per instruction. It’s the hidden back bar that draws industry folk, an intimate space ideal for conversation.

KASK

Though not overwhelmed with creative vision at Kask, the newer sister bar to neighboring Austrian restaurant Gruner, I enjoyed the corner casual chic in a small space with welcoming bartenders. Here can linger with friends, actually hear each other, and savor solid cocktails ($9-12).

Though my favorite drink was an off menu Del Maguey mezcal/citrus creation, I tasted the gamut, from Rabo de Galo, utilizing Novo Fogo’s barrel aged cachaca (a spirit popping up often on Portland menus), Gran Classico, Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, and Brazilian coffee bitters. The Black Lodge covered the whiskey/vermouth/bitter side with Wild Turkey Rye, Punt E Mes sweet vermouth, Combier Rouge, Cynar, Regan’s orange bitters, while another off menu creation, Leather Canary (a Chevy Chase reference), mixed up that profile with tart/sour: Combier Pamplemousse  – a grapefruit liqueur, rye whiskey, Gran Classico, Punt E Mes vermouth.

Kask’s service and relaxed vibe make it one of the better hangouts for cocktailians in my downtown Portland explorations.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

DCCC’s Mirkarimi resolution gets delayed

Sasha Cuttler
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DCCC’s Mirkarimi resolution gets delayed

San Franciscans will get a chance to take a deep breath – and their politicians will be able to get past Election Day – before wading back into the sordid saga surrounding Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s fitness for office, thanks to a resolution condemning him being pulled from tomorrow night’s San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee agenda.

The measure’s chief sponsor, Zoe Dunning, today sent her DCCC colleagues an email thanking supporters of the measure but noting that “a few of you also expressed your belief that collaborating on an amended but substantially similar resolution would help maximize consensus on the DCCC. In consideration of these sentiments and my desire for consensus, I’ve decided to temporarily withdraw my resolution from consideration.”

Instead, Dunning said that she would reintroduce a new resolution for the following meeting, which is scheduled for Nov. 28. Her resolution condemns Mirkarimi for the domestic violence incident against his wife – for which he accepted criminal responsibility in March and survived an attempt to remove him from office for official misconduct last month – and voiced support for his recall by voters.

Inside sources tell us the reason for the delay has less to do with the substance of the measure than with its timing, coming while emotions are still so raw and emotionally charged on both sides of the Mirkarimi question. Few DCCC members had the stomach right now for a replay of the ugly, hours-long public testimony that marked the Oct. 9 Board of Supervisors meeting – particularly coming during Game 1 of the World Series.

Dunning conceded that one factor in her decision was that she “got the feedback that emotions are a little raw right now,” although she told us her main reason was to gather more support: “The timing aspect of it was getting more consensus on the measure. I’m not doing this to be divisive, but I would like the party to take a stand on this.”

That wasn’t the only dramatic item on tomorrow’s DCCC agenda, which also includes a proposal to revisit the DCCC’s “no endorsement” vote in the contentious District 5 supervisorial race and make an endorsement. The effort was sparked by supporters of London Breed who hope the moderate-dominated body will offer its support to counter current efforts to consolidate progressive support around Christina Olague in the wake of Julian Davis’ current difficulties around his handling of allegations of past misbehavior toward women.

Few sources that we spoke to wanted to offer their predictions for how the D5 endorsement would go, but some were relieved that it was decoupled from the Mirkarimi measure that was placed just ahead of it on the agenda.

Yet Mirkarimi is still likely to be hit with the DCCC’s condemnation when it reconvenes next month, barring a change in the political climate or a deescalation by either the Mayor’s Office or the DV community, which isn’t likely.

Matt Dorsey, the spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office who was elected to the DCCC in June with progressive support, co-sponsored the resolution and told us a recall election is needed to bring closure to this saga.

In an email response to our questions, he wrote: “First, I disagree that a recall would fuel a continued divisive climate. To the contrary, a successful recall would resolve division. Frankly, even an unsuccessful recall would offer both sides the satisfaction of knowing that voters settled the matter – without questions over the legitimacy of the official misconduct proceeding or legal interpretations of the Charter.”

Mirkarimi didn’t respond to our inquiries, but Olague told us last week that she would like to see the fight put to rest. “What I’m concerned about right now is a lot of people are exploiting issues around domestic violence and politicizing it,” Olague said, calling for people to “stop demonizing him” and accept that he’s been punished and is getting the help he needs. “Now it’s so convenient to try to destroy Ross and I think that’s wrong.”

She said the twin scandals involving how Mirkarimi and Davis have treated women – and how those incidents are being exploited – are damaging the city, but she hopes they will give rise to more productive discussions.

“What I’m concerned about is the progressive movement find a way to heal and come together in a way that is more respectful of women,” Olague told us. “Rather than dancing on the grave of Julian Davis, how do we come together and talk about how we treat women?”

Live Shots: Crystal Castles at the Fox

Tony Robles
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Arriving early to the Crystal Castles show Monday at the Fox Theater, discovering that one opener, HEALTH, had canceled its performance, and that the photo pit would be off limits for the other, Kontravoid, I was left with some unexpected time on my hands. Time that I spent trying to recall where I had seen the eerily familiar image hung over the stage, of a veiled figure cradling a fragile, vulnerable looking man in their arms.

Presented without context, it could be potentially tenderly romantic or gothically morbid, an ambiguity which seemed to typically invite the sort of let-me-Google-that mystery that recent bands have found so chic.*

But all that gets into a realm of meaning that is largely irrelevant here, because that’s not really what was on display at the Fox last night. Ask someone about a Crystal Castles show and they will mostly recount the spectacle. A woman walked out into the crowd supported by the hands of her fans, in a messianic rock move, or alternately crowd surfed in their arms.

All the while, she was performing with a near epileptic frenzy, mouth agape, spitting words that were largely drowned out by the barrage of beats produced onstage by her partner and a tour drummer. If singer Alice Glass were ever actually sent into a fit by the painful amount of strobes accompanying the show**, it is likely that her cries would go unnoticed.

The tradeoff with such pounding intensity is that there isn’t a whole lot of variety. The music drives and drives, largely due to the production of Ethan Kath, but rarely opens up (“Not in Love” a track featuring clear vocals from the Cure’s Robert Smith remains the exception in this regard) as Glass’s primary mode is a wrenching scream. New tracks, including one instrumental that had both of the main members at the controls, only seem to further the band’s hard, caustic edge.

I imagine that there are few casual Crystal Castles fans, and only two extreme ways to appreciate them: either in a drunken fury or with a finger twitching, phone tapping obsessiveness***. When I went home I immediately opened my laptop, to find that picture, and to look up the new songs.

* And perhaps Crystal Castles more than any other. It is after all – as anyone with a search engine could tell you – a band that emerged so rapidly from the internet underground that even the singer was late to find out about it.

** “Shoot between the beats,” the band’s handler told the photographers as he lead us to the side of the stage. “Otherwise you won’t get anything.” Quite helpful advice, really. He could be seen later in the show at the front of the pit, pulling Alice off of the audience, and he promised to give us a heads up if the singer was about to throw a mic stand in out general direction.

*** Remember watching Lost and then immediately going online to talk about the smoke monster or the map in the hatch? This is the musical equivalent of that.

Louis Dunn on Ann Romney: “I am not the binder centerfold”

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Louis Dunn helps Ann Romney clear up Mitt’s problem with the binder centerfold.

Click on the artwork to view the full-size image.

Telegenic Band Check: Elegy

Tony Robles
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After spending an afternoon with Bay Area punk band Elegy, I learned that the band will not only rock your socks off, they can also style your hair, give you legal advice, and probably knit you a pair of socks. That’s pretty punk rock.

Dick Meister: Labor’s wise election choices

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

No issue on the November election ballot anywhere is of greater importance to working people and their unions than Proposition 32 on the California ballot.

As the State AFL-CIO notes in its call for an all-out campaign against Prop 32, it’s “a brazen power play” by billionaire corporate interests and other anti-union forces to all but silence labor’s political voice, while at the same time greatly increasing the political strength of labor’s wealthy opponents.

Prop 32’s corporate sponsors deceptively call their measure an even-handed attempt to limit campaign spending. Yet it would only limit – and severely limit – the political spending of unions. There would be no limit on the political spending of corporations and other wealthy interests.

A Prop 32 victory would have a serious national impact, since passage of the measure in the country’s largest state would certainly lead to attempts to enact similar measures elsewhere.

California Propositions 30 and 38 also could have major, though less direct, effects nationally.  Both measures would raise badly needed new funds for education.

Prop 30, which is widely supported by unions and a broad base of community organizations, would do it through a tax increase that would be levied on wealthy Californians with annual incomes of $250,000 or more.

But Prop 38, bankrolled by some of the same billionaire interests that are contributing heavily to the Yes on 32 campaign, would raise money by taxing everyone, including the poor. And while Prop 30 specifically calls for added education funds to go to schools at all levels, including the community colleges that train workers for jobs that are heavily unionized, Prop 38 does not apply to community colleges.

There are, of course, other state as well as local and national issues and candidates that are of particular interest to labor. That includes, as it very well should, labor-friendly President Obama and just about any other Democrat.

Although the odds are heavily against Democrats regaining control of the House or adding to their narrow margin in the Senate, that has not kept labor and its supporters from trying to beat the odds.

National Democratic strategists are relying on California to be a leader in raising funds to make that happen. They’re sending out an unprecedented barrage of requests to Californians for money for Democratic candidates in general and especially for candidates in battleground states.

Unions are playing an important role in that effort and in many local elections as well. That naturally includes the voting in San Francisco, long one of the country’s premier labor cities and national pacesetter for labor.

As usual, the SF Labor Council and SF unions generally have endorsed all of the Democrats running for national and state offices. It would be hard to quarrel with that or with most of labor’s other choices of who and what to back and oppose on the city’s election ballot.

Locally, labor is backing incumbent Supervisors Eric Mar (District One) and David Campos (District Nine) and newcomer F.X. Crowley, a longtime union leader and activist who’s running in District Seven. All have consistently supported labor.

Labor is rightly eager to defeat Crowley’s opponent, Mike Garcia, a candidate of the downtown interests that have consistently opposed labor.

Voters would be wise to follow the guidance of the teachers union on candidates for the SF Board of Education. The union has endorsed Matt Haney, Beverly Popek, Sam Rodriguez and Shamann Walton. All would be new to the board.

The teachers union and the Service Employees Union local that represent SF City College workers agree that the best candidates for the Community College Board that governs City College are Hanna Leung, Rafael Mandelman and incumbents Natalie Berg and Chris Jackson.

As far as local propositions go, labor’s support for a parcel tax to raise badly needed funds for City College (Prop A) and for a trust fund to help lower and middle income families secure affordable housing (Prop C) makes very good sense.

Unfortunately, labor did not take an official position on Prop G, the policy statement that calls for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that has allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and wealthy individuals.

Otherwise, however, labor has provided voters with an invaluable election guide.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Agnos and other progressives rally for Olague

Sasha Cuttler
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Agnos and other progressives rally for Olague

A string of prominent local progressive leaders today offered their support to Sup. Christina Olague – including former Mayor Art Agnos, who announced his endorsement of her in the District 5 supervisorial race – in a rally on the steps of City Hall.

In the process, many voiced a need to broaden and redefine progressivism as valuing independence and diversity of perspective more than just stands on specific issues, traits they said Olague embodies. But more than anything, the rally seemed aimed to consolidating progressive support around Olague as the best hope to beat moderate London Breed in one of the city’s most progressive districts.

“District 5 is often referred to as the most progressive of San Francisco’s supervisorial districts. It includes a diversity of views and opinions on how to meet the challenges all our communities face,” Agnos said. “And it takes a supervisor who know how to listen, to hear and respect those differing views, while working for a resolution that moves us forward.”

Sup. David Campos made only a veiled, indirect reference to the problems some progressives (himself among them) have had with some of Olague’s stands since she was appointed to the job by Mayor Ed Lee, but he said, “Those of us who have worked with her know what’s in her heart…She has been the independent person we always knew she would be and I’m proud to stand with her today.”

Several speakers made reference to Olague’s working class roots, her perspective as a Latina and member of the LGBT community, and her history of progressive activism in San Francisco. Cleve Jones, Gabriel Haaland, Sandra Fewer, and Sup. Eric Mar were among those there to offer support.

“It was a big give by the Mayor’s Office to appoint someone who wasn’t always going to agree with him,” said Sup. Jane Kim, but that was about the only positive reference to the Mayor’s Office, which turned on Olague after she voted to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, setting the stage for her return to the progressive fold.

“To be a progressive is to share an ideology that understands and believes that the best decisions for our city require the participation of all of us, no matter who we are, where we live, or how big our checkbook is,” Agnos said. “As with so many who have endorsed her, that progressive label says she is a politician who understand this fundamental truth.”

SF Rising board member Alicia Garza kicked off the rally by saying, “We are here to set the record straight that the progressive movement is alive and well in San Francisco.” Later, she praise Olague’s history as a community organizer, saying that, “She understands deeply what it means to empower communities.”

Sup. John Avalos, another supervisor who hasn’t always agreed with Olague in the last nine months and just endorsed last week, commended her for the courage it takes to assert her values instead of simply supporting the mayor who appointed her. He said Olague recognizes that, “We live in a city of extremes, with extreme differences between the haves and have-nots.”

Another new progressive endorsement, coming in the wake of one-time progressive favorite Julian Davis’ troubles, was Quintin Mecke, who said he first worked with Olague on anti-gentrification issues 13 years ago. “I trusted her work then and I trust her work today,” he said. Activist Lisa Feldstein – like Mecke, a former D5 candidate – echoed the sentiment.

“I’m here because I really trust Christina and want to fight for her,” Feldstein said. “She comes from a place of integrity and compassion.”

When Olague finally took the podium, she said, “I am humbled by the heartfelt words of my colleagues.” She also tried to help define progressivism in San Francisco, said that it “isn’t about a cult of personality.”

Instead, she said it’s about working to building people’s capacity to create an inclusive and just city. “It’s about building a movement that can weather any storm,” Olague said, closing by saying she’ll ensure “the progressive voice is always strong in District 5 and I’ll keep working to make it heard until I’m blue in the face…I am the most progressive person in the race.”

Daly’s Buck Tavern, a progressive hangout, is closing

Sasha Cuttler
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Daly’s Buck Tavern, a progressive hangout, is closing

When leftist firebrand Chris Daly left the Board of Supervisors two years ago, amid political treachery that effectively ended a decade of progressive control over the body, the bar that he took over and operated – the Buck Tavern – became a gathering place for progressive activists. It was almost like a government in exile following a coup d’etat.

That changed a bit over the last year as Daly became the full-time political director of SEIU Local 1021 and dropped his regular bartending gigs, although the Buck still showcased community events. But as their lease was set to expire on Oct. 31, Daly and co-owner Ted Strawser were unable to negotiate a new one on terms they could afford, to find a new space, or to find a buyer that would keep the Buck running.

So the Buck Tavern, under the helm of a politico that the SF Weekly once-dubbed Captain Outrageous – in an article recognizing his role in getting a better deal for the city hosting the America’s Cup (and, of course, denying ours) – is set to sink at the witching hour on Halloween. That’s right, the Buck is going under.

“We’ve been able to do some really cool things with the space in terms of housing a community of people,” Daly told us. “We had a good run.”

That community is invited for a last hurrah at the Buck on Oct. 31, with nautical-themed costumes requested. So, ye scurvy dogs, come grab some grog and toast the motley crew that proudly sailed these stormy seas before they descend to Davy Jones locker. Arghhh!

UP Festival will locate urban engineering ideas within the best of the SF arts scene

Andrew Lam
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Technology-driven “tactical urbanism” will be on display Sat/20 at the Urban Prototyping (UP) Festival. Presented by the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, the Intersection for the Arts, Rebar, and global design firm IDEO, the UP Festival will feature over 20 projects whose creators hope will be at the forefront of urban innovation. The various projects will be showcased on the streets and in parking lots in a three-block zone centered on the corner of 5th Street and Mission, and soundtracked by a rather stellar lineup of local theater, live music, and DJs. The festival promises to be an explosion of DIY tech meets DIY civic engagement meets SF art scene.

Each digitized urban mashup venture presented will essentially be a miniature replica of the desired development. The projects will include public urinals, reimagined urban gardens, and glowing crosswalks. In addition, one particular display that caught our eye entitled “Faces,” is a facial recognition plan that takes pictures of passing pedestrians and projects them on a nearby wall. Scary? Cool?

Hip-hop collective Felonius performs with theater group Campo Santo this weekend

Expect to see an array of some the best entertainment in the Bay, too. Hot Pocket, the Latin-funk ensemble comprised of Bayonics members will perform, along with Jazz Mafia and a host of other live music groups. Festival goers will get the privilege of a performance by Intersection for the Art’s resident theater company Campo Santo who collaborate on a piece with hip-hop collective Felonius. The GAFTA stage will host DJs from Haceteria’s Tristes Tropiques to Honey Sound System’s DJ P-Play, latter doing a set with visuals by Gabriel Dunne. Kicking off the festivities will be a live graffiti battle, for which artists like Ricardo “Apex” Richey and Jan Wayne Swayze will spray up works of art as you watch (don’t get too close unless you dig aerosol-head.)

UP Festival Expo

Sat/20, free

Mint and Hallidie Plazas

5th St. between Mission and Market, SF

sf.urbanprototyping.org

D5 shakeups flip the dynamics of that wild race

Sasha Cuttler
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D5 shakeups flip the dynamics of that wild race

[UPDATED AND CORRECTED] Wild and unsettling political dynamics have rocked the District 5 supervisorial race, with three major candidates having prominent endorsements withdrawn, the most significant being this week’s mass exodus of support from the campaign of Julian Davis following his bad handling of allegations that he has mistreated women.

Those withdrawing their endorsements of Davis since Saturday include Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Jane Kim, Assembly member Tom Ammiano, the Bay Guardian, the Examiner, and the League of Pissed-Off Voters. The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club has scheduled a vote for Monday on whether to withdraw its sole endorsement of Davis.

Avalos gave his endorsement to Sup. Christina Olague over the weekend, and she seems to be getting more progressive support in the wake of Davis’ flame-out and her Oct. 9 vote in favor of reinstating Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. That vote triggered a strong backlash against Olague from Mayor Ed Lee and his allies, with San Francisco Police Officers Association withdrawing its endorsement.

But former Mayor Art Agnos reached out to Olague – who he didn’t know previously – after the Mirkarimi vote and is rumored to be considering offering her his endorsement and support. Agnos didn’t confirm or deny the rumor, but he did tell us, “I was very impressed by her commitment to the progressive issues we share.”

Olague has a long history of progressive activism and was a consistently good vote during her tenure on the Planning Commission, but many progressives were concerned by her early support for Lee, who then appointed her to the District 5 seat vacated by Mirkarimi’s election as sheriff, and by some of her votes and behaviors since then.

But now that she’s been viciously attacked by Lee’s staffers and allies over the Mirkarimi vote – and iced out by Lee himself, who she says won’t return her calls and who bailed out on a planned campaign appearance – Olague seems to have a newfound independence. “At the end of the day, we serve constituents and the city, and that’s who we should answer to,” Olague told us, agreeing that she feels freed up by recent developments, as difficult as they’ve been. “You don’t become an indentured servant.”

She told us that her decision last year to co-chair the “Run, Ed, Run” campaign to convince Lee to break his promise and run for a full term to the office he’d been appointed to was based on her belief that “we’d see an infusion of new energy and some more diversity” of both ideology and demographics in the Mayor’s Office.

“Sadly, I’m not seeing those changes happening really. I didn’t sign up for another four years of Gavin Newsom and those thugs, and I’ve seen a lot of that same behavior,” she said. “People who played prominent roles in the Newsom administration continue to play prominent roles in this administration.”

Olague said the schism with the administration began this summer when she supported Avalos in trying to bring in new revenue as part of the business tax reform measure that became Prop. E, which Lee had insisted be revenue neutral before compromising with progressives. That was when Olague said she got her first nasty message from Tony Winnicker, the former Newsom press secretary who now works for Lee and wrote Olague a text during the Mirkarimi hearing telling her “you disgust me and I will work night and day to defeat you.”

Some prominent progressives privately worried that schism was an election ploy designed to help Olague win the race for this progressive district given that Davis had captured most of the influential progressive endorsements. But with Lee and his allies continuing to be openly livid over the Mirkarimi vote – and with solid progressive John Rizzo running a lackluster campaign that has less than $5,000 in the bank – there is growing progressive support for Olague.

The big fear among many progressives is that London Breed will win the race, a concern that has been exacerbated by the support that Breed has been receiving from real estate and development interests, both directly and in independent expenditures by the Association of Realtors, which has spent more than $225,000 in this election cycle hoping to knock out progressives in Districts 1 and 5 and tip the balance of power on the board.

Breed told us that she doesn’t know the Realtors or why they’re offering such strong support, pledging to be an independent vote. “I’ve never made any promises to anyone that I would help anyone or that I would be this way or that,” she told us. “I’m not here to do anyone’s bidding, whether it’s Aaron Peskin or Willie Brown or anyone else.”

Brown helped launch Breed’s political career by [CORRECTED recommending then-Mayor Gavin Newsom] appoint her to the Redevelopment Commission, where Breed supported Lennar and other big developers, but she had a falling out with him earlier this year and made impolitic comments about him to the Fog City Journal, causing US Sen. Dianne Feinstein to withdraw her endorsement of Breed.

Brown, Lee, and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak helped raise money for Olague, who has received the maximum $500 donation from such powerful inside players as venture capitalist Ron Conway (and his wife, Gayle), Michael Cohen, Victor Makras, Lawrence Nibbi, Mark Mosher, and John Whitehurst.

But that was before the Mirkarimi vote, which Lee’s allies seem to see as a litmus test on Olague’s loyalty to them. As Tenderloin Housing Clinic director Randy Shaw, who helped engineer the progressive split that brought Lee to power, put it on his Beyond Chron blog, “Olague’s vote was an act of profound disloyalty not only to the mayor who appointed her, but also to those who pushed the mayor to do so.”

Olague says she’s disturbed by that viewpoint, and by those so blinded by their efforts to demonize Mirkarimi “and exploit and politicize issues around domestic violence” that they have failed to consider the price he has already paid for his actions or the legal standards for removing an elected official. “On something like this, it’s not a question of loyalty. It’s about principles,” she said.

Breed says that she has seen an increase in support since the Mirkarimi vote and the Davis meltdown, but she said that she doesn’t want to talk about those cases or exploit them politically. “I don’t take pleasure in the misery of someone else,” she said, adding her hope that the furor about Mirkarimi will die down. “The decision has been made and it’s time for the city to come together.”

Progressive leaders have made similar calls, but Mirkarimi’s critics are showing no signs of letting the issue go. San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee members Zoe Dunning and Matt Dorsey have put forward a resolution condemning the reinstatement vote and calling for Mirkarimi’s ouster, which the DCCC will consider on Wednesday evening, Oct. 24.

[CORRECTED At that meeting, the DCCC will also consider a motion] to reopen the D5 endorsement process, hoping to change the DCCC’s previous “no endorsement” vote, and sources tell us there is currently a strong backroom effort to give the endorsement to Breed. That vote will be a big test for progressives, which lost their majority control over the DCCC in the June elections.

Meanwhile, D5 candidate Thea Selby – who snagged one of the three endorsements by both the Guardian and the Examiner – continues to run a strong and well-funded campaign that has avoided the carnage taking place in the other campaigns. “I feel like I’m in the middle watching out for flying beams,” she told us, adding that both she and Rizzo have been “the grown-ups in the room, so there’s an opportunity there and I’m hopeful.”

But unlike Rizzo, who has seems strangely absent and didn’t return Guardian phone calls [see UPDATE below], Selby has plenty of money in the bank – nearly $60,000 as of the last official report two weeks ago – and could benefit from voter disgust with the ugly politics at play. “It’s my experience that is driving this,” says this small-businessperson, “and not my lifelong desire to be a politician, and that may ring some bells.”

How the ranked-choice voting system will play out in this mess is anyone’s guess, and even Davis seems to be hoping that he still has a shot, resisting calls by the Guardian and others to withdraw from the race. Poorly funded candidates Andrew Resignato and Hope Johnson this week announced they were joining forces for the “People’s Ticket” after being excluded from a University of San Francisco candidates forum.

But most political observers seem to think this race will come down to a two-person contest between Breed and Olague – who each have more than $45,000 in the bank with which to make a strong final push – and the distinctions between them are becoming clearer as more progressives get behind Olague and the moderates and monied interests get behind Breed.

Olague said she’s still “willing to work with anybody,” but that, “I’m worried that moderate forces will seize this moment to try to destroy us.”

UPDATE 4:45: Rizzo just got back to us and said he’s been actively campaigning and feeling good about his chances. “We have a great team and we’ll have enough resources to reach voters,” Rizzo said. He said that he’s had a stong fundraising push in the last couple weeks since the last campaign financing statement was released, and he noted his endorsements and active support by influential progressives including Ammiano, Campos, and Carole Migden. “We’re doing a lot of retail campaigning, meeting voters and getting the message out.”

Drunks, drugs, kung fu, and rock ‘n’ roll: just another week at the movies

Sue Vaughan
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Drunks, drugs, kung fu, and rock ‘n’ roll: just another week at the movies

This week, get thee to the Roxie for “Not Necessarily Noir III” (Dennis Harvey’s preview here), or the wind-whipped moors for Andrea Arnold’s brutal new Wuthering Heights (my chat with Arnold here). Other new stuff we haven’t reviewed yet: the not-screened-for-critics-because-let’s-face-it-these-movies-are-critic-proof Paranormal Activity 4, and Tyler Perry’s first Madea-free enterprise in some time, Alex Cross.

Read on for more new reviews!

Bel Borba Aqui “The People’s Picasso” and “Brazil’s Pied Piper of Street Art” are both apt descriptions of veteran artist Bel Borba, who has spent decades bringing color and imagination to the streets of Salvador — his seaside hometown, and a place already graced with the nickname “Brazil’s Capital of Happiness.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that Borba’s commitment to public art (a giant Christmas tree made of plastic Coke bottles, a rhinoceros sculpture crafted from old boat planks, hundreds of large-scale mosaics, even a painted airplane) has done its share to lift spirits. Bel Borba Aqui isn’t the sort of doc to delve into its mustachioed subject’s history or personal life (despite a few angry cell phone conversations randomly captured along the way); instead, it’s much like Borba himself — freewheeling and spontaneous, and most alive when it’s showing art being created. Great soundtrack, too. (1:34) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-SQ0pgjXm0

Fat Kid Rules the World It really does suck to be Troy (Jacob Wysocki from 2011’s Terri). An XXL-sized high schooler, he’s invisible to his peers, derided by his little brother (Dylan Arnold), and has lived in general domestic misery since the death of his beloved mother under the heavy-handed rule of his well-meaning but humorless ex-military dad (Billy Campbell). His only friends are online gamers, his only girlfriends the imaginary kind. But all that begins to change when chance throws him across the path of notorious local hellraiser Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who’s been expelled from school, has left the band he fronts, and is equal parts rebel hero to druggy, lyin’ mess. But he randomly decrees Troy is cool, and his new drummer. Even if he’s just being used, Troy’s world is headed for some big changes. Actor Matthew Lillard’s feature directorial debut, based on K.L. Going’s graphic novel, is familiar stuff in outline but a delight in execution, as it trades the usual teen-comedy crudities (a few gratuitous joke fantasy sequences aside) for something more heartfelt and restrained, while still funny. O’Leary from last year’s overlooked Natural Selection is flamboyantly terrific, while on the opposite end of the acting scale Campbell makes repressed emotion count for a lot — he has one wordless moment at a hospital that just might bring you to the tears his character refuses to spill. (1:38) (Dennis Harvey)

The House I Live In Much like he did in 2005’s Why We Fight, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki identifies a Big Issue (in that film, the Iraq War) and strips it down, tracing all of the history leading up to the current crisis point. Here, he takes on America’s “war on drugs,” which I put quotes around not just because it was a phrase spoken by Nixon and Reagan, but also because — as The House I Live In ruthlessly exposes — it’s been a failure, a sham, since its origins in the late 1960s. Framing his investigation with the personal story of his family’s housekeeper — whose dedication to the Jarecki family meant that she was absent when her own son turned to drugs — and enfolding a diverse array of interviews (a sympathetic prison guard, addicts and their families, The Wire‘s David Simon) and locations (New York City, Sioux City), Jarecki has created an eye-opening film. Particularly well-explained are segments on how drug laws correlate directly to race and class, and how the prison-industrial complex has played a part in making sure those laws remain as strict as possible. (1:48)  (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1vOw9ykpQk

Middle of Nowhere All the reasons why movie publicist turned filmmaker Ava DuVernay scored the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival are up here on the screen. Taking on the emotionally charged yet rarely attempted challenge of picturing the life of the loved one left behind by the incarcerated, DuVernay furthers the cause of telling African American stories — she founded AaFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement) and made her directorial debut with 2008 LA hip-hop doc This Is The Life — with Middle of Nowhere. Medical student Ruby (the compelling Emayatzy Corinealdi) appears to have a bright future ahead of her, when her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) makes some bad choices and is tossed into maximum security prison for eight long years. She swears she’ll wait for him, putting her dreams aside, making the long bus ride out to visit him regularly, and settling for any nursing shift she can. How will she scrape the money together to pay the lawyer for Derek’s parole hearing, cope with the grinding disapproval of her mother (Lorraine Toussaint), support the increasingly hardened and altered Derek, and most importantly, discover a new path for herself? All are handled with rare empathy and compassion by DuVernay, who is rewarded for her care by her cast’s powerful performances. Our reward might be found amid the everyday poetry of Ruby’s life, while she wraps her hair for bed, watches Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), and fantasizes about love in a life interrupted. (1:41) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80_L_LsOexE

Simon and the Oaks Despite being gripping or heartwarming at times, Simon and the Oaks, based on the novel by Marianne Fredricksson, fails to cohere, serving as another reminder of the perennial dilemma of converting literature to film. It tells the story of Simon (Bill Skarsgard — son of Stellan, younger brother of Alexander), a boy coming of age in World War II Sweden. He befriends Isak, son of a Jewish bookkeeper who fled Nazi Germany, and their families become close when Isak’s father nurtures Simon’s love of books and Isak begins to heal his emotional scars by diving into carpentry work with Simon’s father. The moments of true human compassion between the two families begin to falter as the story jumps around to follow Simon’s search for love and identity. More missteps: Simon’s discovery of classical music is conveyed via a series of “artsy” montages, and his brief affair with a fiery Auschwitz victim — problematic, to say the least. (2:02) (Molly Champlin)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtT1cKo4RX4

Smashed A heartbreaking lead performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead drives this tale of a marriage tested when one partner decides to get sober. And it’s time: after an epic night of boozing, first-grade teacher Kate (Winstead) pukes in front of her class, then lies and says she’s pregnant, not anticipating the pushy delight of the school’s principal (Megan Mullally). Plus, Kate’s gotten into the habit of waking up in strange, unsafe places, not really remembering how she stumbled there in the first place. Husband Charlie (Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul) sees no reason to give up partying; he’s a music blogger whose “office” is the home his wealthy parents bought for the couple, and his problem isn’t quite as unmanageable as hers (at least, we never see him peeing in a convenience store). After Kate joins AA, she realizes she’ll have to face her problems rather than drinking them away — a potentially clichéd character arc that’s handled without flashy hysterics by director and co-writer (with Susan Burke) James Ponsoldt, and conveyed with grace and pain by Winstead —an actor probably best-known for playing Ramona Flowers in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but just now revealing the scope of her talent. (1:25) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LSX_UH0F9g

Tai Chi Zero A little boy dubbed “the Freak” for the curious, horn-like growth on his forehead grows up to be Lu Chan (Jaydan Yuan), who becomes a near-supernatural martial arts machine when the horn is punched, panic-button style. But activating the “Three Blossoms of the Crown,” as it’s called, takes a toll on the boy’s health, so he’s sent to the isolated Chen Village to learn their signature moves, though he’s repeatedly told “Chen-style kung fu is not taught to outsiders!” Stephen Fung’s lighthearted direction (characters are introduced with bios about the actors who play them, even the split-second cameos: “Andrew Lau, director of the Infernal Affairs trilogy”), affinity for steampunk and whimsy, engagement of Sammo Hung as action director, and embracing of the absurd (the film’s most-repeated line: “What the hell?”) all bring interest to this otherwise pretty predictable kung-fu tale, with its old-ways-versus-Western-ways conflict and misfit hero. Still, there’s something to be said for batshit insanity. (Be warned, though: Tai Chi Zero is the first in a series, which means one thing: it ends on a cliffhanger. Argh.) (1:34) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWIAjsf9Xq0

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) (Lynn Rapoport)

Party Radar: Rrose, Osunlade, Daniel Wang, Odyssey, more

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Party Radar: Rrose, Osunlade, Daniel Wang, Odyssey, more

First of all, what the heck are you gonna be for Halloweeeeen?

I’m vacillating between being these amazing but creepy speakers made of artificial muscles — so many of my interests intersecting? — and DJ Paris Hilton (I’ll just stand there like a stunned gazelle with one headphone, and have someone pop up from under my minidress to fiddle with a mixer). In any case, let’s all agree that this can be our Halloween–costume-choosing retro kiki house theme song:

Second, I screwed up someting major in my Super Ego column in the paper this week: The wonderful Odyssey party is actually on FRIDAY (not Saturday as your wasted columnist stupidly put forth — hey at least I’m cute in the dark!) Come and spank me on the dancefloor, loves, it’s gonna be a great one.

Here are more parties.

 

>>OSUNLADE

Beautifully hypnotic global-tribal, jazzy-deep house from the spiritual master — he’ll be at another installment of Marques Wyatt’s Deep parties, IMHO the most excitingly diverse experiences in SF.

Fri/19, 10pm-4am, $15-$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

>>PEACHES

It’s time to re-up your degree in the teaches of Peaches. Berlin’s bad mama-jamma of electroclash performance art is back for a rare appearance, celebrating the 17th anniversary of local art-tech-music powerhouse Blasthaus.

Fri/19, 9pm, $22.50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.blasthaus.com

 

>>RROSE

The mindbending deep techno entity known as Rrose obliterated pretty much everyone when she played here at Public Works several months ago — c’est la vie! Joining Rrose in the blessedly banging, re-abilified Club Six basement is Sensate Focus, another cerebellum twirler. I’m kind of scared, the good scared.

Sat/20, 10pm-late, $15-$20. Club Six, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

>>DANIEL WANG

He used to live here, now he lives in Berlin — the US is less cute without him 🙁 but he will be bringing his deliciously breezy underground house magic to Honey Soundsystem 🙂 

Sun/21, 10pm, $5. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. hnysndsystm.tumblr.com

Nudity and tourism

Zelda Bronstein
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Nudity and tourism

KQED’s Forum weighed in on Sup. Scott Wiener’s anti-nudity law Oct. 18, and I particularly enjoyed the attempts by all to avoid the use of the word “cockring.” I taped a show for KPFA’s morning mix (to air 7:30 am Oct. 19) and host John Hamilton told me that “cockring” wasn’t on the FCC list of unacceptable words and it was ok to use it, but that’s KPFA, not KQED. I also laughed at Michael Krasny confessing that he was beeing “lookist” when he said he’d heard that the men at Jane Warner Plaza weren’t all that good-looking.

At any rate, here’s the real story: A friend’s mom was visiting recently from Switzerland, and what did she want to do in San Francisco? She wanted to go to the Castro and see the naked men. Of course.

You see the buses going down Market Street with all the tourists, sticking their cameras out the window to get a shot? It’s a tourist attraction. 

Remember — when the sea lions first arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf about 20 years ago, and hauled themselves up on the docks, the city tried to get them to leave — they were loud and stinky and unappealing. But they wouldn’t go — and after a few weeks, the merchants realized how good they were for business.

I asked the Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as SF Travel, if banning nudity might be bad for the tourist industry — and the local economy. The folks there haven’t gotten back to me. But I don’t know; maybe the city economist should study this nudity ban.

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