Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay
I’m all for local businesses and delicious honey and getting to use the word “apiarist” in a sentence, but if any kind of this shit goes down you’ll know which type of urban farmer to give the stink eye. You say 15 beehives hidden in “‘borrowed spaces’ around SF,” NY Times — I say bio-terrorist cells. Hell, if you can train bees to detect bombs, who’s to say they also couldn’t be trained to detonate them?
Meanwhile in Science: “While dominant hyenas have a steady, confident-sounding giggle, subordinate ones produce a more variable call, allowing the animals to keep track of their social hierarchy, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study.” Who’s laughing now, bitch?
Remember in Basquiat when David Bowie’s Andy Warhol crows, “you always get the good stuff,” to dealer Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper, in an equally meta bit of casting) over their power lunch? Well, that’s how I felt when I read the news on Fecal Face that uber-cool-for-Mission-School gallery Jack Hanley is closing shop in SF to focus on its New York space. If you want to pour out some beer on the corner of 15th and Valencia, the SF institution’s final show opens this Saturday. It’s a family affair, including work by old and new Hanley favorites such as Tauba Auerbach, Chris Johanson, Alicia Mccarthy, Shaun O’Dell, and Leslie Shows.
In more encouraging gallery-related news: last Friday, the GLBT Historical Society’s Dom Romesburg sent out an email announcing that the org just signed a lease for, “a new Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society History Museum in the Castro.” Romesburg continues, “The new exhibit space is on 18th near Castro, in the old laundromat right across from Magnet.” This is indeed exciting news, as the rotating exhibits at the Society’s intimate downtown space, along with Passionate Struggle, last year’s long-running panorama of SF LGBT history in the old Wolf Camera shop on Castro Street, have largely been great, but have also felt like so many amuse-bouches for what must be some pretty fabulous main-course holdings (Sylvester’s Purple People Eater sequined stage costume, one of Passionate Struggle’s highlights, notwithstanding).