>>TAKE BACK THE STREETS In Chiapas, small Zapatista towns will build DIY speed bumps on the freeways cutting through their community. Here in SF, we make our own bike lanes. Nicely done, Kingston and Guerrero, nicely done.
Look and listen
>>TRIANGULA The Alps’ next album after last year’s acclaimed Le Voyage includes striking design work by Tauba Auerbach — namely, a sleeve that can be folded out to form a sky-sided pyramid atop a landscape. Released by Mexican Summer, Easy Action finds core trio Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Alexis Georgopolous, and Scott Hewicker collaborating in different ways from song to song, using collage techniques to reframe sounds from past recordings, including Le Voyage. The overall textures are more dissonant, with fuzzy-needle effects and distortion present on more than one track.
>>MOMMY, HE’S SCARING US San Francisco’s latest YouTube sensation isn’t one of our outrageous performance artists or curbside curiosities. It’s Dr. Robert Lustig, a UCSF pediatric endocrinologist who wants to take away our candy. The opening salvo in Lustig’s journey to viral status was “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” a dense, learned, 90-minute lecture dissecting the harmful effects of sugar on everything from our triceratops to our hermaphrodites — or was it our trigyclerides and hematocrits? The YouTube lecture was followed by a New York Times Magazine cover story by Gary Taubes on April 17 and an appearance on Forum with Michael Krasney on April 21. As of April 22, more than 1 million people have viewed the lecture, presumably after they polished off the cookies in their secret office drawer.
>>G.A.W.K. AND RAWK The Gay Artists and Writers Kollective is celebrating its 25th anniversary this Saturday at Magnet in the Castro. G.A.W.K. still rocks thanks to the efforts of Jon Sugar, who in addition to music and drag endeavors has helped assemble and emcee the gathering for queer rock performers, songwriters, actors, writers, and more. The bill for Saturday’s free anniversary celebration includes Bambi Lake, Jerry the Faerie, Xavier, Khalil Sullivan, the band Era Escape, and violinist Kippy Marks.
>>GUTS ‘N’ GLORY Having emerged on the other side of its first decade, the BYOBW (Bring Your Own Big Wheel) races yesterday on Sunday, April 17 seemed to be gathering speed, and swinging a can of Miller High Life about as they one-handedly swerved down the backside of Potrero Hill. The capacity crowd on Vermont street was well-pleased with their careening crusaders – even spectators inconvenienced by an airborne Michael Jackson on turn number two gave a lusty cheer when the King of Pop spun about nimbly and re-boarded. The Internet has nothing else on it today but video footage of the event, but here’s our fave shots from the day.
The glory:
And the fall (sorry buddy):
