Art Archives — Page 126 of 206 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Magnetic folk

David Talbot

May 20, 2010

The video for “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros plays like a Super 8 summer memory you wish you had. The happy, whistling back-and-forth duet between front man Alex Ebert and real-life girlfriend Jade Castrinos is illustrated with scenes from a 21st-century Merry Prankster stopover in Marfa, Texas. Everyone’s playing guitars, running through fields, and prancing about holding hands in a way that suggests the 11-piece folk band’s bond goes beyond the ecstatic sing-alongs that have been the toast of festival crowds from here to Coachella.

The group’s creator, Ebert (who spent another life as singer for the sharply mod punk band Ima Robot) is undoubtedly the ring leader of all this. He presents himself in a vaguely messianic manner, with unkempt brown hair piled atop his head and enigmatic zeros painted on his torso. “But it’s done with a smile,” Ebert says during a recent phone conversation about Edward Sharpe, Ebert’s musical transformation, and art-based community making. The group’s namesake, he explains, began as his autobiographic ideal.

“Edward Sharpe was an idea of a better version of myself, the me that I wanted to be when I was five years old — which I think is what all of us want to be,” Ebert reflects, unhurried despite his publicist’s insistence that we talk no more than 15 minutes. “It’s not really such a big deal, I don’t think. I guess in some ways, when I started the band I didn’t feel particularly attached or close to myself. Alex Ebert — I didn’t know what the hell that meant anymore.”

So he got on a new deal. Met his new love, Castrinos (“The power her spirit exudes, the truth that pours from her eyes, the reminder of sort of something bigger whenever she’s around — sometimes you meet people that are inexplicably important,” he says about their relationship), started jamming with friends from around town, bought a white school bus, and took off on tour.

Ebert says his transition to folk music was a bid to create togetherness in the Los Angeles of his childhood, where sprawl seems to have precluded connectivity. “What the city did for me was really make me pray for community,” he says. “It made other people pray, and I think some of that yearning has made its way to the album as a heralding for some kind of community.”

It’s enough to make you throw on your peasant skirt and thumb for a ride on the bus. But what exactly would one be signing up for? What’s up with, say, the red zeros? Ebert laughs. “I still have to figure out what the hell [they mean],” he says. “I was getting really, really into mathematics and physics [back when in 2009, when he formed the band]. I was getting into trigonometry and not knowing what the fuck I was talking about. One night I came up with the Magnetic Zeros. It just sort of felt like something.”

So maybe the point is not to get bogged down in the specifics of the Edward Sharpe mythology. Which is fine, because the music is entertaining enough on its own. The ease of the collective background singing recalls the organic way it was created. Onstage, Castrinos and Ebert romp about, clearly quite pleased with the joy their adventure has brought to their fans over the last year — but perhaps less so about the sold-out shows and critical accolades.

“The music industry is … it’s just important not to take it too seriously,” Ebert says, reflecting on how he maintains joy in the face of hectic touring and promotions for the album. “That can be really crazy-making. It can be a bizarre, humorless game, so I think it’s good to bring some levity and levitation to this whole situation.”

EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS

With Dawes

Thurs/27, 9 p.m., $25

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

The Mitchell sister

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 18, 2010

sarah@sfbg.com

Porn heiress Meta Jane Mitchell Johnson is running a little late when I arrive at the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater, the adult entertainment establishment her father Jim Mitchell and uncle Artie Mitchell founded on the edge of the Tenderloin, just blocks from City Hall, July 4, 1969.

Johnson, 32, recently became co-owner of the theater and invited me over to discuss her vision for this notoriously hardcore strip club and the challenges she faces in an industry dominated by the Déjà Vu corporate strip club chain, in a town whose political leaders are still trying to figure out how best to regulate the clubs to ensure that their predominantly female workforce is properly compensated and protected from harassment in safe, sanitary conditions.

A young guy on the front register ushers me into a side room. The walls are decorated with photographs that recall the people and players who have made this club such a storied San Francisco institution and a landmark in the history of the sex industry.

There’s an image of a topless Marilyn Chambers, the star of Behind the Green Door, the porn film the Mitchell brothers shot and screened at the theater in 1972 and was a major hit after it became known that Chambers was also the wholesome face on Ivory Snow soap flakes box.

There is a photo of Artie with a young raven perched over his shoulder. It was taken in 1990 during a trip to Aspen, Colo., to support gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who worked at the club in the 1980s and was facing serious charges, including sexual assault and possession of drugs and explosives, that eventually got dropped.

Another shows both the Mitchell brothers, photographed when they were still young and rakish and battling the vice squad, even as they entertained the local political elite.

Today the brothers are dead, Artie from bullet wounds inflicted when Jim shot him with a rifle in February 1991; Jim from a heart attack in July 2007. And now Jim’s oldest son, James Mitchell, 28, is in jail awaiting trial for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend Danielle Keller to death with a baseball bat in July 2009 and abducting their baby daughter, Samantha.

Unlike his father, who continued to run the Mitchell porn empire after serving less than three years for voluntary manslaughter, James is facing life behind bars.

“He is charged with six serious felonies and is facing life imprisonment with no possibility of parole,” Marin County Deputy Chief District Attorney Barry Borden said recently. Johnson told me that her brother no longer owns stock in Cinema 7, the corporation the Mitchell brothers founded to oversee their burgeoning sex business.

This latest family tragedy occurred in the wake of a $3.74 million class action suit that was settled in 2008. Brought by three MBOT dancers, the suit led to valid claims by 370 dancers who complained about Cinema 7’s “piece-rate” wage system. Under that system, the club compensated dancers solely for the number of private dances performed, waived meal and rest periods, and failed to reimburse dancers for costumes, props, and makeup.

Since then the club ended the piece-rate system, but introduced chips customers must buy to procure lap dances and encounters in small, curtained private rooms. On a recent night, the girls at the O’Farrell Theater remained smiling and bright-eyed as they succeeded in getting some customers to purchase chips for lap dances and private encounters. But the rest of the crowd remained largely silent and mostly tight-fisted as customers watched the club’s exotic dancers perform on its disco-balled stage.

All of which left me wondering if Johnson can succeed in overcoming her family history and reputation to make a difference for her workers and community while facing a nationwide recession in an industry dominated by an out-of-state chain.

THE UNLIKELY SAVIOR

Johnson greets me dressed in Ugg boots and jeans, apologizes for being tardy, and leads the way upstairs to the theater’s office so we can talk.

I first met Johnson in 2007 (“Behind the Mitchell’s Door,” 07/22/09) when she arrived at the theater in knee-high boots, clutching a massive lime handbag and a tiny dog named Baby. During that first encounter, three months after her father died, Johnson confided that when she took over the office, it was full of dildos dancers had given the Mitchell brothers. Placing her dog on the pool table that dominated the office, she said she planned to massage all this male energy toward femininity.

Today it looks as if she has started to deliver on that promise. The pool table is gone. The sofa where Hunter S. Thompson used to sit remains in the room. But now a clothesline runs between the office walls, draped with a stripper’s glove, stilettos, and a G-string emblazoned with the word “Gonzo,” presumably in honor of Thompson.

“It was a little thing we made to give away,” Johnson laughs.

She introduces her youngest brother and club co-owner, Justin. “Me and Justin are close. We are the owners and we are making some changes,” Johnson explains. “We are making the prices more reasonable so customers don’t have to spend an arm and a leg just to get a lap dance. And we’re going to hold events like poetry slams. We are trying to make the club fun again. We definitely see a hit due to the economy, but we’ve also been hit by the decision from the class action lawsuit.”

Johnson insists she and her brother aren’t “your typical strip club owners.”

“We‘re in a symbiotic relationship with our dancers,“ she says. “That sets us apart from other clubs. The dancers are our employees. We pay them minimum wage and workers comp. We cover their Healthy San Francisco costs. We incur a lot of expenses legally employing our dancers. But instead of crying about ‘our handicap,’ she said, referring to treating dancers as employees, “my goal is to show we can manage the club without a pimp mentality, without a ‘How much can you shake them down for?‘ approach.

“A lot of our employees have been here a long time and have had to deal with all the painful violent stuff too,” she continued. “And folks are still here, even though their hours got cut and they are not making as much money.“

In 2007, Johnson told me that she resented the family business when she was growing up. “The boys could go inside, and I couldn’t,” she recalled. It wasn’t until 2004, when she was working as a mortgage consultant in a cubical farm in San Ramon that Johnson began to take pride in the business “as something that had taken care of us through the years.”

Johnson, who became the club’s scheduling manager in 2005, recalls the shock of losing her dad in 2007. “It was like being dumped in icy water,” she says. “At first we didn’t know how to handle it. But we learned. Five years ago, I was much more liable to listen to advice. But I need to be able to fall asleep feeling good. That involves treating people a certain way. I don’t think any other strip club in the country is being run the way this one is.”

Johnson got married and went on maternity leave in 2008. ” When my son was six months old, I came back for the club’s 40th anniversary party and I realized, they need me — both of us [she and her brother]— as owners, steering the proverbial ship. No one else wants to be held accountable. We never discussed selling. Our father built this place. It’s completely shaped our lives. Good or bad, it’s ours.”

TOUGH INDUSTRY

As a nude strip club, Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre stands in direct competition with Crazy Horse on Market Street and the Déjà Vu-owned clubs including the Market Street Theaters, Gold Clubs and other spots in SoMa, and most of the clubs in North Beach. The exception is Lusty Lady, the only unionized, worker-owned peepshow in the country.

“If you walk into the Gold Club in San Francisco, well, there are 50 other Gold Clubs in the country, so, it‘s generic,“ Johnson says. “But they‘ve got their business model. We‘re not trying to copy Déjà Vu or Crazy Horse. We‘re the Mitchell Brothers. It‘s been part of us and our whole history.“

Dancers agree that the Lusty Lady isn’t in competition with Déjà Vu.

“They’re Walmart, and we’re the mom and pop store on the corner,” Lorelei*, a dancer at Lusty Lady, said. “At the Lusty, we pride ourselves on being alternative and having tattoos and piercings.”

Some dancers, who we’ve indicated with an asterisk after their altered names, voiced fear of being identified as critics of Déjà Vu’s business model.

“If Deja Vu found out I was shit-talking them I would probably get fired and be blacklisted from all their clubs,” Sugar* said. “If I were to get blacklisted, I’d be totally screwed because there are no other clubs in San Francisco,” where she doesn’t feel pressure to do more than dance, “which is not my thing.”

“Or the Lusty Lady, which doesn’t pay enough to cover my bills,” she continued. “But Deja Vu is notorious for being a terrible company to work for, mainly because of their outrageously high stage fees.”

Other dancers say they had to pay stage fees at the Déjà Vu-owned Hungry I, and sometimes went home empty-handed after eight-hour shifts when uninvited touching was common.

“The number one thing that would improve our work experience is if someone actually forced Deja Vu to stop charging us stage fees,” Amber* said. “Almost no one outside the industry knows that dancers pay money to go to work. A lot of customers think the clubs pay us, like, thousands of dollars. In San Francisco we pay between $100–$200 per shift, sometimes more.”

By law, dancers have the right to choose employee status, versus being considered independent contractors. “But that’s a joke,” Amber added. “If we choose employee status, we’re required to do a minimum of 10 lap dances per shift. The club keeps all that money, and we would get paid $12–$15 an hour.”

But Edi Thomas, counsel for Déjà Vu‘s Centerfolds club, flatly denies that the dancers who perform at Centerfolds (the only nightclub in San Francisco authorized to operate as a “Deja Vu Showgirls“ club) pay stage fees.

“Rather, entertainers who perform at Centerfolds (and/or at Hungry I, the Condor, and Market Street) are paid a substantial percentage of the patron revenues generated from individual dance sales,“ Thomas stated.

“The entertainers are issued Forms 1099 at year-end, reflecting the amounts they were paid by the nightclub,“ she said, which means the dancers are independent contractors, not employees. “These nightclubs operate within the law and make every effort to assure that entertainers are well compensated and perform in safe and lawful environments.

“There are, as in any industry, former and disgruntled workers carrying a desire to harm a nightclub or the industry for their own personal reasons,“ Thomas added. “But those workers do not represent the voice of the majority.“

CENTER OF THE STORM

When the Mitchell Brothers founded their empire, it was against a backdrop of organized crime trying to exercise a monopoly on the porn industry. According to a 1977 U.S. Department of Justice report, members of La Cosa Nostra tried to request exclusive distribution of Mitchell Brothers’ porn films.

The Mitchells resisted for years, but DOJ claims they eventually entered into a contract with LCN’s Michael Zaffarano to distribute “Autobiography of a Flea.” the Mitchells also fought City Hall.

During the 1980s, Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s vice squad tried to close the Mitchell Brothers’ operations. But under Mayor Willie Brown, the former attorney for late Déjà Vu strip club owner Sam Conti, SFPD enforcement reportedly eased.

Then in 1997, Déjà Vu started to take control of the city’s sex clubs, introducing stage fees and private rooms. In 2002, three former MBOT dancers filed their suit against Cinema 7. The next year, three other dancers brought suits against Market Street Cinema and Century Theater. And in 2005, Deja Vu settled a class action labor suit with its dancers. Attorney Greg Walston, representing the dancers, said at the time that minimum pay rate would protect dancers from being forced into prostitution to make money.

Deja Vu threatened a counter-suit based on the allegations of prostitution at their clubs, but Walston told reporters: “The record speaks for itself.” Walston used police reports with prostitution allegations to bolster his case and said he was doing the job the District Attorney’s Office should have done.

In July 2008, when MBOT reached its $3.74 million class action settlement, Cinema 7 president Jeffrey Armstrong said that the corporation was “not able to pay the entire amount up front.” Instead, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mitchell and her business partner John P. Morgan, then cotrustees of the Jim Mitchell 1990 Family Trust, which holds two-thirds of Cinema 7’s shares, pledged stock certificates as security interest.

But the debate about how to treat sex work in San Francisco continues. In November 2008, District Attorney Kamala Harris and Mayor Gavin Newsom opposed Proposition K, a local measure that tried to decriminalize prostitution by forbidding local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting sex workers. They argued that the measure would increase prostitution on the streets, give pimps cover, and hamper efforts to stop sex trafficking. The measure failed.

At the time, Prop. K advocate Carol Leigh and cofounder of the Bay Area Sex Workers Advocacy Network said, “We feel that repressive policies don’t help trafficking victims, and that human rights-based approaches, including decriminalization, are actually more effective.”

Today, erotic dancers must identify which of a tangle of regulatory entities is the appropriate venue to lodge complaints. District Attorney spokesperson Erica Derryck said Harris is dedicated to prosecuting violent crimes committed against all San Franciscans, regardless of whether they happen in a club or an alley.

“If there are two drug dealers and one attacks the other, we’d prosecute. But that’s not to say there won’t also be consequences for underlying criminal behavior too,” she said. “But anyone who has been victimized should be confident of going to the police and reporting any incident.”

Derryck said public health and safety complaints can be lodged at entities that provide permits and licenses, including the Planning Department and Entertainment Commission.

“There might not be any criminal activity involved, but this route hits clubs in the pocket and is worth considering if dancers want to represent their grievances,” she said.

Meanwhile dancers say there is still pressure to do more than just dance in some clubs. “For some dancers, the clubs feel fine,” Lorelei says. “It’s a safe space where no ads are needed. They see it as a fair exchange. But if you just want to dance — when one girl is doing this, and another that, how are you supposed to make money?”

Other dancers wish managers wouldn’t abuse their power. “Sometimes they back you up,” Amber said. “Other nights, someone insults you and they won’t help.” And many wish management would try to make the clubs fun again.

“It used to be a party, but now it’s about the cheapest dirtiest fuck you can get,” Lorelei said. “Taking stage fees created a dark environment that carries over to the customers. It’s like we’re goats in a petting zoo begging, saying give me money, give me coke.”

FAMILY BUSINESS

Attorney Jim Quadra, who represented the dancers in the MBOT class action suit, said that for all the talk about treating dancers right, the Mitchells’ interest was money.

“At the time, a group of people thought the agenda was to get dancers to do more than dancing because that’s what brings in the revenue,” Quadra said. “But Meta comes off much better than the rest of her family.”

During the trial, Jim was asked if there were meetings where Cinema 7 personnel defined what they meant by a “lap dance” in the piece rate system.

“You need a lap for a lap dance,” Mitchell replied. “You are getting down to like, you know, lap dance, erotic theater, America. And your question is like just a waste of the public’s slender resources, like drop[ping] a basketball in the ghetto and asking, ‘Did you define what that is for them?'<0x2009>”

Johnson, who voluntarily took the witness stand, was asked if there was any reason dancers would be afraid of her father. “He can be a little gruff and he can be cranky, a grouchy old man,” she replied.

Today Johnson is moving ahead with a vision she began to outline in 2007, then put on hold until December 2009, when a law suit about the family trust fund was settled.

“We settled everything out of court in December with my grandmother, which was a nice Christmas present,” she says, confirming that she and her siblings succeeded in removing their 83-year grandmother, Georgia Mae Mitchell, as trustee of the Jim Mitchell family fund. They replaced her with their mother, Jim Mitchell’s ex-wife, Mary Jane Whitty-Grimm, who also has custody of James’s baby daughter, Samantha.

“Danielle’s mother has some personal problems … that made the court reluctant to give her custody of the baby. so they gave Samantha to Mary, who is a nice woman, who is married with a family,” former San Francisco D.A. Terence Hallinan told me, after James Mitchell replaced him with another private criminal defense attorney, Douglas Horngrad, in March.

In court filings related to the family trust fund, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae claimed her grandchildren’s lawsuit was intended to deny her jailed grandson James his share of the trust to defend against his serious felony charges.

“Justin asked me to take money out of the trust account of his brother James, and send it to his mother instead of paying his criminal defense attorney, Terence Hallinan,” the Mitchell matriarch claimed.

I asked Hallinan if the trust fund was the reason James Mitchell changed attorneys. “Yes and no,” Hallinan said. “It definitely had to do with money and who was going to run the club. The poor grandma, she is such a nice person. She was trying to play fair and be nice to all the kids. It’s not a really healthy family. ‘Rafe’ [James] is where he is. In my opinion, he is still not clear what happened or why.”

Johnson, for her part, says her brother James has mental health issues. “I don’t accept what he did,” she said. “I’m not making any excuses for it. He’s either insane or he’s a monster. But the family has an obligation to make sure he has legal defense. He was always a beneficiary of the trust. But he fired his lawyer, which is the worst thing he could have done.”

A restraining order Keller secured five days before she was murdered claims Mitchell abused her for years, had mood swings, used cocaine, and was addicted to methamphetamines.

“Danny should have left,” Johnson said.

“It’s been painful to read the comments people leave,” she continued, referring to online reaction to her brother’s arrest that suggest the Mitchells are bad seed and should be wiped out. “It’s not because James is a Mitchell, or because there’s some bad gene.”

Rather, she said he had serious unaddressed problems, “a time bomb that was going to explode and then it did in just about the most horrific way imaginable.”

“When I was 13, my father shot my uncle Artie. And when I was 31, James killed Danny,” she adds. “So I hope I don’t live to be 103.”

WOMEN’S WORK

In 1985, the O’Farrell Theater’s marquee famously read, “For show times call … ” followed by Mayor Feinstein’s phone number. But that was another era.

“I don’t know Dianne Feinstein,” Johnson says, as she shows me a cartoon R. Crumb drew in 1985 of then-Mayor Feinstein as Little Bo Peep, with a bunch of men, including political and law enforcement leaders, peeking out from under her skirts. “I know my father was never very fond of her. And I’m sure her reasons for wanting to shut the club down were based on the idea that women are being exploited and that we need to save them.”

Johnson says some of their dancers are single moms; some are young girls who can’t get enough work at retail jobs to pay their bills; and others are college students and graduates.

“There are as many stories as there are dancers. But the stereotype is that dancers are being exploited and have to be protected because they can’t protect themselves and no one really wants to dance. But when I came through the club door, I realized that many women want to do this and get upset if people try to save them. Some people feel that working in a strip club is bad, wrong, dirty. No. But it can be if you are pushed into it and don’t want to do it.”

Dancers the Guardian spoke to confirmed that they dislike being framed as victims. “When we are painted as victims, we look stupid,“ Lorelei said. “All we want is to make sure that folks are following the labor code and providing the same basic, decent working conditions you‘d get if you were working at a coffee shop.“

But dancers know that some people are titillated by the idea of women being taken advantage of. “They don’t want that fantasy to go away, that she’s really a good girl and doesn’t want to do it,” Lorelei said. “If it turns out we are not traumatized, horrified, or disenfranchised, it ruins the whole fantasy.”

She fears that political leaders know bad things are happening but don’t want to talk about them for fear it implies they are permitting them. “The attitude is these women aren’t real, they are sex workers, so if they get raped or go missing, who cares?” Lorelei claimed. “We can’t admit they are the babysitter, the girl who sits next to you at the office.”

When Johnson began working at MBOT, she was shocked that the dancers were naked. “But no one is forcing anyone to be here,” she says. “Sure, some women dance out of necessity. But there are women who are really into it … What’s bad is the exploitation.”

It’s hard to tell from the outside whether the MBOT dancers are feeling better about their working conditions these days or whether having a woman in charge makes a big difference.

On a recent Saturday night, we were charged $40 to enter the club. The ticket gave us access to the theater’s main stage, where a succession of ethnically diverse and athletically built girls pranced, pole danced, and eventually took it all off — in tasteful fashion — as the customers threw tips on stage.

A friendly girl asked if we’d like some company but backed off gracefully when we declined to do more than chat. No one else tried to hustle us for the next hour, and we didn’t get the sense that these women were desperate to make more money. The private rooms remained empty during our visit. But there are VIP rooms that we didn’t have access to, and it’s possible more hardcore stuff was going on elsewhere in the club.

As we left, a tour bus pulled up outside, full of tourists who pressed their noses against the bus windows to eyeball the famed Mitchell Brothers establishment, drawn just to gawk at this titillating and complicated San Francisco institution.

Johnson and Mitchell believe their club gives women a path to financial independence and that having a female in charge makes a difference. “They don’t need a man,” Johnson says. “In most strip clubs, the pay is all under the table, and the girls keep cash in shoe box under the bed.”

“Dodging the IRS,” Mitchell adds.

But they recognize that some dancers may be coming from abusive situations. Johnson said she realized one dancer was in trouble when she asked to be booked for every shift. “I looked at the situation and saw 16-hour days in stilettos and an exhausting schedule. It took a woman’s insight to work out what was going on.”

“It goes back to a woman’s touch, ” Mitchell says.

Johnson blames this nation’s puritanical roots for the abiding disapproval toward the sex industry and those who work in it.

“But it’s come a long way,” Mitchell interjects.” When this place first started, it got raided non-stop. Now it’s much more acceptable than 20 years ago. In the next 20 years, I’m optimistic that prostitution will be decriminalized, at least in our city, if not in our state.”

So is prostitution happening as much as some dancers say it is? “You can’t penalize people for surviving,” Johnson says. “What dancers do outside clubs is their business. We don’t have control over them. All we can do is worry about them. We don’t condone illegal activity inside the club. We don’t encourage or support it. That’s our official take.”

Johnson acknowledges the O’Farrell Theater may have the reputation for being perhaps the most hardcore club in the city. “But everything that happens here, happens elsewhere,” she says. “It’s the same exact deal except they don’t care at all, and we’re a family-run business.”

Mitchell observes that the O’Farrell Theater is huge part of the city’s tourism industry. “When conventions come through, we’re one of the prime tourist spots, along with Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said.

“San Francisco is known for its freewheeling sexuality, like the Folsom Street Fair,” Johnson adds. “People say San Francisco is Oakland’s slutty sister. And people come here because this club is an institution, a landmark in San Francisco.”

So can Johnson make a difference against this convoluted backdrop?

“It’s a benefit to have a female in management,” Johnson claims. “When we come up with an idea, I think: How will the dancers feel? We’re on the same team. I treat them like teammates. We’re not in a battle over who gets the most money. I can see through things. Women manipulate men, and dancers are in the business of manipulating men. It’s a sale. It’s a hustle. They have that mindset. But I say, no, you don’t need to make up situations. You just tell us what’s up. But that’s not the normal attitude. In most clubs, it’s ‘Shut up, do what we say, and pay your fees.'”

Johnson says she was recently at the AT&T store, and the girl asked where she worked. “I said, at a strip club. People find that incredibly interesting. This girl was 23 and she was not comfortable with the idea of dancing, but at the same time she was fascinated by it. And it’s not going away, women dancing and stripping, You can hate it; you can love it — it doesn’t matter.”

After so many years on the San Francisco scene, MBOT is striving to be a legitimate part of its neighborhood and the city’s business community. And to Johnson, some of that involves unfinished business.

“Lou Silva was the artist who did the original mural of whales on the club‘s wall. That‘s what I remember as a child. My dad and uncle were connected to that community and the underground comic movement in the late 1970s. They made money, they wanted to spread the love around, so they did a giant art project on the side wall. And a couple of years before my uncle died, they started to redo it. But the project stopped when my uncle was shot. We are going to bring the whales back. We‘re working on it with an Academy of Art class. It will be far more peaceful and calm than a crazy jungle scene on the wall. We want to redo whales to demonstrate that we are interested in more than just sex and exploitation. We want to be connected to our community again.“

Noting that the new mural is part of the beautification of Polk Street, Johnson concludes: “The mural on the wall is unfinished because of Artie‘s death. Now it‘s time to finish it, not to have unfinished art on the wall because of some horrible, violent incident. It‘s an investment to show we are not the Mitchells everyone thinks we are.“

Hot slice

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 18, 2010

Check out more photos of Boot and Shoe Service here.

DINE Interviewing a pizza guy: predictable banter about perfect crusts and luscious tomatoes, right? But restaurant owner Charlie Hallowell completely caught me off guard with a mouthful about life and the oven that sustains it. His new Boot and Shoe Service joint is a short walk from Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and a neighborhood away from his other popular pizza hub, Pizzaiolo. Hallowell loves pizza, like, really loves it, and now he’s going to use it to love you.

“I want to love the shit out of [customers],” he says, chomping on his lunch amid tables covered with chairs, as the dinner-only resto fires up its oven.

Two dozen tables and bar seats and a first-come, first-served, no reservation policy, means the place has been continually packed since it opened in December. The 800-degree oven toasts the fluffy, handmade crusts a crisp golden brown with a little doughy squish in the middle. Toppings like wild arugula, Monterey Bay squid, calabrian peppers, rosemary, mint, and pancetta (all 100 percent organic) make each of the fluctuating menu choices a full-on pleasure.

The peculiar name pays homage to the building’s former shoe repair tenants and ink drawings on the walls show leggy slices wearing kicky boots. Hallowell’s intentions for the new place were pretty simple: employ some talented young cooks, hang friends’ art, sell Bourbon, play Otis Redding, and hire hot girls with tattoos to run the food. And make damn good pies.

“It’s a fucking pizza — a circle of dough with shit on top of it. But there’s something beautiful about doing something over and over again,” he says of the process of slinging pies day in and day out. Spin a little dough lasso-style, smear on the sauce, throw on some cheese … um, not quite. Hallowell says it’s about building a special relationship with the oven and the fire.

“If you’ve had a fight with your girlfriend, or you haven’t been laid in awhile, or your mom’s dying from cancer and you try to throw in a log — the log will roll off the fire, maybe it won’t catch, or it lands on a pizza,” he says. “When you’re not there and you’re not present, the pizza burns.”

Hallowell has dedicated his life to pizza — and sometimes that freaks him out. Making pizzas may feel mundane at times, but he believes that the three most important things in life — fucking, eating, and sleeping — can all have a tendency to feel that way. So he kneads in a little extra love and hopes it comes through.

“I feed people. I fuel people. I cook with love so people can keep living. They can go home after dinner and make love to their wife and look after their children. They can wake up a happy human being.”

His main concern is helping his customers relax. He tells me he’s tired of how insecure this world makes people feel and he points the blame at the male anatomy.

“It’s all about your dick. It’s all about the size of your dick,” he starts shouting at me. “Your dick isn’t big enough.” He repeats the phrase about six times, louder and louder, and when I look around to see if anyone else is put off by the phrase and the sheer volume of his voice, not one of the chefs looks up from their work.

All this insecurity, Hallowell says, is what make people question if they’re truly lovable.

“Are you lovable?” he shouts to one of his chefs.

“Hell yeah, I’m lovable!” the chef shouts back.

Hallowell turns back to me. “Your mom doesn’t love you. Your dad doesn’t love you. Your friends … ” He lists off more people in my life, locking his eyes on mine. I put my notebook over my head and jokingly mutter to the chefs, “I’m getting a little nervous and maybe this interview isn’t going as planned.”

“And this is all why I promise to love the shit out of people,” Hallowell calms down. “They deserve love and respect. The business part is for the birds.”

BOOT AND SHOE SERVICE

3308 Grand Ave., Oakl.

(510) 763 2668

www.bootandshoeservice.com

A hologlyphic story

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 18, 2010

arts@sfbg.com

FILM/VISUAL ART The first time I witnessed Walter Funk’s Hologlyphics, I’d spiraled up the whimsical stairs of Jaina Bee’s Granny’s Empire of Art, parted curtains and slipped inside the otherwise dark, slanted-roof attic. A circle floated in the center of the room that slowly morphed into a rhombus, then a rectangle. It was three-dimensional, but not real. Along with its movement, sound spread from keyboards and motion-sensor instruments and bounced off the walls.

Remember when R2-D2 projected Princess Leia’s message “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope”? What was once just an idea imagined by George Lucas is now Walter Funk’s Hologlyphics — although the images are abstract and more like Leia’s famous coiled buns. Unlike the 3-D technology Avatar is hyping, Hologlyphics requires no glasses and presents a 90-degree view of the object, allowing a viewer to walk around the image and see it from multiple perspectives.

Funk developed a system for live auto-stereoscopic movies along with music and created a family of real-time spatial image synthesis and processing algorithms that he has coined Hologlyphics. The system takes information from keyboards, controllers, motion sensors, and acoustic instruments and projects a 3-D image that interacts with the sound it is simultaneously producing. “So as something gets bigger and smaller, something might get louder or softer or lower or higher in pitch,” Funk explains as we talk over a café americano (him) and black coffee (me) at the Marsh Café. “The sound and the visual are considered one thing. For every visual, there’s an associated sound, just like in the real world.”

Funk has been pursuing holography ever since he went to the now defunct Museum of Holography in New York in the 1980s. In 1987, he ordered his first holography kit and played with graphics on the now-ancient Apple IIe. But he kept running into walls and was frustrated by monetary and technological constraints. He considered abandoning his work. Then, in the early 1990s while doing research in old technical journals, he discovered Homer Tilton’s display system and got in touch with Tilton.

“He [Tilton] was really open to the idea of doing art with his parallactiscope system, even though it wasn’t what he did,” Funk explains. “He actually put together some early hardware for me. Here I was, this freaky artist in California. And he didn’t necessarily share my same visual aesthetic, but just liked the idea that people wanted to do other stuff with his display.” By 1994, with the aide of Tilton, Funk had put together his first prototype.

Currently the display projects green, morphing, 3-D shapes. But Funk has big dreams for the future — although there are still the same two limitations: money and technology. In an ideal future, the system would be “larger, full color, and photo-realistic.” If the system was larger, multiple people could view it at a time — just like Avatar. But for now, Hologlyphics works best as a one-person-at-a-time experience. “Everything I’m doing is pretty much abstract, which is good, since I’m doing a lot of abstract music,” Funk says. “At the same time, I’d like people to incorporate real-world imagery with it.”

Funk has an optimistic view of the latest 3-D craze. “There are some negative aspects because some studios are just going make things 3-D to make money. But there’s a whole new world of storytelling going on. Done right, it can be amazing and even evolve into a different art form beyond film.”

With Funk’s system, viewers witness multiple perspectives while moving, just like the hologlyph, thus integrating it fluidly into the real world. “This is a cheesy example, but everyone knows it,” he says, with more energy than a mere cafe americano can provide. “Imagine Clint Eastwood when he says, ‘Go ahead, make my day.’ What if you were watching that movie for the first time, and right at that scene you’re looking at the back of his head because you can — that takes away a lot of effect and power from the filmmaker. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing. It’s just a different art form.”

Hologlyphics illustrates the potential for enhanced viewing experiences and new ways to tell stories. “The thought of it is very common, but the existence of it is not,” he says. “I think once this stuff does exist, there’s no putting it back. It’s like Pandora’s box — people are gonna love it.”

WALTER FUNK’S HOLOGLYPHICS

Maker Faire

Sat/22, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun/23, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; free–$25

San Mateo County Event Center

346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo (650) 574-3247

www.hologlyphics.com

Quick Lit: May 19-May 25

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, a celebration of Bukowski, Carol Queen revisits exhibitionism, Rebecca Solnit and Mona Caron create a California bestiary, and more

Wednesday, May 19

A California Bestiary
Authors Rebecca Solnit and Mona Caron partnered to create their own book of magical California beasts inspired by medieval bestiaries that were more fanciful than factual.
7 p.m., free
Green Arcade
1680 Market, SF
(415) 431-6800

Celebrate Bukowski
Celebrate the release of Absence of the Hero: Uncollected Stories and Essays by Charles Bukowski with editor David Calonne in conversation with Garrett Caples and readings from Stephen Elliot and Daphne Gottlieb.
7 p.m., free
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus, SF
(415) 362-8193

The Empire Strikes Out
Author Robert Elias reads from his new book The Empire Strikes Out: How baseball sold U.S. foreign policy and promoted the American way abroad, which takes an eye-opening look at baseball’s relationship to the American empire, from the revolutionary era to the present.
7:30 p.m., free
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck, Berk
(510) 649-1320

Michael Chabon
Join bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon as he discusses his new memoir, Manhood for Amateurs.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

“Massive Stars and Their Temper Tantrums”
Join UC Berkeley professor Dr. Nathan Smith as he discusses the properties of the most massive stars, and the life and death of large, unstable stars, such as Eta Carinae.
7:30 p.m., free
Randall Museum
199 Museum Way, SF
(415) 554-9600
www.randallmuseum.org

Carol Queen
Attend a book party for Queen’s 1996 book, Exhibitionism for the Shy, featuring new chapters on internet exhibitionism and added interviews. Dress up, show off, and talk hot at this discussion on finding your own erotic identity and comfort zone to become the erotically outgoing soul you’d like to be.
6:30 p.m., free
Good Vibrations Berkeley
2504 San Pablo, Berk.
http://events.goodvibes.com

Thursday, May 20

An evening with Chuck Palahniuk
Hear the famed author of Fight Club discuss his new book Tell All, a Sunset Boulevard homage to Old Hollywood, filled with name-dropping and nostalgia.
7:30 p.m., $36
Swedish American Hall
2174 Market, SF
(415) 863-8688

California Condors
Learn more about the reestablished population of California Condors after their near extinction 30 years ago at this talk with National Park Service wildlife biologist Daniel George titled, “The Natural History and Future of California Condors.”
7:30 p.m., free
First Unitarian Universalist Church
1187 Franklin, SF
www.goldengateaudubon.org

The Food Industry
Hear Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times reporter Michael Moss discuss lapses in food safety, nutrition related issues, the White House’s war on obesity and more in conversation with KQED reporter Sarah Varney.
Noon, $20
Commonwealth Club
2nd floor
595 Market, SF
(415) 597-6700

Hearts for Madeline
Hear author Page Hodel talk about her new book about when she met Madelene Rodriguez, who soon after died of cancer, and how she still leaves crafted hearts on her doorstep to say ‘I love you.’
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc.
2275 Market, SF
(415) 864-6777

InsideStorytime: Crime
Enjoy readings from crime writers Lisa Lutz, author of The Spellmans Strike Again, Mark Coggins, author of The Big Wake-up, Seth Harwood, author of Jack Wakes Up, Mitzi Ngim, and Julie Graham with MC Ransom Stephens.
6:30 p.m., $3-$5 sliding scale
Café Royale
800 Post, SF
(415) 505-0869
www.insidestorytime.com

Low Bite
Attend this launch of Sin Soracco’s new prison novel about survival, dignity, friendship, and insubordination inside a women’s prison.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

“Lyman vs. Niman: Can you be a good environmentalist and still eat meat?”
Raising livestock is resource-intensive and, we are beginning to learn, a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Nicolette Hahn Niman, a Marin rancher and author of Righteous Porkchop, will argue that there is an ecologically sustainable way to eat meat against Howard Lyman, the author of Mad Cowboy: Plain truth from a cattle rancher who won’t eat meat.
7 p.m., $10-$20
David Brower Center
Richard & Rhoda Goldman Theater
2150 Allston, Berk.
(510) 859-9100

Friday, May 21

To Teach: The Journey, In Comics
Graphic artist Ryan Alexander-Tanner brings William Ayers’ memoir To Teach: The journey of a teacher to life in this new graphic novel.
7 p.m., free
Green Arcade
1680 Market, SF
(415) 431-6800

Saturday, May 22

“Shanghai”
Attend an Asian Art Museum docent talk featuring a lecture and slideshow presentation about the museum’s exhibition “Shanghai.” The talk will be in English and Cantonese.
2:30 p.m., free
Chinatown Branch Library
Community Room
1135 Powell, SF
(415) 355-2888

Very Good-Looking Seeks Same
Author Robert Philipson will read from his new book, Very Good-Looking Seeks Same: Gay profiles in search of love, a new volume of transgressive, internet inspired poems, at this event featuring refreshments and live jazz music.
5 p.m., free
San Francisco LGBT Center
4th floor
1800 Market, SF
(415) 865-5555

Sunday, May 23

Broken Promises, Broken Dreams
Hear author Alice Rothchild explore the complexities of Jewish Israeli attitudes and the hardships of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza through personal narratives based on work with medical delegations in the region.
3 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

Monday, May 24

Sunnyside
Bay Area author Glen David Gold discusses his new American epic, Sunnyside, starring Charlie Chaplin, about dreams, ambition, and the birth of modern America.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

War: As Soldiers Really Live It
Hear Sebastian Junger discuss his new book about the reality of combat, the fear, honor and trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15 month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.
7:30 p.m., $12
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing, Berk.
(510) 848-6767

Tuesday, May 25

A Poem for Mother Earth
Attend this poetry sharing and community healing ceremony featuring poetry, spoken word, and music from migrant Raza, indigenous youth, adults, and elders in poverty focused on the impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples and poor people of color.
Noon, free
Galleria de la Raza
2857 24th St., SF
www.poormagazine.org

Benefits: May 19-May 25

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Ways to have fun while giving back this week

Friday, May 21

Threatened, Endangered, Extinct
Celebrate 2010 Endangered Species Day at this lively discussion with experts currently creating strategies to protect biodiversity and convert consumers worldwide featuring cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction including travel, restaurants, jewelry, limited edition signed wildlife prints, and more.
6 p.m., free
The University Club
800 Powell, SF
RSVP to sullivan@wildaid.org

Three-Minute Picture Show
Shake your booty to the music of Ron Silva and the Monarchs and enter to win raffle prizes from 3 Fish Studios, Books Inc., Gregory Cowley Photography, Interior Design Fair, Madrone Art Bar, and more at this benefit soiree featuring a screening of past Three-Minute Picture Show audience favorites.
7:30 p.m., $7
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF
www.threeminutepictureshow.com

Saturday, May 22

Bachelor Firefighter Auction
Bid on a smokin’ hot bachelor and enjoy raffle prizes, music, and other suprises at this fundraiser for the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the lives of burn survivors and promoting burn prevention education.
8 p.m., $35
Sir Francis Drake Hotel
450 Powell, SF
http://buyfiremen.eventbrite.com

Harvey Milk Diversity Brunch
Celebrate the birthday and life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official. Enjoy well-known speakers from the LGBT community, food from Hott Box Catering, and more at this fundraiser for La Cocina, a small business support resource.
10:30 a.m., $65
The Arc of San Francisco
1500 Howard, SF
www.milkday.org

Public Glass Auction
Attend this benefit auction featuring the work of more than 60 renowned glass artists, wine, and hors d’ oeuvres. Proceeds will go towards Public Glass’ education program that reaches 300 students a year.
4:30 p.m., $50
First Unitarian Universalist Church and Center
1187 Franklin, SF
www.publicglass.org

Reliquarium
Attend this auction of reliquary-like objects representing the artistic DNA of writers and artists, housed in an attractive container. Participating artists include Justin Timberlake, Lemony Snicket, Jonathan Lethem, Anne Waldman, and more. Proceeds to benefit Small Press Traffic, an organization that brings together independent readers, writers, and presses.
5:30 p.m., $20 includes refreshments
California College of the Arts
Graduate Writing Studio
195 De Haro, SF
www.sptraffic.org

Sunday, May 23

Backyard BBQ for Chile
Join the Art House Gallery at this backyard potluck BBQ to benefit the Chile Earthquake Relief Effort featuring live music by Rafael Manriquez, Esteban Bello, Clara Bellino, and more. Look for the balloons.
Noon, $5-$50
Edith between Cedar and Lincoln, Berk.
(510) 472-3170

Castro County Fair
Join AIDS Emergency Fund on Harvey Milk weekend for a one of a kind county fair and fundraiser, featuring a dog-owner look alike contest, carnival games, country western dancing, a pie baking contest, an orchid show, field day events, and more.
10 a.m., $25
The Armory
14th at Mission, SF
www.castrocountyfair.org

Chance for Change
Enjoy a night of food, music, an auction, and a tribute to the struggles of homeless women and children at this fundraiser for Berkeley Women’s Daytime Drop-In Center, a daytime program for homeless women and their children.
3 p.m., $50
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
1501 Washington, Albany
(510) 548-2884
www.womensdropin.org

Hidden Gems Garden Tour
Take a look at ten inspiring private gardens and public spaces with gardeners on hand to answer questions at this fundraiser for the new Potrero Hill Library.
10 a.m.; $25, $40 for two
Christopher’s Books
1400 18th St., SF
(415) 255-8802
All States Best Foods
1607 20th St., SF
(415) 642-3230

Stage listings

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-30. Previews Wed/19-Fri/21, 8pm. Opens Sat/22, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. SF Playhouse presents the world premiere of William Bivins’ new play, set at the sleazy Lazy Eight Motel, as part of its stripped-down Sandbox Series.

Bone to Pick and Diadem Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Previews Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 5pm. Opens May 27, 8pm (gala opening May 28, 8pm). Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 20. Cutting Ball Theater closes its tenth season with a pair of plays by Eugenie Chan.

The Breath of Life NohSpace, 2840 Mariposa; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Opens Fri/21, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 6. Spare Stage Productions performs David Hare’s drama about a wife and mistress dumped by the same man.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Opens Sun/23, 7pm. Runs Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. Aileen Clark returns with a special run of her autobiographical comedy.

"San Francisco International Arts Festival" Various venues; 1-800-838-3006, www.sfiaf.org. Most shows $25. May 19-31. In its seventh incarnation, the fest hosts dance, theater, and other artists from ten countries.

BAY AREA

God’s Ear Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-28. Previews Wed/19, 7pm; Thurs/20, 8pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; and Sun, 5pm. Through June 20. Shotgun Players perform Jenny Schwartz’s drama about grief; Erica Chong Shuch directs.

ONGOING

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening Garage, 975 Howard; 585-1221, http://pustheatre.com. $15. Thurs/20-Sat/22, 8pm. This new, relatively short play with the long title, presented by Performers Under Stress, struts and frets a wearying hour upon the stage as actor Scott Baker’s haughty and high-strung Faust, knowing he is bound for hell at the end of the evening, pleads his case before the audience, shadowed all the while by a speechless but expressive Mephistopheles (played with sly showmanship and moody animal intelligence by Valerie Fachman). Free brew aside, there’s little merit in playwright Mickle Maher’s self-conscious rambling, which more than anything chases its own tale — running in semantic circles without progressing anywhere or landing a bite. (Avila)

Andy Warhol: Good For the Jews? Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida; 292-1233, www.tjt-sf.org. $15-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 20. Renowned monologist Josh Kornbluth is ready to admit his niche is a narrow one: he talks about himself, and more than that, he talks about his relationship to his beloved late father, the larger-than-life old-guard communist of Kornbluth’s breakthrough Red Diaper Baby. So it will not be surprising that in his current (and still evolving) work, created with director David Dower, the performer-playwright’s attempt to "enter" Warhol’s controversial ten portraits of famous 20th-century Jews (neatly illuminated at the back of the stage) stirs up memories of his father, along with a close family friend — an erudite bachelor and closeted homosexual who impressed the boyhood Josh with bedtime stories culled from his dissertation. The scenes in which Kornbluth recreates these childhood memories are among the show’s most effective, although throughout the narrative Kornbluth, never more confident in his capacities, remains a knowing charmer. (Avila)

Company Fat Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through May 29. Exit Theatre and Pumpjam Productions perform Bill Levesque’s darkly comic play, set in the Depression-era South.

Eat, Pray, Laugh! Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Wed, 8pm. Through May 26. Off-Market Theaters presents stand up comic and solo artist Alicia Dattner in her award-winning solo show.

Echo’s Reach Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St; 665-2275, www.citycircus.org. $14-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 4pm); Sun, 4pm. Through May 30. City Circus premieres an urban fairytale by Tim Barsky.

Fishing Shotwell Studios, 3252 19th St; www.fishingtheplay.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through May 29. David Duman’s new play satirizes foodie culture.

Geezer Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/21, 8pm; Sat/22, 8:30pm; Sun/23, 7pm. Geoff Hoyle presents a workshop performance of his new solo show about aging.

Giant Bones Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (650) 728-8098, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Fantasy author Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) penned the source material for Stuart Bousel’s world-premiere play.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Thurs, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. On the principle that when you’ve got it you should really flaunt it, San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers essay their second revival of a musical by the storied Cockettes. Hot Greeks, which premiered in midnight performances at the old Palace Theater in 1972, was the gleefully crazed cross-dressing troupe’s only other fully scripted musical besides, of course, Pearls Over Shanghai.

While not the Oresteia or anything, Hot Greeks is more than an excuse for a lot of louche, libidinous hilarity. Okay, not much more. But it is a knowing little romp — supported by some infectious songs courtesy of Martin Worman and Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn — wedding trashy high school romance with the trashy ancient Greece of Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War. (Avila)

Marga Gomez is Proud and Bothered New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-6988, www.nctcsf.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show June 25); Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. Gomez performs her GLAAD Media award-winning comedy.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Starting July 10, runs Sat, 8pm and Sun, 7pm. Through August 1. Thrillpeddlers presents this revival of the legendary Cockettes’ 1970 musical extravaganza.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

The Real Americans The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $18-50. Wed-Thurs and May 28, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 30. Starting July 8, runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm, through Aug 8. The Marsh presents the world premiere of Dan Hoyle’s new solo show.

Rhino Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $14-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 29. A stark spotlight, a vibrant cellist, masked players, and a chairless theatre space greet audience members attending Boxcar Theatre’s Ionesco adaptation, Rhino. Though encouraged to move about freely, most audience members (the night I attended) settled for turning their otherwise static bodies to follow the action occurring in every corner of the small room: a hypersomniac’s nightscapes, a lethargic love affair between a pair of petit bourgeoisie, the slowly unraveling radio announcer reporting on the encroaching tide of rhinoceres, a fraught spinster hysterical over the fate of her pussy (cat). Though a courageous choice in staging, it didn’t quite provide the feeling of the familiar under siege that it could have with more overt interaction with the not-quite-captive-enough public. And while certain of the short snipped scenes were tense and evocative — in particular the homesick lamentations and anxiety-laden dreams of Eugene (Ross Pasquale) — less subtle imaginings such as the intermittent lockstep marches fell flat. Bad German accents have a well-respected place in Monty Python sketches and the like — not so much in a play whose original strength of metaphor doesn’t need such obvious machinations. However, in keeping with an already-established Boxcar Theatre tradition, design elements such as lighting (Nick A. Olivero) and sound design (Sara Huddleston) were impeccable. (Nicole Gluckstern)

*Round and Round the Garden American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-82. Wed/19-Sat/22, 8pm (also Wed/19 and Sat/22, 2pm); Sun/23, 2pm. American Conservatory Theater offers a canny and contagious production of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1973 sex farce, one of the gems in the British playwright’s well-loved trilogy, "The Norman Conquests," which variously lands on the same group of related characters — centered on the loveable and lovelorn reprobate Norman (a charmingly unstrung Manoel Felciano) — during the course of a single weekend spent in giddy, desperate, troubled infidelities. Director John Rando and a razor-sharp cast deliver a very entertaining evening. (Avila)

Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show Marines’ Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter; 771-6900. $30-89. Thurs/20-Sat/22, 8pm (also Sat/22, 2pm); Sun/23, 2pm. Starting May 28, runs Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 27. From somewhere before the Beatles and after Broadway "Beatlemania" comes this big band cigarettes-and-high-ball nightclub act, recreating the storied Vegas stage shenanigans of iconic actor-crooners Frank Sinatra (David DeCosta), Dean Martin (Tony Basile), and Sammy Davis Jr. (Doug Starks), and sidekick comedian Joey Bishop (Sandy Hackett). The band is all-pro and the songs sound great — DeCosta’s singing as Sinatra is uncanny, but all do very presentable renditions of signature songs and standards. Meanwhile, a lot of mincing about the stage and the drink cart meets with more mixed success, and I don’t just mean scotch and soda. The Rat Pack is pre-PC, of course, but the off-color humor, while no doubt historically sound, can be dully moronic. (Avila)

Speed the Plow Royce Gallery, 2910 Mariposa; 1-866-811-4111, www.speedtheplowsf.com. $28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Expression Productions performs David Mamet’s black comedy.

Very Warm for May Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207. $38-44. Wed/19, 7pm; Thurs/20-Fri/21, 8pm; Sat/22, 6pm; Sun/23, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon kicks off their Jerome Kern Celebration with this Oscar Hammerstein II script that features Kern’s final Broadway score.

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 30. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/21, June 4, 11, 18, 9pm; Sat/22, June 12, 8pm; May 30, June 6, 20, 7pm. Through June 20. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Wake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $13.50-71. Opens Wed/19, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Thurs/20, May 29, June 3, 12, or 17; no show June 25); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 27. Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group perform Lisa Kron and Leigh Silverman’s drama about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown after she begins to question her faith in country, relationships, and herself.

Twelfth Night La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. You’ve got to hand it to Impact Theatre: they make reimagining Shakespeare look so darned easy. To set a crass comedy about class, obsession, and mistaken identity at "Illyria Studios" in the heart of tawdry Tinseltown seems like such an obvious take, you wonder why it took someone so long to get around to doing it. True, the execution is not as vivacious as last year’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but overall, the enthusiastic cast and timeless humor win the night. (Gluckstern)

What Just Happened? Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/21, 9pm; Sat/22, 8pm. Nina Wise’s show, an improvised work based on personal and political recent events, extends and re-opens at a new venue.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $10-50. Sun, 11am. Through June 27. The Amazing Bubble Man, a.k.a. Louis Pearl, performs his family-friendly show.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Baggage Allowance" Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. $16-20. Composer and artist Pamela Z presents her world-premiere multi-layered performance work.

"BorderOUT Collaborative: Noche de Inspiracion y Tradicion" Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom; 826-2402. Fri, 8pm. $10-15. Music, theater, spoken word, acrobatics, stilt walking, and more from BorderOUT’s LGBTQ immigrant artists.

Crooked Jades with Kate Weare Dance Co. Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez; 454-5238, www.noevalleymusicseries.com. Sat, 8pm. $20. The old-time music group performs with the modern dance company.

"Dream Come True: All-Female Battle and Showcase" City Dance Studios, 10 Colton; www.myspace.com/allfemalebattle. Sat, 8pm. $10-15. MCs, DJs, musicians, and dancers participate in this b-girl competition.

Sara Shelton Mann and David Szlasa Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 700 Howard; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. $30. The choreorgrapher and media artist present a world premiere collaboration, tribes/dominion.

"2010 Rhino Benefit Spectacular" Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 1-800-838-3006, www.therhino.org. Tues, 8pm. $20. Raise money for queer theater pioneers Theatre Rhinoceros by attending this show, featuing Leanne Borghese, Connie Champagne, Matthew Martin, and other performers.

Film listings

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. The film intern is Peter Galvin. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

OPENING

The City of Your Final Destination In James Ivory’s latest literary adaptation, Omar (Omar Metwally), an Iranian American graduate student of Latin American literature, precipitously descends on a rural estate in Paraguay, hoping to petition the relatives of deceased writer Jules Gund for authorization to write his biography. Numbering among the somewhat complicated ménage are Gund’s widow, Caroline (Laura Linney), his mistress, Arden (Charlotte Gainsbourg), their child, Portia (Ambar Mallman), the author’s brother, Adam (Anthony Hopkins), and Adam’s lover, Pete (Hiroyuki Sanada), a household that the film depicts as caught in a sedative isolation obstructing any progress or flourishing or change. But where Gund’s violent suicide has failed to produce a cataclysmic shift, the somewhat hapless Omar manages to interrupt their idle routines and mobilize them, stirring up sentiment and ambition. The notion of redirected fate is telegraphed by the title, but what the film does best is show the calm before the storm (really more of a heavy downpour) — and showcase the fineness of Hopkins’s and Linney’s dramatic abilities. In the final act, we see the characters being moved about rather than moved, and the sound of screeching brakes applied as the film reaches its conclusion undoes much of the subtlety invested in their performances. (1:58) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*Dirty Hands The 1990s-ish iconoclastic, workaholic breed of Asian hipster is obsessively worked by David Choe in Dirty Hands. Exhaustively documenting the Los Angeles-born artist for eight years as he matures before our eyes, director Harry Kim charts the growth spurts: from mischievous tot to shoplifter and graf artist to porn illustrator to street-art superstar to spiritual penitent after a stint in a Tokyo jail. The filmmaker doesn’t seem to know quite when to stop, but then neither does his subject: an obviously intelligent, playful talent who specializes in compulsively analyzing himself and pushing himself to the limits of the law, his work, and his own (r)evolution as a human being. So driven in his pursuit of edge-skating experiences that he comes off as less hipster than haunted, Choe and his Bukowskian tendencies, Vice aesthetics, and "deep" thoughts rivet long after the bodily fluids and sensory overload murals congeal. (1:33) Roxie. (Chun)

Kites This Bollywood action-romance is "presented by" Brett Ratner (apparently, he helped re-edit this English version). (1:30)

MacGruber Will Forte’s bemulleted, MacGyver-biting Saturday Night Live character gets his own movie. (1:39)

Paper Man Though certainly offbeat enough to fall into the quirky indie category, Paper Man reminds us that weird is not always good. There’s very little original about the main conceit: plagued by writer’s block, Richard Dunn (Jeff Daniels) rents a house in Montauk where he befriends outcast Abby (Emma Stone), a teenage girl with a tragic past. The film’s unique addition is Richard’s imaginary friend Captain Excellent, played by Ryan Reynolds in full-on superhero attire. But Captain Excellent is so absurdly campy that he’s almost too much to take — which wouldn’t be such a problem if Paper Man weren’t asking us to take it seriously. The wacky superhero scenes are mostly out-of-place, and all the heavy drama moments fall flat. But even without the muddled tone, Paper Man is riddled with clichés. We’ve seen enough of the zany manchild learning valuable life lessons, and the troubled teen forming an unlikely bond. At this point, there’s nothing super about it. (1:50) Lumiere. (Peitzman)

Shrek Forever After 3D Mike Myers has sure gotten a lot of longevity out of his Scottish accent. (1:33) Four Star, Presidio.

ONGOING

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) SF Center. (Eddy)

*Babies Thomas Balmes’ camera records the first year in the lives of four infants in vastly different circumstances. They’re respectively born to hip young couple in Tokyo’s high-tech clutter; familiar moderately alterna-types (the father is director Frazer Bradshaw of last year’s excellent indie drama Everything Strange and New) in S.F.’s Mission District; a yurt-dwelling family isolated in the vast Mongolian tundra; and a Namibian village so maternally focused that adult menfolk seem to have been banished. Yes, on one level this is the cutest li’l documentary you ever saw. But if you were planning to avoid thinking that is all (or most) of what Babies would be like, you will miss out bigtime. Void of explanatory titles, voice-over narration, or subtitle translations, this is a purely observatory piece that reveals just how fascinating the business of being a baby is. There’s very little predictable pooping, wailing, or coddling. Instead, Balmes’ wonderful eye captures absorbing moments of sussing things out, decision-making, and skill learning. While the First World tykes firstborns both — are hauled off to (way) pre-school classes, the much less day planned Third Worlders have more complex, unmediated dealings with community. Those range from fending off devilish older siblings to Mongol Bayarjargal’s startlingly casual consorting with large furry livestock. (Imagine the horror of parents you know were their baby found surrounded by massive cows — a situation that here causes no concern whatsoever for adults, children, or bovines.) So accustomed to the camera that it doesn’t influence their behavior, the subjects here are viewed with an intimacy that continually surprises. Babies is getting a wider-than-usual release for a documentary, one cannily timed to coincide with Mother’s Day. But don’t be fooled: this movie is actually very cool. (1:19) Albany, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Back-Up Plan (1:40) SF Center.

*Casino Jack and the United States of Money Casino Jack is big-budget documentary filmmaking, glossy and prone to expensive music cues, but I suppose you get a license to be flashy when you’ve proven to be as good at it as Alex Gibney. The director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and Academy Award winner Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Gibney sets his sights on Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff with an abundantly in-depth exploration of government greed and fraud. Investigating Abramoff’s indiscretions, from his introduction as chairman of the College Republicans, to his illegal selling of House votes for sweatshops in the Mariana Islands and over-billing of numerous Indian casinos, Gibney solidly serves Abramoff his just desserts. The director is equally interested in questioning the kind of government America has fostered that turns a blind eye to this sort of behavior. (2:02) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*City Island The Rizzo family of City Island, N.Y. — a tiny atoll associated historically with fishing and jurisdictionally with the Bronx — have reached a state where their primary interactions consist of sniping, yelling, and storming out of rooms. These storm clouds operate as cover for the secrets they’re all busy keeping from one another. Correctional officer Vince (Andy Garcia) pretends he’s got frequent poker nights so he can skulk off to his true shameful indulgence: a Manhattan acting class. Perpetually fuming spouse Joyce (Julianna Margulies) assumes he’s having an affair. Daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has dropped out of school to work at a strip joint, while the world class-sarcasms of teenager Vinnie (Ezra Miller) deflect attention from his own hidden life as an aspiring chubby chaser. All this (plus everyone’s sneaky cigarette habit) is nothing, however, compared to Vince’s really big secret: he conceived and abandoned a "love child" before marrying, and said guilty issue has just turned up as a 24-year-old car thief on his cell block. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta made a couple other features in the last 15 years, none widely seen; if this latest is typical, we need more of him, more often. Perfectly cast, City Island is farcical without being cartoonish, howl-inducing without lowering your brain-cell count. It’s arguably a better, less self-conscious slice of dysfunctional family absurdism than Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — complete with an Alan Arkin more inspired in his one big scene here than in all of that film’s Oscar-winning performance. (1:40) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Clash of the Titans The minds behind Clash of the Titans decided their movie should be 3D at the last possible moment before release. Consequently, the 3D is pretty janky. I don’t know what the rest of the film’s excuse is. Clash of the Titans retreads the 1981 cult classic with reasonable faithfulness, though Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects have been (of course) replaced with CG renderings of all the expected monsters, magic, gods, etc. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes — as other reviews have pointed out: Schindler’s List (1993) reunion! — glow and glower as Zeus and Hades, while Sam Worthington (2009’s Avatar) once again fills the role of bland hero, this time as a snooze-worthy Perseus. You might have fun in the moment with Clash of the Titans, but it’s hardly memorable, and certainly nowhere near epic. (1:58) SF Center. (Eddy)

Date Night By today’s comedy standards, Date Night is positively old-fashioned: a case of mistaken identity causes a struggling married couple (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) to be tangled in a ransom plot for a stolen flash drive that belongs to a local mob boss. Unfussy plots are par for the course for films belonging to the all-but-lost "madcap all-nighter" genre, and in this case the simplicity of the set-up becomes Date Night‘s greatest asset, allowing Carell and Fey free reign to joke and ad lib lines. Like it or loathe it, the pair’s trademark senses of humor are the movie, and they arrange some pretty gleefully entertaining bits on the fly. Toss in a bunch of cameos from the likes of Ray Liotta and Mark Wahlberg and you’ve got yourself a bona fide movie-film, but it’s difficult not to see what Date Night might have been with just a smidge more effort. (1:27) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Galvin)

*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Sussman)

Furry Vengeance (1:32) SF Center.

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) Opera Plaza, Presidio. (Eddy)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Bridge, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Greatest Lofty title aside, there’s nothing particularly extraordinary about The Greatest. In many ways, it’s your standard grief porn, in that it focuses on a group of characters mourning a dead teenager for an hour and a half. On the other hand, the cast is tremendous — Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan are solid as the parents of the broken Brewer family, but the young actors give the most memorable performances. Fresh off her Oscar nomination for An Education (2009), Carey Mulligan continues to mingle precociousness and naiveté. The Greatest also showcases the very talented Johnny Simmons, whose past films — Hotel for Dogs (2009) and Jennifer’s Body (2009) — haven’t exactly earned him exposure. For its genre, then, The Greatest is actually quite good. It has plenty of charm mixed with moments of genuine emotion, often marked by much welcome restraint. But even with a slight twist on the convention (Mulligan’s Rose is pregnant with the dead kid’s baby), it’s still just a well-made tearjerker. (1:36) Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

Harry Brown Shades of Dirty Harry (1971) for the tea cozy and tweed set: elegantly rendered and very nicely played, Harry Brown might be the dark, late-in-the-day elder brother to 1971’s Get Carter, in the hands of eponymous lead Michael Caine. He’s a pensioner mourning the passing of his beloved wife, his mysterious life as a Marine stationed in Northern Ireland firmly behind him. Then his chess-playing pal Leonard (David Bradley) is terrorized and killed by the unsavory gang of heroin dealing hoodlums who lurk near their projects in a tunnel walkway like gun-toting, foul-mouthed, sociopathic trolls. Harry Brown is, er, forced to forsake a vow of peace and go commando on the culprits’ asses, triggering some moments of ultraviolence that are unsettling in their whole-hearted embrace of vigilante justice. Like predecessors similarly fixated on vengeance in their respective urban hells, a la Hardcore (1979) and Taxi Driver (1976) (Harry Brown echoes key moments in the latter, in particular — see, for instance, its keenly tense, eerily humorous gun shopping scene), Harry Brown is essentially an arch-conservative film, if good looking and even likable with Caine meting out the punishment. The overall denouement just might make some seniors feel very, very good about the coiled potential for hurt embedded in their aging frames. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

How to Train Your Dragon (1:38) 1000 Van Ness.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Director Tom Six had a vision, a glorious dream of surgically connecting three human beings via their gastro-intestinal systems, or as Kevin Smith would say — "ass to mouth." When two girlfriends on a road trip across Europe get a flat tire, they stumble upon the home of a mad doctor (Dieter Laser) with a similar dream, who drugs them and ties them up in his basement laboratory. The Human Centipede is an entry into the torture porn arena, but it feels especially icky because you just know that the girls have zero chance of escaping the "100 percent medically accurate!" surgery. Once hooked up, there’s nowhere for the film to go and two out of three actors can’t talk because they are sewn to someone else’s anus. Still, as one-note as The Human Centipede is, I think we’d do well to encourage more films to be as batshit insane as this one. (1:30) Bridge. (Galvin)

*Iron Man 2 Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) returns, just as rich and self-involved as before, though his ego his inflated to unimaginable heights due to his superheroic fame. Pretty much, he’s put the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing on the back burner, exasperating everyone from Girl Friday Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow); to BFF military man Rhodey (Don Cheadle, replacing the first installment’s Terrence Howard); to certain mysterious Marvels played by Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson; to a doofus-y rival defense contractor (Sam Rockwell); to a sanctimonius Senator (Garry Shandling). Frankly, the fact that a vengeful Russian scientist (Mickey Rourke) is plotting Tony’s imminent death is a secondary threat here — for much of the film, Tony’s biggest enemy is himself. Fortunately, this is conveyed with enjoyable action (props to director Jon Favreau, who also has a small role), a witty script (actor Justin Theroux — who knew? He also co-wrote 2008’s Tropic Thunder, by the way), and gusto-going performances by everyone, from Downey on down. Stay for the whole credits or miss out on the geek-gasm. (2:05) California, Castro, Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Just Wright (1:51) 1000 Van Ness.

*Kick-Ass Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar, whose work was also the model for 2008’s Wanted, Kick Ass is a similarly over-the-top action flick that plays up its absurdity to even greater comedic effect. High school nerd Dave (Aaron Johnson) decides to become the world’s first real superhero. Donning a green wetsuit he bought on the internet and mustering some unlikely courage, he takes to the streets to avenge wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, Dave is immediately beaten almost to death because he’s just a kid who has no idea what he’s doing, but Kick-Ass‘ greatest achievement is knowing exactly how to subvert audience expectations. Scenes that marry the film’s innocent story with enormously exaggerated violence enhance the otherwise Superbad-lite high-school comedy unfolding around them, and a parallel plot-line involving Nicolas Cage instructing his 12-year-old daughter to commit grievous murders will probably end up being the most gratifying aspect of the film. Though too much set-up and spinning gears mars the middle act, it’s hard to fault the film for competently setting up one of the most crowd-pleasing endings in recent memory. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Galvin)

Letters to Juliet If you can stomach the inevitable Barbara Cartland/Harlequin-romance-style clichés — and believe that Amanda Seyfried as a New Yorker fact-checker — then Letters to Juliet might be the ideal Tuscan-sunlit valentine for you. Seyfried’s Sophie is on a pre-honeymoon trip to Verona with her preoccupied chef-restaurateur intended, Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), who’s more interested in sampling cheese and purchasing vino than taking in the romantic attractions of Verona with his fiancée. Luckily she finds the perfect diversion for a wannabe scribe: a small clutch of diehard romantics enlisted by the city of Verona to answer the letters to Juliet posted by lovelorn ladies. They’re Juliet’s secretaries — never mind that Juliet never managed to maintain a successful or long-term relationship herself. When Sophie finds a lost, unanswered letter from the ’50s, she sets off sequence of unlikely events, as the letter’s English writer, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), returns to Verona with her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan), in search of her missed-connection, Lorenzo. Alas, Lorenzo’s long gone, and the fact-checker decides to help the warm-hearted, hopeful Claire find her lost lover. Unfortunately Sophie’s chemistry with both her matches isn’t as powerful as Redgrave’s with real-life husband Franco Nero — after all he was Lancelot to her Guenevere in 1967’s Camelot and the father of her son. Still, Redgrave’s power as an actress — and her relationship with Nero — adds a resonance that takes this otherwise by-the-numbers romance to another level. (1:46) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Little Traitor Lynn Roth’s film is set in 1947 Palestine, shortly before Israel became a state. Young Proffi Liebowitz (Ido Port) wasn’t yet born when his parents fled the Holocaust in Poland, but he’s politically tuned-in enough to form a mini-resistance group with his neighborhood pals, who plot against the occupying British forces (sample act of rebellion: "British Go Home" graffiti). Caught one night scampering home after the citywide curfew, Proffi meets Sergeant Dunlop (Alfred Molina), whose kindness makes the boy realize his black-and-white view of the enemy might have some room for color after all. Of course, Proffi’s friendship with the Brit, who teaches him to play snooker and pronounce complicated English words like "flatulence," is not received well by his community (see: film’s title). Despite its political undertones, this is a pretty standard coming-of-age tale (including the de rigueur "peeping on the sexy neighbor" subplot). Too bad the director decided to film so much of it in English — kid actor Port is far less cloying when he’s speaking his native Hebrew. (1:29) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

*Mid-August Lunch Gianni Di Gregorio’s loose, engaging comedy is about an aging bachelor still living with his ancient mum in their Rome flat. When his landlord offers to forgive some debts in return for briefly taking in his own elderly ma, Gianni (played by the director himself) soon finds himself in cat-herding charge of no less than five old ladies who delight in one another’s company while running him ragged. Gomorrah (2008) screenwriter Di Gregorio used nonprofessionals to play those parts in this semi improvised miniature, which is as light and flavorful as a first course of prosciutto and mozzarella. It’s a solid addition to the canon of palate-pleasing culinary flicks such as Big Night (1996) and Babette’s Feast (1987), as opposed to the repulsive ones like Super Size Me (2004) or Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). (1:15) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

La Mission A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, fortysomething Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place. (1:57) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, SF Center. (Harvey)

Mother and Child Adoption advocates who railed against Orphan (2009) should turn their sights on Mother and Child, a ridiculous melodrama with a thoroughly vile message. I’d wager writer-director Rodrigo García didn’t set out to make an anti-adoption film: this is a movie about the relationship between mothers and daughters. But the undertones are impossible to miss. Annette Bening plays Karen, a miserable woman consumed by regret for putting her daughter up for adoption 37 years ago. That biological daughter is Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), who — despite having been adopted at birth — speaks dismissively of her "adoptive" parents as though they were never really hers. She’s cold and manipulative, sleeping with her boss and married neighbor because she can. Mother and Child offers no real explanation for why these women are so unpleasant, so we’re forced to conclude it’s the four decades-old adoption. Despite a stellar cast, which also includes Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and S. Epatha Merkerson, the film’s misguided politics are too distracting to ignore. (2:06) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

A Nightmare on Elm Street I’ll say this about the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street: it could have been worse. Yes, it’s pointless and unimaginative and producer Michael Bay should still be ashamed, but I didn’t hate every minute of it. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is not good. It’s not terrible, if only because it has a few decent scares — all of which are, of course, shamelessly lifted from the original. Mostly, however, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a waste of time, updating Freddy Krueger with an icky twist (which I won’t spoil here) and culling together more jump scares than should ever be shoved into one film. The cast is passable, with relative newbie Rooney Mara taking on Nancy — she’s fine but forgettable. Jackie Earle Haley does a solid job with Freddy, but he was doomed from the start, just by virtue of not being Robert Englund. This Freddy is more brutal, to be sure, but he’s also far less fun. One pun in the entire movie? He might as well be Jason Voorhees. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*October Country In taking on the subject of family in the documentary October Country, co-directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher face some imposing specters, and I’m not just talking about the varied stories of the Mosher family. If there’s any micro-genre within documentary that has become embattled over the past decade, it’s the family portrait, thanks to controversial or contentious works such as Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans and Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (both from 2003), son-of-Grey Gardens freakouts which incited claims of exploitation and sensationalism on their paths to a larger public profile. Palmieri’s and Mosher’s movie is a quieter work, yet it isn’t folksy in a complacent Sundance manner, either. The list of the maladies plaguing the Mosher clan — physical abuse, drug abuse, war trauma, custody battles, and abortion, to name a handful — would provoke an ambulance-chasing impulse in some filmmakers, blood ties be damned. But Palmieri (who edited and did cinematography) and Mosher (a former San Francisco resident whose photo essays on his family were shown at Artists’ Television Access) realize these are common American problems, and their treatment of them is at once deeper and more ephemeral. They use the passage of a year from one Halloween to the next to reveal the changes wrought — or evident — on a person’s face, and when they can, a person’s life. (1:20) Roxie. (Huston)

*OSS 117: Lost in Rio The Cold War heated up a public appetite for spy adventures well before James Bond became a pop phenomenon. In fact, Ian Fleming hadn’t yet created 007 in 1949, when Jean Bruce commenced writing novels about Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a.k.a. Agent OSS 117. This French superspy was ready-made to join the ranks of umpteen 007 wannabes, appearing in somewhere between six and 11 films (it’s unclear whether all involved de La Bath, or were just Bruce-based) through 1970, played by at least four actors. The series remained well-known enough to get a new life in 2006 when director Michel Hazanavicius and top French comedy star Jean Dujardin sought to spoof 1960s espionage flicks a la Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). That was a big hit, so now we’ve got a sequel. OSS 117: Lost in Rio isn’t as fresh or funny as the preceding Cairo, Nest of Spies. But it’s still a whole lot fresher and funnier than Austin Powers Nos. two (1999) and three (2002). Dujardin’s de La Bath is the very model of jet-set masculinity, twisting the night away at a ski chalet with umpteen soon-to-be-machine gunned "Oriental" lovelies in the opening sequence. Of course such pleasure pursuits take place strictly between car chases, shootouts, and karate fights. Agreeably silly, Lost in Rio doesn’t go for Hollywood-style slapstick and grossout yuks. Instead, its biggest laughs are usually droll throwaways, as when 117 explains a shocking sudden costume change with the unlikely declaration "I sew," or during an LSD-dosed hippie orgy proves quite willing to go with the flow — even when that involves another guy’s groovy finger breaching security up the pride of French intelligence’s derriere. (1:37) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Please Give Manhattan couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are the proprietors of an up-market vintage furniture store — they troll the apartments of the recently deceased, redistributing the contents at an astonishing markup — and they’ve purchased the entire apartment of their elderly next-door neighbor (Ann Guilbert). As they wait for her to expire so they can knock down a wall, they try not to loom in anticipation in front of her granddaughters, the softly melancholic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and the brittle pragmatist Mary (Amanda Peet). Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener has entered this territory before, examining the interpersonal pressures that a sizable income gap can exert in 2006’s Friends with Money. Here she turns to the pangs and blunderings of the liberal existence burdened with the discomforts of being comfortable and the desire to do some good in the world. The film capably explores the unexamined impulses of liberal guilt, though the conclusion it reaches is unsatisfying. Like Holofcener’s other work, Please Give is constructed from the episodic material of mundane, intimate encounters between characters whose complexity forces us to take them seriously, whether or not we like them. Here, though, it offers these private connections as the best one can hope for, a sort of domestic grace accrued by doing right, authentically, instinctively, by the people in your immediate orbit, leaving the larger world to muddle along on its axis as best it can. (1:30) Clay, SF Center, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Princess Kaiulani Well-meaning and controversial (the independent’s first title, Barbarian Princess, and the tragic events it depicts has distressed some native Hawaiians) in its own inoffensive way, Princess Kaiulani is unfortunately overshadowed by star Q’orianka Kilcher’s first film, 2005’s The New World, in which she portrayed Pocahontas. The Hawaii-raised Kilcher appears to be getting typecast as a tragic, romanticized native royal. Still, if you can get past director Marc Forby’s weak attempts to match New World director Terrence Malick’s searingly poetic montages and the clunky History Channel-by-the-numbers screenplay, you might give a little credit to the makers for bringing to the screen the tale of Hawaii’s last intelligent, beautiful, and accomplished princess — a young woman determined to fight an overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and battle its annexation against the white land owners and descendents of missionaries who tried to block the voting rights of native Hawaiians. Kilcher possesses some of the noble charisma claimed by the real Kaiulani, but the obligatory romance superimposed on the narrative and the neglect of some of genuinely promising threads, such as Kaiulani’s friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson, make Princess Kaiulani feel as faux as those who pretended to Hawaii’s rule. (2:10) Embarcadero. (Chun)

Robin Hood Like it or not, we live in the age of the origin story. Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood introduces us to the outlaw while he’s still in France, wending his way back to Albion in the service of King Richard III. The Lionheart soon takes an arrow in the neck in order to demonstrate the film’s historical bona fides, and yeoman archer Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) — surrounded by a nascent band of merry men — accidentally embroils himself in a conspiracy to wrest control of England. The complications of this intrigue hie Robin to Nottingham, where he is thrown together with Maid Marion (Cate Blanchett), a plucky rural aristocrat who likes getting her hands dirty almost as much as she likes a bit of smoldering Crowe seduction. A lot of hollow medieval verisimilitude ensues, along with a good bit of slow-mo swordplay, but the cumulative effect is tepid and rote. (2:20) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Richardson)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Albany, Embarcadero.

Touching Home Hometown boys (Logan and Noah Miller) make good in this based-on-a-true-story tale of identical twins who must divide their time at home between training for major league baseball and looking after their alcoholic father. The brothers, who also wrote and directed the film, aim for David Gordon Green by way of Marin, but fall short of mastering that director’s knack for natural dialogue. Ed Harris is, unsurprisingly, compelling as the alcoholic father, but the actors in the film who are not named Ed Harris tend to contribute to the script’s distracting histrionics. Touching Home has some amazing NorCal cinematography, and I could see how family audiences might enjoy its "feel bad, then feel good" style of melodrama. But while it’s awkward to say that someone’s real-life experiences come off as trite, there are moments here that feel as clichéd as a Lifetime movie. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

Vincere Given the talent involved, Vincere should be a better film that it is. Director Marco Bellocchio has a lengthy track record of successes, and star Giovanna Mezzogiorno is one of the biggest names in contemporary Italian cinema. The based-on-a-true-story plot is certainly worthy of being filmed: Mezzogiorno plays Ida Dalser, secret wife of Mussolini and mother of the dictator’s first-born son. When Ida begins to make trouble for Il Duce by publicly proclaiming their marriage, she is locked away in a mental hospital. But while Vincere‘s subject is compelling, the film as a whole falls flat. Moments of greatness are few and far between, and the rest of the movie gets by on mediocrity. It’s likely the fault lies with the script, which is too scattered and unfocused to maintain an audience’s focus. Why after almost two hours of watching Ida’s struggle are we suddenly left with her son’s descent into madness? How depressing that a film about a woman forgotten by history is, itself, mostly forgettable. (2:02) Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

Music listings

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Dead Souls, Winston Tong, Graves Bros. Deluxe, Carletta Sue Kay Elbo Room. 9pm, $8. Ian Curtis memorial show.

Francis and the Lights, Teen Inc. Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Frightened Rabbit Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Gosta Berling, Matinees, Foreign Cinema El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Groundation, Orgone, DJ Jeremiah Independent. 9pm, $27.

Hounds and Harlots, Bomber, Poison Control, Mick Leonardi Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Kacey Johansing, Honeycomb, Dovekins, Range of Light Wilderness Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Jeremy Messersmith Hotel Utah. 9pm, $12.

Khi Darag!, Charming Hostess, Mitch Marcus Quintet Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Pebble Theory, Fleeting Trance, JJ Schultz, Wolf Larsen Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Planet Loop Madrone Art Bar. 9:30pm, free.

Chris Pureka, Ramaya Soskin, Fences Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Todd Wolfe Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Michael Abraham Jazz Session, Gaucho Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Jim Page Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Danny Cohen, Jonah Kit, Powell St. John and the Aliens Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Roky Erickson, Okkervil River Fillmore. 8pm, $29.50.

Funk Revival Orchestra, Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra, Loveseat Trio Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $8.

*Sean Hayes, Laura Goldhamer and the Silvernail, DJ Harry D Independent. 8pm, $17.

In the Belly of the Falcon, Tiny Television, Sons of Eden Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Izabella, Nat Keefe, Aaron Redner, and Erik Yates Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Kehoe Nation, HoneyDust, Polar Bears Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

John Németh Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $18.

Tender Box, Deadbeat Darling, Margins Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

30db Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz with guest Black Dynamite Sound spin Afro-tropical, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

FRIDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bonerama Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $15.

Broken Bells, Morning Benders Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $37.

Clem Snide, Whiskey and the Devil Chaplain, Heligoats Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Dredg, Facing New York, Trophy Fire Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Dynamic Coda. 10pm, $10.

Nokie Edwards, Venturesmania, Deke Dickerson and the Ecco-Fonics, Pollo Del Mar Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $20.

*Fresh and Onlys, Jacuzzi Boys, Sonny and the Sunsets, Art Museums Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Katie Garibaldi Abbey Tavern, 4100 Geary, SF; www.abbeytavern-sf.com. 9:30pm, free.

Heticide, Sweet Nothing, Le Fleur El Rio. 9pm, $3-5.

Shooter Jennings and Hierophant, Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real Independent. 9pm, $20.

Jetskiis, Repeater, Northern Key Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Kaki King Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

Mata Leon, Silent Comedy, Mississippi Man, Steelwells Elbo Room. 9pm, $8-10.

Paper Suns, Scraping for Change, Attack Plan, Five Minutes to Freedom Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Jackie Payne and Steve Edmonson Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Pillows, Noodles, Pop Chocolat, Monokuro Slim’s. 8pm, $28.

Soul Delights Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 9pm, free.

Temporary Rock Formation, Tsigoti Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Emily Anne’s Delights Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta II Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25-30.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Revolution Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Johnny G and Hi Ukelele Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

Deep Fried Butter, 354 11th St, SF; (415) 863-5964. DJs jaybee, David Justin, and Dean Manning spinning indie, dance rock, electronica, funk, hip hop, and more.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Farewell to Berlin Mezzanine. 9pm, free. With Claude, Justin Martin, Worthy and Christian Martin.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

House of Voodoo Medici Lounge, 299 9th St., SF; (415) 501-9162. 9pm. With DJs voodoo and Purgatory spinning goth, industrial, deathrock, glam, darkwave, and eighties.

Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. With the Ogres and burlesque performances.

Lago Roots Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 9pm, $12. With DJs Kush Arora, Matt Haze and Manitous, and B-Haul spinning afrobeat.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

*Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, one-hit wonders, and soul with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Followed by Warm Leatherette at Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; (415) 377-3325. 9pm. A back to back traveling Cold Wave night with DJs spinning danceable post-punk and psychedelic.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

SATURDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Stacy Dee and Lil Jen, Jeson Welt, Mike McGuire, Roland Finn Hemlock Tavern. 5pm, $5.

Evelyn Evelyn, Sxip Shirley, Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26.

*Finches, Key Losers, Breezy Days Band Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

“Forever Young: Bob Dylan Birthday Tribute” Ireland’s 32. 9pm, $10. With Crooked Roads, Warehouse Eyes, Z-Trane Electric Band, and more.

Leatherface, Ninja Gun, Young Livers Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Motherlode, Devil’s Own, Belltower, Brad Brooks Thee Parkside. 9pm, free.

Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Splinters, Superstitions, Larry and the Angriest Generation, Machete Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; (415) 584-5122. 9pm.

State Radio, Kelley James Independent. 9pm, $20.

Sugar Spun, Sky Flakes, Lost Puppy Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

This Charming Band, Love Vigilantes, Fascination Street Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

“Traffic: A Benefit for the Somaly Mam Foundation” Elbo Room. 10pm, $15-20. With Cold Shot.

We Be the Echo, Ventid, Form and Fate, Art in Heaven El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Y&T, Don Dokken Fillmore. 9pm, $36.50

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta II Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30.

Marlina Teich Quintet and Two Generations of Perkoff Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm.

Soulive, Will Blades OGD Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-45.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Yacouba Diarra Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-$15.

Frank Jordan and the Wrenboys Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Hallflowers Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 9pm, free.

Honky-Tonk Showdown Café Du Nord. 8pm, $13. With Whisky Richards, Misisipi Rider, Bootcuts, and Toshio Hirano.

Honoring St. Francis Mission Dolores Basilica, 3321 Dolores, SF; (415) 621-8203. 8pm, free.

Kafana Balkan, Brass Menazeri Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Nay Virtuoso, Bassam Saba, and guests Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th St., SF; www.arabculturalcenter.org. 1pm, free.

Royal Deuces, Old Death Whisper Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Socha All-Stars Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $5-10. Eclectic 80s music with Djs Damon, Phillie Ocean, and Javier, plus free 80s hair and make-up by professional stylists.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Prom-themed festivities and mash-ups with Adrian and Mysterious D.

Colombia y Panama Coda. 10pm, $5. With DJs Beto, Vinne Esparza, and Guillermo.

Dead After Dark Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. The 90s dance party goes hip-hop this week with DJs Jamie Jams, EmDee, and Stab Master Arson.

DJ Kaskade Mezzanine. 9pm, $40.

EpiscoDisco Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; (415) 869-7817. 7pm, free. A monthly event featuring art, installations, live music, drinks, and DJs.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346-2025. 9pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Tres Lingerie, Steve Fabus, Nicky B., and more.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Junk Food Love Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJ A-Ron, Sneak-E Pete, and more spinning hip hop, soul, reggae, and electrofunk.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Slide into Summer Mighty. 9pm, $20. With DJs Solar and Galen, Sammy D, Chris Smith and Rooz, and more.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Battle of the Bands” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Alrt, Sirly, Sherlock Tones, and more.

Caribou, Toro y Moi Independent. 8pm, $17.

Bone Cootes, Joe and Vicki Price Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.myspace.com/ritespot. 6pm, free.

Evelyn Evelyn, Sxip Shirley, Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26.

Horse Feathers, Dawn Landes, Garrett Pierce Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Indian Valley Line, Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives, James Finch Jr. Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

Lecherous Gaze, Switchblade Riot, Butcher Cover, Bang Maiden Thee Parkside. 8pm, free.

Lucabrazzi Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; (415) 584-5122. 9pm.

Raccoons, Slaves, Tunnels, Kevin Shields Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Emily Jane White, Slow Motion Cowboys, Devotionals Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Helladelics Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $12-$15. Greek roots music.

Jamie Davis Quintet San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25.

Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta II Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-30.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Louie Romero y su Mazacote Coda. 8pm, $10.

John Sherry, Kyle Thayer and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Starlene Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Vission Latina El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Zithers of East Asia Mercy High School, 3250 19th Ave., SF; (415) 668-8111. 3pm, $15-$20. Part of the 28th annual San Francisco Gu-Zheng Music Society Concert.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with Vinnie Esparza and Ludichris.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

One Love Sundays Gravity Room, 3251 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $8. With DJs Senseless and Young Fyah spinning reggae, dancehall, and soca.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Baths, Future Islands, Lower Dens El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Demon Hunter, Stick To Your Guns, War of Ages, Great Commission Slim’s. 7:30pm, $16.

“Felonious Presents Live City Revue” Coda. 9pm, $7.

Kina Grannis Café du Nord. 8pm, $14.

*Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek Fillmore. 8pm, $29.50.

Shalants, Bitter Honeys, Harry Merry, Dark Sun Sky Pilot Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Worm Ouroboros, Pussygutt, A Story of Rats, Prizehog Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

X (Australia), A-Frames, Hank IV Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Earl Brothers Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Califa, Astral Force El Rio. 8pm, free.

Congress Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8.

Crow, Talk Is Poison, Yakodai Knockout. 9pm, $10.

Massive Attack, Martina Topley-Bird, Anti Pop Consortium Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $47.50-52.50.

Maus Haus, Boomsnake, Hosannas Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $8.

Olehole, Build Us Airplanes, Kairu Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Landon Pigg, Madi Diaz Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $14.

Plants and Animals, Lost in the Trees Independent. 8pm, $14.

Spectrum, Wooden Shjips, DJ Britt Govea Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ Ravi Rocka and DJ Big Nate.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

On the Cheap Listings

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THURSDAY 20

Open Show #13 Rayko, 428 3rd St., SF; (415) 495-3773. 7pm, free. Attend this interactive art salon and social mixer where five curated presenters will showcase a 20 image story or a 4-7 minute multimedia/video project. The audience is encouraged to engage presenters with questions and feedback.

FRIDAY 21

Bead and Design Show Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (530) 274-2222. Fri.-Sun. 10am-6pm; $10, good for all three days. Visit more than 150 artists and artisan exhibitors displaying and selling precious stones, jewelry, vintage and contemporary beads, metalwork, cloisonné, ceramics, handmade clothing, and more. You can also check out workshops and demonstrations in techniques such as jewelry design, metal work, bead making, found object jewelry, and more.

Fourteen Hills San Francisco Motorcycle Club, 2194 Folsom, SF; http://14hills.net. 7pm, free. Get a taste of new work by emerging and established writers at this Spring 2010 release of Fourteen Hills, San Francisco State University’s international literary magazine featuring poetry, fiction, short plays, literary nonfiction, and art. The release party to feature readings, art, DJ music, food, and great raffle prizes.

BAY AREA

Skank Bloc Bologna Number Four Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Bancroft, Berk.; (510) 642-0808. 7:30pm, $5. Attend the release party for Anne Colvin’s Skank Bloc Bologna, a looseleaf collection of works from an international cast of artists, writers, and poets, featuring a duet of music and verse with artist William Wiley playing the didgeridoo and poet Michael Hannon reciting.

SATURDAY 22

Harvey Milk Day Various locations throughout the Castro, SF; visit www.milkday.org for more info. 8am-2am, various prices. Celebrate the Castro neighborhood and its vibrant culture and history on the first ever Harvey Milk Day, a day of recognition for civil rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978. Events and activities to include a milk and cookies street fair, a free screening of “Milk” at the Castro theater, a Tour de Castro Tricycle race, a dedication of a new Civil Rights mural, and much more.

Open Gardens Angle of Repose, 1625 Plymoth, SF; Boyd’s Passage to India, 2619 Baker, SF; Live Oak Garden, 106 Collins, SF; Playful Pines Street Gardens, 2418 Pine, SF; Sea Cliff, 4 Sea Cliff, SF; Urban Labyrinth Garden, 1620 Plymouth, SF; 1-888-842-2442. 10am-4pm, $5 per garden. Take a stroll through some of San Francisco’s private gardens and help support the Garden Conservancy’s work to preserve exceptional American gardens.

BAY AREA

Slicing the Budgetary Pie Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar, Berk.; www.notmypriorities.org. 7pm; free, donations encouraged. Discuss the U.S.’s budget priorities and the militarism of our society with the group Not My Priorities while sharing some delicious pie. If you’d like to donate a pie, email office@bfuu.org.

SUNDAY 23

All You Can Dance Day Alonzo King LINES Dance Center, 5th floor, 26 7th St., SF; (415) 863-3040. 1pm, $5. Sample half hour dance classes geared towards adult dancers of all levels including hip hop, ballet, jazz, and more.

Capsule Design Festival Octavia between Fell and Grove, SF; http://uniondesignsf.com. 11am, free. Celebrate Bay Area fashion, accessory, and house wares designers at this all day outdoor street fair featuring 140 independent designers, music, food, and a special section of SF couture.

Sunday Streets Bayview 3rd St. and King to Terry Francois to Mariposa, 3rd St. from Mariposa to Carroll (Bayview Playground), SF; sundaystreetssf.com. 10am-5pm, free. Stroll, skate, cycle, people watch, or participate in activities and events spaced out along the car-free route at this Bayview Sunday Streets celebration coupled with the Bayview Festival. Meet up with the San Francisco Bike Coalition at Illinois and 3rd St. at 3pm for a tour of some of the newest bike lanes in town.

MONDAY 24

Make My Monday Fort Mason Center Firehouse, Laguna at Beach, SF; www.fortamson.org/mmm. 6:30pm, free. Support the local art community at this art-making party featuring music, cocktails, and freshly made art for sale for $5-$50. Watch at artist Rebecca Peters hand-colors linocuts and Robert Harris creates triptychs, while DJ Fingersnaps will set the mood.

Sheryl WuDunn Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; (510) 786-2500, ext. 226. 6:30pm, free. Hear Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist and co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Sheryl WuDunn, in conversation with Kavita Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, as they discuss how to empower women worldwide with financial resources.

BAY AREA

Chill with the Union Night Bay Area IWW Office, 2022 Blake, Berk.; bayarea.iww.org. 7pm, free. Find out more about the Industrial Workers of the World Union (IWW), network, and socialize at this event featuring a talk about green-worker alliances with Judy Bari, Darryl Cherneym and Earth First.

TUESDAY 25

Bishop Christopher Sanyajo LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF; www.clgs.org. 6pm, free. Attend this public forum featuring Bishop Christopher Sanyojo, a Ugandan voice for equality, in conversation with Rev. Roland Stringfellow.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Alerts

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19

Solutions for Survival

Empower young people, support vivacious media, and support work on climate justice at this launch/fundraiser for this global youth media program that aims to uncover local, equitable solutions for climate change. Featuring guest speakers, food and wine, DJs, a silent art auction, and more.

7:30 p.m., free

Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

www.projectsurvivalmedia.org

THURSDAY, MAY 20

"Stand-In" for Safety

Protest the proposed "sit/lie" ordinance, which would make it illegal to sit or lie on SF sidewalks. The law would target sex workers, homeless people, youths, and immigrants, pushing them further underground and into more isolated, dangerous situations and areas.

Noon, free

Corner of Polk and Sutter, SF

www.allwomencount.net

FRIDAY, MAY 21

Rally for Peace

Say no to the war in Afghanistan, where deaths of U.S. troop Afghan civilians continue to rise. Demand that we bring our troops home now.

2 p.m., free

Corner of Acton and University, Berk.

(510) 841-4143

Berkeleygraypanthers.mysite.com

SATURDAY, MAY 22

Live in Peace March

Join KIPP Bayview Academy (KBA) students and community members for this peace march through the Bayview neighborhood to promote peaceful resolutions to social issues culminating in a scholarship ceremony. The Live in Peace March offers students and community members the opportunity to take a public stance against issues plaguing southeastern SF and attempts to ignite social change from within neighborhoods.

Noon, free

KIPP Bayview Academy

1060 Key, SF

www.kippbayarea.org

Walk to End Poverty

Help raise awareness about poverty at this walk around Lake Merritt followed by a multicultural family party featuring jazz, dance, kids activities, a community awards ceremony, and more.

10 a.m. walk, 11 a.m. party; free

Lake Merritt Bandstand

666 Bellevue, Oakl.

(510) 238-2362

SUNDAY, MAY 23

Beach cleanup

Celebrate World Turtle Day by removing plastic litter and garbage from Ocean Beach to help endangered leatherback sea turtles. The waters off San Francisco are popular with leatherbacks looking to feed on jellyfish, but ingesting plastic bags and other human garbage is known to kill leatherbacks worldwide.

10 a.m., free

Meet at north Ocean Beach

1000 Great Highway, SF

www.seaturtles.org

Rally against the pope

Join San Francisco and East Bay atheists in a call for a transparent investigation into the policies of the Catholic Church, which have perpetuated the sexual abuse of children all over the world. Demand the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

9:30 a.m., free

St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic Church

111 Gough, SF

www.atheists.meetup.com

Save the Whales

Show your opposition to the International Whaling Commission’s proposal to remove the ban on commercial whaling at this rally featuring SF Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and others.

Noon, free

Steps of San Francisco City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

www.greenpeace.org 2

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

May 18, 2010

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The governor of California released his last official state budget proposal May 14, just a few weeks before Mayor Gavin Newsom releases what might be his last official city budget proposal. The guv’s is truly ugly, so bad it’s almost hard to imagine what would happen if it passes. The mayor’s may not be a whole lot different.

Here’s why Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget is so hypocritical. In his message, Schwarzenegger said that "employment remains the biggest source of concern" as the state emerges from the Great Recession. Then he moved to guarantee more unemployment.

I remember when a Democratic Assembly Member from San Francisco first proposed the idea that would later become the philosophical basis for the CALWORKS program. Art Agnos, who went on to serve as mayor of this city, suggested that it wasn’t such a bad idea to make welfare recipients work — as long as the state offered education, training, and, most important, affordable child care. A lot of us complained about it, warning that it would never get fully funded; it costs a lot up front to provide the services that allow long-term unemployed to transition into the workforce. Ultimately, however, most states have now created some sort of welfare-to-work program.

Now Schwarzenegger wants that completely eliminated. Along with all state-subsidized child care. So how are low-income people with kids supposed to get a job?

They’re not. They’re supposed to become a permanent underclass in a rich state. That’s exactly what the governor is talking about — destroying opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people, keeping them from joining in the productivity boom we’re going to need to get the economy going again, forcing them to live a third-world existence, at a massive cost to the state’s future. All to avoid modest taxes on the rich. If that’s not class warfare, I don’t know what is.

So how are we going to respond in San Francisco? Will Newsom’s budget — the one he will have to answer for as he runs for lieutenant governor — be cuts only? Or does he have the courage to tell the truth — that the only way the state and the city are ever going to emerge from this recession is if the folks on top of the economic pyramid chip in a little more? Well, I asked his press person, Tony Winnicker, and here’s what he said: "The mayor’s budget will not rely on taxes to achieve balance."

Nice.

The Daily Blurgh: What shall we do with a Russian sailor?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 13, 2010

The Daily Blurgh: What shall we do with a Russian sailor?

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Greasy Russian sailors, unearthed ships, and shanghaied coppers: Chris Carlsson sails through tales of maritime transit from SF’s past.

*****

Today in sad local business news: Berkeley’s Reel Video to close. People love Ike’s too much. Facebook (hey, don’t they count as local?) navel-gazes about its growing unpopularity.

*****

Oh, honey don’t forget to stop in at Walgreens on your way home and pick up some shampoo, trash bags, and a DNA test.

*****

“There is a cynicism to this project that suggests that the producers did not feel much need to do it very well just because they have some terrific character actors in all the leading roles (save maybe for Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer), and even in some minor ones (Samuel L. Jackson, Jr., mails in his one scene as Nick Fury, making me wish they’d gotten Laurence Fishburne). Just fill it out with special effects & heavy metal music & take it to the bank. Getting the director of Elf to helm the project is just one index of how Marvel cut costs wherever it was felt they weren’t necessary. Like direction.” Poet Ron Silliman reviews Iron Man 2.

*****

People who say, “bleachedcarbsdairyanythingtoxinfilledeverything makes me feel ill,” please stop hyperventilating. You aren’t actually allergic.

*****

Honor the late, great fantasy painter Frank Frazetta by raising a horn of mead tomorrow at Mission Comics & Art’s “Memorial Drink and Draw.”

*****
Wake up Gary!

Mission possibility

David Talbot

May 13, 2010

Meklit Hadero’s voice exudes music. A casual conversation over morning coffee can feel like an impromptu personal performance by the San Francisco jazz musician, because even her speaking voice has rhythm.

Assured with the spoken word, Hadero pauses at all the right times, naturally crafting an underlying melodic or poetic content to her dialogue. The intonation floats up and down like a line from one of her songs, as the buzz of the bean grinder, the clanking ceramic cups, and pings of a cash register replace traditional percussion. Opening and closing her eyes between thoughts, she carefully constructs each sentence.

“There is an art to not saying things too quickly,” she blushes when I call her out on this distinct way of speaking. “You have to be open to letting the words come. If there’s too much conversation in your head, the poetry runs away.”

Hadero is all about feeling out the right tempo. And whether it’s in regard to speech or daily duties, she’s established a beat. But as her musical career has grown in the past couple years due to residencies at both the Red Poppy Art House and the de Young Museum, her to-do list has simultaneously matured into a demanding beast, distracting her creative process and throwing off her internal metronome. When she does get a day off, it’s all about coffee and taking time to breathe.

“I’ll sleep in, enjoy the view from my apartment, and trick myself into not using my computer — I hide it in my car. Well, just kidding … but maybe I should do that.”

It’s on these days that Hadero is able to create music. Soul-filled vocals dance with jazzy, playful bass for a sound that references Nina Simone and suggests a more vibrant Norah Jones. This week she releases her debut album, On A Day Like This … (Porto Franco), a collection of plush, bright songs woven from the world of influences Hadero’s been collecting throughout her 30 years of life.

Hadero was born in Ethiopia, spent her childhood in Brooklyn, and has since lived in a dozen other places, including Germany; Washington, D.C.; Iowa City; Seattle; Miami; and New Haven, Conn., where she earned a degree from Yale. While she’s most comfortable in “nomad mode,” if there’s anywhere that’s home for her in this country, it’s here, Hadero says.

“The artistic community here is not something to take for granted. I’m coming on six years here in San Francisco — that’s the longest I’ve spent anywhere,” she pauses to reflect on this realization. “I will always be a person with multiple homes — because for me, home isn’t a physical place.”

For Hadero, home is made up of the people who inhabit a space and the rich exchanges that happen among them. It’s the diversity. The mountains. The water. The coffee shops and the music. On A Day Like This … is her ode to California.

“All the songs were written in San Francisco — they’re a culmination of my first period here. My Mission community of artists are all on this album, all the people I’ve been working and playing with for years. These are my moments in the Mission.”

MEKLIT HADERO CD RELEASE PARTY

With DJ Jeremiah Kpoh, and art by Great Tortilla Conspiracy

Thurs/13, 8 p.m., $15–$18

Bimbo’s 365 Club

365 Columbus, SF

1 (877) 4FL-YTIX

www.meklithadero.com

Streets of San Francisco: ICP goes for inner city phame

John Elberling

May 12, 2010

Streets of San Francisco: ICP goes for inner city phame

If you live in San Francisco and pay attention to public art, you might already be familiar with the work of longstanding Bay Area graffiti crew Inner City Phame (ICP). Their prolific murals – diverse in style and magnetic in form – grace walls across the city. There’s a tribute to Malcolm X on Third and Kirkwood in Bayview-Hunters Point, featuring intricately crafted aliases free floating among inspired quotes. On a vibrant wall on the corner of 19th and Mission, comic book characters from Ironman to Dr. Evil swing between stylized names forged in cracked stone. An Azteca-themed mural up the street on 25th has a jaguar warrior getting down with the gods. And ICP also curates the street level walls of the Defenestration building on 6th and Howard (that old tenement hotel with furniture flying out of the windows), making a dynamic open-air gallery out of abandoned space. Wait, who said graffiti wasn’t art?

“The first graffiti I saw when I was a kid growing up in the Mission was the Chicano writing on our walls,” says Twick, ICP veteran and original member of the group of close-knit friends, founded by Il Charo (then named Jes 446) back in 1988. “We called it Cholo writing, because that’s what it was. The walls decorated the names of the gang members of the neighborhood.” Surprisingly little of San Francisco’s Cholo writing has been documented, although street art researches have traced the origins of its Los Angeles cousin back to eastside barrios in the 1930s. What we do know is that today’s hip-hop tradition of graffiti didn’t take off in the Bay until ’83, a year that marked the momentous PBS broadcast of Henry Chalfant’s and Tony Silver’s Style Wars. After watching the stunning documentary about New York’s burgeoning youth culture, thousands of kids around the world racked some aerosol cans and took to the streets. A thirteen-year-old Twick, who had already tried to his hand at Cholo graffiti, was one of them.

“I fell in love with the art form right away and wanted to duplicate what the writers in New York were doing,” Twick recalls. Along the way Twick found a mentor in Antie 67, who introduced to him the values and elements of hip-hop culture – from the craft of lettering to break dancing and emceeing. It was an apprenticeship. Like many other kids, Twick felt pulled into an exciting and creative underground world, one that for the most part, kept him out of the real trouble. “I didn’t choose my destiny my destiny chose me,” he says.

Soon enough more and more crews popped up, a unique Bay Area style developed and an ever-evolving ICP made a name for itself on the walls across the city. “We dubbed the style we do Phunk,” Twick explains, “meaning, knowing the foundation of a letter and creating from that: stretching it here and there, adding connections – some arrows and a few bends in the right places with a shadow or a 3d.” Funkified calligraphy is readable, unlike widlstyle, which has helped ICP garner a large audience of appreciators and street notoriety.

In recent years San Francisco has taken an active role on trying to eliminate graffiti. City policies have enforced strict regulations on private property owners to buff vandalism and enacted tougher surveillance and punishments on the writers. Graffiti is known as a quality of life crime, but it seems easy enough make just the opposite case. “We don’t destroy neighborhoods and communities – we beautify them,” Twick says. While ICP now paints many legal murals and members sell canvases in galleries, Twick still highlights that the practice is fundamentally rooted in both an unsanctioned approach and the aesthetics of the tag. So, ICP maintains a balance between two worlds. “The most important thing we stand for is our family and our cultures, inspiring young minds through art – not violence – and blessing our community with colorful murals,” says Twick. “And we will continue to be one of the top crews in the Bay Area.”

Quick Lit: May 12-May 18

David Talbot

May 12, 2010

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Norris Chruch Mailer, Daniel Clowes, real live magic, authors on immigration, the urban farming movement, and more.

Wednesday, May 12

Cakewalk
Hear author Kate Moses disuss her new memoir about being a self-taught baker whose appetite for sugar helped her to survive a tumultuous sixties-era childhood and the friendships she forged with famous authors while working in the editorial department of the North Point Press in Berkeley.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
www.booksmith.com

Chronic
Hear D.A. Powell read from his new book of poetry.
6 p.m., free
University Press Books
2430 Bancroft, Berk.
www.universitypressbooks.com

“Urban Farming Movement”
Join leaders of the urban farming movement as they discuss their aspirations to shift our culture away from chain grocery stores in favor of local urban businesses. Featuring Jason Mark, manager of Alemany Farm and editor-in-chief of Earth Island Journal, Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City, and Christopher Burley, founder of Hayes Valley Farm.
6:30 p.m., $20
Commonwealth Club
595 Market, 2nd floor, SF
www.commonwealthclub.org

Thursday, May 13

Daniel Clowes
Enjoy a visual presentation and conversation with Oscar-nominated screenwriter and award-winning cartoonist, Daniel Clowes, about his new graphic novel, Wilson.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
www.booksmith.com

Jamy Ian Swiss
Enjoy some live magic and conversation with slight-of-hand artist Jamy Ian Swiss, author of Shattering Illusions and The Art of Magic. In conversation with Adam Savage.
8 p.m., $20
Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness, SF
www.cityboxoffice.com

Saturday, May 15

Unbound: A true tale of war, love, and survival
Hear author Dean King discuss his new book about 30 women who participated in China’s Long March in 1934.
2:30 p.m., free
San Francisco Public Library
Chinatown Branch
1135 Powell, SF
www.shanghaicelebration.com

West Coast Live
Attend this live radio broadcast with host Sedge Thomson and guests Norris Church Mailer, author of A Ticket to the Circus, Eric Puchner, author of Model Home, Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting Stone, and more.
10 a.m., $18
Freight and Salvage
2020 Addison, Berk.
www.wcl.org

Monday, May 17

Authors on Immigration
Hear Peter Schrag, author of Not Fit for Society, discuss the modern immigration controversy within the context of three centuries of debate and Tyche Hendricks, author of The Wind Doesn’t Need a Passport, talk about her experience in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and the ordinary Americans and Mexicans who live there.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
www.booksmith.com

Counselor: Life at the Edge of History
Hear author Theodore Sorensen recount his experience as former Special Counsel and Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, including his significant input into JFK’s most important speeches.
6 p.m., $20
Commonwealth Club
595 Market, 2nd floor, SF
www.commonwealthclub.org

The Frugal Foodie Cookbook
Learn some tips on “Frugal Beauty” from author Lara Starr like how to make “sugar-free spa candy” and “wake up and smell the coffee scrub” as she discusses her new book, The Frugal Foodie Cokbook: Waste not recipes for the wise cook.
7:30 p.m., free
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck, Berk.
www.pegasusbookstore.com

Norris Church Mailer
Hear Norris Church Mailer discuss her new memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, that depicts the evolution of her marriage to Norman Mailer, as well as her early years in Little Rock Arkansas, where she was a young beauty queen who dated Bill Clinton.
8 p.m., $18-$20
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF
(415) 292-1233
www.jccsf.org/arts

Tuesday, May 18

Point Dume
Hear author Katie Arnoldi talk about her new novel set in Malibu where she takes on the death of surf culture, human trafficking, drug cartels, and the environmental devastation caused by illegal pot farms on public lands.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
www.booksmith.com

Wordcatcher
Hear Phil Cousineau discuss his new book, Wordcatcher: An odyssey into the world of weird and wonderful words.
6 p.m., $12
Mechanics’ Institute
Room 406
57 Post, SF
www.milibrary.org

Benefits: May 12-May 18

David Talbot

May 12, 2010

Ways to have fun while giving back this week

Wednesday, May 12

Eat Drink Change
Enjoy some of the best Peruvian food in the Bay Area while helping to raise money for Small Schools for Equity (SSE), an organizing project that implements innovative education reform policies and programs to help diverse urban youth achieve their full scholastic potential and develop socially just communities. The June Jordan School for Equity, the pilot school for this project, boasts a 75% college acceptance rate for it’s graduates, ninety-nine percent of which are minorities. So raise a glass of sangria for social justice and 25% of the proceeds will benefit SSE and the leaders of tomorrow.
5:30 p.m., free admission
Mochica
937 Harrison, SF
(415) 278-0480
Piqueos
830 Cortland, SF
(415) 282-8812
www.jjse.org
www.smallschoolsforequity.org

Thursday, May 13

The Arc of San Francisco
Celebrate disability, diversity, and pride at this LGBTQQ community fundraiser for the Arc of San Francisco, a non-profit that serves adults with developmental disabilities. Featuring circus performers, cocktails, a drag show, and a special guest San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty.
7 p.m., $100
Cirque de l’Arc
1500 Howard, SF
www.thearcsf.org/cirque

Bubbles and Bivalves
Learn more about native oysters while helping to support the Oysters on the Half Shell program and efforts to restore the critical underwater ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay. Featuring emcee Wendy Tokuda, CBS 5 news anchor, oysters, hors d’oeuvres, champagne, and libations from regional sustainable restaurants.
7 p.m., $50
The Aquarium of the Bay
Pier 39, SF
www.thewatershedproject.org

Rendezvous of Victory
Attend this benefit for the Middle East Children’s alliance featuring historian Norman Finkelstein, author of This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, and a performance by Iraqi/UK hip hop artist Lowkey.
7:30 p.m., $15
Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School
1781 Rose, Berk.
(510) 548-0542
www.mecaforpeace.org

Friday, May 14

Inside/Out #20
Attend this issue release party and fundraiser for Hyphen, a volunteer-run non-profit magazine that focuses on the Asian American community, including cultural trends, art, and politics. Featuring DJs Franchise, Esquire, and Citizen Ten, a food cart appearance by Adobo Hobo, live art, and more.
9 p.m.; $10, $20 with subscription
Som. Bar
2925 16th St., SF
www.hyphenmagazine.com

Marin Services for Women Benefit Dinner
Attend this dinner themed “Celebrating Strong Women,” featuring Emmy Award winning actor Mariette Hartley, Jan Wahl, live music, a delicious meal, live and silent auctions, and more. Marin Services for Women is a non-profit that provides a full continuum of alcohol and drug treatment programs specifically designed for women, their children, and their families.
6:30 p.m., $150
Mill Valley Community Center
180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley
(415) 924-5995, ext. 128
www.marinservicesforwomen.org

Saturday, May 15

Beautiful Dreamers
Help keep art alive in Alameda at this benefit for Autobody Fine Art Inc., a non-profit that helps emerging and mid-career artists from the East Bay and surrounding areas, featuring a silent auction, a raffle of art related gifts, services, and local restaurants, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, and live music.
5 p.m., $15
Autobody Fine Art
1517 Park Street, Alameda
(510) 865-2608
www.autobodyfineart.com

Paul “The Lobster” Wells’ Birthday Bash
Enjoy readings, a silent auction, rare rock n’ roll memorabilia, and live entertainment with David Denny, Barry “the Fish” Melton, Joli Valenti, Mitchell Holman, Carlos Reyes, Mindy Canter, Thrasher, Jamie Clark and the Players, and more. Proceeds to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
8:30 p.m., $30-$50
Broadway Studios
435 Broadway, SF
(415) 291-0333‎

Petchitecture 15
Attend this auction of dog houses and cat condos, created by San Francisco architects and designers, to benefit Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS), a non-profit that helps people with illnesses keep their pets. Featuring food, drinks, pups, and live and silent auctions of unique pet habitats. Fully licensed and vaccinated pups on leash are welcome.
6:30 p.m., $150
Palace Hotel
2 New Montgomery, SF
www.pawssf.org

Sunday, May 16

Lagunitas Beer Circus
Attend this fundraiser for the Petaluma Music Festival featuring carnival games, aerialists, contortionists, sideshow freaks, great food, beer from ten local breweries, live music, and more.
1 p.m., $35
Lagunitas Brewery
Parking lot and beer sanctuary
1280 N. McDowell, Petaluma
(707) 769-4495

Monday, May 17

Spelling “Bee-In”
Attend this spelling bee to benefit Small Press Distribution (SPD), a non-profit distributor of small press books, featuring local literati attempting to show off their spelling acumen.
7:30 p.m., $75
Crown Point Gallery
20 Hawthorne, SF
www.spdbooks.org/bee

Appetite: Sneak peak at Comstock Saloon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 12, 2010

Bartenders extraordinaire, Jeff Hollinger (also author of The Art of the Bar) and Jonny Raglin of Absinthe, debut Comstock Saloon, scheduled for a May 20 opening date.

This long-anticipated bar is in the former SF Brewing Company on Columbus, a 1907 building on the Barbary Coast trail with a Barbary Coast past honored in the restoration of mahogany bar, Victorian furniture, turn-of-the-century saloon look and menu (Beef Shank with Bone Marrow Pot Pie, anyone?) from Chef Carlo Espinas, formerly of Piccino Cafe. Cocktails ($8-12) are the classics, the kind found in pages of The Savoy Cocktail Book or Charles H. Baker’s Gentleman’s Companion, and all-time greats like a Negroni or Sazerac (two of my favorites).

COMSTOCK SALOON

155 Columbus Ave, SF.

(415) 617-0071

www.comstocksaloon.com

The Daily Blurgh: Is Gaga union?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

May 11, 2010

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Large, hairy gay men fashionably invaded Berkeley Art Museum on Mother’s Day in honor of large, hairy Belgian fashion designer. Did you go? We’d love to hear your on-the-scene reports. (Alas, we were dining with Mum).
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Welcome to Yuba County, SF’s rural dumping ground.

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Flashmobs: the new unions?

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Pop artists’ estate’s grasp on copyright loosened by artist’s “popular” source material: “Roy Lichetenstein’s estate has seen the light. After threatening copyright litigation against an indie band whose CD cover remixed the same comic book panel that the pop artist made famous, the estate has withdrawn the threat and no longer claims to own the rights to everything that rips off the same stuff that Lichtenstein copied.”

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SFMOMA has announced the shortlist of architects in consideration for its $250 million expansion. The final four are: Foster + Partners, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, David Adjaye Associates, and Snøhetta.

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Forget prostituting yourself for American Apparel. Can you make sexyface while wearing a messenger bag? Then Timbuk2 wants you!

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Sam McPheeters: I saw John Carpenter speak in 2002. He was 54 then, but he looked ten years older, and he talked for a while about his sagging energy levels. You’re the same age now, right?
Glenn Danzig: Give or take.

SM: Well, you look my age and it’s kind of weirding me out. Do you ever have problems with your energy levels?
GD: No.

SM: What’s your secret?
GD: I don’t know. I don’t eat shit food. I don’t do drugs. I don’t know what else to tell you.

SM: I’m 40. I don’t do any of those things. I eat salad for lunch. And I wake up almost every day feeling like a wet bag of sand.
GD: Salad is terrible if you put creamy crap on it.

SM: It’s low-fat creamy crap!
GD: There’s no such thing.

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Speaking of a comic Danzig:

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Today in “no, The Onion didn’t make this shit up” campaign ads:

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

Vandalism Manifesto

David Talbot

May 11, 2010

Editor’s note: An earlier edition of this manifesto was scrawled onto the walls of an abandoned underground Muni tunnel somewhere in the Sunset District.

STREETS ISSUE The magic of the word — VANDALISM — is terribly offensive. Vandalism offends all the right people and launches an offensive against all the wrong people. Wait, vandalism converts our doublemoralspeak to honesty. Vandalism affirms a number of precarious values: freedom, justice, the art of unmediated living, etc.

Vandalism is not just a word. It’s a gaseous engine powering subversion, all saturated in viscous honey. A lifestyle set on boundless hope. A toy monkey you can buy on Haight Street. A self-imagined adventure ride in your Disneyland theme city of choice. A movement determined to strategically undermine deceptive imagery in favor of immediate experience — the sort of primitive amoebic goo that inspires the gorgeous muck of truthfulness. Vandalism lives in dirt and filth — the only organic material left unadulterated.

Vandalism has a healthy diet: iIt devours the monopoly on spectacle and excretes into the vast wastelands of intergalactic oil spills. Vandalism likes thrills: It’s a hyperdérive on the brink of the familiar, gathering as much intensity as possible before fluxing the rules of the game into a vortex of momentous vision. Vandalism wants to hold your hand. Vandalism is so charged that you might already feel an electric rage surging forth while reading this. If you don’t, you will. Does it burn and singe and bend and twist into the antennae of your fingertips? Channel that rage into acts of vandalism.

Vandalism is an awfully new phenomenon. It takes up arms all over the world: in big cities like New York and London, and in not-so-famous towns like Bakersfield and Danville. Well, maybe not Danville. Just wait, Danville.

Vandalism is an awfully old phenomenon. You can see nature desecrated, I mean subliminally mysticized, in the caves of Lascaux. Since we no longer live in pure nature but in concrete labyrinths built on top of iron cage islands, we must bring the caves of Lascaux and beaches of Eden and tornados of Jupiter to bear on today’s jungle city. We must subliminally mysticize the streets. Cue air horn.

Vandalism is so important that there are white wall guardians who repress it with nervous glances and waving arms. Byzantine policies regulate it. Laws have been established to punish transgressors. Yet vandalism doesn’t go away. Too many dreams fuel it. Too many imaginations keep it vital. Word on the street is that Werner Herzog is making a movie about it.

Vandalism doesn’t insist on art. It doesn’t get involved in arguments about whether something is or isn’t art. That conversation is terribly boring. Have you been to a modern museum lately? Didn’t you get the joke? OK, I admit, that conversation is irresistible. Here’s a clarification: Vandalism is an art form even if the graffiti itself is not artistic — a shrouded word meaning ultimately, technically savvy, or educated and properly executed. To this, I summon the ghost of a severe-faced vandal, Norman Mailer: Art is not peace but war! And war ain’t always pretty, or concerned with legality, soljah.

Vandalism would prefer to mark its ephemeral existence on the city skin, gushing down the fermented joys of unsanctioned life, mummifying itself in the cold caverns of a culture mausoleum. It would prefer to make you smile and laugh and wonder mercilessly to what happens in galleries: first confusion, then self-consciousness, and finally, the lingering pain of feeling slightly cheated. (Confession: I kinda stole that from Banksy. VANDALIZED!) No, vandalism doesn’t demand legitimacy in order to die in a sea of sterilized artifacts — all rotten fish skins and busted gall bladders in excessive frames. Museums sanctify the past. Vandalism prophesies the present.

History lesson: Street kids baptized vandalism in the slums, reconfiguring our country’s criminal policies of benign neglect into an acrobatic dance. They spun windmills into the future and set their gaze on the heavens. Among buildings reduced to rubble — a bombed out third world — they flipped the script and defined vandalism as bombing. The kids crucified monotony and sacrificed the crushing industrial rhythm of authority. They called themselves writers and painted their neon-tinted altar egos onto the shining armor of the behemoth subway trains and all over the walls. The names projected a faith in identity among the noise of polluted prayers.

Writers became pseudonymous in an abysmal well of city hustlers trying to make a legacy for themselves — billboard important and newsworthy. Writers preferred this life, fleeting and necessary and beautiful in the quixotic eternity of the now. The indifferent had no choice but to reckon with the writers.

Over 40 years strong, the writers still scour the marrow of their bones to re-enchant the lifeblood of the city. They craft enigmas out of the geometric lines and curves of the alphabet, making ferocious animals out of huge letters, feral and gunning in the jungle. The animals promulgate like bacteria, spawning writers-turned-shamans who cast spells of cryptic iconography wherever they go. Mummies, giraffes, and spaceships populate the jungle. An aura of prophecy emerges in the streets.

Writers wage war against the ubiquitous icons of worship mounted across the empire: those branded images manufacturing a spectacle of insurmountable desire and Sisyphean frustration. The marketers might have the money to buy permission to assault your eyes and make you feel bad about yourself; writers have the courage to forgo bureaucratic approval, stake claim on what rightfully belongs to all of us and conjure up a moveable feast. We believe in innocent pleasures, impulsive and vibrant, in order to dismantle the tyranny of monotony! More air horn, please.

Vandalism is degenerate. It’s not here to promote cleanliness and genteel manners of etiquette. Vandalism will replace honorifics with its own stamp of affirmation: Vandal Basquiat, Vandal Futura 2000, Vandal Taki 183, Vandal Debord, Haring, Burrows and Proudhon. But more than any of that, all the lower-case vandals on Muni set to burn their names on your retina.

Vandalism doesn’t care about rights to property. Vandalism stands by this ancient principle: property is theft. Vandalism doesn’t care about copyright. Copyright smacks of self-indulgence and greed. Quote me on that. Vandalism is universal and limitless, unwieldy and unbalanced, completely unhinged and frighteningly beautiful. It’s dangerous but welcoming. Come on. Give vandalism a try. Vandalism is the new gentrification; everyone’s doing it. It’s pushing emptiness and dullness out of the city and raising the quality of life to unpredictable heights of magnanimity. Your neutral walls do violence to our integrity. Whatcha got against color?

How does one live well and good? By doing vandalism. How does one become anonymously famous? By doing vandalism. With a flick of the wrists and a swagger of the step. Til’ one can’t stop and certainly won’t stop. It’s a terrible habit, an awfully time-consuming obsession. How can one get rid of everything grotesque and in bad taste? Vandalism. How do we reassert ourselves in the midst of corporate homogeny and increasing pressure to normalize? Vandalism. By what means do we establish our will to communicate freely and openly in the public sphere? Vandalism.

Vandalism cannot be bought or sold in your local Walgreens (maybe in Giant Robot, though). No no, vandalism is a nebulous thing, an utterly cosmic thing, dirty and scurrilous and always operating in the shadows, always slipping away from sterilization and appropriation like a rat with rabies on the run. What a charming nuisance. What a credible way to live! Street credible. The streets is a mother, and good ol’ vanguard vandalism — the first lesson.

Vandalism once brought down the Roman empire. We have yet to rebuild the world in its depths. (Wooley Van Dahl)

Goat news

Mary Magee

May 11, 2010

City Grazing, the adorable weed-eating goat herd in Bayview, has a ton of upcoming events, starting tomorrow, May 12, at 6 p.m., when City Grazing founder David Gavrich will talk at a community forum on the urban farming movement at the Commonwealth Club.

Other speakers include Novella Carpenter (author of Farm City), Jason Mark, manager of Alemany Farm and editor of Earth Island Journal. Tickets are $20 and the price includes local, sustainable food.

On Sunday, June 20, City Grazing’s ambassador Momma Goat will be at the Giants County Fair with her two 3-month-old kids as part of CUESA’s Urban Eats program

And on Sunday June 27, City Grazing will make goat history by providing the first goats ever to join the SF Pride Parade! So, keep an eye out for their Goat Float.

The organization is also finalizing its new state of the art goat shelter design, redesigning its website, and looking for volunteers. Maa!

Time travel

David Talbot

May 11, 2010

arts@sfbg.com

LIT Sometimes when I’m bored walking around Union Square, I wonder how many of the well-heeled white guys heading toward the Financial District are really criminal types who should be followed. Say, maybe some higher-up at Wells Fargo or Citigroup who helped rip off thousands through subprime loans before getting a nice slice of that sweet Wall Street bailout money.

When I’m feeling that way, I’m under the influence of a seminal 20th century writer who spent his most productive years in San Francisco. Here’s a passage that sends me there:

She walked on down Post Street to Kearny, stopping, stopping every now and then to look — or to pretend to look — in store windows; while I ambled along sometimes beside her, sometimes, almost by her side, and sometimes in front.

She was trying to check the people around her, trying to determine whether she was being followed or not. But here, in the busy part of town, that gave me no cause for worry. On a less crowded street it might have been different, though not necessarily so.

There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye. Obey them, and, except in unusual circumstances, shadowing is the easiest thing that a sleuth has to do.

The narrator so hep to the ways of the tail is Dashiell Hammett’s “Continental Op,” an operative for the fictional Continental Detective Agency, whose adventures in print include some of Hammett’s finest San Francisco tales.

Don Herron’s walking tour of landmarks associated with Hammett’s time in San Francisco is well worth making for anyone curious about the history of the author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who helped create hardboiled crime fiction and was one its greatest practitioners. At three to four hours of often hilly trekking, it’s a bit of a commitment, but at $10, it’s an affordable way to engage in the next best thing to time travel.

Herron, author of books about pulp actioneer Robert Howard and noir craftsman Charles Willeford, has been informally conducting the tour for three decades. It started in 1977 as part of a “free college” known as Communiversity. The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook (2009), which updates earlier versions, is a nifty package that belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting San Francisco denizen with a passion for our city’s often twisted past. It’s a lively combination of biographical material about Hammett, assorted related trivia that never seems trivial, and Herron’s memories from 30 years of accompanying a broad spectrum of writers, fans, and eccentrics through the former stomping grounds of Hammett and his fictional creations.

The tour starts near the former site of the San Francisco Library Main Branch, now the Asian Art Museum. In an era of economic collapse papered over with massive subsidies to the same financial entities that brought us to collapse in the first place, lessons from earlier belt-tightening eras are useful. Hence it’s only appropriate to tip our fedoras to the memory of an autodidact left-winger who never finished high school but, by devoting years to reading in public libraries, got a better education than most who did. Though Hammett was making good money from writing crime fiction by the late 1920s, when he lived at 620 Eddy St. in the early 1920s, he couldn’t afford books and the library was a lifeline. The 1923 photo on page 66 of the guidebook, of what Heron calls “Hammett’s Reading Room” in the old main library branch at 200 Larkin St., is a beaut.

When Hammett and his family lived at 620 Eddy, their landlady was a bootlegger. Hammett’s wife later recalled cops rousting people in front of their window to the street. As Herron notes, today’s prohibition on hard drugs is about as effective at deterring users as the earlier one on alcohol, and equally effective at creating endless business opportunities for motivated entrepreneurs. If you’re not legally blind and are paying any attention at all, it’s likely you may see one or two such enterprising businesspeople on the streets of the Hammett tour. It’s also a safe bet they might bear a resemblance to the Continental Op’s self-description: “My face doesn’t scare children, but it’s a more or less truthful witness to a life that hasn’t been overburdened with refinement and gentility.”

The 1920s in San Francisco were wild, wide-open years full of fast living and dodgy characters. The late venerable columnist Herb Caen wrote of the period: “The Hall of Justice was dirty and reeked of evil. The City Hall, the D.A., and the cops ran the town as though they owned it, and they did … You could play roulette in the Marina, shoot craps on O’Farrell, play poker on Mason, and get rolled at 4 a.m. in a bar on Eddy.”

Hammett toiled on his used Underwood typewriter late into the night, creating characters and stories based on what he’d seen in that milieu. During World War I, he contracted both Spanish influenza and tuberculosis. When his TB got so bad that it was hazardous to the health of his wife and baby to maintain a family abode, he moved out and lived in a succession of apartments, including one up the hill from Eddy Street at 891 Post St., at the corner of Hyde. In a corner apartment on the fourth floor of that building, Hammett pounded out his first three novels. If you’re lucky, on Herron’s tour you’ll be buzzed in and get to see where Hammett typed, ate, drank, and smoked furiously — and sometimes pulled down the Murphy bed to sleep. The apartment of The Maltese Falcon‘s tough detective Sam Spade was based on the snug little dwelling.

The current occupant is Bill Arney, an architect and Hammett fan. When he showed the tour I was on around the small one-bedroom unit, I noticed a great compilation of “crime jazz,” soundtrack music from black and white crime movies and TV shows, on top of a pile of CDs. Appropriate, since Arney serves as announcer for the Noir City film festival local mover and shaker Eddie Muller puts on at the Castro Theatre every January.

Hammett left a permanent mark on San Francisco. Specifically, on the block-long street that used to be called Monroe, which runs south off Pine in the block between Powell and Stockton. From what is now called Dashiell Hammett Street, walk east on Bush and on the right, at Burritt Street, just before the Stockton tunnel overpass, ponder the plaque that reads: ON APPROXIMATELY THIS SPOT/MILES ARCHER,/PARTNER OF SAM SPADE,/WAS DONE IN BY/BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY.

We are lucky to be in a city that commemorates one of its most accomplished past local residents with a plaque honoring a killing that was a product of that writer’s imagination. *

MORE ON SFBG.COM: Johnny Ray Huston’s illustrated look at the Vertigo tour

360-degrees “Muralismo”

David Talbot

May 11, 2010

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO In the late 1960s, when the muralismo movement began gaining strength among artists and community organizers in the Mission District, or in the 1970s when pioneer female street artists Mujeres Muralistas first picked up their brushes to trick out Balmy Alley, they probably weren’t thinking about the de Young Museum and slick coffee table books.

But, to appropriate Jay-Z, street art’s got a new bitch — the fine art world. With the 2009 release of Precita Eyes’ eye-popping Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (www.missionmuralismo.com) and the corresponding year-long event series the picture book of the storied mural hood has spawned at the de Young museum, neighborhood tags and tableaus are gaining a stronger foothold in the world of high art. That is to say, the world of art that people pay big money for.

Banksy’s recent film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and the attendant media frenzy about several tie-in works appearing around town, is the hyped-out crest of spray-can crazy that’s got San Francisco in its grip. Galleries like Project One, White Walls, and 1AM are selling works for hundreds and thousands of dollars that you once saw on the wall of your neighborhood elementary school or liquor store. High class Union Square Hotel Des Arts offers visitors the chance to sleep in well-appointed rooms designed by “street” artists Apex, Shepard Fairey, and Chor Boogie. It’s hip to be street, stay up to get down, yadda yadda.

So what’s new? After all, Jean-Michel Basquiat zoomed from asphalt to canvas, sparking a meteoric career that collectors loved to cop a piece of in the 1980s. In graffiti’s early days, New York taggers struggled to retain control of their art in the face of soaring price tags, grasping middlemen, and ad execs who recognized the power of the bubble letter to sell. Past generations of SF artists like Twist and Mars One have graduated from the streets entirely. “You need money to do bigger and better things,” White Walls curator Justin Giarla told me. “Galleries are another possible venue to find yourself in history books, museums.”

Mission Muralismo offers a seductively jumbled history. Its pages, a nonlinear whirl of street art celebrated in situ, are perfect for a disparate neighborhood art movement that includes Latin American freedom songs, urban rustic neo-folk, and unapologetic civil disobedience. Editor Annice Jacoby says it took years of “digging through people’s closets” to create.

“You have to find a container that reflects the contradictions and surprises of the street,” Jacoby told me. “This whole place [the Mission] is like a gallery, proliferating and procreating.” To encapsulate the movement’s feel, she took images of temporal art — murals tend to last no more than 12 years before they start to deteriorate — and laid them alongside thoughtful essays by artists and other key Mission figures.

It would be easy to mistake the whirl surrounding Muralismo as another round of outsider art profiteering. Easy, that is, if you didn’t know Precita Eyes’ history of sponsoring social justice-based community murals. Easy, if you forget that the de Young events don’t directly commodify in the murals depicted in the book by swallowing them whole — those murals are pretty well stuck to their walls. Easy, if you’ve never seen the diverse crowds the events draw and the enthusiasm and respect shown by all sides.

“You mention Basquiat, and what happened there is that collectors started recognizing his work and showing it. This is different — we’re not bringing in the art,” de Young director of public programs Renee Baldocchi. Her museum’s First Fridays Mission Muralismo events, part of its Friday night “Cultural Encounters” series, are more than opportunistic book tie-ins. They aim to focus on the culture of the artists themselves. Key figures in the mural movement featured in the book like Juana Alicia, the Billboard Liberation Front, and Jet Martinez (muralist and artistic director of the Clarion Alley Mural Project), come in to lecture — street artists, lecturing? — to packed crowds on what they do, why it’s important, and how you can do it too. “We’re hoping that by inviting them in to talk about their art, it makes more people aware of them in the world,” Baldocchi says.

“The [de Young] events, I see them attracting a lot of young people,” says Jaime Cortez, an artist who coordinated the Galeria de la Raza digital billboard campaign in the 1990s and AIDS awareness mural projects. “I think that’s because of the big name graffiti artists the events draw.” Perhaps these functions are less about changing the meaning of the murals they celebrate than the high art venue they’re being celebrated in.

“It’s not like they’re having a show of muralists [at the de Young],” says Martinez, who has feet in both the street and gallery art worlds. Jet spoke at the Mission Muralismo event highlighting Clarion Alley. “They’re providing a forum where we can speak about this art,” he said.

Hopefully there are some lifted conversations going on, because the color and uniqueness of the Mission’s public art is pretty dope. “You’re dealing with a monumental subject,” Jacoby acknowledges. “You have to find a container that reflects the contradictions and surprises of the street.”

Debates don’t get much weirder than ones about where art “belongs.” But what’s certain is that with all the attention — the de Young events, the Banksy histrionics — more people are seeing the writing on the wall. “Oftentimes we’re in a hurry; we don’t stop to look at the murals,” Baldocchi says. “This is providing a forum so that when we do go down into the Mission, we can look at them and think about what’s being said — especially the social justice side.” *

MISSION MURALISMO

First Fridays, 5 p.m., free

de Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., SF.

(415) 750-3600

www.famsf.org/deyoung

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