Art

Best of the Bay 2009

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BEST OF THE BAY 2009:
>>READERS POLL WINNERS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CLASSICS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CITY LIVING
>>EDITORS PICKS: FOOD AND DRINK
>>EDITORS PICKS: ARTS AND NIGHTLIFE
>>EDITORS PICKS: SHOPPING
>>EDITORS PICKS: SEX AND ROMANCE
>>EDITORS PICKS: OUTDOORS AND SPORTS
>>LOCAL HEROES

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Best of the Bay 2009: Rediscovery

By Marke B.

marke@sfbg.com

The perfect journey is

no need to go …

— A. R. Ammons, The Snow Poems

Welcome to the San Francisco Bay Guardian‘s Best of the Bay 2009! This is our 35th annual celebration of the people, places, and things that make living here such a ridiculous joy, a behemothic shout-out to everything Bay-you-tiful — from Best Jazz Club and Best Asian Restaurant to Best Burlesque Act and beyond.

As usual when putting this tribute together, we couldn’t help thinking about how the Bay has changed, yet how resilient its remarkable denizens have remained. Times are rocky, y’all. Local businesses, charitable nonprofits, and arts institutions — already the "little guys" fighting against the onslaught of big-box blanding, intellectual dumbing-down, and commercial cynicism — are more endangered than ever. And we don’t need to tell you that stretching a dollar has become a whole new exercise regimen. We call it "subprime yoga." Look for our infomercial on the HGN network.

But economic reality can’t quash our native creative spark. That ebullient Bay ingenuity bubbles up no matter what — evidenced in the recent gourmet food cart, street fair, and spontaneous party explosions. You can find someone "doing their thing" on almost every street corner these days, and local businesses are pulling out the stops in terms of specials, outreach, and overall friendliness. Forget those odiously snobbish buzzwords like "staycation" and "funemployment" — for anyone but the still rich, the current squeeze is nothing to laugh about. But in typical Bay Area spirit, citizens are ingeniously rediscovering all the vast, affordable pleasures available to us in our own shared backyard, embarking on a journey of rediscovery, relishing the comforts of home with renewed vigor and determination.

The Guardian has been celebrating that special brand of dynamism for years. In 1974 Esquire asked us for ideas for its Best of the U.S.A. issue, and the we responded by publishing the original Best of the Bay. Made by the people of the Bay Area for the people of the Bay Area, it’s our annual chance to celebrate the people and places that make this city great. We were the first weekly paper to print a regular "best of" issue. Thirty-five years on — and 43 years after we opened our doors — we’re still going strong.

Inside this issue you’ll find the results of our Readers Poll — more than 8,000 people voted this year, and there were a few surprise upsets in some of the categories. Also within are our Editors Picks, where we shine a little light of recognition into some of the bay’s more brilliant corners. And our Local Heroes single out people and organizations that inspire awe and remind us that we can all work to make the world a better place.

Editing this year’s installment was something no one could possibly do alone. I had the extreme privilege of working with the marvelous Guardian staff and an amazing smorgasbord of local talent to get 2009’s Best of the Bay out the conceptual door.

I shower grateful smooches on them all, especially my right-hand cheese puff Molly Freedenberg, creative wizard Mirissa Neff, amazing illustrator Barbara Pollak, our steadfast advertisers, and the ever-supportive Hunky Beau, my own personal Best of the Bay.

But most of all we thank you, dear reader, for pouring your unique pluck and zing into this great community, for keeping the doors of hope open, and for forging ahead in the quest to keep the Bay an incredible place to live. Happy trails!


BEST OF THE BAY STAFF

BEST OF THE BAY EDITOR

Marke B.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Mirissa Neff

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Molly Freedenberg

ASSOCIATE ART EDITOR

Ben Hopfer

COVER AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Barbara Pollak

CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER

Jake Balakoohi

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Bruce B. Brugmann, Kimberly Chun, Paula Connelly, Sam Devine, Deia De Brito, Cheryl Eddy, Rita Felciano, Cecile Lepage, Nicole Gluckstern, Johnny Ray Huston, Billy Jam, Steven T. Jones, Justin Juul, Danica Li, Mayka Mei, Virginia Miller, Amy Monroe, C. Nellie Nelson, Scott Owen, Laura Palmer Peach, Sarah Phelan, Tim Redmond, Charles Russo, Joe Sciarrillo, Karen Solomon, Scott Steinberg, Diane Sussman, Stephen Torres, Juliette Tang, Andre Torrez, Susan White

BEST OF THE BAY PHOTOGRAPHER

Constance Smith

LOCAL HEROES PHOTOGRAPHER

Pat Mazzera

COPY EDITORS

Scott Steinberg, Diane Sussman

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Barbara Pollak’s colorful, whimsical depictions of people and objects have been featured in publications including Seventeen and Time, in various games, and in her children’s book Our Community Garden (Beyond Words, 2004). When not creating a line of personalized wall art for kids or contributing images to the Guardian, she enjoys traveling, collecting Japanese fashion magazines and ’70s kitsch art, making toys, and cooking at her home in Potrero Hill, where she lives with her husband, two young children, a cat, and some resilient tropical fish. You can see more work on her Web site at www.happypix.com.

Avalos on the budget process

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Editors note: Sup. John Avalos sent this letter in response to criticism (including criticism from the Guardian) of the city budget process.

By John Avalos

Responding to Tim Redmond’s editor’s notes posted on July 22: Robocop is one of my favorite movies too, especially for its anti-privatization message. Over the last 5 years that I worked in City Hall, I have actively opposed efforts to privatize City services like the security at the Asian Art museum and custodial work at City Hall. This year, when Jail Health Services were threatened to be contracted out to a for-profit corporation, I led the effort to push back, visiting both jails and meeting directly with those most impacted by the move.

As of June 29th, the night of the last Budget and Finance Committee hearing on the mayor’s budget, the Budget Committee had freed up only $20 million in cuts to prevent the massive cuts imposed by the Mayor. This was nowhere near enough to stop all the Prop J’s, the Mayor’s effort to contract out services, and restore cuts to essential services. Stopping the Prop J’s alone cost over $20 million.

Late that night, I met with a broad array of budget constituent representatives: seniors, youth, SRO tenants, city workers, homeless advocates, to get their input on priorities and strategies before President Chiu and I went headlong into negotiations with the Mayor’s office.

By the night of July 1st, we had $43 million to stop ALL the Prop J’s and restore over 23 million in other priorities.
We kept shelters open 24 hours, restored substance abuse and mental health services such as the single standard of care for mental health, continued immigrant rights and tenant services, protected seniors from losing meal programs and having to pay social workers to help them with their finances, prevented cuts to family support and violence prevention services, restored rec director jobs, rejected charging families for their child’s detention at YGC, reoriented the Mayor’s administration towards community development, promoted transit first parking policies, and set aside millions of dollars for job programs at the airport, port and PUC.

But I would not credit two newbie supervisors’ negotiating skills for restoring an unprecented $43 million in restorations in the worst year possible.

Writers’ Block: Precita Eyes’ Urban Youth Arts Festival

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By Michael Krimper

Precita Eyes — the community-based non-profit responsible for beautifying Mission street walls and educating San Francisco on mural art for over 30 years — has quite a celebration planned for their upcoming 13th annual Urban Youth Arts Festival. Live music performances, from local headliners to up and coming performers under the age of 20, will rock the park. Young heads will craft colorful aerosol art on open canvases, or you can throw down some paint yourself if you can an available board. I got a chance to catch up with the head organizer of the event, Precita Eyes’ youth arts coordinator Eli Lippert, just before he got too busy preparing last minute touches for Saturday’s festivities.

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SFBG How did you get into Precita Eyes?
Eli Lippert I started coming to Precita Eyes as a student in the youth arts program that I’m now running. I started when I was about 14 going to classes here and then stuck with it. I got involved with painting murals and doing more projects. I got a little older, and now I’m actually teaching the class and running the program that I was a part of. You could say I’m kinda’ a product of my environment.

SFBG What is the makeup of the youth arts program?
EL It’s still pretty much the same setup. There’s two weekly ongoing classes that are year-round. One is called the urban youth arts program and the other is the youth mural workshop. They’re for teenagers mostly ages 11 to 19. A lot of the kids that come through are interested in graffiti and more urban styles of art. So in the urban youth arts class we center on that kind of stuff and then in the youth mural workshop we focus more on the various processes of painting.

SFBG Do a lot of the students have an interest in doing illegal graffiti art?
EL Well, some of them do. Some of them have done it in the past or in their own time before coming to Precita Eyes. It’s not something that we promote for the kids to do. But most of them have come from a graffiti background, even myself, I started out doing graffiti — as entree into the art world, I guess I would say. But what we try to do is to get them to channel the energy that they have for [graffiti] and put it into something positive for the community. So the students can show the community what they can do with all this energy and talent that they have.

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SFBG Does Precita Eyes teach students how to get legal art out there in public space?
ELThat’s also part of my job — to find things like that and organize the group. But the students are always involved in some part of it. For example in the magazine class we got a grant, but the grant is a student-based grant. It was written entirely by our students. So they were involved in the whole process, and they got more of an idea of the different artistic avenues from the ground up.

Fine ideas, at 20 seconds per slide

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By Susan White

pechakucha0709.jpg

This coming Thursday, art aficionados are invited to meet at the Autodesk Gallery for what the SFBG previously referred to as a “hyperintellectual show-and-tell” – otherwise known as Pecha Kucha Night, a worldwide event that started in Tokyo six years ago.

Basically, Pecha Kucha (pronounced “pe-chak-cha” – Japanese for “chit chat”) is a function at which designers each have exactly six minutes and 40 seconds to present 20 slides of their work (giving them 20 seconds per slide). Having no control over the speed of the projector, speakers are forced to make their points quickly and effectively, moving on before the audience gets bored. Their work usually ranges from architecture to furniture – even the occasional science experiment. Anyone can sign up to speak in advance, and the events are usually free (with suggested donations).

Last month’s theme was “Causes,” which, contingent with San Francisco Design Week, sought to promote designers who use their work to affect positive social change. Highlights included Trevor Hubbard, whose 823KEYPROJECT – a collection of vintage keys he sells as necklaces – aims to fund emerging artists “whose vision of a more beautiful world frames a broader perspective of life.” (The number 823 came from the pager code for “thinking of you” – something Hubbard openly deemed “cheesy as fuck.”) Another speaker, Michael Voege, presented cooper.com, which specializes in improving the design and usability of various products. His firm revamps everything from cars to hospital equipment, using consumer frustration with technology as its primary motivating factor. (A refreshing change of pace for someone continually perplexed by the workings of her own capricious gadgets.)

Most speakers had something entertaining and witty to say, and it’s the type of event that tends to attract a cool crowd of people. Thursday’s Pecha Kucha will focus on the theme “Counterpoint,” positing the deep and thought-provoking question, “Isn’t the counterintuitive what counts?” Be sure to get there early. Seats fill up fast, and if you’re not quick enough, you might miss out on some awe-inspiring presentations. (Who thought PowerPoint could be this exciting?)

Pecha Kucha: Counterpoint
The Autodesk Gallery
1 Market, SF (2nd floor)
July 30, 7:30-10:00 p.m.
suggested $5 donation
www.pechakucha-sf.com

De La Soul is alive

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CHECK ONE Last night, I played De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1989) for the first time in years. I couldn’t stop laughing.

It was a surprise, even though I always knew that much of De La Soul’s early appeal rested on its humor. Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer spelled “soundsop” backwards; Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur loved yogurt. (He’s pictured eating yogurt in the album’s liner notes.) They complained about style biters who dug “Potholes in My Lawn”; and called their loopy, circuitous jams “Plug Tunin’.” There were references to soap, water, and Luden’s cough drops. In the first of several “game show” skits that bookended the album, Trugoy remarked that his favorite film was the 1976 sex-and-torture spectacle Bloodsucking Freaks. Twenty years later, De La Soul’s private language — or, to be accurate, “DA Inner Sound Y’all (D.A.I.S.Y. Age)” — still sounds fresh and crazily absurd.

Mainstream rock critics, suspicious of all that hippity-hop stuff, welcomed 3 Feet with restrained praise at first: Rolling Stone, in one of its historic blunders, only gave the album three stars while acknowledging it as “one of the most original rap albums ever.” The yellow-and-turquoise-daisies album art and MTV hype obscured De La Soul’s sharply intelligent sendups of go-go (“Do As De La Does”) and rap clichés (“Take It Off,” which parodied the then-ubiquitous “Funky Drummer” loop). Today, irony is so entrenched in the Generation X-Y-and-Zero lexicon that we forget how pleasurable it is when it’s done right.

Unfortunately, the good vibes quickly turned sour. Shortly after the album’s release, De La Soul ended an Arsenio Hall appearance with “Ain’t Hip to Be Labeled a Hippie,” a refrain first voiced on “Me, Myself and I.” The 1991 follow-up De La Soul is Dead offered a smashed flowerpot and tales of how the crew nearly got kicked off LL Cool J’s tour for fighting, just to prove that, hey, they ain’t no punks. Goofy odes to weed-smoking jostled uneasily with cautionary tales of child abuse and murder. The playful spirit of hip-hop’s so-called golden age was gone, another casualty in the oncoming storm of street realism and gangster aesthetics. (Mosi Reeves)

CHECK TWO I’d dug “Plug Tunin'” when I chanced across it on a mixtape from somewhere. This flow — this new style of speak — was shrouded in slang, occulted, and backed by a sound collage that seemed conjured from a basement where a rusty Victrola played the memories of an old man nodding off in his Lay-Z-Boy.

My boys hated that song. I loved it, but I didn’t “get it.” Armed with more fashion-sense than any of us knew what to do with, Marlon looked over at me and said, “You really like these Oklahoma muthafuckas?” Yes I did. Brothers was dope. From Strong Island, and dope. Rakim dope.

One Sunday, I was cleaning up my place to 3 Feet High and Rising and ran across a roach in an ashtray. Sprawled out on the couch watching the sun stream through my dirty windows, I “got” De La Soul. Every word was deciphered. It felt as if I’d learned a new language, or remembered an old one.

Things changed after that.

The 20th anniversary of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising is a cause for celebration. Anyone else feeling vindicated?

Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer, David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, and Vincent “PA Mase” Mason have chronicled the last 20 years through nine studio albums and countless production credits (Camp Lo, Gorillaz and MF DOOM among them). Prince Paul produced them, and in turn their popularity produced Prince Paul. They introduced a sleeping world to the black gale known as Mos Def.

De La is coming back to San Francisco. Witness genius at work. (D. Scot Miller)

DE LA SOUL

With Kenan Bell

Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $29.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

Celluloid Nation

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Unsurprisingly, Israeli films have been a big part of each San Francisco Jewish Film Festival program from the beginning. Yet despite that annual local sampling, occasional theatrical exports, and Oscar’s devotion (seven Israeli features have been nominated for Best Foreign Film so far, including 2008’s highway-robbery loser Waltz with Bashir), the general narrative of how that industry got where it is today has remained hazy. It clears up quite a bit after three and a half hours spent with Raphael Nadjari’s A History of Israeli Cinema, the new two-part documentary screening at SFJFF.

Nadjari’s choice of article is apt — this is a history, not any attempt at creating "the" definitive one, and no doubt seasoned viewers will be left scratching their heads over an omission or eight. (The weirdest being M.I.A. Eytan Fox, of 2002’s Yossi and Jagger, 2004’s Walk on Water, and 2006’s The Bubble.) But the myriad clips and commentators he assembles nonetheless piece together a cogent overview that will have you running to check DVD availabilities (usually in vain, alas).

Early features, before and after nationhood was declared in 1948, mostly sold the "Zionist utopia" that would unite millennia of Jewish diaspora, often using filmic language reminiscent of Soviet propagandist cinema. When audiences no longer needed that basic affirmation, more escapist forms emerged, notably the broad "bourekas" comedies and sentimental dramas depicting struggling ethnic groups (mostly Mizrahi Jews). Alongside these in the 1960s there developed a "New Sensitivity" school indebted to European art film that appealed to the intelligentsia if not the wider public. A gradual shift from collective to individual concerns affected everything from the omnipresent military dramas to dissenting political content, plus depictions of hitherto ignored or stereotyped figures whether Arab, gay, Georgian émigré, or simply female.

SFJFF 2009 continues this history with a sizable range of new Israeli screen work. Home-turf hit Lost Islands is a seriocomic family saga played to the big-hair beat of early ’80s New Wave (come back, Flock of Seagulls!). The excellent Zion and His Brother provides darker domestic strife amidst Haifa’s meanest housing-project streets. Coming highly recommended for a good time is A Matter of Size, which is pretty much The Full Monty (1997) of sumo wrestling. (Dennis Harvey)

A HISTORY OF ISRAELI CINEMA

Aug 1, 11:45 a.m., CineArts

Aug 8, 11:30 a.m., JCCSF

Not being boring

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

There are reasons why John Baldessari has always seemed a little like god. For one, the L.A.-based artist resembles popular visions of the man upstairs. He’s a formidably tall fellow — 6 feet, 7 inches — with white hair and beard, and he exudes an unflappably calm, wise demeanor, characteristics that figure in his role as an influential professor for almost three decades at Calarts and UCLA. In Seven Days in the Art World, the dishy 2008 book-length look at the pre-downturn contemporary art scene, author Sarah Thornton describes Baldessari as "a hippie version of Michelangelo’s representation of the grand old man in the Sistine Chapel." It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to suggest that he makes art that you can faith in, if not always completely decipher.

At 78, Baldessari has amassed quite a body of work, even though he pared things down as one of his important early gestures, famously cremating his paintings to start afresh as a conceptualist. "I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art" was the ironic mantra that fueled a 1971 video and his first print, in which he wrote the phrase repeatedly as if a punishment. Since that time, he has well managed to steer clear of boredom, his own and that of his viewers, with works that playfully address mediated culture and the making of art.

Baldessari received a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award at the current Venice Biennale, and he’ll be honored with a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern this fall. In San Francisco, a thorough selection of his prints is on view at the Legion of Honor. While screenprints and lithographs aren’t usually considered primary works, Baldessari’s approach is so connected to mechanical reproduction — he relies on found images, text, and photography — that the exhibition’s 100-plus examples, all from the collection of Jordan Schnitzer, an Oregon-based Baldessari devotee, comprise a very satisfying survey.

Baldessari’s art is seductive, though surprisingly difficult to parse. His works can play like engaging rebuses that are thwarted by his frequent use of bold, primary-colored dots placed over faces and objects, seriously throwing their meaning into question. Just as often, however, a Baldessari can have a succinct visual/conceptual punch line, like his 1973 Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), which in classic conceptual art fashion, is just what the title describes. That early work also exemplifies the sense of playfulness and pleasure often present in Baldessari’s art. It shouldn’t seem surprising that his prints can evoke Matisse’s buoyantly colorful Jazz cut-outs.

"I’m glad you saw that, he’s a huge influence on me," Baldessari says when I mention the Matisse connection during a recent interview. At the Venice Biennale award ceremony, he acknowledged his indebtedness to Giotto, Goya, Duchamp, and especially Sol LeWitt, the latter two being similarly playful conceptualists who played with systems to rejigger the way we think about life and art. Baldessari’s mode of operation involves breaking down mass-produced images until they take on new meanings. He has long collected 8 x 10 glossies from forgotten films, advertising campaigns, or various other commercial images that he reconfigures, crops, and/or paints over. Like Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills from the postmodern late 1970s, Baldessari’s sources are coded with meaning and narrative, but are emphatically anonymous. "If I know who it is, it’s ruined for me," he says.

Besides movie stills, Baldessari turns his attention to drab landscapes, mundane table lamps — resulting in a jaunty 1994 series of full-size reproductions with bold patches of color painted over the shades and shadows — and body parts, notably noses and ears (don’t miss the vacuum-formed piece mounted on the ceiling at the entrance of the Legion exhibition).

One room at the Legion is devoted to a 2004 series of prints of men playing guitars. The images are broken into layers, goosing the perspective by having some areas on thicker paper and turning the instruments into solid blocks of color. The story of their making offers a window into Baldessari’s process: "I’ve had these 8 by 10’s of rock and roll musicians for years," he begins. "I collect a lot of stuff because I’m repulsed by it, and that whole rock and roll musician thing does not interest me in the least. I just wonder, why are they popular? I had the photos for years and didn’t know what to do with them, and all of a sudden something clicked — the guitar is an element in art from Cubism, it’s always there with the bottle of wine and newspaper and a loaf of bread. So I thought, how does that work in a more contemporary context?"

He goes on to describe his interest in shapes in photographs, making perspective into a flat plane. "What if I just erase all the gradation and make shapes of color? When the guitars are tilted, they’re pretty interesting shapes, especially in context with gaudy costumes, glitter and bling. It’s an interesting collision."

Perhaps not a lightning bolt from above, but like most of Baldessari’s work, the clash creates subtle sparks. The kind you can believe in.

JOHN BALDESSARI: A PRINT RETROSPECTIVE FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF JORDAN D. SCHNITZER AND HIS FAMILY FOUNDATION

Through Nov. 8 (Tues.– Sun., 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.)

free–$10

Legion of Honor

Lincoln Park, 34th Ave. and Clement, SF

(415) 750-3600
www.thinker.org

SF International Poetry Festival

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PREVIEW San Francisco is known internationally for many things, but top among them are parties, politics, and poetry. We’ve got plenty of events dedicated to the first two, but it’s surprising that we didn’t have a full-blown poetry festival until two years ago. Thankfully, the city, the public libraries, and the Friends of the library are back this year with four days of events dedicated to the medium that made Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti famous — with an intention of continuing the tradition as a biennial gathering. This round features main stage readings by local heroes and international stars like Maram al-Massri, Daisy Zamora, SF Poet Laureate Diane di Prima, and Ferlinghetti himself. Other highlights include an exhibition of artwork and broadsides from participating poets, screening of a documentary about Jack Hirschman, a conversation about the art of translation, an event for youth moderated by California state Poet Laureate Carol-Muske-Dukes, workshops, parties, and a North Beach Poetry crawl that includes stopping in at Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore and other famous haunts of the Beats. Best of all? Like creating poetry itself, all events are free and open to the public.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL Thurs/23–Sun/26, Various times and locations. Free. www.sfipf.org

“Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004”

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REVIEW I saw my deceased grandfather before I saw Groucho Marx. In Richard Avedon’s 1972 photograph of the aging comedian, Marx’s push-broom mustache, here a baleen of gray bristles, is the only obvious identifying feature in what otherwise looks to be a portrait of an elderly Jewish man. Marx’s eyes — like Marilyn Monroe’s in Avedon’s famous 1957 portrait of the star seeming to want out of her skin — avoid the camera, looking off glassily toward something in the distance. Or perhaps they are trying to look at nothing.

Of all the faces in "Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004," the first large-scale retrospective of the late photographer’s work that makes its only U.S. stopover at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the ones crumpled with age, the ones closest to death, hold my attention most. The ubiquitous white backdrop and large format camera used in many shots allow the viewer an intimate look at the liver spots, wrinkles, fleshy furrows, stray hairs, scars, and other accumulated physical tallies that testify to what Susan Sontag called photography’s ability to depict "time’s relentless melt."

As in my encounter with the Marx portrait, you often notice the physical attributes of Avedon’s subjects before you register who they are. John Ford, replete with eye-patch, resembles a pumpkin caving in. Isak Dinesen (uncannily resembling Little Edie Beale in a brooch-adorned knit cap) is all hollowed cheekbones and cracked lips, and to quote Geoff Dyer’s wonderful catalog essay, "looks like she was once the most beautiful woman in the world — about 2,000 years ago." The exhibit contrasts Avedon’s portrait of Andy Warhol’s scarred torso, gnarled into a Weston-worthy bell pepper by Valerie Solanias’s gunshots, with the Apollonian perfection of the male superstars in the famous panorama of Warhol and his Factory Avedon shot prior to the artist’s near death experience.

Death has been a subject for photographers since photography’s invention, as much as it has developed as trope within writing on photography. Sontag certainly touched on photo-mortality, but it was taken up most melodramatically by Roland Barthes, who declared: "All young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death."

It would be foolish to brand Avedon with such a label, but there is something to be said for his willingness to allow his subjects’ place on this mortal coil to show through so clearly. Avedon was probably the most unsparing of 20th century photography’s great portraitists. But in their calculated presentation of their subject’s imperfections, his photographs manage at the very least to seem uncontrived — perhaps the best compliment a photograph can attract.

RICHARD AVEDON: PHOTOGRAPHS 1946–2004 Through Nov. 29, $9-$15 (free first Tues. and half-off Thurs. evenings). Mon–Tues. and Fri.–Sun., 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

Art Listings

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Art listings are compiled by Johnny Ray Huston. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

MUSEUMS

Asian Art Museum 200 Larkin; 581-3500, www.asianart.org. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, 10am-5pm; Thurs, 10am-9pm. $10 ($5 Thurs after 5pm), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 12 to 17, free for 11 and under. "In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection." Ongoing.

California Palace of the Legion of Honor Lincoln Park (near 34th Ave and Clement); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5pm. $8, $6 seniors, $5 for ages 12 to 17, free for 10 and under (free Tues). "Surrealism: Selections from the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books." Work by surrealist poets and artists. Ongoing.

Cartoon Art Museum 655 Mission; CAR-TOON. Tues-Sun, 11am-5pm. $6, $4 students and seniors, $2 for ages 6 to 12, free for five and under and members. "The Brinkley Girls." Retrospective devoted to early 20th century illustrator Nell Brinkley. Through August 23.

Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission; www.thecjm.org. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:30pm; Thurs, 1-8pm. $10, $8 seniors and students, free for 12 and under and members. "Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater." An exhibition of 200 works of art and ephemera. Through Sept 7. "Being Jewish: A Bay Area Portrait." Ongoing.

De Young Museum Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive (near Fulton and 10th Ave); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm (Fri, 9:30am-8:45pm). $10 ($27.50 for "Tutankhamun"), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 13 to 17 and college students with ID (free first Tues). "Art and Power in the Central African Savannah." Survey show. Through Oct 11, 2009. "Towards Abstraction: Photographs and Photograms." Survey show. Through Nov 15. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs." The return of the boy king. Through March 28, 2010. "The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific." Mural by Miguel Covarrubias. Ongoing.

Legion of Honor Lincoln Park, 34th Ave and Clement; 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm. $20 adults, $7 seniors, $6 youths and students, free 12 and under. "Waking Dreams: Max Klinger and the Symbolist Print." Survey show. Through Sept 6. "John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation." Retrospective exhibition. Through Nov 8.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 151 Third St; 357-4000. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:45pm; Thurs, 10am-8:45pm. $12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues; half price Thurs, 6-8:45pm). "Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’." Exhibition devoted to the photographic classic. Through August 23. "Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities." Show dedicated to the two popular American artists. Through Sept 7. "Matisse and Beyond: The Painting and Sculpture Collection." Museum survey. Through Nov 8. "Paul Klee: Social Creatures." Early line drawings by the artist. Through Nov 8. "Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004." Show dedicated to the iconic photographer. Through Nov 29. "Between Art and Life: The Contemporary Painting and Sculpure Collection." Museum survey. Through Jan 3, 2010. "Art in the Atrium: Kerry James Marshall." Monumental murals. Ongoing.

San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness, fourth floor; 255-4800, www.sfpalm.org. Tues-Fri, 11am-5pm; Sat, 1-5pm. Free. "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward." Exhibition dedicated to the icon. Through August 29. "Maestro: Photographic Portraits of Tom Zimberoff." Portraits of national and international conductors. Ongoing. "150 Years of Dance in California." Ongoing. "San Francisco in Song." Ongoing. "San Francisco 1900: On Stage." Ongoing.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission; 978-ARTS. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, noon-5pm; Thurs, noon-8pm. $6, $3 seniors, students, and youths, free for members (free first Tues). "Wallworks." Exhibition of local, regional, and international artists, curated by Betti-Sue Hertz. Through Oct. 25.


BAY AREA

Cantor Arts Center Lomita and Museum, Stanford University, Stanford; (650) 723-4177. Wed, Fri-Sun, 11am-5pm; Thurs, 11am-8pm. "Appellations to Antiquity." 19th and 20th century works from the museum collection. Through July 26. "Pop to Present." Survey from the 1960s to the present. Through August 16. "Contemporary Glass." Modern glass works. Ongoing. "Rodin! The Complete Stanford Collection." Ongoing.

Judah L. Magnes Museum 2911 Russell, Berk; (510) 549-6950. Mon-Wed, Sun, 11am-4pm. $4, $3 students and seniors. "Memory Lab." Interactive installation allowing visitors to make family albums from their documents, photographs, and memories. Ongoing. "Projections." Multimedia works from the museums archival, documentary, and experimental films. Ongoing.

Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm (first Fri, 10am-9pm); Sun, noon-5pm. $8, $5 seniors and students (free second Sun). "Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century." Panoramic photos with commentary. Through August 23. "Squeak Carnwath: Painting is No Ordinary Object." A solo exhibition dedicated to the Oakland artist. Through August 23. "The Art and History of Early California." The story of California from the first inhabitants through the Gold Rush. Ongoing.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology UC Berkeley, 103 Kroeber Hall, room 3712, Bancroft and Bowditch, Berk; (510) 643-1193. Wed-Sat, 10am-4:30pm; Sun, noon-4pm. $4, $3 seniors, $1 students, free for 12 and under. "From the Maker’s Hand: Selections from the Permanent Collection." An exploration of human ingenuity found in living and historic cultures around the world. Ongoing.

UC Berkeley Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk; (510) 642-0808. Wed-Sun, 11am-5pm. $8 adults, $5 seniors and young adults, free for members and 12 and under. "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye." Museum survey curated by Lawrence Rinder. Through August 30. "Human Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet." Collaborative exhibition. Through Sept. 27. *

More free stuff: Great street art

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By Michael Krimper

Some of the most innovative street art and inspired graffiti in the world calls San Francisco home. For those adventurous city dwellers whose definition of art is not circumscribed by its state of legality, there are thousands of voices that grace the city’s public spaces. I compiled a five-point list of some of my favorites as a crash course in street art exploration.

Defenestration Building – A massive fire burned out the Hugo Hotel — a four-story tenement on the corner of 6th and Howard streets — in the mid 1980s. The building quietly rotted for nearly a decade until artist Brian Goggin decided to transform the mini-behemoth SRO into a jarring public art installation. We now know the Hugo Hotel as the “defenestration” building. The name derives from a surreal picture of street-ravaged furniture desperately leaping in suspension from the skinny windows and roof. But it also means a gesture of throwing out, a spiritual act of release and possible renewal. The Defenestration building still is one of the city’s most dynamic public artworks, due in large part to its diligent curators, the legendary graffiti crew Inner City Phame (ICP). Over the years ICP has demonstrated an incredible talent for beautifying the Defenestration walls with layer after layer of spell-bounding murals. This past winter, Santa Claus and scantily clad elvish ladies bookended intricate Christmas ornamented names. Last year the crew painted a compelling memorial to the late Barbara Bode Falcon, muse and former wife of the eccentric comic book artist and inspirational source for graffiti styled illustration Vaughn Bode. And they’re probably painting something completely new right now as you’re reading this article.

Bluxome Alley — The art corridor lining the capillaries of Bluxome Alley (located between 5th and 6th off Townsend) just entered a new evolutionary stage during its formal grand opening last Saturday. Now officially baptized “Kommunitas”, the allery (alley gallery) strives towards “spreading the revolution one word at a time,” at least according to the domain site. Besides its activist mission statement, what makes Kommunitas different from your typical allery is a curious metal sign posted on the entrances outlining the guidelines to gain permission to paint. Kommunitas’ property manager, Tardon Feathered tells me in simple terms his reasons for opening the walls to artists. “[I] decided that good art looked better than bad tags, in an alley which we could not shut down the tagging.” In turn, the dusty walls, thick windows, pipelines, poles, air ducts, staircase banisters, and all other industrial furniture suddenly lose their grayness and become canvases for mesmerizing street art.

Mac Dre Memorial — Many a surprising mural abounds in SoMa’s seemingly desolate alley ways. One of the most spectacular is an enormous ICP production on the corner of Langton and Harrison in dedication to the life and work of the late Andre Hicks, better known as Mac Dre. The artists painted a monolithic memorial to pay tribute to the Vallejo-born rapper widely credited with founding the hyphy movement. On the Langton side of the warehouse, grandiose “rest in peace” block letters burst forth in all caps, floating just above a double headed thizz facing Dre. The two heads exhibit the antagonistic elements of fire and water, expressing Hicks’ versatile flow and style, combining fiery braggadocio with outlandishly cool comedy.

Oak Parking Lot — In the current social climate where rapid gentrification sterilizes neighborhoods while corporate minded policy limits artistic innovation, very few downtown spaces still allow graffiti to blossom. Nonetheless, a secluded parking lot on Oak St. just north of Market boasts some of the most vibrant, intricately woven murals in the heart of the city’s daily grind. Illegal productions elegantly grace the walls, blending seamlessly with commissioned pieces (maybe). But even if you can’t appreciate the subtle sophistication of spontaneously erupting tags, the heavily caked over walls still tote some finely crafted murals. Visit the endangered species before its imminent distinction.

Lilac Mural Project — The Lilac Mural Project, a two-block stretch between 24th and 26th Streets, is a fresh addition to staple Mission district alleries (and tourist favorites) Balmy and Clarion. But unlike its moderately bloated neighbors, Lilac possesses a youthful energy in anticipation of its open ended future. The murals gracing the walls oscillate between carefully thought out productions, whimsical tags, hastily spayed throw-ups, and the great possibility of empty space. Most recently, a old school styled memorial of New York graffiti luminary, Iz The Whiz (whose untimely death was caused by a medical condition related to breathing in an excess of aerosol spray), blessed the corridor.

Collision Fest, Convergence Fest, and ‘Faux Real’

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By Johnny Ray Huston

429-musabox.jpg
Dynasty Handbag: she’s real

Children, go where I send you. Seek out the wild women of the Mission Creek Music Festival Collision Fest.

Sure there are some sweet boys — any pleasure-seeker with eyes and ears should enjoy Mike Mantle of the Mantles (headlining July 22 at Hotel Utah), or Myles Cooper’s solo journey outside the Passionistas (opening a June 24 El Rio bill). But this year’s MCMF says here’s to the ladies who launch — the women who make new musical rules in order to break them.

Ryder Cooley reps recent Bay Area ingenuity on Thursday at the LAB. But the double bill bonanza crazier than any acid trip involving Tony Danza goes down same place, same time the next night, when Dynasty Handbag and Ann Magnuson take the stage. Dynasty girl Jibz Cameron is a treasure as classy as your mom’s favorite perfume — not even Lypsinka sinks her teeth into the art of lipsyncing with such ferocity. Try not pee yourself as she puts the p in performance and prepares you for the musical dramatics of Ms. Magnuson. What can be said about the queen of Bongwater, besides that on the cover of Power Of Pussy (Shimmy Disc, 1990), she was both outdoing and lampooning Burning Man before it even became a phenomenon?

Since Magnuson rubbed extremely pointy shoulders with Klaus Nomi back at the Mudd Club, it’s safe to assume she would be intrigued by the Nomi-esque stage theatrics of Fauxnique, a.k.a. Monique Jenkinson, who is bringing her recent show Faux Real back for a weekend stint outside of the Mission Creek rubric. Word has it that the show is brilliant — for real.

While Magnuson and Dynasty Handbag exemplify the Collision Fest’s cross-disciplinary antics, the Convergence Fest is a trip into filmdom. And in the case of Ira Cohen’s 1968 cinematic mirror-warp The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (Sun/19 at Artists’ Television Access), I do mean trip. Along with a documentary about Krautrock godheads Faust (Sat/18 at ATA), Cohen’s movie is one of MCMF’s screen gems.

FAUX REAL Thurs/16–Sat/18, 8 p.m. $20. Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., SF.(415)704-3260, www.climatetheater.com

COLLISION FEST AND CONVERGENCE FEST www.mcmf.org

Mumblecorenography

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Nervous or slightly guilty laughter is a typical soundtrack to any fear that dare not say its name. It’s not reading too deep to call the recent bromantic comedy explosion one conspicuous way in which Straight Male America is covertly coming to squirmy terms with a brave new gay = OK world.

I Love You Man, Superbad (2007), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), and so on provide sugar-coated therapy, allowing a youngish straight male audience to titter at the faux-mosexuality of Peter Pans with growing pains. Best-friendliness that resembles something else is milked for both "ewwww!" yuks and a certain redemptive sweetness. Offscreen, your girlfriend might laugh at skittish you for reacting with that retro "I am so not gay!" recoil to anything that looks or feels gay; so would the gay friends it’s now kinda cool for you to have. But onscreen, it’s fine to both laugh and identify with doofuses doing just that. Is this progress? Eh, more or less.

Lynn Shelton’s Humpday takes the logical next one-step-forward, half-step-back for anxious brethren. Unlike her Slamdance award-winning debut feature We Go Way Back (2006), whose arty, autobiographical memory drama recalled formative feminist cinema, Humpday operates within a contemporary dude idiom: mumblecore, complete with improvised dialogue and genre staple Mark Duplass (2005’s The Puffy Chair) in a principal role. It’s better crafted than most mumblecore movies. But what isn’t?

Seattleites Ben (Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore) are drifting toward conventional adulthood while remaining vaguely "alternative," liberal arts types. Enter Ben’s old bud Andrew (Joshua Leonard, finger donor in 1999’s The Blair Witch Project), pit-stopped between backpacker adventures. To Ben, this hairy hippie is the thrilling, chilling reminder of freedoms left behind. Of course he’s great at parties and an inspiration to worried college seniors everywhere. But do you really want that on your couch for more than a weekend?

Anna might have doubts about that. (Humpday‘s secret strength is its deft probing the boundary-testing not between men, but within a credible marriage.) Ben, however, grows giddy under the influence of wine, reefer, cello rock, and Andrew at a communal house party the latter’s gotten them invited to. Excited to be the center of attention for people two-thirds their age, the two dudes have a brainstorm, vowing they’ll make their own "two straight dudes, straight ballin’" video as an "art project" for an amateur sex film festival. Having double-dared, even next-day sobriety won’t let them back down.

It’s impossible to address Humpday‘s failure of nerve — it is, ultimately, another "raunchy" movie for the faint-hearted — without spoiling the tepid punchline of a hitherto amiable, pleasingly performed albeit one-joke, movie. Suffice it to say, though, it reflects the zeitgeist precisely in recoiling where it does. Millennia of territory-marking manhood still instinctively bridles, however quietly, at actual dude-on-dude snuggling. That a target audience is willing to go this far at present is cheering. That the characters and filmmakers inevitably wind up paralyzed by nervous giggles is proof just how not-over-the-hump yet we remain when it comes to real comfort with guys doing, er … stuff.

HUMPDAY opens Fri/17 in San Francisco.

Something for nothing

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>>CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS GUIDE ON ONE PAGE

You can’t get much cheaper than free. And at a time when many of us are counting every penny, the Bay Area is full of free stuff. Some of it’s right in front of your face, but most of it takes a little digging to find. This guide should send you in the right direction.

Oh, and by the way: some economists and political thinkers are suggesting that, as the over-financed, money-driven economy of the last century goes into, well, free-fall, the idea of giving things away could be the model for a more sustainable future.

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FREE FOOD

You can eat like a gourmet for the price of a drink

By Virginia Miller

Eating free doesn’t have to begin and end with soup kitchens. Here are some spots where, for the price of a drink — or sometimes for nothing — you can get good food, and sometimes excellent food, for everybody’s favorite magic number of zero.

ADESSO HAPPY HOUR

Adesso is much more than wine bar with an Italian-centric list of wines by the glass. The drinks are (relatively) inexpensive and creative concoctions. But the best part (besides a Foosball table) is food that comes out continuously from the kitchen during weekday happy hours. We’re not talking about your average free bar food here — this is stuff from the regular menu, like excellent house-made charcuterie, cheeses, hefty arancini (fried Italian rice balls), pates, sardine crostini, and all kinds of goodness. Happy hour, indeed.

Mon.–Fri., 5-7pm. 4395 Piedmont, Oakl. 510-601-0305

ALISHA’S HOME COOKIN’ FRIDAYS AT THE RIPTIDE

It’s happy hour and it’s Friday … what could be better? Especially at dive bar extraordinaire the Riptide, all the way out by the ocean in the Sunset District. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (or until the food’s gone), Alisha cooks up down-home goodness that pairs well with the ‘Tide’s PBRs and fireplace (in case — shall we bet on it? — the fog rolls in after a sunny summer day). You get chili con carne, chicken pot pie, and something called "blushin’ bunnies."

4–7 p.m. 3639 Taraval, SF.415-681-8433. www.riptidesf.com

MAYA HAPPY HOUR WITH BOTANAS

The $5 drink specials all night on margaritas, mojitos, and sangria are already a good deal. Add in free all-you-can-eat Mexican snacks and it’s a party. Free stuff includes Mexican bites like guac, quesadillas, taquitos, jicama with ceviche, tamales, and black bean dip. Arriba!

Weekdays, 4–7pm www.mayasf.com

EL RIO’S MONTHLY PANCAKE SATURDAYS

El Rio is one generous bar — the place serves free pancakes from the griddle the third Saturday of the month. Further cool points won by calling it "Rock Softly and Carry a Big Spatula." Breakfast is kindly served at 1 p.m., so after you’ve rolled out of bed and wandered over, ease into wakefulness with soft rock and hot flapjacks. Wear the "funkiest kitchen couture" and you could win their Golden Apron honors. After a meal that costs nothing, it’s easy to feed the tradition with generous tips. There’s also free barbecue at Friday night happy hours until 9 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

3rd Saturdays, 1–3 p.m. 3158 Mission, 415-282-3325. www.elriosf.com

PALIO D’ASTI’S PIZZA

Any two drinks (of the alcoholic kind, $6–$9) and you’re given a generous-sized pizza for two (or one massive eater). Devour the sauceless pizza d’Asti (shaved asparagus, fontina val d’aosta, thyme), a classic Margherita, or a Siciliana (fabulous Berkshire pork fennel sausage, fire roasted peppers, and smoked mozzarella). It’s no trouble drinking cocktails when they’re as playful as rosemary "sweet tea" (bourbon, muddled rosemary, lemon, and a splash of Moscato d’Asti), or a rhubarb margarita with lime and a salt rim.

Mon-Fri, 4–7pm. 640 Sacramento, SF.415-395-9800. www.paliodasti.com

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FREE DRINKS

Sometimes, even the booze is on the house

By Amy Monroe

If you’re curious and thirsty on a Friday, head to Spuntino’s free wine tasting from 4 to 6 p.m. Let the friendly staff pour and explain a flight of wines organized around a different theme each week. Drink free and get educated — imagine that.

1957 Union, 931-0122, www.spuntinosf.com

Cash-strapped social butterflies need only round up a group of friends and bring them to Tropisueno any night of the week to earn free drinks, and lots of them. The host imbibes gratis all evening provided she brings five friends with her to the bar.

75 Yerba Buena Ln., 243-0299, www.tropisueno.com

If you happen to be walking by one of the city’s many Kimpton hotels between 5 and 6 p.m. on a weekday, you might want to wander in and mingle with the guests in the lobby. If you look the part (and nobody asks you to show your room key), you can partake in the hotel chain’s free wine hour. Bonus: many locations pour free Anchor, too.

Nine locations in San Francisco, www.kimptonhotels.com

Like beer, music, and crowds? Then head to tiny Laszlo on the first Friday of the month for GroundSound Happy Hour. Hosts Upper Playground and SonicLiving buy you beer — and good beer at that, Trumer Pils and Shiner Commemorator — from 6 to 7 p.m. while DJs spin for your listening pleasure.

2526 Mission, 401-0810, www.laszlobar.com

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JOHNNY FUNCHEAP’S FAVORITE WAYS TO ENJOY THE CITY, FREE

By Johnny Funcheap

When you’re broke in San Francisco, sometimes even "cheap" can seem like a four-letter word. So thank God for free. Here are a few ways you can still enjoy the fun of living in San Francisco without cracking open your wallet even once.

GET LECTURED ABOUT YOUR DRINKING

The Mission District bar Elixir hosts a free Thursday night "Cocktail Club" with tastings (whiskeys, vodkas, tequilas … even absinthe) and a guest expert to help guide you through the process of finding new ways to appreciate staying off the wagon. For beer and wine drinkers, most BevMo! locations in the Bay Area have regular free tasting parties with themes like summertime ales and Mexican beers.

Elixir, 3200 16th St. http://www.elixirsf.com

ART GALLERY RECEPTIONS AND WALKS

To help lure in and lubricate casual art fans into being art-buyers, most galleries have regular receptions with free-flowing wine and a tasty platter of things to nibble on while you research art you can’t yet afford. If one reception a night isn’t enough, try sauntering from gallery to gallery during one of several monthly art walks — the most reliable of which clusters around Union Square with regular collective receptions the first Thursday evening of each month.

www.firstthursdayart.com

VOLUNTEERING MADE EASY: ONE BRICK

Unemployed? Got time on your hands? Do something useful with it — and meet new friends in the process. One Brick is a local nonprofit that hosts upwards of 20 different flexible volunteering opportunities each week, ranging from working a short shift beautifying a local park to serving food to the homeless. It’s not just about doing good — One Brick aims to help you make new friends by organizing meet-ups after each event so volunteers can get to know one another in a relaxed setting over a meal or a drink.

www.onebrick.org

GET YOUR GEEK ON: STAR PARTIES

If you’ve ever looked up to the heavens and wondered what the hell was up there, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers might be able to give you some answers. The group gives free lectures the third Wednesday of each month at the Randall Museum. When skies are clear, it hosts free monthly Star Parties at Point Lobos at Lands End with a lecture and a public telescope viewing.

RandallMuseum, 199 Museum Way; Point Lobos, El Camino Del Mar in Lands End;

www.sfaa-astronomy.org

AURAL PLEASURES: MARKET STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL

If the live music at the Stern Grove and Yerba Buena Gardens Festivals make you sad that most weekdays are quiet, the annual People in Plazas festival should help fill in any remaining gaps in your work-week concert schedule. This free July-to-October Market Street music festival puts on more than 145 free lunchtime concerts of all types in 16 different public plazas from the Embarcadero through the Castro.

www.peopleinplazas.org

FRIDAY NIGHT SKATE

Rather than plunking down a big portion of your salary (or unemployment check) on a gym membership (or signing up for a free introductory pass at a different gym each week: a.k.a. "gym slutting"), get sweaty by donning your blades or old-school roller skates and join the Midnight Rollers’ weekly Friday Night Skate. A large group of skaters embark from the Ferry Plaza on a 10-mile dance party/skate tour of the city, which includes plenty of stops for ice cream, Frisbee-throwing, and a chance for slowpokes to catch up.

www.cora.org/friday

TASTE-MAKING

Macy’s Union Square puts on free monthly cooking demonstrations in the Cellar, where top local chefs reveal their secrets for dishing up creative yet healthy meals. Not only do you get to learn skills like how to barbecue like a grill master, expertly pair chocolate and wine, or make a brunch worth waking up early for, you also get to sample the yummy delights the experts have cooked up. It’s like watching your favorite cooking show on the Food Network, but getting to magically reach inside the TV to grab a taste.

www1.macys.com

Johnny Funcheap runs FunCheapSF.com, a free San Francisco-based service that uncovers and shares a hand-picked recommendation list of upwards of 50 cheap, fun, unique Bay Area events each week.

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FIVE FREE THINGS TO DISCOVER IN SF

Urban adventures don’t have to cost money

By Broke-Ass Stuart

Although wasting a day in Dolores Park or purposefully misdirecting tourists might be great way to have some free fun, anything can get redundant after a while. That’s why I put together this list of amazing free things to discover in San Francisco. Whether you’ve been here your whole life or just landed today, you’re bound to find something entertaining on this list.

The Wave Organ at the end of the jetty extending past the Golden Gate Yacht club in the Marina. It’s not bellowing quite like it used to, but the Wave Organ is a perfect particle of San Francisco’s quirkiness. Built by the Exploratorium, the Wave Organ consists of 25 PVC pipes of various lengths jutting through concrete into the bay below. The sounds it makes depend on the height of the tide.

The Seward Street Slides at Seward and Douglass streets in the Castro District. Cardboard: free. Concrete slides: free. Getting bloody scrapes from combo of cardboard and concrete slides: priceless. The two concrete chutes are constructed so that when you get to the top and sit on a piece of cardboard, you slide down. Bring wax paper for even greater velocity.

The Xanadu Gallery at 140 Maiden Lane. If you’re excited about free stuff, chances are you can’t afford anything in this gallery. But looking around is free — and awesome! Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at the same time that he was doodling the Guggenheim, Xanadu Gallery (built as the VC Morris Gift Shop), has a remarkably similar interior to its New York City cousin — seemingly devoid of right angles and full of curving ramps. I’d pay so much money to see Tony Hawk go to town in here.

The Tiled Steps and Grand View Park, 16th Avenue at Moraga. Bring your sweetie and climb the lovely 163 tiled steps. Stop at the top and breathe a bunch. Then climb the next set of stairs to the right, and the ones after that. Now you’re in Grand View Park. Breathe a bunch more while checking out the staggering view. Smooching at the top is optional (but excellent).

The Jejune Institute, 580 California, Suite 1607,. Imagine if Lost took place in San Francisco. But instead of wandering the jungle dodging weird smoke monsters and "the others," you could explore the city in ways you never imagined. The JeJune Institute is kinda like that, only better. I don’t want to ruin anything for you, so all I’m gonna say is go there with a couple free hours, a cell phone, and $1.10 (not technically free but seriously the best $1.10 you’ll ever spend). The Jejune Institute blew my mind so hard that the top of my skull still flaps in the wind.

If you like cheap stuff, check out BrokeAssStuart.com.

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FREE HAIRCUTS

Let the students practice on your head

By Mayka Mei

Has anyone ever said you have a great face for hair modeling? Volunteering as a hair model gives salon trainees a chance to fulfill all their requirements for becoming full-time stylists. True, salons have become more guarded about their freebies, sometimes nixing the programs altogether. But a few freebies are still out there.

A few caveats: you’ll need an open, available schedule. Some salons have casting calls or will screen you for certain characteristics online or over the phone. Decide if you want a cut or color, and exactly what type of styling you have in mind. With specific days devoted to specific lessons, they may not need another graduate specializing in bobs the week you need a cut. Here are two places that still cut hair, absolutely free.

Festoon Salon

Haircuts Mondays at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Coloring second and fifth Mondays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.

1401 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berk.

(888) 35-SALON or (510) 528-5855, www.festoonsalon.com

Visual Image

Hair modeling vacancies available one or two times a month, or once a quarter

5200 Mowry, Suite C, Fremont

(510) 792-5922, www.visualimagesalon.com

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FREE PHONES, MOVIES, AND WI-FI

Why are you still paying for Internet access?

By Annalee Newitz

Information may want to be free, but Internet service providers want to charge you too see it. That doesn’t have to crimp your style; there’s plenty of free Wi-Fi — and ways to get free movies and phone service.

Let’s start with a little disclaimer: When you’re talking about getting things like free Wi-Fi, or free phone service, even "free" comes with a price. You’re going to have to invest in some equipment to get free stuff later. You might also need some training — but that’s available free.

For free classes where you can learn more about how to build some of the technologies I’ll be talking about below, check out the Noisebridge hacker space near 16th and Mission streets (www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge).

Now, here’s the dirt on how you can stop paying for phone service, cable, Internet, and online media.

FREE INTERNET SERVICE

Novice level: If you have a laptop with a Wi-Fi card, you should never have to pay for an Internet connection while you live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are countless cafes that provide free Wi-Fi to their customers. Yelp offers a good, up-to-date list of free Wi-Fi cafes in San Francisco at www.yelp.com/list/free-wireless-cafes-in-sf-san-francisco.

In San Francisco, check for free Wi-Fi provided by commercial vendor Meraki using this map: sf.meraki.com/map. Every branch library in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland offers free Wi-Fi.

Techie level: If you’d like to get free Internet service at home and not have to visit your local cafe all the time, you can build a cheap antenna so that you can see countless networks all around your house. Find out how to build such an antenna using this free online guide at www.en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wifi/Building_an_antenna.

If you are going to be borrowing your neighbors’ Wi-Fi service, please observe this cardinal rule: You are a guest, so use their service sparingly. Checking e-mail is fine, surfing the Web is fine, but downloading giant movie files is extremely uncool.

FREE MOBILE PHONE SERVICE

Novice level: Make all of your phone calls over the Internet using an IP phone. You can either invest in an IP phone and make phone calls using free Wi-Fi cafes and free city networks, or you can get the headset and microphone to plug into your laptop so that you can use Skype or another free Internet voice service.

Techie level: Turn your home phone into an IP phone.

Here are other ideas that some people have tried (and we, of course, don’t recommend that anyone does anything against the law). One of the open secrets about cordless phones is that it is extremely easy to steal phone service using them. Many cordless phones use the DECT chipset, and special laptop cards are available that that allow the users to trick cordless phones system into thinking that the laptop user is one of the cordless phones associated with it. www.dedected.org/trac

FREE CABLE

Novice level: Miro is an online service that allows you to turn your computer into a Tivo-like device that will download the shows you want to watch as soon as they are available via file-sharing programs. Find out more here: www.getmiro.com

Techie level: Turn your computer into a television tuner using Myth TV. www.mythtv.org

FREE MEDIA

Novice level: There are plenty of services online that offer free media, from Hulu.com, which offers a lot of free television and movies, to Archive.org, which has a vast collection of public domain films. Neither Hulu nor Archive.org requires you to download any special software. Or if you’d like something classier, you can download free, public domain classical music at MusOpen! www.musopen.com

Techie level: Use a BitTorrent client to download public domain music and movies that you can save on your computer. CreativeCommons.org lists many artists who offer their music for free. Public Domain Movies offers torrents of movies available to you for free. www.publicdomaintorrents.com

Other options people have tried: Some use a BitTorrent client to download any movie, television, music, software, or books that they like, using a popular Torrent search engine like Isohunt. There are a lot of what you might call grey area legal media at the Pirate Bay. That oufit is located in Sweden, a country that recenty elected representatives of the Pirate Party to serve in the European Parliament.

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FREE POT

You may be broke, but you can still smoke

By Rachel Buhner

It’s not well advertised, but if you’re short on money and need your organic herbal medicine, many of the city’s pot clubs will give it to you, free. Some places ask for proof of income or require membership while some are more loose about it. You won’t get big bags, either — typically the freebie is a gram. But while the American Medical Association and the insurance companies argue in Washington, D.C., about how to keep their fingers on the cash, local medical marijuana dispensaries are actually trying to serve needy patients.

The Green Door offers free marijuana every Thursday from 12 noon to 2 p.m. for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

843 Howard Street. (415) 541-9590. www.greendoorsf.com

The Market Street Cooperative offers free marijuana every Sunday for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

1884 Market. (415) 864-6686 www.marketstreetcooperative.com

The Hemp Center offers compassionate donations to all members when available; no proof of income is required. There’s also free Internet access, free bottled water, and free rolling papers.

4811 Geary (415) 386-4367www.thehempcenter.com

Sanctuary offers free medical marijuana, but there’s currently a waiting list and priority if given to terminally ill patients. Proof of income required; open to San Francisco residents only.

669 O’Farrell (415) 885-4420

Harborside Health Centers offers a care package program to low-income patients. Paperwork showing a fixed low income is required; patients can receive a free gram and a half each week. Additionally, members from any income bracket can volunteer at the center performing general activist work (calling local representatives, writing letters, etc.). After one hour of work, patients receive a free gram.

And there’s more: every Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., the center offers members free how-to-grow classes taught by David Gold, author of The Complete Cannabis. Members also get a free lending library for cannabis-related materials as well as free holistic health services such as hypnotherapy, chiropractic, naturopathy, yoga, reiki, traditional Chinese medicine, Western herbalist consultations, and Alexander Technique classes.

1840 Embarcadero, Oakl. (510) 533-0146, www.harborsidehealthcenter.com

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FREE PAINT

Not many colors, but the price is right

Every wonder what happens to all that old paint that good, responsible San Franciscans drop off at the city dump? It gets recycled, in the best possible way. The dump workers sort it by color, pour it into big buckets, and give it away.

You don’t get a wide color selection (off-white is the big choice) but the price is right and it keeps the stuff out of the landfill. Schools and community groups get priority, but San Francisco residents can stop by and pick some up whenever there’s extra.

501 Tunnel Avenue. 330-1400. www.sfrecycling.com/sfdump

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FREE SEX

Clubs, classes, and clinics dedicated to low-cost lovin’

By Molly Freedenberg

As anyone with a broken bed frame or a broken heart knows, even sex you don’t exchange money for is rarely free. But we’ve compiled a list of sex-related events, resources, health centers, and club nights that are easier on the pocketbook than most.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Good Vibrations is always hosting free events, classes, and book signings at its Bay Area stores. This month, check out Paul Krassner reading from his book In Praise of Indecency on July 15 and Kevin Simmonds presenting his new project "Feti(sh)ame," based on interviews with gay men about sexual fetishes, on July 16, both at the Polk Street location, and a reading/signing of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitues Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money (featuring stories by Annie Sprinkle and Tracy Quan, among others) July 30 in Berkeley. www.goodvibes.com

CHAPS

With no cover and nightly drink specials, this SoMa gay bar is the place to ogle hot men on a budget. Ongoing events include Shirts Off Mondays, Trumer Tuesdays (featuring $2 Trumer drafts and specials on Jäger and fernet); the sports-gear and jock-strap-themed Locker Room Wednesdays (with specials on Speakeasy ales, Wild Turkey, and shooters with names like Cock Sucker and Golden Showers); Thursday’s Busted (with whiskey specials and indie, electro, and ’80s remixes); Men in Gear on Saturdays, Cheap Ass Happy Hour every Monday through Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.; and Rubber (hosted by the Rubbermen of SF Bay) every second Friday.

1225 Folsom, SF. (415) 255-2427, www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

CENTER FOR SEX AND CULTURE

This nonprofit organization provides education and resources across the gender spectrum. Though there’s a fee to attend many of the events hosted here, visiting the extensive library/media archive is free. So is checking out "Erotic Embrace of the Corset," an exhibit featuring 50 years of photography of bodies tied up tight, on display through Sept. 10. Call before you visit (the center is run by volunteers and has irregular hours), or try stop by between 1 and 5 p.m. weekdays.

1519 Mission, SF. (415) 255-1155, www.sexandculture.org

FIRST FRIDAY FOLLIES

Burlesque, by its very nature, is meant to be accessible to the masses — which means it should be not only lowbrow, but low cost. This monthly burlesque, music, and comedy revue takes "low" even lower by cutting out the cover charge entirely.

9:30pm. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.myspace.com/firstfridayfollies

FEMINA POTENS

Part art gallery, part performance space, part community center, this nonprofit dedicated to greater visibility for women and transgendered artists has become a favorite of luminaries like Annie Sprinkle, Michelle Tea, and Carol Queen. Many events are low or no cost, and it’s always free to check out the art, including this month’s "Show Me Your Fantasy," featuring Malia Schlaefer’s photographs addressing contemporary female sexuality.

Thurs–Sun, 12–6pm. 2199 Market, SF. (415) 864-1558, www.feminapotens.org

SF JACKS

When you’re poor and bored, nothing perks you up quite like a good session of self-love. But if you’re tired of the solo mission, join other like-minded men for group "therapy" every second and fourth Monday. Though a $7 donation is suggested (insert "donation" pun here), no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Just remember the rules: mandatory nudity, jack-off play only.

7:30–8:30pm. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. (415) 267-6999, www.sfjacks.com

ST. JAMES INFIRMARY

Run by and for sex workers, this 10-year-old nonprofit provides free STI counseling and testing, rapid HIV testing, transgender healthcare and hormone therapy, self-defense classes, legal advice, and much MUCH more to sex workers and their families.

1372 Mission, SF. (415) 554-8494, stjamesinfirmary.org

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FREE TIPS GRAB BAG

More free stuff we love

You can watch Giants games free through the outfield fence; three-inning limit when there’s a crowd … Thrift stores all say "no dumping," but people leave stuff out in front late at night anyway … Ask someone leaving Muni for their transfer (and always take a transfer, even if you don’t need it, to share) … There’s almost always great free music at street fairs …. You can actually ski free at a lot of resorts if you do the old-fashioned thing and hike up the slopes instead of buying a lift ticket; on busy days nobody notices (obviously, this works best for short-run beginner hills) … There’s some great stuff at freecyle.org, but it’s a Yahoo newsgroup and floods your inbox so you have to keep up with it … The free stuff listings on Craigslist are also good … Casual carpools are a great way to get a free ride across the Bay … The Lyrics Born, Toto La Momposina, Kailash Kher’s Kailasa and the San Francisco Ballet all perform free this summer at Stern Grove, Sundays at 2 p.m., see www.sterngrove.org/2009season … Catch Wicked, Beach Blanket Babylon, Killing My Lobster, and more at the SF Theater Festival free shows; see www.sftheaterfestival.com and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (till Oct. www.ybgf.org) … You can get free movie passes many weeks from the Guardian … Buy a Muni pass before the end of the month, and you can share your old one; it’s good for three days of free rides at the beginning of the month … Almost every used bookstore has a free box; mostly crap, but sometimes some gems …. The Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley offers free introductory sailing sessions on summer Sundays; for the schedule and details check out www.cal-sailing.org. San Francisco Brew Craft offers free beer-brewing classes every Monday night at 6 p.m. 1555 Clement, 751-9338 … You can catch free outdoor movies at Jack London Square in Oakland every other Thurs. night through August (www.jacklondonsquare.com/newscenter/upcomingevents) … Free Shakespeare in the Park performs The Comedy of Errors Sat. and Sun. afternoons in August and September at the Presidio Parade Grounds (schedule at www.sfshakes.org/park/index)

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FREE TRADE

Go ahead, give it away — that’s the way the next economy may work

By Cecile Lepage

The 2003 documentary film The Corporation established that corporations were psychopathic entities, prone to irresponsibility, manipulation, and remorselessness. Now writer Douglas Rushkoff contends that we — the human beings — have started to act like corporations. His new thought-provoking book — Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back (Random House) — retraces how society has internalized the corporate values that disconnect us from one another. The current economic meltdown, he argues, is our chance to overthrow this dysfunctional model. We talked to him about a very different economy — one based on things that are free.

SFBG Your outlook is bleak, but you are still optimistic enough to see a way out. What’s your plan?

Douglas Rushkoff This crisis is an opportunity to start doing things for each other. First we have to be daring enough to enter gift economies, where we exchange favors freely and openly without even keeping track, just assuming that it’s all going to work out. So if someone needs tutoring or help mowing his lawn, you should do it. Eventually we’ll realize how much less money we need to earn to get what we need.

SFBG You acknowledge that accepting favors in exchange for other ones feels messy and confusing to us. Why is that?

DR We’re afraid of being indebted to somebody else. In order to accept something from another person, you also accept your indebtedness and acknowledge your gratitude. Money feels cleaner to us. People prefer hiring a person to babysit for their child rather than accepting a favor from the old lady down the street — because if you accept, what social obligation have you incurred? What if she wants to join you at your next barbecue? What if she now wants to be your friend? So now we all have to work more to get money to buy things that we used to just exchange freely with each other.

SFBG You blame the corporations for convincing us that we are self-interested beings. How did they achieve that?

DR They thought that the mathematician John Nash’s bad game theory applied to real life. A number of experiments tried to show that human beings made decisions like poker players for personal short-term gain and assuming the worst about other people. None of the experiments actually worked: the secretaries they did the experiment on behaved collaboratively and compassionately.

The better scientists, like Dr. Glynn Isaac, an Africanist from Harvard, demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that food-sharing and collaboration are what allowed homo sapiens to survive. Nevertheless, we intentionally built an economy and a scarcity-based currency to promote the self-interest.

People look at the economy we’re living in as a fact of nature. They don’t see it as a set of rules that was put in place by a particular people at a particular time. They look at money the way a doctor looks at the bloodstream. They don’t understand that it’s a social construction and that we can rewrite it.

Collision Fest, Convergence Fest, and “Faux Real”

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PREVIEW Children, go where I send you. Seek out the wild women of the Mission Creek Music Festival Collision Fest.

Sure there are some sweet boys — any pleasure-seeker with eyes and ears should enjoy Mike Mantle of the Mantles (headlining July 22 at Hotel Utah), or Myles Cooper’s solo journey outside the Passionistas (opening a June 24 El Rio bill). But this year’s MCMF says here’s to the ladies who launch — the women who make new musical rules in order to break them.

Ryder Cooley reps recent Bay Area ingenuity on Thursday at the LAB. But the double bill bonanza crazier than any acid trip involving Tony Danza goes down same place, same time the next night, when Dynasty Handbag and Ann Magnuson take the stage. Dynasty girl Jibz Cameron is a treasure as classy as your mom’s favorite perfume — not even Lypsinka sinks her teeth into the art of lipsyncing with such ferocity. Try not pee yourself as she puts the p in performance and prepares you for the musical dramatics of Ms. Magnuson. What can be said about the queen of Bongwater, besides that on the cover of Power Of Pussy (Shimmy Disc, 1990), she was both outdoing and lampooning Burning Man before it even became a phenomenon?

Since Magnuson rubbed extremely pointy shoulders with Klaus Nomi back at the Mudd Club, it’s safe to assume she would be intrigued by the Nomi-esque stage theatrics of Fauxnique, a.k.a. Monique Jenkinson, who is bringing her recent show Faux Real back for a weekend stint outside of the Mission Creek rubric. Word has it that the show is brilliant — for real.

While Magnuson and Dynasty Handbag exemplify the Collision Fest’s cross-disciplinary antics, the Convergence Fest is a trip into filmdom. And in the case of Ira Cohen’s 1968 cinematic mirror-warp The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (Sun/19 at Artists’ Television Access), I do mean trip. Along with a documentary about Krautrock godheads Faust (Sat/18 at ATA), Cohen’s movie is one of MCMF’s screen gems.

FAUX REAL Thurs/16–Sat/18, 8 p.m. $20. Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., SF.(415)704-3260, www.climatetheater.com

COLLISION FEST AND CONVERGENCE FEST www.mcmf.org

Art Listings

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Art listings are compiled by Johnny Ray Huston. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings. For more art listings go to sfbg.com.

MUSEUMS

Asian Art Museum 200 Larkin; 581-3500, www.asianart.org. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, 10am-5pm; Thurs, 10am-9pm. $10 ($5 Thurs after 5pm), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 12 to 17, free for 11 and under. "In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection." Ongoing.

California Palace of the Legion of Honor Lincoln Park (near 34th Ave and Clement); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5pm. $8, $6 seniors, $5 for ages 12 to 17, free for 10 and under (free Tues). "Surrealism: Selections from the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books." Work by surrealist poets and artists. Ongoing.

Cartoon Art Museum 655 Mission; CAR-TOON. Tues-Sun, 11am-5pm. $6, $4 students and seniors, $2 for ages 6 to 12, free for five and under and members. "Watchmen." Illustrations, sketches, and comic book pages by Dave Gibbons. Through Sun/19. "The Brinkley Girls." Retrospective devoted to early 20th century illustrator Nell Brinkley. Through August 23.

Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission; www.thecjm.org. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:30pm; Thurs, 1-8pm. $10, $8 seniors and students, free for 12 and under and members. "Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater." An exhibition of 200 works of art and ephemera. Through Sept 7. "Being Jewish: A Bay Area Portrait." Ongoing.

De Young Museum Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive (near Fulton and 10th Ave); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm (Fri, 9:30am-8:45pm). $10 ($27.50 for "Tutankhamun"), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 13 to 17 and college students with ID (free first Tues). "Art and Power in the Central African Savannah." Survey show. Through Oct 11, 2009. "Towards Abstraction: Photographs and Photograms." Survey show. Through Nov 15. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs." The return of the boy king. Through March 28, 2010. "The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific." Mural by Miguel Covarrubias. Ongoing.

Legion of Honor Lincoln Park, 34th Ave and Clement; 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm. $20 adults, $7 seniors, $6 youths and students, free 12 and under. "Waking Dreams: Max Klinger and the Symbolist Print." Survey show. Through Sept 6. "John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation." Retrospective exhibition. Through Nov 8.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 151 Third St; 357-4000. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:45pm; Thurs, 10am-8:45pm. $12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues; half price Thurs, 6-8:45pm). "Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’." Exhibition devoted to the photographic classic. Through August 23. "Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities." Show dedicated to the two popular American artists. Through Sept 7. "Matisse and Beyond: The Painting and Sculpture Collection." Museum survey. Through Nov 8. "Paul Klee: Social Creatures." Early line drawings by the artist. Through Nov 8. "Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004." Show dedicated to the iconic photographer. Through Nov 29. "Between Art and Life: The Contemporary Painting and Sculpure Collection." Museum survey. Through Jan 3, 2010. "Art in the Atrium: Kerry James Marshall." Monumental murals. Ongoing.

San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness, fourth floor; 255-4800, www.sfpalm.org. Tues-Fri, 11am-5pm; Sat, 1-5pm. Free. "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward." Exhibition dedicated to the icon. Through August 29. "Maestro: Photographic Portraits of Tom Zimberoff." Portraits of national and international conductors. Ongoing. "150 Years of Dance in California." Ongoing. "San Francisco in Song." Ongoing. "San Francisco 1900: On Stage." Ongoing.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission; 978-ARTS. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, noon-5pm; Thurs, noon-8pm. $6, $3 seniors, students, and youths, free for members (free first Tues). "Wallworks." Exhibition of local, regional, and international artists, curated by Betti-Sue Hertz. Sat/18 through Oct. 25.


BAY AREA

Cantor Arts Center Lomita and Museum, Stanford University, Stanford; (650) 723-4177. Wed, Fri-Sun, 11am-5pm; Thurs, 11am-8pm. "Appellations to Antiquity." 19th and 20th century works from the museum collection. Through July 26. "Pop to Present." Survey from the 1960s to the present. Through August 16. "Contemporary Glass." Modern glass works. Ongoing. "Rodin! The Complete Stanford Collection." Ongoing.

Judah L. Magnes Museum 2911 Russell, Berk; (510) 549-6950. Mon-Wed, Sun, 11am-4pm. $4, $3 students and seniors. "Memory Lab." Interactive installation allowing visitors to make family albums from their documents, photographs, and memories. Ongoing. "Projections." Multimedia works from the museums archival, documentary, and experimental films. Ongoing.

Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm (first Fri, 10am-9pm); Sun, noon-5pm. $8, $5 seniors and students (free second Sun). "Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century." Panoramic photos with commentary. Through August 23. "Squeak Carnwath: Painting is No Ordinary Object." A solo exhibition dedicated to the Oakland artist. Through August 23. "The Art and History of Early California." The story of California from the first inhabitants through the Gold Rush. Ongoing.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology UC Berkeley, 103 Kroeber Hall, room 3712, Bancroft and Bowditch, Berk; (510) 643-1193. Wed-Sat, 10am-4:30pm; Sun, noon-4pm. $4, $3 seniors, $1 students, free for 12 and under. "From the Maker’s Hand: Selections from the Permanent Collection." An exploration of human ingenuity found in living and historic cultures around the world. Ongoing.

UC Berkeley Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk; (510) 642-0808. Wed-Sun, 11am-5pm. $8 adults, $5 seniors and young adults, free for members and 12 and under. "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye." Museum survey curated by Lawrence Rinder. Through August 30. "Human Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet." Collaborative exhibition. Through Sept. 27. *

Writers’ Block: In Defense of The Tag

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By Michael Krimper

The tag is the essence of graffiti. The craft begins with and grows from the aesthetics of the tag. Without it, there would be no two colored throw-ups or top to bottom burners breathing life into abandoned parking lots. No Goliath productions and finely orchestrated murals ushering thousands into Clarion Alley. And no multi-million dollar industry building upon and capitalizing on graffiti’s provocative aesthetic legacy. The tag is literally the ABC’s of the art practice. But in the eye of the mass public, the tag gets the worst wrap out of all of graffiti’s many articulations.

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Photo by Michael Krimper

I have engaged in countless conversations with detesters of the tag who confess more often than not a rapturous appreciation for its more colorful, larger than life offspring. Nonetheless, they cannot stand graffiti’s more ubiquitous and less evolved ancestors. The detesters envision city streets completely devoid of drippy marked signatures but magnificently filled with vibrantly painted walls. An urban landscape thoughtfully curated with the latex polish of expertly trained artists, but missing the gritty, grassroots democracy of the tag. A pleasant but curiously vacuous or ghostly urban picture.

In defense of the tag, it has many upstanding virtues as a serious art form. At rock bottom, the shape of the letters express raw feeling and the organization of the name tells a cohesive narrative. At its most experimental, the tag stretches the conceptual basis of letter forms and the autograph beyond their pragmatic usage into the more abstract territory of geometric notions and relations. At any level of skill whatsoever, the writer demonstrates a grasp on “hand styles”, the calligraphic interpretation of form and personality by way of stylizing a dynamic signature. However, considering that much of today’s (and history’s) broadly venerated visual art and pervasive commercial art employs aesthetic qualities similar or identical to those inherent in the graffiti tag, I have come to doubt that most people’s disgust is fundamentally conditioned by the tag’s surface appearance.

Treasure Island lineup announced: Flaming Lips, MGMT, Beirut, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, and more

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This just in from the folks at Another Planet:

July 13, 2009 – San Francisco , CA – San Francisco ’s Indian summer is around the corner and with it brings the 3rd Annual Treasure Island Music Festival, the West Coast’s most anticipated boutique music festival. Set against panoramic views of the city by the bay, Treasure Island Music Festival will stick true to form in offering an electronic and dance centric lineup on Saturday, October 17th and an indie rock lineup on Sunday, October 18th. With two stages and no overlapping sets, fans can enjoy every note of every act. Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment are pleased to announce the following lineup…

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

MGMT
MSTRKRFT
Girl Talk
Brazilian Girls
The Streets
Passion Pit
LTJ Bukem feat. MC Conrad
DJ Krush
Federico Aubele
Dan Deacon
Murs
Crown City Rockers
The Limousines

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The Flaming Lips
The Decemberists
Beirut
Grizzly Bear
Yo La Tengo
The Walkmen
Bob Mould
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down
Vetiver
Spiral Stairs
Sleepy Sun
Tommy Guerrero
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

In only its third year, Treasure Island Music Festival has garnered national acclaim and become a must see on the United States ’ festival circuit. SPIN described it as a “full blown love affair,” while the SF WEEKLY claimed, “NorCal has its own Micro-achella” and declared that Treasure Island boasted “an impressive lineup with bands from all over the world.” PASTE MAGAZINE said, “For the second year in a row, a 70-year-old, man-made island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay was home to some of the finest live bands in the country.”

Treasure Island Music Festival will continue its tradition of exposing emerging and critically established artists to the tastemakers and fans of independent music… all going down smack-dab in the middle of the San Francisco Bay . In addition to the tunes, there will be a multitude of activities for the audience including a 60-foot tall Ferris wheel, an interactive art tent, a vendor village showcasing local designers and an array of healthy and affordable food and beverages.

“Treasure Island has a unique feel for a music festival due to its intimate size and beautiful setting. It’s very much a communal experience with artists and fans sharing similar moments together,” says Bryan Duquette of Another Planet Entertainment.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with this year’s line-up,” adds Noise Pop’s Jordan Kurland, “It’s a well-balanced cross section of established veterans of the independent and electronic music communities alongside some of the most celebrated breakout artists of the last couple years. It’s also a chance to spend a day on an island with the Flaming Lips and a 60-foot Ferris wheel.”

A limited quantity of $99.99 2-Day tickets and VIP Single Day 2-Packs go on sale on Tuesday, July 14th at 12pm PST through www.treasureislandfestival.com. A VIP 2-Pack includes 2 VIP tickets to one day, 1 parking spot on island, preferred viewing area with bleachers, lounge with full bar and other amenities. Single Day tickets go on sale on Friday, July 17th at 10am PST. To off-set traffic congestion and the limited amount of parking on the island, Treasure Island Music Festival will be providing shuttles on and off the island to ticket holders at no additional cost.

Your Treasure Island experience is brought to you by your friends at Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment.

For more information on Treasure Island Music Festival please visit
www.treasureislandfestival.com

Bedazzler: Beyonce at Oracle Arena

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Dangerous curves ahead: Beyonce and company and “Crazy in Love.” All photos by Charles Russo.

By Kimberly Chun


I’m bedazzled by Beyonce – bewitched, bemused, checked in and down for the night at the Knowles family’s B&B. ‘Nuff said.

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I resort to the Stan Lee comicbook equivalent of “end of discussion” because I’m just too tempted to toss in the towel after taking in Ms. Knowles’ Thierry Mugler-imbued show (she tellingly selected him as her tour’s costume designer and “creative advisor” after discovering his handiwork at the “Superheroes” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute last year). Have mercy, my robotic leopard woman. Because despite it’s tough, sleek surfaces, Beyonce’s “I Am… Tour” is an organic, ever-morphing, slippery organism, judging from the timely Michael Jackson/“Halo” tribute and seemingly impromptu birthday singalong that closed July 10 performance at the Oracle Arena.

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Genius avant camp. Heaven-bound goddess-gown diva perfection. Down-on-the-floor earthy air-humping along to a guitar solo. Warm moments of communion with the fans. Obama love juxtaposing the Civil Rights marches, **Cadillac Records,** the ‘09 inauguration celebration, and “At Last.” Aerial flips and hood-ornament poses on a trapeze eliciting shrieks of delight from the audience. All were welcome, all were included. And the curvaceous, rump-shaking, and robust Beyonce held up throughout, looking like an ace super-trooper while dancing, kicking, and singing in her minis, hot pants, and sparkly heels ala a young Tina Turner, and whipping around Shakira-esque curls with the fury of go-go dancer scorned.

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From the photo pit: Tamia Pitts, 7, was front and center.

Art Listings

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Art listings are compiled by Johnny Ray Huston. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings. For more art listings go to sfbg.com.

MUSEUMS

Asian Art Museum 200 Larkin; 581-3500, www.asianart.org. Tues-Wed, Fri-Sun, 10am-5pm; Thurs, 10am-9pm. $10 ($5 Thurs after 5pm), $7 seniors, $6 for ages 12 to 17, free for 11 and under. "In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection." Ongoing.

California Palace of the Legion of Honor Lincoln Park (near 34th Ave and Clement); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5pm. $8, $6 seniors, $5 for ages 12 to 17, free for 10 and under (free Tues). "Surrealism: Selections from the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books." Work by surrealist poets and artists. Ongoing.

Cartoon Art Museum 655 Mission; CAR-TOON. Tues-Sun, 11am-5pm. $6, $4 students and seniors, $2 for ages 6 to 12, free for five and under and members. "Watchmen." Illustrations, sketches, and comic book pages by Dave Gibbons. Through July 19. "The Brinkley Girls." Retrospective devoted to early 20th century illustrator Nell Brinkley. Through August 23.

Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission; www.thecjm.org. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:30pm; Thurs, 1-8pm. $10, $8 seniors and students, free for 12 and under and members. "Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater." An exhibition of 200 works of art and ephemera. Through Sept 7. "Being Jewish: A Bay Area Portrait." Ongoing.

De Young Museum Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive (near Fulton and 10th Ave); 750-3600. Tues-Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm (Fri, 9:30am-8:45pm). $10, $7 seniors, $6 for ages 13 to 17 and college students with ID (free first Tues). "The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific." Mural by Miguel Covarrubias. Ongoing.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 151 Third St; 357-4000. Mon-Tues, Fri-Sun, 11am-5:45pm; Thurs, 10am-8:45pm. $12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues; half price Thurs, 6-8:45pm). "Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’." Exhibition devoted to the photographic classic. Through August 23. "Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities." Show dedicated to the two popular American artists. Through Sept 7. "Art in the Atrium: Kerry James Marshall." Monumental murals. Ongoing.

San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness, fourth floor; 255-4800, www.sfpalm.org. Tues-Fri, 11am-5pm; Sat, 1-5pm. Free. "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward." Exhibition dedicated to the icon. Through August 29. "Maestro: Photographic Portraits of Tom Zimberoff." Portraits of national and international conductors. Ongoing. "150 Years of Dance in California." Ongoing. "San Francisco in Song." Ongoing. "San Francisco 1900: On Stage." Ongoing.


BAY AREA

Cantor Arts Center Lomita and Museum, Stanford University, Stanford; (650) 723-4177. Wed, Fri-Sun, 11am-5pm; Thurs, 11am-8pm. "Appellations to Antiquity." 19th and 20th century works from the museum collection. Through July 26. "Pop to Present." Survey from the 1960s to the present. Through August 16. "Contemporary Glass." Modern glass works. Ongoing. "Rodin! The Complete Stanford Collection." Ongoing.

Judah L. Magnes Museum 2911 Russell, Berk; (510) 549-6950. Mon-Wed, Sun, 11am-4pm. $4, $3 students and seniors. "Memory Lab." Interactive installation allowing visitors to make family albums from their documents, photographs, and memories. Ongoing. "Projections." Multimedia works from the museums archival, documentary, and experimental films. Ongoing.

Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm (first Fri, 10am-9pm); Sun, noon-5pm. $8, $5 seniors and students (free second Sun). "Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century." Panoramic photos with commentary. Through August 23. "Squeak Carnwath: Painting is No Ordinary Object." A solo exhibition dedicated to the Oakland artist. Through August 23. "The Art and History of Early California." The story of California from the first inhabitants through the Gold Rush. Ongoing.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology UC Berkeley, 103 Kroeber Hall, room 3712, Bancroft and Bowditch, Berk; (510) 643-1193. Wed-Sat, 10am-4:30pm; Sun, noon-4pm. $4, $3 seniors, $1 students, free for 12 and under. "From the Maker’s Hand: Selections from the Permanent Collection." An exploration of human ingenuity found in living and historic cultures around the world. Ongoing.

UC Berkeley Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk; (510) 642-0808. Wed-Sun, 11am-5pm. $8 adults, $5 seniors and young adults, free for members and 12 and under. "Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye." Museum survey curated by Lawrence Rinder. Through August 30. "Human Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet." Collaborative exhibition. Through Sept. 27.

The deep end

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Lucrecia Martel’s three mischievous films scramble normal narrative hierarchies, privileging sensation to exposition, desire to explanation, and intuition to realism. Thunder-clapped fairy tales of unknowing, they have an adolescent’s sensitivity to the strangeness of the adult world. Outside of Tsai Ming-liang, it’s difficult to think of another working director with such a productive obsession with water. Martel is attracted to locations where her characters can sink, like pools and beds, and she arranges her multiplanar compositions so that these figures appear as floating heads and torsos.

The apprehensive tilt of Martel’s stories is left undefined, just on the cusp of horror, but the director’s formal coordination of sound and image is anything but imprecise. Her humid aesthetic popped out fully formed in the opening minutes of 2001’s La Ciénaga ("The Swamp"), in which the sloshing reds of blood and wine, a padded sound design, and viscous handheld camera movements conduct an atrophying bourgeois scene with the heavy-lidded amplitude of a Caravaggio. The Holy Girl (2004) further demonstrated Martel’s skill at playing for senses other than reason. Her new work, The Headless Woman, is her most expressly psychological yet, and thus entails a newly concentrated application of her unusual narration style — a kind of intimate, hooded third person in which neurosis and desire register as phenomenology.

The woman of the title (which doesn’t translate literally) is another of Martel’s dislodged bourgeoisie women. Driving home from a gabby gathering, she runs over something while absentmindedly reaching for her cell phone; after this, her mind absents her. Perhaps amnesiac, but at the least traumatized, Veronica (Maria Onetto) reenters her everyday life in a fog. Her weak smiles and mute replies will irritate some viewers, especially those who reflexively despise the withholding ambiguity of Antonioni films like 1964’s Red Desert (Martel’s characters, like Antonioni’s, often put on sunglasses at odd moments, as if to shield their wanting souls). What’s remarkable about The Headless Woman in comparison to so many art house pretenders, however, is that Martel is able to maintain this high level of uncertainty without letting the story go slack. As much as Veronica seems to drift, the film’s carefully calibrated ruptures make it so she cannot keep the world at bay.

HOLY GIRLS AND HEADLESS WOMEN: THE FILMS OF LUCRECIA MARTEL

July 14–15 and 23, 7:30 p.m. (Martel in person July 14–15), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Cold, cold hearts

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cheryl@sfbg.com

Metalheads: before you gang up on Until the Light Takes Us — a new documentary by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, who dare to admit they weren’t really into metal before starting their film — consider the sinister fact that there’s now an imdb entry for the 2010 release of Lords of Chaos. This narrative take on Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sonderlind’s 1998 book (subtitled The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground) casts Twilight vamp Jackson Rathbone as scene boogeyman Varg Vikernes.

Remember, also, the cursory attention afforded Scandinavian black metal in the sprawling doc Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). You may not recall that same year’s Metal Storm: The Scandinavian Black Metal Wars — an interesting if technically rough look at the subject — because it screened locally just once, as part of a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series on heavy metal cinema. Metal Storm featured interviews with a young (circa 2000) Vikernes. The erstwhile Count Grishnackh, late of Burzum, returns in Until the Light Takes Us, which hits YBCA for a three-night stand.

Locked up in 1993 for murdering Mayhem’s Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, Vikernes was very recently paroled. But he was still incarcerated in Until the Light Takes Us, and he doesn’t seem terribly put out, likening his time behind bars to "a stay in a monastery." He’s articulate, intelligent, and unrepentant, reflecting on his various deeds. He claims he provided the shotgun ammo used by another Mayhem member, Per Yngve Ohlin (a.k.a. "Dead"), to committ suicide. (Of course, after Euronymous discovered Dead’s body, he took a photo that was later used as Mayhem cover art. Seriously, these were spooky dudes.)

Vikernes may be a fascinating fellow — a worst-case scenario for anyone eager to believe that heavy metal is a recruitment tool for Satan worshippers — but Until the Light Takes Us isn’t centered on him. This is not a true-crime tale (though it does offer some striking footage of Norwegian churches set ablaze during black metal’s criminal zenith). Nor is it trying to teach Metal 101 (though it does touch on black metal’s eerie, atmospheric sound, pagan themes, and deliberately lo-fi production). Instead, Until the Light Takes Us attempts to show what happens when a very specific, proudly isolationist art movement becomes commercialized — to the chagrin of founding members like Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, memorable for his demon-like appearance in full corpsepaint on the cover of his band Darkthrone’s 1994 release, Transilvanian Hunger (Peaceville Records).

"I don’t want to be blamed for black metal becoming a trend," Fenriz says, some 16 years after an article in the U.K. magazine Kerrang! introduced black metal to the mainstream. Though the film interviews other players like Mayhem drummer Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg and former Emperor drummer Bård "Faust" Eithun (himself a convicted murderer who appears as a voice-altered silhouette), Fenriz is Aites and Ewell’s focus, drifting around icy Oslo, working on current music projects, and ruefully reminiscing about the movement he helped create: "I guess the sale of black lipstick went through the roof."

Rather than focusing on copycat bands, Until the Light Takes Us explores black metal’s influence on artists like Bjarne Melgaard, whose "Sons of Odin" installation earns smirks from Fenriz, and Harmony Korine, who earns smirks from the filmmakers. Not mentioned in the film: the Vice-produced 2007 internet videos series and Peter Beste’s subsequent book of photographs, True Norwegian Black Metal. Of course, Until the Light Takes Us — full of artful shots of Norway’s stark, gorgeous countryside and cityscapes, which go a long way toward illustrating what inspired the black metal guys in the first place — is also opening up the scene for curious outsiders.

"It’s out of our hands now," Fenriz shrugs. He’s bitter, but he’s got a point. Murders and mayhem and Mayhem aside, once pop culture snatches up your subculture — see: Guitar Hero‘s black-metal character, Lars Ümlaüt, or the aforementioned Lords of Chaos flick — there’s no stealing it back.

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US

Thurs–Sat, 7:30 p.m.

(also Fri–Sat, 9:30 p.m.), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Miss u?

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Killer apps available soon for your iClub phone, besides the one where you can fake-snort Adderall, that epilepsy-inducing portable strobe, the virtual cigarette, and — Goddess help us all — the Paul Van Dyk BPM counter and 3-D glow stick:

Breath Blocker.

Douche Douche.

Cops Are Here (for bathroom line clearance).

Midi Jammer (to fuck with laptop DJs).

Instant Breakfast. Better Breakdown. Red Bull Unburp. Take Back What You Told Her. What’s Your Name Again? Third Ear Corrector (for trainwreck mixes). Stiletto GPS (to avoid injury). Bachelorette Banishment. Collar De-Pop. Hands In The Air (for lazies). Center Of Gravity (for twirlers). Personal Space. Interested Face. Sleep It Off. Leave The House. Get Me Home. Cocktail Scan. Dealer Dialer. Bag Locator. Eyes Uncrosser. Name-On-List. Instant Blackout. Armpit Undo. Wardrobe Wand. Singalong Stop. Conversation Erase. Invisible Walk of Shame.

Embedding Disabled By Request.

No More ’80s? Electro Silence? Trance-A-Way? Techno Buffer? Affliction Tee Annihilate? Child, you could make a million. Call me when your cell’s a mirror, and I can look myself up in it.

CLUB 1992

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times — I think. I was too busy raving with Big Bird. In 1992, "Baby Got Back," "I’m Too Sexy," and "Jump Around" fought it out on hypothetical dance floors somewhere in Mainstreamland, probably, but the most important thing you need to know about that annus horribilis (Queen Elizabeth II’s phrase, not mine) was that something called Super Typhoon Gay threatened Guam. I do the research so you don’t have to. In any case, if irony’s taught us anything, it’s that taste is now a featherless bird that will peck out your brain. And — welcome friends! Awesome hair! — for the hot new gen flooding the clubs at the moment, these songs were its older sister’s jams. I can’t say mine were any more artistically momentous, because a) I’m basically a cultural relativist and b) she blinded me with science. In an undoubtedly canny move, the kids from electro-styley bonanzas Blow-Up and L.O.W. SF are getting all JTT on the TRL, coloring 111 Minna badd with a mess of DJs. Along with the neon pop dollops, "’90s hip-hop" is promised — which I’m guessing means more "getting jiggy" than experimental Quannum mechanics. Question: when will someone do an 1892 party? Now that would be epic.

Sat/11, 10 p.m., $10. 111 Minna, SF. www.club1992.com

PRINCE VS. MICHAEL JACKSON

Alas, I think we have a winner already for the 62nd installment of this seven-year-old monthly party at Madrone. But, despite it’s unabashed gimmickry and slightly worn template — and the fact that you’ve been dancing to MJ everywhere — this DJ battle pitting Purplesaurus Rex against Sparkle Fingers is a poppy blast, if now overshadowed by tragedy. In terms of dance music influence, Prince currently holds the ruling orb (just ask precocious ’80s pinchers La Roux). Michael hasn’t really been in the game since Frankie Knuckles’ masterpiece remix of the R. Kelly-penned "You Are Not Alone" in 1995, despite Rihanna and Justin’s bland efforts and Ne-Yo’s excellent ones. But all that has now been reset, with postmortem reevaluation and exposure forced on us. This party, with its hits, rarities, and remixes, is a good start for hearing things afresh.

Sat/18, 8 p.m., $5. Madrone Art Bar, 500 Divisadero, SF. www.madronelounge.com

We walk with a zombie

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PHENOM In our heads, in our heads: zombies, zombies, zombies.

Don’t blame me for taking a bite out of your brain and inserting an annoying tune in its place — once again, not long after the last onslaught of undead trends, our culture is totally zombie mad.

The phrase "zombie bank" is multiplying at a disturbing rate within economic circles. In music, the group Zombi — hailing from the zombie capitol Pittsburgh — is reviving the analogue electronics of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead while the British act Zomby brings dubstep to postapocalyptic dance floors. A comedy of manners possessed by ultraviolent urges, Seth Grahame-Smith’s "unmentionable" Jane Austen update Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 320 pages, $12.95) has set up camp on the trade paperback New York Times best sellers list, with S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament — currently being movie-ized by Diablo Cody — on its trail. On a smaller scale, Yusaka Hanakuma’s manga Tokyo Zombie (Last Gasp, 164 pages, $9.95) has caught a zombie plane over to the United States.

Most of all, posthumous Michael Jackson mania is bringing the corpse choreography of the 1983 video for "Thriller" to life, as the media and masses fluctuate between the worst facets of grave-robbing and best facets of revival and death celebration. A Friday, July 3 party in Seattle that aimed to top the 3,370-participant world record for largest "zombie walk" included a mass dance performance to the song.

When journalist Lev Grossman first noted the shift in bloodlust from vampirism to zombiedom in a Time trend piece this April, he ticked off some of these activities but steered clear of visual art. Zombies are around in galleries and museums, too. In Los Angeles last month, Peres Projects presented Bruce LaBruce’s "Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project" in which stills from a forthcoming movie by the director of last year’s Otto; or, Up with Dead People were blown up, framed, and hung on the space’s blood-spattered white cube walls. Here in San Francisco, Michael Rosenthal Gallery is hosting a variety of zombified works by another Canadian artist, Jillian Mcdonald.

Active revisions of cinema are central to Mcdonald, whose past projects find her staring down, mimicking and making out with male screen icons such as Billy Bob Thornton. "Monstrosities" makes room for vampires, but hunger for flesh is dominant over thirst for blood. The five-minute video Zombie Apocalypse brings the zombie back to the beach, its eerily effective primary haunting ground in Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1943 Val Lewton production I Walked with a Zombie — which, incidentally, is being remade, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre now explicitly cited as its source material. In 2006’s Horror Make-up, Mcdonald plays with the image of a woman putting on makeup in public by using her compact to turn herself into a zombie while raiding the New York subway. "Monstrosities" also includes zombie wall portraits that aren’t exactly static. Through lenticular photography, Mcdonald taps into the zombie within an acquaintance, a creature that often appears more animated than its "living" counterpart.

"Monstrosities" and much of Mcdonald’s current work mines horror as a source of catharsis. The tactic is most overt in 2007’s The Scream, where her screams scare off a variety of slasher killers and monstrous adversaries. Art world attempts at tapping into filmic horror can be dreadful in the sterile and blah sense (see Cindy Sherman’s 1997’s Office Killer — or better, don’t see it). But when Mcdonald bites zombies, she gives them love bites, borne out of and energized by genuine appreciation. (Johnny Ray Huston)

JILLIAN MCDONALD: MONSTROSITIES

Through July 22

Michael Rosenthal Gallery

365 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-1010

www.jillianmcdonald.net

www.rostenthalgallery.com

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Brain appetit: Fine reading and viewing for the discriminating zombie lover

Twilight (haven’t read it) and True Blood (haven’t seen it) are grabbing all the headlines, including a fawning New York Times story entitled "A Trend with Teeth." But fuck this newfangled passion for vampires. (Apologies to Let the Right One In: you are awesome, despite the massive English subtitle fail on your DVD.) Go back to the graveyard, sexy supernatural critters. There’s a far more terrifying and fiendishly disgusting army of coffin-rockers afoot these days. And though they’ll happily drink your blood, they’ll also help themselves to the rest of your delicious mortal flesh.

Granted, zombie movies are almost as old as cinema itself. Glenn Kay’s recent Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (Chicago Review Press, 352 pages, $25.95), which features a forward by Stuart Gordon, director of 1985’s Re-Animator, is a pretty good jumping-off point for the uninitiated — and a steal for anyone who’s shy about paying $280 on eBay for Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci (FAB Press). Generously illustrated chapters — with a full-color photo section in the book’s center — cover the genre’s history, starting with 1932’s White Zombie (fun fact: star Bela Lugosi earned $500-ish dollars for playing the sinister plantation owner improbably named "Murder.") There are spotlights on the turbulent 1960s (the era that spawned 1968’s immortal Night of the Living Dead), the insane 1970s (with an index of "the weirdest/funniest/most disturbing things" seen in zombie films, including my own personal fave: the underwater shark vs. zombie battle in 1979’s Zombie), Italy’s reign of terror in the 1980s (the decade that also brought us, lest we forget, "Thriller"), and the rise of video game zombies in the 1990s. Sprinkled throughout are interviews with horror luminaries like makeup master Tom Savini.

Zombie Movies‘ biggest chapter is devoted to the new millennium, with shout-outs to Asian entries like Versus (2000), cult hits like 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, and mainstream moneymakers — 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake brought in $59 million. Less successful (in my book, if not apparent George Romero fanatic Kay’s) was 2007’s Diary of the Dead, the least-enjoyable entry in Romero’s esteemed zombie series. Blame it on an annoying cast, and an even more annoying reliance on the hot-for-five-minutes "self-filming" technique. Aside from producing a Crazies remake (nooo!), Romero’s next project is titled simply … of the Dead, release date unknown, zombie subject matter an absolute certainty.

Still, ammo enough for walking-dead fans sick of all this fang-banging comes in two forms: the hilarious trailer for Zombieland (due in October), featuring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg as slayers of the undead, and the eagerly-anticipated arrival of Dead Snow. Currently available as an On-Demand selection for Comcast customers (in crappy dubbed form), this Norwegian import — a comedy with plenty of satisfying gore — opens July 17 at the Roxie (in presumably superior, subtitled form). Nazi zombies, y’all. Get some! (Cheryl Eddy)

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Zombie playlist: Music to eat flesh by

For whatever reason, America is possessed by a another wave of fascination with the living dead. Is increased anxiety about a devastated economy manifesting as comic book fantasy? Or do we just think zombies are kinda neat? Either way, like so many (or few) survivors barricaded inside an abandoned country home, we’re captivated by the brainless hordes. In the mood for some mood music? Here’s a brief celebration of zombiedom in the world of rock. It ain’t authoritative — no self-respecting zombie respects authority.

MISFITS

"Braineaters"

(from Walk Among Us, Slash, 1982)

Yes, Walk Among Us also features "Night of the Living Dead" and "Astro Zombies," but neither of those tracks captures the profound ennui of existence as a walking corpse. Democratically sung from a zombie’s perspective, "Braineaters" laments a repetitive diet of brains. (Why can’t a zombie have some tasty guts instead?) The Misfits actually made a primitive music video for "Braineaters" that shows the band engaged in what has to be the most disgusting food fight ever filmed. If you’ve ever wanted to see a young Glenn Danzig covered in what appear to be cow brains, have I got a YouTube link for you!

ANNIHILATION TIME

"Fast Forward to the Gore"

(from II, Six Weeks, 2005)

One of the standout tracks from II, "Fast Forward to the Gore" makes excellent use of singer Jimmy Rose’s frantic vocal delivery. Rose’s raw lyrics, belted out over the hardcore guitar assault of Graham Clise and Jamie Sanitate, celebrate the subtle artistry at play when zombie meets chainsaw. In the event of an actual zombie apocalypse, this song should serve as nostalgic reminder of simpler times, when zombies were merely a source of entertainment that didn’t leave the TV screen.

THE ZOMBIES

Entire discography

Self-explanatory.

DEATH

"Zombie Ritual"

(from Scream Bloody Gore, Combat, 1987)

The second track on the seminal Scream Bloody Gore, "Zombie Ritual" helped establish the nascent death metal scene’s predictable love affair with the titular braindead hellspawn. Chuck Schuldiner’s lyrics — as awesomely repulsive as anything the genre has to offer — deal with some sort of zombie creation ceremony, though the only discernable part is the Dylanesque chorus ("Zombie ritual!" screamed four times in succession). While Death’s later albums saw Schuldiner grow by leaps and bounds as a songwriter, "Zombie Ritual" remained a live staple up until the band’s final days. (Tony Papanikolas)

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