Art

Fashion forward

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› culture@sfbg.com

Looking at fashion designer Miranda Caroligne today, it’s hard to imagine she ever did anything other than sew and sell clothing. In addition to running her namesake boutique on 14th Street, she manages the co-op Trunk, peddles her wares at events across the country, and was asked to write Reconstructing Clothes for Dummies (For Dummies, 2007). Thanks to her gorgeous, whimsical, reconstructed styles, as well as her dedication to environmentalism and artistic community, she has become a well-reputed force in the SF indie fashion scene and beyond.

But she didn’t start that way — and the road to the present was neither easy nor direct.

Caroligne grew up in the woodland areas of Rhode Island with her mom, an elementary school teacher and brilliant seamstress, and her dad, a textile scientist. As a child, she spent most of her time hiking, exploring, or working on creative crafts with her mom, developing equal interest in both art and science. By high school, she was passionate about three very different subjects: writing, health care, and fashion. But when she got to the University of Rhode Island, she chose her major based on which jobs she thought would be available after she graduated. Health care won by a long shot. "And I was afraid of this thing called writer’s block," she jokes. Sewing remained a captivating pastime.

After graduating with a MS in physical therapy in 2000, Caroligne began working with children who had sensory system problems in Washington, DC. "Being young and having a job that relied on my physical strength — that time was psychologically stressful," she recalls.

Caroligne’s stress level hit the roof after a bicycling accident in 2003, which left her with a crushed nerve in her neck. Her physical strength had failed her, and she was without a job. It was a sign that it was time to turn her lifelong hobby, fashion design, into a career. With her short-term disability insurance and unemployment checks, she moved to Boston and found an art studio, where she spent nearly all her time at the sewing machine. "Sometimes when I don’t know what to do, I just do," she explains. "I’m not one to be idle." She spent so much time working at the studio that she decided to sublease her apartment, leaving her nowhere to sleep but on friends’ couches. After a few months of couch-surfing, she cashed her unemployment checks and moved across the country to pursue a career in fashion.

It was January 2005, and Caroligne lived in a closet in her friend’s apartment. Her only possessions were a disco ball, which hung from the ceiling next to the skylight, a sewing machine, and a few pieces of colorful fabric draped over a stretch canvas which served as sewing material by day and bedding by night. Soon, she found her dream store in the heart of the Mission District.

She opened the shop in November of that year. About the size of a large dorm room, the cluttered space is filled with radiant, one-of-a-kind garments that reflect many years of hard work. She stitches them with a beat-up machine that faces a window on the street, so she can smile and wave to people as they pass. Her wares are reconstructed garments (made from donated clothing that she dismantles and pieces back together in different ways), articles produced from original patterns, and offcut items (made from the leftover scraps she accumulates while working on patterned pieces).

And her reuse of materials is more than just style — it’s an outgrowth of the environmentalism she learned as a kid. Caroligne advocates sustainability and makes use of almost every shred of old fabric, no matter how big or small. "I have this philosophy of not having sizes," she says. "I alter everything to fit." Sometimes she lets her customers alter pieces with her, so inspired buyers can learn how to make clothing on their own. "Part of the reason the sewing machine’s out is to show people they can do it, too."

To share her philosophy, Caroligne agreed to write Reconstructing Clothes for Dummies in the fall of 2007, encouraging fellow fashionistas to reuse old materials. She was surprised to reach not only an earth-loving, crafty crowd but also a non-sewing, mainstream audience. People were motivated to salvage their materials, whether they made their own clothes or not. Now, her style is becoming so popular with typical shoppers that some conventional retailers have started "faking" reconstruction. But Caroligne says her authentic pieces are about reducing waste and avoiding conformity, not just about looking good.

Now, on a typical Friday afternoon at her boutique, as she sits at her old-fashioned sewing machine with a pile of white, ruffly fabric exploding out from under it, she waves playfully at a child strolling past the shop with his family. Another woman walks in and gives Caroligne a hug. "It’s less about fashion and more about meeting people, helping them get in touch with themselves," she says. She wants everyone to be able to express themselves by wearing clothes that reveal how they feel. While her designs are meant to be fashionable, they’re carefully crafted based on how they feel and move while wearing them. Her background in physical therapy helps her understand the way fabrics are supposed to flow with the body, as well as how light or heavy the materials should be. She tests most of her skirts and dresses for these characteristics, because she says the weight of a fabric can change the way someone walks in it, depending on his or her physical composition. "They don’t teach you that in fashion school," she says, noting that she’s glad she didn’t attend. "It’s rigid."

Most designers she knows went to fashion school, though, and have taken a more standard route: they’ve created clothing lines and sold them to national retailers. While this route is probably the easiest, Caroligne says she’ll never regret opening her neighborhood boutique and sewing her designs herself. "There’s a life that happens when hanging up a new piece," she says. Curiously, it’s the one people ooh and ahh over when entering the store, even though everything looks new to them when it’s their first time in. Caroligne gets new ideas when sewing one-of-a-kind articles, which she says wouldn’t happen if other people sewed the clothes for her.

This March, however, Caroligne and her sales rep plan to start taking orders for a nationally distributed clothing line — without abandoning her boutique. Her "adult contemporary" collection will comprise pieces she has crafted for her store and her fashion shows, which are usually fundraising events for groups such as the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

On top of everything, she runs a sustainable art-retail-fashion cooperative, Trunk, in Upper Haight. Formerly known as Pandora’s Trunk, the shop has been renovated inside and out since she and her business partner split last fall. Caroligne says the corporate structure and leadership has changed, and for the first time it feels like a true San Francisco co-op, where people encourage each other and each other’s art. "There’s a sense of community support in San Francisco," she says, thinking about the differences between the Bay Area and Boston. "People live better here." Now there’s more space for local designers in the store, including the San Francisco–born, world-renowned company Wildlife Works, whose proceeds benefit endangered species and help create jobs and schools in Kenya. Caroligne donates regularly to Wildlife Works, which gives her scrap fabric and clothing in exchange. She uses the leftovers for her reconstructed and offcut designs, noting that this swap is just another way she likes to support the community and reinforce its connectedness.

Years after accomplishing her goal of becoming a successful designer, she has only one piece of advice for others with a similar ambition: "Just do it." She remembers one of her college professors who’d had many different jobs in various fields, and back then she thought he was a failure. But now his story inspires her.

"There are different ways of looking at life: you can work to financially support the life you want to live, or you can figure out a way to make the thing you love to do a source of financial stability," she says. With a humble smile, she adds: "I think I’ve found success in that." *

MIRANDA CAROLIGNE

485 14th St., SF. (415) 355-1900, www.mirandacaroligne.com

TRUNK

544 Haight, SF. (415) 861-5310, www.myspace.com/trunksf

Back to school

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› culture@sfbg.com

Let’s face it: 2008 was not great. Two wars, lots of political BS, and an economy that’s seen better days. But if our president-elect is to be believed, things are about to change. Why not bring some of that change to your personal life by learning a new skill? Here are some of my favorite offerings in our fair city by the Bay.

EN GARDE!


Perhaps you love those old Robin Hood movies or actually know the names of all three Musketeers. Or maybe you just think it’d be fun to hit someone with a steel stick. Whatever your attraction to fencing, Golden Gate Fencing Center is the place for you.

On the day I visited, a number of young fencers were working out. Some were junior national champions; some were just out to have fun. And that is the vibe that permeates the place, which has been serving fencers of all ages and levels since 1997. Although the sport is physical, coach Paul Soter says strategy is equally important. In fact, some fencers have been known to compete and train well into their 70s.

As for gear, the expense is minimal. Aside from the cost of the class, the only thing you have to buy is a glove that will run you about $20. Golden Gate will provide the rest.

Golden Gate Fencing Center, 2417 Harrison, SF. (415) 626-7910, www.gofencing.com

BLOW ME


More of an artist than an athlete? Get yourself down to Public Glass in the Bayview. Founded 12 years ago as "the Disneyland of glassblowing," this organization is the only one in the city that teaches novice glassblowers. The space is ample, as is the curriculum. But classes are small, with a ratio of three students to one carefully screened instructor.

The experience of making glass is magical, and almost spooky. The heat coming off the glory holes — the giant furnaces that heat glass into liquid — reminds you that the beautiful orange glow is powerfully dangerous. But it might be the danger that keeps people coming to Public Glass. "It’s a primordial rush," says Manigeh Bridget Khalaji, the operational manager.

But another part of glassblowing’s appeal seems to be that it requires teamwork. Though glass in liquid form shifts shape easily, it only stays malleable for a few moments. Thus, it takes more than one set of hands to perform all the tasks necessary to shape a glass piece.

When I was there, I saw two men working in tandem — almost as if they were one person with four hands — sculpting, cutting, blow-torching the glass before it hardened. One of the artists called the process "controlled chaos," and he wasn’t exaggerating.

Glassblowing isn’t cheap, and learning the skills necessary to make a decent piece requires a real time commitment. The staff recommends four four-week classes to get you up and running, and the classes are a little on the expensive side. But if you can get the money together, and if you want to experience something truly unique, creating glass objects fits the bill — and then some.

Public Glass, 1750 Armstrong, SF. (415) 671-4916, www.publicglass.org

CHEEK-TO-CHEEK


Take a trip to Buenos Aires — via Potrero Hill — on the first three Fridays of each month, when Gary Weinberg and his partner teach two walk-in tango classes — one for beginners and the other for more advanced dancers. Afterward, he hosts a milonga (or dance social) where you can practice what you learned. And you get all of that for $15.

The Monte Cristo is just one of many places in the city where you can learn tango, but there are few places as friendly to newbies. During the week, it’s a social club for Italian Americans, and it’s been around for more than 100 years. As you might imagine, the vibe there is old-school, with an emphasis on old. There’s a lot of fake wood panels, black-and-white photos on the wall, and plastic tablecloths like you see in North Beach’s older, "locals only" cafés. That said, tango at the Monte Cristo attracts dancers of all ages.

Unlike other styles of dance, there is no basic step to the tango; you just walk. So beginners can get a real taste for what the dance is like after one lesson. Still, tango ain’t easy. If you’re leading, this means walking without stepping on your partner’s toes; if you’re the follower, then you’re walking backward, often in heels. From there, things get increasingly complicated. Think mobile, upright Twister and you start to get a feel for how difficult the dance becomes.

Maybe because of its complexity, tango lends itself to overachiever types. Gary is a retired English professor, and many of the people I met at his class were engineers, doctors, and teachers. That said, tango is not only an intellectual exercise. If you like a physical challenge, and if you like to surround yourself with interesting, passionate people, you won’t go wrong spending a Friday night at the Monte Cristo.

Monte Cristo Club, 136 Missouri, SF. www.sanfrantango.com

CLOWNIN’ AROUND


One of the things people tend to lose as they get older is the ability to play. So imagine a place for adults where the whole point is to rediscover that part of you that’s been buried under all the worries you carry around. That place exists right here in San Francisco, at the Clown Conservatory.

When you enter the building, which was once a boy’s gymnasium for a now-defunct high school, you forget the world outside. It’s a bit like Willy Wonka’s factory, without the calories. There are rainbow-colored lockers and some of the students do wear clownlike clothing. Most notable, though, is that everyone brings a real earnestness to what they do.

The biggest surprise to me was this: clowning is not only fun, but an art. Jeff Raz, the Clown Conservatory’s founder and a professional clown, has developed a curriculum that trains every level of performer, from the recreational trapeze student to people who want to go on to careers in Cirque du Soleil.

But it’s the students who work tirelessly at their craft that make the space come alive. The cost is a few hundred bucks for a 12-week class, but learning to be a clown might just be the thing to make your 2009 a year of wonder. *

The Clown Conservatory, Circus Center, 755 Frederick, SF. (415) 759-8123, www.circuscenter.org

Get class-y

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› molly@sfbg.com

Want to take your career in a new direction? Increase the skills you already have? Use your unemployment check for something fun and educational? We’ve chosen just a handful of interesting classes to occupy your time and, perhaps, to serve as a more cost-effective (and beneficial) alternative to the massively expensive dinner-and-bar outing.

BHANGRA


This multilevel class teaches a modern version of the ancient harvest dance from the state of Punjab in northwestern India. Incorporating hip-hop, dancehall, and drum ‘n’ bass influences of modern DJs, this accessible dance form reflects the diversity of the Indian diaspora.

Mondays, 6:30–8 p.m. $12 drop-in.

Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. (415) 826-4441, www.dancemission.com

SWING GOTH


More "alt" than strictly "goth," the whole point of this class is to teach basic partner dancing moves to fun, unconventional music. Don’t expect to learn traditional swing, but do expect a rockin’ good time with a room full of people looking for the same. (And you’ll leave at least looking like you know how to swing.)

Tuesdays, 7–8 p.m. $5 drop-in.

Fat City, 314 11th St., SF. www.swinggoth.com

BEGINNER ROCK CLIMBING COURSE


You’ll learn everything you need to know to climb glaciers (or gym walls) in this in-depth, four-week introductory course, including belay and basic safety techniques, bouldering, climbing technology, and more. It’s not cheap, but the fee includes harness and shoe rentals for class nights, gym access for one month, and — should you decide to join the gym — a discount on membership.

Wednesdays, 7 p.m. $129 for four weeks.

Planet Granite, 924 Old Mason, SF. (415) 692-3434, www.planetgranite.com

FLASH FICTION


Explore this exciting, nuanced genre with instructor and published writer Josh Mohr. You’ll learn to use all the elements of narrative construction while creating powerful stories containing only a few hundred words. Mohr promises lots of freedom, experimentation, and play.

Jan. 24, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., $110

Writing Salon, 720 York, SF. (415) 609-2468, www.writingsalons.com

WTF NIGHT


Are you intimidated by the bicycle boys’ club? Want a supportive place to learn more about your ride? Bike Kitchen’s monthly clinic devoted to women, transfolks, genderqueers, and femmes is one of our favorite offerings from the all-volunteer collective. Also check out Basic Tune-up classes in February, and BK’s new locale in March!

Jan. 26, 6:30–9:30 p.m. Free.

Bike Kitchen, 1256 Mission, SF. www.bikekitchen.org

SIMPLE AND HEALTHY EVERYDAY COOKING


Spend an informative, enjoyable evening with Chef Joe Wittenbrook in his charming Duboce Triangle studio as you learn approachable menus that work well for those on a budget. Or, even better, schedule a private class for you and four friends.

Jan. 27 (and every Tuesday through April), 6–9 p.m. $95.

Chef Joe’s Culinary Salon, 16a/b Sanchez, SF. www.theculinarysalon.com

SCULPTURAL SQUARE BOOK


Elaine Chu shows students how to make an impressive hardcover, origami-style book with folded pages that can be filled with images and text. In class, you’ll paint your own covers using vibrantly colored inks, as well as learn to attach ribbon ties.

Jan. 27, 6:30-9:30 p.m. $55 plus $10 materials.

SF Center for the Book, 300 De Haro, SF. (415) 565-0545, www.sfcb.org

MONSTER BABY FLEECE HAT


Learn to work with stretch fabrics while making these painfully cute tops for tots, all while supporting the new effort by former Stitch Lounge favorites Kelly Williams and Hannah McDevitt. Great gifts for new moms and their winter spawn!

Jan. 31, noon–3 p.m. $62

Craft Haven Collective, 520 Hampshire, SF. crafthaven.org

HERBAL MEDICINE-MAKING FOR WINTER HEALTH


Create simple herbal remedies for the common winter bug while learning about basic actions of plants and how they work in combination. You’ll leave with a jar or each remedy, plus handouts and recipes.

Jan. 31, 10 a.m.–noon. $15.

Garden for the Environment, Seventh Ave. at Lawton, SF. (415) 731-5627, www.gardenfortheenvironment.org

BEGINNER SURFING I


You live in California! It’s time to learn how to surf! In Adventure Out’s two-day clinic, you’ll learn basic technique, safety and etiquette, ocean awareness, and balance. All gear included!

Feb. 7–8, 9 a.m.–noon, $170.

Linda Mar Beach, Pacifica. www.adventureout.com

FEARLESS FIRE EATING


Think there’s no way you could be a fire-eater? Think again. The art of putting (and putting out) fire in your mouth, running it along your skin, and executing other advanced tricks is easier than it seems. In this entry-level class, you’ll make two torches to take home and practice with. And don’t worry, you’ll learn fire safety before any flames touch your skin.

Feb. 28–Mar. 1, 3:30–5:30 p.m. $85.

The Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. (510) 444-0919, www.thecrucible.org

GRANT WRITING FOR ARTISTS


There’s no better time for learning how to fund your art than now. Let Root Division’s executive director, Michelle Mansour, guide you through researching and applying for grant funding, including understanding lingo, addressing application criteria, preparing work samples, and editing.

March 16 & 30, 7–9 p.m. $30

Root Division, 3175 17th St., SF. www.rootdivision.org *

Mo Biggie

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Wait for it, wait for it: the moment when Jamal Woolard as Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Big Poppa, utters, with admirable understatement, "Mo money, mo problems." The woman he married three days after he met her, vocalist Faith Evans (a sad-eyed Antonique Smith), is pregnant but estranged; his spunky protégé Lil’ Kim (Naturi Naughton) is hopping mad that her lover-protector-mentor has dropped her and is instead bossing her in the studio; his original baby mama is miffed that his daughter gets zero Big Poppa time, and his ex-BFF Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie) thinks Biggie is out to get him, and the East Coast vs. West Coast beef is now fully fired up. ‘Nuff said.

"Mo Money Mo Problems" is the obvious alternate title for Notorious, which has the ring of a men’s cologne by Sean "I Am King" Combs, aka Puff Daddy, aka P. Diddy, aka Diddy, the film’s executive producer. It’s certainly more glammy — and feeds into the mythmaking that Combs has been so adept at when it comes to his Bad Boy artists — than Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G. (Three Rivers, 2004), the title of the book by Cheo Hodari Coker that this biopic is based on.

The drive-by shooters who killed the legendary rapper, born Christopher Wallace, at the far-too-young age of 24, remain cloaked in mystery, despite the attention given the MC’s murder in Randall Sullivan’s 2002 book, LAbyrinth (Grove/Atlantic) and Nick Broomfield’s ’02 doc Biggie and Tupac, and his death is still embroiled in knotty intrigue, having triggered multiple wrongful-death claims against the Los Angeles Police Department. But of course, history is written by the winners — and those happen to be Combs and Notorious‘ producers, Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace and Biggie managers Wayne Barrow and Mark Pitts — and in the end, they prefer to skip the speculation and allegations of conspiracy surrounding the rapper’s unsolved murder and focus on the love.

So much like recent musicmaker biopics à la 2007’s Control, which privileged the perspective of Joy Division frontperson Ian Curtis’ wife over his bandmates’, there’s an element of noticeably selective memory-picking to Notorious — even as it tries to play fair with those outside the equation, such as Shakur and Lil’ Kim. The latter has slammed the movie, according to MTV: she believes it hews to the version of history as written by Biggie’s mother and wife and portrays her inaccurately.

Still, director George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor, Barbershop) seems to have thrived on the tension between a mother who adored Biggie but disapproved of his criminal activities, and label heads and managers aware that the dope-dealing, dues-paying gangsta grind girding Notorious B.I.G.’s lyrics must be shown to authenticate the first-person experiential honesty the rapper was known for. Thus we get a multidimensional Biggie — the big-kid vulnerability he showed to his moms and his "Faith-Faith," as well as the tough, rock-slinging-to-pregnant-crackheads, money-making front. Plenty of respect is also given to the MC’s art, which this rags-to-riches/gats-to-bitches tale (with much due given to a kind of golden-age of hip-hop label patronage in the form of Puffy [Derek Luke] and Biggie’s friendship) reverently visualizes on the street, in the basement, in the studio, and on the arena stage.

Putting his interest in street-level soul, characters less than well-represented in mainstream Hollywood, and his touch with rappers to work, Tillman subtly injects more cinematic interest into his already-dramatic material than it might have had on the page. Biggie’s childhood is washed with glowy, golden hues, while his time dealing on the street is leached of hues and clad in corroded grays, blacks, whites, and browns, until the MC battles another rapper on the sidewalk and color begins to enter the picture.

And unlike 2008’s Cadillac Records, which bought into the overt displays of bling that talent can bring, Tillman and company give adequate shrift to the musicmaking that built Biggie’s renown: the mic is shot as if it’s a grail, swathed in a silvery aura. The symbols of power — such as the Big Daddy Kane–like throne Biggie mounts — speak louder than his kicks, cribs, or cars. And the scenes in which Woolard actually raps — particularly in a basement scene after he emerges from prison and a bout of lyric writing and soul searching — are believable and compelling: flecks of his spit shimmer in the harsh light. Woolard, who grew up blocks from Biggie’s original hood and had a promising career until a shooting in front of NYC’s Hot 97, is the perfect choice to portray the man.

Notorious‘ melodramatic, overly amped conclusion may ring a bit artificial with its drawn-out return to the opening scenes: as "Hypnotize"’s "Rise" sample ripples through the dancers, Notorious B.I.G. says, in flashback, that he’s finally found peace, he’s become a man, and, well, he’s Ready to Die (Bad Boy, 1994), to crib the title of his classic debut. But I dare anyone to not get choked up by Notorious‘ coda, as Voletta Wallace, portrayed with grand-dame grit by Angela Bassett, looks out on the crowd surrounding her son’s NYC funeral procession, playing his music and flinging their arms, and realizes that, though she never quite trusted the easy money and fast friends surrounding her son, Biggie will always be remembered for his way with words.

NOTORIOUS opens Fri/16 in the Bay Area

———–

JUST PLAYING

BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT


It’s not a hologram: the roving musicmakers return to the region they once called home. Wed/14, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

LOS YEUX NOIR


They’re dark-eyed and infatuated with gypsy, Yiddish, and Manouche jazz. Wed/14, 8 and 10 p.m., $20–<\d>$25. Yoshi’s SF, 1330 Fillmore, SF. sf.yoshis.com

LENKA


Cutie-pie pop oozes from the Aussie charmer who once studied acting with Cate Blanchett. Thurs/15, 8 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

WILD WEEKEND


We’re lost in an all-girl punk rock wilderness. Sat/17, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE


The popsters go acoustic with tunes from an album-in-progress. Sun/18–Mon/19, 8 p.m., $25. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com.

BARRINGTON LEVY


The acclaimed live performer taps Obama samples for his new single, "No War." Tues/20, 9 p.m., $28. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Hang on, Ramsey

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Venerable jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis will be 74 in May, but you’d hardly know it from his packed tour schedule and mounting awards. The Chicago native and 2007 NEA Jazz Master honoree hosts a nationally syndicated radio show, has recorded nearly an album a year since 1956 plus tours with his trio, does regular duets with Dave Brubeck, and moonlights as a member of smooth jazz supergroup Urban Knights. But perhaps Lewis’ greatest accomplishment was bringing jazz and pop together in soulful harmony.

Sample libraries and hip-hop production would be diminished were it not for Lewis’ funky covers ("Dear Prudence," "Soul Man," "People Make the World Go Round," "Slipping into Darkness"). Likewise Lewis, whose been playing since age four, has a sense of history: he studied Bach, Beethoven, Hayden, Duke Ellington, and Art Tatum before forming the Cleffs with Eldee Young on bass and Redd Holt on drums, his first of many trio configurations.

As the Ramsey Lewis Trio he scored hits in the mid-1960s on Chess-Cadet label releases like "Wade in the Water," "The In Crowd," and Motown cover "Hang on Sloopy." Lewis did for the piano what Stevie Wonder did for the harmonica, made the instrument swing. He also managed to evolve with the times, switching to Fender electric piano and writing originals like "Uhuru" and "Bold and Black" on 1969’s Another Voyage (Cadet) produced by studio great Charles Stepney. Sun Goddess (Columbia, 1974), which showcases enduring Lewis collaborator Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire on drums and vocals, was rediscovered by DJs decades later and ushered in the early-’90s acid jazz movement.

His most recent recording, 2005’s With One Voice (Narada) includes gospel standard "Oh Happy Day," redone with a house groove, and soulful reggae number "Keep the Spirit." These days bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce fill out the trio, and the group makes an extended stop at Yoshi’s SF, a great prelude to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and Barack Obama’s inauguration.

In 1967 Columbia Records president Clive J. Davis said: "In the next century or so, we may very well no longer draw distinctions between what is ‘jazz,’ what is ‘classical,’ what is ‘progressive,’ ‘rock,’ or ‘soul.’ It may all just be called music, and let it go at that. For it’s all here, in the music that Ramsey makes." Davis’ hope for an end to genre distinctions may not have come to pass yet, but he was right about Lewis, it is all in him.

RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO

Thurs/15–Fri/16, 8 p.m., Sat/17, 8 and 10 p.m., Sun/18, 7 p.m.; $65

Yoshi’s SF

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

sf.yoshis.com

Shock and awe

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

After 15 years of a labor of printmaking love in what has become the artistic heart of SoMa, Aurobora Press has to be out of its home at 147 Natoma Street by the end of the month. When the landlord came forward with a tenant able to pay three times what the press was shelling out for the historic back-alley building, built in 1907 with bricks from the rubble of the earthquake, Aurobora — no stranger to our languishing economy — was forced to pack its bags. Standing before a radiantly colored Jay Davis monotype in the press’s small office, director Michael Liener said that he was trying to stay positive and accept that "change is good." But he was clearly in shock, sounding somewhat otherworldly in his soothsaying. "We’re still figuring out where we’re going to land — maybe in a space, maybe not."

In order to lessen its moving load, the press is currently selling framed work at unframed prices, though Aurobora Projects, the press’s showroom in Menlo Park, will continue to operate. Sadly, Aurobora’s coveted residencies, which allow artists who don’t normally work in the medium to come in and make monotypes — paintings on paper, created by inking a flat surface and then pressing it in an intaglio press — are up in the air. In the tradition of early 20th-century artistic crossovers such as French Catalan sculptor Aristide Maillol’s exquisite woodblock illustrations, the residencies have helped artists discover hidden resonance within their own symbolic systems. For example, working in monotype without preconceived notions, painter Angela Dufrense captured the essence of Ivan the Terrible. Local sculptor Stephen DeStaebler saw his signature angel wings and rock-forms expand on paper.

Caught between dimensions and subject to the idiosyncrasies of a big, heavy press, the monotype medium is an ongoing experiment in temporality. Thus Liener is familiar with the unexpected. He stressed that he doesn’t harbor hard feelings toward the landlord, who helped Aurobora get the space in the first place. Liener had been on a month-to-month lease, but that doesn’t make it any easier to leave a space that he created from the ground up. "The question now is, do I have the will, the stomach, the bank account, to do this all over again?" he says. "It’s kind of the end of an era. When we first moved here, we spent four months ripping this place apart, exposing the bare bones, shaping a beautiful gallery." During Aurobora’s time at 147 Natoma, Liener and friends pulled down six rooms, took out the "cheesy carpet," and exposed and patched the site’s original floorboards.

"We were here before the [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art] opened, before the W [hotel], before all the development," Liener observes. "We were out here pioneering. This is just another example of what happens when an area becomes ‘discovered,’ ‘found,’ ‘populated’: the ‘pioneers’ can no longer afford their good work. I’m not unique. This happens everywhere in every city. When you create a really lovely space and you’re here for a period of time, it becomes a selling point for the next person to come in and kick you out." The tragedy is that it’s the quiet little places, the hidden spaces for meditation and contemplation, that always seem to disappear first. And what do we need most right now?

www.aurobora.com

The Hard Times Handbook

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We all have high hopes for the new administration. We’d all like to believe that the recession will end soon, that jobs will be plentiful, health care available to all, and affordable housing built in abundance.

But the grim reality is that hard times are probably around for a while longer, and it may get worse before it gets better.

Don’t despair: the city is full of fun things to do on the cheap. There are ways to save money and enjoy life at the same time. If you’re in trouble — out of work, out of food, facing eviction — there are resources around to help you. What follows is a collection of tips, techniques, and ideas for surviving the ongoing depression that’s the last bitter legacy of George W. Bush.

BELOW YOU’LL FIND OUR TIPS ON SCORING FREE, CHEAP, AND LOW-COST WONDERS. (Click here for the full page version with jumps, if you can’t see it.)

MUSIC AND MOVIES

CLOTHING

FOOD

CONCERTS

WHEELS

HEALTH CARE

SHELTER

MEALS

COCKTAILS

DATE NIGHTS

YOGA

PLUS:

HOW TO KEEP YOUR APARTMENT

HOW TO GET UNEMPLOYMENT

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FREE MUSIC AND MOVIES

For a little extra routine effort, I’ve managed to make San Francisco’s library system my Netflix/GreenCine, rotating CD turntable, and bookstore, all rolled into one. And it’s all free.

If you’re a books-music-film whore like me, you find your home maxed out with piles of the stuff … and not enough extra cash to feed your habits. So I’ve decided to only buy my favorites and to borrow the rest. We San Franciscans have quite a library system at our fingertips. You just have to learn how to use it.

Almost everyone thinks of a library as a place for books. And that’s not wrong: you can read the latest fiction and nonfiction bestsellers, and I’ve checked out a slew of great mixology/cocktail recipe books when I want to try new drinks at home. I’ve hit up bios on my favorite musicians, or brought home stacks of travel books before a trip (they usually have the current year’s edition of at least one travel series for a given place, whether it be Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, or Frommer’s).

But there’s much more. For DVDs, I regularly check Rotten Tomatoes’ New Releases page (www.rottentomatoes.com/dvd/new_releases.php) for new DVD releases. Anything I want to see, I keep on a list and search www.sfpl.org for those titles every week. About 90 percent of my list eventually comes to the library, and most within a few weeks of the release date.

And such a range! I recently checked out the Oscar-nominated animated foreign film, Persepolis, the entire first season of Mad Men, tons of documentaries, classics (like a Cyd Charisse musical or Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s catalog), even Baby Mama (sure, it sucked, but I can’t resist Tina Fey).

A music fanatic can find virtually every style, and even dig into the history of a genre. I’ve found CDs of jazz and blues greats, including Jelly Roll Morton, John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, kitschy lounge like Martin Denny and singer Julie London, and have satiated rap cravings with the latest Talib Kwali, Lyrics Born, Missy Elliott, T.I. or Kanye (I won’t tell if you won’t).

Warning: there can be a long "holds" list for popular new releases (e.g., Iron Man just came out and has about 175). When this happens, Just get in the queue — you can request as many as 15 items simultaneously online (you do have a library card, right?) You’ll get an e-mail when your item comes in and you can check the status of your list any time you log in. Keep DVDs a full seven days (three weeks for books and CDs) and return ’em to any branch you like.

I’ve deepened my music knowledge, read a broader range of books, and canceled GreenCine. Instead, I enjoy a steady flow of free shit coming my way each week. And if I get bored or the novelty of Baby Mama wears off, I return it and free up space in my mind (and on my shelf) for more. (Virginia Miller)

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STYLE FOR A SONG

Shhh. The first rule about thrifting, to paraphrase mobsters and hardcore thrift-store shoppers, is don’t talk about thrifting — and that means the sites of your finest thrift scores. Diehard thrifters guard their favorite shops with jealous zeal: they know exactly what it’s like to wade through scores of stained T-shirts, dress-for-success suits, and plastic purses and come up with zilcherooni. They also know what it’s like to ascend to thrifter nirvana, an increasingly rarified plane where vintage Chanel party shoes and cool dead-stock Western wear are sold for a song.

Friendships have been trashed and shopping carts upended in the revelation of these much-cherished thrift stores, where the quest for that ’50s lamb’s fur jacket or ’80s acid-washed zipper jeans — whatever floats your low-budg boat — has come to a rapturous conclusion. It’s a war zone, shopping on the cheap, out there — and though word has it that the thrifting is excellent in Vallejo and Fresno, our battle begins at home. When the sample sales, designer runoff outlets, resale dives, and consignment boutiques dry up, here’s where you’ll find just what you weren’t looking for — but love, love, love all the same.

Community Thrift, 623 Valencia, SF. (415) 861-4910, www.communitythrift.bravehost.com. Come for the writer’s own giveaways (you can bequeath the funds raised to any number of local nonprofits), and leave with the rattan couches, deco bureaus, records, books and magazines, and an eccentric assortment of clothing and housewares. I’m still amazed at the array of intriguing junk that zips through this spot, but act fast or you’ll miss snagging that Victorian armoire.

Goodwill As-Is Store, 86 11th St., SF. (415) 575-2197, www.sfgoodwill.org. This is the archetype and endgamer of grab-and-tumble thrifting. We’re talking bins, people — bins of dirt cheap and often downright dirty garb that the massive Goodwill around the corner has designated unsuitable, for whatever reason. Dive into said bins, rolled out by your, ahem, gracious Goodwill hosts throughout the day, along with your competition: professional pickers for vintage shops, grabby vintage people, and ironclad bargain hunters. They may not sell items by the pound anymore — now its $2.25 for a piece of adult clothing, 50 cents to $1 for babies’ and children’s garb, $4 for leather jackets, etc. — but the sense of triumph you’ll feel when you discover a tattered 1930s Atonement-style poison-ivy green gown, or a Dr. Pimp-enstein rabbit-fur patchwork coat, or cheery 1950s tablecloths with negligible stainage, is indescribable.

Goodwill Industries, 3801 Third St., SF. (415) 641-4470, www.sfgoodwill.org Alas, not all Goodwills are created equal: some eke out nothing but stale mom jeans and stretched-out polo shirts. But others, like this Hunter’s Point Goodwill, abound with on-trend goodies. At least until all of you thrift-hungry hordes grab my junk first. Tucked into the corner of a little strip mall, this Goodwill has all those extremely fashionable hipster goods that have been leached from more populated thrift pastures or plucked by your favorite street-savvy designer to "repurpose" as their latest collection: buffalo check shirts, wolf-embellished T-shirts, Gunne Sax fairy-princess gowns, basketball jerseys, and ’80s-era, multicolored zany-print tops that Paper Rad would give their beards for.

Salvation Army, 1500 Valencia, SF. (415) 643-8040, www.salvationarmyusa.org. The OG of Mission District thrifting, this Salv has been the site of many an awesome discovery. Find out when the Army puts out the new goods. The Salvation soldiers may have cordoned off the "vintage" — read: higher priced — items in the store within the store, but there are still plenty of old books, men’s clothing, and at times hep housewares and Formica kitchen tables to be had: I adore the rainbow Mork and Mindy parka vest I scored in the boys’ department, as well as my mid-century-mod mustard-colored rocker.

Savers, 875 Main, Redwood City. (650) 364-5545, www.savers.com When the ladies of Hillsborough, Burlingame, and the surrounding ‘burbs shed their oldest, most elegant offerings, the pickings can’t be beat at this Savers. You’ll find everything from I. Magnin cashmere toppers, vintage Gucci tweed, and high-camp ’80s feather-and-leather sweaters to collectible dishware, antique ribbons, and kitsch-cute Holly Hobbie plaques. Strangest, oddly covetable missed-score: a psychiatrist’s couch.

Thrift Town, 2101 Mission, SF. (415) 861-1132, www.thrifttown.com. When all else fails, fall back on this department store-sized megalith. Back in the day, thrift-oldsters tell me, they’d dig out collectible paintings and ’50s-era bikes. Now you’ll have to grind deeply to land those finds, though they’re here: cute, mismatched, mid-century chairs; the occasional designer handbag; and ’60s knit suits. Hint: venture into less picked-over departments like bedding. (Kimberly Chun)

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FREE FOOD

San Francisco will not let you starve. Even if you’re completely out of money, there are plenty of places and ways to fill your belly. Many soup kitchens operate out of churches and community centers, and lists can be downloaded and printed from freeprintshop.org and sfhomeless.net (which is also a great clearinghouse of information on social services in San Francisco.)Here’s a list of some of our favorites.

Free hot meals

Curry without Worry Healthy, soul pleasing Nepalese food to hungry people in San Francisco. Every Tues. 5:45–7 p.m. on the square at Hyde and Market streets.

Glide, 330 Ellis. Breakfast 8-9 a.m., lunch noon-1:30 p.m. everyday. Dinner 4-5:30 p.m., M-F.

St. Anthony Dining Room, 45 Jones, Lunch everyday 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

St Martin de Porres Hospitality House, 225 Potrero Ave. Best bowl of oatmeal in the city. Tues.-Sat. breakfast from 6:30-7:30 a.m., lunch from noon-2 pm.. Sun. brunch 9-10:30 a.m. Often vegetarian options.

Vegetarian

Food not Bombs Vegetarian soup and bread, but bring your own bowl. At the UN Plaza, Mon., 6 p.m.; Wed., 5:30 p.m. Also at 16th and Mission streets. Thurs. at 7:30 p.m.

Mother’s Kitchen, 7 Octavia, Fri., 2:30-3:30. Vegan options.

Iglesia Latina Americana de Las Adventistas Seventh Dia, 3024 24th St. Breakfast 9:30-11 a.m., third Sun. of the month.

Grab and go sandwiches

Glide, bag meals to go after breakfast ends at 9 a.m.

St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, 666 Filbert. 4-5 p.m. every day.

Seniors

Curry Senior Center, 333 Turk. For the 60+ set. Breakfast 8-9 a.m., lunch 11:30 to noon every day.

Kimochi, 1840 Sutter St. Japanese-style hot lunch served 11:45 am (M-F). $1.50 donation per meal is requested. 60+ only with no one to assist with meals. Home deliveries available. 415-931-2287

St. Anthony Dining Room, 10:30-11:30 a.m., 59+, families, and people who can’t carry a tray.

Free groceries

San Francisco Food Bank A wealth of resources, from pantries with emergency food boxes to supplemental food programs. 415-282-1900. sffoodbank.org/programs

211 Dial this magic number and United Way will connect you with free food resources in your neighborhood — 24/7.

Low-cost groceries

Maybe you don’t qualify for food assistance programs or you just want to be a little thriftier — in which case the old adage that the early bird gets the metaphorical worm is apropos. When it comes to good food deals, timing can be everything. Here are a couple of handy tips for those of us who like to eat local, organic, and cheap. Go to Rainbow Grocery early and hit the farmers markets late. Rainbow has cheap and half-price bins in the bread and produce sections — but you wouldn’t know it if you’re a late-riser. Get there shortly after doors open at 9 a.m. for the best deals.

By the end of the day, many vendors at farmers markets are looking to unload produce rather than pack it up, so it’s possible to score great deals if you’re wandering around during the last half hour of the market. CAFF has a comprehensive list of Bay Area markets that you can download: guide.buylocalca.org/localguides.

Then there’s the Grocery Outlet (2001 Fourth St., Berkeley and 2900 Broadway, Oakland, www.groceryoutlets.com), which puts Wal-Mart to shame. This is truly the home of low-cost living. Grocery Outlet began in 1946 in San Francisco when Jim Read purchased surplus government goods and started selling them. Now Grocery Outlets are the West Coast’s version of those dented-can stores that sell discounted food that wasn’t ready for prime-time, or perhaps spent a little too long in the limelight.

Be prepared to eat what you find — options range from name brands with trashed labels to foodstuffs you’ve never seen before — but there are often good deals on local breads and cheeses, and their wine section will deeply expand you Two-Buck Chuck cellar. Don’t be afraid of an occasional corked bottle that you can turn into salad dressing, and be sure to check the dates on anything perishable. The Grocery Outlet Web site (which has the pimpest intro music ever) lists locations and ways to sign up for coupons and download a brochure on how to feed your family for $3 a day. (Amanda Witherell)

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LIVE MUSIC FOR NOTHING — AND KICKS FOR FREE

Music should be free. Everyone who has downloaded music they haven’t been given or paid for obviously believes this, though we haven’t quite made it to that ideal world where all professional musicians are subsidized — and given health care — by the government or other entities. But live, Clive? Where do can you catch fresh, live sounds during a hard-hitting, heavy-hanging economic downturn? Intrepid, impecunious sonic seekers know that with a sharp eye and zero dough, great sounds can be found in the oddest crannies of the city. You just need to know where to look, then lend an ear. Here are a few reliables — occasional BART station busks and impromptu Ocean Beach shows aside.

Some of the best deals — read: free — on world-class performers happen seasonally: in addition to freebie fests like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass every October and the street fairs that accompanying in fair weather, there’s each summer’s Stern Grove Festival. Beat back the Sunset fog with a picnic of bread, cheese, and cheap vino, though you gotta move fast to claim primo viewing turf to eyeball acts like Bettye Lavette, Seun Kuti and Egypt 80, and Allen Toussaint. Look for the 2009 schedule to be posted at www.sterngrove.org May 1.

Another great spot to catch particularly local luminaries is the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, which runs from May to October. Rupa and the April Fishes, Brass Menazeri, Marcus Shelby Trio, Bayonics, and Omar Sosa’s Afreecanos Quintet all took their turn in the sun during the Thursday lunchtime concerts. Find out who’s slated for ’09 in early spring at www.ybgf.org.

All year around, shopkeeps support sounds further off the beaten path — music fans already know about the free, albeit usually shorter, shows, DJ sets, and acoustic performances at aural emporiums like Amoeba Music (www.amoeba.com) and Aquarius Records (www.aquariusrecords.org). Many a mind has been blown by a free blast of new sonics from MIA or Boris amid the stacks at Amoeba, the big daddy in this field, while Aquarius in-stores define coziness: witness last year’s intimate acoustic hootenanny by Deerhoof’s Satomi and Tenniscoats’ Saya as Oneone. Less regular but still an excellent time if you happen upon one: Adobe Books Backroom Gallery art openings (adobebooksbackroomgallery.blogspot.com), where you can get a nice, low-key dose of the Mission District’s art and music scenes converging. Recent exhibition unveilings have been topped off by performances by the Oh Sees, Boner Ha-chachacha, and the Quails.

Still further afield, check into the free-for-all, quality curatorial efforts at the Rite Spot (www.ritespotcafe.net), where most shows at this dimly lit, atmospheric slice of old-school cabaret bohemia are as free as the breeze and as fun as the collection of napkin art in back: Axton Kincaid, Brandy Shearer, Kitten on the Keys, Toshio Hirano, and Yard Sale have popped up in the past. Also worth a looky-loo are Thee Parkside‘s (www.theeparkside.com) free Twang Sunday and Happy Hour Shows: a rad time to check out bands you’ve never heard of but nonetheless pique your curiosity: Hukaholix, hell’s yeah! And don’t forget: every cover effort sounds better with a pint — all the better to check into the cover bands at Johnny Foley’s (www.johnnyfoleys.com), groove artists at Beckett’s Irish Pub in Berkeley (www.beckettsirishpub.com), and piano man Rod Dibble and his rousing sing-alongs at the Alley in Oakland (510-444-8505). All free of charge. Charge! (Kimberly Chun}

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THE CHEAPEST WAY TO GET AROUND TOWN

Our complex world often defies simple solutions. But there is one easy way to save money, get healthy, become more self-sufficient, free up public resources, and reduce your contribution to air pollution and global warming: get around town on a bicycle.

It’s no coincidence that the number of cyclists on San Francisco streets has increased dramatically over the last few years, a period of volatile gasoline prices, heightened awareness of climate change, poor Muni performance, and economic stagnation.

On Bike to Work Day last year, traffic counts during the morning commute tallied more bicycles than cars on Market Street for the first time. Surveys commissioned by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition show that the number of regular bike commuters has more than doubled in recent years. And that increase came even as a court injunction barred new bike projects in the city (see "Stationary biking," 5/16/07), a ban that likely will be lifted later this year, triggering key improvements in the city’s bicycle network that will greatly improve safety.

Still not convinced? Then do the math.

Drive a car and you’ll probably spend a few hundred dollars every month on insurance, gas, tolls, parking, and fines, and that’s even if you already own your car outright. If you ride the bus, you’ll pay $45 per month for a Fast Pass while government will pay millions more to subsidize the difference. Riding a bike is basically free.

Free? Surely there are costs associated with bicycling, right? Yeah, sure, occasionally. But in a bike-friendly city like San Francisco, there are all kinds of opportunities to keep those costs very low, certainly lower than any other transportation alternative except walking (which is also a fine option for short trips).

There are lots of inexpensive used bicycles out there. I bought three of my four bicycles at the Bike Hut at Pier 40 (www.thebikehut.com) for an average of $100 each and they’ve worked great for several years (my fourth bike, a suspension mountain bike, I also bought used for a few hundred bucks).

Local shops that sell used bikes include Fresh Air Bicycles, (1943 Divisidero, www.fabsf.com) Refried Cycles (3804 17th St., www.refriedcycles,com/bicycles.htm), Karim Cycle (2800 Telegraph., Berkeley, www.teamkarim.com/bikes/used/) and Re-Cycles Bicycles (3120 Sacramento, Berkeley, www.recyclesbicycles.com). Blazing Saddles (1095 Columbus, www.blazingsaddles.com) sells used rental bikes for reasonable prices. Craigslist always has listings for dozens of used bikes of all styles and prices. And these days, you can even buy a new bike for a few hundred bucks. Sure, they’re often made in China with cheap parts, but they’ll work just fine.

Bikes are simple yet effective machines with a limited number of moving parts, so it’s easy to learn to fix them yourself and cut out even the minimal maintenance costs associated with cycling. I spent $100 for two four-hour classes at Freewheel Bike Shop (1920 Hayes and 914 Valencia, www.thefreewheel.com) that taught me everything I need to know about bike maintenance and includes a six-month membership that lets me use its facilities, tools, and the expertise of its mechanics. My bikes are all running smoother than ever on new ball bearings that cost me two bucks per wheel, but they were plenty functional even before.

There are also ways to get bike skills for free. Sports Basement (www.sportsbasement.com) offers free bicycle maintenance classes at both its San Francisco locations the first Tuesday of every month from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Or you can turn to the Internet, where YouTube has a variety of bike repair videos and Web sites such as www.howtofixbikes.com can lead you through repairs.

The nonprofit The Bike Kitchen (1256 Mission, www.thebikekitchen.org) on Mission Street offers great deals to people who spend $40 per year for a membership. Volunteer your time through the Earn-a-Bike program and they’ll give you the frame, parts, and skills to build your own bike for free.

But even in these hard economic times, there is one purchase I wouldn’t skimp on: spend the $30 — $45 for a good U-lock, preferably with a cable for securing the wheels. Then you’re all set, ready to sell your car, ditch the bus, and learn how easy, cheap, fast, efficient, and fun it is to bicycle in this 49-square-mile city. (Steven T. Jones)

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LOW-COST HEALTH CARE

When money’s tight, healthcare tends to be one of the first costs we cut. But that can be a bad idea, because skimping on preventive care and treatment for minor issues can lead to much more expensive and serious (and painful) health issues later. Here is our guide to Bay Area institutions, programs, and clinics that serve the under- and uninsured.

One of our favorite places is the Women’s Community Clinic (2166 Hayes, 415-379-7800, www.womenscommunityclinic.org), a women-operated provider open to anyone female, female-identified, or female-bodied transgender. This awesome 10-year-old clinic offers sexual and reproductive health services — from Pap smears and PMS treatment to menopause and infertility support — to any SF, San Mateo, Alameda, or Marin County resident, and all on a generous sliding scale based on income and insurance (or lack thereof). Call for an appointment, or drop in on Friday mornings (but show up at 9:30 a.m. because spots fill up fast).

A broader option (in terms of both gender and service) is Mission Neighborhood Center (main clinic at 240 Shotwell. 415-552-3870, www.mnhc.org, see Web site for specialty clinics). This one-stop health shop provides primary, HIV/AIDS, preventive, podiatry, women’s, children’s, and homeless care to all, though its primary focus is on the Latino/Hispanic Spanish-speaking community. Insurance and patient payment is accepted, including a sliding scale for the uninsured (no one is denied based on inability to pay). This clinic is also a designated Medical Home (or primary care facility) for those involved in the Healthy San Francisco program.

Contrary to popular belief, Healthy San Francisco (www.healthysanfrancisco.org) is not insurance. Rather, it’s a network of hospitals and clinics that provide free or nearly free healthcare to uninsured SF residents who earn at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty level (which, at about $2,600 per month, includes many of us). Participants choose a Medical Home, which serves as a first point-of-contact. The good news? HSF is blind to immigration status, employment status, and preexisting medical conditions. The catch? The program’s so new and there are so many eligible residents that the application process is backlogged — you may have a long wait before you reap the rewards. Plus, HSF only applies within San Francisco.

Some might consider mental health less important than that of the corporeal body, but anyone who’s suffered from depression, addiction, or PTSD knows otherwise. Problem is, psychotherapy tends to be expensive — and therefore considered superfluous. Not so at Golden Gate Integral Counseling Center (507 Polk. 415-561-0230, www.goldengatecounseling.org), where individuals, couples, families, and groups can get long- and short-term counseling for issues from stress and relationships to gender identity, all billed on a sliding scale.

Other good options

American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (450 Connecticut, 415-282-9603, actcm.edu). This well-regarded school provides a range of treatments, including acupuncture, cupping, tui ma/shiatsu massage, and herbal therapy, at its on-site clinics — all priced according to a sliding scale and with discounts for students and seniors. The college also sends interns to specialty clinics around the Bay, including the Women’s Community Clinic, Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, and St. James Infirmary.

St. James Infirmary (1372 Mission. 415-554-8494, www.stjamesinfirmary.org). Created for sex-workers and their partners, this Mission District clinic offers a range of services from primary care to massage and self-defense classes, for free. Bad ass.

Free Print Shop (www.freeprintshop.org): This fantabulous Webs site has charts showing access to free healthcare across the city, as well as free food, shelter, and help with neighborhood problems. If we haven’t listed ’em, Free Print Shop has. Tell a friend.

Native American Health Center (160 Capp, 415-621-8051, www.nativehealth.org). Though geared towards Native Americans, this multifaceted clinic (dental! an Oakland locale, and an Alameda satellite!) turns no one away. Services are offered to the under-insured on a sliding scale as well as to those with insurance.

SF Free Clinic (4900 California, 415-750-9894, www.sffc.org). Those without any health insurance can get vaccinations, diabetes care, family planning assistance, STD diagnosis and treatment, well child care, and monitoring of acute and chronic medical problems.

Haight Ashbury Free Clinics (558 Clayton. 415-746-1950, www.hafci.org): Though available to all, these clinics are geared towards the uninsured, underinsured "working poor," the homeless, youth, and those with substance abuse and/or mental health issues. We love this organization not only for its day-to-day service, but for its low-income residential substance abuse recovery programs and its creation of RockMed, which provides free medical care at concerts and events. (Molly Freedenberg)

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THE BEST HOMELESS SHELTERS

There’s no reason to be ashamed to stay in the city’s homeless shelters — but proceed with awareness. Although most shelters take safety precautions and men and women sleep in separate areas, they’re high-traffic places that house a true cross-section of the city’s population.

The city shelters won’t take you if you just show up — you have to make a reservation. In any case, a reservation center should be your first stop anyway because they’ll likely have other services available for you. If you’re a first-timer, they’ll want to enter you into the system and take your photograph. (You can turn down the photo-op.) Reservations can be made for up to seven days, after which you’ll need to connect with a case manager to reserve a more permanent 30- or 60-day bed.

The best time to show up is first thing in the morning when beds are opening up, or late at night when beds have opened up because of no-show reservations. First thing in the morning means break of dawn — people often start lining up between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. for the few open beds. Many people are turned away throughout the day, although your chances are better if you’re a woman.

You can reserve a bed at one of several reservation stations: 150 Otis, Mission Neighborhood Resource Center (165 Capp St.), Tenderloin Resource Center (187 Golden Gate), Glide (330 Ellis), United Council (2111 Jennings), and the shelters at MSC South (525 Fifth St.) and Hospitality House (146 Leavenworth). If it’s late at night, they may have a van available to give you a ride to the shelter. Otherwise, bus tokens are sometimes available if you ask for one — especially if you’re staying at Providence shelter in the Bayview-Hunters Point District.

They’ll ask if you have a shelter preference — they’re all a little different and come with good and bad recommendations depending on whom you talk to. By all accounts, Hospitality House is one of the best — it’s small, clean, and well run. But it’s for men only, as are the Dolores Street Community Services shelters (1050 S. Van Ness and 1200 Florida), which primarily cater to Spanish-speaking clients.

Women can try Oshun (211 13th St.) and A Woman’s Place (1049 Howard) if they want a men-free space. If kids are in tow, Compass Family Services will set you up with shelter and put you on a waiting list for housing. (A recent crush of families means a waiting list for shelters also exists.) People between 18 and 24 can go to Lark Inn (869 Ellis). The Asian Woman’s Shelter specializes in services for Asian-speaking women and domestic violence victims (call the crisis line 877-751-0880). (Amanda Witherell)

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MEALS FOR $5: TOP FIVE CHEAP EATS

Nothing fancy about these places — but the food is good, and the price is right, and they’re perfect for depression dining.

Betty’s Cafeteria Probably the easiest place in town to eat for under five bucks, breakfast or lunch, American or Chinese. 167 11th St., SF. (415) 431-2525

Susie’s Café You can get four pancakes or a bacon burger for under $5 at this truly grungy and divine dive, right next to Ed’s Auto — and you get the sense the grease intermingles. , 603 Seventh St., SF (415) 431-2177

Lawrence Bakery Café Burger and fries, $3.75, and a slice of pie for a buck. 2290 Mission., SF. (415) 864-3119

Wo’s Restaurant Plenty of under-$5 Cantonese and Vietnamese dishes, and, though the place itself is cold and unatmospheric, the food is actually great. 4005 Judah, SF. (415) 681-2433

Glenn’s Hot Dogs A cozy, friendly, cheap, delicious hole-in-the-wall and probably my favorite counter to sit at in the whole Bay Area. 3506 MacArthur Blvd., Oakl. (510) 530-5175 (L.E. Leone)

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CHEAP DRINKS

When it comes to free drinks I’m a liar, a whore, and a cheat, duh.

I’m a liar because of course I find your designer replica stink-cloud irresistible and your popped collar oh so intriguing — and no, you sexy lug, I’ve never tried one of those delicious-looking orange-juice-and-vodka concoctions you’re holding. Perhaps you could order me one so I could try it out while we spend some time?

I’m a whore because I’ll still do you anyway — after the fifth round, natch. That’s why they call me the liquor quicker picker-upper.

And I’m a cheat because here I am supposed to give you the scoop on where to score some highball on the lowdown, when in fact there’s a couple of awesome Web sites just aching to help you slurp down the freebies. Research gives me wrinkles, darling. So before I get into some of my fave inexpensive inebriation stations, take a designated-driver test drive of www.funcheapsf.com and www.sf.myopenbar.com.

FuncheapSF’s run by the loquacious Johnny Funcheap, and has the dirty deets on a fab array of free and cheap city events — with gallery openings, wine and spirits tastings, and excellent shindigs for the nightlife-inclined included. MyOpenBar.com is a national operation that’s geared toward the hard stuff, and its local branch offers way too much clarity about happy hours, concerts, drink specials, and service nights. Both have led me into inglorious perdition, with dignity, when my chips were down.

Beyond all that, and if you have a couple bucks in your shucks, here’s a few get-happies of note:

Godzuki Sushi Happy Hour at the Knockout. Super-yummy affordable fish rolls and $2 Kirin on tap in a rockin’ atmosphere. Wednesdays, 6–9:30 p.m. 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994, www.knockoutsf.com

All-Night Happy Hour at The Attic. Drown your recession tears — and the start of your work week — in $3 cosmos and martinis at this hipster hideaway. Sundays and Mondays, 5 p.m.–2 a.m. 3336 24th St., (415) 722-7986

The Stork Club. Enough live punk to bleed your earworm out and $2 Pabsts every night to boot? Fly me there toute suite. 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 444-6174, www.storkcluboakland.com

House of Shields. Dive into $2 PBR on tap and great music every night except Sundays at the beautiful winner of our 2008 Best of the Bay "Best Monumental Urinal" award. (We meant in the men’s room, not the place as a whole!) 39 New Montgomery, SF. (415) 975-8651, www.houseofshields.com

The Bitter End. $3 drafts Monday through Friday are just the beginning at this Richmond pub: the Thursday night Jager shot plus Pabst for five bucks (plus an ’80s dance party) is worth a look-see. 441 Clement, SF. (415) 221-9538

Thee Parkside Fast becoming the edge-seekers bar of choice, this Potrero Hill joint has some awesome live nights with cheap brews going for it, but the those in the know misplace their Saturday afternoons with $3 well drinks from 3 to 8 p.m.1600 17th St., SF. (415) 252-1330, www.theeparkside.com

Infatuation. One of the best free club nights in the city brings in stellar electro-oriented talent and also offers two-for-one well drinks, so what the hey. Wednesdays, 9 p.m.–2 a.m. Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF. (415) 433-8585, www.vesselsf.com

Honey Sundays. Another free club night, this one on the gay tip, that offers more great local and international DJ names and some truly fetching specials at Paradise Lounge’s swank upstairs bar. Sundays, 8 p.m.–2 a.m. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-5018, www.paradisesf.com (Marke B.)

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IMPRESS A DATE WITH DINNER UNDER $50

You’ve got a date this weekend, which you’re feeling pretty good about, but only $50 to spend, which feels … not so good. Where should you go?

You’ll appear in-the-know at the underrated Sheba Piano Lounge (1419 Fillmore, www.shebalounge.com) on lower Fillmore Street, right in the middle of the burgeoning jazz revival district. Sheba was around long before Yoshi’s, offering live jazz (usually piano, sometimes a vocalist) and some of the best Ethiopian food in the city in a refined, relaxed lounge setting. Sure, they’ve got Americanized dishes, but skip those for the traditional Ethiopian menu. Sample multiple items by ordering the vegetarian platter ($13) or ask for a mixed meat platter, which is not on the menu ($16 last time I ordered it). One platter is more than enough for two, and you can still afford a couple of cocktails, glasses of wine or beer, or even some Ethiopian honey wine (all well under $10). Like any authentic Ethiopian place I’ve eaten in, the staff operates on Africa time, so be prepared to linger and relax.

It’s a little hipster-ish with slick light fixtures, a narrow dining room/bar, and the increasingly common "communal table" up front, but the Mission District’s Bar Bambino (2931 16th St., www.barbambino.com) offers an Italian enoteca experience that says "I’ve got some sophistication, but I like to keep it casual." Reserve ahead for tables because there aren’t many, or come early and sit at the bar or in the enclosed back patio and enjoy an impressive selection of Italian wines by the glass ($8–$12.50). For added savings with a touch of glam, don’t forget their free sparkling water on tap. It’s another small plates/antipasti-style menu, so share a pasta ($10.50–$15.50), panini ($11.50–$12.50), and some of their great house-cured salumi or artisan cheese. Bar Bambino was just named one of the best wine bars in the country by Bon Apetit, but don’t let that deter you from one of the city’s real gems.

Nothing says romance (of the first date kind) like a classic French bistro, especially one with a charming (heated) back patio. Bistro Aix (3340 Steiner, www.bistroaix.com) is one of those rare places in the Marina District where you can skip the pretension and go for old school French comfort food (think duck confit, top sirloin steak and frites, and a goat cheese salad — although the menu does stray a little outside the French zone with some pasta and "cracker crust pizza." Bistro Aix has been around for years, offering one of the cheapest (and latest — most end by 6 or 7 p.m.) French prix fixe menus in town (Sunday through Thursday, 6–8 p.m.) at $18 for two courses. This pushes it to $40 for two, but still makes it possible to add a glass of wine, which is reasonably priced on the lower end of their Euro-focused wine list ($6.25–$15 a glass).

Who knew seduction could be so surprisingly affordable? (Virginia Miller)

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FREE YOGA

You may be broke, but you can still stay limber. San Francisco is home to scores of studios and karmically-blessed souls looking to do a good turn by making yoga affordable for everyone.

One of the more prolific teachers and donation-based yoga enthusiasts is Tony Eason, who trained in the Iyengar tradition. His classes, as well as links to other donation-based teachers, can be found at ynottony.com. Another great teacher in the Anusara tradition is Skeeter Barker, who teaches classes for all levels Mondays and Wednesdays from 7:45 to 9:15 p.m. at Yoga Kula, 3030a 16th St. (recommended $8–$10 donation).

Sports Basement also hosts free classes every Sunday at three stores: Bryant Street from 1 to 2 p.m., the Presidio from 11a.m. to noon, and Walnut Creek 11 a.m. to noon. Bring your own mat.

But remember: even yoga teachers need to make a living — so be fair and give what you can. (Amanda Witherell)

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HOW TO KEEP YOUR APARTMENT

So the building you live in was foreclosed. Or you missed a few rent payments. Suddenly there’s a three-day eviction notice in your mailbox. What now?

Don’t panic. That’s the advice from Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. Tenants have rights, and evictions can take a long time. And while you may have to deal with some complications and legal issues, you don’t need to pack your bags yet.

Instead, pick up the phone and call the Tenants Union (282-6622, www.sftu.org) or get some professional advice from a lawyer.

The three-day notice doesn’t mean you have to be out in three days. "But it does mean you will have to respond to and communicate with the landlord/lady within that time," Gullicksen told us.

It’s also important to keep paying your rent, Gullicksen warned, unless you can’t pay the full amount and have little hope of doing so any time soon.

"Nonpayment of rent is the easiest way for a landlord to evict a tenant," Gullicksen explained. "Don’t make life easier for the landlady who was perhaps trying to use the fact that your relatives have been staying with you for a month as grounds to evict you so she can convert your apartment into a pricey condominium."

There are, however, caveats to Gullicksen’s "always pay the rent" rule: if you don’t have the money or you don’t have all the money.

"Say you owe $1,000 but only have $750 when you get the eviction notice," Gullicksen explained. "In that case, you may want to not pay your landlord $750, in case he sits on it but still continues on with the eviction. Instead, you might want to put the money to finding another place or hiring an attorney."

A good lawyer can often delay an eviction — even if it’s over nonpayment or rent — and give you time to work out a deal. Many landlords, when faced with the prospect of a long legal fight, will come to the table. Gullicksen noted that the vast majority of eviction cases end in a settlement. "We encourage all tenants to fight evictions," he said. The Tenants Union can refer you to qualified tenant lawyers.

These days some tenants who live in buildings that have been foreclosed on are getting eviction notices. But in San Francisco, city officials are quick to point out, foreclosure is not a legal ground for eviction.

Another useful tip: if your landlord is cutting back on the services you get — whether it’s a loss of laundry facilities, parking, or storage space, or the owner has failed to do repairs or is preventing you from preventing you from "the quiet enjoyment of your apartment" — you may be able to get a rent reduction. With the passage of Proposition M in November 2008 tenants who have been subjected to harassment by their landlords are also eligible for rent reductions. That involves a petition to the San Francisco Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board (www.sfgov.org/site/rentboard_index.asp).

Gullicksen also recommends that people who have lost their jobs check out the Eviction Defense Collaborative (www.evictiondefense.org).

"They are mostly limited to helping people who have temporary shortfalls," Gullicksen cautioned. But if you’ve lost your job and are about to start a new one and are a month short, they can help. (Sarah Phelan)

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OUT OF WORK? HERE’S STEP ONE

How do you get your unemployment check?

"Just apply for it."

That’s the advice of California’s Employment Development Department spokesperson Patrick Joyce.

You may think you aren’t eligible because you may have been fired or were only working part-time, but it’s still worth a try. "Sometimes people are ineligible, but sometimes they’re not," Joyce said, explaining that a lot of factors come into play, including your work history and how much you were making during the year before you became unemployed.

"So, simply apply for it — if you don’t qualify we’ll tell you," he said. "And if you think you are eligible and we don’t, you can appeal to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board."

Don’t wait, either. "No one gets unemployment benefits insurance payments for the first week they are unemployed," Joyce explained, referring to the one-week waiting period the EDD imposes before qualified applicants can start collecting. "So you should apply immediately."

Folks can apply by filling out the unemployment insurance benefits form online or over the phone. But the phone number is frequently busy, so online is the best bet.

Even if you apply by phone, visit www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment beforehand to view the EDD’s extensive unemployment insurance instructions and explanations. To file an online claim, visit eapply4ui.edd.ca.gov. For a phone number for your local office, visit www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/telephone_numbers.

(Sarah Phelan)

We’ll be doing regular updates and running tips for hard times in future issues. Send your ideas to tips@sfbg.com.

Martin Puryear

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REVIEW It’s exhilarating to see, upon entering the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s atrium, one of Martin Puryear’s most renowned works, Ladder for Booker T. Washington (1996), installed with such noiseless bravura: the 36-foot sapling grows slender and seems to disappear even faster into space as it floats above the elevators. Puryear’s eloquent exercise in perspective and comment on Washington — and his philosophy of slow progress and steady struggle in the fight for racial equality — gathers even more resonance today, thinking of 2008’s lengthy political campaigns and the calls for sacrifice in the recessionary year ahead.

After the conceptual games of SFMOMA’s "The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now" and the almost-fetishized objects of "246 and Counting: Recent Architecture and Design Acquisitions," there’s a lot to surprise — and refresh — the eye in this Puryear retrospective. If "246" startles with its museum recontextualization of almost mundane gadgets like the iPhone, this survey accomplishes the opposite: it quietly brings a primal sense of wonder to the act of walking 360 degrees around sculpture that seems both familiar and alien, bearing all the humble hallmarks of functionality but amplified to the level of fine art. Engineers and architects, woodworkers and basket-weavers, Sea Ranch aficionados and even Olafur Eliasson buffs will find much to ponder at Puryear’s elegant intersection of the raw and the handmade, the organic and the geometric. What comes across clearly in this gradually, gently elucidating exhibit — in which Puryear’s works are displayed thematically rather than chronologically, culminating with an effect akin to a camera aperture slowly swiveling its nautilus eye wide open — is the respect the artist so clearly has for those who study and perfect a craft or trade. It’s as if Puryear has writ large the notion of making: lionizing the utilitarian (Some Tales [1975-78], Lever #3 [1989]) and making it big and beautiful, even witty (Pride’s Cross [1988], Sharp and Flat [1987]), almost Dada-esque in its cerebral and political provocations (Le Prix [2005], C.F.A.O. [2006-07]), and as ovoidally opaque and as fascinated with the negative space within as the surrounding space it so handsomely cuts, without (Maroon [1987-88], The Charm of Subsistence [1989]).

MARTIN PURYEAR Through Jan. 25. Mon–Tues, Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., SF. $12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues.; half price Thurs., 6–8:45 p.m.). (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Pecha Kucha: PowerPoint sprints for artists

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By Susan White

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Last month, an amalgamation of hipsters and art aficionados congregated at the Harlot Nightclub for a “hyperintellectual show-and-tell,” otherwise known as Pecha Kucha Night, a worldwide event created in Tokyo six years ago (and recently adapted for San Francisco Design Week).

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).

Speed Reading

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A SLOW DEATH: 83 DAYS OF RADIATION SICKNESS

By NHK-TV "Tokaimura Criticality Accident Crew"

Vertical

160 pages

$19.95

It’s tacky to begin a review of a book about death by radiation poisoning by praising the design of its jacket. But I’m afraid I have to — John Gall’s art for A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness is unique in a gaze-snatching fashion. It combines hues of yellow and green, block patterns, and a news photo backdrop into an attractive, enigmatic, and faintly disturbing image that makes a browser wonder, "What exactly is inside this book?"

The answer is an account of a nuclear plant worker’s gradual demise after he was accidentally exposed to 20,000 times the maximum tolerable amount of neutron beam radiation. As some alleged environmentalists (including figureheads such as Al Gore) have begun touting the benefits of "non-carbon sources" of energy — an evasive way of saying "atomic power" — Hisashi Ouchi’s death comes across as an extreme cautionary tale.

Built from a television documentary about the nuclear accident, A Slow Death bluntly but compassionately renders Ouchi’s physical symptoms — which included massive skin loss — and the emotional impact his plight had on the doctors and nurses who treated him. The last extraordinary aspect of Ouchi’s story involves his heart, which persevered and remained relatively healthy while the rest of him demonstrated the impact of radiation — as the book puts it, "it continued living amidst the destruction of virtually every other cell in his body." (Johnny Ray Huston)

REFLECTION OF A MAN: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF STANLEY MARCUS

Photo selection by Allison V. Smith

Cairn Press

192 pages

$60

Sale signs at Macy’s and other businesses tend to suggest that the department store is a 20th-century phenomenon on its way down. But the department store had a great curator of sorts in Stanley Marcus, the Marcus in Neiman Marcus. An over-the-top extravagant collection of the businessman’s photography, Reflections of a Man might seem like a vanity project, but in fact it reveals a talented cameraman and, somewhat enticingly, the aesthetic point-of-view that might have gone into creating a popular chain of stores.

Dallas was Marcus’ home, and his version of the city wasn’t characterized by ugly American cowboy mentality so much as a love of beauty, parties, and profitable combinations thereof — he invented an annual Fortnight celebration as a way to boost sales during the slack period between back-to-school and the holidays. Oscar de la Renta’s brief forward to this monograph is a semi-flattering if fully affectionate account of Marcus’ unflagging success at making a sale. An old press pass reveals he wanted to be a photojournalist, but his public profession proved far more lucrative.

As for the photos, they are gorgeous, Popsicle-bright Kodachrome images of life in the South and abroad in Europe. Marcus had a terrific eye for patterns and repetitions, whether they came from cubic carpeting on the floor of a Paris fashion show or funny visual rhyming between Stetson hats and hanging lamps in a Houston restaurant. Christian Dior and Pucci pose with personality for Marcus, but his skill isn’t so much for portraiture as it is for the art of commerce, capturing the flair of couturiers as well as balloon and sponge vendors on the street. (Huston)

HOME: SOCIAL ESSAYS

By Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka)

Akashic Books

282 pages

$15.95

THE HUNGERED ONE

By Ed Bullins

Akashic Books

192 pages

$14.95

I didn’t ask, so don’t tell me why queers have come to be the fashionable sacrificial stooges for pandering new Democratic presidents. For some overstanding on the matter, read Amiri Baraka’s intro to the most recent edition of Home: Social Essays, a collection he wrote between 1961 and 1966 as Leroi Jones. Anyone familiar with reprints of Jones’s autobiographical works knows that they afford Baraka with a chance to engage in scathing (and sometimes funny) multileveled assessments of his past writings and views. Here, he leaps right into a critique of his past use of the word "fag" that insinuates tribute (without naming names) to some of the strong, influential queers he’s worked with over the years. It’s a prescient genuine act, but characteristic — Baraka was calling Obama "slick" years ago at a City Lights reading.

Baraka also writes a preface for a reprint of Ed Bullins’ story collection The Hungered One, but it’s Bullins’ introduction that makes an impression, because of its open-ended refusal of readings that interpret (and thus restrict) the title tale as an allegory. The Hungered One is filled with pieces that do exactly what they set out to do — "An Ancient One," for example, perfectly renders a city scene that happens in front of my building every day of the year. But it’s that title story — more horrifying than anything a genre writer like Stephen King has imagined — that lingers. It’s as uncanny as a nightmare, and as real as human nature. (Huston)

Reel time travel

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

How often do you encounter a living artist whose radical and prolific body of work is criminally obscure? I can’t evangelize enough about the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, whose work is the subject of Laurence A. Rickels’ Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 288 pages, $22).

Some glimpses into Ottinger’s dazzling and genre-defying oeuvre: baroque lesbian pirate adventure (1977’s Madame X: An Absolute Ruler); an aristocratic alcoholic tourist drinking herself to death in a post-apocalyptic West Berlin (1979’s Ticket of No Return); and a trans-Siberian train journey that makes an unexpected pit stop in Mongolia, where a two-hour ethnography of an all-female tribe unfolds (1989’s Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia).

There are hardly words to describe these striking and innovative films, but Rickels’ ambitious new book — drawing upon extensive interviews with the filmmaker — provides compelling interpretations. I recently interviewed him via e-mail.

SFBG It puzzles me how Derek Jarman’s queer-punk classic Jubilee (1978) is available as a Criterion DVD and Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporaneous and similarly groundbreaking Madame X is virtually inaccessible. Why do you think Ottinger isn’t better known in the states?

LAURENCE A. RICKELS Ottinger was very well known throughout the art cinema network in the 1980s. Though [her] fiction films were "long" in density and attention-surfeit, they in fact observed the time limits of features made for theatrical release. With the turn to documentary, she engaged in what I once referred to as "real time travel" — involving durations of viewing time up to nine hours in length. But once she began again to show her photography in acknowledged art venues, her current film work was rediscovered at least for that world.

Just as important, no doubt, is her refusal to release her films as readily available videos or DVDs. But this brings us back to the point that she operates, even when she identifies herself as filmmaker, as an artist who tries to oversee her reception.

SFBG Many of Ottinger’s films — both the documentaries and narrative films — deal with the exotic and otherness. She persistently crosses genres, cultures, and genders.

LAR What is so radical about her film art is an insistence on encountering the other, on meeting the other "halfway." For the other’s arrival, Ottinger constructs out of her own (formal) language a sort of terminal, which anticipates or fantasizes about what the other will bring to their "first" contact and exchange.

SFBG Which film from Ottinger’s oeuvre is essential viewing for those who haven’t seen her work? What about this film should a new viewer expect?

LAR If I had to choose one, it would be Ticket of No Return. It introduces the viewer to the distance Ottinger observes with regard to the very conditions of trauma. By drinking herself to death, the protagonist seeks, as Nietzsche counseled, to become who she is.

SFBG In your book you describe Ottinger’s next narrative work, Diamond Dance, about Jewish gangsters in Brighton Beach, the diamond business in New York, a gay psychoanalyst, and more. The film sounds incredible. What’s happening with the project?

LAR Diamond Dance was a new fictional film project at the start of the 1990s. There have been more near-miss attempts to find suitable conditions for its realization, even according to a more modest plan. However, Ottinger has not given up, and has been revising some of the pressure plot points in the original screenplay to reflect and invite another time period in which the film will be made and set. But the original film is in a sense lost — together with the era of art cinema to which it belonged.

The age of antiquarian: Lennon, Hemingway, and more

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By Laura Peach

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A few years ago, single and sullen on a rainy Valentines Day, I was moping past the library on my way back to my apartment. A sandwich board sign for the “Book Lovers Library Discard Sale” caught my eye and enticed me inside. A small, closetish room on the first floor was bursting with books soon to be orphaned from the library shelves. I spent my time scanning several spines before settling on a cheery red art history text from the 1920s and a distinguished hardcover volume on Hanoi. Happily home I went with these beautiful books in my arms, decidedly less depressed.

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Whether or not you have a Valentine this year, you’ll be sure to find literary love at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair this Saturday. Peruse the offerings of hundreds of rare booksellers, and pick up the tomes that turn on your inner bibliophile, from a first addition of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to a signed copy of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea.

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Cafe Kati

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If the second half of the 1990s stands to be remembered as an era of golden bubble baths in San Francisco, the decade’s quite different first half (less opulence, more calamities) might be remembered as a magical era of neighborhood restaurants. With the Great Freeway Shift that followed the 1989 earthquake — demolitions, re-routings, rethinkings — the city’s relationship with its suburbs changed forever; suburban diners could not be counted on as before to fill city restaurants, and young chefs migrated into the neighborhoods to start their own places in what amounted to a culinary diaspora.

Among the earliest of these pioneers was Kirk Webber, who opened his Café Kati in the borderland between the Fillmore and Japantown in 1990. Webber brought a high pedigree to the venture; he had been trained at the California Culinary Academy and had worked at Silks (in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel), among other places, before opening Kati. The restaurant, nonetheless, was a neighborhood restaurant, snug and warm, with a handful of tables and a sense that each dish was being carefully handmade in the small kitchen behind the dining room.

And so it remains. From the rustic, wood-cut-style street signage (reminiscent, for me, of Chez Panisse’s) to the intimacy of the dining room (which seats no more than 20 or so) to the wall art that resembles the famous cave paintings at Lascaux, France, Café Kati feels personal. It has been shaped by human hands and reflects a steady, guiding sensibility. Even the slightly retro black track lighting on the ceiling reinforces our sense that Café Kati has evolved and accreted — has earned its look over the years rather than having been sculpted all at once by a hired-gun designer who then was hired elsewhere and moved on, never to revisit.

Webber is one of the first, and remains one of the purest, of the so-called fusion chefs, the people who brought Asian touches to classic French cooking. A central goal for Webber was to cut down on the fattiness and richness of the traditional dishes without having them deflate altogether, and in this sense his food shares a root with nouvelle cuisine. Even after nearly two decades, it retains an element of invention and wonder without becoming contorted or attention-seeking.

The appetizers are the main, most overtly Asian dishes on the menu. One of Kati’s longtime customer favorites, in fact — the dragon roll ($18.95) — is as good a sushi-style roll as I’ve had in any Japanese restaurant. The roll includes avocado, cucumber, and wonderful crisp-fried shrimp, with flaps of smoked salmon laid like tarpaulins over the top of each rice round. And instead of serving the wasabi and soy sauce separately, Webber mixes them into a glossy sauce that shows signs of being thickened and softened with a bit of honey.

In another signature dish, Vietnamese-style spring rolls ($8.95) the sweetness of mango is modulated with plenty of cilantro, Thai basil (a little sharper than the Italian kinds), and, above all, mint. Webber doesn’t stint on plate decoration, either, having a particular fancy for complex coilings of ruby-red beet and for colorful heaps of cut carrots and microgreens. Plates can look like dioramas of a flower shop.

Main courses open out from Asian influences without forsaking them entirely. Hanger steak (at $29.95, the priciest item on the menu) gets a slightly sweet marinade of soy sauce and sesame oil before being grilled, cut into slices, and served with Blue Lake beans and sautéed spinach. The deft touch here is the pile of spicy Spanish fries, really a version of patatas bravas, the gently crispy quarters of waxy (in this case some kind of baby yellow) potato.

From steak and potatoes to fried chicken ($16.95) — in this case a Cornish game hen, given a Cajun-scented batter, then lightly fried and served with buttermilk mashed potatoes, a mop top of wilted pea tendrils, and a marvelous, bewitching gravy inflected with citrus. If there’s a heaven, the home cooking there will include something like this.

Desserts are all $8.95 — a price point I would describe as neither high nor low — and sing in a more mainstream key. You might find a sundae, a flourless chocolate cake, a crisp, a butterscotch pudding. The last is presented in a parfait glass and consists of layerings of homemade butterscotch and whipped cream — like a sundae with no ice cream, or a planet (like Jupiter) with no definite surface. Butterscotch is basically caramel with vanilla, and Kati’s version is barely sweet with a faint, keen edge of smoke and a rich color like that of tarnished gold. These are strong hints that the butterscotch has been made by a practiced hand, someone who isn’t afraid to skate near the edge of burnt sugar and to give character to the result. (The big giveaway for commercial, mass-produced desserts is that they are predominantly, often overwhelmingly, sweet; they taste as if they were made from sugar and little else.)

Kati’s wine list is substantial though not overwrought, with quite a few decent choices by the glass, and service tends toward flawlessness. As in many pint-sized restaurants, the door opens right into the dining room, which can be disconcerting, especially in the season of cold drafts. I mean wind, not beer.

CAFE KATI

Dinner: Tues.–Sat., 5:30–10 p.m.

1963 Sutter, SF

(415) 775-7313

www.cafekati.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Funky Meters

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PREVIEW Since we’re dealing with a reunion here, let’s start with what’s missing: the funky Meters are not the same as the original Meters. You might own some records by the plain old Meters, the New Orleans funk unit whose best-known full-lengths are Look-Ka Py Py (Josie, 1969) and Fire on the Bayou (Reprise, 1975). That version of Meters consisted of — in addition to singer-keyboardist Art Neville and bassist George Porter Jr. — guitarist Leo Nocentelli and drummer Joseph Modeliste. The band, which broke up in 1977, reformed in 1989 as the funky Meters, with the latter two original members being replaced, at different points, by Brian Stoltz and Russell Batiste Jr. To make matters more confusing, the original lineup occasionally plays dates as well — thus, the original vs. funky distinction.

Robert Christgau called the Meters "a totally original band," and as usual he’s right: the band’s sound contributed in a big way to the development of funk and was an idiosyncratic voice within it. Fire on the Bayou is probably its most-appreciated album, but even at the height of its power, the group had a funny way of shamelessly accommodating itself to pop formulae without abandoning its uniqueness. This is the kind of outfit self-aware enough to give its disc’s longest and least engaging track the self-deprecating title "Middle of the Road," and yet make the track — whose style presages the smooth jazz radio format — melodically and rhythmically sophisticated enough to maintain your basic attention, because the musicians know that’s all they can ask for. Although Modeliste’s and Nocentelli’s contributions to the Meters were substantial enough to justify being wary of their substitutions in the Funky Meters’ lineup, something in the ensemble’s past behavior indicates they all might be on the same page, with the same doubts, and better — or at least more honest — performers for the experience.

BILL’S BIRTHDAY BASH With funky Meters featuring Cyril Neville, Marcia Ball, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Bonnie Raitt with Hutch Hutchinson. Sat/10, 9 p.m., $50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-TIXS, www.livenation.com

“A Trip Down (False) Memory Lane”

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PREVIEW The Lexington Club is an underground landmark of San Francisco. If you’re queer, and especially if you’re a lesbian, the bar has probably played a role in your life at one point or another, and something important probably went down there, by the jukebox or in a graffiti-lined bathroom. In "A Trip Down (False) Memory Lane," curator Jessica Silverman of Silverman Gallery taps into the Lexington’s importance and its history through an ambitious but also human-scale group show that’s been more than a year in the making.

The Lexington has hosted some excellent art at times (I’ve seen paintings by Alicia McCarthy there, for example), though you might not know it. "About a year ago, I was there and I asked [some bar-goers] what show was up, and they didn’t know," says Silverman. "No one was looking at the art. That was bothersome to me. I also wanted to do a show that addressed the space."

Silverman has brought together an array of local and international artists — including Susanne Winterling, Bruce LaBruce, and Slava Mogutin — to create individual works for the exhibition and smaller works for a limited 50-edition box set. Some people, such as New York’s Daphne Fitzpatrick, have never been to the Lexington, even if they have friends who work there — in such cases, they create works that imagine the site, or forge a connection to it. I’m looking forward to seeing Luke Butler’s collages, photographer Job Piston’s sculptural piece, and Tammy Rae Carland’s c-print. Some other potential highlights: Brandon Herman’s jewelry box containing a lighter — which overtly plays off of the ritual of smoking a cigarette in front of the bar — and a postcard invitation from Danny Keith.

A TRIP DOWN (FALSE) MEMORY LANE Reception: Tues/13, 7–9 p.m. 3464 19th St., S.F. (415) 863-2052, www.atripdown-false-memorylane.blogspot.com

Lethal force

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Editors note: This story ran Dec. 12, 1992

The autumn air was crisp and clear in Hayward on the night the kid called Glasstop took a shotgun blast in the back of the head and died for the theft of a $60 radio.

It was just before 8 p.m., on Sunday, Nov. 15. The lights were on in the parking lot outside the Hayward BART station, where a six-car southbound train had arrived a few minutes earlier. About 50 passengers had gotten off, and some were still straggling into cars or waiting around for the next AC Transit bus.

Glasstop, a 19-year-old warehouse worker from Union City whose legal name was Jerrold Cornelius Hall, had ridden the train from Bayfair, one stop north, along with John Henry Owens, a 20-year-old unemployed custodian who lived in Oakland. The two young African American men were standing at the bus stop, not far from the station entrance, when Officer Fred Crabtree pulled into the parking lot in a BART police cruiser.

Crabtree was a white 16-year veteran of the transit police agency and a member of its elite Canine Corps. His partner was a highly trained German shepherd imported from a special obedience school in Germany. The dog trotted at Crabtree’s side as he approached Owens and Hall. The officer carried a loaded 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.

Crabtree was responding to a report of an armed robbery: Halfway between Bayfair and Hayward, a passenger had told the train operator that two black men had taken his Walkman personal stereo. The passenger said one of the robbers had a gun and described what they looked like; the trainman passed on the message, and the BART dispatcher passed it on again. Owens and Hall matched the third-hand description that came over Crabtree’s radio.

Within a matter of minutes, Hall was lying in a pool of his own blood, Owens was in handcuffs, and the parking lot was a mass of sirens and flashing red lights. Hall was pronounced dead shortly after midnight at Eden Hospital; Owens is still in the Alameda County jail. The police never turned up a gun.

And the man who reported the robbery disappeared without leaving his name.

That’s about all BART officials will say about the incident. They’ve clamped on a lid of secrecy that defies most normal local police procedures and violates the California Public Records Act. The San Francisco newspapers have almost entirely ignored the shooting, and there’s been little reaction from the East Bay community.

But an extensive Bay Guardian investigation has turned up a long list of troubling questions about the death of Jerrold Hall – and a long list of serious problems in an agency that has some of the most sweeping police powers in California, and some of the least civilian oversight.

Our investigation, based on a dozen interviews, a review of public records, and more than 50 pages of unreleased internal documents from the BART police and other local authorities, shows:

Officer Crabtree violated one of the most basic rules of modern law enforcement – and his own department’s written policy – when he fired a warning shot toward the suspect, potentially endangering the lives of passersby in the busy urban area. The nine .33-caliber pellets from that shotgun cartridge wound up in the side of a tree, about 4-1/2 feet above the ground.

BART’s own internal documents contradict the official claim that Hall was attacking or threatening Crabtree at the time of the shooting. Statements filed by several witnesses, and at least two BART police officers, suggest that Hall was more than 10 feet from the officer when the shots were fired, and was walking away. Medical records obtained by the Bay Guardian show that he was shot in the back of the head.

The shooting appears to violate nearly every modern police standard on the use of deadly force. In fact, the latest BART Police Operational Directive, dated July 22, 1987, states that guns may be fired only to prevent a suspect from killing or wounding another person, or to stop a suspected felon who is presumed to be armed and dangerous from fleeing and escaping arrest. But BART internal documents and other records obtained by the Bay Guardian provide little evidence to suggest that Hall fit either category.

Nevertheless, on Dec. 4, a BART Firearms Review Board, consisting entirely of BART police officers appointed by the chief, determined that the “use of lethal force in this instance was justified.” BART officials refuse to release the report or comment further on the findings.

The fact that Crabtree fired a gun to subdue Hall seems to undermine one of BART’s central reasons for the use of trained attack dogs. The dogs, BART officials say, are supposed to support officers in situations just like the one in question – to intimidate, and if necessary, pursue and immobilize a suspect when other backup isn’t available, and to attack immediately if an officer is under assault. Some law-enforcement experts, and many civil-rights advocates, question the use of dogs for that purpose – but all those contacted by the Bay Guardian agreed it was rather curious that Crabtree’s canine partner sat out this whole bloody incident.

Officer Crabtree is on administrative leave, with pay, pending the final outcome of an internal investigation. Owens is still facing robbery charges, despite the lack of a victim willing to testify against him. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for this week.

But the problems with the BART police go far beyond the arrest of John Owens and the death of Jerrold Hall. In fact, the Bay Guardian has learned:

BART’s Internal Affairs Division, which reviews citizen complaints against BART police officers, has investigated 162 cases in the past five years, 39 of them involving excessive use of force – and not a single charge was sustained. Law-enforcement observers say that’s an astonishing statistic, one that casts severe doubt on the department’s ability to control police abuse.

“I’ve never heard of any department with a rate of zero sustained complaints,” said John Crew, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Police Practices Project. “I can’t believe that none of those people had a single valid case.”

The BART Police Department has a written procedure for civilians filing complaints. A 1991 directive signed by Chief Harold Taylor states that every department employee should accept complaints by mail, by phone, or in person, and refer them to the watch commander or the Internal Affairs Division. But there’s nothing posted in any BART train or station to tell the public about the complaint process, no procedure for appealing a Police Department decision to a civilian review agency, and not much visible effort to inform BART employees about how to handle complaints.

The BART police use dogs for purposes inconsistent with many modern law-enforcement guidelines. Most local police agencies employ canines primarily to sniff out bombs and narcotics, or to search for dangerous suspects hidden in dark, confined areas. Berkeley has banned police dogs altogether. The BART police dogs are not trained to sniff out bombs or drugs, and are rarely involved in searches; the officers use the animals as standard backup, to intimidate and apprehend suspects in even fairly routine arrests.

The elected BART Board of Directors has demonstrated virtually no effective control over the BART police, and most board members don’t seem to know or care what their armed employees are doing with those badges, dogs, and guns.

None of the board members contacted by the Bay Guardian could even guess how many citizen complaints had been filed against the BART police since 1988, or what the outcome of the cases had been. None could explain the complaint procedure, or identify the person responsible for supervising internal investigations. Most didn’t know how the police chief was hired, or to whom he reported; some board members didn’t even know his name.

Several years ago, I asked Art Shartsis, a downtown lawyer who was then the BART Board president, if he knew who ran the BART police. His answer was unusually blunt, but entirely typical of the attitude board members show toward the force.

“I don’t know,” he told me. “I guess we must have a chief.”

A DAY AT THE MALL

Jerrold Hall was the son of Alameda Fire Department Captain Cornelius Hall, a retired Navy Reserve officer who lives with his wife, Rose and two other sons in a comfortable middle-class home in suburban Union City. Both of Jerrold’s brothers are in college, earning top grades; his aunt is the first black woman ever to serve on the Board of Trustees of Auburn University.

Jerrold, who graduated from high school in 1991 and was living with his parents, “had some problems, like a lot of kids these days,” his father told me. “But we hoped he’d outgrow them. He was a good kid, never into guns or killing or any of that sort of thing.”

On Sunday, Nov. 15, at about 2 in the afternoon, Hall met Owens at the Eastmont Mall in Oakland. According to a sworn statement Owens gave to the police, the two drank a few beers and part of a small bottle of E&J Brandy. Early in the evening, Hill invited Owens to his home, and they left the mall on an AC Transit bus to catch a BART train for Union City.

According to Owens and several other witnesses, Owens and Hill encountered a black man in his late 30s on board the train, and the man asked them if they wanted to buy one of the Walkmans he was carrying in a bag. When first questioned by police, at about 1:35 a.m., Owens said he declined the offer, went to another train car “where more girls were,” and met up with Hall again a few minutes later. At about 4:30 a.m., he made another statement, acknowledging that he was present when the friend he called “Glasstop” told the would-be salesman, “give me your Walkman.”

Several other witnesses on the train agreed that Hall had confronted the man, and walked away with a bag. None, including Owens, saw a gun.

However, the victim of what the BART police still call an “armed robbery” called the train operator on the intercom and said two men with a gun had stolen his Walkman. The operator, who never saw Hall or Owens, reported the incident, and it was relayed to BART police, who instructed the trainman to stop in Hayward, and, after a brief delay, to open the train doors. Hall and Owens left with about 50 others; according to the station attendant, they jumped the emergency gate and walked into the parking lot.

The police were able to find several eyewitnesses to the alleged robbery; however, other than Owens and Crabtree, who was the only police officer on the scene at the time, the internal report does not identify a single witness who actually saw the shooting.

An official Dec. 7 statement, written by BART Police Chief Harold Taylor at the request of the Bay Guardian and reviewed by BART’s legal department, notes that “witnesses disagreed as to the precise sequence of the next events.”

The internal BART police documents obtained by the Bay Guardian contain no formal statement or direct quotation from Crabtree; he apparently filed no written report. The reports were all prepared by other officers, who arrived at the scene after the shooting.

According to those reports, filed shortly after the incident, Crabtree approached Hall and Owens, who were standing near a bench in the parking lot’s bus-stop area, and ordered them to lie on the ground with their hands over their heads. Owens complied; Hall did not.

Hall, the reports state, “confronted and challenged Officer Crabtree, attempting to take Officer Crabtree’s shotgun from him at one point.” There is no mention of what the dog, who was trained to bite anyone who attacked Officer Crabtree, was doing at the time. BART officials refuse to elaborate, saying the incident is still under investigation.

However, one Bay Area dog trainer, who has trained police dogs, said it’s highly unlikely that a German shepherd of the sort imported by the BART police (see sidebar) would fail to respond in such a situation. “Dogs are very loyal and protective,” the trainer, who asked not to be identified, told the Bay Guardian. “These dogs are carefully bred and taught to attack anyone who physically endangers their human handler. Sometimes they overreact; they very rarely underreact.”

TO TAKE A LIFE

Owens told the police he “did not see the cop and Glasstop get into any physical fighting. They did not touch. They were just arguing.” After a few moments, Owens said, “Glasstop walked over to me and said we could go. So we started to walk away.”

Whatever the nature of the confrontation between Hall and Officer Crabtree, the police report and witness statements leave very little doubt that it ended with Hall walking away – and, as the internal police report states, “with Officer Crabtree retaining the shotgun.”

It’s also clear that some time, perhaps as much a minute or two, passed between the initial clash and the shooting – more than enough time for Hall and Owens to start walking away. During that period, the documents suggest, the passenger who had initially reported the robbery – and had not made any contact yet with police – suddenly ran out into the parking lot, pointed toward Hall and Owens and shouted, “That’s them.” Then the passenger fled.

Crabtree then ordered the two young men to halt again – and at that point, the statements get very fuzzy.

According to the official statement released Dec. 7 by BART, Crabtree “summoned his canine, but Hall resisted the dog.” A medical report filed by Alameda County emergency technicians who examined Hall after the shooting includes no mention of any dog bites or wounds of any sort other than those caused by the shotgun. A copy of the report, which has not been released, was obtained by the Bay Guardian.

Crabtree, the official BART statement continues, “fired a warning shot at a nearby tree. Hall continued to move toward the other suspect, and at one point turned and assumed a position which concealed his hands.”

The internal police report, however, states that Owens was the one who was “failing to keep his hands in view,” and who, in what the report described as “an effort to get rid of the evidence [Walkman],” put his hands into his pants pockets. At that point, the report states, Crabtree “used deadly force on suspect Hall.”

Owens said he responded immediately to the second command to halt, but that Hall kept walking away. When Owens heard the shots, he turned around, “and my partner was lying face down…. Then I heard all the cops coming with sirens.”

In fact, within a matter of minutes, at least three more BART police cars and a backup unit from the Hayward Police Department had arrived on the scene. Even if Hall, who by all accounts was walking, not running, had been attempting to “flee,” it’s unlikely he would have been able to get far.

And after an extensive search of the train, the tracks, the station, the parking lot, and everything else in the vicinity, the BART police acknowledge they were unable to find a gun.

Although the BART police initially insisted that Hall had been shot in the chest, and most of the news reports carried that statement unchallenged, even BART now admits that the shot struck the young man in the back of his head. His father, Cornelius Hall, never had any doubt.

“I’m a trained emergency medical technician,” he told the Bay Guardian. “I was in the hospital room when the nurse was washing down the body. I know what an entrance wound looks like, and my son was shot in the back.”

In Modern Police Firearms, a textbook on law-enforcement procedures, Professor Allen P. Bristow of California State University, Los Angeles, writes that deadly force should be used to stop a fleeing felon only when “he cannot be contained or captured” through other means. Further, Bristow notes, an officer considering deadly force should ask the following question:

“Is the crime this suspect is committing, or are the consequences of his possible escape, serious enough to justify my taking his life or endangering the lives of bystanders?”

The San Francisco Police Department guidelines on deadly force embody some of that same philosophy. “Officers shall exhaust all other reasonable means of apprehension and control before resorting to the use of firearms,” the Aug. 24, 1984, policy states. Officers are allowed to shoot at a dangerous, fleeing felony suspect “only after all other reasonable means of apprehension and control have been exhausted.”

San Francisco, like almost every other police agency in the Bay Area, and most in the country, strictly prohibits warning shots. So does BART: “Discharging of firearms [is] not allowable as a warning,” BART’s official weapons policy states.

The BART police are a bit more lenient than San Francisco on the use of deadly force to stop fleeing suspects. The officer must only believe that “the suspect is likely to continue to threaten death or serious bodily harm to another human being,” according to BART’s July 22, 1987, operational directive. Yet the directive also states that a firearm may not be used “when the officer has reason to believe … that the discharge may endanger the lives of passersby, or other persons not involved in the crime, and the officer’s life, or that of another person, is not in imminent danger.”

THE OPEN RANGE

Armed guards have patrolled BART trains and stations since the agency started running trains about 30 years ago. At first, they were simply known as “BART Security”; the officers had the authority to carry weapons and arrest suspects, but under state law, they weren’t members of a real police department. For the most part, that limited their authority to the confines of BART property.

In 1976, the state Legislature granted BART the authority to run a police department with jurisdiction and authority second only to the California Highway Patrol. BART officers now have full police powers, not only on their own turf, but in every one of the 58 California counties.

The department, headquartered near the Lake Merritt BART station, currently employs 151 sworn officers and nine dogs (see sidebar Page TK). An undisclosed number work undercover, in plain clothes, riding the trains and looking for crimes that range from fare evasion, “eating,” and “expectoration,” to assault, robbery, and rape. By far the most common crime, according to a BART police statistical breakdown for 1992, is “vagrancy”: 4,227 separate instances were reported by BART officers in the first 10 months of the year.

The BART Police Department has a $12 million annual budget, a fleet of patrol cars, and its own communications system. Officers earn salaries that Chief Taylor calls “competitive” with other departments in the Bay Area.

And at a time when California law-enforcement agencies are coming under increasingly strict civilian control, the BART police operate with nothing more than token oversight.

Chief Taylor reports to no commission, mayor, or city council. The department is administered by BART’s assistant general manager for public safety, who reports to the general manager, who reports to the board. BART spokesperson Michael Healy said the board plays no role in hiring or firing a chief, much less in disciplining police officers.

Former BART Board member Arlo Hale Smith said that in his term of office, the BART police chief rarely showed up for board meetings. “Even when we had something to discuss about the department – usually a labor-contract issue – the assistant general manager would come,” Smith explained.

Citizen complaints against the BART police are handled by the Internal Affairs Department, which is not a separate agency, as it is in many police departments, but a branch of the Detective Division, Taylor told the Bay Guardian.

That, some critics say, may explain why BART has the lowest possible rate of sustained complaints against its police officers. “There’s a very good reason for civilian agencies to handle complaints against the police,” said the ACLU’s John Crew. “People who have been abused by the police have a hard time trusting the same police department to do an honest investigation.”

Cornelius Hall, who is no stranger to government bureaucracy, said he ran into a stone wall when he tried to get some basic information about his son’s death from BART. “They wouldn’t even give me the police report,” he told the Bay Guardian. “The only way I can find out what happened to my son is to hire a lawyer and have it subpoenaed.”

Crew said he finds the situation “chilling.” He said he saw a “complete dearth” of civilian oversight in the BART administrative structure. “There’s no opportunity for meaningful public input, for hearings, for discussion of issues,” he continued.

“It’s not an acceptable situation. But under the circumstances, the members of the BART Board have an increased responsibility to ask questions and keep on top of their police department’s practices.”

In the case of Jerrold Hall, at least, that doesn’t seem to be happening. The shooting hasn’t been on the agenda for any board meeting since Nov. 15, and board members say they haven’t received any information about it from BART management.

And unlike Cornelius Hall, they haven’t even bothered to ask.

TO TELL THE TRUTH

The day after a BART police officer shot Jerrold Hall in the back of the head, transit agency spokesperson Mike Healy told reporters that Hall had been shot in the chest.

Not true.

Healy also told reporters that Hall had attacked Officer Fred Crabtree, and continued to attack him after Crabtree fired a warning shot.

Not true.

And Healy said that the warning shot was fired “over Hall’s head.”

Not true, either.

Healy freely referred to an alleged “armed robbery,” but he didn’t tell reporters that BART police had searched the entire area and never found a gun. He didn’t say that the alleged robbery victim had vanished without a trace, either.

So the public got a one-sided – and, as it turns out, largely inaccurate – picture of the incident. The press, taking Healy’s information at face value, portrayed Jerrold Hall as a violent, gun-wielding punk, shot in the act of attacking a cop.

“In some ways,” says Hall’s father, Cornelius, “that’s the saddest part of all.”

And while Healy finally put out a statement Dec. 7 acknowledging that some of his previous comments were in error, he did so only after a three-week barrage of questions from the Bay Guardian – and he never issued a word of apology to the Hall family.

It’s hard to blame Healy for the initial round of misinformation: In the heat of a bloody battle, the truth is often obscured. But Healy clearly knew, or could have known, within a few days after the incident that his official press statements had been wrong – that, for example, the medical reports showed Hall had been shot from behind. He could have called the reporters who were covering the story and let them know, or issued a new press release with updated information.

He could have tried to rescue some of what was left of the dead 19 year old’s personal reputation – and salvaged a bit of his own in the process. Instead, he fell back on the old BART strategy: When in doubt, stonewall. Then duck for cover, and hope it will all go away.

The BART Police Department may be the least-responsive law-enforcement agency I’ve seen since the discovery of the shredding machine in the White House basement. There is no press officer. The watch commanders, lieutenants, and captains refer all press calls to Chief Harold Taylor, who won’t come to the phone; his secretary refers the calls to the BART Public Affairs Office.

When I first called Healy Nov. 16 to ask about the shooting, he told me he hadn’t seen a police report, and didn’t know if one existed. He also said he didn’t know what the citizen complaint procedure was for the BART police, and had no idea if it was in writing. I filed a formal request for those and other records Nov. 17; under the Public Records Act, I had a legal right to a response within 10 days.

I let it slide to 15 days (holidays and all), then started calling Healy’s office. He was too busy to come to the phone at first, but after I harassed him for several hours, he told me that Chief Harold Taylor was handling my request, and that I should call him directly. Taylor wouldn’t come to the phone at all: He had an assistant tell me that Public Affairs was handling the request, and that I should call Mike Healy.

I spent another day trying again to reach Healy, who finally told me he wanted to set up an interview with Taylor – for Dec. 4, 17 days after I’d sent in a request for information most police agencies would probably have provided in less than an hour.

Chief Taylor showed up for the interview with a BART lawyer, who promised that the chief would fax me a statement of the facts of the shooting sometime later that afternoon. The brief, incomplete statement finally arrived three days later, around 3:30 p.m. Dec. 7, 21 days after my initial request. And BART officials still won’t release the full police report.

If I were a suspicious reporter, I’d wonder what they were trying to hide.

————

Deputy dog

In Philadelphia, the Inquirer revealed several years ago, police dogs attacked 358 people in the course of 33 months, leaving many of them scarred or maimed for life. In Los Angeles, the Times recently reported, the local K-9 Corps recorded more than a thousand bites in three years. In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, trained German shepherds tore into a total of 375 legs, arms, and torsos in the course of their law-enforcement work.

In the past 10 years, canine corps scandals have tarnished the reputations of police departments all over the country and have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in lawsuits.

In Berkeley, however, police dogs have been banned since the early 1970s, when a City Council member named Ron Dellums responded to the brutal use of dogs against blacks in the South with a resolution abolishing the local canine corps. In San Francisco, dogs handle only a few very limited tasks.

But since 1990, the BART Police Canine Corps has been expanding into the sort of work that created such extensive problems in other American cities – a use for dogs that critics say has little justification.

“There are two basic rationales for using police dogs,” explained Richard Avenzino, director of the San Francisco SPCA, whose agency has worked with the local Police Department canine program. “One is for sniffing out explosives or narcotics. The other is for searches, mainly in enclosed spaces, where the dog’s sense of smell can aid in finding a hidden human suspect.

“But there’s also a perception that a snarling dog can intimidate people, which creates a lot more potential for trouble.”

The first BART Police canine corps dates back to the early 1970s. But the BART Board disbanded the program in 1975, after a police dog on a train in Philadelphia barked at BART Director John Glenn.

In 1990, Police Chief Harold Taylor restored four dogs to the force, saying they would be “a strong statement of police presence,” would deter violent crime, and could be used to help clear homeless people from trains and stations. In an interview last week, Taylor said the dogs, which now number nine, are used “to back up officers, in all their law-enforcement duties.”

The dogs, imported German shepherds, are bred and undergo Schützhund training at a special school in Germany, where they learn to attack on command. “The dogs only [understand] German,” explained Deputy Chief Kevin Sharp. “The officers learn to issue their commands in that language.”

Sharp said none of the BART dogs are trained to sniff out bombs or drugs and that they aren’t often needed for searches. In normal situations, he said, the dogs stay in the police car, with the window open, while the officer approaches a suspect. “They’re trained to jump out and attack without any command if they see that the officer is under assault,” he added.

ACLU Police Practices lawyer John Crew found that description alarming. “In other words,” he said, “we have dogs deciding on their own when to use what amounts to lethal force. That’s not a very good idea.”

Avenzino said the training methods used for such dogs “are, to put it mildly, controversial. A dog will do anything to please its owner; if you teach it to attack on command, it’s like loading a gun. In my opinion, it’s very dangerous.”

Jim Chanin, a Berkeley lawyer who has filed several lawsuits over attacks by police dogs, said he sees no good reason for BART to have a canine corps. “The problem is that these dogs are just trained to attack,” he explained. “You can’t use them to search for some kid lost in the BART tunnel.

“If there’s something the BART police do on a regular basis that requires the use of dogs, I certainly can’t see what it is.”

Chief Taylor told the Bay Guardian that dogs provide much less expensive backup than additional sworn officers. Berkeley Police Lt. Tom Grant said he agrees, to a point: “But then you have to pay out those big legal settlements if one of the dogs does something wrong.”

Zomes, Liquid Liquid, Silver Apples: Mi Ami picks the rest of the best of 2008

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zomes-zomes sml.jpg

Another in a series of year-end picks from Bay Area musicians, writers, scene-makers, and music lovers. Here’s the rest of Mi Ami‘s best of 2008; for more of their selections, go here.

MORE 2008 PICKS FROM MI AMI’S DANIEL MARTIN-MCCORMICK AND DAMON PALERMO

– Omar-S, “Psychotic Photosynthesis” (both the original and beatless versions) (FXHE)
– Rhythm Based Lovers, “Boogie Vision”/”Snow Drift” 7-inch (Future Times)
– Group Inerane, Guitars from Agadez (Sublime Frequencies)
– Zomes, Zomes (Holy Mountain)
– Kyle Hall, Worx of Art EP 1 (Wild Oats)
– Liquid Liquid, Liquid Liquid (Grand Royal)
– Theo Parrish, Sound Sculptures Volume 1 (Sound Signature)
– Silver Apples, Selections from the Early Sessions (ChickenCoop Recordings)
– Droids, Star Peace (Barclay)
– La Düsseldorf, Viva (Water)
– Methusalem, Journey into the Unknown (Ariola)

Top tendencies

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› johnny@sfbg.com

1. Sarabande (Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2008)

A masterful film was made in San Francisco by someone who doesn’t just live for the city, but does the city know it? Dorsky’s latest (along with the superb companion piece Winter) screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was part of a retrospective at New York’s Anthology Film Archive, but as far as I know it has yet to have a public screening in his hometown, where he resides on the avenues that separate the filmmakers and film lovers of SF’s streets, and the Film Society in the Presidio. This summer, along with kino21’s Konrad Steiner, I put together a program devoted to Dorsky’s one-time peer and brother filmmaker of sorts, the late Warren Sonbert, whose revelatory explorations of editing and direct vision lead up — in far more frenetic and sprawling sense — to what Dorsky is doing today. Sarabande is the time and place where Dorsky’s devotional cinema reaches the sublime. This country priest of a film critic may be misreading the signs, once again, in making such a claim — but so be it.

2. The Exiles restoration (Kent MacKenzie, USA, 1961)

This night in the life of urban American Indians occupies a one-of-a-kind place and time. The title renders any description superfluous — what form of exile is stronger than the one discovered while drifting through a stolen home? MacKenzie’s movie, with the life-and-death tunnel vision of its gorgeous Weegee-inflected vérité cinematography, revealed a lost United States. Today it’s a haunting marker of a moment before this country’s commercial independent cinema went in countless stupid and phony directions, and of an area of Los Angeles that has vanished. People are rendered disposable. Lonely spirits continue to gather.

3. Wimbledon Men’s Final 2008: Rafael Nadal def. Roger Federer, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7

If you believe what you read and what you see, Raise the Red Lantern and Hero director Zhang Yimou’s production of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony was the spectacle of the year — so dazzling it erased the torch’s troubled travels from what’s left of a collective memory. Television networks have it on rerun, art publications like Artforum can’t stop parsing and usually praising it. (It also garnered an excellent lengthy "movie review" in the magazine Cinema Scope.) Yet Zhang’s endlessly-rehearsed and prefabricated festivities paled in comparison to the marathon drama and dazzling finale of this year’s last match at Wimbledon. The spine-tingling aspect came from fate, not machination, as night crept into a stadium that doesn’t use lights, and the victor’s triumph gave way to an outrageous spontaneous ovation of flashbulbs. It didn’t hurt that Rafael Nadal is the sport’s version of his idol, Zinedine Zidane. Lil Wayne said it best: "I love his motivation and his heart is so big. He leaves it on the court."

4. The Juche Idea (Jim Finn, USA, 2008) and Light is Waiting (Michael Robinson, USA 2007)

Convulsive cinema is radical cinema, one of the reasons the gut-busting aspects of these two movies are vital. Finn’s look at Kim Jong-Il’s film theories (yes, "Dear Leader" is a film theorist with publications to his name) is uncannily timely, from its clips of North Korean stadium parades — shades of Zhang Yimou’s Beijing bombast — to its satirical insight that little separates dreaded (and oft-ridiculous) socialism from the broken-down ghost of late capitalism. Also, best use of ski jumps, rodents, and fly-face sculptures this year. Robinson finds a Satanic kaleidoscope within the fractured pixels of an episode of Full House, making the discovery roughly around the time one of the Olsen twins re-manifested as an angel of death. His statement for the movie still might be the definitive one: "Tropes of video art and family entertainment face off in a luminous orgy neither can survive." Dying of laughter has rarely felt better.

5. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008)

The growing wave of top 10 raves and critic’s awards for Alfredson’s deeply subversive eternal preteen romance is a rare heartening aspect of this year’s feature film malaise.

6. California Company Town (Lee Ann Schmitt, USA, 2008), Viva (Anna Biller, USA, 2007), Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2008), and When It Was Blue (Jennifer Reeves, USA, 2008)


The heart of American cinema in 2008 is as wild and strong as these directors’ visions. Schmitt’s scorched-earth exploration of California’s abandoned past, closing with a final chapter on Silicon Valley that refreshingly breaks its own rules and throws down the gauntlet, is the timeliest movie in a year of ever-accumuutf8g economic disaster. Biller’s tribute to the bodaciously vivid soft-core fantasies of Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger couples enthusiasm with smarts with kinky results. It also features a character whose incessant cackling laughter practically becomes hallucinogenic. Reichardt starts off what could have been just another shaggy dog story by paying tribute to the Polaroid Kidd (she’s also sussed out the new depression), and allows her lead actress’s offscreen back story to silently color in a thousand shades of loss. In sync with Skuli Sverrisson’s incandescent score, Reeves’ movie makes love to nature. The past-tense in the title proves she’s looking ahead.

7. Wild Combination (Matt Wolf, USA, 2008)

In his feature debut, the talented 25-year-old Wolf chooses a documentary subject he has an affinity for, and Russell’s still-blooming musical legacy automatically gives the film a unique soulful beauty. While the pastoral and waterfront imagery is expected, Wolf’s humane insight as an interviewer is a wonder to behold. It results in one of the year’s most emotionally powerful films, when following the reticent Russell could have been futile. The final 10 minutes are a complete rebuke to all the idiotic discourse that rails against (and perhaps even for?) gay marriage.

8. Hunger (Steve McQueen, UK/Ireland, 2008) and Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA, 2008)


Is hunger sated by milk? Can milk alone get rid of hunger? Steve McQueen is the last art star with film director aspirations, and Gus Van Sant is a movieland auteur who always seems to look longingly at the art world’s white cubes. Both have made bio-dramas about political icons: McQueen speculates about the life and death of IRA leader Bobby Sands, while Van Sant, in case you haven’t heard, has realized his fascination with a certain trailblazing gay San Franciscan. Funny, then, that McQueen makes a riveting experimental work that devolves into a standard heroic final passage, while Van Sant crafts a traditional film in drag. In interview, McQueen told me that he thought of Hunger‘s standout confrontational scene as a bit like the 1982 Wimbledon final. (See, tennis is uniquely cinematic.) But his visceral perspective is most effective early on, when scarcely any words are spoken, and his oblique references to everyone from Jean Genet to Van Sant’s old love Alfred Hitchcock don’t seem merely precocious.

9. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA, 2008)

I may have enjoyed this movie because I know next to nothing about (and don’t give a damn about) Mickey Rourke’s misadventures. He arrived in my frame of vision as a modern-day American version of Jean Cocteau’s Beast, blinking out some perfectly round tears when he isn’t pulling staples out of his leathery salon-tanned hide. Look no further than the corrupt endgame of Hulk Hogan — better yet, try to avoid looking at it — for proof that such a figure suits the late-Bush era, though of course Rourke’s brawler has true working-class heart. A working class hero is something to be.

10. Manny Farber, 1917-2008

A lot of critics, ranging from musty well-off bores to young upstarts, wrote tributes to Farber upon his passing. But I have to wonder, who in the current era’s echo chamber of Web-bound opinion has actually learned from him? Ten years ago, there were at least a few voices (Chuck Stephens, Edward E. Crouse) whose writing carried traces of Farber’s spiky structures and wonderfully disorienting shifts in point-of-view. Now, I don’t see hear anyone with a voice like his, but more troubling, I don’t see newer generations of film critics picking up on the fact that he approached the medium as something other than a passive "entertain me" observer. Farber’s vision of film was anything but literal. He was, and is, an artist.

>>More Year in Film 2008

Reel leaders

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MIDNITES FOR MANIACS CURATOR JESSE HAWTHORNE FICKS’ TOP TEN (AND THEN SOME):

1 Downloading Nancy (Johan Renck, USA) People were literally running out of the Sundance screening of this brutally honest exploration of a couple’s complacent relationship. Maria Bello and Rufus Sewell bare all, while Christopher Doyle’s camera traps them in the year’s coldest blue harshness.

2 Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, Spain/USA) After 2007’s Cassandra’s Dream, another tiny gem from the greatest living filmmaker.

3 Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA) Quiet and haunting, this follow-up to Reichardt’s wonderful Old Joy (2006) is a perfect antithesis to Sean Penn’s overly romanticized Into the Wild (2007).

4 Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, France) I cried throughout this unique family drama and immediately called my parents as soon as it was over. Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) is the closest thing I can think of.

5 JCVD. (Mabrouk El Mechri, Belgium/Luxembourg/France) Jean-Claude Van Damme is a genuine genre actor and this deconstructive meta-film lovingly proves it.

6 CJ7 (Stephen Chow, Hong Kong) Overlooked by adults and kids alike, this little Furby comedy is insanity at its most brilliant!

7 Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK) Leigh’s loving tribute to teachers is a dark and lonely place. En-Ra-Ha.

8 Redbelt (David Mamet, USA) Mamet does martial arts: the metaphors are limitless.

9 Funny Games (Michael Haneke (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy) Mean, lean and totally gene!

10 Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, USA/Germany) Sly captures American destruction and cynicism in half the time as PT Anderson’s meandering There Will Be Blood (2007).

Favorite actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (Darren Aronfsky, USA) Ignore Aronfsky’s overly sentimental tendencies and Rourke will blow your mind. Then go watch Tsui Hark’s Double Team (1998) for the ultimate ’90s rumble: Rourke vs. Van Damme!

Favorite actress: Emmanuelle Béart, Vinyan (Fabrice Du Welz, France/Belgium/UK) Wealthy white tourists will stop at nothing to colonize every corner of this planet. Watch Béart and husband Rufus Sewell (see Downloading Nancy) go absolutely nuts as they battle each other and creepy jungle kids in this hypnotic hybrid of The African Queen (1951) and Don’t Look Now (1973).

Favorite animated movie: Wall*E (Andrew Stanton, USA) This unofficial remake of Silent Running (1972) should win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Favorite mumblecore film: Baghead (Duplass Brothers, USA) The brothers continue to nail their jokes hilariously and earnestly.

Favorite trailer: The Class (Laurent Cantet, France) Tears well up every time I see the trailer for this Cannes Golden Palm winner (due in early 2009). Can’t wait.

MICHELLE DEVEREAUX’S "ANTIDOTES TO BROMANCE" LIST

Best pluck: Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)

Worst pluck: Angelina Jolie, Changeling (Clint Eastwood, USA)

Best train wreck: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, USA)

Worst train wreck: Marianna Palka, Good Dick (Marianna Palka, USA)

Best tween vampiress: Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Norway)

Worst teen vampire groupie: Kristen Stewart, Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, USA)

Worst mother in an awful movie: Julianne Moore, Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, Spain/USA/France)

Worst mother in a good movie: Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married

Best outlaw: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007)

Worst outlaw: Angelina Jolie, Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, USA/Germany)

Best Princess Diana impression: Keira Knightly, The Duchess (Saul Dibb, UK/France/Italy)

Better than a Princess Diana impression: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA)

ERIK MORSE’S TOP TEN:

1 My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)

2 Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)

3 The long-awaited DVD release of Stranded in Canton (William Eggleston, USA, 1974)

4 The Man From London (Béla Tarr, France/Germany/Hungary)

5 Man on Wire (James Marsh, UK/USA)

6 Tell No One (Guillaume Canet, France)

7 The Bank Job (Roger Donaldson, UK)

8 Alexandra (Alexander Sokurov, Russia/France)

9 In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, UK/USA)

10 The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA)

HEIDI ATWAL’S TOP TEN:

1 Towelhead (Alan Ball, USA)

2 The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)

3 Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)

4 Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, UK/India)

5 Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, USA)

6 Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA, 2007)

7 Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, USA)

8 Reprise (Joachim Trier, Norway, 2006)

9 Gomorra (Matteo Garrone, Italy)

10 Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, Spain/USA)

JIM FINN’S TOP 10 MOVIES LOVED AT 2008 FILM FESTIVALS AROUND PLANET EARTH

1 The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)

2 Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina)

3 Lion’s Den (Pablo Trapero, Argentina)

4 Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, Italy)

5 On the Assassination of the President (Adam Keker, USA)

6 United Red Army (Koji Wakamatsu, Japan, 2007)

7 Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (Wang Bing, China, 2007)

8 Observando el Cielo (Jeanne Liotta, USA, 2007)

9 Brilliant Noise (Semiconductor, USA, 2006)

10 Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 1999)

Jim Finn’s films include The Juche Idea, La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, and Interkosmos.

ROSS LIPMAN’S TOP 10

As I’m usually absorbed in restoration and production, my film viewing is erratic, and I’m hopelessly unable to keep up with all the films I’d like to see. Thus this list is not so much a critical 10 "best" list as it is a list of new works which, having somehow cut through the clutter and pulled me to the theater, struck me as excellent — each one in a unique way. I’ve allowed it to include "film events" of 2008, enabling notable restorations and experimental works to stand alongside conventional releases.

In alphabetical order:

Absurdistan (Veit Heimer, Germany/Azerbaijan)

Four Nights with Anna (Jerzy Skolimowki, Poland/France)

Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)

Man on Wire (James Marsh, UK/USA)

Once Upon a Time in the West restoration (Sergio Leone, Italy/US, 1968)

The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona, Mexico/Spain, 2007)

Quiet Chaos (Antonio Luigi Grimaldi, Italy/UK)

Song of Sparrows (Majid Majidi, Iran)

Think of Me First as a Person restoration (George Ingmire, USA, 1975)

Untitled film projector performance (Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Olivia Block, USA)

Ross Lipman’s recent film restorations include Killer of Sheep, The Exiles, and Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle.

MICHAEL ROBINSON’S TOP 10

1 Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, 2007)

2 Body ÷ Mind + 7 = Spirit (Shana Moulton, USA, 2007)

3 Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)

4 Origin of the Species, (Ben Rivers, UK)

5 La France, (Serge Bozon, France, 2007)

6 False Aging (Lewis Klahr, USA)

7 Paranoid Park and Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA, 2007 and 2008)

8 Lost, season four (Jack Bender and others, USA)

9 Singing Biscotts (Luther Price, USA)

10 The Fall (Tarsem Singh, India/UK/USA)

Michael Robinson’s films include Light Is Waiting and The General Returns From One Place to Another.

MATT WOLF’S TOP 10

1 Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)

For the fake political ephemera; the meticulous reconstruction of Harvey’s camera shop; DP Harris Savides’ recurring visions of San Francisco; and Sean Penn’s queer, Jew-y affectation.

2 RR (James Benning, USA, 2007)

A hypnotic structural film about railroads and the romantic landscapes they traverse, devoid of signs from contemporary life.

3 The Order of Myths (Margaret Brown, USA)

A lovingly crafted documentary about Mardi Gras traditions and race in Mobile, Alabama.

4 Happy Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)

For Sally Hawkins’ stellar performance as a recklessly childlike schoolteacher, who transforms into a fearless adult.

5 Maggie in Wonderland (Mark Hammarberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark, and Beatrice Maggie Andersson, Sweden)

Swedish documentary about an African immigrant, Maggie, which mixes her poignant video diary with savvy reenactments. A fertile cross between Lukas Moodysson and Spencer Nakasako.

6 Tearoom (William E. Jones, USA, 1962/2007)

An evocative resurrection of archival police footage from the 1960s of public sex crackdowns in the Midwest.

7 Derek (Isaac Julien, UK)

Tilda Swinton’s absorbing monologue about queer-punk filmmaker Derek Jarman thrusts his radical work into the present.

8 Reprise (Joachim Trier, Norway, 2006)

A bombastic film about the literary ambitions of a group of post-punk boys in Oslo.

9 Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA)

The sobering alternative to the pre-recession revelry of Sex and the City: The Movie.

10 A Mother’s Promise: Barack Obama Bio Film (David Guggenheim, USA)

Romantic Barack-oganda screened during the DNC.

Matt Wolf is the director of Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell.

BARRY JENKINS’ TOP 10

1 Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore’eda, Japan)

Perfection.

2 Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA)

One of the most unbridled films ever funded by Hollywood coffers. Thank you, Sidney Kimmel.

3 Useless (Jia Zhangke, China, 2007)

Yerba Buena Center. You know, they show films there. And usually, they’re pretty fuckin’ crucial.

4 Flight of The Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, France, 2007)

A dream.

5 Phone Banking for Obama @ Four Barrel Coffee

Not cinema, but visual storytelling nonetheless: when Jeremy Tooker brought ironing boards and voter rolls into his glittering café for a few exemplary weeks, we glimpsed a version of San Francisco where shiny new things brought us together rather than separated us.

6 The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude (Josh Weinberg, USA)

My favorite short of the year. Truly independent "cinema."

7 Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Gemany/France/Israel/USA)

Animation is the ideal medium for the recollection of memories. This film proves it.

8 Che (Steven Soderbergh, Spain/France/USA)

Someday, we’ll look upon Soderbergh’s effort for the sum of its parts: RED.

9 Craig Baldwin interview with SF360 Movie Scene

The most exciting four minutes of local film-speak in all of ’08.

10 There Will Be Bud (P.O.T. Anderson, USA)

Old-school spoofing done right.

Barry Jenkins is the director of Medicine for Melancholy.


>>More Year in Film 2008

“Pinball as Art and the Art of the Pinball”

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PREVIEW One Bay Area artwork that made an impression in 2008 was William T. Wiley’s Punball: Only One Earth. For the centerpiece of a large solo show at Electric Works, Wiley took a 1964 pinball machine from Gottlieb and redesigned it — with characteristic humor — into a global warming game in which "eye scabs [were] melting" and (to quote a review by Guardian contributor Ari Messer) "globes [were] drunk on their own worldliness."

Wiley’s machine isn’t included in "Pinball as Art and the Art of Pinball" at Lucky Ju Ju Gallery, but curator Michael Schiess has organized an 11-artist group collection of pinball machines, paintings, photographs, back-glasses, and playfields. He’s out to demonstrate that the medium exemplifies art just as thoroughly and effectively as other popular forms like comic books or cartoons. The venue is ideal: Lucky Ju Ju Pinball is a paradise for vintage pinball and — after some arresting past shows such as photographer Linda Kramer’s "American Carnival Portraits" — this is its gallery’s 50th exhibition.

PINBALL AS ART AND ART AS PINBALL Through Feb. 4, 2009. Fri.–Sat. 6 p.m.–midnight (party Wed/31, 6 p.m.–1 a.m.), $5–$10. Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery, 713 Santa Clara, Alameda. (510) 205-9793, www.ujuju.com

Best in show

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YEAR IN REVIEW The time is right to pay tribute to the Bay Area’s artists and galleries. Without further ado, here’s an alphabetical guide to 2008’s delights.

A is for the amazing SF art opening section at www.artbusiness.com; and for Ryan Alexiev, whose "Land of a Million Cereals," at Mission 17, hit Larry King and Damien Hirst with sugary comedy

B is Todd Bura, whose "Misfits" at Triple Base used minimalism to make one see things anew; Jonathan Burstein, whose "Visage" at Patricia Sweetow Gallery turned museum recycling into the year’s best portraiture; and Luke Butler, whose "Invasion," at [2nd floor projects] tickled with Spock landscapes and Republican presidential beefcake

C is for Victor Cartagena, "The Invisible Nation," at Galeria de la Raza; Julie Chang, "Ox-herding," at Hosfelt Gallery; Ryan Coffey, "Recent Works," at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery

D is for Lauren DiCioccio, threading through the death of the newspaper era in "Lauren DiCioccio, Aliza Lelah," at Jack Fischer Gallery; and Emory Douglas, making his own activist news in "The Long Memory: Works Past and Present," at Babylon Falling

E is for David Enos, Frank Haines, and Wayne Smith, pronouncing "Zen With a Lisp," at [2nd floor projects]; and 871 Fine Arts, the Bay’s best art books, now at a new site.

F is for Matt Furie and his "Heads," at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery; and "Nature Freak," at Jack Fischer Gallery

G is for the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, who — with help from a Paris Hilton Endowment for the Tortilla Arts — served up "Tortilla Art for the 21st Century," at SomArts Gallery

H is for Jay Howell, who teamed up with Matt Furie for Receiver Gallery’s "Return to Innocence," and brought curatorial goodness to 111 Minna

I is for inventiveness

J is for Bill Jenkins, whose self-titled show at Jancar Jones Gallery was the understatement of the year; and Ian Johnson, whose "Other Voices/Other Rooms" turned jazz into color bursts at Park Life

K is for the brother duo George and Mike Kuchar, presenting dinosaur and dog love via "paintingsdrawingspaintingsdrawingspaintings," at [2nd floor projects]

L is for Ruth Laskey, and the amazing intricacy of her "7 Weavings," at Ratio 3; and Frank Lyon and David Wilson, "Enter the Center," at Eleanor Harwood Gallery

M is for Dave Muller, " Medium (Six Times,)" at Anthony Meier Fine Arts

N is for nothing

O is for Open Studios

P is for Nathan Phelps, turning a corner from white to black with "The Neti Project," at 20 GOTO 10 Gallery

Q is for Queen’s Nails Annex, which saw the future with Maximo Gonzalez’s "Recession: The Alternative Economies of Maximo Gonzalez."

R is for onetime Bay Area queer punk Gwenaël Rattke, bringing collage back with "Nouveau Système," at Ping Pong Gallery; and Lordy Rodriguez, blasting us with color in "201 Drawings," at Hosfelt Gallery

S is for Bott Scarry, tweaking op art and his name with "Weezing the Juice," at CCRider

T is for David Tomb, heeding the call of the wild with the beautiful paintings of "Birds of the Sierra Madre," at Electric Works

U is for underground art that you keep at home and show only to friends

V is for Jacques Villegle, whose "Decollage from 1965-2006" brought the art of torn posters to Modernism Gallery

W is for William T. Wiley, turning ecology into pinball at Electric Works’ "Punball — Only One Earth"; and Michael Wolf, whose "The Transparent City" eyed city-of-now Chicago, at Robert Koch Gallery

X marks the spot

Y is for Will Yackulic, "A Prompt and Perfect Cure," at Gregory Lind Gallery

Z is for "Zebulun," by Goldie winner Kamau Patton, at Queen’s Nails Annex; and for all the zzzs needed to rest up before the barrage of Bay Area art in 2009.

Between Oakland soul and the ‘Black Sea’: A top 10 from Jeff Ray of Mission Creek Music Festival

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tomutonto.jpg
Itchy and scratchy: Tomutonttu’s Ultra Eczema art.

‘Tis the season – here’s another in a series of top 10s from Bay Area musicians, writers, and scenesters.

JEFF RAY’S TOP 10

– Favorite album: Fennesz, Black Sea (Touch)
Should be renamed Endless Winter. So incredibly lush and can warm up any long Ukrainian winter night.
– Favorite band: MGMT
Fun, danceable, catchy but not stupid.
– Favorite music series, “Relay” at the Lab, Oct. 22–Nov. 15
Great experimental music series hosted by the Lab. Folks from Finland and Fonal Records, Tomutonttu, Thuja, and Loren Chasse all performed, along with others. The sonic works were inspiring to listen to and watch. The Lab is awesome: www.thelab.org.

Steps that impressed

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Looking back over the past year always entails a look forward, and perhaps the best part of 2008 is that in 2009 there is at least the possibility of the arts becoming part of the national dialogue. Two reasons warrant such optimism: during the Great Depression, people still wrote books, went to the theater and movies, and created canvasses. Modern dance went through its most crucial development in that time.

Furthermore, President-elect Barack Obama actually has an arts agenda — the first president to have one in a long while. That alone is encouraging. As for 2008, out of dozens of experiences, some inevitably have imprinted themselves more than others.

**If I had to choose the single most important event of the year, it would have to be the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s two-week residency at Cal Performances, culminating with Craneway Event at a former Ford auto plant in Richmond. It was a quiet, luminous, and utterly unforgettable Sunday afternoon of being in the presence of genius.

**San Francisco Ballet’s commissioning of 10 works by 10 choreographers in honor of its 75th anniversary could have been more adventuresome. Still, it signaled a commitment to the future. Margaret Jenkins’ and Julia Adam’s pieces were not critically acclaimed, but both choreographers dared to go outside the conventionally balletic.

**Ballet San Jose impressed with first-rate programming. Just Balanchine, Swan Lake, The Firebird, and The Toreador highlighted just how fine a group of dancers they are — with an excellent repertoire the South Bay can call its own.

**Shelley Senter set Trisha Brown’s 1979 hauntingly beautiful Glacial Decoy before the professionals and graduate students of Mills College dance department, titling it Glacial Decoy Redux. Adapted for a smaller stage, the 30-year-old piece looked as pristine and daring as ever.

**Joe Goode Performance Group made Wonderboy after a sabbatical spent recharging batteries with travel. With its touching tenderness and poignant exploration of loneliness and community, Wonderboy was vintage Goode, though in its use of the material — dance in particular, but also text, music, and puppetry — it was as fresh and imaginative as anything he has created.

**Former Joe Goode dancer, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People’s edgy and audience-challenging Retrospective Exhibitionist asked the year’s most intellectually trenchant questions about the nature of performance, perception, and theatrical manipulation.

**Hip-hop artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s the break/s: a mixtape for stage proved to be another of his meditations on what it means to be an African American, a man, a father, and a human being. Using a travel diary approach, he integrated language, music, and movement into a self-effacing monologue that was as freewheeling yet formally cogent.

**Certainly the most intriguing, but least promising, collaboration happened between Janice Garrett and Dancers and the Del Sol String Quartet. The idea was to have dancers and musicians physically interact with each other. The result was the sparkling StringWreck, a spirited entertainment with musical as well as choreographic substance.

**Jess Curtis/Gravity’s imagistic Symmetry Study #7 for Curtis and Maria Francesca Scaroni paired the two nude dancers in a structured contact improvisation in which their interlocking bodies became a piece of sculpture trying to find its form. They used the body at its most basic: weight, mass, and skeletal structure.

**The San Francisco International Arts Festival brought the year’s best surprise: Berkeley’s Art Street Theater’s US premiere of Yes, Yes to Moscow, a wistful and beautifully imaginative dance theater work that picked up where Chekhov’s Three Sisters left off. If you have ever wondered what would have happened if Olga, Masha, and Irina had made it Moscow, go and see Yes — if it ever returns.

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