Art

Tongues and tales

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The unconscious, the underworld, the undead — what is it that under-the-mattress anxiety points to, exactly? And what might it have to do with a pack of powdered French fops in Louis Seize costumes? Given the blissful nonchalance with which Dark Porch Theater’s Under the Bed tackles that thing called plot, it’s probably best not to mull it over too much. Suffice it to say that all of the above and a live band serve as lower bunkmates to Leonard Pinklestein (Chris Carlone), a World War II soldier crashed out on a fluffy brass bed, the limbo life raft for a lost soul that slipped its earthly mooring on the beaches of Normandy.

It’s a testament to the grace in some brands of lunacy that this swift, enjoyably madcap dance musical — a self-styled fairy tale set in purgatory, created and directed by Margery Fairchild and copresented with SafeHouse at a new Howard Street venue known pretty aptly as the Garage — can seem so endlessly expansive on an otherwise cramped (if nicely atmospheric) stage. Under the Bed not only draws a dozen or more bodies from beneath its title furniture; it also sets them exuberantly in motion.

But back to that willful plot: run aground on a patch of purgatory under the management of a sort of manic night nurse named Harriette D. (a comically adept Fairchild), Leonard finds himself the pawn in a battle royal between his gleaming but slightly sinister hostess and the Greek goddess and maiden huntress Artemis (a vigorous Alexis Blade Perry). The latter storms Hades, or whatever, with the intention of reuniting Leonard and his lost love, the cheerful would-be revolutionary Rosemary Short (Hilde Susan Jaegtnes), who arrives soon after him as another Lethe-headed amnesiac, though with raised fist ever at the ready.

Harriette, who for assistance is wont to call on a member of the band, the somewhat reluctant Mr. M. (a laid-back Patrick Simms), also conjures the French courtiers previously mentioned. When not mincing, they act as willing executioners and wield the same device that left such prominent scar lines on their own effete necks.

A fairy tale naturally allows for all manner of incongruities, and Under the Bed‘s just sweeten the pot. No doubt the unusually collaborative nature of the production has something to do with them, as do a winsome score (composed of more than a dozen droll and dreamy songs), eclectic choreography (by Fairchild and Perry), and some nicely offbeat dialogue. Add to that the production’s generally sharp and always game performances, beginning with a fine, versatile turn by Carlone as the slumbering soldier, and the unlikely spell cast by Under the Bed is complete.

ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE


Art in Artemisia is a dynamic, multifaceted force, skillfully and thoughtfully realized in just about every aspect of the Dell’Arte Company’s thought-provoking dramatic study exploring the life and work of the 17th-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (Barbara Geary). In director Giulio Cesare Perrone’s well-acted and visually striking production, which closed its run at the Magic Theatre last weekend, the rape of the artist by Agostino Tassi and the sensational trial that followed in 1612 — as well as the biblical story of Judith, whose beheading of Holofernes served as a heroic subject for Gentileschi at a time when female painters were rare and deemed unable to handle such material — become the ever-present, intervening background to a physically choreographed dialogue set in 1635 between Artemisia and her model Giulia (Keight Gleason).

If the script (cowritten by Perrone and Geary) veers at points into an awkward mesh of heightened speech and contemporary frankness, the production design carries the theme of art’s transformative power in several directions. From the cleverly abstract yet functional use of painting materials and everyday objects in Perrone’s scenic design to Greta Welsh’s dynamic chiaroscuro lighting, composer Youn Joo Sim’s transporting score, and choreographer Yong Zoo Lee’s incorporation of the histrionic postures of the painter’s canvases, Artemisia‘s mise-en-scène elaborates a vision of symbolic and psychic redress that echoes down the centuries. *

UNDER THE BED — A FAIRYTALE SET IN PURGATORY

Thurs/7–Sat/9, 8 p.m.; Sun/10, 7 p.m., $12–$20

The Garage

975 Howard, SF

(415) 793-8030

darkporchtheater@gmail.com

Only human

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Great art has a moral force that ennobles anyone it touches. Not that Joe Goode’s new Humansville, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is that great. But the work nudges at so many raw spots in a lovingly healing way that you end up believing there may yet be hope for human nature, at least until you leave the theater. Still, Goode’s latest essay on acceptance and the embracing of frailty left me with conflicting emotions.

To longtime Goode watchers — and the night I attended, the YBCA’s Forum seemed packed with them — Humansville‘s inhabitants may have looked vaguely familiar: the wistful, lonely guy (Melecio Estrella) stretched out poolside; the poodle-skirted, Doris Day–ish country inhabitant (Jessica Swanson); the preternaturally mismatched couple (Marit Brook-Kothlow and Felipe Barrueto-Cabello); and the two tough-luck buddies (Estrella and Alexander Zendzian). We know them; we have met them before. But Goode never seems to tire of making us look at them again. Yet because he does it with such clear-sighted wit and compassion, we will probably continue to cherish them and recognize ourselves in these hapless strugglers for sanity.

Humansville is divided into two parts. At first the audience walks around dioramas devised by designer Erik Flatmo and video artist Austin Forbord. One rains words, another is all furry softness, a third is composed of chintz and flowers. In each, dancers present episodes of disconnectedness. As you return to them, the sections begin to blend. You shudder as you hear Patricia West bitching about a missed dinner reservation while Zendzian and Estrella crash their bodies against their cell walls. Swanson’s relationship hysterics bleed into Brook-Kothlow’s and Barrueto-Cabello’s stony silences. This roundabout of foolishness, pain, and absurdity works well despite being a vaguely voyeuristic experience. Swanson’s TV news–inspired echo of a mourning mother on the video screen below her is particularly chilling.

The more conventionally choreographed second half elaborates on what went before. Estrella laments the death of his fellow prisoner; Brook-Kothlow endlessly nuzzles up to a tormented Barrueto-Cabello; Swanson wails about a nest being a launching pad. But the choreography falls short — it is bland and stiff. The lifts, reaches, and stretches of shifting connections look too unmotivated to suggest the fragile community proposed by Brook-Kothlow’s hymn about an empathy that enables you to step out of yourself. Not even Joan Jeanrenaud’s delicate cello, weaving in and out of the hour-long show, made me buy it.

HUMANSVILLE

Thurs/7–Sat/9, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., $19–$25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Living in the moment

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Anat Cohen, an Israeli-born New Yorker often found working in Latin bands, seems intent on leaving no jazz style unexplored. Whether on tenor saxophone — essaying the opening melody of Cuban drummer Francisco Mela’s straight-ahead "John Ramsay" from his 2006 album Melao (Ayva) — or soloing on clarinet with the Brazilian Choro Ensemble, Cohen seems to intuitively absorb the musical language she’s engaged in. With a burgeoning reputation preceding her and two new albums in tow, she comes to Yoshi’s this week, performing alongside guitarist Vic Juris and drummer Daniel Freedman. Special guest pianist Jason Lindner, Cohen’s longtime colleague and mentor, will sit in on June 6.

Earlier this year Cohen released Poetica, a sensuous, clarinet-based album augmented with a string quartet, simultaneously with Noir, a film score–ready big-band full-length on which she played mostly saxophone. She produced both records and released them on her up-and-coming independent label, Anzic.

Cohen spoke by phone from Tel Aviv, where she was preparing for a concert with her two brothers, saxophonist Yuval and trumpet player Avishai. The latter sat in with the SFJAZZ Collective this spring when Dave Douglas was unavailable.

She laughed about releasing two albums at once, saying it has raised eyebrows even though that wasn’t her intent. "They’re very different, but it just makes sense to put them out together because they show different musical adventures for me," she said. "Different musical personalities on the instruments and different approaches to the music."

She began Noir almost a year before Poetica, but the big-band recording was more complex to put together. Cohen and coproducer Oded Lev-Ari, who wrote the arrangements, had gathered some musicians to try the music out. The results sounded good, and they wanted to record it, but they needed more music to complete the album.

"It’s a longer process, obviously, because it’s a 15-piece band, and it just takes longer to write everything," Cohen said. The tunes are a travelogue of cultures reflecting Cohen’s journeys that opens with Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona’s "La Comparsa," touches on Sun Ra and Hobart Dotson’s "You Never Told Me That You Care," and closes with music by a couple of Brazilian icons: Hermeto Pascual’s "Bebe!" and Pixinguinha’s "Ingênuo." There are also American pop songs such as "Cry Me a River" and "No Moon at All."

During the making of Noir, Cohen decided she’d like to make a clarinet album and enlisted friend and bassist Omer Avitale to write string arrangements. Poetica includes the old Israeli songs "Hofim" and "Eyn Gedi," the Jacques Brel song "La Chanson des Vieux Amants," and a lush arrangement of John Coltrane’s "Lonnie’s Lament."

Cohen called Coltrane her "constant inspiration." "I’ve tried along my musical path to really be open," she explained. "I have, of course, a passion for the traditionals of the American songbook and the American art form called jazz. But I also fell in love along the way with a lot of world music."

She’s the only non-Brazilian member of the Choro Ensemble but has toured the country several times, taking the opportunity to learn its language, culture, and music.

She’s also immersed herself in the rich musical heritages of Venezuela and Colombia. "I got stuck in Colombia during 9/11, and I couldn’t come back to New York," Cohen recalled. "I stayed there for three weeks, and I learned so much about Colombian music. It was a great adventure, really living the moment."

ANAT COHEN

Wed/6–Thurs/7, 8 and 10 p.m., $10

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West

Jack London Square, Oakl.

(510) 238-9200

www.yoshis.com

Mission: school

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› johnny@sfbg.com

REVIEW When I walked into the Berkeley Art Museum for a first look at Alicia McCarthy’s contribution to "Fer-ma-ta," the 37th annual UC Berkeley MFA graduate exhibition, I was given a small stash of pencils — the kind you use to mark scores in bowling or putt-putt golf. Note-taking is allowed in museum spaces, but pens are a definite no-no. The self-consciousness brought about by such a rule and the gift of the pencils only served to enhance the direct address of McCarthy’s work. The artist has a flair for such modest tools — in fact, her prismatic use of colored pencils counts as one of the most imitated and influential Bay Area art practices of the past decade. Also, she isn’t one to kowtow to the conventions of art-market packaging and presentation.

That trait again became clear the minute I approached McCarthy’s section of the group show. She has 11 works fixed — sometimes nailed directly — to the museum walls, but in addition she’s placed an old wooden chair before them in a manner that presents viewers with the option of sitting on one piece of art to view others. The chair is, like most of McCarthy’s material, a found object, and it isn’t going to be brought to Antiques Roadshow anytime soon. Perhaps it’s a piece of classroom furniture from a bygone era — though, curiously, it’s on rickety, small wheels — and its surface is marked with rings. A collector or consumer would view those marks as water damage, but in McCarthy’s art, such wear and tear only adds texture. Here, as in other shows, her drawings are on already used surfaces: construction or packaging paper and slabs of wood. The use of found material, while welcome in an ecological sense, has become a cliché in Bay Area circles and beyond in the indie pop Found magazine culture. But McCarthy still does it better than others who’ve come in her wake. Even more than the forebears who practiced assemblage in the ’60s, she taps into the expressiveness of an object’s wrinkled history, so the splatter pattern of a coffee stain can function like a splash of watercolor.

What happens when an artist associated with the core of the Mission School — and perhaps the most undersung — goes back to school? Some of McCarthy’s livelier contributions at BAM bounce free from that question’s limitations to play with the very idea of education. Amusingly, I found myself using the little pencils given to me by the museum to take notes on — and even re-create to a degree — a trio of McCarthy pencil and ink drawings that could be categorized as classroom notes and doodles. In McCarthy’s hands, the idea of turning one’s study notes into art isn’t smart-ass or lazy but critical, humorous, and kinetically lively, producing words and scrawls that dance across the page. Andy Warhol’s churchgoing habits, characteristics of fascism and Marxism, and ideas about theories and practice orbit around various forms of the show’s chief motif: a series of snaky lines that almost but don’t quite form a ball shape similar to that of tangled yarn or metal coils, most featuring a depth of field that it’s easy to become lost within.

As Artforum welcomes the return of op art with a pair of cover essays about large survey shows in Columbus, Ohio, and Frankfurt, Germany, it’s worth contemputf8g the op art undertow that’s long been present within some of McCarthy’s (as always) untitled work. While it isn’t as noticeable or dominant as in the drawings and other pieces made by her friend Xylor Jane, it is there, particularly in a black-and-white doors-of-perception piece at the BAM show that might be rendered in Magic Marker. For McCarthy, fine execution isn’t the point so much as dedication to vision. She achieves a lo-fi and distinctly low-key — some might say junior high Trapper Keeper — version of the hallucinatory effect achieved when one gazes too long, and thus long enough, at the waves of lines in Bridget Riley’s famous 1964 polymer–on–composition board piece Current.

The upfront or subliminal presence of Riley-like op art — and color theory — elements within work by some of the main female artists associated with the Mission School is worth noting in light of the enjoyable pair of May Artforum essays that single Riley out for praise while suggesting that op art has been absent, aside from pure kitsch manifestations, since its ’60s heyday. In fact, a case could be made that artists such as McCarthy and Jane have knowingly or unknowingly taken up some of Riley’s practice in modest ways, adapting it as one aspect within their own work. Kitsch has nothing to do with it, but feminism and a shared creative sensibility might.

Among the work by developing artists at the UC Berkeley MFA show (Jenifer K. Wofford’s impressive graphic novel–like wall of paintings; Ali Dadgar’s screen prints on stones), McCarthy’s section doesn’t call out for attention so much as reward those who are present enough to pay it, and in that sense, her closest kin within the exhibition is probably Bill Jenkins, whose contributions confront the blindness of an average seven-seconds-a-piece stroll through a museum. Like McCarthy’s chair, they suggest that the world needs heightened perception more than it needs another dazzling, hi-fi, expensive work of art. *

FER-MA-TA

Through Sun/10

Wed. and Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; $4–$8 (free first Thurs.)

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Pet projects

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

"If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men."

St. Francis of Assisi

His name is Sylvester. He’s quite handsome and charismatic, for a cat.

Sylvester is believed to be about eight years old, and the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been his home since last July. He’s a simple domestic shorthair, with a jet-black coat aside from some snow-white blotches on his chest and left arm.

Also doing time at the SPCA is a slightly bashful orange tabby named Jitters, who has awaited a home since April. A long-haired tortie named Minna, with somber green eyes and a splash of umber on her nose, has been at the SPCA for a year and a half.

In many cities Sylvester, Jitters, and Minna would be on death row. In San Francisco they’re guaranteed a chance to live until they find a family, as long as they’re deemed adoptable by the SPCA and don’t develop a life-threatening disease or unmanageable behavior traits. They are the legacy of pioneering former president Richard Avanzino, regarded by most as the originator of the national "no-kill" movement.

Avanzino spent 20 years making the San Francisco SPCA a national leader in saving animals, including forging a pact with the city in 1994 to work toward guaranteeing every adoptable cat and dog a home, a remarkable promise during a time when few places across the nation were willing to make saving the lives of companion animals a priority. Most shelters euthanized tens of thousands of kittens, puppies, dogs, and cats every year to save space and money. Quite a few still do.

But after Avanzino left in 1998 to spread his no-kill philosophy nationally through the Alameda-based nonprofit Maddie’s Fund, the local SPCA has steadily retreated from the cutting edge. Rather than continuing to push toward the goal of saving all the animals, the two presidents who succeeded Avanzino have focused the organization on a private hospital project that has turned into an expensive boondoggle that’s sapped the organization’s energy and resources and angered the local veterinary community.

"San Francisco likes to say it’s the safest city in the United States to be a dog or cat," said Nathan Winograd, a widely recognized proponent of the no-kill philosophy and former director of operations for the SPCA, who left the organization in late 2000. "That is no longer true. There are other cities that are doing much more in terms of lifesaving. That’s one of the reasons I chose to leave San Francisco."

The SPCA’s eighth president, Jan McHugh-Smith, finally arrived in April after the shelter had spent nine months with an interim head, and the question now is whether she can turn this troubled yet still revered organization around.

Only in recent years have cities nationwide begun enacting policies intended to stop — or at least dramatically slow — the senseless slaughter of animals that are the defenseless victims of the public’s love of adorable newborns and specialized breeds. That trend started in San Francisco.

Avanzino calls welfare groups like the SPCA "safety valves" that relieve pressure on animal control officers and traditional municipal shelters. In an editorial last year for Maddie’s Fund he wrote that saving healthy and treatable shelter pets is the "minimum no-kill standard" and that communities today should strive to go beyond no-kill.

"Tompkins County, New York is a case in point," he wrote. "The Tompkins County SPCA maintains a 92 percent live-release rate. It saves all of the county’s healthy and treatable shelter pets and feral cats. Should this be our life-saving goal? I think it should."

Tompkins County, it turns out, is exactly where Winograd went after leaving the San Francisco SPCA in frustration. "When I left, we just had to save 500 or 600 more treatable dogs and cats every year, and we would have been just about there," Winograd said. "We were a whisper away."

Edwin Sayres, who succeeded Avanzino as president, told the shelter’s board of directors that the SPCA could remain in the vanguard of reducing pet overpopulation and saving abandoned animals while at the same time building a prestigious, state-of-the-art veterinary hospital that would rival one of the few other comparable facilities anywhere in the United States, Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston.

The Massachusetts SPCA, however, spends millions of dollars more each year simply running its three Angell facilities than the San Francisco SPCA’s entire budget. Originally expected to cost just $15 million, the price tag of the latter’s Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center has now shot to $32 million. The SPCA will finally break ground on the new facility in October.

Critics feared the hospital idea was a potential disaster, and they complained that the nonprofit had become top-heavy under Sayres. They pointed to the shelter’s money trail, detailed in its required annual tax-exempt disclosure forms, to emphasize where they believed the shelter’s priorities now rested.

While earning $200,000 a year in salary and benefits, Sayres created new executive positions that cost the shelter hundreds of thousands of dollars more in compensation than was spent during Avanzino’s tenure. That might not have seemed like such a big deal in 1997, when the nonprofit was taking in several million dollars more in donations from the public than it was spending to cover operational expenses.

But by the end of the 2002 fiscal year, when donations to the SPCA and many nonprofits were lagging, the shelter had fallen $2 million short of covering its $14 million in expenses, which had climbed by the millions annually.

At the same time, the city failed to reach its goal of releasing alive 75 percent of the animals it impounded; 2,075 animals were killed that year for a variety of reasons, according to city records. The SPCA also missed its target that year for the number of animals it would take in from the city’s municipal shelter and make available for new homes through its unique adoption center.

Meanwhile, several cities across the country were embracing the no-kill cause, inspired at least initially by San Francisco’s example. They did so with considerable help from Winograd, who worked briefly as a Marin County prosecutor before traversing the nation to help shelters come as reasonably close to no-kill as they could.

Tompkins County; Charlottesville, Va.; and Reno are all boasting live-release rates of around 90 percent after promising to find homes for adoptable and treatable animals, the latter a key category that includes animals with behavior problems, serious illnesses, and injuries that require extra care.

In other words, as San Francisco struggled to maintain its sense of direction, other communities began to implement and even redefine the meaning of no-kill. San Francisco has averaged a 70 to 80 percent save rate annually for several years — and the difference between this and what Winograd and others have hoped for the city of St. Francis means hundreds of animals being killed each year.

While avoiding any searing critique of the shelter, Avanzino told the Guardian that he perhaps would not have promoted the hospital scheme. However, he said, plenty of his own bold ideas at the SPCA once made him a target of criticism, like the shelter’s posh $7 million adoption center, composed of 86 kitty condos and doggy apartments.

"I know it sounds like I’m ducking the issue, and I am," Avanzino told us. "But the bottom line is that new leadership and the policy makers for the organization believe with everything in their being that this is an important next step for the San Francisco SPCA and [that] it is going to do more to help the animals. They have not kept me in the loop."

Nonetheless, when Sayres led the nonprofit, between 1999 and 2003, it spent at least $1.7 million just on architects and veterinary consultants moving the planned hospital forward. Meanwhile, programs like humane education and law and advocacy, the latter at one time a half-million-dollar program, saw deep cuts in their budgets or simply shriveled up and disappeared altogether, while public relations and promotional expenses retained brisk support to the tune of at least $1 million annually for several years before those expenditures were finally trimmed too.

Further, the shelter’s 17-member board of directors granted Sayres a $400,000 home loan and gave him 30 years to pay it off, although he cleared the debt before leaving for a new job in June 2003 at the American SPCA, which is independent of the San Francisco SPCA.

As the summertime explosion of kittens loomed in the spring of 2003 and Sayres prepared to leave, he sent an e-mail to the SPCA’s nearly 1,000 volunteers blaming the economy’s ongoing downturn and a 10 percent drop in public donations for the shelter’s money woes. The jobs of at least 15 employees were cut, and others were merged into one, including two major volunteer-coordinating positions.

In e-mails circuutf8g at the time, copies of which we’ve obtained, volunteers agonized over whether to inform the press of what was going on internally, nearing the point of insurrection over cuts in shelter services — including a one-of-a-kind dog behavior and training program. The truth, some feared, would turn donors away. Some argued that executive salaries should be trimmed to save money before ground-level staffers were dispatched with pink slips. Others were furious over the planned hospital’s burgeoning costs.

"I certainly think a new center is exciting and overdue," a volunteer wrote to Sayres. "But it annoys me [to] no end to see billboards all over the city about the center and nothing about the situation we’re in."

Sayres never responded to several detailed questions sent to him by e-mail and was unable to make time for a phone interview. But he admitted in a 2002 San Francisco Business Times story that he’d "tried to move forward with my vision too quickly."

"I should have taken more time to listen and absorb the culture," Sayres said in the story. "Now I’m more mindful of the contributions that people have made here over the decades."

New president McHugh-Smith insists the shelter can still balance the hospital plan’s most recent incarnation and a continued focus on the agency’s raison d’être: preventing cruelty to animals.

"One thing I’m really proud of is our hospital provides one and a half million dollars’ worth of charity care to homeless animals and people who can’t afford veterinary care for their pets," McHugh-Smith said. "What a critical service for this city. There are a lot of people here who can’t afford the care their animals need. They shouldn’t have to give up their pets for that."

Recent troubles aside, even the SPCA’s fiercest critics contend that much of the nation still lives deep in the shadows of its extraordinary achievements.

The San Francisco SPCA was officially chartered in 1868 as the first humane society west of the Mississippi River. But more than a century later, in 1978, its leadership had grown tired of the organization’s serving dual roles as a killer and a savior of animals.

Backing out of its long-standing shelter contract with the city meant losing more than a fifth of its annual budget, but then-president Avanzino felt the group’s agenda no longer fit with the city’s mechanized handling of hapless animals. Thousands were still being killed by the city each year.

"For 101 years, the reputation of the SFSPCA was, ‘That’s the place where animals are killed,’" Avanzino said in a 2000 interview he gave to Maddie’s Fund. "That was not the purpose of our organization. You can’t be the animals’ best friends and be their principal killer."

The city was forced to create a separate municipal shelter, known today as the Department of Animal Care and Control, which cites abusers, seizes dangerous dogs, and maintains its own adoption program. The SPCA then proceeded to vastly expand its spaying and neutering services, particularly for juvenile animals, as well as its medical facilities and treatment for animal behavior previously regarded as severe enough to warrant a trip to the death chamber, in which dozens of animals were killed at once. A technician withdrew oxygen from a decompression room until they died.

The SPCA led the way in taking animals waiting for adoption out into the community, and while some early skeptics feared mobilized adoptions would inspire impulse buying and high turnovers, many groups nationwide started to follow Avanzino’s lead after seeing how well it worked here.

On its sweeping Mission property at 16th and Alabama streets, where the SPCA has been located for almost a century, the shelter did away with cell-style kennels, which encourage erratic behavior and reduce the chances that an animal will find a home. In 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available, the city found homes for 4,500 dogs and cats, with the SPCA handling three-fourths of those adoptions.

And guaranteeing homes for cats and dogs defined as adoptable, let alone those who are arguably treatable with the right commitment of energy and resources, was almost unheard of in the mid-’90s, when San Francisco made its promise. Under San Francisco’s agreement with the SPCA, animals considered adoptable include cats and dogs eight weeks and older, those without "temperamental defects," and those not suffering from life-threatening diseases or injuries.

However, while a 100 percent adoption rate is probably not possible, Winograd and others worry that the bedrock of the nation’s no-kill movement has failed to reach its full potential since Avanzino left, and they say the San Francisco SPCA could at least aspire to a save rate of more than 70 to 80 percent.

"I think the agency went through some times they weren’t used to, not having a long-term leader that really understood the history of the organization and the goals of the organization," Carl Friedman, director of Animal Care and Control, said of the SPCA. "But that happens everywhere. I think it took a little bit of a toll on the organization."

Friedman worked at the SPCA for several of its most memorable years before moving to the city’s municipal shelter in 1988, after the SPCA relinquished its role as the proverbial dogcatcher. He says that most euthanized animals in San Francisco are cats and dogs struck by automobiles or those suffering from parvovirus and distemper, both preventable with early vaccinations.

It’s worth noting that the agreement between Friedman’s office and the SPCA forbids each of them from speaking critically of the other, and many of the people we talked to balked at speaking on the record.

"People are afraid of getting sued, and they’re afraid of what will happen," Winograd said. "There are people in San Francisco who need these agencies. They’re not willing to be forthright, because they’re afraid. I’m a lawyer, so anybody who wants to sue me, good luck. But the truth is the truth."

The shelter’s problems that started under Sayres continued under his handpicked successor, Daniel Crain. And they reached a zenith in August 2004 when one of the SPCA’s leading veterinarians, Jeffrey Proulx, committed suicide in horrific fashion, delivering a psychic blow to longtime SPCA volunteers and staffers.

The morning Proulx was discovered, a Marin County coroner found an empty box of Nembutal injectable solution on the kitchen counter of his San Rafael home. Nembutal is a barbiturate used in physician-assisted suicides, but it’s also used to euthanize animals, and a bottle of it was missing from the shelter’s medicine cabinet the day Proulx died.

Proulx was the hospital’s chief of staff and was overseeing the expansion project. The task was apparently wearing him down, and on the day of his death, he threatened to resign.

Groundbreaking was supposed to occur in 2004. Then 2005. Then 2006. In the meantime, a private animal hospital providing 24-hour emergency care — San Francisco Veterinary Specialists — moved into the neighborhood, just blocks away, casting doubt on whether the facility’s service load could justify the project.

After Proulx’s death, the SPCA announced that it had chosen another architectural firm to take charge of the hospital: Rauhaus Freedenfeld and Associates. By then the organization had spent nearly $4 million on veterinary consultants and architects, according to tax records, and even today hardly a single wall has been erected.

A previous architecture firm, ARQ Architects, which designed the shelter’s adoption center, has earned more than $2 million from the SPCA since 2000, but there’s no telling what happened to any of the designs the firm crafted. Nonetheless, according to the shelter’s newest tax records, provided at the Guardian‘s request, Rauhaus was paid more than $500,000 last year, and another $330,000 went to a project manager, CMA. A new veterinary consultant was paid $90,000 last year as well, after a previous consultant, Massachusetts-based VHC, was paid at least $925,000 over a three-year period.

After Proulx died, Crain lasted just two more years as president. He left last August, and attempts to reach him at various phone numbers, a fax number, and a last-known San Francisco address in Bernal Heights were unsuccessful.

Crain joined the shelter in 1999 as a human resources director but quickly — despite little evidence of nonprofit management experience and only a brief stint running human resources — became the SPCA’s vice president under Sayres, earning well into six figures. In 2003, after Sayres’s departure, he became the SPCA’s top administrator following a board vote, which brought his compensation to more than $200,000 a year.

Ken White, director of the Peninsula Humane Society, said he never forged the bond with Crain that he did with the leadership of Marin County’s municipal shelter and its major East Bay animal welfare counterpart. White worked for nearly a decade at the SPCA, until 1989, when San Francisco created the separate animal-control entity that exists today.

Although reluctant to speak critically about the SPCA, White explained that the Peninsula shelter treats about 1,000 injured wildlife animals from San Francisco annually under a very modest contract with the city that’s nowhere near enough to cover his costs. The SPCA focuses primarily on cats and dogs, and the Peninsula shelter has more space.

People like Winograd, who now directs a nonprofit in San Clemente called the No Kill Advocacy Center, say the shelter’s campaign to build a modern but almost prohibitively expensive hospital diverted funds away from "God’s work": caring for animals so they may be adopted out.

"I didn’t feel the city needed another specialty hospital," Winograd said, "and my fear was that the energy and dollars and all the effort that would be put into the hospital would pull the agency away from its core mission of patching together the sick and injured dogs and cats."

"They still think that’s the next big thing," said Karin Jaffie, a former public relations coordinator and longtime volunteer. "For the cost of the hospital, you could have trained a lot of people’s dogs or spay-neutered the city’s pit bull population for free."

An early plan for the hospital included 24-hour emergency care and critical services like oncology, cardiology, and neurology — services that shelter execs argued pet owners would never pursue otherwise to help save their animals.

Yet the plan had a significant catch: it called for aligning the hospital’s nonprofit component with a for-profit network of veterinary specialists who would lease space inside the facility and help cover its overhead by paying some of the utility bills. Private specialty veterinary care was among the fastest-growing segments of the industry at the time, and the SPCA’s eager citywide promotional campaign for the hospital raised the ire of private vets working in the Bay Area, including their industry group, the California Veterinary Medical Association.

McHugh-Smith admitted that "after much evaluation" the complex for-profit plan was scratched completely, and the shelter had to more or less start over after spending millions. "It wasn’t going to help our mission, so that project was put to rest," she told us.

Not everyone was quick to offer a negative opinion of the shelter’s past leadership. Kelley Filson, a former humane-education director, said that all nonprofits experience periodic lulls in funding and that her program was never short of the resources it genuinely needed to help Bay Area youth understand why it’s necessary to treat animals humanely. Like in K-9 behavior training, she says, SPCA supporters should focus on the shelter’s historic milestones.

"It was not a direct-care program," Filson said of humane education, which endured budget cuts in recent years. "When there are 10 puppies that need medicine and treatment, that’s a very immediate need, so I think that people [misunderstand] when an organization has to look at the immediate needs of suffering animals versus education goals. Until you’re in the position of running that organization, you don’t often understand the decisions that are being made."

Skepticism aside, the shelter’s existing 70-year-old animal care hospital, where it treats injured and abandoned animals, could certainly benefit from a makeover. It still provides a range of services for a relatively minimal fee, including limited emergency care for the pets of some low-income San Franciscans. In 1978 the shelter’s spay-neuter clinic was the first in the nation to provide the service at a reduced cost, and it continues to alter feral cats brought in by a citywide network of caretakers for free.

"The demands on that hospital have grown large over the years," McHugh-Smith said. "Our surgical [unit] is on the second floor, and we have to carry the animals upstairs…. It’s just not very efficient or effective any longer."

The emergency and specialty hospital San Francisco Veterinary Specialists now does what the SPCA originally hoped to. Previously at odds with the SPCA’s for-profit scheme, the private vets will now donate certain specialty services that the SPCA isn’t able to cover under its current plans. Dr. Alan Stewart, a founder of SFVS, told us they’ve already helped several animals.

Construction on the Roberts Center is slated to begin in October. McHugh-Smith promises the new plan will enable San Francisco to expand its definition of a treatable homeless animal by expanding the range of treatment the city can administer. Now the $32 million will go toward simply renovating a massive warehouse on the shelter’s campus and giving its current facility another 40,000 square feet of space. The feral cat project, which today operates out of a former lobby, will get its own designated area, and McHugh-Smith says the shelter will also act as a university hospital where veterinary students can learn to treat the approximately 25,000 animals that pass through annually.

McHugh-Smith, the shelter’s first female president, has worked in animal welfare for more than two decades. She spent 12 years as CEO of the humane society in Boulder, Colo., and built that city’s live-release rate up to 86 percent.

Because of the Bay Area’s supercharged political tendencies, she faces constant and varying obstacles. Wildlife supporters loathe the SPCA’s long history of backing feral cat populations and off-leash dogs on federal parkland such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Even the phrase "animal welfare" is politically loaded — it’s often used specifically to separate pet lovers and the wealthy benefactors of big nonprofit shelters from "animal rights" factions perceived as too radical. Plus, there’s the fact that higher save rates translate into greater challenges in dealing with the final 20 or 30 percent of animals, which can require treatment before being adoptable.

"The higher you get, the more difficult it gets, and the more resources you need," McHugh-Smith said of the city’s save rate. "Hence, the hospital is going to be a really critical part of that."

Avanzino says San Francisco could still do a much better job presenting records to the public of which animals are killed and why. Are hyperthyroid or feral cats untreatable? Are otherwise healthy pit bulls made "unhealthy" merely by irresponsible owners? For years, transparency in terms of what constitutes a treatable or healthy animal has been a major tenet Avanzino has advocated.

"If we’re really going to empower the public to be part of the solution and see that the job gets done, we’ve got to give them the data," he told us. "Are the dogs and cats that we call family members getting justice from us? If not, then we have failed them, and in San Francisco that should never happen. It’s the city of St. Francis." *

Dining listings

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Welcome to our dining listings, a detailed guide by neighborhood of some great places to grab a bite, hang out with friends, or impress the ones you love with thorough knowledge of this delectable city. Restaurants are reviewed by Paul Reidinger (PR) or staff. All area codes are 415, and all restaurants are wheelchair accessible, except where noted.

B Breakfast

BR Saturday and/or Sunday brunch

L Lunch

D Dinner

AE American Express

DC Diners Club

DISC Discover

MC MasterCard

V Visa

¢ less than $7 per entrée

$ $7–<\d>$12

$$ $13–<\d>$20

$$$ more than $20

DOWNTOWN/EMBARCADERO

Bocadillos serves bocadillos — little Spanish-<\d>style sandwiches on little round buns — but the menu ranges more widely, through a variety of Spanish and Basque delights. Decor is handsome, though a little too stark-<\d>modern to be quite cozy. (PR, 8/04) 710 Montgomery, SF. Spanish/<\d>Basque, L/D, $, MC/V.

Boulevard runs with ethereal smoothness — you are cosseted as if at a chic private party — but despite much fame the place retains its brasserie trappings and joyous energy. (Staff) 1 Mission, SF. 543-6084. American, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Brindisi Cucina di Mare cooks seafood the south Italian way, and that means many, many ways, with many, many sorts of seafood. (PR, 4/04) 88 Belden Place, SF. 593-8000. Italian/<\d>seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Bushi-tei melds East and West, old and new, with sublime elegance. Chef Seiji Wakabayashi is fluent in many of the culinary dialects of East Asia as well as the lofty idiom of France, and the result is cooking that develops its own integrity. The setting — of glass, candles, and ancient lumber — shimmers with enchantment. (PR, 3/06) 1638 Post, SF. 440-4959. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

Café Claude is a hidden treasure of the city center. There is an excellent menu of traditional, discreetly citified French dishes, a youthful energy, and a romantic setting on a narrow, car-free lane reminiscent of the Marais. (PR, 10/06) 7 Claude Lane, SF. 392-3515. French, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Chaya Brasserie brings a taste of LA’s preen-and-be-seen culture to the waterfront. The Japanese-<\d>influenced food is mostly French, and very expensive. (Staff) 132 Embarcadero, SF. 777-8688. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Cortez has a Scandinavian Designs-<\d>on-<\d>acid look — lots of heavy, weird multicolored mobiles — but Pascal Rigo’s Mediterranean-<\d>influenced small plates will quickly make you forget you’re eating in a hotel. (Staff) 550 Geary (in the Hotel Adagio), SF. 292-6360. Mediterranean, B/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cosmopolitan Cafe seems like a huge Pullman car. The New American menu emphasizes heartiness. (Staff) 121 Spear, SF. 543-4001. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

NORTH BEACH/CHINATOWN

Da Flora advertises Venetian specialties, but notes from Central Europe (veal in paprika cream sauce) and points east (whiffs of nutmeg) creep into other fine dishes. (Staff) 701 Columbus, SF. 981-4664. Italian, D, $$, MC/V.

Dalla Torre is one of the most inaccessible restaurants in the city. The multi<\d>level dining room — a cross between an Italian country inn and a Frank Lloyd Wright house — offers memorable bay views, but the pricey food is erratic. (Staff) 1349 Montgomery, SF. 296-1111. Italian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Enrico’s Sidewalk Cafe remains a classic see-and-be-seen part of the North Beach scene. The full bar and extensive menu of tapas, pizzas, pastas, and grills make dropping in at any hour a real treat. (Staff) 504 Broadway, SF. 982-6223. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Gondola captures the varied flavors of Venice and the Veneto in charmingly low-key style. The main theme is the classic one of simplicity, while service strikes just the right balance between efficiency and warmth. (Staff) 15 Columbus, SF. 956-5528. Italian, L/D, $, MC/V.

House of Nanking never fails to garner raves from restaurant reviewers and Guardian readers alike. Chinatown ambience, great food, good prices. (Best Ofs, 1994) 919 Kearny, SF. 421-1429. Chinese, L/D, ¢.

SOMA

Le Charm might be in San Francisco, but it has a bistro authenticity even Parisians could love, from a wealth of golden wood trim to an enduring loyalty au prix fixe. The chicken liver salad is matchless, the succinct wine list distinctly Californian. Ponder it in the idyllic, trellised garden. (PR, 9/06) 315 Fifth St, SF. 546-6128. French, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Chez Spencer brings Laurent Katgely’s precise French cooking into the rustic-<\d>industrial urban cathedral that once housed Citizen Cake. Get something from the wood-<\d>burning oven. (Staff) 82 14th St, SF. 864-2191. French, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.

Fly Trap Restaurant captures a bit of that old-time San Francisco feel, from the intricate plaster ceiling to the straightforward menu: celery Victor, grilled salmon filet with beurre blanc. A good lunchtime spot. (Staff) 606 Folsom, SF. 243-0580. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

*Fringale still satisfies the urge to eat in true French bistro style, with Basque flourishes. The paella roll is a small masterpiece of food narrative; the frites are superior. (PR, 7/04) 570 Fourth St, SF. 543-0573. French/Basque, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

India Garden indeed has a lovely garden and an excellent lunch buffet that does credit to South Asian standards. (Staff) 1261 Folsom, SF. 626-2798. Indian, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

NOB HILL/RUSSIAN HILL

Acquerello reminds us that the Italians, like the French, have a high cuisine — sophisticated and earthy and offered in a onetime chapel with exposed rafters and sumptuous fabrics on the banquettes. Service is as knowledgeable and civilized as at any restaurant in the city. (PR, 3/05) 1722 Sacramento, SF. 567-5432. Italian, $$$, D, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Ah Lin offers Mandarin-style Chinese cooking in an easy-to-take storefront setting on Cathedral Hill. The dishes are well behaved and tasty, with only an occasional flare-up of chile heat. The roast duck is one of the best deals in town. (PR, 10/06) 1634 Bush, SF. 922-5279. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Alborz looks more like a hotel restaurant than a den of Persian cuisine, but there are flavors here — of barberry and dried lime, among others — you won’t easily find elsewhere. (Staff) 1245 Van Ness, SF. 440-4321. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Bacio offers homey, traditional Italian dishes in a charmingly cozy rustic space. Service can be slow. (PR, 1/05) 835 Hyde, SF. 292-7999. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Cordon Bleu has huge portions, tiny prices, and a hoppin’ location right next to the Lumiere Theatre. (Staff) 1574 California, SF. 673-5637. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.

CIVIC CENTER/TENDERLOIN

Mangosteen radiates lime green good cheer from its corner perch in the Tenderloin. Inexpensive Vietnamese standards are rendered with thoughtful little touches and an emphasis on the freshest ingredients. (PR, 11/05) 601 Larkin, SF. 776-3999. Vietnamese, L/D, $, cash only.

Max’s Opera Cafe Huge food is the theme here, from softball-<\d>size matzo balls to towering desserts. Your basic Jewish deli. (Staff) 601 Van Ness, SF. 771-7300. American, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Mekong Restaurant serves the foods of the Mekong River basin. There is a distinct Thai presence but also dishes with Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and even Chinese accents. (PR, 1/06) 791 O’Farrell, SF. 928-2772. Pan-<\d>Asian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Olive might look like a tapas bar, but what you want are the thin-crust pizzas, the simpler the toppings the better. The small plates offer eclectic pleasures, especially the Tuscan pâté and beef satay with peanut sauce. (Staff) 743 Larkin, SF. 776-9814. Pizza/<\d>eclectic, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.

HAYES VALLEY

Frjtz serves first-rate Belgian fries, beer, crepes, and sandwiches in an art-<\d>house atmosphere. If the noise overwhelms, take refuge in the lovely rear garden. (Staff) 579 Hayes, SF. 864-7654; also at Ghirardelli Square, SF. 928-3886. Belgian, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Hayes Street Grill started more than a quarter century ago as an emulation of the city’s old seafood houses, and now it’s an institution itself. The original formula — immaculate seafood simply prepared, with choice of sauce and French fries — still beats vibrantly at the heart of the menu. Service is impeccable, the setting one of relaxed grace. (PR, 7/06) 816 Folsom, SF. 863-5545. Seafood, L/D, $$$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Sauce enjoys the services of chef Ben Paula, whose uninhibited California cooking is as easy to like as a good pop song. (PR, 5/05) 131 Gough, SF. 252-1369. California, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Suppenküche has a Busvan for Bargains, butcher-<\d>block look that gives context to its German cuisine. If you like schnitzel, brats, roasted potatoes, eggs, cheese, cucumber salad, cold cuts, and cold beer, you’ll love it here. (Staff) 601 Hayes, SF. 252-9289. German, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

*Zuni Cafe is one of the most celebrated — and durable — restaurants in town, perhaps because its kitchen has honored the rustic country cooking of France and Italy for the better part of two decades. (PR, 2/05) 1658 Market, SF. 552-2522. California, B/L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

CASTRO/NOE VALLEY/GLEN PARK

Firewood Cafe serves up delicious thin chewy-<\d>crusted pizzas, four kinds of tortellini, rotisserie-<\d>roasted chicken, and big bowls of salad. (Staff) 4248 18th St, SF. 252-0999. Italian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Los Flamingos mingles Cuban and Mexican specialties in a relaxed, leafy, walk-<\d>oriented neighborhood setting. Lots of pink on the walls; even more starch on the plates. (PR, 11/04) 151 Noe, SF. 252-7450. Cuban/<\d>Mexican, BR/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Fresca raises the already high bar a little higher for Peruvian restaurants in town. Many of the dishes are complex assemblies of unusual and distinctive ingredients, but some of the best are among the simplest. The skylighted barrel-<\d>ceiling setting is quietly spectacular. (PR, 7/05) 3945 24th St, SF. 695-0549. Peruvian, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Gialina offers fabulous thin-crust pizzas in the nouveau-quaint heart of Glen Park’s village center. Toppings reflect the companionable spirits of innovation and playfulness. For dessert: chocolate pizza, though beware the danger of starch overload. (PR, 3/07) 2842 Diamond, SF. 239-8500. Pizza/Italian, D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

Hamano Sushi packs them in despite a slightly dowdy setting and food of variable appeal. The best stuff is as good as it gets, though, and prices aren’t bad. (Staff) 1332 Castro, SF. 826-0825. Japanese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

HAIGHT/COLE VALLEY/WESTERN ADDITION

Alamo Square is an archetype for the "good little place around the corner." Five different kinds of fish are offered next to three cooking techniques and five sauces. (Staff) 803 Fillmore, SF. 440-2828. Seafood, D, $, MC/V.

Ali Baba’s Cave Veggie shish kebabs are grilled fresh to order; the hummus and baba ghanoush are subtly seasoned and delicious. (Staff) 531 Haight (at Fillmore), SF. 255-7820; 799 Valencia, SF. 863-3054. Middle Eastern, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

All You Knead emphasizes the wonderful world of yeast — sandwiches, pizzas, etc. — in a space reminiscent of beer halls near Big 10 campuses. (Staff) 1466 Haight, SF. 552-4550. American, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Asqew Grill reinvents the world of fine fast food on a budget with skewers, served in under 10 minutes for under 10 bucks. (Staff) 1607 Haight, SF. 701-9301. California, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Bia’s Restaurant and Wine Bar proves hippies know what’s what in matters of food and wine. An excellent menu of homey items with Middle Eastern and Persian accents; a tight, widely varied wine list. (PR, 11/04) 1640 Haight, SF. 861-8868. California/<\d>Middle Eastern, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

Blue Jay Cafe has the Mayberry, RFD, look and giant platters of Southernish food, including a good catfish po’boy and crispy fried chicken. Everything is under $10. (PR, 4/04) 919 Divisadero, SF. 447-6066. American/<\d>soul, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

Brother-in-Laws Bar-B-Cue always wins the "Best Barbecue" prize in our annual Best of the Bay edition: the ribs, chickens, links, and brisket are smoky and succulent; the aroma sucks you in like a tractor beam. (Staff) 705 Divisadero, SF. 931-7427. Barbecue, L/D, $.

Burgermeister uses top-grade Niman Ranch beef for its burgers, but nonetheless they’re splendid, with soft buns and crisp, well-<\d>salted fries. Foofy California wrinkles are available if you want them, but why would you? (PR, 5/04) 86 Carl, SF. 566-1274. Burgers, L/D, $.

MISSION/BERNAL HEIGHTS/POTRERO HILL

Cafe Phoenix looks like a junior-<\d>high cafeteria, but the California-<\d>deli food is fresh, tasty, and honest, and the people making it are part of a program to help the emotionally troubled return to employability. (Staff) 1234 Indiana, SF. 282-9675, ext. 239. California, B/L, ¢, MC/V.

Caffe Cozzolino Get it to go: everything’s about two to four bucks more if you eat it there. (Staff) 300 Precita, SF. 285-6005. Italian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Caffe d’Melanio is the place to go if you want your pound of coffee beans roasted while you enjoy an Argentine-<\d>Italian dinner of pasta, milanesa, and chimichurri sauce. During the day the café offers a more typically Cal-<\d>American menu of better-<\d>than-<\d>average quality. First-rate coffee beans. (PR, 10/04) 1314 Ocean, SF. 333-3665. Italian/<\d>Argentine, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Il Cantuccio strikingly evokes that little trattoria you found near the Ponte Vecchio on your last trip to Florence. (Staff) 3228 16th St, SF. 861-3899. Italian, D, $, MC/V.

Chez Papa Bistrot sits like a beret atop Potrero Hill. The food is good, the staff’s French accents authentic, the crowd a lively cross section, but the place needs a few more scuffs and quirks before it can start feeling real. (Staff) 1401 18th St, SF. 824-8210. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Circolo Restaurant and Lounge brings Peruvian- and Asian-<\d>influenced cooking into a stylishly barnlike urban space where dot-<\d>commers gathered of old. Some of the dishes are overwrought, but the food is splendid on the whole. (PR, 6/04) 500 Florida, SF. 553-8560. Nuevo Latino/<\d>Asian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Couleur Café reminds us that French food need be neither fancy nor insular. The kitchen playfully deploys a world of influences — the duck-<\d>confit quesadilla is fabulous — and service is precise and attentive despite the modest setting at the foot of Potrero Hill. (PR, 2/06) 300 De Haro, SF. 255-1021. French, BR/L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

*Delfina has grown from a neighborhood restaurant to an event, but an expanded dining room has brought the noise under control, and as always, the food — intense variations on a theme of Tuscany — could not be better. (PR, 2/04) 3621 18th St, SF. 552-4055. California, D, $$, MC/V.

Dosa serves dosas, the south Indian crepes, along with a wealth of other, and generally quite spicy, dishes from the south of the subcontinent. The cooking tends toward a natural meatlessness; the crowds are intense, like hordes of passengers inquiring about a delayed international flight. (PR, 1/06) 995 Valencia, SF. 642-3672. South Indian, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Double Play sits across the street from what once was Seals Stadium, but while the field and team are gone, the restaurant persists as an authentic sports bar with a solidly masculine aura — mitts on the walls, lots of dark wood, et cetera. The all-<\d>American food (soups, sandwiches, pastas, meat dishes, lots of fries) is outstanding. (Staff) 2401 16th St, SF. 621-9859. American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack offers a tasty, inexpensive, late-night alternative to Pasta Pomodoro. The touch of human hands is everywhere evident. (Staff) 18 Virginia, SF. 206-2086. Italian, D, $, cash only.

Esperpento is as authentic a Spanish-style tapas restaurant as you’ll find in San Francisco, but even better — the paella is good! (PR, 4/07) 3295 22nd St, SF. 282-8867. Spanish/tapas, L/D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Foreign Cinema serves some fine New American food in a spare setting of concrete and glass that warms up romantically once the sun goes down. (Staff) 2534 Mission, SF. 648-7600. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Front Porch mixes a cheerfully homey setting (with a front porch of sorts), a hipster crowd, and a Caribbean-inflected comfort menu into a distinctive urban cocktail. The best dishes, such as a white polenta porridge with crab, are Range-worthy, and nothing on the menu is much more than $10. (PR, 10/06) 65A 29th St, SF. 695-7800. American/Caribbean, BR/D, $, MC/V.

MARINA/PACIFIC HEIGHTS/LAUREL HEIGHTS

Greens All the elements that made it famous are still intact: pristine produce, an emphasis on luxury rather than health, that gorgeous view. (Staff) Fort Mason Center, Bldg A, Marina at Laguna, SF. 771-6222. Vegetarian, L/D, $$, DISC/MC/V.

*Harris’ Restaurant is a timeless temple to beef, which appears most memorably as slices of rib roast, but in other ways too. Uncheap. (PR, 5/04) 2100 Van Ness, SF. 673-1888. Steakhouse/<\d>American, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Kiss is tiny, industrial, not particularly Anglophonic — and serves some of the best sushi in the city. Warning: the very best stuff (from the specials menu) can be very pricey. (Staff) 1700 Laguna, SF. 474-2866. Japanese, D, $$$, MC/V.

Letitia’s has claimed the old Alta Plaza space and dispensed with the huge cruise mirror. The Mexican standards are pretty good and still pricey, though they don’t seem quite as dear in Pacific Heights as they did in the Castro. (PR, 6/04) 2301 Fillmore, SF. 922-1722. Mexican, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Mezes glows with sunny Greek hospitality, and the plates coming off the grill are terrific, though not huge. Bulk up with a fine Greek salad. (Staff) 2373 Chestnut, SF. 409-7111. Greek, D, $, MC/V.

Out the Door is the takeout-friendly child of the Slanted Door, and the food reflects the same emphasis on first-quality ingredients. You can eat in if you want or shop for hard-to-find Asian groceries at reasonable prices. (PR, 1/07) Westfield Center, 845 Market, SF. 541-9913; One Ferry Bldg, SF. 861-8032. Vietnamese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Plump Jack Café If you had to take your parents to dinner in the Marina, this would be the place. A small but authentic jewel. (Staff) 3127 Fillmore, SF. 563-4755. California, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

SUNSET

Marnee Thai A friendly, low-key neighborhood restaurant — now in two neighborhoods — that just happens to serve some of the best Thai food in town. (PR, 1/04) 2225 Irving, SF. 665-9500; 1243 Ninth Ave (at Lincoln), SF. 731-9999. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Masala means "spice mixture," and spices aplenty you will find in the South Asian menu. Be sure to order plenty of naan to sop up the sauce with. (Staff) 1220 Ninth Ave, SF. 566-6976. Indian/<\d>Pakistani, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Nan King Road Bistro laces its mostly Chinese menu with little touches from around Asia (sake sauces, Korean noodles), and the result is a spectacular saucefest. Spare, cool environment. (Staff) 1360 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-2900. Pan-<\d>Asian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Park Chow could probably thrive on its basic dishes, such as the burger royale with cheese ($6.95), but if you’re willing to spend an extra five bucks or so, the kitchen can really flash you some thigh. (Staff) 1240 Ninth Ave, SF. 665-9912. California, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

Pisces California Cuisine brings a touch of SoMa sophistication to an Outer Sunset neighborhood in need of paint. (You can’t miss the restaurant’s black facade.) The kitchen turns out a variety of seafood preparations — the clam chowder is terrific — and offers an appealing prix fixe option at both lunch and dinner. (PR, 8/06) 3414-3416 Judah, SF. 564-2233. Seafood, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

P.J.’s Oyster Bed Of all the US regional cultures, southern Louisiana’s may be the most beloved, and at P.J.’s you can taste why. (Staff) 737 Irving, SF. 566-7775. Seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Pomelo Big portions of Asian- and Italian-<\d>inspired noodle dishes. If you need something quick, cheap, and fresh, pop in here. (Staff) 92 Judah, SF. 731-6175. Noodles, L/D, $, cash only.

Sabella’s carries a famous seafood name into the heart of West Portal. Good nonseafood stuff too. (Staff) 53 West Portal, SF. 753-3130. Italian/<\d>seafood, $, L/D, MC/V.

Sea Breeze Cafe looks like a dive, but the California cooking is elevated, literally and figuratively. Lots of witty salads, a rum-rich crème brûlée. (Staff) 3940 Judah, SF. 242-6022. California, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.

So Restaurant brings the heat, in the form of huge soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, many of them liberally laced with hot peppers and chiles. The pot stickers are homemade and exceptional, the crowd young and noisy. Cheap. (PR, 10/06) 2240 Irving, SF. 731-3143. Chinese/noodles, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tasty Curry still shows traces of an earlier life as a Korean hibachi restaurant (i.e., venting hoods above most of the tables), but the South Asian food is cheap, fresh, and packs a strong kick. (PR, 1/04) 1375 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-5122. Indian/<\d>Pakistani, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tennessee Grill could as easily be called the Topeka Grill, since its atmosphere is redolent of Middle America. Belly up to the salad bar for huge helpings of the basics to accompany your meat loaf or calf’s liver. (Staff) 1128 Taraval, SF. 664-7834. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Thai Cottage isn’t really a cottage, but it is small in the homey way, and its Thai menu is sharp and vivid in the home-<\d>cooking way. Cheap, and the N train stops practically at the front door. (PR, 8/04) 4041 Judah, SF. 566-5311. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.

*Xiao Loong elevates the neighborhood Chinese restaurant experience to one of fine dining, with immaculate ingredients and skillful preparation in a calm architectural setting. (PR, 8/05) 250 West Portal, SF. 753-5678. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Yum Yum Fish is basically a fish store: three or four little tables with fish-print tablecloths under glass, fish-chart art along the wall, and fish-price signs all over the place. (Staff) 2181 Irving, SF. 566-6433. Sushi, L/D, ¢.

RICHMOND

Eva’s Hawaiian Café re-creates the Hawaiian lunch-plate experience in a Clement Street storefront done up in primary colors worthy of a 1970s-era middle school. The food is excellent and inexpensive, the service skilled and cheerful, the setting immaculate. What’s not to like? (PR, 3/07) 731 Clement, SF. 221-2087. Hawaiian, L/C, ¢, MC/V.

Katia’s, a Russian Tea Room evokes the bourgeois romance of old Russia, and the classic Slavic food is carefully prepared and presented. Silken Crimean port is served in a tiny glass shaped like a Cossack boot. (PR, 12/04) 600 Fifth Ave, SF. 668-9292. Russian, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Kitaro This Japanese restaurant, unlike many others, has a lot of options for vegetarians. (Staff) 5850 Geary, SF. 386-2777. Japanese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Lucky Fortune serves up a wide variety of Chinese-<\d>style seafood in a cheerfully blah setting. Prices are astoundingly low, portions large. (Staff) 5715 Geary, SF. 751-2888. Chinese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Mai’s Restaurant On the basis of the hot-and-sour shrimp soup with pineapple alone, Mai’s deserves a line out the door. (Staff) 316 Clement, SF. 221-3046. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.

BAYVIEW/HUNTERS POINT/SOUTH

Bella Vista Continental Restaurant commands a gorgeous view of the Peninsula and South Bay from its sylvan perch on Skyline Boulevard, and the continental food, though a little stately, is quite good. The look is rustic-stylish (exposed wood beams, servers in dinner jackets), and the tone one of informal horse-country wealth. (PR, 3/07) 13451 Skyline Blvd., Woodside. (650) 851-1229. Continental, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cable Car Coffee Shop Atmospherically speaking, you’re looking at your basic downtown South San Francisco old-style joint, one that serves a great Pacific Scramble for $4.95 and the most perfectest hash browns to be tasted. (Staff) 423 Grand, South SF. (650) 952-9533. American, B/BR/L, ¢.

Cliff’s Bar-B-Q and Seafood Some things Cliff’s got going for him: excellent mustard greens, just drenched in flavorfulness, and barbecued you name it. Brisket. Rib tips. Hot links. Pork ribs. Beef ribs. Baby backs. And then there are fried chickens and, by way of health food, fried fishes. (Staff) 2177 Bayshore, SF. 330-0736. Barbecue, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.

BERKELEY/EMERYVILLE/NORTH

Ajanta offers a variety of deftly seasoned regional dishes from the Asian subcontinent. (Staff) 1888 Solano, Berk. (510) 526-4373. Indian, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

La Bayou serves up an astounding array of authentic New Orleans staples, including jambalaya, (greaseless!) fried catfish, and homemade pralines. (Staff) 3278 Adeline, Berk. (510) 594-9302. Cajun/<\d>Creole, L/D, ¢-$, MC/V.

Breads of India and Gourmet Curries The menu changes every day, so nothing is refrigerated overnight, and the curries benefit from obvious loving care. (Staff) 2448 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 848-7684. Indian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

OAKLAND/ALAMEDA

Connie’s Cantina fashions unique variations on standard Mexican fare — enchiladas, tamales, fajitas, rellenos. (Staff) 3340 Grand, Oakl. (510) 839-4986. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Garibaldi’s on College focuses on Mediterranean-<\d>style seafood. (Staff) 5356 College, Oakl. (510) 595-4000. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Gerardo’s Mexican Restaurant offers all the expected taquería fare. But a main reason to visit is to pick up a dozen of Maria’s wonderfully down-home chicken or pork tamales. (Staff) 3811 MacArthur, Oakl. (510) 531-5255. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢-$. *

Ed Jew: “I don’t spend my money this way and I’ll bet you don’t either.”

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By Sarah Phelan

Cannot get enough of the Sunset Beacon!
In a recent “Update on District Affairs” column for the neighborhood paper, Jew writes about why he and Sups. Michela Alioto Pier, Sean Elsbernd and Geraldo Sandoval, opposed Sup. Chris Daly’s $28 million supplemental appropriation for a variety of affordable housing programs.
Since we were kinda wondering about that vote (unlike Jew we don’t own 13 properties in and around San Francisco and therefore we could seriously use some more affordable housing), we read on.
“Some supervisors [that would be seven out of eleven supervisors, Ed] believe this money needs to go to affordable housing because the taxpayers have twice, in recent years, turned down the opportunity to pay more property taxes intended for housing.”
“Of course we need affordable housing, but a last-minute budget raid is not the way to get it, “continues Jew, who claims he was “particularly puzzled” that the $28 million request contained $5 million for the Housing Authority, “an agency,” writes Jew that spends money so badly that former Mayor Art Agnos has just been named it court-appointed receiver for the purpose of forcing the agency to pay its bills. There are no strings attached to the $5 million–it is basically a blank check. I don’t spend my money this way and I’ll bet you don’t either.”
Actually, Ed, now that you’ve mentioned it, we’ve been wanting to ask you about the $40,000 cash in your office safe, and how you were planning to spend it. See you at the Board meeting, tomorrow.

Negative creep

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› duncan@sfbg.com

"Do you always have to offend everyone?" So ran a comment — anonymous, of course — on a piece I’d written for an undergrad creative writing class, a piss take on the Our Father titled "Our Father II." This was in the early ’90s, when I was still planning my escape from junior college and the burbs. Another classmate suggested that I "try going on a fishing trip or getting laid or something" so I could "write something positive for a change."

During this time in my life, Unsane (Matador, 1991), the eponymous debut by the East Village meat grinders, was in heavy rotation on my turntable, the cover displayed upright on the stereo cabinet: a man on the subway tracks, his head neatly severed by the downtown train. In an era rife with rawboned noise rock, the record was the ne plus ultra of anger and aggression: as violent and uncompromising as golden-age Slayer, but more immediate and less mythical. Whereas Slayer sang about historical creeps Ed Gein and Josef Mengele, Unsane’s Chris Spencer screamed his throat raw about that guy, right there, sitting across the aisle from you with an ice pick in his pocket, staring. Musically, he somehow managed to take the country staple Fender Telecaster and wring the twang out of it, giving it a metal-on-metal screech like that subway train with its brakes locked.

Years later, after logging a decent amount of coitus and fishing trips, I had lost neither my predilection for the aggro or for Unsane. I’d wander around the SF State campus stressed, thinking deep collegiate thoughts, scowling, and muttering to myself, borderline Trenchcoat Mafia and pre–selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I got into a philosophical argument with a poet visiting one of my classes. She was heavily into Zen and read a few poems about sweaty horses and wild roses. They were well crafted and praiseworthy but raised hackles when their author, all blissed out on Mill Valley and whole grain, contended that the purpose of poetry is to convey beauty. That’s an option, sure, but what about ugly? If the only purpose of art is to strive for beauty, what separates it from a Cover Girl commercial, from the consistent mainstream message that things, such as they are, are not as they should be? "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," John Keats wrote in "Ode on a Grecian Urn." I prefer the adage "Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugly goes to the bone." Sure, the Lorax speaks for the trees, but who will speak for the twisted, ugly, and bitter?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Three albums — not counting singles and greatest-hits comps — and four labels later, Unsane are back with Visqueen on Ipecac, with its cover of a body wrapped in plastic sheeting and dumped in a meadow. Over the course of its career, the band has toured relentlessly, including an opening stint with Slayer; lost a drummer to a heroin overdose; and inspired dozens of noise bands, some the real deal, others merely aping it. In February 1998, Spencer was attacked by four people in Amsterdam and needed emergency surgery for internal bleeding. So while you can look at the photos on Unsane’s site and see the band members smiling and horsing around, their recordings are decidedly missing that "good day, sunshine" vibe. They’ve been there, and they’ve seen it. "This city is packed full of lowlifes," Spencer sings over a forlorn harmonica on the ominously titled "This Stops at the River," "and all I can see in your eyes is fear."

It can be argued that there’s a certain homogeneity in Unsane’s fixation on the shady side of the street. "I know it’s only pain / I know it’s all the same," Spencer reveals in a moment of self-awareness. Both Keats and my classroom visitor had it right — and they both had it wrong. Zen isn’t a hippie chill pill; it’s about seeing clearly what’s there. This is the picture, Pollyanna. This is the whole thing. You live in the city; there are no more truffula trees. There are no more barbaloots in their barbaloot suits. There’s a boot on your car, rent’s due, the phone’s been disconnected, and there’s a junkie sitting on the curb, shooting up in his foot.

There are things you can count on in this world, and that same, punishing Unsane sound, with minor variations, will be there when you need release. Keats died of tuberculosis at 25, coughing up blood. If "beauty is truth, truth beauty," then either his death was a lie or all the death and blood and bodies wrapped in Visqueen have some kind of underlying beauty. There is an aesthetic in violence and fear that forms a more satisfying whole than roses and Grecian urns alone. What does an urn hold, after all, but ashes? *

UNSANE

With 400 Blows and Mouth of the Architect

Tues/5, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Return to the sixth dimension

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

It’s nearly impossible to describe Forbidden Zone to the uninitiated. It’s a musical, a surreal fairy tale, an avant-garde live-action cartoon, and a strangely alluring jab at the boundaries of good taste. It’s black-and-white and nutty all over — and has become a cult sensation since its 1980 release. A film as singularly odd as Forbidden Zone obviously has one hell of a backstory. Fortunately, I didn’t have to sneak through any basement portals to track down director and coscripter Richard Elfman. Now the editor of Buzzine — an entertainment and pop culture mag with a bustling Web site, www.buzzine.com — Elfman e-mailed and chatted with me over the phone about what’s possibly the strangest movie ever made, featuring the first film score by his brother, Danny Elfman.

Surprisingly, Richard revealed quite a few San Francisco ties; he lived in the Haight and in Berkeley in the 1960s and ’70s, playing in an Afro-Latin percussion ensemble that later gigged in Las Vegas. He also spent some time working with the Cockettes, who introduced him to Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoons, a Forbidden Zone influence. A fateful trip to a Toronto theater festival introduced him to the Grand Magic Circus, a French troupe that encouraged his eclectic theatrical tastes.

SFBG How did you move from the Grand Magic Circus to form the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo?

RICHARD ELFMAN Shortly [after the Toronto festival], the Magic Circus opened a major show in Paris. I was invited to join the company, which I did, and soon brought my younger brother Danny in. I married the leading lady, Marie-Pascale — Frenchy in Forbidden Zone. The show was billed as an avant-garde musical, but in fact much of it had roots in both turn of the century absurdism and French classical comedy.

After a year of touring Europe and beyond, I, along with Frenchy and my childhood friend Gene Cunningham [Pa in Forbidden Zone], formed the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo back in Los Angeles. My brother Danny, who went from the Magic Circus to a year in the African bush — I’m not joking — joined us shortly thereafter. The Mystic Knights incorporated absurdist comedy with an eclectic mix of great older music, pieces [by Cab Calloway and others] that could no longer be heard live elsewhere, along with original avant-garde pieces by Danny. As the ’70s moved along, I went off to other projects; under my brother’s direction, the Mystic Knights were ultimately bent into a rock band, Oingo Boingo.

SFBG Obviously, several of the performers in Forbidden Zone were from the theater troupe — but how did Susan Tyrrell and Hervé Villechaize get involved?

RE Well, the film had Frenchy [who starred and was the production designer], Gene, my brother, and all of the Mystic Knights, along with Danny’s childhood friend and original Knight, Matthew Bright, who played Squeezit and René Henderson. He also cowrote Forbidden Zone and went on to write and direct films like Freeway [1996]. Matthew’s roommate at the time was Hervé Villechaize, the king. Hervé’s girlfriend was Susan Tyrrell, the queen. Et voilà!

SFBG What were some of the challenges you faced during filming?

RE I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I started, but I eventually figured things out and got — over three arduous years — something that gives the sense what our Mystic Knights shows were like. The music was easy, as I had experience staging and choreographing musicals, and my little brother is Mozart. The animation bankrupted me, however. We inked things cell by cell, the old-fashioned way. Susan and Hervé had their occasional spats, although they were both supreme troopers who kicked their Screen Actors Guild checks back into the production. Hervé even helped Frenchy paint sets on weekends.

SFBG How much of the film was scripted?

RE It was all scripted; nothing was spontaneous. In the number "Bim Bam Boom," I had a really shy guy whose lips semifroze when it came time to lip-synch the song. So I had Matthew Bright’s lips superimposed over his. I use that example even today as an admonition for actors to do as I say.

SFBG The film is now known as a stoner classic, so I feel like I have to ask if there were any chemicals involved — and if not, where’d you come up with the story? Were you inspired by other filmmakers or artists?

RE Personally, I don’t take drugs. Wine and women, or woman — I am presently remarried — are as many intoxicants as I can handle. In terms of other inspiration? Along with Max Fleischer, the Cockettes, and Jerome Savary and his Magic Circus, I was influenced by Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Latin great Miguelito Valdez, and Aaron Lebedeff of the Yiddish theater. Design style? Definitely German expressionism, which serves one well if your whole art budget is only 40 rolls of paper and 12 buckets of black and white paint.

SFBG When the film came out in 1980, what was the reaction? Did it have a regular theatrical run?

RE Well, it had a brief summer run of scattered midnight shows. It was banned from the University of Wisconsin and other institutions of higher learning. I remember there was an arson threat in Los Angeles one night. Censorship rears its head in many guises; in our case the politically correct tried to kill Forbidden Zone, although they were not entirely successful.

SFBG Did you have any idea Forbidden Zone would be a cult hit?

RE I had thought the film had totally disappeared. About five years ago, when I put my first Web site up, I received e-mails from fans from around the world. Apparently bootleg videos had been going around for years, picking up new fans. I was knocked on my ass, truly.

SFBG Forbidden Zone 2 — true or false?

RE We’re planning Forbidden Zone 2: The Forbidden Galaxy. Ma and Pa Kettle are driven from the dust bowl along with their kids — gray-haired Stinky and the slutty, lumbering Petunia — and they move to Crenshaw, down in South Central LA, only to purchase that fateful little house whose basement is connected to the sixth dimension. "Just wait until those dead babies start marching!" *

FORBIDDEN ZONE

With Richard Elfman in person

Another Hole in the Head Film Festival

Sat/2, 11:45 p.m., $10

Roxie Film Center

3117 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Windex music

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Swooning in the aural vortex of the last How Weird Street Faire, I lean against the central shade tower — heavens, it’s hot! — as four separate whiz-bang DJ arenas writhe at my compass points like electronic eels. Psytrance, tech house, tribal, and jeep beats overlap in a fun fuzz of dissonance: a Euterpean kaleidoscope, if you will.

A shirtless Pan in crooked BluBlockers emerges from the sonic haze and politely offers a welcome quench from his Camelback. Ah, agua … that’s better. Pan hightails it back into the neon-freaky crowds, his shadow a tongue of purple flame darting through the throng. Uh oh, the colors — they’re starting to come alive. I can see the music. I am the Lizard Queen. Goddammit, I’ve been dosed unbeknownst!

Does that mean I’m still cute enough to date-rape? Whew.

There’s no real need for chemical alteration at Burner-powered musical affairs like How Weird. The beats are gleefully conservative, locking hearts and minds into a virtual retro techno shroom step of the middle–late ’90s. You can just stop dropping and roll, Siddhartha. Close your eyes, and Smurf the vibe.

The ultimate expression of this baroque kind of bubble-icious bounce back is the continued global triumph of DJ Tiësto’s 2005 Eurotrance classical gasser Adagio for Strings (Universal France) — from Barber to Burner, via Coachella, with a $50,000 light show, a Lycra Tony Montana jersey, and a passé Jesus pose. Gord lord, lady. Tone it down a little. Tiësto’s not the lowest of the low — some trancers still work bastard Carl Orff tracks — and the high’s all the dedicated protofairies making laptop tribal in their parents’ incense-clouded basements. Whether they’ll trade in the oms for Armani once they graduate to clubland is anyone’s guess. It’s become such a thin, thin line. Still, you know if you threw on some neu-rave Klaxons at the pre-Compressions, the kids would have an air-horn breakdown and an alien breakthrough.

Yep, in these fractious times, the speakers overflow with comfort food. And there’s another retro techno movement snaking its way into the clubs, a splash of cool blue against the electroshocked Day-Glo patchwork of today’s dance music: neominimal. Incubating for the past few years in art galleries like Gray Area and Rx, underground parties like Gentlemen’s Techno and Moxie, unlikely bars like Detox, 222 Club, and the Transfer, and occasional Blasthaus and Daly City Records events, neominimal techno has lately come to the official fore, with major regular parties at the Endup and Fat City taking root and sold-out one-offs at Mezzanine fierce ruling.

The neominimal kids take their cues less from ’90s London big beat and depunked Prodigy than from ’80s acid house polychromatics and the Warp Records–Sheffield bleep scene, while paying heavy dues to laser-eared Detroit techno pioneers like Kenny Larkin and Richie Hawtin, whose classic 1999 full-length Decks Efx and 909 (Mute) kick-started the original minimal movement (he’ll be at the Mighty on June 1). Hawtin told me at the time of DE9‘s release that he wanted to "cut through the clouds of contemporary techno" to produce something more loop focused, software malleable, and dynamic in terms of live manipulation. Eight years later, neominimal’s tweeter-oriented arpeggios, atonal motifs, staticky sprezzatura, and clean, focused bass lines — plus a reliance on laptop programming and a healthy nullity of bombast and breaks — bear out his intentions to the nth. It’s unimposing, almost shy music that hooks you with its lack of superstar pretense and leads you gently by your ears to the dance floor. Not that it doesn’t have soul or humor, as anyone entranced by groundbreaking neominimal releases like "The Sad Piano," by Justin Martin (Buzzin’ Fly, 2003), and "Deep Throat," by Claude VonStroke (Dirtybird, 2005), can attest. It just doesn’t wear them on its digital sleeve.

Internationally renowned local boys Martin and VonStoke spend a lot of time touring the world these days, and both are stabled at well-respected San Francisco label Dirtybird (www.dirtybirdrecords.com), but promoters here have only recently been able to convince club owners that neominimal’s a good regular bar draw. Now some much-loved AWOL promoters from the past are rising with the neominimal boat.

"I call it Windex music," promoter Greg Bird — no relation to Dirtybird, but there sure are a lot of birds in SF techno — told me over the phone. "It’s crisp and clear and a lot more funky in a kind of grown-up way." His bangin’ Saturday monthly, Kontrol — recently relocated from Rx Gallery to bigger, all-night quarters at the Endup — celebrates two years of being head above the rest June 2 by bringing in legendary tech heads Baby Ford and DJ Zip to supplement hot-topic Kontrol residents Alland Byalo, Nikola Baytala, Sammy D., and Craig Kuna.

Bird cut through the cork-popping, lounge-heavy blahs of the Internet boom club scene in 2000 with his fascinatingly minimal Clean Plate Club monthly ("clean plate" = minimal groove). "After 9/11 and the bust, I could tell the whole club scene was headed south, so I concentrated on my personal situation. But a couple years ago me, Sammy D., and the others felt the need to bring our sound back to the clubs," he says. Bird emphasizes that Kontrol is all about mixing and making music live, in both a digital and a performance context: "We like to sound immediate." He name-checks Perlon Records, Hawtin’s Minus label, and Los Angeles’s wacky Experimental Liquor Museum collective as current influences. "There’s a ton happening right now," he says. "This summer is going to blow up big for techno in SF."

Another blast from the boom — and a delight for old-school minimal and nonorchestral house fans — is the return of the Staple crew, in this iteration composed of Fil Latorre, a.k.a. Fil Noir from the early ’00s out-of-control Staple and Refuge monthlies, and Dave Javate, a.k.a. DJ Javaight, formerly of the giant Optimal techno parties. Over e-mail, both cite scene burnout and a lack of feeling from the dance floor as reasons they closed up shop, coyly proffer "ichibana, Muay Thai, and pharmacology studies" as the reasons for their absence, and say a recent sense of receptivity to techno, the trend toward live acts, and greater technological capabilities in the form of Ableton Live and Traktor software pulled them out of early retirement. Staple just launched two monthlies at Rx and Anu and brought in Kenny Larkin in May to wow sold-out crowds. "It’s like reloading on experience and refocusing creativity once again on new output," Latorre writes.

I detest it when writers hype new movements. Indeed, almost all the DJs and promoters involved in the latest scene balk at the neominimal — and even minimal — moniker, differentiating themselves from the juggernaut with alternate adjectives like "modular," "organic," and "digital live." But all agree that they’re trying to wipe the tired commercial techno slate clean — and with it, the bad taste of overworked electronica most clubbers still have in their mouths. Many admit that the minimal tag is what’s helping them most to get their music recognized on a grand scale. And there’s definitely a local groundswell of interest in techno. (We gays have forward-looking neominimal heroes too, in DJs Kendig, Nikita, Pee Play, and Robot.Hustle, who keep one ear trained on the alternaqueer retro disco scene.) So for now neominimal’s the name of the Bay techno game. And that may be one to grow on. *

KONTROL

First Sat., 9 a.m.–6 a.m., $15

Endup

401 Sixth St., SF

(415) 646-0999

www.theendup.com

www.kontrolsf.com

MINUS RECORDS SHOWCASE

With DJs Richie Hawtin and Magda

Fri/1, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $22

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.mighty415.com

STAPLE

Second Fri., 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $10

Featuring DJ Mike Huckaby, June 8th

Rx Gallery

132 Eddy, SF

(415) 474-7973

www.rxgallery.com

www.staplemusic.net

STAPLE: SABOTAGE

Fourth Thu., 10 p.m.–2 a.m., Free

Anu

43 Sixth St., SF

(415) 543-3505

www.anu-bar.com

Caffe Bella Venezia

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› paulr@sfbg.com

The world traveler might arrive in some strange foreign city eager to find enlightenment at the table — to suss out the city’s most interesting and revealing restaurants and ponder the cultural clues they offer — but first there is the matter of jet lag. The world traveler has an urgent need for a good night’s sleep and perhaps a meal that’s somehow authentically local but not too difficult: not too expensive or far away or served at a place that’s difficult to get into. Tourist cities — of which ours is one — must have plenty of restaurants to provide this service, just as they must have plenty of other places to provide dazzle and memories while charging prices that keep the local tourist economy well watered and in bloom.

We don’t lack for the second, lofty sort of restaurant, of course, but you might be surprised that we have examples of the former too. While stepping into Caffé Bella Venezia one recent mild evening, I noticed a huge youth hostel on the other side of Post Street, and I was glad. For a city that so self-consciously links itself to youth culture, ours is a fearfully — I might even say prohibitively — expensive place for youth to visit. Youth tends to be impecunious, and that won’t get you very far at the Ritz-Carlton or even the Phoenix, no matter how charming and chic your pennilessness. If the concierge is nice, you might be sent down to the hostel on Post Street, not far from Union Square and the theater district, and welcomed there. And if you’re hungry, you might next be sent across the street to Bella Venezia, which isn’t exactly Venetian — except for all the wall art, with its many depictions of gondoliers and canals — but is appealingly pan-Italian, with a rich selection of pastas. If money is one language everybody speaks, pasta is another.

Venice has long been the most eastward-looking of Italian cities. For centuries it was the western terminus of the Silk Road to China, and after the horrendous Fourth Crusade in 1204 — in which Venetian forces sacked the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, instead of carrying on to the Holy Land — it was handsomely decorated with Byzantine gewgaws looted from that ancient city. One associates certain oriental perfumes, of cinnamon and nutmeg, among others, with the cooking of Venice, and while you’re not likely to catch a whiff of these at Bella Venezia, you might catch a latter-day Silk Road echo: the chef is Italian, and his Filipina wife runs the front of the house with the help of their son.

Meanwhile, much of the clientele speaks little or no English. While we did note several solitary, possibly Anglophone, diners roosting forlornly at tables on various evenings, we were more struck by the parade of high-spirited young people moving in packs and speaking, say, French. Of course the French like and serve pasta, even if they’re French Canadian. And just about everyone would like Bella Venezia’s fettuccine arlecchino ($9.95), a lively and colorful mélange of zucchini coins, black olives, and sun-dried tomatoes in a sauce of garlic and goat cheese and a heaping tangle of pasta. Even better is gnocchi ($5 for a small plate that’s not that small), which isn’t really a pasta but is often grouped with the pasta family. Bella Venezia’s house-made lobes are achingly tender, stuffed with gorgonzola, and bathed with a mushroom cream in which we detected, we thought, a hint of brandy breath.

I was surprised to find that I did not quite care for the lasagna ($9.95). So seldom am I disaffected in this way that I can’t recall the last time it happened, if it ever did. But BV’s lasagna, though served in an immense portion, had an unbecoming sweetness; too much minced onion mixed in with the ground beef? We noted a similar problem with the minestrone ($4.50), a run-of-the-mill vegetable soup heavy with carrots, onions, celery, zucchini, potatoes, and shreds of spinach — but no tomatoes, white beans, or pasta. Both lasagna and minestrone responded to salting, the latter more smartly than the former.

A nice feature of the menu is that you can get little versions of pizzas, pastas, and salads for $3 to $6 each. A pair of these makes a nice two-course dinner for someone who isn’t starving or is watching carb intake or feels a little jet-lagged. Pizza regina ($4.75) is a daughter of the full-figured pizza margherita, topped with the same combination of tomatoes, oregano, basil, and mozzarella — plenty of mozzarella. Pizza salsiccia ($8.95) is (to extend our familial imagery) an uncle, a brawny pie of meaty mushrooms and lots of fennel-charged Italian sauces. If the current vogue of thin-crust pizza has left you fatigued, you will appreciate BV’s slightly thicker, breadier crusts.

Two of the restaurant’s best dishes turn up as appetizers. Caprese salad ($6.95) is often routine, a tried-and-true medley of sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, but here it is lightly doused with a pesto vinaigrette that enlivens each constituent while bringing them together. (All salad dressings are supposed to do this, but few do it this well.) And sautéed mussels ($9.95) arrive in a pool of garlicky tomato–white wine sauce that will have you motioning for more of the house-made focaccia to sop it up with, since it is impolite to do so with your fingers, even if you’ve just flown in from Venice and have jet lag. *

CAFFÉ BELLA VENEZIA

Dinner: nightly, 5 p.m.–midnight

720 Post, SF

(415) 775-1156

www.caffebellavenezia.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DISC/MC/V

Not loud

Wheelchair accessible

Little green burners

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› steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Today’s environmental problems — global warming, peak oil, drastically dwindling biodiversity, an unsustainable economic system that pollutes and consumes too much — are big. And there are many big solutions proposed by big governmental bodies, big individuals, and big corporations.

A major commitment is truly needed, but perhaps it’s the million small innovators and gestures that are most likely to add up to the most fundamental shift. Could these people, linked together, with enough freedom and support to pursue their visions, save the planet?

Burning Man founder Larry Harvey threw a stone into this pond last September when he chose Green Man as the theme for this year’s event, a decision that has rippled through the thousands of creative, capable people who spend much of the year tinkering in workshops around the Bay Area and across the country. People like Jim Mason.

Mason heeded Harvey’s call in his typically exuberant fashion, developing an innovative gasification system that turns biomass waste products into a usable fuel similar to natural gas. Collaborating with fellow artists and engineers in the Shipyard space that he created in Berkeley, Mason has been doing groundbreaking work.

The group converted a 1975 pickup truck owned by impresario Chicken John to run on substances like wood chips and coffee grounds, and Mason and John have been working principally with artists Michael Christian and Dann Davis to develop a fire-spewing, waste-eating, carbon-neutral slug called Mechabolic for Burning Man this year.

"Chicken’s shitty truck is going to be sitting in front of the Silicon Valley’s big alternative-energy conference for venture capitalists," Mason told the Guardian on May 22 as he headed to the Clean Technology 2007 confab, an illustration of the place little innovators are starting to find amid the big.

The New York Times featured Mechabolic in a technology article it ran earlier in May about the Green Man theme, and the project has been a centerpiece of the green evangelizing being done by Burning Man’s new environmental director, Tom Price.

Price has been working with hundreds of innovators like Mason to turn this year’s Burning Man, at least in part, into a green-technology exposition where creative types from around the world can exchange ideas. "It’s the Internet versus the big three networks" was how Price compared the big and small approaches to environmental solutions. "The goal is to show how easy and do-it-yourself profound solutions can be."

But ragtag approaches like Mason’s don’t fit well into institutional assumptions about art and technology, as he discovered May 11 when Berkeley city officials ordered him to shut down the Shipyard or bring it into immediate compliance with various municipal codes.

"They need to temporarily leave while they seek the permits that ensure it’s safe to be there," Berkeley planning director Dan Marks told us May 18. He criticized the Shipyard for using massive steel shipping containers as building material, doing electrical work without permits, and not being responsive to city requests.

The move stopped work on gasification and other projects as the Shipyard crew scrambled to satisfy bureaucratic demands — but it also prompted a letter-writing campaign and offers of outside help and collaboration that convinced Mayor Tom Bates and city council member Darryl Moore to meet with Mason on May 21 and agree to help the Shipyard stay in business.

Berkeley fire chief David Orth and other officials fighting the Shipyard say that Bates has asked for their cooperation. "A request has been made to see what can be done to keep the facility there but bring it into compliance," Orth told us.

All involved say the Shipyard has a long way to go before it’s legal and accepted by the city. Among other things, Mason must prove that the old, recycled oceangoing shipping containers (which enclose the Shipyard and other Bay Area artists’ collectives) are safe. But he and others are hopeful, driven, and convinced that they’re onto something big.

"Places like the Shipyard, which is a cauldron of ideas, don’t fit into the traditional model of how a city should work," Price told us. "The fringes, where the rules are a little fuzzy, is where surprisingly creative things happen." *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Show me

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER I may have gotten straight Cs in critics’ college, but I can’t tell you what works for you. You are the only one who knows what makes you put down the channel changer, sends thrills down your spine, sets your disco ball spinning, and brings that mischievous sparkle to your eye. Or do you?

When it comes to e-mail subject line come-ons, one man’s "Ciali$ CHEEEP" is another woman’s "Ever wanted a bigger penis, Kimberly?" and one stud puppy’s "Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Cum to my cam! Buy OEM software CHEEEP!" is my "I could probably make the SF show too if I drove for about the same price as taking the train to Seattle." Last week a certain server masquerading as "Blanchard Christian" fired off that latter missive, an oblique snippet of pseudocrucial poetry to my ears — who cares that ole Blanche du Blah’s masters were ready to announce their plans to bilk — whoops, I mean, "address the huge influx of immigrant workers into the US that need banking solutions that they otherwise would not qualify for"? Pavlov’s e-mail robot knows what gets me salivating — aside from those wolf beach towels on Amazon.com (wintry wolves and hot sand go together about as well as infants and live grenades): namely, live music. Drive blearily into the Mojave for Coachella, jump through hoops to get to Seattle for Bumbershoot, make the red-eye to Austin for South by Southwest, take the midnight train to Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, hock yourself for England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, hazard reindeer sashimi for Reykjavik’s Iceland Airwaves — take note of the chart; I have a history of doing anything for a life-altering show.

So I could immediately relate to the scribblers of The Show I’ll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concertgoing Experience (Da Capo). Some keep it short like notes or cockeyed haiku, punctuating eccentrically ’cause they didn’t get enough of that in grade school (Thurston Moore on Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey, and Wharton Tiers). Others find their key note on the "me-me-me-me" and skew confessional (Dani Shapiro revealing that she was beaten by Courtney Cox in the dance-off to be the archetypally lucky audience member pulled from the crowd by Brooooce Springsteen in his "Dancing in the Dark" video). And some make you want to beat them over the head with their next pretentious footnote (yes, Rick Moody, I’m looking at your Lounge Lizards essay — we too were once forced to use the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, but we recovered).

Attribute it to sheer wordsmith chops or an all-permeating passion for music, but most entries tend to tell you more about a writer, time, and place than, say, a set list. I know I felt like revisiting my own memorable shows: Iggy Pop in ’80s Hawaii; Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, Unwound, and Karp at Yo Yo a Go Go in Olympia, Wash.; Sufjan Stevens borne by butterfly wings in Berkeley. These essays’ mood music is liable to send you a bit more alertly braced for baby epiphanies into your next show. You may even be inspired to take notes.

Because I bet all those precious details are pretty sketchy at this point. Hence, some of my favorite essays were hung up on the "memorable" part of the anthology’s title. Was it the songs, the scene, my sweetheart, or my failing gray matter? We all feel vulnerable in the face of the power of music and love, art and memory loss, and in a remembrance (sort of) of all things Rush in 1985 Portland, Maine, Heidi Julavits hits a sad, clear-eyed note that embraces the factual pitfalls of a "memorable concert … about which I remember little," except for her low-life boyfriend who worshipped the sticks a certain drummer sat on. "Neil Something was a stratospherically gifted drummer," she continues, "who, if memory isn’t supplying ghoulishness to a situation that otherwise failed to interest me at all, had lost an arm. Or maybe he was blind."

Likewise Jerry Stahl’s once, twice, three times a David Bowie glance-back sails by on bad TV and reminiscences of rehab before "Rehab" was cool. After first glimpsing Bowie, departing fabulously from a Sunset Strip book shop, the "boundary-challenged" Stahl breaks down into the man who fell to earth’s arms midinterview with "I haven’t shot dope in a month." Lastly, the writer drags his teen daughter to a 2004 Los Angeles show: after embarrassing her by "waving twenties around like Spiro Agnew — a reference no one reading should rightfully comprehend," the two head in, but once Bowie appears onstage, Stahl demurs, "Hey I’m old enough to get junk mail from AARP. I can’t remember everything." He does remember, amid "Rebel Rebel," that he is alive: "My own good luck scares me. David Bowie saved my life, inspired me to scrape enough psychic ganglia off the sidewalk to still be here." Makes you want to get the old diary out and start reassembling the old memory banks — or making new memories.

WRITING WRONGS Electrelane guitarist Mia Clarke has done her share of scribbling about music for the Wire, among other pubs, but that ability to step back and assess, analyze, and appreciate didn’t help when the Brighton-born members of the all-femme band seemed to be on the verge of breaking. After the group made its excellent 2005 Axes (Too Pure) and embarked on a year of touring, Clarke said from her current home in Chicago, where Electrelane are launching their current series of US shows, "we were really sick of each other. When you spend that much time with each other, it gets a bit much, and we all have other things going on in our lives" (bassist Ros Murray, for example, is working on a graduate degree from King’s College while on the bus). Fortunately, Electrelane reconvened in vocalist-keyboardist Verity Susman’s then-home in Berlin during the World Cup and, buoyed by the welcoming vibe in the town, found it in themselves to write and record the nautically themed No Shouts, No Calls (Too Pure), a lighter take on their kraut rock of yore, embellished with ukulele, and Chamberlin keyboards, and sailors’ knots in the CD art. Some ties somehow always bind. *

ELECTRELANE

With the Arcade Fire

June 1–2, 8 p.m., $31.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley

Gayley Road, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

HEAR ‘EM OUT

PRIESTBIRD AND PIT ER PAT


Once a Tarantula AD, now a Priestbird — make up your mind, NYC drama trio. Chicago’s Pit er Pat keep working that exploratory vein. Wed/23, 9:30 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

VATICANS, BUG NASTIES,
AND COCONUT COOLOUTS


An arse-wigglin’ time emerges from the garage when the SF headliners get with the Seattle sickos. Fri/25, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ELECTRIC LOVE PARADE


Tender, bare tunes and rockin’ piano electrify the Brighton band’s No Need to Be Downhearted (Better Looking). Sun/27, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455

SAN SIERN HOLYOAKE
AND WOOD FESTIVAL


New folk forms — taking shape as Almaden, Barn Owl, Adam Snider, Misty Mountain, Mass at Dawn, and Messes — scurry from the woods. Sun/27, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

Gui, your music looks terrific

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› johnny@sfbg.com

The first clue that Gui Boratto’s Chromophobia is an extraordinary Kompakt disc — a song collection that places the German label back at the forefront of the best electronic music — can be found on its cover art. Since its inception, Kompakt has had a signature clean design style for its releases. Developed by one of the label’s three co-owners, Wolfgang Voigt, it’s made great use of simple circles and basic color combinations. For Chromophobia, the São Paulo, Brazil, musician called on his friend Felipe Caetano to create a cover. Caetano came up with a beautiful piece of color theory that layers a series of primary-color Kompakt circles over the edges of one another to form a variety of new-hued combinations.

"Our first idea was to do a black-and-white cover, but we decided that was cliché," Boratto says from São Paulo, referring to the title word, a term for the fear of color. "The decision to make the cover colorful was ironic. But for me, chromophobia is like simplicity — the same type of meaning as monochromatism within an architectural point of view."

Got that? The affable Boratto is no club drone whose scope of experience remains as narrow as a programmed and endlessly looped 4/4 beat. He’s a married father of one who has studied architecture in addition to music. "I think architecture and music are almost the same thing," he says, his accent bringing an alternately questioning and singsong quality to English words. "They’re different means of expression, but they treat spaces in the same way."

In Chromophobia, Boratto builds and creates a variety of attractive spaces, without pretension but with a sensibility perhaps informed by a love of modernist architectural pioneers such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. "Within the modernism movement, you can find the same ramp used in the garage and in the dining room," he observes. Such functionality could be ascribed to many tracks on Chromophobia, which entwine rhythmic and melodic complexity and simplicity in a manner that can add vivid atmosphere to private interior settings, natural panoramas, and — though not in all cases — the dance floor.

COLOR ME GLAD


A major part of Chromophobia‘s appeal — apparent from the crystalline descending melody of the opening track, "Scene 1" — is that Boratto knows how to construct a strong simple motif or riff. "My first instrument was guitar, and when I was 10 or 11, I was really into Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin," he says, breaking down his musical background into shorthand. "But in the mid- to late ’80s, my older brother lived for a while in the south of France and then in London, and when he came back he brainwashed me."

The glorious results of that brainwashing are apparent in Chromophobia‘s most-discussed track, "Beautiful Life," on which Boratto’s wife, Luciana Villanova, plays the role of a female Bernard Sumner, quietly singing some affirmative words alongside a mammoth guitar line that invokes the unmistakable bass lines of New Order’s Peter Hook. "It was really a joke," Boratto says with bashful enthusiasm when asked about the track, which Web sites such as Resident Advisor have singled out for special praise. "There’s no complex textures [to "Beautiful Life"], as there are on some of the other songs [on Chromophobia]." True, but the song is no mere retro exercise: as much as New Order, the sunny feminine grace of "Beautiful Life" also calls to mind Ricardo Villalobos’s epic 2006 update of his own "La Belle Epoque," probably the only time Boratto and the Chilean Villalobos have crafted a similar definition of techno.

Still, Chromophobia‘s truest pleasures might be subtler ones, such as the alternately shuddering and sinuous propulsive energy of "Terminal" and "Gate 7" (the latter of which takes its title from the number of the TAM Airlines boarding gate for all of Boratto’s flights to Europe). On "Acróstico," Boratto provides a reprieve from this momentum, fashioning the electronic equivalent — via an array of low-key chirps and whirring sounds — of a nature scene at dawn or dusk.

"The title of ‘Acróstico’ stems from the fact that the high bass notes complete the lower notes — if you see a drawing of the notes, it looks like an acrostic," Boratto explains. For a musician who specializes in instrumental tracks, Boratto has a flair for linguistic matters. After bringing up Franz Kafka in response to a question about Chromophobia‘s final track, "The Verdict" — which takes its name from a Kafka tale often published in volumes of The Metamorphosis — he comments on a certain similarity: "One thing I noticed is that with Metamorphosis‘s Mr. [Gregor] Samsa, if the two s‘s in his name turn into k‘s, and the m‘s turn into f‘s, you have Kafka. It’s fiction, but it’s his story."

THE AMERICAN FRIENDS


By no means is Chromophobia Kafkaesque. But a dynamic between colorful optimism and an undercurrent of gloom gradually courses through the album, growing deeper as it progresses. On the penultimate track, "Hera," Boratto crafts a coda so poignant that it easily eclipses the best recent tracks put forth by Booka Shade and other instrumental acts on Get Physical, perhaps the one German label to overshadow Kompakt in recent years. Kompakt is definitely on a roll as of late, thanks to the long-awaited — and underrated — second volume of label cohead Michael Mayer’s Immer (2006) and the ambient — in comparison to Boratto — allure of the Field’s acclaimed From Here We Go Sublime. The Field’s Axel Willner is inventive enough to tap into the so-ghostly-it’s-frightening essence of the Flamingos’ "I Only Have Eyes for You" (also a touchstone on the soundtrack of Kenneth Anger’s 1950 film Rabbit’s Moon), yet Boratto’s palette is broader, connecting techno’s chillier reaches with the warmth of Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim.

Jobim may be "the master," in Boratto’s words, but the man behind Chromophobia also loves US brands of soul — especially Al Green and Stevie Wonder. Likewise, while the "little Paris" known as Prague might be Boratto’s favorite city in architectural terms, he’s looking forward to his SF visit. "I really love San Francisco," he says, remembering the "mainstream" charms of a club like Spundae, where he once saw Boy George. "I actually lived near Berkeley, in Pinole, for six months in 2001. I studied in Berkeley, and I had two American friends. This one friend had a big house in a nice neighborhood in Berkeley, where we had barbecues and never-ending parties. We used to party in San Francisco too, at some clubs and friends’ apartments."

This week, as Boratto returns to the Bay Area, he’s going to find a lot more than just two American friends — or at least American fans — at his party. And deservedly so — he’s made one of the best records of this year. *

KOMPAKT TOUR

With Gui Boratto and Michael Mayer

Thurs/24, 9 p.m., $15 advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

09 F9

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION I have a number, and therefore I am a free person. That’s the message more than a million protesters across the Internet have been broadcasting throughout the month of May as they publish the 128-bit number familiarly known as 09 F9. Why would so many people create MySpace accounts using this number, devote a Wikipedia entry to it, post it thousands of times on news-finding site Digg, share pictures of it on photo site Flickr, and emblazon it on T-shirts?

They’re doing it to protest kids being threatened with jail by entertainment companies. They’re doing it to protest bad art, bad business, and bad uses of good technology. They’re doing it because they want to watch Spider-Man 3 on their Linux machines.

In case you don’t know, 09 F9 is part of a key that unlocks the encryption codes on HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVDs. Only a handful of DVD players are authorized to play these discs, and if you don’t own one of them, you can’t watch Spidey in high definition — even if you purchase the DVD lawfully and aren’t doing any copying. For many in the tech community, this encryption scheme, known as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), felt like a final slap in the face from an entertainment industry whose recording branch sues kids for downloading music and whose movie branch makes crappy sequels that you can’t even watch on your good Linux computer (you guessed it — not authorized).

When a person going by the screen name arnezami managed to uncover and publish the AACS key in February, other people immediately began reposting it. They did it because they’re media consumers angry about the AACS and they wanted Hollywood and the world to know that they don’t need no stinkin’ authorized players. That’s when the Motion Picture Association of America and the AACS Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) started sending out the cease and desist letters. Lawyers for the AACS LA argued that the number could be used to circumvent copy protection measures on DVDs and posting it was therefore a violation of the anticircumvention clauses in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They targeted blogs and social networks with cease and desists, even sending notice to Google that the search engine should stop returning results for people searching for the AACS key (as of this writing, Google returns nearly 1.5 million pages containing it).

While some individuals complied with the AACS LA, in many cases community sentiment was so overwhelming that it was impossible to quell the tide of hexadecimal madness. Popular news site Digg tried to take down articles containing the number, and for a while it appeased the AACS LA. But Digg is a social network whose content is determined by millions of people, and as soon as Digg staffers took down one number, it would pop up in hundreds of other places. At last Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, gave up and told the community that if Digg got sued, it’d go down fighting. Many other sites, such as Wikipedia and Wired.com, deliberately published the number in articles, daring the AACS LA to sue them. Sites like MySpace and LiveJournal are also rife with the number — like Digg, these sites are made up entirely of user content, and it would be practically impossible for administrators to scrub the number out.

The AACS key protests have become so popular because they reach far beyond the usual debates over copyright infringement. This isn’t about my right to copy movies — it’s about my right to play movies on whatever machine I want to. The AACS scheme is the perfect planned obsolescence generator. It will absolutely force people to upgrade their existing DVD players because soon they won’t be authorized to play new DVDs. Even worse, the AACS scheme allows movie companies to revoke authorized status for players. Already, the AACS LA has revoked the authorized status of the WinDVD media player, so anybody who invested in WinDVD will have to reinvest in a new player — at least, until that player’s authorized status is revoked too.

The AACS, more than any other digital rights management scheme, has revealed that the Hollywood studios have formed a cartel with electronics manufacturers who will do anything to suck more money out of the public. If you want to watch lawfully purchased movies, the only sane thing to do is post the number. Stand up and be counted. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who can’t help but notice that you’re reading this column on a nonauthorized device.

On death and dining

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS When he talks, his whole face participates, but especially his forehead, which snakes into road maps of thought, and I get lost. When he listens, he listens. This guy went to medical school, completed his residency, and then went, Naw, I reckon I’d rather work in publishing. And for this my new friend Maze is a kind of a hero to me.

A hero and a proofreader.

Phenomenon’s new favorite restaurant is Phnom Penh, a friendly little Cambodian wonderland on the edge of Oakland’s Chinatown. Phenomenon swears by the barbecued chicken, but I ate with the Maze.

And I don’t remember where we were going after, but I guarantee you we were late. I’ve always been a slow eater. Now I’m that plus a chatterbox.

Maze asks about chickens. You almost have to, to be polite. (And then, an hour later, you start to wonder if politeness is perhaps overrated.) I talk about chickens as pets, chickens as dinner, chickens as funny little philosophers, escape artists, workhorses, lessons in vulnerability, art….

I describe in detail how beautiful it looks inside a hen when you butcher her: the bright colors; the next day’s egg, a culinary prize, fully formed; then maybe a soft-shell one; then a full-size yolk; and a winding, twisty twirl of progressively smaller bright yellow globes circling back to the fictional future — which, it turns out, is a clustered galaxy of distinctly astounding yellow dots. I cried the first time I saw it because I didn’t have a camera.

"So in med school when you were dissecting human cadavers and shit," I said, "did it change the way you felt about death?"

The Maze’s brow did what it does when he fixes to speak. He worries about words and sentences them with care. That’s why I really like talking with this guy. "No," he said, finally, thoughtfully. It made him more concretely aware of the fact of mortality and perhaps a little leery of old age — but he was already those things.

He speaks of the smell of formaldehyde, the auxiliary presence of a "prosected" cadaver (in case you can’t find some parts or accidentally mash them or something), and the necessity for keeping things moist, lest "everything starts to look like jerky." And while he is speaking (of these things) … I eat.

Squid salad. Duck curry. Shrimp soup. White rice. Everything was great! Everything was moist! Nothing was missing or mashed or jerkied. Although … never mind.

The squid salad, the squid … There weren’t any tentacles, and that’s my favorite part. The lip ticklers. And the parts that there were seemed almost too nice, too white, and not quite as slimy or chewy or fishy as I like. Which most people would probably see as a plus, I know.

The duck curry had potatoes and string beans and was very mild, maybe coconut milky. And the duck pieces were big and tender and juicy. Delicious!

But the soup had more zing. It was a little bit like canh chua, that Vietnamese hot-and-sour stuff I love, with pineapple and tomatoes. And the shrimp and the zing, but the similarities stop there. This was a different zing, more lemony, more … I don’t know, Cambodian.

Well, I like jerky. I don’t know about cadaver jerky. But beef jerky, turkey jerky, elk jerky. All of these things I have had and enjoyed immensely. Especially on road trips.

But how did I get here? And, more importantly, are we there yet?

No. We are still at Phnom Penh, talking, eating, and being late. There’s a scene of a city or town. I don’t know how to describe this. There must be a word. There is wainscoting, and then above that a kind of continuous strip of low buildings and cool trees and walkways. Not painted or pictured, but protruding, in 3-D or kind of 2 1/2–D. Relief?

All one color. Gold?

And I don’t necessarily recommend this, but if you stood in the middle of the restaurant, spinning around like a ballerina, and were four feet tall with your eyes open, it would be a lot like traveling, looking out the window of a fast car.

Until you fell down and dreamed scrambled eggs with cheese.

"Have nice days," the door of the restaurant says. I’m trying. *

PHNOM PENH

Mon.–Thurs., 11 a.m.–9:15 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–9:45 p.m.

251 Eighth St., Oakl.

(510) 893-3825

Takeout available

Beer

MC/V

Quiet

Wheelchair accessible

Sic Alps, cool art at Le Meridian Hotel

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@@http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/music/2007/05/sic_alps_cool_art.html@@

Sic Alps, cool art

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Paradise – I gotta get me some of that!

chrisjohanson.jpg
Chris Johanson’s Abstract (Invitation) (2003). Courtesy of www.jackhanley.com.

Tomorrow, May 22, be sure to check out Paradise Library, a “very special event” in the lobby of Le Meridian Hotel in SF, Sic Alps‘ Mike Donovan e-mails. It’s the opening of an art installation by married MIssion Schooleys Jo Jackson and Chris Johanson, now bunked down in Portland. Expect “beautiful colors, many great books,” and live music by Sic Alps. Writes Donovan: “We put together a special set of tunes for this show (due to the volume constraints) so don’t miss this one-time deal!”

detroitsicalps.jpg
Sic wit it. Courtesy of the Sic Alps Web site.

It’s at Le Meridian Hotel, 333 Battery at Clay, SF, May 22, 6-8 p.m. And it’s all free – just how you like it.

Riding the bright horse with Patrick Wolf

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By Todd Lavoie

All aboard the Technicolor carousel!

patrickwolfcoversml.bmp

Patrick Wolf emerges from his blink-and-you-miss-it retirement – he’d announced only last month that he’d be taking an extended break from music – with a Left Coast tour. Our beloved British Boy Wonder will eventually head back overseas on another European orbit to support his recent glitter-fabulous release, The Magic Position (Fontana Universal). Wolf’s threats of self-imposed exile? A hasty decree delivered from a temporary funk, apparently, according to his press releases. So, I guess it’s true, folks: April showers do bring May flowers, after all.

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Please, kind sir, may I offer you a ride on my showily art-directed carousel?

And what sorts of floral bouquets are we talking about here, you ask? Heavens above! How about garlands so glitzy, so glammy, so shamelessly rococo that they border on the surreal? Theatricality is one thing, but the breathlessly-ambitious Wolf – all of 23 years old – pivots and whirls into near-pageantry territory, as sweeping string arrangements and dense canopies of sound provide the sort of surging drama needed for such a commanding vocal presence. Restrained this ain’t, and the otherwise dull-as-dishwater world of pure pop has been made all the better for it. Sure, I could trot out a Rufus Wainwright comparison for the quick answer, but consider this: if Rufus aches to be Judy Garland, Wolf fancies himself the heir apparent to Hunky Dory-era David Bowie, and he’s got the vision to back it up. And much like bright-eyed Bowie believers Marc Almond and the late, great Billy Mackenzie of the Associates, the guy knows how to work the camp angle and still wreck the sweet bejesus out of your poor unsuspecting heart.

Patrick Wolf plays Monday and Tuesday, May 21 and 22, at Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. No Bra and DJ Baron Von Luxxury open, starting at 9 p.m. Tickets are $14.

Artsfest

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Artsfest 2007 Arts Expo Attendees To Create Gaint Peace Sign
Collaborative Art Project Sponsored by MySpace.com

MySpace.com and the Bay Area’s Create Peace Project have teamed up with Artsfest to offer attendees of all ages at the Artsfest 2007 Arts Expo the opportunity to create a giant peace sign made from individually created peace cards.

Based on the idea that ‘what you create will change the world,’ this collaborative community art project is part of a daylong celebration of the arts on Saturday, May 19 from 11am to 6pm in front of San Francisco City Hall (Polk Street at McAllister).

The 32 foot by 32 foot peace sign engages participants to become ‘culture catalysts’ for peace. Furthermore, the sign is designed to travel to peace and community events throughout the summer and Artsfest 2007 organizers are arranging a location for its permanent display in the Bay Area thereafter. In addition to the on-site creation of this artwork, MySpacers can also create online video cards that will be uploaded to a peace card gallery at www.myspace.com/artsfest.

Artsfest 2007 Arts Expo is a free, family-friendly, multi-cultural event that features daylong entertainment including music, dance, theatre, spoken word, visual arts, fashion, food, a beer and wine garden and more. Headliners include the hot alt rock band RubberSideDown, Hot Pink Feathers, Blue Bone Express, Lutsinga Musical Ensemble, Youth Speaks and many others.

As a unifying non-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, Artsfest is a culture catalyst that engages and connects people in the arts, business, media, non-profit, government and the public sectors by producing and promoting art events and services that inspire cooperation, creativity, commerce and a culturally vibrant community.

Visit Artsfest at www.Artsfestsf.org or Create Peace Project at www.createpeaceproject.org.

Five recent adds to Victor Krummenacher’s iPod

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Ex-Guardian art director Victor Krummenacher has left our fair offices but he’s not forgotten: dude can still be seen playing around town and far beyond city limits with his groundbreaking group Camper Van Beethoven and in CVB vocalist David Lowery’s Cracker – and now solo (see this week’s Sonic Reducer) – future appearances include opening for the Knitters at Great American Music Hall on Saturday, May 19.

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Folks depart, but some things are eternal…like music lists. Here’s Krummenacher’s most recent adds to his iPod.

– Tinariwen, Aman Iman (World Village)
By far the most badass Malian blues band going. The CD of the year so far.

– James McMurtry Americana Master Series: Best of the Sugar Hill Years (Sugar Hill)
Given to me by a friend, an old friend who knows me too well and is currently stuck on “Gulf Road.”

– Grinderman, Grinderman (Anti-)
The undercurrent of demonic Pro Tools loops by Warren Ellis keeps grabbing my ear.

– Paula Frazer and Tarnation, Now It’s Time (Birdman)
Best release by Paula in a long time – cool string arrangements.

– Fall, Hex Enduction Hour double-CD reissue (Castle)
A birthday present. My favorite record of my junior year of high school holds up 25(!) years later.

Support your local band…shell

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panhandle_bandshell_logo.jpgSome people make plans to spend their summer drinking beer and barbecuing beef ribs. Others have slightly more ambitious goals. Like the people behind the Panhandle Bandshell project, a temporary installation made from reclaimed materials meant as a community performance and acoustic music space. These architects, artists, activists, freaks, friends, and volunteers are spending their whole summer doing manual labor for the collective good.

So how can we help them? (Other than drinking a beer and eating a rib in their honor?) There are all kinds of ways to be found on their website. But the most immediate is to stop by tonight’s fundraising event at Madrone. There will be a silent auction featuring local merchant wares and art, a short bandshell design presentation, and music and performance by Dr. Abacus, Allison Lovejoy, Clide vs Crocodiles,Cohen, and DJ Delachaux.

INFO: Wednesday, May 16. 8pm-2am. $5-$20 sliding scale. Madrone Lounge, Divisadero at Fell, SF.

Chasing the church

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By Steven T. Jones
Toward the end of Christopher Hitchens’ wonderfully caustic anti-tribute to Jerry Falwell on Slate today, he chides the Democratic Party for trying to follow the Republican Party in pandering to the religionists. That’s a very real fear that has the potential to do immense damage to this country and its constitutional separation of religion from government.
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Image from Sunday’s New York Times Review of Books

Just last week, during the Democratic Party fundraiser in San Francisco on which I reported, both national party chair Howard Dean and state party chair Art Torres talked about reaching out to churchgoers. “We believe God is not a Democrat or a Republican. He’s a social progressive,” Torres said. It was a funny line that broke up the room of party faithful, but it has some serious implications.

Rave on, Anon.

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ART BOOK Any ole body can start a LiveJournal or blog these days with the flick of a mousing finger and a peck on a keyboard. But how many people can undertake a project such as the one documented in The 1000 Journals Project (Chronicle Books, $22.95)? At a time when you can post your thoughts to zillions in an instant, there’s still something romantic and risky in the act of taking 1,000 blank books and dropping them like so many inspiring dandelion seeds in bars, cafés, and Muni buses, as San Francisco art instigator Someguy (né Brian Singer) did seven years ago.

It all started after the graphic designer became fascinated by the scribblings on urinal walls. "When I was in college, the art department shared a building with the ROTC, and there would be some very interesting conversations taking place on the bathroom walls," Someguy recalls from a job at Apple in Cupertino. "That was sort of the genesis of The 1000 Journals Project — try to figure out what people do when no one is watching and try to get these conversations on paper in some form."

Word of the project spread online, and after launching a site, Someguy began to get e-mail requests for books, which he fulfilled until the 1,000 were gone. Then he began organizing waiting lists.

Surrealists did it with exquisite corpses; punkers shot off mail art from afar. But The 1000 Journals Project is more anonymous, intimate, and unschooled — it’s a chain message in a bottle, bidding the finder to express him- or herself and pass it on. The product of nameless contributors in more than 40 countries, the volume is by turns grittily beautiful, quirky, and rough-hewn — filled with drawings, cartoons, collages, and stitched pages located somewhere between classroom doodles meant for one set of eyes and graffiti scrawl writ small for all the world to see.

Why 1,000? "It was sort of like those turtles running across a beach," Someguy says. "Not all of them are going to make it. It’s nearly impossible to get ahold of one nowadays." (Filmmaker Andrea Kreuzhage has managed to trace some participants for a forthcoming documentary.)

Only two completed journals ever made the journey back to Someguy, though while working on the book, he put out a call for partially filled journals, which he scanned and sent back out. "One in the book, Journal 49, was left on a scripture table overlooking a city in Croatia," Someguy remembers. "Someone in London left it in a phone booth, open to a spread saying, ‘This is for you.’" And then there were the big question marks: one contributor was held up at gunpoint and had to forfeit a bag containing a journal, and some Midwestern pirate-costumed jokers created a treasure hunt that led to a journal in the maw of a giant turtle statue. "That one," Someguy marvels, "I never heard from again!"

www.1000journals.com

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