Art

Our Brother the Native documents love on ‘Vows’

Tony Robles
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Our Brother the Native documents love on ‘Vows’

When I call Josh Bertram of Our Brother The Native at his home in Pontiac, Mich., he’s unwinding with hot tea and whiskey after “one of those days” at the office. The 22-year-old art director harbors an insuppressible passion for music, which is tough to convey to his older coworkers. “I feel like they progressively get more and more weirded out by me,” he admits. Bertram graciously welcomes my questions, speaking openly and eloquently about his new album, Vows.

At age 16, Bertram began recording with high school friend John-Michael Foss. They soon linked up with California resident Chaz Knapp and started collaborating via the Internet. “There wasn’t a lot of that kind of thing going on,” says Bertram. “Now, that’s really common.”

Bertram, Foss, and Knapp only met face to face after Our Brother The Native recorded its first full length album. Following its debut, Tooth And Claw, the band put out a host of material ranging from “pretty folk” to “post rock” on FatCat Records. Through all the style shifts, an avid fascination with circuit-bent instruments and layered sounds remained a consistent focus. After 2009’s Sacred Psalms, however, the steady outflow of releases came to a halt.

“Chaz and I were never really satisfied with the records we put out,” says Bertram. “I’ve been documenting my artistic growth over the years. It’s kind of like looking at embarrassing photos from high school. Finally, I was like alright, I need to slow it down.”

Production slowed, but Bertram’s been busier than ever. “It’s such an ambitious project to get all these players and instruments recorded,” he says. “It just took a lot longer.” The self-described sound geek did all the tracking for Vows himself. Guitar, banjo, ukulele, piano, synthesizer, and alto saxophone were among the instruments he played on the album. Knapp wrote the orchestral arrangements, and Nick Cowman of Oakland’s Religious Girls laid down the drums. “A lot of these songs had almost 120 tracks of instruments and sounds,” Bertram tells me. The final mixing of the album became an eight month endeavor.

Vows (released late October) is a dynamic flurry of sounds. Dense arrangements of strings, wind instruments, and clattering percussion accompany harrowing vocals from Bertram and an ethereal chorus of friends. “There’s so much to take in on this record,” Bertram affirms. “It’s kind of exhausting.”

In the course of recording the album, Bertram fell in love for the first time. “I wanted to make it sort of like marriage vows documenting various stages of love,” he says. “This is the first [album] I feel has actual human depth.” Ironically, it’s also the first time Bertram’s had difficulty finding a label. He’s digitally self-releasing Vows in the hopes that someone takes interest in putting out a physical version. “I don’t want fame or fortune or anything,” Bertram tells me. “I just want people to hear it. If I could have a conversation with you about your art, my art… I just want music to instigate these sort of things.”

Our Brother the Native
With Future Twin, Dead Eyes, and the Mallard
Sat/12, 9 p.m., $5
Engine Works
190 Capp, SF
(415) 563-8941

Wag the dog: The SF kennel that makes your apartment look like kibble

Andrew Lam
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Wag the dog: The SF kennel that makes your apartment look like kibble

Wiggle that paw into your trusty Birkin for a spare $150 this holiday season — you’re staying in the best room in town. Of course, the hospitality staff there is going to be a little hands-on. They’ll wake you at 6 a.m., feed you breakfast, put you in a play group with future-friends that share your weight, age, and temperment. They’ll read you a short story during nightly “cuddletimes” and make sure your owners can see you on the livefeed at all times. Also, in this scenario you are a dog.

“People don’t want a kennel these days,” Jose Gonzales, director of guest services at the Mission’s Wag Hotel, is showing me through his kennel’s state-of-the-art facilities. “They want a safe, clean, convenient place to leave their pet.”

Wag’s first branch opened in Sacramento in 2005, at which time Gonzales tells me “we really, literally redefined pet care.” Redefined it to mean luxury summer camp for the dander set, that is.

Where’s my mint. Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

The center is open 24 hours a day. In Wag’s parlance, its human customers are “parents,” individuals who need only peek at their iPhones and the hotel’s playroom livestreams shown thereon to determine whether Pawla Abdul needs another dog biscuit (Gonzales says he is wont to call in requests that employees give snacks to his own pooch when he leaves his furry friend to Wag). 

Wag smells more like air freshener than canine as the two of us explore its bowels, Gonzales imparting a stream of information and myself dutifully following after. Here are the glistening, occasionally flatscreen-bedecked two-room enclosures that house steerage boarders (the dog bowl in the door means the “room” has been serviced), the vast playrooms looked down upon by even more vast skylights. 

There are 239 of these quarters at Wag. Usually there are less than 100 dogs staying in them, although at peak times over holidays, there can be enough to necessitate 50 to 60 employees, when it’s “all paws on deck,” as Gonzales puns. There is a rooftop garden for dogs that love to feel the sun on their furry faces, even report cards given to each parent at their offspring-from-another-bitch’s terminus at Wag. These rate Puppy’s bowel movements, and cite the friends they’ve made at Wag by breed and name. There are special activities planned intermittently, like the 12 Days of Winter event from Dec. 1-16 that will afford the dogs opportunities to take photos on Santa’s lap and have staff members design stockings for them that suit their personalities. 

Reading selections in the Wag Suite. Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

But for some, this comfort is not enough. And there is still a chance for your young pup to be the first guest at the $150 a night Golden Gate Suite.

This is the grand finale of Gonzales’ tour. Here, in a secluded hallway far from the whines and yelps of steerage, a genteel canine can while away the three to four days that constitute the average stay at the hotel, in jet-setting style. 

A double bed (slung low to the floor, no jumping for the dogs of the one percent) with organic sheets, layers of pillows, and a faux fur throw is the centerpiece of the room, which rather resembles a slick private double in a high-end hostel. Upon the pillows rest a box of doggy “chocolates” made by a local artisan and a plush remote control, which does not operate the large flatscreen on one side of the room where room occupants will view their owners each night for a heart-warming Skype chat. 

There is also a stack of books for storytime on a coffee table. “I personally like The Giving Tree,” Gonzales tells me. “But that’s a personal favorite.”

“A lot of people thought that the room was built to be over the top,” he reflects, shortly before we call in a golden labrador named Montana to lounge for my camera on the bed and whine impatiently for the box of artisan treats Gonzales has safely hid behind his back. “But we built it to be practical. We looked at what a dog needs and what will make the client and dog super-happy.”

This super-happiness, Wag has decided, lies in bridging the gap between pet and human when the two must be geographically separated. To mimic the home environment, Golden Gate Suite patrons can even sit down with hotel employees to determine which Pandora channel their beloved four-legger will listen to. 

On the occasion of my visit, classical is playing throughout the hotel. “We’ve had different feedback from clients that they don’t want their dog listening to classical,” says the director of guest services. “Maybe they want movie noise. Yeah, dogs don’t watch movies. But we want them to feel at home.”

 

Wag Hotel

25 14th St., SF

(415) 876-0700

www.waghotels.com

Campo Santo premiers Block by Block

Maria Poblet
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The de Young Museum is proud to present the Intersection for the Arts theater group Campo Santo premiering Block by Block.  The performances will utilize the immediacy of the space in the de Young and allow the surroundings to help inspire and inform the movement of the dancers and the collective of participating artists and performers. This piece allows the artists to interact with audiences in a new way and invite them into the process, the landscape, and the world that is being created through the performance.

Block by Block incorporates dance, mixed-media, and live music (mixing beatboxing, spoken-word movement, battles, and more), along with projected visuals created by acclaimed visual artists Favianna Rodriguez and Evan Bissell, creating an incredibly rich tapestry of performance that should not be missed!

Audiences will be taken on a journey, quite literally, through the de Young Museum with choreographed, immediate, improvised, and purposeful performances featuring Felonious (led by Keith Pinto, Tommy Shepherd, and Dan Wolf, with Carlos Aguirre), DJ Wonway (Juan Amador), Campo Santo Street Team (Ricky Saenz, Christine Jamlig, and Kelly Strickland), Brian Rivera, Nicole Klaymoon and the Embodiment Project, Susie Lundy and Subway Fillmore Strutting to Carnaval. With the visual art of Evan Bissell, Ricardo Richey, and Favianna Rodriguez and design team Alejandro Acosta, Ray Diaz, Tanya Orellana, Pak Han, Jessica Baldwin, and Gretchen Werner.

$20 general admission, $12 for students, and $10 for Intersection for the Arts and de Young museum members. Purchase advanced tickets here.

Thursday, November 17th-Saturday, November 19th at 6:00pm reception/7:00pm performance @ The de Young Museum Koret Auditorium, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park, SF

GOLDIES 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Although the Goldies have been around for 23 years, the question arises with annual predictability: Goldies? What are the Goldies? The name is shorthand for the Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards — and it represents the Guardian’s annual celebration of local musicians, filmmakers, dancers, choreographers, and theater and visual artists (plus, this year, a film programmer and a poet) who have affixed their unique stamps on the Bay Area’s diverse, ever-changing arts scene.

Goldies winners produce work that stands out for being exciting, provocative, influential, inspiring, and even awe-inspiring. In 2011, with depressing financial news crowding the headlines and mind-numbing product churning from the mainstream entertainment maw, it is particularly crucial to honor and encourage those who’ve stayed true to their creative pursuits — be they makers of crush-worthy bubblegum punk rock, outrageously hilarious performance art, nimble and athletic dance routines, or symbolically-charged high heels carved from ice.

The 2011 Goldie winners were selected by a group of Guardian editors and contributors, including Emily Savage, Robert Avila, Garrett Caples, Rita Felciano, Nicole Gluckstern, Max Goldberg, and Matt Sussman. Thanks to all who participated, and thanks to you for reading the Guardian and supporting Bay Area arts. Most importantly, thanks to all Goldies winners past and present. They are people who, as writer Caples remarks of 2011 Lifetime Achievement winner David Meltzer, “make San Francisco great.” (Cheryl Eddy)

>>DANCE: SAN FRANCISCO HIP HOP DANCEFEST

>>THEATER: PHILIP HUANG

>>MUSIC: RELIGIOUS GIRLS

>>DANCE: KATIE FAULKNER

>>VISUAL ART: ANA TERESA FERNANDEZ

>>FILM: PAUL CLIPSON

>>MUSIC: DIRTY CUPCAKES

>>VISUAL ART: TAMMY RAE CARLAND

>>LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: INGRID EGGERS

>>LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: DAVID MELTZER

GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: David Meltzer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: David Meltzer

GOLDIES “This isn’t a conflict of interest, I hope?” David Meltzer asks. We’re smoking on the back porch of his Piedmont apartment with his wife, poet Julie Rogers, about two bottles of wine into our interview, wondering whether he’s the first former Guardian contributor to get a Goldie. A decade or so ago, he was writing CD reviews and the odd feature on anything from pedal steel guitar to new age music. But Meltzer had made a reputation long before, as the youngest poet (along with Ron Loewinsohn, now a UC Berkeley professor) in Donald Allen’s seminal New American Poetry (Grove, 1960). Now, at age 74, he’s fresh from his latest achievement, When I Was a Poet, chosen by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as #60 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series.

Between these two events he’s made so many distinctive contributions to Bay Area culture that his foray into music journalism for the Guardian is simply characteristic of his protean endeavors. Indeed, his musical endeavors alone would earn him a place in San Francisco history, beginning with his late ’50s jazz poetry readings at the Cellar. In the mid-’60s, Meltzer hosted the Monday night hootenannies at the Coffee Gallery — folk jam sessions attracting visitors like David Crosby, as well as now-legendary locals like Jerry Garcia — as well as performing there regularly with his late first wife, Tina Meltzer (who died in 1997).

“It was the genesis of the SF rock scene,” Meltzer says, and he soon found himself, like Dylan, “going electric,” as guitarist, songwriter, and co-lead vocalist of the Serpent Power, a psychedelic folk band featuring Tina on vocals and poet Clark Coolidge on drums, along with stray members of the Grass Roots. Released on Vanguard Records in 1967, Serpent Power’s eponymous LP went nowhere at the time, but in 2007 was named #28 on Rolling Stone‘s top 40 albums of the Summer of Love (which, if you think of the number of classics released in ’67, is extraordinary). As an example of the possibilities of long-form rock, the 13-minute, album-closing “Endless Tunnel” is widely considered ahead of its time.

Meltzer’s a natural raconteur — easily outlasting my digital recorder — because his life’s been so extraordinary. By the time he moved from L.A. to SF in 1957, first inhabiting the window display area of a defunct radio repair shop at 1514 Larkin, the Brooklyn-born Meltzer was already a former child performer on radio and TV, as well as a recent participant in the art scene around Wallace Berman. But SF was an irresistible lure for a 20-year-old poet.

“It seemed to be the place of a kind of creative surge,” he recalls, having already encountered Pocket Poets books such as Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World (1955) and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956). “I needed to be in a place where you dealt with language rather than paint and images.”

“Of course, when I got here, the first place I went to was City Lights,” Meltzer continues. “It was much smaller back then, like a more proletarian Gotham Bookmart, with an emphasis on literary production.”

By 1961, Meltzer would find himself co-editor of the first issue of City Lights’ occasional Journal for the Protection of All Beings, the first of several projects he worked on at the press. But, despite Ferlinghetti’s admiration for his work, When I Was a Poet is Meltzer’s first book of poems for City Lights, some 54 years after his arrival. “It’s just one of those things,” says Meltzer, who published many books over the years on presses ranging from Black Sparrow to Penguin.

Space precludes a full rehearsal of Meltzer’s career, and significant items — such as editing the poetry and kabbalah journal Tree in the ’70s or co-founding the New College poetics program in ’80s — can only be mentioned in passing. His precociousness has engendered a sort of perpetual youth, and you can still find Meltzer giving readings around town, solo or in tandem with Julie Rogers. He remains one of the key people who make San Francisco great.

GOLDIES 2011: Paul Clipson

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2011: Paul Clipson

GOLDIES Whether we’re talking about his verging live projections or crystalline short films, Paul Clipson makes things happen onscreen. His exploratory form of lyricism is composed for Super 8 film. That for is critical, since Clipson shoots with a well-practiced intuition for what shows up as gold in Super 8 (an increasingly rare form of presentiment). While taking great advantage of the small-gauge camera’s pencil-like responsiveness to movement, Clipson works from a keen appreciation for the interrelation between fine-grained detail and expansive volumes. In the words of Gaston Bachelard, a writer Clipson admires, “Sometimes the transactions between small and large multiply, have repercussions.” Clipson’s intensive approach in both shooting and projecting his work definitely angles towards a repercussive cinema.

Compound Eyes, a series of short subjects created with musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma during a recent residency at the San Francisco Exploratorium, puts a fine point on the phenomenological tuning of Clipson’s art. The images envision insect life in a manner unlike traditional nature documentaries, with Clipson’s suggestible camera swallowed in an unfamiliar network of spatial relations and glistening surfaces. Urban architectures emerge in juxtaposition, freshly uncertain in the face of our new sense of scale and environmental experience. Clipson tells me about chasing “the startling fact of the insect’s existence” one recent sunny afternoon. “To understand the animal,” he says, “you have to understand how it understands space — which we can’t do. What’s important to me than is sensitizing the view and creating an awareness of how the space is traversed.”

Discovery is primary to Clipson’s work, not only in his cinematographic concentration of visual phenomena, but also in his oblique tangents upon highly specific shards of film history, and especially in his approach to live performance. The shows place Clipson’s footage in dynamic relation to music performed by artists equally concerned with dynamics of time and space (many of them record for Cantu-Ledesma’s Root Strata label). For the audience, it means a good shot at a heightened state of being.

In all iterations, Clipson’s images are delighted by the ephemerality of that which passes before the camera (“I like the idea that [the insects] leave very quickly and that it’s this continual chase rather than something conditioned”). At the same time, the films realize a remarkable persistence of vision. Clipson’s open channeling of inspiration makes his films as instructive as they are beautiful; it also delivers the good news that there’s more to come.

GOLDIES 2011: Ana Teresa Fernandez

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2011: Ana Teresa Fernandez

GOLDIES When I meet Ana Teresa Fernandez at her studio at the furthest edge of Hunters Point, she tells me she has just come from surfing. Water, it seems, is very much Fernandez’s element, frequently appearing in her dream-like video installations and her gorgeous, large-scale, photorealistic oil paintings as both setting and metaphor — and sometimes even as medium.

“My work is about an energy that is placed in an object that creates a kind of strangeness,” she explains. More often than not that object is a body of water: a swimming pool, a bathtub, the polluted shallows of the Pacific at the San Diego-Tijuana border (Fernandez was born in Tampico, Mexico), and the San Francisco Bay itself. The strangeness emerges out of the choreographies of resistance and restraint — ritually washing herself; performing household chores; walking, or more often than not, swimming in heels — that Fernandez executes at these symbolically-charged sites, documented in the larger-than-life scale of her videos and paintings.

For its many beautiful surfaces, Fernandez’s art doesn’t let you forget that the actions depicted are rarely neutral, even if the ways in which they’ve been gendered, raced, and classed have been naturalized. The glossy realism of Fernandez’s aesthetic also foregrounds the physicality and sensuality of what she’s doing or enduring. For example, in the video of her performance Ice Queen, Fernandez wears high heels made of ice while standing on an Oakland storm drain until her footwear has entirely melted back into the Bay some 45 minutes later. In one of the paintings from the “Pressing Matters” series, Fernandez is shown mopping the beach at US-Mexico border while in pumps that sink into the sand, an image that is the very definition of Sisyphean.

Fernandez wears that uniform of a black cocktail dress and matching heels in many of her performances. It simultaneously draws attention to her body through its very incongruity with her setting or actions while also rendering her archetypical feminine. When I ask her about this tension, Fernandez, who swam competitively for 14 years, informs me that to wear clothing while racing is called drag, leading to a half-joking assessment of her performance getup as “wearing the weight of femininity.”

But for Fernandez, who cites modern artist Marilyn Minter and Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as inspirations in the same breath, the point is not accusatory per se, but to explore how that weight can or can’t be shifted through a willful blending of the metaphoric and the physical. Water can drag you down, but it also provides buoyancy. “There are these moments of seduction that occur because of the element itself, whether its the beauty of the sea or the allure and sensuality of dance. I throw a wrench into all that,” Fernandez explains. “Actually, I throw the whole toolbox.”

GOLDIES 2011: San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2011: San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest

GOLDIES “Five, six, seven, eight!” Micaya — teacher, choreographer, and unstoppable producer of the San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest (the 2011 edition is coming up Nov. 18-20 at the Palace of Fine Arts) — is counting off for her beginners’ class at ODC. Some of these Saturday-morning devotees are skinny; others are not. One has gray hair, most do not; some are dancers, while some … “They are all dancers. We are all dancers,” Micaya (who often calls herself “Mama”) insists after class.

There is something, perhaps not exactly maternal, but definitely loving and encompassing about the way she talks about dance in general and the Hip Hop DanceFest in particular. No matter whether she is, as now, in worn pedal pushers and thick-bottom sneakers or, as emcee at the Palace, in five-inch heels and a tight skirt barely longer than the heels are high — one way or the other, you get a sense that she feels a personal responsibility for the dancers in her life.

As a producer Micaya is a phenomenon. She has single-handedly moved hip-hop from the studio and community hall to a proscenium theater, giving it widespread recognition and enthusiastic audiences. Uniquely, she has done so by honoring the art as a social activity and in its more theatrically evolved expressions. On Micaya’s stage there is room for the recreational dancer and the professional. Significantly, she refers to all of them as “companies,” preferring that term to “crews” or “troupes.” “It’s a matter of respect,” she insists.

Yet the Hip Hop DanceFest, now in its 13th year, started on a hunch. In the late 1980s, Micaya had just arrived from the South, a dirt poor single mom with her small son in tow. “I know what it means to live on food stamps,” she remembers. But she had two kinds of wealth: love for dance (ballet, Latin, modern, jazz, African, hip-hop) and an embracing attitude towards difference, something to which she credits her upbringing. Teaching hip-hop in San Francisco, she offered yearly recitals at Dance Mission. “They always sold out,” she remembers. So she started a festival, and “that’s when I found out how big and rich Bay Area hip-hop is.”

This year the festival had over 100 applicants, from as far away as Kenya and Uganda. Seventeen of them — local, national and international — made the cut. Yet Micaya is a still frustrated producer: so much good art, so little money. No matter, she’ll soon be back on the Palace of Fine Arts stage, pointing to the dancers and exhorting audiences to “give ’em love!”

Our Weekly Picks: November 9-15

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 9

Keep Shelly in Athens

Grecian downbeat band Keep Shelly in Athens is an enigmatic act. Not in the annoying, contrived, hype-craving way — rather, this duo keeps its public persona as laid back as its chilled out, ambient music, allowing the material to speak for itself. Keep Shelly in Athens’ new EP, Our Own Dream (Forest Family), is refreshingly accessible. There are enough enchanting vocal melodies to snare pop enthusiasts, enough heavy beats to satisfy the most voracious electro-heads, and plenty of mellow, spaced out vibes for the chillwavers. (Frances Capell)

With Kisses and Blackbird Blackbird (DJ Set)

8 p.m., $14

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

Lykke Li

A few years back, it seemed Swedish singer Lykke Li was most known for a certain frailty, a breathless, whispered seduction on songs like “Little Bit.” With her last album, 2011’s boldly dark Wounded Rhymes, every weakness has been inverted into a strength. The pining 1950s bubblegum on “Sadness Is A Blessing” is not the song of teen heartbreak it appears to be, revealing an emotional maturity and confidence beyond what you would expect from any of her peers. From other 25-year-olds, the chorus of “Get Some” — “I’m your prostitute/you’re gonna get some” — would be little more than a sleazy come on. From Lykke Li, it’s a threat. (Ryan Prendiville)

With First Aid Kit

8 p.m., $35

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oak.

www.thefoxtheater.com


THURSDAY 10

Holy Ghost!

With the release of the first single in 2007, Holy Ghost! set a high bar for itself. An electropop track with a debt to Italo, “Hold On” announced the duo of Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser (two session musicians with ties to DFA in NYC) as a group to watch. Also, taking the title seriously, a group to wait for, as a full album wouldn’t be released until this year (they may have been busy opening for LCD Soundsystem and Cut Copy.) On the self-titled LP, though, “Hold On” is easily overshadowed by songs including the New Order referencing “It’s Not Over,” “Some Children” featuring soulful white man Michael McDonald, and the saddest dance song, “Jam for Jerry,” (a tribute to deceased !!! drummer Jerry Fuchs, who also had worked with Holy Ghost!).(Prendiville)

With Jessica 6 and Eli Escobar

8 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

Blek le Rat

Xavier Prou, a.k.a Blek le Rat, has been stenciling political art on city walls since 1981 — decades earlier than Banksy. “Every time I think I’ve painted something original,” Banksy has said, “I find out Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier.” Blek le Rat’s stirring and elegant stencil work has become a model for others. He’s pushed the limits of what graffiti can do, and helped elevate it to the respected art it is today — as one court judge in Paris said of his work, “I cannot condemn it. It’s too beautiful.” Arts Publishing Ltd. has released an immense 30-year retrospective book of Blek le Rat’s work. And at SFMOMA, the artist appears for a signing party in the Schwab Room. (James H. Miller)

6:30 p.m., free

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.com


FRIDAY 11

Big Troubles

It was difficult to discern just how much talent was buried within Big Troubles’ ultra-fuzzy lo-fi debut, Worry. There were a few promising glimpses of My Bloody Valentine, but altogether the band came across as a little one-dimensional. Then the baby-faced boys from Ridgewood, NJ, got serious for the more mature, infinitely more polished follow-up, Romantic Comedy (Slumberland). Its songs convey angst, heartache, and ennui with a delightfully diverse array of influences: shoegaze, jangle-pop, even slacker rock. Big Troubles makes modern pop music for the teenager in all of us. Let your inner teen out, if only for a night. (Capell)

With Real Estate

9 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

“Bring on the Lumière”

Don’t fence in Catherine Galasso. She is intrigued by smashing distinctions between the virtual and the real, the present and the historic and, of course, conventional artistic disciplines like dance, music, drama, and film. Her instinct for the theater is clear; her craft impressive. Still, expending all that talent on a work about Emperor Norton seemed distinctly odd. Given that her father was a composer of music for films — she uses some of his scores — her present project, “Bring on the Lumière,” an evocation of cinema inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière, makes a lot more sense. She couldn’t have done better than collaborating with pioneering lighting designer Elaine Buckholtz. Or with dancers Cristine Bonansea and Marina Fukushima as the brothers. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sun/13, 8 p.m. $17-$20.

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

 

“Lost Together in No Man’s Land”

Midnites for Maniacs’ latest triple bill at the Castro highlights exotic road adventures with two familiar features, the animated Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and 1984’s Romancing the Stone. Both were hits, but the midnight show was a notorious flop. Like Heaven’s Gate before it, Ishtar‘s 1987 release was preceded by embarrassingly public reports of a production wildly over-budget, over-schedule, and over-run by the clashing of several monumental egos. Thus it was considered a failure before it was ever seen, and became a cultural joke rejected by both critics and public. But Elaine May’s salute to the 1940s Hope/Crosby Road to… comedies, with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as talentless NYC lounge singers incongruously caught up in Middle Eastern political upheavals, is overdue for re-evaluation — it has moments of sublime silliness. Still unavailable on DVD, Ishtar gets a rare 35mm showing tonight. (Dennis Harvey)

7:30 p.m. (Ishtar at 11:45 p.m.), $12

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.midnightsformaniacs.com


SATURDAY 12

“International BowWow Doggy Film Festival”

I just finished reading Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, so I’ve got canine cinema on the brain. That famous German Shepherd (or shepherds, as the book discusses) doesn’t factor into the Roxie’s first-ever dog-centric film festival, but plenty of other pooches do, from the sad-faced, snappily-dressed Weimaraners onscreen (in a program of William Wegman shorts), to the dog show judged by celebs like Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin and former child actor Jon Provist (a.k.a. the always-imperiled Timmy from Lassie). A good portion of the audience will be on four legs, too: hounds under 35 pounds get in free, and while bigger Fidos do need their own tickets, it’s all for a good cause — Muttville senior dog rescue. Alert the pup-arazzi! (Cheryl Eddy)

12:30 p.m., $10–$40

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

 

They Might Be Giants

The Fillmore’s page for this show includes a video of They Might Be Giants from 1991, performing a couple of traditional gateways into the band, “Istanbul” and “Birdhouse In Your Soul.” But it doesn’t really answer important questions like “Are these guys still any good?” or “Are they still making children’s music?” For that, you could check out the recent albums Join Us and Album Raises New and Troubling Questions, but a shortcut would be John Flansburgh and John Linnell’s performance for the Onion AV Club’s cover song competition, “Undercover.” With a bombastic version of Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” the veteran band destroys a host of hip chillwave acts and bearded indie rockers, proving that yeah, the two Johns still got it.(Prendiville)

Also Sun/13,

8 p.m., $27.50

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Austra

Austra’s sound has been described as “harkening back to the sleazier side of new wave” — is there anything more appealing than that notion? Sleaze-wave; it rolls off the tongue. Led by Latvian-Canadian vocal powerhouse Katie Stelmanis (a former solo artist known for her youthful opera training and her Fucked Up album guest appearance), the Toronto based trio creates classically driven electronic dance music with spiffy beats and supernatural female vocals — it’d fit well in an impassioned 1980s montage scene, perhaps one where our main girl has a revelation of sudden power. This is especially true of “Lose It,” the heart-pumping single with scattered operatic highs off this spring’s debut, Feel It Break. It’s a modern, electro-“Total Eclipse of the Heart” meets “Sweet Dreams,” only you know, sexier. (Emily Savage)

With Grimes, Sister Crayon

9 p.m., $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


SUNDAY 13

The Two Man Gentlemen Band

Calling all hep cats and swing kids. The Two Man Gentlemen Band is jumping and jiving its way across the country with a brand new vinyl seven-inch, and an exuberant retro sound. Sounding like a cheeky cross between a Django Reinhardt revival and a late-night drinking session with Broke-Ass Stuart, the gents of the Two Man Gentlemen Band honed their craft on the unsympathetic streets and subways of the Big Apple, and like other buskers-turned-legit, their sound is much bigger and far tighter than you might expect from a bare bones string duo whose favorite themes are inebriation, indiscretion, and ladies. A toe-tapping, seriously swinging good time for all. (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Colin Gilmore, the Barbary Ghosts

9 p.m., $10

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

(415) 970-0012

www.amnesiathebar.com


TUESDAY 15

Future Islands

The only thing more intense and cathartic than a Future Islands record is a Future Islands show. Each release from this Baltimore, Md., synth-pop trio is more haunting than the last, but its dramatic performances have been legendary from the get-go. Thunder-throated singer Samuel T. Herring has been known to call forth the beast within by slapping his own face and beating on his chest as he takes to the stage. Future Islands’ dreamy synth and bass tunes are as danceable as they are tragic; you won’t know whether to sweat or cry. You’ll probably do both. (Capell)

With Ed Shrader’s Music Beat and Secret Shopper

9 p.m., $14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

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Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Fela! Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-200. Opens Tues/15, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 2pm (also Nov 27, 7:30pm). Through Dec 11. The life and music of Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti is captured in this show with choreography by Bill T. Jones.

Forgetting the Details Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.nicolemaxali.com. $20. Opens Thurs/10, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun/13, 3pm. Through Nov 19. Nicole Maxali performs her solo work about the effects of Alzheimer’s.

The Importance of Being Earnest Notre Dame Senior Plaza, Community Room, 347 Dolores, SF; (650) 952-3021. Free. Opens Fri/11, 7:30pm. Runs Fri, 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 20. 16th Street Players perform the Oscar Wilde classic.

Language Rooms Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-28. Previews Thurs/10-Fri/11, 8pm. Opens Sat/12, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24); Sun, 7pm (no show Sun/13). Through Dec 4. Golden Thread Productions and Asian American Theater Company present the West Coast premiere of Yussef El Guindi’s dark comedy.

SexRev: The José Sarria Experience CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; (415) 552-4100, www.therhino.org. $10-25. Previews Thurs/10-Sat/12 and Nov 17-18, 8pm (also Sat/12, 10:30pm); Sun/13, 3pm. Opens Nov 19, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 10:30pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 27. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s musical celebration of America’s first queer activist — a hit for the company in 2010.

BAY AREA

The Soldier’s Tale Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/11-Sat/12 and Nov 16, 8pm; Sun/12, 2pm; Tues/15, 7pm. Opens Nov 17, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 18. Aurora Theatre presents a re-imagined version of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 musical by Tom Ross and Muriel Maffre.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; (415) 992-8168, www.thealcovetheater.com. $32-50. Sun, 6pm; starting Nov 19, Thurs and Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 29. Not Quite Opera Productions presents Anne Nygren Doherty’s musical about San Francisco, with five characters all portrayed by Mary Gibboney.

Almost Nothing, Day of Absence Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre christens its grand new home near Union Square with two well-acted one-act plays under sharp direction by artistic director Steven Anthony Jones. Almost Nothing by Brazilian playwright Marcos Barbosa marks the North American premiere of an intriguing and shrewdly crafted Pinteresque drama, wherein a middle-class couple (Rhonnie Washington and Kathryn Tkel) returns home from an unexpected encounter at a stop light that leaves them jittery and distracted. As an eerie wind blows outside (in David Molina’s atmospheric sound design), their conversation circles around the event as if fearing to name it outright. When a poor woman (Wilma Bonet) arrives claiming to have seen everything, the couple abandons rationalization for a practical emergency and a moral morass dictated by poverty and class advantage — negotiated on their behalf by a black market professional (Rudy Guerrero). Next comes a spirited revival of Douglas Turner Ward’s Civil Rights–era Day of Absence (1965), a broad satire of Southern race relations that posits a day when all the “Neegras” mysteriously disappear, leaving white society helpless and desperate. The cast (in white face) excel at the high-energy comedy, and in staging the text director Jones makes a convincing parallel with today’s anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric. But if the play remains topical in one way, its too-blunt agitprop mode makes the message plain immediately and interest accordingly pales rapidly. (Avila)

Annapurna Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Opens Wed/9, 8pm. Showtimes vary, through Dec 4. Magic Theatre performs Sharr White’s world premiere drama about love’s longevity.

How to Love Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.pustheatre.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. Three demigod-like personalities at the center of the earth are charged with answering life’s mysteries, big and small, but find themselves stymied by their latest task, namely, explaining “how to love.” They have only a week to do it, for some reason, or humanity will be consigned to everlasting consternation, or something like that — coherence is not a priority here — anyway: stakes are high. Their boss, the Magistrate (Geo Epsilanty), has them present their findings each day, but each of them — the Very Sexy One (Jessica Schroeder in sassy lingerie), the Stern One (Gloria MacDonald in girl-school uniform), and the Young One (Brian Martin in caped crusader outfit) — comes up with bupkus. Finally, the Young One gets the inspiration to kidnap a surface-dwelling earthling (Valerie Fachman) to help them figure it all out. Local playwright Megan Cohen’s mumbling comedy, directed with robust attention to blocking and movement by Scott Baker for Performers Under Stress, is far too skit-like a conceit to merit its two plodding acts. More to the point, its humor is very silly but generally dim. Despite being set at the center of the earth, this is too shallow and glancing an investigation of love to intrigue or tickle the genuinely curious. (Avila)

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat/12, 8:30pm; Sun/13, 7pm. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Thurs, 8pm; Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 9pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Nov 27. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

*”Master Harold” … and the Boys Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Based loosely on personal history, Athol Fugard’s drama explores institutionalized racism in South Africa’s apartheid era ensconced in the seemingly innocuous world of a Port Elizabeth tea room. The play opens during a rainy afternoon with no customers, leaving the Black African help, Willie (Anthony Rollins-Mullens) and Sam (LaMont Ridgell), with little to do but rehearse ballroom dance steps for a big competition coming up in a couple of weeks. When Hally (Adam Simpson), the owner’s son, arrives from school, the atmosphere remains convivial at first then increasingly strained, as events happening outside the tea room conspire to tear apart their fragile camaraderie. The greatest burdens of the play are carried by Sam, who fills a range of roles for the increasingly pessimistic and emotionally-stunted Hally — teacher, student, surrogate father, confidante, and servant — all the while completely aware that their mutual love is almost certainly doomed to not survive past Hally’s adolescence, and possibly not past the afternoon. Ridgell rises greatly to the challenges of his character, ably flanked by Rollins-Mullens, and Simpson; he embodies the depth of Sam’s humanity, from his wisdom of experience, to his admiration for beauty, to his capacity to bear and finally to forgive Hally’s need to lash out at him. It is a moving and memorable rendering. (Gluckstern)

More Human Than Human Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. B. Duke’s dystopian drama is inspired by Philip K. Dick.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Extended through Dec 17. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

*The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Fri/11-Sat/12 and Nov 18, 12:30pm. Heralding their hugely ambitious Spring 2012 production of The Odyssey, which will take place all over Angel Island, the WE Players are tackling the work on a slightly smaller scale by staging it on the historic scow schooner Alma, which is part of the Maritime National Historical Park fleet docked at the end of Hyde Street Pier. Using both boat and Bay as setting, the essential chapters of the ten-year voyage — encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Calypso — are enacted through an intriguing mash-up of narration, choreography, sea chanteys, salty dog stories (like shaggy dog stories, but more water-logged), breathtaking views, and a few death-defying stunts the likes of which you won’t see on many conventional stages. High points include the casual swapping of roles (every actor gets to play Odysseus, however briefly), Ross Travis’ masked and flatulent Prometheus and sure-footed Hermes, Ava Roy’s hot pants-clad Circe, Charlie Gurke’s steady musical direction and multi-instrumental abilities, and the sail itself, an experiential bonus. Landlubbers beware, so much time facing the back of the boat where much of the action takes place can result in mild quease, even on a calm day. Take advantage of the downtime between scenes to walk around and face forward now and again. You’ll want to anyway. (Gluckstern)

Oh, Kay! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 20. 42nd Street Moon performs George and Ira Gershwin’s Prohibition-set comedy.

*On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final production at its longtime nest on Pier 29 is a nostalgia-infused banquet of bits structured around an old-time radio variety show, featuring headliners Geoff Hoyle (Geezer) and blues singer Duffy Bishop. If you haven’t seen juggling on the radio, for instance, it’s pretty awesome, especially with a performer like Bernard Hazens, whose footing atop a precarious tower of tubes and cubes is already cringingly extraordinary. But all the performers are dependably first-rate, including Andrea Conway’s comic chandelier lunacy, aerialist and enchanting space alien Elena Gatilova’s gorgeous “circeaux” act, graceful hand-balancer Christopher Phi, class-act tapper Wayne Doba, and radio MC Mat Plendl’s raucously tweeny hula-hooping. Add some sultry blues numbers by raunchy belter Bishop, Hoyle’s masterful characterizations (including some wonderful shtick-within-a-shtick as one-liner maestro “Red Bottoms”), a few classic commercials, and a healthy dose of audience participation and you start to feel nicely satiated and ready for a good cigar. Smoothly helmed by ZinZanni creative director Norm Langill, On the Air signals off-the-air for the popular dinner circus — until it can secure a new patch of local real estate for its antique spiegeltent — so tune in while you may. (Avila)

*Pellas and Melisande Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thurs, 7:30; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 27. The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, the Swan Maiden: shimmering strands of each timeless tale twist through the melancholy tapestry of the Maurice Maeterlinck play Pelleas and Melisande, which opens Cutting Ball Theater’s 12th season. Receiving a lushly atmospheric treatment by director and translator Rob Melrose, this ill-fated Symbolist drama stars Joshua Schell and Caitlyn Louchard as the doomed lovers. Trapped in the claustrophobic environs of an isolated castle at the edge of a forbidding forest and equally trapped in an inadvertent love triangle with the hale and hearty elder prince Golaud (Derek Fischer), Pelleas’ brother and Melisande’s husband, the desperate, unconsummated passion that builds between the two youngsters rivals that of Romeo and Juliet’s, and leads to an ending even more tragic — lacking the bittersweet reconciliation of rival families that subverts the pure melodrama of the Shakespearean classic. Presented on a spare, wooden traverse stage (designed by Michael Locher), and accompanied by a smoothly-flowing score by Cliff Caruthers, the action is enhanced by Laura Arrington’s haunting choreography, a silent contortionism which grips each character as they try desperately to convey the conflicting emotions which grip them without benefit of dialogue. Though described by Melrose as a “fairy tale world for adults,” the dreamy gauze of Pelleas and Melisande peels away quickly enough to reveal a flinty and unsentimental heart. (Gluckstern)

*Race American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Opens Wed/26, 8pm. Wed/9-Sat/12, 8pm (also Wed/9 and Sat/12, 2pm); Sun/13, 2pm. A very rich older white guy (Kevin O’Rourke) accused of sexually assaulting a poor woman of color looks for representation from the racially diverse firm headed by Jack (Anthony Fusco) and Henry (Chris Butler) with assistance from Jack’s African American protégé, Susan (Susan Heyward). With shades of Oleanna and Speed the Plow, David Mamet’s fleet new play mixes race and gender in the so-called justice system (in fact solely adversarial in the playwright’s unsurprising view, with winning being the only point). The result is an ultimately vindictive struggle both volatile and familiar. Some of that familiarity naturally stems from the world beyond the playwright’s immediate control — especially with the odor of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair still in the air — but the play’s action feels managed throughout by a political worldview too, um, black-and-white to register as up-to-the-moment. That said, muscular writing and the strong and appealing cast under intelligent direction by Irene Lewis guarantee an enjoyable, crackerjack production from American Conservatory Theater. (Avila)

Savage in Limbo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs John Patrick Shanley’s edgy comedy.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. In its annual season-scented horror bid, Thrillpeddlers joins forces with SF’s Czar of Noir, writer-director Eddie Muller, for a sharply penned triplet of plays that resurrect lurid San Francisco lore as flesh-and-blood action. In the slightly sluggish but intriguing Grand Inquisitor, a solitary young woman modeling herself on Louise Brooks in Lulu (an alluringly Lulu-like Bonni Suval) believes she has located the Zodiac killer’s widow (a sweet but cagey Mary Gibboney) — a scenario that just can’t end well for somebody, yet manages to defy expectations. An Obvious Explanation turns on an amnesiac (Daniel Bakken) whose brother (Flynn de Marco) explains the female corpse in the rollaway (Zelda Koznofski) before asking bro where he hid a certain pile of money. Enter a brash doctor (Suval) with a new drug and ambitions of her own vis-à-vis the hapless head case. Russell Blackwood directs The Drug, which adapts a Grand Guignol classic to the hoity-toity milieu of the Van Nesses and seedy Chinatown opium dens, where a rough-playing attorney (an ever persuasive Eric Tyson Wertz) determines to turn a gruesome case involving the duplicitous Mrs. Van Ness (an equally sure, sultry Kära Emry) to his own advantage. The evening also offers a blackout spook show and some smoothly atmospheric musical numbers, including Muller’s rousing “Fear Over Frisco” (music composed by Scrumbly Koldewyn; accompaniment by Steve Bolinger and Birdie-Bob Watt) and an aptly low-down Irving Berlin number — both winningly performed by the entire company. (Avila)

Shoot O’Malley Twice StageWerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.viragotheatre.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24). Through Nov 26. Virago Theater Company performs Jon Brooks’ world-premiere existential comedy.

Sitting in a Circle Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, Ste 109, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Fri/11-Sat/12, 8pm. We are here to question the ways we present ourselves, communicate, and commune, but the masks never really come off and — unlike, say, a general assembly meeting down at Occupy SF — a circle of equals never really forms in this new work by the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, debuting at Intersection for the Arts’ new downtown space. The audience sits in or around a large circle of chairs, initially bathed in the harsh glow of office-space fluorescence. This much is as expected. But as the room transforms (amid production designer Allen Willner’s protean, mood-shifting lighting scheme) into some in-between world of personal-transformation workshop, talk show confessional, art therapy session, and psychic retreat, the accompanying conceit of spontaneous open-ended “coming together” gives way to a highly choreographed, largely jocular entertainment managed by a group of seven performers planted among the assembled. The results are varied, sometimes amusing, sometimes pushy, and usually too stylized or arch to be very moving or discerning. But a dance solo by adroit 13-year-old Rio Mezey Anderson comes as an unexpected, mesmerizing moment that — in its channeling of pure, unguarded expression — is also the evening’s most authentic. (Avila)

Sticky Time Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.vanguardianproductions.com. $15-40. Wed-Sat and Mon/14, 8pm. Through Nov 18. Crowded Fire and Vanguardian Productions present playwright-director Marilee Talkington’s multimedia science fiction about a woman running out of time in the worst way. The prolix and histrionic story is the real sticking point, however, in this otherwise imaginatively staged piece, which places its audience on swivel chairs in the center of Brava’s upstairs studio theater, transformed by designer Andrew Lu’s raised stage and white video screens running the length of the walls into an enveloping aural (moody minimalistic score by Chao-Jan Chang) and visual landscape. Thea (Rami Margron) heads a three-person crew of celestial plumbers managing a sea of time “threads,” an undulating web of crisscrossing lines (in the impressive video animation by Rebecca Longworth). The structure is plagued by a mysterious wave of “time quakes” that Tim (Lawrence Radecker) thinks he may have figured out. Coworker Emit (Michele Leavy), meanwhile, goofing around like a hyperactive child, spots some sort of beast at work in the ether. When Thea gets stuck by a loose thread, she becomes something of a time junky, desperate to relive the color-suffused world of love and family lost somewhere in space-time as reality starts to unravel (with a dramatic assist from cinematographer Lloyd Vance) and the crew seeks help from a wise figure in a tattered gown (Mollena Williams). A little like a frenetic, stagy version of Andrey Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), the story gets credit for dramatizing some confounding facts about time and space at the particle level but might have benefited from less dialogue and more mystery — just as the audio-visual experience works best when the house lights are low. (Avila)

The Temperamentals New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/9-Fri/11, 8pm. Opens Sat/12, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 18. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Marans’ drama about gay rights during the McCarthy era.

Totem Grand Chapiteau, AT&T Park, Parking Lot A, 74 Mission Rock, SF; cirquedusoleil.com/totem. $58-248.50. Tues-Sun, schedule varies. Extended through Dec 18. Cirque Du Soleil returns with its latest big-top production.

Two Dead Clowns Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 7pm. Through Nov 26. Ronnie Larsen’s new play explores the lives of Divine and John Wayne Gacy.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 26. Brian Copeland (Not a Genuine Black Man) presents a workshop production of his new solo show.

*Working for the Mouse Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no performances Nov 24-26). Through Dec 17. It might not come as a surprise to hear that even “the happiest place on earth” has a dark side, but hearing Trevor Allen describe it during this reprise of 2002’s Working for the Mouse will put a smile on your face as big as Mickey’s. With a burst of youthful energy, Allen bounds onto the tiny stage of Impact Theatre to confess his one-time aspiration to never grow up — a desire which made auditioning for the role of Peter Pan at Disneyland a sensible career move. But in order to break into the big time of “charactering,” one must pay some heavy, plush-covered dues. As Allen creeps up the costumed hierarchy one iconic cartoon figure at a time, he finds himself unwittingly enmeshed in a world full of backroom politics, union-busting, drug addled surfer dudes with peaches-and-cream complexions, sexual tension, showboating, job suspension, Make-A-Wish Foundation heartbreak, hash brownies, rabbit vomit, and accidental decapitation. Smoothly paced and astutely crafted, Mouse will either shatter your blissful ignorance or confirm your worst suspicions about the corporate Disney machine, but either way, it will probably make you treat any “Casual Seasonal Pageant Helpers” you see running around in their sweaty character suits with a whole lot more empathy. (Note: review from the show’s recent run at La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley.) (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Annie Berkeley Playhouse, Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thurs-Sat, 7pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 4. Berkeley Playhouse performs the classic musical.

Doubt: A Parable Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun/13, 2pm. Through Nov 19. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning drama.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm; no show Nov 18); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through Nov 20. An aspiring writer who later becomes a priest, Bill (Tyler Pierce) is the caregiver for his aging mother (Linda Gehringer) during her long bout with cancer. His father (Leo Marks), though already dead, still inhabits his mother’s flickering concept of reality, made all the more dreamlike by her necessary dependence on pain medication. His brother (Aaron Blakely), meanwhile, has returned from Vietnam with survivor guilt but lands a meaningful career as a schoolteacher in the South. The latest from playwright Bill Cain (Equivocation, 9 Circles) is a humor-filled but sentimental and long-winded autobiographical reflection on family from the vantage of his mother’s long illness. It gets a strong production from Berkeley Rep, with a slick cast under agile direction by Kent Nicholson, but it plays as if narrator Bill mistakenly believes he’s stepped out of an Arthur Miller play, when in fact there’s little here of dramatic interest and far too much jerking of tears. (Avila)

Rambo: The Missing Years Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 7pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Dec 10. Howard “Hanoi Howie” Petrick presents his solo show about being an anti-war demonstrator — while also serving in the Army.

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Wed/9, 7pm; Thurs/10 and Sat/12-Sun/13, 2pm; Fri/11, 8pm. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. (Avila)

Sam’s Enchanted Evening TheaterStage at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 26. The Residents wrote the script and did the musical arrangements for this musical, featuring singer Randy Rose and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through Nov 20. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 9

Food For Thought Dine-Out Various locations, SF. www.missiongraduates.org. 9 a.m. – 11 p.m., prices vary (check website for participating restaurants). Mission Graduates, a nonprofit working to boost the numbers of college-bound Mission youngsters, receives a sizeable chunk of participating diners’ bills tonight at eateries across town. Depending on your budget, today’s the day to either go all-out at Foreign Cinema or reignite your love affair with the humble Papalote burrito.

“Trading Ideas: Emerging Discourses on Asian Contemporary Art” Galley One, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org. 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., $7, free for members. YBCA and the Asian Art Museum team up to explore Asia’s role within the contemporary art picture.

“Unwrapped and Regifted: Stories about the Holidays” 111 Minna gallery, SF. (415) 974-1719, www.111minnagallery.com, free. The story-sharers at LitUp Writers know that it’s not even Thanksgiving, and on shopping center time that means the hour is nigh for Christmas and Chanukah tales. If you think you can take the heat, don your worst holiday sweater to compete for a cash prize.

THURSDAY 10

One and Only: the Untold Story of On the Road book reading Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30 p.m., free. LuAnne Henderson rambled with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady for the entire length of that well-known Road. Her daughter, Anne Marie Santos, joins Kerouac expert Gerald Nicosia to discuss the journey’s underside.

Love Cake Reading Modern Times, 2919 24th St., SF. www.mtbs.com. 7 p.m., free. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha may not be the easiest name to type into Google, but it merits a cramped finger or two. The activist and spoken-word poet reads from recent work addressing how queer people of color combat violence with compassion and sexuality.

Footloose Forays Talk Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF. www.randallmuseum.org. 7:30 – 9 p.m., free. Michael Ellis’s bio photo shows the man in a backwards pink baseball cap, matching shirt, and dangling binoculars. This may aptly sum him up. Join the freewheeling botanist, Burner, world traveler, and radio host for a recounting of his best adventures.

FRIDAY 11

Legends of Hip-Hop book signing Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 6:30 p.m., free. With a lovingly-penned forward by Chuck D of Public Enemy, Justin Bua’s compilation of art honoring hip-hop’s greats breathes new life into the traditional coffee table book.

Celebration of Craftswomen Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF. Also Sat/12 and Sun/13. www.celebrationofcraftswomen.org. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., $9. The 33rd annual fair and celebration brings SF’s craftiest females and their wares out on display, accompanied by live music and dance. Proceeds benefit the Mission’s eye-poppingly beautiful Women’s Building.

SATURDAY 12

Green Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 8th St., SF. Also Sun/13. www.greenfestivals.org. 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., free (see conditions below). Maybe the 12 pounds of organic garbanzo beans you just bought do have an immediate use, after all. Bring a Rainbow Grocery receipt (for a purchase of more than ten dollars), four cans of food, your bike, your Sierra Club card or a union card and get free admission to the green equivalent of a state fair. Food court, beer garden, yoga classes, business seminars, speakers, and exhibits await.

Paul Madonna book signing Museum Store, SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. www.sfmoma.org. 2 p.m., free. If this well-known SF cartoonist has luminously sketched your cupola, gable, or neighborhood pothole you know you have bragging rights. Everything Is Its Own Reward, Madonna’s latest compilation of SF streetscapes, roams from mundane telephone wires to noble turrets, all in pen and ink.

Writers with Drinks The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com. 7:30 – 9:30 p.m., $5 sliding scale. Authors swig and shoot the breeze with their audience at this recurrent event, which benefits the Center for Sex and Culture this month. Befitting of the cause of the evening, tonight’s lineup includes writers responsible for an erotic novella, a transsexual showbiz memoir, and a treatise on dating as a feminist.

SUNDAY 13

“Man as Object” Peep Show Drawing Circle SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. www.somarts.org. Noon – 3 p.m., $8 suggested donation. All our welcome to take up their artistic tools and depict a live male model as part of SOMArts’ ongoing exhibit turning traditional gender roles upside down — although we tend to question the innovation of having a man treated like a piece of meat in this town.

MONDAY 14

Mere Future Reading and Signing Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck, Berk. www.pegasusbookstore.com. 7:30 p.m., free. To an audience familiar with paying astronomical rents, Sarah Schulman’s dystopian satire of a future New York will strike a chord. Schulman slyly invents a world where apartments go for forty bucks a month and the only possible jobs are in marketing.

TUESDAY 15

Ether Reading and Signing City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF. www.citylights.com. 7 p.m., free. Ben Ehrenreich once reimagined The Odyssey to critical acclaim, and his latest undertaking – the chronicle of an unnamed protagonist wandering through a city’s violent apocalypse – is no less involved of a literary feat.

New ‘Romance’: Wild Flag stole our hearts at Great American Music Hall

Tony Robles
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Despite the awesome spectacle (high kicks, guitar humping) and the resumes (Sleater-Kinney, Helium, the Minders) Wild Flag’s music stands on its own. The indie rock foursome (don’t call it a supergroup) from Portland, Oreg. and Washington D.C. ripped the Great American Music Hall to shreds on Saturday night, likely Friday night too, but I wasn’t there.

Jumping on stage without a word and whipping through the first three songs of the set (all off the self-titled debut), the band set the bar high early; the energy between vocalist-guitarist Mary Timony and vocalist-guitarist Carrie Brownstein was instantly electric. The two snaked around one another, in classic sex-soaked rock god movements. Janet Weiss’ complex drumming remained a blissful flurry of pummeling hits. Organist Rebecca Cole added cool retro garage charm. This is a pack of insanely talented musicians, and the crowd fed off their every lick. It was a packed, attentive, ecstatic house.

Ever the dry wit, Brownstein occasionally piped up with observations — “last night they said we brought the weather from Portland” and “I watched two depressing movies before the show — Girl, Interrupted and How To Die In Oregon.” A pre-game decision that she identified as a bad idea. Playing nearly every track off the album, including standout “Racehorse” and singles “Future Crimes” and “Romance” –  plus two promising new songs – the band retreated off stage after a tight hour.

When they returned for the first and only encore, Brownstein said she’d read a story online about Danzig being too cold at Fun Fun Fun Fest, which delayed his stage time, then she remarked about his need for shawl, buttering us up for a Misfits cover. “I don’t need a fucking shawl to sing a Misfits song,” she explained. Brownstein tricked us by asking if we liked the Misfits song “’Bullet” – cheers – “Yeah, I’m not going to play that, it’s fucking offensive.” Wild Flag launched into a garage version of “She.” Someone threw a shawl on stage. This was followed by a Television cover. The band closed out the impeccable set with a tingling cover of Patti Smith’s “Ask the Angels.”

While Wild Flag is essentially brand new (late 2010), the show felt nostalgic. It was the night of my 10-year high school reunion (which I chose not to attend for obvious reasons), and there were wistful pangs of youthful abandon. Having been just a tiny bit too young for the heart of riot grrrl, on the very teetering tip of the movement, I always felt like I was on the outside wishing to break in. But when the merch woman for Wild Flag at Great American Music Hall complimented my Bikini Kill tattoo, I was filled with pride. Listening to bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Sleater-Kinney changed my young life for the better; no matter my non-traditional place in its legacy, riot grrrl brought me to feminism, to music as art, to journalism.

Yes, Wild Flag is a new –  and might I add, yet again, brilliant – project and should be judged as such, that demands a clean slate, but the members have been a part of the cultural female underground, the ongoing, endless discussion of riot grrrl, post-riot-grrrl, women in rock, and genderless musicianship for decades. It’s unavoidable and I think, a disservice to simply ignore. When do we stop talking about musicians based on sex? It’s a question I alone cannot answer but I think it starts with bands like these. I wasn’t  the only one claiming it album of the year/best show of the year –  female or not – I’ve heard that high praise elsewhere, everywhere.

We love the sound: Wild Flag will play the Great American Music Hall

Tony Robles
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Back in 2010, when the members of Wild Flag initially started playing music with one another, whether a band would be forged or not wasn’t altogether clear. Carrie Brownstein, Rebecca Cole, and Janet Weiss (all from Portland, Ore.) had been writing the score for art documentary !Women Art Revolution when they tapped Mary Timony, who lived in Washington D.C., to record vocals. One project naturally led to the other.

Given the bands they had played in before, you would think there’d be no question as to whether or not they’d make a good group: Brownstein and Weiss had Sleater-Kinney until it disbanded in the 2006, Timony led Helium in the 90s, while Cole had backed the Minders. However, the four weren’t certain. In theory, sure, but: “Everyone knows, whether, you’re a fan or a musician, that theories do not make good music,” Carrie Brownstein said in a phone interview on Thursday. Wild Flag is now north in San Francisco for a two-night stint at the Great American Music Hall starting Friday, Nov. 4. “We spent a lot of time working to figure out if the band was necessary.”

Necessary — it’s something Brownstein stresses about the band. And it seems that it not only determined the fate of Wild Flag, but also determines her involvement in just about any project, which likely explains the reason why everything she does, she does extremely well — she needs it, and it undoubtedly needs her. Her co-created IFC sketch comedy with Fred Armisen, Portlandia (whose second season begins in January), is spot on and hilarious. Her blog at NPR Music, Monitor Mix, was intelligent and delightful. And Sleater-Kinney was one of the most talented feminist-punk bands of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Now, Brownstein and the others have found Wild Flag necessary — the songs were telling them so. “The songs felt like they were being played by a band,” Brownstein explained, “not individual people with separate ideas that weren’t congealing into something interesting.”

After they announced that Wild Flag was official late last year, the band set out on tour, without an album or recorded songs, to play fairly small clubs (including Bottom of the Hill) and to give fans a pure, unadulterated listen to the band. Over the course of that tour, the band earned a reputation for its passionate live performances. Then, in April of this year, Wild Flag went into Sacramento’s the Hangar studio to record its self-titled debut, releasing it five months later on Merge.

The record is tough but catchy, original but accessible, and recalls just about every sub-genre between post-hardcore and classic hard rock. It also speaks to just how important music is to Wild Flag. “We love the sound, the sound is what found us/Sound is the blood between me and you,” they harmonize on the dynamic single, “Romance.” Most of the music besides the vocals on the album was recorded live as well, making it a raw and undisguised release.

“For our first album, we wanted an unadorned, mirror document of who we were — our capabilities, our presence, and our sound,” Brownstein said. “It was exciting to have a blank slate; to not be comparing or measuring ourselves to any previous body of work.”

Although the four musicians have been playing in bands for decades and they feel familiar, Wild Flag is itself still a very new project. Even for someone like Brownstein, who is in familiar territory. “I feel like this band is very recent and still in its infancy,” she says, “there are still a lot of places to go with it, and there are a lot of things I still don’t know about it.”

Clearly, this is just the beginning for Wild Flag. The members are anxious to move on from this point and explore the band and it’s ultimate potential. “We’re trying to just be present in the band and be in the middle of it. But at the same time, we’re impatient. I really want to have new songs, those are what I love playing live.”

“But,” she adds, “that’s not going to happen between now and San Francisco.”

Wild Flag
With Drew Grow & the Pastors Wives
Fri/4 and Sat/5, 9 p.m., $19
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.gamh.com

The awesome video for “Romance”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8n9R8rnB8&ob=av2e

THREAD Show – Indie fashion extravganza

Maria Poblet
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THREAD Show – Indie fashion extravganza

Support the local design scene by shopping the latest trends at THREAD Show, a travelling showcase of the best indie fashion.
 
In addition to shopping, you’ll  find sweet interactive features like live music, a pop-up local art gallery, Style Lounge, Nail Bar, THREAD Wellness Lounge with mini-massages, DIY Gift Wrapping Lounge, Fashion Art Installation, photo booth, plus a Clothing Swap Lounge.

Guests can either pre-register up to 24 hours prior to the show here, or bring a bag of clothes for swapping, to get in for $5. Otherwise, general admission tickets will be be available at the door for $10.
 
Sunday, November 20 from Noon to 5pm @ Metreon, 101 4th St., SF

Here’s an example of what to expect:

 

 

 

Hot sexy events: November 2-8

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: November 2-8

It’s easy to see how photographer Michael Rosen gets people to take their clothes off. He listens, he’s mild-mannered, and he makes great art of the occasion – what more could you want in a voyeur? Rosen has been taking erotic photos since 1977, images of all genders, all sexualities, all the slutty, falling-apart-at-the seams of human sexuality. His new show opens on Fri/4.

This new exhibition, “Contact Sheet,” focuses on the fairer sex. Rosen has assembled comprehensive looks at individual womens’ sexuality – the series start with them fully clothed, then progress to strip shots, close-ups of genitals, and erotic images. 

“They’re strong, in control, and display what of themselves they choose,” comments Rosen. Lucky ladies to have a shutterbag there to pick up what they’re putting down. 

 

“100 Ways to Play: A Catalog of Kink”

Like a smorgasbord of BDSM snacks, this party gives attendees the opportunity to sample many of the ways of play that they might be called upon to perform at a dungeon party. Get the introductory skills you need to at least know what you don’t know about electric, fetish, medical, sensation, impact play, and much more. 

Thu/3 7:30-10:30 p.m., $15-$25

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

www.sfcitadel.org


Michael Rosen photography exhibit: “Contact Sheet”

36 women, caught and preserved on 35mm film contact sheets – this is Rosen’s meditation on feminine sexuality. Seeing as he’s been capturing sexy things for over 30 years, his thoughts bear listening to. 

Fri/4 6-9 p.m., free

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 902-2071

www.sexandculture.org


Hard French

If you can’t get laid at 2011’s final installment of this cruise-y queer soulfest, you’re just not trying. Or you need to work on your outfit. The monthly retro bump-and-grind returns to El Rio for one last time before it gets too cold for vintage swimsuits and white denim booty shorts.

Sat/5 2-9 p.m., $7

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

 

“Intersextions of Fat Positivity & Sex Positivity”

Sex educator Virgie Tovar will bring her fat-friendly knowledge of all things carnal to this workshop on bridging the gap between chubby and sexual positivity. Come to learn more about integrating both into your community. 

Sun/6 3-4 p.m., free

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com

 

Eagle in Exile

Ever since leather bar legend the Eagle was ousted from SoMa, there’s been a severe lack of all-you-can-drink beer events for bears and big boys. Well, except for Eagle in Exile, which brings those boys to the El Rio yard with bottomless Rolling Rocks. Pair with a side of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and performances by the Patsy Cline belt-outs of the Patsychords and Carletta Sue Kay and you have yourself a party. 

Sun/6 3-8 p.m., $10

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

Start your day off dead: Your Dia de los Muertos events guide

Andrew Lam
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There is probably no more devastatingly beautiful day in San Francisco as today, Dia de los Muertos. It’s more neighborly than Burning Man Decompression, more colorful than a march on the Federal Building — and has more emphasis on colored tissue paper than even the Mission’s spectacular Carnival parade (see here for last year’s Guardian photo gallery). Peep the community altars at SOMArts Cultural Center (above) and read on for more on where you can let those skeletons out of the closet.

So who are you remembering this year? At SOMArts “Illuminations” altar exhibition (read our interview from last year with Rene and Rio Yañez, the father-son team that curates the event) this year’s artists have created homages to Martha Sanchez, deceased doyenne of the Casa Sanchez taqueria and brain behind everyone’s favorite cheap tortilla chips; friends who passed away in the San Bruno fires; victims of Hurricane Katrina; and Pablo Picasso. Rene Yañez’ 3-D art pops from one end of the maze of installations.

You still have ’til Saturday to check those out, but be sure you drop through the Mission tonight if you haven’t seen the explosion of creativity that goes into all the house parties, kids costumes, dance performances, and altars artistically lounging about Parque de los Niños Unidos this time of year. 

 

“Illuminations” altar exhibit

Through Sat/5

Closing party: Sat/5 6-9 p.m., $6-$10 suggested donation

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

www.somarts.org

 

Day of the Dead procession

Join in with your still-living loved ones — contrary to popular belief, facepaint and costumes are not required — and march to the park where all the altars are set up. In prior years, the parade has been marked by paper mache puppetry on a massive scale, dance performances, and cross-cultural celebration.

7 p.m., free

22nd St. and Bryant, SF

www.dayofthedeadsf.org  

 

Day of the Dead Festival of Altars

Genuflect in front of the wall of Michael Jackson remembrances (one of last year’s efforts), or just kick back and take pleasure in a Mission District park full of happy families — and sure, partying — after dark. This is one of the neighborhood’s most special happenings of the year. 

6-11 p.m., free

Garfield Park

26th St. and Harrison, SF

www.dayofthedeadsf.org

 

SF Symphony Dia de los Muertos family performance

Mexican tenor David Lomelí will join the symphony’s world-class cast for this family day on Van Ness Street. “Besame Mucho,” “Granada,” and works by Mexican composers will stud the program, and from 1 p.m. traditional dancers strut their stuff in the lobby, right by the tables full of pan de muerto and Mexican hot chocolate drinks. 

1 p.m. procession, 2 p.m. performance, $15–$68

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 552-8338

www.sfsymphony.org

 

See listings for more dead head events

Mood setters

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Mood setters

emilysavage@sfbg.com


MUSIC Water Borders, a gloomy beat-driven San Francisco band with a new release (Harbored Mantras) on Tri Angle Records, spent the past few weekends practicing the art of creating atmosphere for obscure vintage films.


The band was picked for the first San Francisco installment of Celluloid Salon, a multimedia series that also takes place in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. At the event — Nov. 15 at Public Works — the trio will live score four silent shorts from the 1920s and ’30s. “We’re good at soundscapes,” explains the group’s singer Amitai Heller, sitting amongst pedals, synths, stacked TVs, and laptops in the band’s Tenderloin practice space. “It’s kind of what we do best, is create moods.”


He’s right. The textured tracks on Harbored Mantras creep from black velvet-swaddled eerie (“What Wiwant”) to veiled ethereal (“Waldenpond.com”). Moody synths and drum machine beats are layered with cinematic samples that recall snake rattles, dragging chains, even bird chirps. The album — which is the band’s first full-length release after putting out a CD-R, a cassette, and a few records on labels such as Disaro — also takes hints from post-punk and experimental industrial, most notably, Coil.


Heller’s doomed, swallowed vocals are the most startling. “There’s definitely a lot of studio tricks with the vocals,” says Heller’s partner-in-sound, Loric Sih. “Our music is generally dense and cavernous, the vocals have to be mixed in a specific way to sound right sitting on top of that. There was a lot of experimenting, a lot of trial and error, a lot of long nights in here.” Here meaning the practice space, where a nearby metal act’s muffled guitar bleeds through the walls.


While this project arose in 2009, the two met 10 years back at UC Santa Cruz when Heller was the “flamboyantly dressed” singer of Gross Gang. After Gross Gang ended, Heller started New Thrill Parade and asked Sih to join. With Water Borders, Heller says they had a plan: “everything in reverse from how we did things in the previous band.” In the other band, they “self-promoted aggressively, toured insane, and lost tons of money.”


Says Heller, “With this, [Loric and I] decided that we wanted to get everything in order first, have concise direction…and not show people the evolution as it unfolded. So it’s record it, perfect it, show it.” While that was the theory, the reality was a bit more complicated. They had to work at bringing the synth-and-machine music to the stage in an engrossing way. “It’s taken us about this long to understand how to make electronic sound good live. I think the [record release] show we just played at Amnesia was probably the first time that nothing went wrong.”


Part of that newfound live strength comes from the band’s newest member, Matt Rogers, a longtime friend and recent Seattle transplant. At shows, the multi-instrumentalist plays guitar, keyboard, and an electrical kalimba, among other pieces. The addition of Rogers, who joined in August, meant Heller could focus mainly on vocals. And those are important to him. While they’re murky, under a thick goth-y haze, the lyrics on Harbored Mantras touch on themes of dissatisfaction, systemic and institutional change, and colonialism. They come from Heller’s sociopolitical awareness; raised on a kibbutz in Israel, he’s now a volunteer counselor at the Tenants Union and frequents the Occupy SF grounds.


While likely not so in line with his personal politics, he once composed music for a documentary on the Seastedding Institute (which, he says, is basically an organization of rich libertarians who want to colonize the ocean by creating autonomous cities). The event at Public Works will be the first scoring for Water Borders as a band though. Sih and Heller seem stoked at the prospect. “I would be happy if this band was able to score films professionally,” enthuses Sih. The tones of the short films vary wildly, one even has a slapstick element — which seems worlds away from the Water Borders vibe. Says Heller, “It’s challenging in a good way.”


 


WATER BORDERS


Nov. 15, 7 p.m., free with RSVP


Public Works


161 Erie, SF


(415) 932-0955


www.myopenbar.com/celluloidsalon


www.publicsf.com

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Lucy Schiller. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 2

Ecology, Ethics, and World Renewal lecture Northbrae Community Church, 941 Alameda, Berk. (510) 526-3805. 7:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation. Stephen Most, documentarian and dreamer, discusses the links between Aldo Leopold’s philosophies and those of the Klamath River tribes.

Alan Kaufman reading Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30 p.m., free. San Franciscan Alan Kaufman, author of “Matches” and “Jew Boy,” has led a life as steeped in alcohol as that of a tequila worm. Somehow, he made it out of the bottle and has managed to write a harrowing account of the battle.

Ask a Scientist Science Trivia Atlas Café, 3049 20th St., SF. www.atlascafe.net. 7 p.m., free. Finally, a trivia night where no one has to name all the members of the Bangles. Join revelers for more cerebral concerns (and munch on an Atlas yam sandwich).

Day of the Dead procession 22nd St. and Bryant, SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7 p.m., free. With marigolds, stilts, drum-pounders, candles, and altars, SF’s annual Dia de los Muertos procession mixes reverence with neighborhood block party. Join thousands under cover of darkness for a thoughtful remembrance of friends, family, pets, and strangers.

Day of the Dead Festival of Altars Garfield Park, 26th St. and Harrison, SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 6-11 p.m., free. Upwards of 80 altars commemorating the lives of loved ones light up Garfield Park. Break out your sugar skulls, candles, photos, and meaningful mementos, this is the time to celebrate the folks you love and miss.

Casa Bonampak Day of the Dead Fiesta Casa Bonampak, 1051 Valencia, SF. www.casabonampak.com. 7-10 p.m., free. Duck into the papel picado-bedecked nook for a break from the DOTD parade to dance, eat, drink, and browse.

THURSDAY 3

San Francisco Transgender Film Festival opening celebration CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF. Also Fri/4, Sat/5. www.counterpulse.org. 8 p.m., $12 sliding scale. Honoring its tenth anniversary as a massive exhibition of short, trans-themed films, this year’s festival opens with a veritable extravaganza featuring some of the more creative names around: Fairy Butch and Kentucky Fried Woman, for starters.

FRIDAY 4

Pico Sanchez Tribute and Dia de los Muertos celebration Mission Arts Center, 745 Treat, SF. (415) 695-5014. 5-8 p.m, free. Kick off the opening of the new Mission Arts Center with a fitting Dia de los Muertos remembrance of formative Mission muralist Pico Sanchez.

Dance Palace Day of the Dead celebration Dance Palace Community Center, 5th St. and B St., Point Reyes. www.dancepalace.org. 6-8 p.m., free. Head North for a smaller-scale Dia de los Muertos, attended by Point Reyesians (Reyesites?) whose aim for the evening is constructing a communal altar celebrating the lives of their loved ones.

SATURDAY 5

Robin Hood and Occupy Wall Street lecture Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com. 7 p.m., free. Paul Buhle, radical historian and illustrator extraordinaire, recently published a graphic exploration of the original populist hero: Robin Hood. Here he talks about the link between Occupy and men in tights.

Bay Area Star Party Thornton Hall, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, SF. www.astrosociety.org. 8-10 p.m., free. Hubble, Hubble — SFSU opens its stellar planetarium and telescope to the public as part of a bay-wide celestial celebration and viewing. Because we’re all stars in our own right, right?

Cowgirl Tricks Performance Potrero Branch Library, 1616 20th St., SF. www.sfpl.org. 4 p.m., free. San Franciscan Karen Quest holds a rather vague prize from the Wild West Arts International Convention for “Most Unusual Trick” — quite a trophy to carry in this city, anyway. Quest whipcracks, yeehaws, and ropes in style among library bookshelves.

Rad Dad book release and reading Rock Paper Scissors Collective, 2278 Telegraph, Oakl. www.rpscollective.org. 7-9 p.m., free. The hip dads biking through SF with faux-hawked toddlers named things like “Orbison” are sweet alright, but there are also plenty of radical folks for whom politics and parenting go hand-in-hand. Zinesters and Rad Dad scenesters Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith speak on activist parenting.

Hypothesis: An Art and Science Fair The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. www.thelab.org. 7:30-11 p.m., free. For a certain high school subculture, science fairs were make-it-or-break-it happenings. Would your sputtering baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano land you that NYU scholarship? Now of legal drinking age, local artists vie for the blue ribbon at the Lab’s true-to-form exhibition, which was closed to any entries lacking the classic tripartite foam board.

Trail Ridge service day UCSF Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, SF. www.ridgetrail.org. 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., free. Register online. When completed, the ongoing trail work sponsored by the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, Sutro Stewards, and REI will culminate in 550 miles of hikeable, bikeable horse-ridable glory. Make your mark this weekend restoring the Twin Peaks Connector Trail.

Illuminations: Dia de los Muertos 2011 closing reception, SOMArts, 934 Brannan, SF. www.somarts.org. 6-9 p.m., $10 sliding scale. Last chance to catch the upwards of 30 altars and installations covering death, from the gravely massive — Fukushima — to the highly personal. Pablo Picasso and beloved Casa Sanchez owner, Martha Sanchez, are among those honored.

SUNDAY 6

Come Out and Play Festival ending games The Go Game, 400 Treat, SF. www.comeoutandplaysf.org. Noon-6 p.m., free. Today marks the end of this week-long, maddeningly mysterious and impossibly brilliant festival challenging San Franciscans to step away from the laptop and onto the streets for games titled things like “Charge of the Rubber Ball Brigade”. Don’t forget to Daylight Savings-ify your reminder notification.

A walk with the Valencia Street smile lady

Andrew Lam
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A walk with the Valencia Street smile lady

“Ooh, out of state, too,” Claire Lemmel winces as a parallel parker crunches his van into the side of a Jaguar. Then she puts her smile back on.

There’s a strong possibility you’ve seen Lemmel’s teeth, either on her “smile car” or on the enlarged mounted photo she holds while sauntering daily down Valencia Street. Lemmel takes her smile to the movies. She takes it to the ophthalmologist. The gleaming eight-inch incisors could be frightening, but no one seems to think so.

Instead, Lemmel’s interactive art generates exactly what she wants it to: interpersonal connection. It’s fascinating to walk with this earnest, sunhatted woman and watch the reactions. 

Most people avert their eyes, glance again, avert once more, and start to involuntarily smile as they walk. Others engage directly, laughing or quickly snapping a photo. Cars honk, bicyclists stare, and narrowly avoid injury. “Are you a dentist?” seems to be the most common question, “awesome” the most frequent comment. Lemmel began her smile project one year ago as part of a public art initiative called CONNECT. 

“People are always texting,” she says, “but they’re not connecting. They’re unengaged, even as they interact.” Lemmel has made it her daily mission to spread goodwill, roaming her Mission neighborhood and beyond with the sign. Walking behind her is a bit bizarre; ten or eleven oncoming faces will split in unison into grins. 

It doesn’t hurt Lemmel’s cause that she’s extremely personable, blessed with both good teeth and a warm Texas drawl. Mission shopkeepers, walkers, and street vendors know her and expect her. Many folks seem to take the sign as an invitation to flirt rather shamelessly with Lemmel, who chucklingly engages and walks on.  

And it’s hard to imagine, after a Valencia Street cruising session with this beaming being, a time that she isn’t smiling. But everyone has their limit, and two hours is Lemmel’s. She walks home with tired cheeks, the mouth tucked under her arm still joyful.  

 

The Hangover: Oct.23-28

Andrew Lam
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Fever dreams and wardrobe malfunctions: all about Halloween Weekend 2011 (and it’s still not over!)

**It’s a little nerve-wracking going out in costume for a show when it’s not  quite yet Halloween. What if no one else dresses up and it’s a scene out of  Legally Blonde? Luckily the bands at Brick and Mortar (Zulus, Uzi Rash, Apache, Nobunny, Ty Segall)  were slated to perform costumed covers, so I figured it would be safe. (Plus, I  spent enough money making the damn thing to ensure I’d be living with my dad for an additional month — so I was gonna milk it.) Still, when I got inside the venue, I scouted to find some other outfits among black  clothes and leather. A guy was wearing a 1994 USA Olympic Dream Team  windbreaker (“Carl Mullen” he told me, pointing to one of the figures  with a basketball) and a still priced-tagged Batman cap, so I assume that he was the first of many Tyler the Creators, despite his refusal. Another guy was dressed as Middle Aged Business Man Who Has Too Much To Drink, Tries To Mosh Too Early, And Is Never Seen Again, but this was easily topped by the best costume of the night: Totally Trashed Crazy Girl (Ryan Prendiville)

**If you were in the back of the Prospector in Long Beach, Calif. on Saturday night, you likely saw my glowing light saber sharking through moshing bodies up front for the Shitfits, a Misfits cover band (actually, the members of now-defunct math rock act the Valley Arena) that comes together just once a year at this special time. The musicians, who are now spread out across the U.S. in San Francisco, New York City, and Long Beach, have been dressing up as the Shitfits for the past six or so Halloweens, though they claimed this perhaps could be their last. My saber disappeared sooner than I’d hoped, when an angry, long-haired, ratfink tried to start some shit in the pit. This is Halloween, man, we’re here to celebrate ghoulish punk, not incite brocious pummeling. No matter, the sweaty set tore it up, kicking off with “Where Eagles Dare” and ending bittersweetly with “Last Caress. (Emily Savage) 

** South by Southwest favorites White Denim helped draw a sizable crowd in support of Manchester Orchestra to the Regency Ballroom on the Friday before Halloween. The Austin, Texas locals did not, however, save for a few ripping solos and a lap around the stage that coincided with some lyrics about running (I think), perform memorably for the sparsely costumed audience. White Denim played jammy, hip indie rock with, albeit, some interesting twists and breakdowns, and certainly with no lack of musicianship, but the set failed to deliver any standout moments. Instead, it seemed to fade into a background noise of other, similar bands with able musicians at the helm playing decent rock’n’roll to the Coachella generation. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

**There were art shags aplenty (and some lovely folks haven’t shown their faces on the nightlife scene in a while) at the tongue-through-cheek orgiastic spectacle that was Thursday’s “Ann Magnuson plays David Bowie and Jobriath, or, the Rock Star as Witch Doctor, Myth Maker, and Ritual Sacrifice” at the SF MoMA’s Halloween installment of its nighttime Now Playing series. While the live show featuring the beloved New York performance artist and Bongwater singer — backed by a fantastic four-piece live band — wasn’t quite as long as its title, it did covera whole lot of ground. Practically David Bowie’s entire career catalog got a glance, refracted through a bloody Mayan-type ritual enactment, with piñata even. But that was just the first bit. Jobriath, revered gay glam rock cult star who burnt out early and later died of AIDS, was resurrected and his tunes reverently trotted out by the always mesmerizing Ann. But in the end it was Beelzebub, the half-naked gogo “acolyte” dancing onstage throughout the entire show, who won. Imagine a wide-eyed Eyeore on ecstacy and you’re halfway there. (Marke B.)

**Santa Cruz did what it does best this weekend: dress up like crazies. Also: Peewee Herman! And motorcycle riders. And a Goldigger (why is that still a costume?). They had to, so that the surfers could be distracted from the fact that the Santa Cruz Coldwater Classic hit a weekend of sub-par waves in front of the town’s lighthouse. Not disappointing at all: the grin on eventual winner, Brazilian Miguel Pupo. Or the fish taco truck. No lines! (Caitlin Donohue)

**The season was in full effect Friday night at Kimo’s, with three costumed bands and quite a few creatively-attired audience members, including a dead-on Jack White. (It seemed all of Polk Street was in the Halloween spirit, for that matter, though the girls dressed as “slutty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” really should’ve known better.) Anyway, rockers Heavy Action — with ghostly back-up dancer — took the stage first with a raft of 70s covers (including “Boris the Spider,” complete with a prop spider), followed by punk-band-with-songs-about-Van-Damme-movies Dalton (all members were dressed as Wayne’s World characters). Headliners Street Justice moonlighted as “Sesame Street Justice” for the night. Turns out that in addition to teaching children about friendship, Bert and Ernie are also capable of throwing down big time. Who knew?(Cheryl Eddy)

**Trannyshack Halloween: A Party was OK on Saturday. Most of the drag numbers were recycled and a little tired, although a neatly choreographed dance number by several of our finest Asian zombie queens, the Rice Rockettes, to “Heads Will Roll” was cuuute. Hostesses Peaches Christ and Heklina seemed to be in a bad mood — and when secret guest costume contest judge Tommy Lee failed to show up, their wrath exploded. Playing his apology voicemail over the PA (he claimed he had “a show tomorrow so really need my rest … rock on, ladies!”) they could barely conceal their disappointment. And usually ace retro DJ Omar seemed a bit on autopilot — although Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” sounds great right now, and Mary J. Blige’s first album is really making a comeback through a wide variety of DJs. Some of the costumes were dope and we still danced to the wee hours. (Marke B.)

 

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