Beer

Appetite: Holiday spirits

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Appetite: Holiday spirits

culture@sfbg.com

Nothing warms on cold and rainy winter nights like a good bottle of liquor — better yet, one given by (and possibly shared with) a good friend. Allow me to recommend some of my top quality favorites, including a few cocktail mixers, many of which can be found at K&L, the Jug Shop, D&M, John Walker & Company, Cask, and other local stores and suppliers.

 

FOR THE HIP COCKTAILIAN:

 

GRAHAM’S 10-YEAR TAWNY PORT ($30)

A port is really just fortified (spirits-enhanced) wine: sometimes sweet, sometimes dry, ideal for after-dinner sipping. For those who might tire of another bottle of wine, this gift travels a slightly different path. Graham’s 10-year Tawny Port is one of the more common ports but packs plenty of flavor for the price, making it a fine intro for the uninitiated. It carries floral, sweet currant, and spiced apple notes, with a whisper of creamy chocolate.

 

BITTER TRUTH TRAVEL PACK ($20)

For the cocktailian on-the-go, what could be better than a retro travel box of five of the best bitters in existence from German wonder duo, Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck? The Bitter Truth travel box (www.the-bitter-truth.com) includes three mini-bottles of the gents’ Creole, Orange, Chocolate, Old Time Aromatic, and award-winning Celery Bitters. It’s an affordable, quirky gift that (bonus) showcases your savvy and panache.

 

SMALL HAND FOODS SYRUPS ($10–$12 EACH)

From local bartender Jennifer Colliau, this line of artisan syrups for cocktails eliminates resorting to crappy, generic grenadine — Colliau’s grenadine remains the best I’ve tasted — or attempting your own gum syrup. Small Hand products (www.smallhandfoods.com) are made with organic cane sugar, gum arabic, and fruits. There’s regular, pineapple, or raspberry gum syrups, for everything from pisco punch to tiki drinks, and an orgeat (almond syrup most commonly known as a Mai Tai ingredient) made with California almonds.

 

BOLS GENEVER DUTCH COURAGE GIFT SET ($38.99)

Go Dutch by giving the gift of Bols Genever, genever being the original Dutch gin. A bottle normally retails for the price of an entire Dutch Courage set, which includes a bottle and two tulip glasses for the traditional Dutch ritual of kopstootje (pronounced kop-stow-che). Translated as “little head butt,” it’s essentially a glass of beer, traditionally a lager, mixed with a shot of genever. Proost!

 

FOR THE DRINK AFICIONADO:

 

PARKER’S HERITAGE WHEATED BOURBON ($80)

I adore legendary distiller Parker Beam, whose Parker’s Heritage Collection remains a thrilling pinnacle of what bourbon can be. Though many will never forget his profound Golden Anniversary bourbon, this year’s release is truly unique. Instead of the corn-dominant notes of typical bourbon, this 10-year aged, cask-strength edition combines winter wheat and corn, bottled at 63.9 percent straight from the barrel. Open it up with a splash of water or sip neat. Either way, whiskey fans will marvel at bracing, rich layers of caramel, maple, and, yes, wheat … but also at the incredible smoothness for a spirit of this proof.

 

CRAFT DISTILLERS’ LOW GAP WHISKEY ($45) AND LOS NAHUALES MEZCALERO ($65)

You won’t go wrong giving any Craft spirits (www.craftdistillers.com) to an aficionado. If she isn’t already a fan of this incredible Ukiah distillery, she’ll fall in love with Craft’s brilliant brandies and grappas or exquisite bottlings like Crispin’s Rose Liqueur. Consider newer releases such as Low Gap Craft-Method Whiskey made with malted Bavarian hard wheat. Where many white whiskeys are harsh and bracing, at 90 proof, it’s intense yet balanced. Or try the recently acquired Los Nahuales Mezcalero (mezcal fans will know it as the former Los Danzantes). As with all Craft products, small production and artisanal techniques are behind this smoky-but-clean, Oaxacan-grown mezcal.

 

LAPHROAIG 18-YEAR SINGLE MALT ($99)

For the peat monsters among you … or rather, for those who don’t fancy the standard Laphroaig 10-year, which, like many in the line, hits hard with that peat. Extra aging has mellowed this Islay single malt to a robust but roundly balanced pour. Alongside peat smoke, enter honey, vanilla, hay, anise, and toffee nuttiness, minus the medicinal properties some tell me they get on the nose in other Laphroaig expressions. This one changes the game, and, in my opinion, best exemplifies Laphroaig’s possibilities.

 

TASTING ROOM SAMPLER KITS ($19.99–$29.99)

New to the market is a sampling experience a California wine fan can enjoy from home: Tasting Room (www.tastingroom.com). Discover new favorites or taste a winery line side by side (all samples are also available as full-sized bottles). Choose from six-pack sets of 50 ml bottles in groupings by winery, region, or type (for example, California cabs). Nicely packaged in a slim black box with winemaker’s tasting notes, consider it a home wine tasting for the cost of tasting at the winery itself.

Headbanging history

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Headbanging history

arts@sfbg.com

YEAR IN MUSIC Sometimes it appears that metal is aging backward in time, like a jean-jacketed, beer-swilling Benjamin Button. A cannibalistic hunger for old tropes sends budding musicians traveling deeper and deeper into the past for inspiration. By the beginning of 2010, the corpse of thrash metal was well and truly picked over, and as a legion of teenage “retro-thrashers” began to wear holes in their all-white high-tops, a new reverence emerged, one that looked beyond the aggression and speed of the middle 1980s, hearkening back to an earlier, heavier time.

This appetite for headbanging history was nurtured by 2010’s profusion of reunion tours. Emboldened by the music’s broadening audience, aging musicians the world over have been emerging from seclusion (voluntary or otherwise) and honing in on ticket territory that recently belonged to their younger colleagues.

Traditional doom metal was robustly resurrected; cult late-1970s acts St. Vitus and Pentagram both graced the stage at DNA Lounge, with mixed results. Considering the promise evinced by its summer 2009 appearance at the same venue, Pentagram was disappointing, though a last-minute lineup change was made the scapegoat. St. Vitus was another matter, thundering forth on the strength of guitarist Dave Chandler’s dive-bombing psychedelia and singer Scott “Wino” Weinrich’s booming baritone. The renewed vigor of the legendary L.A. outfit made the recent death of original drummer Armando Acosta especially poignant, though he had not played with the band for some time.

Metal was robbed of another sainted figure this year: Ronnie James Dio, whose inimitable voice and boundless energy made him one of the best-liked musicians in the business. His performances remained impeccable almost to the bitter end, which exacerbates the sense of loss. Fans can take comfort in the fact that he died during 2010, a year that witnessed a veritable renaissance of exactly the kind of late-1970s metal Dio did so much to popularize.

The fervor for classic, “traditional” metal was on display this past summer at Tidal Wave, a free concert in McClaren Park that featured three reinvigorated acts as its second-day capstone, each interpreting genre-progenitors Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in its own particular way. Anvil Chorus was formed during the dawn of the Reagan administration, and “Blondes in Black” and “Deadly Weapons” served as catchy centerpieces to an expertly-played set. Bay Area treasures Stone Vengeance, an all-African American trio from Hunter’s Point, showed why it has been able to survive for more than three-decades, combining engaging enthusiasm, unimpeachable technique, and a deep-seated sense of humor. U.K. legend Raven was the headliner, belying its advanced years thanks to rapid tempos, vertiginous falsetto, and captivating NWOBHM licks.

Elsewhere, German legend Accept released a new album and set out on the road, and long-running S.F. veterans Slough Feg returned this year with The Animal Spirits, a potent full-length. And yet a love of melody, guitar harmony, sung vocals, and galloping drums is no longer limited to hoary veterans. This year also witnessed a crop of new bands that drew heavily on late-1970s and early-1980s inspiration to craft a compelling crop of fiery LPs.

Sweden’s Enforcer (Diamonds) and Steelwing (Lord of the Wasteland) and L.A.’s Holy Grail (Crisis in Utopia) all took advantage of their klaxon-throated singers to release albums that draw heavily on classic Judas Priest, with a particular focus on high-register vocal melody and a bevy of shredding. Breakout Olympia, Wash., group Christian Mistress took a slightly different approach. The group’s EP Agony & Opium leavens influential British outfit Diamond Head with the unique, melancholy delivery of singer Christine Davis.

If metal spends 2011 in this same archaeological mind-set, the Blue Cheer comparisons will start to fly fast and thick. But while some may decry the stultification that accompanies veneration of the retro, they cannot deny its curatorial power. Like Dio himself, the metal of the past is destined to live again, in the overburdened eardrums of the present.

Mysteries of the death-drug scramble

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Mysteries of the death-drug scramble

news@sfbg.com

The California prison system finally released some documents on its efforts to procure the chemicals it needs to execute prisoners, and the 1,000 pages show the desperate lengths state officials have gone to procure the death drugs.

At one point, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation looked at importing drugs from Pakistan. In October, prison officials sent agents on a secret midnight mission to Arizona to acquire sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used in executions, from that state’s supply.

In the end, CDCR wound up buying an extraordinary quantity of the stuff from a supplier in London — potentially putting California in the disturbing position of serving as the death-drug dealer to the rest of the country.

The protocol for lethal injections in California, and 33 other states, calls for three drugs — sodium thiopental to put the condemned inmate in a coma; pancurium bromide to paralyze the muscles; and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

But sodium thiopental, also known as Sodium Pentothal, has been in short supply in this country, in part because the one company that currently makes it, Hospira, has production backlogs. There’s not a whole lot of need for the drug in modern medicine — it’s largely been replaced with other anesthetics — and Hospira has made it clear in repeated press statements that it doesn’t want its product used in executions.

So when the last batch of the stuff in the state’s hands expired in October, California had to put executions on hold while prison officials scrambled to find some more.

 

HIDING THE TRUTH

The whole process was cloaked in secrecy. Nobody at CDCR would tell us where they were looking for the sodium thiopental, who would be procuring it, or how the supply chain might work. That, of course, is crucial, in a grisly way: If the anesthetic didn’t perform properly (that is, if the state got a bad batch from an unregulated supplier), a prisoner could go through unspeakable agony as the second batch of drugs made it impossible to breathe.

The Guardian filed a request in October under the California Public Records Act seeking details on the purchase attempts, but CDCR stonewalled. The American Civil Liberties Union, also seeking the documents, filed a lawsuit, and a judge ordered the release of a large volume of material.

Those documents, now available at aclunc.org, is heavily redacted, and much of the material we expected to see is missing. But the documents contain some remarkable revelations.

For starters, there’s an internal timeline going back to 2007 showing that CDCR officials knew back then, while the drug protocol was being developed, that there would be problems. The Drug Enforcement Administration will only allow a doctor to order the class III controlled substances. And the federal receiver overseeing the prison system wouldn’t allow any of the three doctors on staff at San Quentin State Prison to sign the order forms, although the documents didn’t say why.

In January 2007, CDCR tried to recruit outside doctors to order the drugs — but physicians in California have traditionally declined to assist in executions. Indeed, the American Medical Association policy bars doctors from participating in capital punishment in any way, including “prescribing or administering tranquilizers.”

It wasn’t until May 2010 that CDCR was able to find doctors willing to order the deadly drugs; the names of those physicians are not in the documents.

The timeline shows that in June 2010, CDCR became aware that there was a shortage of sodium thiopental, but there was no public discussion of the situation. Plans to execute Albert Greenwood Brown, a convicted murderer set to die in September 2010, went forward.

But the courts weren’t rushing the execution — and the last batch of sodium thiopental in CDCR’s possession expired Oct. 1.

As the clock ticked down toward that expiration date, the documents show, CDCR officials — all the way up to Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate — were involved in an all-out scramble to get more of the drug.

At one point, a Sept. 16 e-mail — from an official whose name is blacked out — notes that CDCR had contacted between 80 and 100 hospitals to try to buy some sodium thiopental, but “none of them have a drop.”

The documents note that CDCR officials even suggested that there were supplies of sodium thiopental in Pakistan. An Aug. 17 e-mail from John McAuliffe, a contract worker helping CDCR with executions, says the agency is trying to get federal government approval to import the drug.

One e-mail even suggests that an unnamed CDCR employee was in the area and could make a side trip to Pakistan to pick up the stuff.

 

THE LONDON CONNECTION

There are, of course, serious issues with importing controlled substances into the United States, and the documents show efforts by CDCR to get the DEA to approve imports. The Pakistan deal apparently went nowhere — but later e-mails show CDCR officials contacting a supplier in London. The name of the supplier is blacked out on all the documents, but CDCR’s deputy press secretary, Terry Thornton, later confirmed that the manufacturer was Archimedes Pharma.

Immediately after the California order for 521 grams of sodium thiopental went through, Britain’s secretary of state for business, Vince Cable, issued an order barring any further exports of the drug for use in executions.

Like most of the civilized world, the United Kingdom does not allow the death penalty.

In the meantime, Scott Kernan, CDCR’s undersecretary for operations, was trying to get enough of the death drug domestically to carry out at least one execution. A series of e-mails show contacts between California and Arizona, which recently had imported its own supply — and there are indications that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was willing to call his counterpart in Arizona to help consummate the deal.

“I’m sure either the secretary or even the governor could make a call,” a Sept. 9 e-mail from Kernan to McAuliffe notes.

Then on Sept. 29, Kernan sent an e-mail to Assistant Secretary Anthony Chaus discussing a “secret and important mission.” Kernan wanted Chaus to send a team to a state prison complex in Florence, Ariz., a desert town about 40 miles southeast of Phoenix, to pick up 12 grams of the death drug.

At midnight Sept. 30, the warden in Florence gave the CDCD agents 24 vials, each containing half a gram of sodium thiopental. The agents drove it to Bakersfield, where another team picked up the vials and drove the rest of the way to San Quentin.

In a stomach-turning e-mail, Kernan sent a note Sept. 29 to an unnamed Arizona official saying “you guys in Arizona are life savers” and offering to “by [sic] you a beer next time I get that way.”

By then, a federal judge had delayed Brown’s execution until 2011.

Among the most startling revelation was the sheer quantity of sodium thiopental California eventually ordered from the firm in London. Even with training supplies and backup, it only takes between six and 12 grams of sodium thiopental to render a prisoner unconscious — meaning that the 521 grams that CDCR purchased for $36,413 are enough to kill between 43 and 86 people. The expiration date on the chemical is 2014.

It’s highly unlikely, given the legal hurdles and time involved in even one execution, that California would schedule more than three over the next three years. What possible use could the state have for so much death drug?

Thornton, CDCR’s press person, wouldn’t respond to our queries. But Natasha Minsker, the director of the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project, said she’s concerned that California will try to become a supplier for other prison systems. “It certainly raises questions,” she told us.

There’s a lot missing from the documents. In many instances, the names of the officials who sent and received e-mails are redacted. And there are obvious pieces of the puzzle missing from the files CDCR has released.

“There’s no e-mail from the DEA or the FDA,” Minsker said, “although CDCR was clearly contacting them. There’s nothing from the governor’s office, although it’s likely they were also involved.”

Overall, Minsker said, the documents “show how sneaky CDCR was trying to be about all of this.”

The ACLU filed another suit Dec. 13 seeking the release of some of the redacted material as well as records of CDCR’s efforts between October and December.

If those documents are ever released, they may address some of the looming questions about the material the state uses to kill people.

Where everybody knows your name

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Where everybody knows your name

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL It can be easy to get cynical about the business side of art, so it’s always refreshing when a local labor of love such as Romer Young — the small Dogpatch gallery formerly known as Ping Pong — demonstrates that growth doesn’t necessarily entail compromising one’s vision.

That vision has always been driven by husband and wife team Vanessa Blaikie and Joey Piziali’s commitment to work that is consistently smart, challenging and often surprisingly personal: from recent Goldie winner Amanda Curreri’s conceptual prompts at forging new social connections, to, most recently, James Sterling Pitt’s table-full of sculpted art-related books and ephemera, an affectionate take on how material possessions can shape creative practice.

“We’ve had very special relationships with our artists because this has always been about putting their work first,” explains Blaikie, when I meet with her and Piziali in the gallery’s cozy back room, which adjoins Piazali’s studio. Inspired by the work of many of their classmates in San Francisco Art Institute’s MFA program, but dismayed by the lack of spaces willing to take a chance on art that was more conceptual or performance-based, Blaikie and Piziali took matters into their own hands and started putting together exhibits.

The gallery’s unusual former name came from the quarterly, ping-pong happy hours Blaikie and Piziali held, a nod to 1970s Bay Area conceptual artist Tom Marioni’s famous statement, “Drinking beer with friends is the highest form of art.”

“We were really trying to activate the space as social sculpture through a non-art event,” Piziali recalls, “but we also had our share of calls asking about equipment rentals.”

Five years later, as the partnerships Blaikie and Piziali formed early on have led to a roster of repeat-showers and a more prominent profile, they decided it was time to change names and reassess how best to shift their operation. “Once you’re not an exhibition space, you start looking at the model of ‘gallery’ and see what that means, “explains Piziali. “But you don’t start a space like this with blood, sweat, and tears only to ask every time, ‘Did we make the bottom line?'”

Though the paddles have been hung up in favor of the, let’s face it, more professional-sounding Romer Young — a combination of Blaikie and Piziali’s mothers’ maiden names — Blaikie’s and Piziali’s core commitment hasn’t changed. Fittingly, they have decided to inaugurate the newly christened space with a solo exhibit by the now New York City-based conceptual artist Chad Stayrook, who contributed one of Ping Pong’s earliest shows.

“It felt only right to honor the growth we’ve undergone,” reflects Blaikie. “When we started, we were doing it because we loved it, and now we’re doing it because we love it and we want it to make sure it can keep growing.”

 

DOWN MEXICO WAY

Upon entering “Disponible — a kind of Mexican show” at SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries, you hear Manuel Rocha Iturbide’s sound installation I play the drum with frequency before you see it — what you see is Hector Zamora’s massive arrangement of hanging metal drying racks. Suspended with fishing line in tiered formations, the drying racks play off of the Brutalist, concrete interior of the Walter gallery while imbuing the space with an ethereal density. The ricocheting clinks, low-end buzzes, and sonorous clangs emitted by Iturbide’s piece — installed in a lofted area above the main gallery — bring Zamora’s installation to life as a fog bank-turned-carousel organ.

Both pieces are less impressive, however, when you attempt to view them individually. Without the extra visual accompaniment, Iturbide’s deconstructed drum kit — played via algorithmically-controlled speaker cones whose vibrations sound the cymbals and drum heads they’re attached to — loses its initial impact. Likewise, separated from Iturbide’s soundtrack, Zamora’s piece resembles the forgotten remains of a half-finished install job.

This creeping feeling of “is that all there is?” that both Zamora’s and Iturbide’s pieces evokes seems, at least partially, by design. The exhibit takes its name from the text on empty advertising billboards throughout Mexico, in which disponible is followed by a phone number. Playing off the double meaning of disponible as “available” and also “potentially changeable” or “disposable,” the curatorial team of Hou Hanru, SFAI’s director of exhibitions and public programs, and Guillermo Santamarina, an independent curator based in Mexico City, aren’t so much devaluing the pieces they’ve selected as they are loosening the conceptual strictures implicit in putting on a show of contemporary Mexican art. I can’t wait to see what Hanru and Santamarina have in store for phase two of the exhibit, which opens in February.

CHAD STAYROOK: UNATTAINABLE BEAST

Fri/10 through Jan. 15, 2011

Romer Young Gallery

1240 22nd St., SF

(415) 550-7483

www.romeryounggallery.com

DISPONIBLE — A KIND OF MEXICAN SHOW (PHASE ONE)

Through Jan. 22

Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute

800 Chestnut, SF

(415) 749-4563

www.waltermcbean.com

Shroomin’ at the Fungus Fair

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Erik Anderson

“See, it’s starting to smell.” It’s day two of the Mycological Society of San Francisco‘s winter Fungus Fair at Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science this weekend and the ‘shrooms are getting a little funky. MSSF member Peter Wegner is showing us around the caps and stems and he sounds a little apologetic for the earthy musk that has descended on us as we enter the fair’s specimen room. 

But he needn’t be – the sight of the room’s fungi, collected by society volunteers in the Bay Area over the past few days from 25 forage sites, more than makes up for any scent it emits. Not to mention the fair’s culinary offerings, educational bonanza, and the ‘shroom gnome hats so delicately worn by gung-ho clan members – this is the cardinal event of the country’s largest amateur mushroom society. 

Fungus Fair, I think I love you.

Wegner himself has been a MSSF member for eight years. His mushroom mania began on a trip to Italy, incensed by the delectable array of edible fungi that lined dinner tables in the area. He is now  happy to tell Fungus Fair newbies that his favorite mushroom is the black chanterelle (“they’re mysterious,” he says). 

Delicious meals are but one type of draw to the study of mycology – other members we spoke with yesterday expressed interest in the taxonomy of the fungi kingdom, in dyeing clothes from the mushroom’s natural pigment, and in the sheer camaraderie that’s inherent in finding roughly 800 others with an atypical attraction to fine fungal growth. 

“There’s a lot of mentoring that goes on,” says Norm Andresen, MSSF member and conductor of the society’s beginner’s forays into the wilds of McLaren Park and other damp corners of the Bay. A Brobdingnagian, white-haired man, Andresen towers above the tables of the specimen room, keeping his distance from a particularly pungent stand of growths as he answers questions on their providence, properties, and shelf life (“you probably wouldn’t want to eat any of these display ones, they’ve been getting touched by little kids all weekend.”)

In a lecture room a few halls down from Andresen’s post, a man introduced as “the best mushroom photographer in the world” by fair chair person J.R. Blair is playing the music video to his self-penned ode to the fungus among us, “Mushroom Fever.” On repeat. “Hopefully we don’t scare anybody away!” he announces blithely into his microphone as he readies his presentation on his recent mushroom-finding jaunt around the Americas.

Such is the intro to the glory that is Taylor Lockwood, who has achieved a near-godlike status in my eyes by having cobbled together a living off of traveling, digging around in the dirt, and hoisting himself up tree-supported ladders to get the best shot of aerially-inclined mysterious mushrooms. The man flips through a Power Point presentation of some of his best clips, which include squishy mushrooms (“good for the kids!”), fungi resembling tropical purple coral (“probably just convergent evolution”), and Brazilian ‘shrooms he captured on illicit night-time jaunts through a nature preserve.

Lockwood’s pitch for his calendars and assorted publications concluded, we wander past the sold-out mushroom soup kitchen and into the realm of Pat George, the society’s culinary chair. George, set up at at a table kitty-corner from an impressive display of psilocybin, is distributing recipes and information on the group’s regular potluck dinners. She explains that the events feature a carefully planned barrage of  the mushroom’s power to sate — mushroom ragus, mushroom desserts flavored by candy cap mushrooms (“cheesecake, biscotti, there’s all kinds of stuff you can make with a candy cap,” she ventures), even the rare bottle of mushroom beer. 

It’s all very tasty, as is the prospect of the MSSF’s other fare for the nascent mycological enthusiast. Beginners are welcome also to the group’s regular forays into the not-quite-wild for ‘shrooms, many of which are located here in the city for extreme accessibility. For the lazy, Far West Fungi has set up a stand in the vendor hall that stocks the farm’s “mini-farms” in oyster and shiitake — simply uncover the germinated logs and let the fungal growth loose in a shady corner of your bedroom. 

Why so much mushroom mania here in the Bay? The answer, says SF State mycology lecturer Thomas Jenkinson, who is stationed at the fair’s “Introduction to Mushrooms” booth, lies in the ubiquity of fungi throughout the year in our fair glens and dales. “The Bay Area’s a real center of mycology,” he tells me. San Francisco State is the site of the West Coast’s longest study of mycology, as well as what he calls “the most prolific mycology professors.”

And mushrooms lend themselves to a real community notion of life in our natural world. “Fungus is a whole other kingdom – we don’t think about it that much because it’s underground, but microscopic threads of it are just everywhere,” says Jenkinson. The ‘shrooms are getting real neighborly down there, due to these interconnected systems. “The concept of individuality that we have – they just don’t have that underground.” Lack of individuality: a trait hardly shared by the mycological aficionados of Fungus Fair.

 

Our Weekly Picks: December 1-7

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 1

MUSIC

Good for the Jews

The last time this parodic-Hebraic duo made it to this city, they were greeted by a protesting Nazi who had posted up in front of their show. “He felt that we were representative of the Jewish-owned media. But I want to know: if we’re representing Zionist power, why am I staying at a Holiday Inn?” says group member Rob Tannenbaum. Honestly, the two (the other member is David Fagin) could probably care less about the crazies. Their Xmas alternative songs, which include “Reuben the Hook-Nosed Reindeer,” poke fun at the schmaltz of Christianity and Judaism — secular, and less so — alike, a perfect side dish for your holiday Chinese takeout. (Caitlin Donohue)

8 p.m., $15

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

THURSDAY 2

FILM

The Passion of Joan of Arc

One of the great meteors of film history, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent elegy literalizes the adage that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) charges religious iconography with the erotic fluency of moving images, paving the way for subsequent generations of film transcendentalists who have sought the sacred in the profane. Once you’ve witnessed Maria Falconetti’s Joan, your sense of what’s possible in film acting is forever marked. Seeing the movie at the Paramount accompanied by an orchestral performance of Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light score promises to be an awesome treat — the cinematic equivalent of a purification ritual. (Max Goldberg)

7:30 p.m., $25

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu


THEATER

“San Francisco’s Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes”

Picture it: San Francisco, 2010. Overcome by their affection for The Golden Girls and a tidal wave of holiday spirit, a quartet of drag superstars (Heklina, Cookie Dough, Matthew Martin, and Pollo Del Mar), plus one legendary rocker (Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s), join forces to present two full-length episodes of the immortal sitcom live on stage. (For GG experts, because I know you’re out there, the eps are “Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Marinara.”) Heklina and company earned raves for The Golden Girls: The Play, and this jolly twist offers an ideal, cheesecake-fueled opportunity to greet the season. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Dec. 23

Thurs.–Sat., 7 and 9 p.m., $25

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.ticketfly.com

 

MUSIC

Mister Heavenly

Mister Heavenly is the result of a long-rumored collaboration between top-flight indie rock songwriters Nick Thorburn (Islands, Unicorns) and Honus Honus of Man Man. Originally slated to be little more than a tossed-off sidestep, the project picked up steam with the addition of drummer Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, Shins). No recordings have surfaced yet, so it’s tough to tell what Mister Heavenly is actually gonna sound like. But with Thorburn on record describing it as a low frequency, slowed down version of doo-wop — appropriately dubbed “doom-wop” — I think it’s at least safe to bank on it being awesomely strange. (Landon Moblad)

9 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com EVENT

 

EVENT

Left Coast Leaning Festival

Pin it on whatever factor you like, but the fact remains that the Best Coast whoops that other coast’s ass, wraps it up nicely, and drops it in the mail marked “Return to Sender.” For reals, it’s nice out here. You already knew that, and so do the wonderful young-person spoken word artists at Youth Speaks, who along with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are putting together this homage to the Wild West’s cultural diversity and its many happy mutations of hip-hop culture. Tonight alone you can check out the modern fusion dance stylings of Adia Tamar Whitaker and a dreamy, beautiful animated piece by Los Angeles’ Miwa Matreyek. (Donohue)

Thurs/2–Sat/4, 8 p.m., $20

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

FRIDAY 3

DANCE

Liss Fain Dance

Choreographer Liss Fain presents The False and True are One, which plays with the notion of how an event can be perceived differently by various people. Fain breaks up the common proscenium presentation of dance by creating a series of galleries on the stage that audience members can meander through at their leisure. Fain’s talented dancers (Jennifer Beamer Fernandez, Private Freeman, Megan Kurashige, Shannon Kurashige, Alec Lytton, and Bethany Mitchell) will perform throughout Matthew Antaky’s architecturally designed performance space while actor Jeri-Lynn Cohen enacts short stories by Lydia Davis. The result will be many different perceptions and viewings of the same performance. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

Fri/3–Sat/4, 8 p.m., $25

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

www.lissfaindance.org

 

VISUAL ART

“Stella Luminosa”

Electric Works’ new group show “Stella Luminosa” is like a much-needed shot of bourbon to steady oneself against the already advancing avalanche of holiday-themed treacle. Brining together such guiding lights as Dave Eggers, Matt Furie, Ian Huebert, Jason Jägel, Keegan McHargue, Clare Rojas, and Gina Tuzzi, “Stella Luminosa” presents these artists’ highly idiosyncratic winter wonderlands (with extra emphasis on “wonder”) and the odd ducks who inhabit them. Why settle for good cheer when there is plenty of weird cheer to go around? (Matt Sussman)

Through Dec. 24

Reception tonight, 6–8 p.m.

Electric Works

130 Eighth St., SF

www.sfelectricworks.com

 

MUSIC

Mr. Oizo

Who is the elusive Mr. Oizo? Here’s what we know for sure: French. Reportedly born Quentin Dupleux, although it’s specious. Electro DJ and producer. On the notorious Ed Banger record label with Justice, SebastiAn, and Cassius. Frequent collaborator with additional label-mate and proto Ke$ha, Uffie. Double identity as a film director. The subject of most recent film, Rubber, involves a homicidal tire with psychic powers. First infiltrated the U.S. in 1999 with seemingly harmless yet ubiquitous “Flat Eric” Levi’s ad campaign, the soundtrack from which may have been used to indoctrinate domestic sleeper agents. Current developments in sound are more nefarious and possibly deadly. Further surveillance required. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Boyz IV Men

10 p.m., $19.50

103 Harriet

103 Harriet, SF

(415) 431-1200

www.1015.com

 

DANCE

Human Creature and Jessica Damon

Human Creature shares the bill with Jessica Damon and Dancers in this performance presented by Resident Artist Workshop (RAW). With four new works choreographed by codirectors Derek Harris and Meegan Hertensteiner and music by composer Mark Hertensteiner, Human Creature’s witty and dark subject matter includes sleep, a postapocalyptic beginning, and the subconscious. Choreographer Jessica Damon’s piece Coated investigates how it must feel to be coated in oil and addresses the environmental problems associated with innovation and the unconsidered costs of technological growth. Stick around for beer and wine at the post-show party in the basement with DJ K-Real. (Wiederholt)

Fri/3–Sat/4, 8 p.m., $10–$20

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(415) 518-1517

www.975howard.com

 

SATURDAY 4

DANCE

“Pilot 57: Pilot Light”

Twenty years and 27 programs later, ODC’s Pilot series one reason young dancers continue flocking to the Bay Area, cost of living be damned. Pilot participants are not beginners; they have a professional, though usually small, track record. What they want and get from Pilot are 11 weeks of working with equal-minded colleagues in a supportive environment that provides feedback. Practical advice on how to make it in a competitive field is thrown in. Artists Nathan Cottam, Amy Foley, Daria Kaufman, Elizabeth McSurdy, Raisa Punkki, and Charles Slender bring wide perspective to their projects, which should make for appealing shows — and probably had sparks flying during the working sessions. (Rita Felciano)

Sat/4–Sun/5, 8 p.m., $12

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

 

SUNDAY 5

MUSIC

Jonathan Richman

Some know him as the leader of 1970s pre-punk trailblazers, the Modern Lovers. Others recognize him as the wide-eyed crooner known to pop up in Farrelly brothers comedies. But it’s the 30 years’ worth of quirky solo albums that have made Jonathan Richman one of the finest cult singer-songwriters of his era. Combining early rock ‘n’ roll songwriting strummed out on a clean Telecaster; a surplus of world music influences; and sparse, tasteful accompaniment from his longtime drummer Tommy Larkins, Richman is a hilarious and charming performer whose live show is not to be missed. (Moblad)

With Gail Davies

8 p.m., $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

DANCE

Mary Sano Dance Collaborations

Mary Sano is a passionate advocate for the work of Isadora Duncan. In Japan she was a modern dancer until she encountered the work of the great California dance pioneer. Her programs usually feature Duncan and Duncan-style dances, but she often brings in actors, musicians, and poets for intriguing salon-type evenings. For Ship of Dreams: Kanrin Maru — 150 Years of Hope, Struggle and Friendship, her first evening-length piece, she dipped into all of these resources. Everybody has heard of Commodore Perry, who is credited-blamed for “opening” Japan to wonders of Western civilization in 1851. But does anybody know the story of the Kanrin Maru, which — against incredible odds — carried the first Japanese emissaries to the U.S. in 1860, landing of course in San Francisco? Sano “recreates” this journey with four dancers, seven actors, and five musicians, including Native American singer Dennis Banks. (Felciano)

7 p.m., $28

Brava Theater

2781 24th St., SF

(415) 647-2822

www.brava.org

 

MUSIC

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

Is it possible that Owen Ashworth has cheered up? For more than a decade Casiotone for the Painfully Alone has been an appropriately descriptive title for his brand of subdued, introspective, keyboard-infused indie pop. But now it’s over. He announced in suitably emo fashion (via LiveJournal): “After nearly 13 years of being the dude from Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, I’m ready for a fresh start and a new challenge. So, after Dec. 5, 2010 (the 13-year anniversary of my first show), I’m throwing out the old songs and I’m trying something new.” Expect this show to be especially bittersweet. (Prendiville)

With Donkeys and Ian Fays

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com 


The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Our Weekly Picks: November 24-30

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 24

MUSIC

Pretty Lights

Fewer and fewer new musicians are choosing to fight the losing battle against illegal downloading, deciding instead to align with our interweb overlords and rely on their music to speak for itself. Colorado electronic music producer Derek Vincent Smith, a.k.a. Pretty Lights, has been steadily releasing free albums on his website all year, and this tour is proof that a heavy helping of Internet chatter can indeed get you a big-time show at The Fox. Reminiscent of early-aught DJ Shadow or RJD2 albums, Smith’s style infuses old school, crate-digging funk and soul with contempo dance beats, an approach that’s lain dormant in the aftermath of the mashup. Come for the rad music and stay to see how many “candy kids” it takes to turn the show into a rave. (Peter Galvin)

With Thunderball and Gramatik

7:30 p.m., $27.50

The Fox Theatre

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

1-800-745-3000

www.thefoxoakland.com

 

MUSIC

Kenny Dope

I have an urge to use Kenny Dope’s last name as an adjective, but the powers that be informed me I’m cut off from using any more puns this week. So here’s the straight talk: Come Thursday, you’re gonna be in a full on turkey (or tofurkey) coma, which makes tonight night your last chance to squeeze in some cardio. Even for the unmotivated, Kenny Dope will make this happen. Also half of the production duo Masters at Work, Dope is known for reworking disco, jazz, pop, and especially Nuyorican soul to make everything (including your feet) move a whole lot more. (Ryan Prendiville)

With David Harness and LadyHouse

10 p.m., call for price

Endup

401 Sixth St., SF

(415) 646-0999

www.theendup.com

 

FRIDAY 26

EVENT

Dickens Christmas Fair

Imagine 12,000 square feet of Victorian London, suitable for diversion over Thanksgiving weekend and perhaps some light Christmas shopping (sorry, I said it). But harken! The Dickens Christmas Fair is one costume-heavy event whose appeal goes far beyond the Miss Havisham fan club. Especially if you like beer — there will be five pubs on the cobblestone streets, including the Bohemian Absinthe Bar, and ribald entertainment like daily performances of The Mikado and an explorer’s club where the audience is regaled with tales of British empire expansion. And especially if you like cinching — Dark Garden’s corsetry will be there amid the fake snow and bawdiness, perfect for the French postcard tableaux nearby. Wink. Nudge. (Caitlin Donohue)

Fri/26–Sun/28; also Dec. 4–5, 11–12, 18–19;

11 a.m.–7 p.m., $12–$25

Cow Palace Exhibition Halls

2600 Geneva, SF

1-800-510-1558

www.dickensfair.com

 

PERFORMANCE

Mummenschanz

With zany characters created from wires, tubes, boxes, and even toilet paper, all ages will delight in Mummenschanz and its imaginative world. Founded in 1972 by Bernie Schüch, Floriana Frassetto, and the late Andres Bossard as a nonverbal theatrical troupe interested in transcending national and cultural barriers, this Switzerland-based pantomime company has enjoyed internationally acclaim. 3×11, a retrospective look back on the company’s most popular and successful works of the past 33 years, will entertain Bay Area audiences immensely this weekend. Come and be enchanted by the wacky, witty universe of Mummenschanz. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

Fri/26-Sat/27, 2 p.m.; (also Sat/27, 8 p.m.);

Sun/28, 3 p.m., $22–$52

Zellerbach Hall

UC Berkeley, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperformances.org


DANCE

The Christmas Ballet

The late Michael Smuin knew western music inside out. From Bach to Coltrane, Palestrinata to Presley, he let it feed his wit, imagination, and — let’s be frank — a dollop of his sentimentality. Nowhere did he put these propensities to better use than in The Christmas Ballet, a rip-roaring trip through the holidays. You can’t miss the way these composers inspired him for choreography that’s both classical and cool. Every year he added a few new voices, letting others rest. This year the task of keeping the show fresh has fallen to choreographer-in-residence Amy Seiwert, who picked Leonard Bernstein’s version of the “Carol of Bells,” and ballet master Amy London, who went for Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” The show comes to SF Dec. 15. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/26–Sat/27, 8 p.m.;

also Sat/27, 2 p.m., $20–$62

Lesher Center for the Arts

1601 Civic Center, Walnut Creek

(925) 943-7469

www.smuinballet.org


FILM

Kuroneko

Japanese director Kaneto Shindo has a thing for ghostly mothers and daughters-in-law, perhaps because the supernatural events that unfurl in his elegant, horror-minded films always spring from domestic traumas. In his most famous film, Onibaba (1964), two women are driven to madness after preying on near-dead samurai in feudal Japan. In the equally stunning Kuroneko (Black Cat, 1969), a different pair of women linked by a son gone off to war also prey on samurai: only this time, as vengeful, shape-shifting spirits. Shindo makes more than a few stylistic nods to Jacques Tourneur (especially 1942’s Cat People) in this recently restored beauty, which dwells as much on the sorrows of the dead as it does on the terror the dead inflict on the living. (Matt Sussman)

2:30, 4:45, 7, and 9:15 p.m., $7.50–$10

Castro

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com


PERFORMANCE

Yard Dogs Road Show

Two years since this glitter and glory bordello played its own show in the Bay? Egads! But jealous lovers we are not. YDRS felt the need to bring its vaudevillian stage presence to circus freaks around the country, so like the proverbial “thing,” we loved it enough to let it go — and it has returned. High Times described the 13-member troupe as “an acid trip without the come-down” — the group stuffs into its hobo cornucopia cheery fanfare, sword swallowing, burlesque, a mystic man, handlebar mustaches, and Mission Thrift finery enhanced by their temporarily halted epic wanderlust. Dance off your Turkey Day paunch to the freewheeling frolics. (Donohue)

Fri/26–Sat/27, 9 p.m., $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


DANCE

The Velveteen Rabbit

Margery Williams’ tale The Velveteen Rabbit has made many a child hope their most beloved toy might one day come to life — and for the past 24 seasons, the story of a boy and his adored stuffed rabbit has come to life itself, thanks to ODC Dance. Directed and choreographed by KT Nelson with music by Benjamin Britten, this dance adaptation features the talented artists of ODC as the madcap characters in this childhood favorite. With festive undertones and a classic narrative about enduring love and what it means to be real, The Velveteen Rabbit is the perfect way to ring in the holidays with the family. (Wiederholt)

Fri/26–Sun/28 and . 5, 12, 2 p.m.;

Dec.2–3 and 9–10, 11 a.m.; Dec. 4 and 11, 1 and 4 p.m.

$15–$45

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Novellus Theater

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.odcdance.org


SATURDAY 27

DANCE

Nutcracker at Zeum

Is there a little one in your life who would love The Nutcracker but doesn’t have the attention span to sit through a two-hour extravaganza? There is no better (or more affordable) way to make that first foray into Nut-Land — where brave little Marie lets the evil Mouse King have it — than Mark Foehringer’s theatrically savvy and utterly charming Nutcracker at Zeum. The show runs 50 minutes and squeezes a tiny orchestra into the corner of the stage. The kids can watch scenery being moved. The story is beautifully condensed with dancers still shining in spiffy turns and floating leaps; Brian Fisher’s Drosselmeyer is as mysterious and kindly as any seen on local stages. (Felciano)

Through Dec. 19

Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.;

also Sat., 4 p.m.,$25–$40

Zeum

Yerba Buena Gardens

221 Fourth St., SF

1-800-838-3006

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/125859

 

MONDAY 29

MUSIC

Grinderman

Apparently deciding he needed to be even more of a badass, Nick Cave went ahead and added blues-punk outfit Grinderman to his repertoire as a songwriter, screenwriter, author, and film scorer. The group is all raw, sweaty, garage-rock drive, full of dirty-sounding guitars and some psychedelic touches sprinkled throughout. Grinderman includes three members of Cave’s touring-recording band, the Bad Seeds, and is further proof that even now into his 50s, he isn’t even thinking of slowing down. (Landon Moblad)

With Armen Ra

8 p.m., $29–$35

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com


TUESDAY 30

EVENT

SF Green Film Festival screening and launch party

Who’s “greener” — the guy in the Haight who picks up cigarette butts, takes one arguable drag, then deposits them in an otherwise empty can? Or the innumerable Prius drivers? Not sure, but sometimes I turn green when everything from drinking coffee to buying stocks is considered candidacy for eco-martyrdom. What are we, leprechauns? Mythical creatures or no, it’s good to understand what’s going on in the world, and to get inspired to change it if it sucks. Tonight’s kickoff event features a screening of Dive!, chronicling the romantic art of eating out of Dumpsters, plus short films, film clips, and trailers. Cocktails and conversation prescreening; proceeds help bring the films to the inaugural festival next March. (Kat Renz)

6 p.m.–9 p.m., $10–$20

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

145 Ninth St., SF

(415) 625-6100

www.ninthstreet.org


MUSIC

Os Mutantes

Combing traditional bossa nova, samba, and tropicalia music of its native Brazil, with a sound heavily inspired by western rock from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Os Mutantes was one of the more adventurous psych-rock bands of the 1960s. The band has had its music covered and praised by such artists as Kurt Cobain, Beck, and Of Montreal. Front man Sergio Dias has remained active as a solo artist in Brazil, but the band, in any incarnation, hasn’t really been on the map for more than 35 years. Now Dias is leading a new lineup with a new album in tow, resurrecting the Os Mutantes sound. (Moblad)

With Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

8 p.m., $27

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

1-800-745-3000 www.theregencyballroom.com  

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

What I remember of my interview with Yard Dogs Road Show

Andrew Lam
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What I remember of my interview with Yard Dogs Road Show

“I brought my costume, it’s in this bag. Well except for the pants.” The song and dance man of the Bay’s vaudevillian acid bordello, Broadway Freddie (aka Miguel Strong, or Michael if you’re trying to get technical about it) is already seated at a corner table at the Right Spot Cafe when I arrive to chat about Yard Dog Road Show‘s first headlining show in San Francisco in years (The Independent, Sat/20). 

Broadway-Miguel is wearing a striped tie, suit jacket, and dapper fedora, which by Yard Dogs Road Show standards seems vaguely pedestrian. But then he stands up. Electric blue, leopard print, so-skinny-they’re-emaciated jeans. “Miley Cyrus,” he confides, tossing his shoulder length blonde locks.

It is fitting that Broadway be a theater of the absurd. He is one of the original three progenitors (in addition to founder-manager-hype man Eddy Joe Cotton, who also wrote the heart-stoppingly wanderlustful memoir Hobo, and filmmaker Fletcher Fledujon) of the theatrically absurd touring troupe with which he makes his livelihood. He is artfully decorative in speech — as befits a man who has spent the last eight years of his life in pursuit of a vision received en route to one of Ken Kesey’s acid tests. 

I can’t say he gives me too many tangibles to work with during the course of our conversation, which is fine, because he has given me some lovely images to share in the article. The Yard Dogs Road Show milieu he finds “beyond English or current events, a landscape of dreams.” Also, it is “a sequined and glittered ceremony, a joyous one.” Fledujon, Cotton, and Strong met “organically destined to be in the same constellation of stars.” Broadway himself is “an electron,” a good show is when “the wind goes through you – you’re not doing it, it’s doing you.”

“Would you like a drink?” I ask him. “Oh, well I’m supposed to be” were finger quotes involved here? “On the wagon. But yes, I’ll have one. What are you drinking – a beer? Yes, I’ll have one of those.”

Things that we do manage to establish: the members of Yard Dogs Road Show – all “fifteen or sixteen” of them, travel together in a vintage Greyhound bus, in which none of them have their own beds save Kid Casbah, this because he is “the golden leopard, untouchable.” They are good house guests. One of their pinnacle moments as a troupe was a performance in an old opera house in Braga, Portugal — a performance that took place under an omnibus of a chandelier on a tour that took them to quite a few grand opera houses, the one in Braga being the grandest. 

The gang’s all here, in the Sonoma Hills. Photo by Hilary Hulteen

Its upcoming shows – the first time the group has had its own night in the Bay in two years — is for friends and family, in the looser sense of those words. New material will be debuted, this new material involving a carousel of prancing, bejeweled pony girls that Broadway and I conclude will resemble “peeking inside a Faberge egg,” a rocket man, and the Queen of Pineapple Island. We would be remiss if we did not mention that the talents of Scotty the Blue Bunny, aerialist Abigail Munn, DJ Shawna, and belly dance impresario Zoey Jakes, will be making their appearances over the two-night run.

At this point, beers have been had. We are touching on the art of the interview. Broadway says the back and forth is a skill he cherishes, and that his last two talks with a journalist were conducted from his bathtub and shower, respectively. “Do you know what would make this a truly great interview?” Broadway leans across our table, holding my gaze. “If we got absolutely wasted! The bartender can finish asking us the questions.” 

I mention I enjoy Bulleit bourbon and it is liberally applied to our conversation. At this point we must rely on my trusty notebook for the gems that were imparted. 

 

(This in the hand of the friendly bartender, who had been reading an Us Weekly upon our interruption)

Q: How do you feel about J. Simpson’s engagement?

B- Holy f…

C- Nick f??? friend Courtney or danced w/ her at club.

Q: What celebs met recently

B- Garry Busey on tour bus in Malibu. Friendly, liked bus. Wrote # on cigarette pack.

C- Paul Mooney – belligerent interview. Stressed out. Kathy Griffin was a total bitch. 

B- Oscar Grant? Don’t want to go there. What art school CC of A & Crafts

(Drawing of a cell phone with a line drawn over it)

C- 3 beers: surprisingly drunk

S- what kind of whiskey would you like?

(In my handwriting)

happy excess

(sketch by Broadway of suspended circles and stars)


I think Broadway then banged out a few impromptu tunes on The Right Spot’s piano, we drank more whiskey, shenanigans, and we called it a night.

More concrete information is to be had from the Yard Dogs Road Show website itself. For instance, after a bit of digging one can turn up a rider that states that the group requires eight vegetarian and seven omnivorous meals from show venues that do catering, tortilla chips and spicy salsa “of the health food store variety” if not. Three bottles of red wine and 24 bottles of “Stella beer or comparable” either way. To me, this says a conscious approach to health in solid foods, followed by a healthy disregard for matters of the liver. 

Here’s how the “great” (it really was) interview ended: Broadway and I mutually supporting each other outside the cafe, a freak November monsoon raging around us. “So. Did we cover everything?” he wonders. “I think we did a good job,” I slur at him before giving my final regards to Broadway and tripping away in the rain. I still believe it to be the case.

(Sorry about leaving you the tab, Miguel!)

Yard Dogs Road Show

With El Radio Fantastique, Zoe Jakes, DJ Shawna, and more 

Fri/26 and Sat/27 9 p.m., $20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

Ode to a N-Owl

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Ode to a N-Owl

Honest to Tyra, one of my absolute favorite things in the world is the N-Judah Night Owl bus at 3 a.m. Where else can you encounter such a juicy cross-section of the city’s nightlife players — at least the ones too broke or too cheap (or too hot, like me) to snag a cab home?

The guilt-eyed bridesmaid lured away from her bachelorette for a quickie in the bushes; electro kids still fidgety from that tragic final snort; full-throated bro-skis trying tipsily to locate the end of their sentences; post-concert hipsters screaming over their own blown eardrums, ankles swollen and bright blue from asphyxiating jeggings (still!); drooling newbie Googlers who tried so very hard to be “cool,” succumbing to drowsy numbness as their $300 steampunk sunglasses slip, one lens cracked, from their acne-scarred foreheads; botched pot deals, stunned French teens, cruisy bears, fresh tweakers, gothic Lolitas, country line-dancers, really aspiring rappers, several actual hotties … Amazing. Especially when someone busts out a boombox. All aboard our homegrown diesel-driven party train, woot woot!

 

NERD NITE

“It’s like the Discovery Channel … with beer!” I’m not sure if there’s going to be intentional dancing at this hot monthly snarf-a-thon, but feisty cerebella should be jumpin’ for these presentations: “Mars’s Lumpy Bumpy Neato Magneto(sphero),” “Penguins, the True Chickens of the Sea,” and “The Perilous Infirmity of Burning: The History of Neisseria Gonorrhea.” OK!

Wed/17, doors 7:30 p.m., show at 8 p.m., $8. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. sf.nerdnite.com

 

PACO OSUNA

They say that minimal is dead — but it actually just got hijacked by hot Spaniards. They added some much-needed swing and even humor (not to mention a little color) to the pale-faced genre, keeping the intellectual rigor but expanding its rhythmic template. Beardy Barcelonan Paco Osuna still likes it dark and heady in a Plus8 Records vein, but he knows how to thump the floor as well.

Thu/18, 9:30 p.m., $10. Vessel, 85 Campton Pl., SF. www.vesselsf.com

 

RADIOACTIVITY

The monthly happy hour celebrating “the sound of low budget synthesizers, Eastern European Cold War dance parties, and the more experimental, dubby, and danceable side of post-punk” turns one year colder with special guests Dominique Leone, one of SF’s best hoarders of vinyl plutonium, and Wobbly, plus residents Robots.In.Heat and Tristes Tropique.

Fri/19, 6 p.m.–9 p.m., free. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO

Yes, the Brit duo is still here, and yes, they are still your friends. I never use the word “eargasm,” because ew, but if your rocks pop for anthemic electro bombast and fuzzy blasts of bass tempered ever so slightly by devilishly insistent samples, then yes, you will have a bananas one of those.

Fri/19, 9 p.m., $18 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

DUBSTEP BEAT BATTLE

Little recognized fact: the Bay has a shit-ton of excellent beats-production talent. (The recent Red Bull Big Tune and BART Series Big Battle were explosions of creativity.) Promoters Phillip Drummond and Ro Knew are unleashing the future wobble with this multiplayer rumble. Plus, it’s a canned food drive for Glide — bring a tin, leave with tinnitus?

Sat/20, 9 p.m., $10/$7 with can of food. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

ILL-ESHA

Breakbeat specialist turned harmonic dubstep heroine (with occasional acid crunk overtones), the Daly City Records artist brings a decade of experience and some spicy live vocals to the tables. This special release party for her new EP includes Brit glitch-hoppers Glitchy and Scratchy, B. Bravo, Slayers Club DJs, and everybody’s favorite cuddly purple noise-monster, Mochipet.

Sat/20, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

SEAN PRICE

The adventurous-eared monthly Frequency party brings in this super-talented, kicked-back, bearish Brooklyn rapper — as one-half of the classic Heltah Skeltah, Price rocked and rucked the ’00s, on his own he’s rolling over tasty Lee Mason “Shady Blues” samples. With Danny Brown, Moe Green, Quelle, and DJ Joe Quixx of Oakland Faders.

Sat/20, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $10 advance. Mighty. 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com 

How California exports water

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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How California exports water

By Patrick Porgans

In 2009, the last year of the so-called great California drought, a strange thing happened: Sacramento Valley growers produced a near record amount of rice, and down south, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Met), the largest urban water supplier in the nation, experienced record-breaking water sales. All this despite repeated mainstream media accounts in 2009 of an economy-wrecking dust bowl water shortage.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the California rice harvest in 2009 was up 9 percent from the previous year and approached the record crop of 2004.

Rice consumes a great deal of water for its dollar value and produces little net income. According to a report by the University of California, Davis, the minimum amount of water required to grow a crop of rice is about 42 inches per acre. Unavoidable losses can add to this amount — so that the amount of water consumed (or evaporated) can be as much as 100 inches per acre, depending on the soil. That appears to be enough water to drown the tallest person on earth.

The California Rice Commission, a trade group representing 2,500 rice farmers, estimates that rice uses 2.2 million acre-feet of irrigation water yearly, about 2.6 percent of the state’s total water supply. According to records obtained from Met, that’s equal to the annual average water it supplied to all of its 19 million customers.

UC Davis data from 2008 show that California exported 52 percent of its rice production, much of it to Japan. For every pound of rice exported, about 250 gallons of embedded water used in growing and processing that rice leaves along with it, according to “Water Footprints of Nations,” a 2004 UNESCO study. (The report spawned the Web site www.waterfootprint.com.)

The rice harvest should be of great consolation to the chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, Charles Hoppin, who is also a rice grower, vice-chairman of the Rice Growers Cooperative, and immediate past chairman of the California Rice Industry Association. Chairman Hoppin, in a March 2010 speech in Yuma, Ariz., complained that the regulatory community, including much of his staff, doesn’t know or understand the issues facing agriculture and “doesn’t give a rat’s ass.”

According to the Environmental Working Group, rice subsidies in California totaled $2.4 billion from 1995-2009. In that period, the single largest recipient of subsidies was the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative of Sacramento, California, totaling more than $146 million.

Farm recipients of USDA subsidies in California totaled $9.1 billion from 1995-2009.According to EWG, “Washington paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009. But to characterize the programs as either a big government bailout or another form of welfare would be manifestly unfair — to bailouts and welfare.” Then there’s hay — another water-gulping product that’s getting exported, with much of it going to Japan.

Writer Melinda Burns, in a June 10, 2009 story on Miller-McCune.com, notes: “In the Imperial Valley of California, a region drier than part of the Sahara Desert, farmers have found a lucrative market abroad for a crop they grow with Colorado River water: They export bales of hay to land-poor Japan. Since the mid-1980s, this arid border region of California has been supplying hay and feed for Japan’s dairy cows and black-haired cattle, the kind that get daily massages, are fed beer, and produce the most tender Kobe beef.”

She quotes Patrick Woodall, research director at Food and Water Watch, an international consumer advocacy group with headquarters in Washington, D.C.: “There is a kind of insanity about this,” Woodall said. “Exporting water in the form of crops is giving water away from thirsty communities and infringing on their ability to deal with water scarcity.”

Epic Bush crawl, part 2

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Epic Bush crawl, part 2

ruggy@yelp.com

SUPER EGO Marke B. is off getting hitched to Hunky Beau (finally!) so we asked scruffy lad-about-town Ruggy Joesten, senior community manager at Yelp.com, to fill in as nightlife correspondent. This is the second part of his SF Bush Corridor bar blitz. You can read all about part one here.

Summer Place Cocktail Lounge (801 Bush): Once we adjusted to the optical shock of entering this dark bar, we were treated to red accents throughout, Festivus lights along the low ceiling, and a new-school jukebox flashing every color of the rainbow and begging for our hard-earned dollars. We were clearly no regulars, but if looks could kill, we’d have all been assassinated by the three locals bellied up to the bar. I get it, though. Here we were, a bunch of young knuckleheads on an ironic bar crawl, interrupting their usually quiet evening with jovial intrigue and obnoxious requests for shots that should only be consumed on 21st birthdays. Clearly we deserved the hesitated acceptance. The standoff between us and the barflies became so contentious that when I asked the bartender for a flyer to help spread the good word about the joint’s 12-year anniversary party, one of the seasoned veterans retorted, “How about this for a flyer: use your fucking mouth and tell people yourself.”

I actually appreciated his candor and offered him a shot. As expected, tequila helped bury the hatchet. Then I learned that every alcoholic beverage purchased comes complete with a free bowl of Doritos! I don’t know if that’s usual policy, since I also noticed a rice cooker and a bottle of mustard on the counter behind the bar. Meanwhile, with cheese-stained fingers and a solid buzz, my posse fixated on a young couple engaging in some serious heavy petting in the corner of the room. And by heavy petting, I mean, I’m almost certain we collectively became pregnant just by watching them. (I named my newly formed zygote Darius, since I’ve always wanted a boy.) Were we slugging moonshine in the Tenderloin, or watching a live sex show with Roman Polanski in Amsterdam? After bidding adieu to the two lovebirds, I thanked my lucky stars that I’d opted for denim instead of sweatpants, and we hightailed it to our next stop.

21 Club (98 Turk): Five warm PBRs for $12.50. Faint smell of Brylcreem, urine, and failure. Esquire magazine’s proclamation that this bar was one of the country’s finest in 2008, proudly framed on the far corner of the facade. Good times for all.

Yong San (895 Bush): Yet another Bush hole-in-the-wall with extremely good-looking Korean women at the helm, and yet another bar where smoking was not only tolerated, but also borderline encouraged. I’m not a smoker, but when in Rome and you find yourself with a lit match in your grill and wandering brown eyes anticipating a long, fiery drag, it almost makes you wish you had a Virginia Slim at the ready. Sadly in this instance, I didn’t have a fag within arm’s reach, but I’ll be better equipped the next time.

Minutes after indulging in complimentary Doritos at Summer Place, I was just as impressed with the honorary eats Yong San had to offer: Cheetos Puffs! I would have been just fine with an ashtray full of Snyder’s or some Beer Nuts. But it’s that kind of outside-the-box thinking that keeps me intrigued. From there, and with another round of shots consumed and more High Life entering my bloodstream than runoff after a winter storm, we sadly waved farewell to Bush Corridor … but I did hold onto a few bullet-pointed observations.

BUSH CRAWL BY THE NUMBERS

7: number of bars visited in one evening

13: number of drinks consumed (belch)

5: hours in which this was accomplished

6: number of sext messages sent with much regret the following morning

8: number of miles walked

16: number of hours needed to fight the herculean hangover.

(415) 674-1821: number for the San Francisco chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A: Konami Code. How this is relevant is beyond me, but somehow, it just seems appropriate.

Another Monkey

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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6
Another Monkey

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE The restaurant formerly known as Conduit was so strikingly designed inside that when, earlier this year, it morphed into a Thai spot, another of those with “monkey” in the name — Another Monkey — I winced, and only in part because the word “monkey” makes me think of ol’ Dubya, now in exile in the Dallas suburb of Elba. The indecorous neon beer sign glowing in the front window seemed to be a particularly glum portent. It said: come in and slam a few! And eat pad Thai with your fingers while you watch ESPN.

As fate would have it, Another Monkey does offer pad Thai, and the flat-panel television mounted over the bar probably does show ESPN on occasion, but otherwise, the ruin I inferred from the infernal neon sign is nowhere to be seen. The restaurant’s high-style interior is intact, while the food is electrifying. The only physical change I noticed in the space was the screening-off of what had been an exhibition kitchen at the rear of the dining room; the counter and stools are still there, but the view now consists of a long eyeful of frosted glass instead of a tableau of busy chefs.

Conduit had been, in its brief heyday, a scene reminiscent of the early days of Foreign Cinema — limousines double-parked on the street and swarms of hipster-geeks in various shades of black jamming the doorway — so Another Monkey’s more relaxed state is easier to live with. When a place becomes over-popular, everything is put at risk, from the quality of the food and service to the ambience itself. Another Monkey shows no signs of becoming a Conduit-style scene, but it is distinctive and gracious enough to draw a steady crowd. It has a neighborly feel, yet for those farther afield it’s worth seeking out, both for its distinctive setting and the sharpness of its cooking.

Chef Aom Phanthong’s menu is, like a bar stool (!), sturdily balanced on three legs: familiar standards, innovative dishes, and items for hard-core (or, in menu-speak, “experienced”) connoisseurs of Thai cuisine. In this last category we find the dip-relishes, whose odors and flavors are “very strong,” according to the menu card’s minatory phrasing. Suspicious people might flee in the direction of the pad Thai, or the excellent fish cakes ($7.50 for four) with an enlivening sweet-sour sauce on the side, along with threads of red and green cabbage.

In the alternative, they might turn toward the mix-and-match department. You can get tom yum shrimp ($9.95), served in little heaps atop crisped triangles of flour tortilla. The menu calls this “nacho style,” and it was quite good, though the frying left the tortillas with an oily aroma, and why flour tortillas instead of the tastier (and healthier, not to mention more authentic) kind made from masa?

The appeal of duck has long eluded me. Like goose, it resembles (for me) slightly gamier, richer chicken — the chicken, interestingly, being native to Southeast Asia. So subbing duck for chicken in a red curry ($15) wasn’t a complete Californication, and maybe, in its exponential richness (rich meat amplified by rich sauce) it wasn’t California at all. The portion size turned out to be just right, though, and with a pineapple slice for a subfloor and some fresh basil over the top, the dish’s richness remained under control.

Richness also briefly threatened the northern Thai hung le curry of pork belly ($13), mostly because of the nature of the meat. Our exquisitely polite server asked if we would be comfortable with “visible fat.” As an American, I have lived most of my life amid visible fat, so this prospect did not deter. And the dish itself turned out to be marvelous, a kind of gingery stew served in a handsome little pot, the meat stringy but tender and a scattering of fresh peanuts for textural counterpoint.

Another Monkey maintains an extensive wine list, which on the one hand is a reassuring line of continuity from Conduit and on the other is paradoxical. Thailand is not wine country, and Thai cuisine (like Indian and Mexican cuisine, to name two other large examples) didn’t evolve with wine. But wine geeks must love a challenge, because the carefully bound list is presented with almost biblical reverence. Beer is still preferable, in my view, but not the almost undrinkably bitter Duvel, the only Belgian beer I’ve ever had that I didn’t like. That’s not the beer proclaimed by the window sign, by the way.

ANOTHER MONKEY

Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

280 Valencia, SF

(415) 241-0288

www.anothermonkeythai.com

Full bar

MC/V

Some noise, but not bad

Wheelchair accessible

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 3

 

SPUR’s Election Wrap-up

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s post-election discussion and analysis session is popular with political junkies of all ideological stripes. Although it’s hosted by a knowledgeable duo — Barbary Coast Consulting founder Alex Clemens and political consultant David Latterman — a wide variety of political analysts always show up to create a lively, insightful discussion. Bring a bag lunch and your two cents.

12:30 p.m., $5 or free for members

SPUR office

654 Mission, SF

381-8726

 

Revolution is not a Tea Party

As the dust begins to settle on the midterm elections battlefield, come discuss how the country’s political fervor affected the national discourse on issues like immigration and civil rights. Was the Tea Party an actual grass roots revolution or merely a large angry mob? How long will the virulent xenophobia and nativism continue, and what can be done to counter it?

7-9 p.m., free

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way

Berkeley

revolutionbooks@sbcglobal.net

THURSDAY NOV. 5

 

“Tranny Fest: San Francisco Transgender Film Festival”

Come one, come all: ladies and gentlemen, transgender, and gender queer. Now in its 12th season, Tranny Fest will open Thursday, with performances by Landa Lakes, Butch Tap, Thisway Thataway, and Psychobabble, among others. The festival continues Friday and Saturday with short films and videos by transgender and gender variant artists. Advance tickets will be available for the event.

Thurs.–Sat., 8–10 p.m.

$12–$15 sliding scale

CounterPULSE, SF

1310 Mission, SF

www.freshmeatproduction.com

 

Evening with our poet laureate

In addition to California poet laureate emeritus Al Young, Revolution Books will also host jazz/blues music, guitarist Trevor Michaels, and other poems and song.

7 p.m.–9 p.m., free

Revolution Books

2425 Channing Way, Berk.

510-848-1196

SATURDAY NOV. 6

 

Green Festival San Francisco

Here’s more proof that green is the new black. One of the largest sustainability events in the country will be held at the San Francisco Concourse. The eco-confab includes lectures from Bill McKibben, Daniel Pinchbeck, Amy Goodman, and others. Vendors, workshops, music and an array of organic beer, wine, and vegetarian cuisine will also be on hand. Admission discounts are also available to students, seniors, cyclists and public transit riders.

Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–7 p.m.

$10–$25

Concourse Exhibition Center

635 Eighth St., SF

www.greenfestivals.org/sf

World Series bedlam!

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

In case you didn’t notice, San Francisco erupted into a street party last night, Nov. 1, after the Giants won the World Series. Wandering through a sea of orange-and-black that swelled into the streets of the Mission, I got showered with beer and champagne about half a dozen times, and my ears are still ringing from all the hooting and hollering, horn-honking, firecracker bursting and police siren wailing that filled the air.

One of the craziest scenes I witnessed the entire night was when some people set a mattress on fire in the middle of the intersection at 22nd and Mission. As the blaze got brighter and everyone yelled louder and laughed harder, a fire truck started blaring its horn and inching its way through the crowd. But after the burning mattress situation was under control, the firefighters had a new problem — a dance party was unfolding on the roof of the fire engine. The crowd swarmed around it, people climbed on up, and even swung open the doors and got into the fire truck, and suddenly the brightly flashing emergency lights seemed more like a strobe light. When the truck sounded its deafening horn, it almost sounded as if the drivers were participating in the madness.

The celebration went on. There were brass bands, fireworks, spontaneous high-fives and embraces, dancing in the streets, and people hanging out of their cars half-naked waving Giants flags and laughing wildly. That was just one San Francisco neighborhood — it seems that similar out-of-control scenes played out in the Castro, near the Civic Center, and around the ballpark.

The riot cops came eventually, of course, and I’ve put a call out to the SFPD to find out how many total arrests were made by the end of the night. On my way into work this morning, I saw people washing graffiti off of brick walls and windows, and the sidewalks were littered with shards of broken glass and debris. San Francisco awoke today for the first time ever as a World Series city, but with one giant hangover.

FEAST: Distilled genius

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: Distilled genius

It’s a thrilling time in Bay Area spirits. The same players who’ve made us proud in years past continue to reinvent themselves, while newcomers add flavor — literally — to the scene. In visits to four local distilleries, I came away inspired by their inventiveness and skill. And while none of the spirits I tasted use extracts or flavorings (like many of their big-brand counterparts), they do manage to fit in countless pounds of local, unexpected fruits, even natural herbs.

Even more exciting to the small batch booze enthusiast? Most of the following distilleries open their tasting rooms by schedule or appointment so the tippling public can discover for itself the motto emblazoned on the bottles of Old World Spirits: “Good stuff needs no special effects.”

ST. GEORGE’S SPIRITS

At the mighty St. George, inventiveness reigns, with a rock star attitude to boot. The distillery’s small staff experiments broadly and distillers Lance Winters and Dave Smith drive this license into genius. A behind-the-scenes journey through their labs unveiled nothing short of a wonderland apothecary: test tubes and bottles of spirits flavored with herbs, fruits, vegetables, foie gras — even beef jerky. You may (rightly) love their eaux de vie, absinthe, agave spirits, rum, vodkas, and whiskeys, but have you heard they’re toying with a carrot brandy? Clear and vegetal, it showcases the essence of the orange vegetable with a delicate hand. We can only pray they’ll bottle this one.

I also sampled St. George’s bourbon aging in charred American white oak that was a few years away from being officially bottled. Only five months young and made from the required minimum amount of corn (it needs at least 51 percent to qualify as bourbon) plus barley, crystal malt, wheat, and rye, it’s full of malty, rich promise. The same holds true of its white dog (clear-white whiskey) made from the same grains — one we could possibly see sooner on the shelves.

St. George’s next single malt whiskey, Lot 9, has been aging five to 12 years in barrels blended with 17 woods, including used American bourbon oak, sherry refills, port refills, and French oak. If you’re lucky, you soon may be able to purchase (in limited quantities) a single malt-single barrel selection that has been aged eight years in bourbon barrels then finished for four years in French oak apple brandy barrels. It is a wonder of complexity compared to their regular whiskey releases.

Only the brave attempt to down the scorching fire that is St. George’s in house habanero vodka. Grown men confessed of crying or throwing up just sipping it — only a handful of people have downed a legitimate amount and have been permitted to sign the distillery’s bottle of the burn. But my name is on that bottle — no tears, no throwing up, just a raging habanero sizzle.

2601 Monarch, Alameda. (510) 769-1601. www.stgeorgesspirits.com


CHARBAY

On a winding road above St. Helena and under peaceful Spring Mountain pines, there’s more going on than this distillery’s impeccable line of vodkas. Thirteen generations have gone into this family business, founded in 1983 and run by Miles and Susan Karakasevic, their son Marko, and his wife Jenni. The distillery’s lineage is evident to the discerning tippler who sips their port, rums, pastis, brandy, grappa, wines — even their herbaceous tequila. Charbay’s father-son distilling duo traveled to Mexico to painstakingly learn traditional tequila-making technique, which they expertly riff on to make their distinct blends.

Don’t even get me started on Release II of Charbay whiskey! 110 proof, aged six years with a pilsner beer base, it’s a stratospheric $325, but one of the most exceptional things I’ve ever tasted. From its astounding complexity, I caught everything from hops to echoes of the pine trees surrounding the distillery. I also sampled an unreleased 12-year version of Release II: higher proof, rich, a stunner.

But there’s no rest for the Karakasevics. Future whiskeys are already aging in French oak barrels — the one I’m most thirsty for, a stout whiskey, won’t be ready until 2012. If early tastes are any indication, it’s already brilliantly complex with coffee, spice, and dark chocolate notes. Made with neighboring Bear Republic’s stout in copper alembic stills, it’ll age for two years to reach 90 proof and is expected to retail around $90 — part of a younger, more affordable line of whiskeys compared with the divine but costly Release II. The bold explorer spirit that propels Charbay to Mexico to make a fine tequila shines in their future whiskeys.


TEMPUS FUGIT SPIRITS

These importers have already made waves with their Swiss-produced Gran Classico Bitter, which I hailed for reinventing classic cocktails like the Negroni. They also import some of the best French and Swiss absinthes in existence. Absinthe historians and spirits experts Peter Schaf and John Troia are the masterminds behind Tempus Fugit — and owners of one of the finest vintage absinthe poster collections in the world. It was a thrill to check out these rare pieces while tasting the history and forward-thinking vision in their bitters and liqueurs.

Tempus Fugit’s modus operandi is reinventing classic recipes and distilling them locally. Petaluma-produced Liqueur de Violettes is next up for the duo, a taste along the lines of Creme de Violette and other violet liqueurs yet somehow unlike any of them. Made with less sugar, the liqueur is a more appropriate cocktail ingredient — it’s less cloying, more purely floral and light. Each time I sample it, its bouquet blossoms like a layered wine: a sophisticated, botanical aperitif.

Tempus Fugit future project (a two-man team, after all, only has four hands) is Crème de Cacao-Chouva, a chocolate liqueur that will change chocolate cocktails the way St. George’s Firelit transformed coffee liqueur. It’s dark, lightly sweet, lush and earthy. Tasting it, I envision a resurgence of my guilty pleasure cocktail, the Grasshopper, refined and grown up with Crème de Cacao-Chouva and creme de menthe. It came alive with soda water — an elevated egg cream soda materialized in my cocktail windshield.

Keep an eye on these guys. They have more spirits and bitters as exciting as the ones I’ve listed in the works. Their dizzying knowledge of the history and intricacies of forgotten or neglected spirits, along with refined taste, suggests revelatory possibilities for the future pours of Tempus Fugit.

(707) 789-9660, www.tempusfugitspirits.com


OLD WORLD SPIRITS

Just north of San Carlos in a nondescript smattering of office buildings, is Old World Spirits, which has been in production since 2009. Davorin Kuchan, its third-generation distiller from Croatia, says family plays an irreplaceable part in the operation, as is evident from the photos lining the walls of the distillery. The whole clan is involved — Kuchan’s young daughter even drew the girl peeking out from foliage that graces Old World’s playful absinthe label. The output of both Davorin and business partner Joseph Karakas is astounding for a two-person operation, with two absinthes, a gin, a black walnut liqueur, three eaux de vie/brandies, and more liquors slotted for future release.

Old World uses custom-made German stills and local fruits like the Indian blood peach, which Davorin calls the “heirloom tomato” of stone fruit. As with the best natural fruits, the Indian blood has cracks and flaws, its lower sugar content imparting a lush understatement of taste. Though he grew the peaches himself in Croatia, in California Davorin orders in from Placerville’s Goldbud Farms. The clear blood peach eau de vie impresses with notes of ripe, juicy fruit flesh and spicy skin. I found Old World’s eaux de vies well-balanced, both the pear-inflected Poire Williams and the three- to seven-months oak-aged O’Henry Peach. I sipped a raspberry eau di vie it has yet to release: clear and lightly floral, free of the cloying sugar common in raspberry liqueurs.

Watch for Old World’s sold out dark black walnut liqueur — another batch is out in two years. Kuchan’s Blade Gin stocks the shelves of many a Bay Area bar, journeying down a nontraditional, California-inspired gin route with whispers of ginger, citrus, cilantro, lemon verbena, and black cardamom. Two kinds of absinthe, a green (verte) and clear blanche/white (referred to as Bleue, as in Switzerland), take cues from classic absinthes but resound with Davorin’s interpretation of 20 percent more herbs than what enlivens a traditional absinthe. Old World’s next release: a Cognac-style double barrel brandy aged in French and American oak and finished in Kentucky bourbon casks, which they hope to release soon. My early taste straight from the barrel yielded an already rich, spicy brandy.

Thirsty yet? Visit Davorin and Joseph during their monthly Friday Flight nights. Davorin will turn on some fine French pop tunes as both pour spirits, transforming the distillery into a warm familial party.

121 Industrial, Belmont. (650) 622-9222. www.oldworldspirits.com 

You can also find these spirits at Cask (17 Third St., SF), John Walker & Co. (175 Sutter, SF), and K&L Wine Merchants (638 Fourth St., SF).

 

 

Stage

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. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.


OPENING

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Failure to Communicate The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Call for prices. Opens Fri/29, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 14. Perfomers Under Stress opens its sixth season with the world premiere of a physical theater piece by Valerie Fachman.

The Unexpected Man EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $18-25. Opens Fri/29. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 14. Spare Stage revives Yasmina Reza’s ironic comedy, starring Ken Ruta.

BAY AREA

Becoming Britney Center REPortory Company, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerREP.org. $25. Previews Thurs/28-Fri/29, 8:15pm. Opens Sat/30, 8:15pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Nov 14.Center REPortory Company presents an original musical about a naïve pop star, written by Molly Bell and Daya Curley.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/29-Sat/30 and Nov 3, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm; Tues/2, 7pm. Opens Nov 4, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Opens Thurs/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

ONGOING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Wed/27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Glory Days Boxcar Studios, 125 Hyde; www.jericaproductions.com. $30. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm (no performance Sun/31). Through Nov 7. Jerica Prodcutions and the Royal Underground Theatre company present Nick Blaemire’s and James Gardiner’s one-act musical.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Hedda Gabler Phoenix Theatre, suite 601, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35.

The action unfolds in the parlor of the newly married Tesmans, young mediocre academic George (Adam Simpson) and town beauty Hedda, née Gabler (a crisp, tightly wound and nicely understated Cecilia Palmtag), a woman of exceptional intelligence, ambition and pride—to call her fiery wouldn’t be bad either, especially since she’s so fond of shooting off her late father’s pistols. Frustrated by her paltry new life, Hedda seeks news of an old flame, Eilert Lovborg (Paul Baird), via the admiring and vaguely lecherous Judge Brack (Peter Abraham) and a timid acquaintance from school days, Thea (Joceyln Stringer). The semi-wild but brilliant Lovborg has published a new book that imperils George’s chances for a professorship. Less interested in securing George’s career than controlling Lovborg’s destiny, Hedda soon manipulates events around her with bold determination and tragic consequences. Passionate, violent and psychologically complex, Henrik Ibsen’s titular heroine is at turns sympathetic and disturbing, an independent soul trapped in and warped by a society that allows her too little scope—a modern predicament that has inspired many modern and postmodern adaptations. Off Broadway West’s straight-ahead production of the late-19th-century drama, helmed by artistic director Richard Harder, remains faithful to the period setting. This includes Bert van Aalsburg’s respectable scenic design and Sylvia Kratins impressive costumes, as well as the old if fine translation by William Archer, who first introduced Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, the quaint diction is not handled with equal grace across an uneven cast. Palmtag’s solid, at times admirable performance in the lead, however, goes a good way toward grounding an otherwise patchy production. (Avila)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Law and Order: San Francisco Unit: The Musical! EXIT Theater, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Mon, 8pm. Through Nov 15. Funny But Mean comedy troupe extends its newest show at a new venue.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*SHIToberfest Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. This special October run of PianoFight’s bowel-loosening comedy series, the S.H.I.T. Show (for acronym fans, that’s the Stop Hating Imagination Time Show), revolves dizzyingly around the subject of beer, Germans and, perhaps less explicably, flatulent dolphins, among much else in the wide open seas of poor taste. Is it hilarious? It is. And you don’t even need to smuggle in a forty to make it so, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. Fine comic acting throughout a charismatic cast (including writer-director-producers Alex Boyd, Zach Cahn, Jed Goldstein, Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty, Evan Winchester and Duncan Wold, with help from Nicole Hammersla, Gabrielle Patacsil, Rob Ready, Derricka Smith, Andy Strong, Jacque Vavroch and Dan Williams) combines here with generally solid to exceptional sketch work, video and song. Add in a permeating spirit of revelry, debauchery and irreverence and the evening becomes a diversion of the first order, culminating in an utterly sacrilicious sketch about a bunch of toasted beer-brewing monks treated to a papal visit—one of the best venial sins for your buck. When it comes to Octoberfesting this year, “Bavaria” is just S.H.I.T.–faced for Bay Area. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Thurs/28-Sun/31 include performances of The Forsaken Laboratory by the Brazilian Grand Guignol group Vigor Mortis). Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, 5pm). Through Sun/31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sun/31. This latest from Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Killer Joe) starts out as a delicious treat but a hollowness in the center of it all leaves one less than fully unsatisfied. Director Leslie Martinson’s cast shines, however, as the action unfolds in crisp, engaging scenes set in the titular run-down donut shop in Chicago’s slowly gentrifying Uptown neighborhood. Owner-operator Arthur Przybyszewski (Howard Swain) is an aging baby boomer and second-generation Polish immigrant who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft and returned years later to take over his parents shop, alienated and hesitant, though well liked by his regulars. At least most: As the play opens his shop has been vandalized. Two beat cops are on the scene, James (Michael J. Asberry) and Randy (Julia Brothers), the latter eventually displaying a visible crush on an oblivious, then discombobulated Arthur. When an impressive young African American man named Franco (Lance Gardner) comes in and charms his way into a job, Arthur gradually finds himself drawn out of his shell and faced with the challenge of valuing another human being more than his own hide—a challenge underscored by Arthur’s several monologues, in which his personal history comes to the fore. The play feels pat and a little lazy-sentimental in the end, but there’s no denying the entertainment afforded here, especially by the magnetic pairing of leads Swain and Gardner. (Avila)

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, Nov 7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead” CELLspace, 2050 Bryant; (510) 207-6101. $10-20. Fri/29, 8pm. Mangos With Chili presents a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration.

“The ChatRoulette Halloween Show” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; www.chatrouletteshow.com. $12-15. Sat/30, 7:30pm. The Illuminated Theater presents a special Halloween edition of its show.

Alicia Dattner Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; (917) 363-9646, www.aliciadattner.com. $20. Fri/29, 8pm.

“Fright Nights at the Wharf” Castagnola’s, 286 Jefferson; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of stand-up comedy by the water.

“Ghost Stories and other Horrors!” Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom; www.firesidestorytelling.com. $5. Wed/27, 8pm. Fireside Storytelling presents an evening of ghoulish tales.

“Kaleidoscope Cabaret” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of drag, burlesque, song, and aerial art by performers of color.

“Karaghiozis Saves the Economy” Hallidie Plaza, Market and 5th; 648-446, www.shadowlight.org. Free. Sun/31, 7pm. A Greek shadow theatre performance by Leonidas Kassapides.

“Make Drag, Not War!” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St; www.dancemission.com. $15-20. Sun/31, 8pm. A drag show and dance party hosted by Artist Malcolm Drake.

“MUNI Diaries Live!” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.munidiaries.com. $5. Fri/29, 7:30pm. An evening of MUNI stories.

“Road trip to Pluto” 4 Star Theatre, 2200 Clement; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $9.99-12. Thurs/28, 8:30pm. Bitter Show reprises its contribution to the SF Fringe Fest.

“Romane Event Comedy Show: Super Special Election and Halloween Edition” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.pacoromane.com. Wed/27, 7:30pm. Paco Romane’s guests include Will Durst, Casey Ley, Grant Lyon, and Pamela Ames.

Devendra Sharma CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $14-24. Thurs/28-Sat/30, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm. CounterPULSe’s “Performing Diaspora” program presents a contemporary take on Nautanki theater by Sharma.

“Stories From a Haunted Forest” Presidio’s Log Cabin, 1299 Story; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Free. Sat/30, 7pm. Bindlestiff Studio presents a one-night-only phantasmic experience.

“Teatro Zinzombie!” Pier 29 at Battery; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. 117-167. Sun/31, 5:15pm. TeatroZinzanni is haunted for one night.

Trailer Park Boys Palace Fine Arts Theatre, 3601 Lyon; 567-6642, www.ticketmaster.com. $45-58. Thurs/28, 7:30pm. The fabled boys appear live in concert.

“Twilight Vixen Revue” SOMArts, 934 Brannan; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12. A special Halloween edition.

“Upper Cut” The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; www.darkroomsf.com. $10. Thurs/28, 8pm. A weekly improve and sketch comedy open mic.

BAY AREA

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. $31-68. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. The acclaimed dance company performs some West Coast premieres.

“Persephone’s Boots” Codornices Park, Berk; www.raggedwing.org. Free. Wed/27-Sun/31, 5:30pm. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents the world premiere of a performance created by Anna Schneiderman and the ensemble.

 

 

Citizen’s Band

Andrew Lam
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0
Citizen’s Band

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE One of the revelations in Peter Mayles’ cycle of enchanting memoirs about life in Provence (A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, Encore Provence) is that some of the best food in France is to be found at truck stops. This stands to reason, since truckers are a migratory species whose survival depends on knowing where to eat — and French truckers spend their days zooming around France, a land where food and wine are as much a part of the national identity as the language itself.

Citizen’s Band (which opened in August on a semi-sketchy stretch of Folsom St. in SoMa) isn’t quite a truck stop and it certainly isn’t in France, but it does have, stashed above the door, a collection of vintage CB radios, the kind whose tinny crackle helped drive C.W. McCall’s 1975 truckers’ anthem, “Convoy.” And it is, in its hipster-city way, a convincing contemporary version of a roadside diner: it has a long counter, zinc-topped tables, harsh lighting, and plenty of din, all at the edge of an insanely busy street.

But the place doesn’t serve Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, despite a plethora of hipsters, and the staff all seem to be relations of Flo, the cheeky woman from the Progressive Insurance TV ads. Indeed, beer places a distant second as a libation to wine, which is offered in a variety of interesting pours listed on the huge chalkboard that backs the counter. So maybe we’re not so far from France after all. Or somewhere in Europe. Lately I’ve noticed a small but definite bloom on wine lists of reds produced in German-speaking lands, and Citizen’s Band offers a glass of Blaufränkisch, an Austrian red, for $7.50. Our (female) server described it as “feminine,” not a customary description for wine. To me, the wine was light and spicy, like a nero d’avola after some heavy core training. Could this be what she meant?

If a convoy of hungry, discerning French truckers came rolling up to Citizen’s Band, what would they find, apart from trouble in parking? American food, subtly reimagined and cooked to the highest standard. Chef Chris Beerman’s menu includes elements of what we might call comfort cuisine, including macaroni and cheese and a burger with fries, but it also soars into the higher airs of the gastronomic ether — and even the homey stuff is enriched by a close attention to detail.

The mac ‘n’cheese ($8) was made with fontina and a Sonoma dry-jack fonduta, which helped permeate the pasta tubes. I didn’t like the fried onion rings on top; they were crunchy but discordant. A plate of humble franks and beans ($8) was stylishly reinvented with grilled sweet Italian sausage from Paul Bertolli’s Fra’ Mani in Berkeley, surrounded by butter beans (from Iacopi Farms) in a rich sauce of oregano, pecorino romano, and (to judge from the glossiness) butter. And how many diners, or truck stops, would toss a salad of baby arugula leaves ($8) with diced peaches (for deep sweetness), almond brittle (for sweet crunch), Point Reyes blue cheese (for rich bite), and a huckleberry vinaigrette for a final fillip of piquancy and (deep purple) color?

The burger ($13, plus $2 for cheese) was quite a production. The beef was kobe, from Snake River Farms; the bun, challah (which is pretty much brioche, for purposes of richness). Also aioli and house-made burger pickles and — better than either of those items, good as they were — no raw onion. Best of all, the kitchen actually grilled the meat as ordered, to medium rare, as recommended by Flo. A medium-rare burger means a juicy burger, and juiciness makes all the difference. A dry burger is a dead burger. The stack of fries on the side was excellent, still warm and crisp from the deep fryer.

The roasted red trout ($20) looked like a pair of cantaloupe slices slipped atop an heirloom-tomato panzanella, with a scattering of garlicky Monterey Bay calamari and some uncredited braised greens. The fish was lovely, but it was the panzanella that commanded our attention: it was colored by several shades of cherry tomatoes and made crunchy by croutons toasted gold. Panzanella is summer on a plate, but it’s also, at least traditionally, frugality on a plate, a way of rejuvenating bread that’s past its prime. To find it deployed with such elegant discipline here was a delight. Encore!

CITIZEN’S BAND

Dinner: Tues.–-Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.

Brunch: Sat., 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

1198 Folsom, SF

(415) 556-4901

www.citizensbandsf.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Appetite: Three beef sandwiches that get it right

Andrew Lam
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0

In today’s Appetite installation, Virginia Miller ranged near and far (in a fabulous pair of vintage pumps, as is her wont) in search of the meatiest hunk of sandwich available for hungry city souls. Sink your teeth into one while watching your — cross your fingers — new league champion baseball team. Go Gigantes! 

1. Deli Board’s Boca 

You’ll do a double take when arriving at the address given for SoMa’s Deli Board. The window is lined with butcher paper, giving the place an under-construction look. Per building owner’s rules, you can’t even step inside the entrance of the building but must wait on the sidewalk to get your sandwich, soup, or salad. But once you do, Deli Board’s friendly staff ensures that you get a sandwich hot off the grill, freshly made within the last few minutes. Their Boca sandwich ($9) is a triple beef threat with brisket, corned beef, pastrami, delicately sliced in a sweet French roll with Muenster cheese, pickles and brown mustard. Though I could have used more of their “board sauce”, the beef is perfection, melting warm in my mouth: feathery light, yet dense and meaty with a radiant, multi-color meat ranging from pink to brown.

1080 Howard Street, SF

(415) 552-7687

www.deliboardsf.com

Deli Board’s three-beef bomb, the Boca Source. Photo by Virginia Miller

2. Refuge’s roast brisket of beef

The famed pastrami sandwich at San Carlos Belgian beer bar and sandwich-burger joint, The Refuge, deserves the accolades. But equally worthy is their roast brisket of beef ($12). The beef is layered on warm bread in tangy sweet Carolina-style sauce with a lather of horseradish cream to give the already addictive beef even more lusciousness.

963 Laurel Street, San Carlos 

(650) 598-981

www.refugesc.com


3. Sycamore’s roast beef sandwich

Sycamore is a cozy little cafe on Mission Street, the kind of neighborhood joint where quality beers, wines, happy hour prices and sliders (I like the BLT slider) keep you coming back. But the real highlight is Sycamore’s famous roast beef sandwich ($8) on grocery store-reminiscent sesame buns with BBQ sauce and mayo, a sandwich that pays tribute to the roots of native Bostonian owners. The beef is pink, thinly sliced, soft but hearty, and dissolves in your mouth. Eating it makes me feel like a kid again.

2140 Mission, SF

(415) 252-7704

www.thesycamoresf.com

 

Epic Bush crawl, part one

Andrew Lam
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5
Epic Bush crawl, part one

ruggy@yelp.com

SUPER EGO Marke B.’s off getting hitched to Hunky Beau, so we asked the raffishly cute Ruggy, senior community manager at Yelp.com, to fill in as nightlife correspondent. Part two comes out Nov. 3.

What does your average Friday night look like? Does it involve catching up with old college friends over a 2007 Chateau Montelena Bordeaux blend? Maybe you’d rather snuggle up next to your boo on an EQ3 chaise longue with the remote in one hand and a Shake Weight in the other.

If you’re anything like me and my ragtag group of degenerate colleagues, nothing quite spells F-U-N like a bar crawl spanning seven different locations in less than five hours, complete with gratuitous heavy petting, nacho cheese Doritos, and warm Miller High Life. Now, what if I told you there was an unheralded bar route in the city that’s chock-full of sticky floors, intoxicated curmudgeons, and more bottom shelf liquor than you can shake a Polaroid at?

The stretch of self-reproach I reference is Bush Street between Stockton and Taylor. But beware — this challenge isn’t for the faint of heart. Being the altruist I am, I decided to document this fantastic, drunken journey on your behalf, to ensure you avoid a colossal case of bottle flu the following morning. You can thank me later.

Tunnel Top (601 Bush): From Union Square, take the stairs north at the entrance to the Stockton Tunnel (after a salacious afternoon romp at the Green Door if you want to up the ante), turn about face, and gallop roughly 10 paces west. Perfect for guest registration on a Bush Street crawl, since the T-Top offers a nifty happy hour with $3 drafts and $2.75 bottled beers as well as a slew of aging hipsters and law school dropouts (a.k.a. real estate brokers) enjoying glasses of Chimay and a hip playlist. Plenty of complicated haircuts at 6:30 p.m., but not a single raccoon tail in sight.

Chelsea Place (641 Bush): If you’re expecting skyline views of Manhattan and metrosexuals out the wazoo, you most certainly have the wrong Chelsea in mind. This is a cozy nook for true alcoholics, where one drink is too many, and 1,000 is never enough. A tiny push through the saloon-style wooden doors grants you access to the Emerald City of unglamorous horizons. One of the few bars in San Francisco that will still let you smoke inside (but the first of many we encountered this Friday night), the immediate rush of second-hand smoke is enough to give you flashbacks to the first time you choked on a Marlboro Red in your junior high bathroom stall. If you’re sensitive to environmental tobacco, you’ll just have to suck it up and enjoy those delightful, toxic fumes.

As is usually the case with these sorts of establishments, the bar was packed with nothing but men over 50 (plus us) cooing over the female Asian staff, who all looked like they were auditioning for a Britney Spears music video. Laissez-faire seems to be in full effect: cigars, graffiti, dice games, whiskey shots out of plastic bottles that just say “whiskey” on the label, cheap beer, snuff pipes, and free bags of Orville Redenbacher. ‘Nuff said.

RJ’s Sports Bar (701 Geary): Korean women behind the bar (it seems to be Bush corridor de rigueur) who speak excellent Spanish and have incredible dance moves (don’t ask me how I know, but this was the biggest surprise of all). Another bar that allows indoor smoking, despite a sticker, in plain sight, that contradicts such actions. A man came in and requested that the bartender fill up his empty Gatorade bottle with Anchor Steam for $5, and without a second thought, that call was answered.

High Tide Lounge (600 Geary): Free food ranging from kimchi, chicken wings, and sushi rolls to stuffed peppers, pad Thai, chow mein, and something that resembled an egg roll but looked more like a snuffed out cigar. I didn’t ask questions. In the midst of our revels, we happened upon a petite woman taking a little catnap in the corner of the bar. Despite sleeping on a cold linoleum floor, she looked quite peaceful. Definitely not dead, though … we checked her pulse.

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