Books

Angels

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Not even duck soup can save me now. The children I put to sleep … they want stories.

“I had a black eye,” I began, “a swollen, purple nose, and tears streaming down my face.” I was lying on my back on the floor in the dark, next to their bunk beds.

“No no no,” the voice on top said. “Make one up this time.”

“When I was a little girl,” I began, as I always do when I’m making one up.

The voice of the bottom bunk interrupted. “In this one make the fox eat the chicken.”

“No no no,” said the voice on top. “Make one up where the chicken eats the fox.” He laughed his angelically evil laugh.

“Yeah!” she said, laughing hers. “Yeah, where — ”

“This story doesn’t have any chickens in it,” I said.

The silence was spectacular, my audience mine. I promised the usual: that if neither one said another single word, from that moment on, I would stay right there in the room with them when the story was over, until everyone was asleep. I said that in any case I would see them in the morning, and if anyone had any questions or comments we would discuss them over pancakes. “But if you want me to stay in the room right now,” I said, “you have to put your heads on your pillows, close your eyes, and just listen.”

This they did, the sweeties, but Top Bunk, being a little too eager to please, overshot the pillow and bounced his head off the headboard, necessitating an ice pack. When I came back from the kitchen, Bottom Bunk was cold and wanted me to snuggle with her.

The story I told, finally, from the floor, once everyone was properly iced and snuggled and re-sworn to silence, started with “When I was a little girl, between your age and yours,” and ended last night at the International Terminal of the San Francisco Airport.

In between there was plenty of time for two little children to fall asleep, wake up, go to school, grow into adults, and surrender to the cold, stark reality of make-believe, or — who knows — maybe even experience, just once, the upending shock of true, fiery, electric, and impossible love, the kind where whole worlds, not just bodies, collide.

Kids aren’t angels. They’re kids. They kept their heads on their pillows, their eyes presumably closed, and bravely just breathed. Then afterward I could hear their wheels spinning, the little coughs and sniffs, restless repositioning of arms and legs.

Their questions went without saying, but I knew what they would be, and had marked them all, along the way, for later, for morning, for pancakes …

What does pneumonia feel like? What’s an exchange student? Oxygen tent? How can duck soup taste so dark and good and still be medicine? And why couldn’t you finish it? Can you go to jail for stealing a roll of toilet paper from a ladies room? What does Fung Lum mean? Can people really fly higher than airplanes? If you liked the same stuff and never wanted to stop playing together, why did you stop? How come we wish on stars but not the moon?

Adults aren’t angels. The dishes needed done, the counters wiped, and the kitchen floor swept. It was garbage night. I hadn’t slept since Sunday, bathed since Monday, or changed my clothes since Tuesday. I’d cancelled meetings, missed deadlines, left work early, and concocted a really very unforgivable dinner that no one, not even parents, could quite fathom. That was Wednesday. On Thursday they ordered pizza.

And I lay on the kids’ room floor long after they’d both spun down into differently delicious dreams, forgetting every single thing except and until pancakes. Awake as always, as low, loved, and lonely as the kid-beaten, bent-tailed, poopy-butt cat curled up next to me, I lay with my black eye and almost-broken nose, tears brining my crows feet and basting my ears, thinking soft fingers on faces and wondering how in the world I would answer the one about the moon.

Fung Lum Restaurant

SFO International Terminal, SF

(650) 821-8282

Beer & wine

AE/D/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Tending the brood

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS The young couple next door to me in Rockridge is building a chicken coop, and I love them for this. They aren’t married and don’t have kids, which makes me just want to squeeze them and look at them, and invite them over for every single thing I eat, even oatmeal.

But that would be creepy, so instead I offer to bring them some straw. Do they need a feeder? A waterer? I still have my place in the woods. I have rat traps, chicken wire, and rusting 55-gallon drums that would look real nice against the falling-down barnlike outbuilding on the edge of their lot.

Together, I think, we can shake up this neighborhood. In just a couple months here I have made more friends (or at any rate met more people I want to be friends with) than I did in five years living in Occidental. In five years in Occidental, I made four friends. Two couples. One I actually met in San Francisco, and the other through a mutual friend in Oakland.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the woods, or I wouldn’t still keep my shack, which I go to when I can for writing and/or romance, and sort of sublet to my artsy bohemian city peeps for same.

The family I work for in East Oakland, Boink’s family, they have a chicken. Used to have three, but two died, and the one that’s left has gone bad. Her name is Cakey. She’s brooding, which means she’s set her mind, and ass, on hatching eggs that no amount of setting will ever induce to hatch. Save maybe a visit from Gabriel.

This is actually a dangerous condition for a roosterless hen to be in, because she might get over it, and she might not. I have girlfriends like this.

It falls on me, while Boink’s family is away in Florida for the week, to traumatize their chicken. I’m surprised Boink hasn’t already achieved this, by accident, but the best way to get a broody hen to snap out of it is to harass the hell out of her.

So I’m going to East Oakland in a moment, I’m stuffing Cakey into a cardboard box with holes poked into it, for air, and I’m driving her out to the country. To the woods. To my shack. Where I can annoy her for three days with sticks, Pere Ubu records, and buckets of cold water — and no one will hear all the squawking. I tried this once with one of my girlfriends and got arrested.

I love Pere Ubu, by the way. But chickens … and perhaps all poultry, for all I know — their capacity to withstand ’70s-era punk rock starts and ends with the Ramones. So you know.

But speaking of traumatized girlfriends, my friend Alice Shaw, after whom I named my great car, Alice Shaw, was mugged at gunpoint in the Mission District. As if I weren’t already mad enough at muggers for stabbing a friend of a friend in Seattle!

And do you know what Alice Shaw said to us, over deep-fried hamburgers after a soccer game? She said, Well, in a way it was nice to be noticed, for a change. I’m paraphrasing.

It is comments like this that make me love human beings even more than chickens. I mean, to be fair, we have no exact translation for the could-be clucks-of-wisdom that chickens call to each other from the jaws of foxes, but it’s a safe bet they are not so laced with humor and sadness as, for example, Alice Shaw’s odd comment.

I wanted to squeeze her and feed her oatmeal, but we were already eating fried hamburgers. Outside, and over rice, with fried eggs on top, and smothered in gravy. What could be better, after a soccer game? It’s a Hawaiian thing, called loco moco, and in fact it was invented 60 years ago, according to the menu, in honor of a barefoot Hawaiian football team called the Wreckers.

Whose players apparently liked to eat, because I, at my hungriest, couldn’t clean half my plate, or even imagine ever being hungry again, so I brought the rest to Earl Butter. We all agreed: Really really dong-dong-dicky-do great, in a school lunchy kind of way.

You want to know where, don’t you?

HUKILAU

Mon., Wed.–Thu., 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

5 Masonic, SF

(415) 921-6242

Full bar

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Lit: Erik Drooker takes aim with Slingshot

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By Ben Terrall

I met Eric Drooker when we were both callow teens experiencing the joys of a coed Quaker socialist hippie camp in Vermont. We skinny-dipped, which was part of the camp’s official policy, and smoked pot, which wasn’t. Drooker has lived in the Bay Area since the mid-1990s, but his art is closely associated with New York City. A lanky, laconic man in his late 40s, he was born and raised in Manhattan, and the city still dominates his imagery. This is true of his wordless graphic novel Flood: A Novel in Pictures (Dark Horse), which won an American Book Award in 1993. It also applies to the haunting silent ballad Blood Song (Harvest Books), published in 2002.

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Eric Drooker

Yet Drooker is perhaps best known for oil paintings that grace covers of The New Yorker — in early September last year, his 15th cover for the magazine appeared on newsstands. Some of these paintings are also included in 2006’s Illuminated Poems (Running Press), which pairs his art with writing by the late Allen Ginsberg. Most recently Drooker published a book of postcards titled Slingshot (PM Press, 68 pages, $14.05). It consists of 32 images created with razor blade on scratchboard.

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Lit: ‘Halliburton’s Army’ uncovers the monster

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By Ben Terrall

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Halliburton’s Army: How A Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized The Way America Makes War

By Pratap Chatterjee
Nation Books
304 pages
$26.95

Pratap Chatterjee, director of CorpWatch, a dogged, effective monitor of corporate malfeasance, has a long track record as a muckraking journalist. The dirt he uncovers on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s favorite company in Halliburton’s Army could help provide grounds for an interesting, and gratifying, series of court cases.

The “army” of the title is staffed with Asians and other workers of color paid scanty wages to toil at crappy jobs once performed by U.S. soldiers. Chatterjee argues that this contracting has made U.S. warfare cheaper by allowing the Pentagon to spend fewer dollars training troops. The workers on the bottom of the ladder aren’t getting much, while “cost-plus” and no-bid contracts, price-gouging, and kickbacks have shoveled tens of millions Halliburton’s way. A whistleblower involved in an audit that she discovered was really a cover-up estimated that the cost of supporting Halliburton/KBR managers in Kuwait City was $73 million per year. To quote Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) within the book, when the Army outsources “this much work on contract management, they really are outsourcing oversight.”

Chatterjee, author of 2004’s Iraq, Inc: A Profitable Occupation, pulls together a vast amount of information (much of it gathered from trips as a reporter in Iraq and Dubai, where Halliburton moved for sunnier tax climes). At times it threatens to overwhelm his narrative. Harried publishing in tight economic times may be the reason for an excess of subsections with different typefaces — given the impressive reportage, the overall presentation is a bit jumbled. Nonetheless, Halliburton’s Army is an important resource.

Morality

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le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

Morality

CHEAP EATS Intoxicated by how pretty flowers are in the dark and wowed by the sheer size of the lit TVs in all my neighbors’ windows, I accidentally hit my head on a tree. Hard. The rest of my life is going to be a dream.

Here’s the part where Earl Butter sends a messenger pigeon saying he’s sick, but not sick, and will be sitting home and crying unless anyone comes over and drinks and eats vegetables with him.

Well, I have no particular plans for the evening. I was planning to stay home and cry, myself, so I tell Earl Butter’s bird to tell Earl Butter I’ll be right over. If I don’t hit my head too hard on too many trees, walking to BART.

Which I didn’t. One tree. Hard, but not hard enough to make my life much more than dreamy. What I failed to account for was all the distractions that would bonk and bewitch me on the other side of the pond, walking from BART to Earl Butter’s. Namely, and in no particular order: Pizzeria, the Mission’s first (that I know of) stone oven pizza, good ol’ Good Vibrations, and of course New Yorker’s buffalo wings because I needed some lube.

Butter and hot sauce, babe. That’s what I’m made of.

Buffalo wings remind me of Earl Butter, who got made in upstate New York and introduced me to buffalo wings and bowling as a way of life.

But a friend of a friend of mine died yesterday of either cancer or knife wounds. She had cancer and then got mugged and stabbed, see, and then died in her sleep after she got out of the hospital, hard to say why. So my friend wrote to me, even though I never knew her friend, and it was like an obituary.

"She loved camp comedians, naughty jokes, show tunes, Ireland, bubble baths, and take-out curry," my friend said of her friend. She said she wished she had a blog because she finds herself wanting to talk and write about her deceased pal. A lot.

And a light went on over my head. It’s rare that you get to do something concrete for a friend in need. But the thing is that I kind of do have a blog, or something very much like one. So why don’t I make myself useful for a change and write about my friend’s friend for her, a lot, in this restaurant review?

Her name was Mandy. She died at home, at night, in bed with her long-distance girlfriend Kristen, who had come that day from Kansas City to be with her, to help her get well.

Mandy was a psych nurse and sometimes kept baby hedgehogs under a heat lamp in her guest room, according to her friend (my friend), "rising during the night to bottle feed them." She didn’t have any brothers or sisters, yet had eight godchildren. Think about it. So whoever stabbed her stabbed someone who didn’t have any brothers or sisters, yet had eight godchildren and nursed both baby hedgehogs and human head cases.

Plus there’s the take-out curry factor. Nothing pokes the unfunny bone like an extinguished hankering for curry. Or the smell of paint. I could go on and on, on my friend’s behalf.

But I know a lot of my readers are muggers, so I’ll be succinct: If you take anything at all from this important restaurant review, take this: stop stabbing people, you fucking morons. We’re all dying anyway, of breast cancer and heart disease, and we don’t need knife wounds on top of it all, so fuck the fuck off. If you lack the skill or finesse to eke a living or pick a pocket cleanly, turn the knife inward and cut your gutless bowels out.

For those of you who aren’t muggers, your moral is quite different. When your friend sends a messenger pigeon, and sometimes even if they don’t, go to them. Bring lube, and/or vodka. Bring buffalo wings. Bring pizza.

Yes, Pizzeria has a dumb name, and a posh (and therefore empty) interior. But its pizza has that nice, thin, stone oven crispness. Which I so so so so love.

My friend’s friend Mandy did not like pizza.

PIZZERIA

Tue.–Thu., 3 p.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., noon–11:30 p.m.; Sun., noon–10 p.m.

659 Valencia, SF

(415) 701-7492

Beer & wine

AE/D/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Stormy weather

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› johnny@sfbg.com

It’s a pleasure to see Sean McFarland receive the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. Last August, McFarland was one of the eight artists or groups showcased in the Bay Guardian‘s second annual photo issue. The Baum Award is a national honor designated for photographers at a pivotal point in their development, and in McFarland’s case, that development is the opposite of predictable. While many photographers work toward "dazzle ’em" displays of technical virtuosity, McFarland has moved away from earlier saturated digital color images toward simple Polaroid photos that possess ominous allure.

Did I say simple? McFarland’s dreamlike images of weather and landscapes are only simple in appearance — they require subtle combinations of photography and the increasingly popular practice of found-image collage. In terms of subject matter, they personalize and miniaturize the vast and unsettling images of the semi-settled West present in the camera art of Michael Light, David Maisel, and Trevor Paglen. The title of Lindsay White’s current show at Ping Pong Gallery, "A Field Guide to the Atmosphere," might just as well apply to McFarland’s work. The atmosphere is stormy, and as troubling as it is beguiling.

SFBG In the last year or two, your work has shifted away from urban views to elemental images: sky, sea, vast land. What has set you off in that direction?

Sean McFarland I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which the earth changes. In an urban environment, we build buildings, roads, and parks, changing the landscape. These are immediate and obvious alterations of our environment. Our actions also change the landscape as we alter the climate — more frequent and powerful storms, rising seas. By focusing on making images of the natural world, of the landscape, I’m interested in making pictures of us. How we change the earth and how the earth effects us.

SFBG Your work from the earlier 2005 era reminds me a bit of a short film, site specific_Las Vegas 05, by an artist named Olivo Barbieri. It has amazing colorful aerial views of Las Vegas in which the city really looks like it is comprised of toy buildings and cars. Were you looking for that kind of "making strange" effect when presenting views some might take for granted?

SM The work I was making from 1999 until around 2002 tried to take things that were fake and make them look real. When I first started re-photographing the collages I was making (in 2003), the miniaturization effect was an unexpected but welcome result. I was working in the other direction, making the real look fake. The collages are made by hand, so the edges are rough and messy. The selective blurring of images was there at first to hide where the images were put together, but it was that transformative quality of the focus that made the process intriguing to me. With the collaged images, I was taking pictures from all over, real images of real things, and by bringing those disparate elements together, the pictures raise questions about what was actually in the photograph.

The image of the park (in the Guardian‘s August 2008 Photo Issue), for example, has the playground from Dolores Park, but with the downtown skyline and bridge removed and replaced with a sky from another city. It may be the absence of the urban center normally in the background that makes the picture seem odd, or it could be that the light from the sky is not the same reflecting off the foreground. The relationship between fact and fiction is one of the strongest reasons I work with photography as opposed to other visual art forms.

SFBG You mention collage as a part of your process. That might not be so apparent to someone who casually glances at your photography. Can you tell me a bit about your approach to collage, and also if there are any collage artists whom you especially like?

SM Lately I’ve been working to make the collage process less apparent. In the past, the images took the final form of a C-Print, made in a darkroom. Now I’m using Polaroid film. Polaroids are mementos and souvenirs of moments, places, and things that actually happened; they imply that whatever is in the picture was witnessed, was real. Since I can’t really take the images I’m making, I’m using collage to do so. A good example is my image of the airplane flying over the black ocean and white land. The picture of the plane is taken from a satellite image of Earth, the land is a photograph I made in the Exploratorium (it’s a picture of an exhibit that shows how land is changed by wind currents).

SFBG Books are a big visual inspiration to me, so I liked seeing you cite the Field Guide to North American Weather and Gerhard Richter’s Atlas as two recent sources of fascination and perhaps material. What drew you to those books and what do you like about them?

SM I enjoy those books because they are both wonderful collections. I work from an archive of several thousand images. This is probably why Atlas is so fascinating to me. It’s the source material (mostly photographs) that Richter uses in his work and it made me even more interested in his work. I like the Field Guide because all the pictures in it are of weather-based natural phenomena. Some of the photographs in it are pretty hard to believe, but actually happened.

SEAN MCFARLAND: THE 2009 BAUM AWARD FOR EMERGING AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS

Thurs/2 through May 23 ( reception Thurs/2, 5–8 p.m.), free or donation

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, second floor, SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

Yelped

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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Hardly anyone names their cat Dave. In fact, no one. That I know of. And yet, every 11 years, like clockwork or a comet, I find myself in the position of having to explain Lou Reed to someone. Why this task falls to me, I will never know. I am not in particular a fan, although I do like and sometimes love and generally "get" and occasionally even listen to Lou Reed.

On the other hand I have never enjoyed hearing Bob Dylan sing a Bob Dylan song. Somebody else — pretty much anybody else singing a Bob Dylan song … sure! On the radio the other day they were talking about whether or not white guys could be "hip," and the name that kept coming up was Bob Dylan. Someone mentioned Tom Waits, and Tom Waits mentioned Chuck E. Wise, and somebody said Quentin Tarantino and the whole time I was screaming at my radio and shaking it, because that’s the way I am.

I am exactly the kind of person who would name their cat Dave. As it happens, my cat came with a name already: Weirdo the Cat. But if I ever get the chance to name another one … Dave! Dave the Cat.

Now, if I ever get to name a person, humanity’s going to be in serious trouble. As is that person, Bing. Boy or girl. After the coolest white man that ever lived. I’m not old enough to even know, really, but then, most people who think Jesus was cool never actually jammed with Him, or heard or saw anything He said or did first hand, or even watched His television special — except on South Park. And that’s animated.

My point being that I’m done with dating (again!), or at least writing about it, and so now you get to read about food, lucky you.

Eats. Cheap, yes, but gourmet? Not that making sense is my specialty, but why would you name your restaurant Eats and then describe it as a "gourmet breakfast and lunch restaurant"?

It’s not gourmet. It’s Eats. Clement and Second Avenue. Just look for the line of people waiting on the sidewalk. You’ll never guess what they’re waiting for: eggs. Toast. You know, potatoes … Eats has the standardest menu on Clement. Nothing’s special, not even the specials. Huevos rancheros? Yeah, special maybe in Iowa. But I ask you, Eats, is this Iowa?

No.

Wait, I made a mistake. This is Iowa. Naw, there is one thing special on the menu. It’s the ricotta cheese pancakes! I found out not by sampling them, but by going to Yelp.com. Which is how I plan to review restaurants from now on. Who knew? There are 134 reviews of Eats on Yelp, and almost all of them mention the specialness of the ricotta cheese pancakes.

Hmm … 134 people versus me. I don’t know about you, but I would trust 134 voices over the evidence of my own senses. Especially since, out of any random 134 people, somewhere between 130 and 133 of them are likely to know more about food than I do.

I am a fan of cornmeal pancakes, and pancake pancakes. Word on the Web is that ricotta cheese is the way to go. They’re so good, apparently, you don’t need butter or syrup. (Many, many, many people said this.) I say: why in the wide, wonky world would I order pancakes except as a vehicle for butter and syrup?

In fact, I ordered the cornmeal pancakes, short stack, with a side of sausage. They gave me three cakes, and only two packets of butter. What the — ? I had to go find four more for myself, ’cause the service was kind of slow. The grillfriends I was with, they ordered cornmeal and regular pancakes. And we all agreed: ho-diddly-hum.

The sausage was dry.

And seriously: it may be that the ricotta cheese pancakes are as amazing as 134 people say, but my guess is they’re not. If they were, the cornmeal and regular ones would at least be good, one would think. *

EATS

Mon.–Sat., 8 a.m.–3:30 p.m.; Sun., 8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

50 Clement, SF

(415) 752-2938

No alcohol

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Undead again

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Resident Evil 5

(Capcom; Xbox 360, PS3)

GAMER With sales hovering around the 35 million mark, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has become less of a cash cow and more of a cash elephant. If I explained to you that Resident Evil 5 is in fact the seventh game in the main series, you might care, but suffice to say that between a bookshelf’s worth of games, novelizations, comic books, and feature films, expectations for the most recent installment are running high.

The new title takes place in Africa, where franchise stalwart Chris Redfield has arrived to be gruff and kill things in the name of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The world is beset on all sides by misanthropes with syringes full of tentacle-rich zombifying megavirus, and only the BSAA can keep us from being turned into creatures that look like a walking combination of ground beef and motor oil.

Redfield is joined by his hard-bodied counterpart, Sheva Alomar, a local operative who accompanies the player throughout. Cooperation is the name of the game this time around, and you’ll have to pool resources and abilities to survive. Sidekick A.I. is one of gaming’s greatest deficiencies, and though Sheva’s is certainly passable (read: not a constant frustration), simple online and same-room co-op features make two-person play the optimal approach.

The game retains Resident Evil’s infuriating "stop-and-pop" controls, rooting you to the spot every time you aim your weapon. This is ostensibly to preserve the series’ survival-horror roots, although you would be hard-pressed to find anything scary during the game’s paltry 12 hours of gameplay. RE5 plays like an action title, with streamlined item-management and save utilities and a lot of relentless gunplay.

Visually, the game is stunning, creating an atmospheric and detailed world for the player to riddle with bullets. If only the other aspects of the game’s presentation had received even half as much attention — the writing is horrifically stilted, and the story is incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like the designers are purposefully insulting the players’ intelligence — "The power is off. Maybe there’s some way to turn it back on" — and every single point is made with a sledgehammer. Early trailers for the game brought accusations of racism (white cop mows down herds of bug-eyed Africans), and while this charge loses potency in context, the appearance of grass-skirted "tribal" zombies who literally throw spears at you is extremely problematic. Thankfully, when your back’s to the wall and you’re running out of ammo, it doesn’t really matter if the zombies are black, blue, or green.

Reilly on Hearst’s Hindenberg

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By Tim Redmond

Clint Reilly calls the San Francisco Chronicle “the greatest wealth destruction machine in American journalism today.” It’s an interesting hit on the situation; he cites a Wall Street Journal interview with investment banker (and media industry expert) Jonathan Knee, who notes:

The reason why most newspaper companies have gone bankrupt or appear perilously close to it is that they have too much debt, not that they have stopped being profitable. For the reasons I have already described, they are certainly less profitable than they used to be, but compared to most media businesses like movies and books, most newspapers still have higher profit margins. Unfortunately, many of these companies maxed out on available debt during a bubble in the debt market just before the debt bubble popped and their own profit margins precipitously declined. That does not mean that these companies cannot continue to generate significant cash flow once restructured into a sustainable capital structure.

Then points out that Hearst’s problem isn’t debt — I suspect the bean counters have already written off as a tax loss most of the $700 million the company paid to buy the Chron. The problem, he argues, is bad management:

With more than 75 percent of its circulation outside San Francisco, the Chronicle is unable to cover The City or the suburbs in depth. The paper’s circulation should have been cut in half many years ago; at 360,000, it remains massively expensive to produce, print and circulate. Resizing alone might have saved the paper by dramatically reducing operating costs across the organization.

All of which, of course, argues against Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s plan to eliminate anti-trust regs and allow the Chron to merge with, say, Dean Singleton’s Media News Group.

Durst: Stuff a sanitary sock in it

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By Will Durst

Oh for crum’s sake. Settle down people. You’re fixated. You’ve inflated this whole steroids thing into a national obsession. Suddenly, steroids are the root of all evil. An Al Qaeda trick designed to devastate Democracy from within. No. That’s not it. It’s athletes trying to cover Father Time’s spread. The average Major League Baseball career is 5.6 years long. If you’re going to make it, better start today. And be willing to do whatever it takes. Especially after Marvin Bernard and Fernando Tatis start going long.

This unhealthy obsession has all the earmarks of payback. Face it: your average baseball writer is smarter than your average ball player. Better educated. Reads more books. Some without pictures in them. Watches PBS. On purpose. And yes, they know they’re smarter and the players probably do too, but demonstrate little, if any, respect; residing at the top of the heap of the cream of the crop of the modern gladiator business.

Pics: Chocolate love overwhelms Fort Mason

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By Ariel Soto. For more chocolate love (tis the season?) on Pixel Vision, click here.

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Chocoholics swarmed Herbst Pavilion March 21st for the 3rd Annual San Francisco International Chocolate Salon at Fort Mason. One had to have sharp elbows and quick maneuvering tactics to get to the tables piled high with samples with everything for durian fruit truffles to, my favorite, locally made chocolate covered Brazilian Honey Cakes by Kika’s Treats. There were also chocolate flavored liquors and Omnivore Books, a bookstore specifically dedicated to books on food and drink. Something for everyone — and I left shaking from so much caffeine and chocolate goodness running through my veins, my fingers sticky and stained a rich, luscious color.

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Janus A.D.: David Enos strikes again

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David Enos is a man of many talents: artist, musician, moviemaker. He recently had a show of art at [2nd floor projects], he’s made a lot of great comic books in the last few years, he did the covers (vinyl and CD) for the new album by the group he’s in, Papercuts. And now, Mr. Enos the director steps behind and in front of the camera once again to add a small chapter to a filmography that includes animated portraits of Jim Morrison, Dennis Wilson, and Leonard Cohen.

His latest effort adds a personalized twist to the great Damon Packard‘s flair for making movies that are previews. Witness Enos as the handsome caped romantic lead of Janus A.D., “an entirely different motion picture experience.”

Cat’s cradle

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Independent, slyly defiant, and given to zigzags, the cat is the spirit animal for a certain breed of cinematic gleaners. The films of Warren Sonbert and Chris Marker are packed with the feline kind. A kitty or two shows through the lucid abstractions of Nathaniel Dorsky’s recent work, and Agnès Varda’s La Pointe-Courte (1954) uses the animal as a structural device. Accordingly, Ben Rivers’ This is My Land (2006) opens with a lithe creature snapping its head to face the camera. There are several other such mysterious cameos across the 14-minute film, one of several bricolage studies Rivers has composed of off-the-grid settlers who are themselves catlike in both appearance (the whiskers and quick smile) and manner (gentle wildness).

Rivers must appreciate the cat’s association with the gothic, given his propensity to label his shorts as either horrors or portraits. The London-based filmmaker and programmer comes to town this week for two rare programs split along these lines, though it isn’t as stark a divide as it might first sound. The films are all exquisite documents of overgrown spaces, the kind in which the past is made palimpsest, audible in the creak of floorboards and everywhere apparent in the makeshift and ajar.

There are traces of Murnau, Dreyer, and Herzog in Rivers’ work; the films are welcome demonstrations that Expressionism is nothing so much as a feeling for how the physical world relates to the spiritual one, though musical references are equally revealing. The beards, spirits, and foliage evoke the deep English folk of the Incredible String Band and Roy Harper. In addition, the field recording quilt-work done by Lucky Dragons and the Books provides a useful analogue to Rivers non-sync style. Shot with a wind-up Bolex, Rivers processes the film stock himself, leaving grain and light flecks unpolished, with sound and image each representing an autonomous, well-portioned montage. The films open the same rich interstices of avant-garde, documentary, and ethnography as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work, but with an intense intimacy that makes them seem like home movies of the highest order.

The old dark house imagery of Rivers’ gothic curios strike a particularly English chord, but the back-to-the-land portraiture has a special resonance in California. We too know these beards, this tumble of wilderness, this particular migration. If these figures seem to age differently, it’s because their living choices represent a decisive approach to both space and time, something Rivers represents with great cinematic adroitness. The specter of global warming and natural disaster thickens these reclusive reliefs. Rivers has admitted his fondness for ’70s postapocalypse moves, a ripe genre rearticulated in the lunar landscapes and scrapyard play of Ah, Liberty! (2008). Horror, in this context, is a kind of awe. It is inseparable from nature — it is, in fact, nature reclaiming civilization.

"[There are] all kind of wild animals [here], and it’s only because I let it get wild. And that’s my point, but nobody will get it," the central figure of Astrika (2006) explains. Rivers, of course, does get it. The homesteaders’ scattered debris suggests Rivers’ own secondhand materials, improvised objects like a birdfeeder made from a milk container reflect his films construction, and the ethos of self-sufficiency is admired and enacted. The human warmth of his filmmaking emanates from these affinities, which go beyond sympathy to touch the elusive nerve of experience. Rivers’ wind-up camera means that no single shot can exceed 30 seconds. But when the pitter-patter of his images settles on something strange and moving, like a distant view of a horse rolling in the snow, it reminds us that beauty is often a humbling drama of the glimpse.

"THE POETIC HORROR OF BEN RIVERS"

Sat/28, 8:30 p.m., $6

Other Cinema at Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890, www.atasite.org

"THIS IS MY LAND: BEN RIVERS’ PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES"

Sun/29, 7:30 p.m., $10

San Francisco Cinematheque at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

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

Desperado

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I did the math. This is Part Five of a Three-Part Series, and therefore the last part. Henceforth, I will leave my neighborhood alone and just live in it.

Speaking of five, I had five first dates in five days. I should say, I made five dates but only had four of them. The first was in an accident on his way to see me and wound up in the hospital.

He sent a picture of the car. One of those ones where you wonder how the driver survived. Well, he’s a fireman. My best guess is that firemen know how (to survive). Which is dangerous knowledge to have. He calls every day, addresses me as dear, and is in a lot of pain.

Shhh. He doesn’t know about my man on the train, to whom I am not technically betrothed, but committed, yes, because I looked deep into his bloodshot eyes and said what he wanted to hear: that I would represent him.

One of my favorite things about being romantically connected to a recovering gangster who was being taken into police custody the last time I saw him is that you can pretty much start fooling around immediately.

And I use the words "fooling around" loosely … No, really, I only actually carried on with one of the five first dates. Meaning my very very seriously irretractable vow to never ever EVER under any conceivable circumstance have sex on a first date, not even once, is still 80 percent intact! For the week.

Nobody approves of the choices I make. Except this one guy. But most of my girlfriends and all of the women’s magazines and dating advice columnists … it’s unanimousish: don’t be desperate. Whatever you do, you’re not supposed to be, or seem, desperate.

"But what if you’re desperate?" I have to ask. It is almost my job to ask, and I think maybe it is my job to answer. Or try.

Well, desperation has a bad rap. Which is easy for me to say. I embody desperation. I am one of desperation’s foremost practitioners and appreciators. Desperate people who don’t embrace, or at least act out of desperation, will never get to lick a ruby in a dangerous drunk’s front tooth, for example. Or …

Or …

There are other examples too unmentionable to mention.

This one isn’t: The best kisser I ever kissed, the man who will now, for me, set the standard for quality kisses, was of course All Wrong, by the book, and an act of desperation on my part. He was the one-in-five, and technically still married. I kinda knew I’d never see him again, and I definitely knew I would want to. Oh, and he wasn’t even very good-looking, nor well-spoken — which turns me on more than good looks. But: none of that. He was an amazing kisser, and I wasn’t wrong to guess that that would translate to great sex.

Minus my being starved for affection, however, it never would have happened. And I never would have made the five dates in five days, probably, if I hadn’t been so impressed and/or horrified by my shenanigans with that man on the train. Not because he was a gangster; because, cool dentistry notwithstanding, he was a terrible, terrible kisser, all force and no finesse.

Somebody save me! Right?

This is not what I want. It’s what I’ve got. I will work with it, laugh and enjoy and wrangle it into words, as always, for your amusement, but it wouldn’t be true desperation without the underlying fact that it ain’t what I want. I want sweet, sexy boredom and juicy burritos with a reliable, commitment-capable man with a soft, spicy tongue, safe driving habits, something to say, and question marks for eyes.

I know you’re out there. Sort it out and step up, please, sir. It’s hard, I know. I know it’s scary. But imagine the meals we will make, and all the great restaurants in our oystery world, as simple as salt plus what?

You’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, when I am absolutely desperate for a burrito:

THE BURRITO SHOP

Mon.–Sat.: 10:30 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun.: 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

5259 College, Oakl.

(510) 658-7646

No alcohol

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Monopoly money

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sarah@sfbg.com

Employees at the San Francisco Chronicle are anxiously awaiting the March 31 deadline that its owner the Hearst Corp. has set for accepting buyout offers, after which the ax could fall on any employee at any time. The California Media Workers Guild has voted to accept 150 layoffs and to end seniority considerations at the city’s major daily.

Hearst claims that amendments to the union’s contract are essential to avoid closing or selling the 144-year-old paper, although the company refuses to open its books, making it impossible to verify claims that the Chronicle is losing $1 million a week. Rather than challenging that corporate prerogative, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to explore allowing a local monopoly like MediaNews to buy the Chronicle, the last major Bay Area newspaper MediaNews doesn’t already own through its Bay Area News Group subsidiary.

In a March 16 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Pelosi wrote: "I am confident that the antitrust division, in assessing any concerns that any proposed mergers or other arrangements in the San Francisco area might reduce competition, will take into appropriate account, as relevant, not only the number of daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, but also the other sources of news and advertising outlets available in the electronic and digital age, so that conclusions reached reflect current market realities."

Holder responded March 18, telling reporters, "It’s important for this nation to maintain a healthy newspaper industry. So to the extent that we have to look at our enforcement policies and conform them to the reality that the industry faces, that’s something I’m going to be willing to do."

Sara Steffens, chair of the Guild’s Bay Area News Group East Bay unit, recently raised her concerns about that strategy. "Consolidating some or all Bay Area News Group operations with the Chronicle could prove the financial salvation for our struggling newspapers, potentially guarding against bankruptcies or outright shutdown," she wrote on the union’s Web site. "But it could also pave the way for further job loss and erosion of standards."

Justice department lawyers have in the past ruled against mergers that created newspaper monopolies, but media analyst Alan Mutter believes times have changed. "It’s just a question of who is going to qualify," Mutter told the Guardian.

Retired UC Berkeley journalism professor Ben Bagdikian, author of books critical of media monopolies, said the Chronicle‘s "surprising announcement" that it might have to shut down could be a scam. He notes that this news comes "not long after Hearst and [MediaNews owner Dean} Singleton, who owns all the East Bay dailies, formed a partnership to buy media in other parts of the country.

"Hearst a few years ago — granted, in boom times — gifted the Examiner to the Fang family along with a stunning gift of $56 million to the Fangs to take it and make it into a daily," Bagdikian said. "I think it has never before happened in the news business or any other business to pay someone else to compete with them. It was clearly part of a larger plan to get rid of this operating agreement for exemption from antitrust [laws]."

Other critics believe that large newspapers, which are tied to huge printing presses and gas-guzzling delivery trucks, could become extinct, and that nimbler prototypes that deliver news by mobile phone and integrate social networking on their Web sites could assume the old media’s traditional role as public watchdogs.

Jeff Elder, who is studying the newspaper industry as a Knight fellow at Stanford University, told the Guardian, "You either see a daily newspaper as an old railroad station, a really cool part of the city’s history that you maybe can’t afford to save, or an at-risk public school whose continuance is fundamental to democracy."

Elder, a columnist for the Charlotte Observer, was one of a wide variety of media professionals (including Guardian publisher Bruce B. Brugmann), who gathered March 17 in the San Francisco Public Library to discuss the Chronicle‘s future.

"There is no minimizing that it’s a real sad situation for the people being laid off," Elder said. "But there is a real danger in propping up print products by strengthening monopolies. You’re draining off resources while propping up a business model that is becoming increasingly irrelevant."

Ok, so I liked “Twilight.” So what?

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By Natalie Gregory

Editor’s note: Twilight is now available On Demand and on DVD. Even if you haven’t read the books, and even if you avoided the theatrical release, you might still be powerless. Read on…

twilight_cast.jpg

I’m just going to come out and say it. I liked Twilight (2008). I liked it so much I can’t wait to go home and watch it again before it expires in my On Demand. I have come to the conclusion that I must be a 14-year-old girl. I was consumed by the whole lusty, breathy, forbidden teenage love affair of the century. So he’s a vampire. And he wants nothing more than to suck her dry. The very first moment she enters the room, he looks like he is going to vomit with lust. They don’t really explain the attraction between the two, except that she is delicate and reflective, he is beautiful and powerful, and he can’t read her mind like he does everyone else. No matter. They are drawn to one another. This is probably explanation enough. The actors are so good-looking you forget to ask questions. Why ruin it?

As far as sexual tension goes….nailed it! The scene that really did it for me (and probably millions of my fellow mental and literal 14-year-olds) is when he attempts to kiss her. He instructs her to be very still. He moves in ever so slowly. They kiss. But the excitement forces him back against the wall in restraint. Right then it hit me: they are only going to be able to keep this abstinence thing going for so long. The audience will consummate for them if they can’t do the job. Congratulations Summit Entertainment. I am now invested in the fate of the Twilight series. Hats off to the casting directors.

The Larder: Willy Wonka and the (raw) chocolate factory

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Diana Dunkelberger gets the scoop on yummy local edibles. View her last installment here.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting the 20-something pastry chefs who left Café Gratitude to found Coracao Confections, a raw chocolate company based in Emeryville. But I imagine, based on their bubblingly exuberant website, that Matthew Rogers and Daniel Korson are a little bit like younger, hipper versions of Willy Wonka, the twinkly-eyed chocolatier from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Willy Wonka_0309.jpg

“We LOVE good food and good chocolate!” Matthew and Daniel exclaim in the secret section of their site, where they chronicle their long love affair with all foods raw. “We became inspired to eat more RAW, MINERAL RICH foods after experiencing the clarity and energy it brought us first-hand,” they explain. “After about five years of working in the raw food industry, reading books, taking classes, teaching classes, going to cutting edge, raw superfood seminars, and TONS of experimenting we finally hit the JACKPOT and developed our line of signature chocolates.”

Appetite: Caffeinated Comics, Chocolate Salon, Masa’s at a discount, and more

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chocolate0316a.jpg

Chocolate time! See “events” below

As long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this city and obsessed with finding and exploring its best food-and-drink spots, deals, events and news, in every neighborhood and cuisine. I started with my own service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot, and am thrilled to share up-to-the minute news with you from the endless goings-on in our fair city. View the last installment of Appetite here

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NEW RESTAURANT & CAFE OPENINGS

Caffeinated Comics, the breakfast of champions
Four Barrel coffee, free wi-fi, comic books and donuts? Could this possibly all be in one place? It is now with Caffeinated Comics, SF’s first comic book/coffee shop rolled into one. The Outer Mission shop is a bright red, orange and yellow space where you can sift through superhero memorabilia or check out DC or Marvel’s latest comic books, all while sipping a high-quality espresso. (Note: there’s also affogatos using neighbor, Mitchell’s, legendary ice cream). CaffCom’s applied for green certification with green lighting, building materials and energy efficient freezers and fridges. Holy caffeinated geekdom, Batman.
Caffeinated Comics
Weekdays 7am-6pm
Weekends 9:30am-5pm
3188 Mission Street
415-829-7530
www.caffcom.com

Livin’ La Dolce Vita at Pizzanostra
Jocelyn Bulow of the Chez Papa and Chez Maman restaurant group and Italian chef, Giovanni Aginolfi (who was cooking pizzas in Nice, France, prior to coming to SF), join forces for a new pizzeria/osteria on Potrero Hill called Pizzanostra. Aginolfi placed sixth in the World Pizza Championship and now we can get ’em right here. There are two themes to this restaurant: a pizzeria serving Aginolfi’s famed pies, and an osteria with a menu of antipasti, foccacias, salumi, pastas, gelatos and Italian wines. The outdoor sidewalk terrace will be a huge hit on sunny days for filling up on bruschetta topped with eggplant, prosciutto, mozerella and tomato, a salad of celery hearts and fennel, or pizzas covered in lamb sausage and egg or clams and prawns. This is la dolce vita realized.
Pizzanostra
300 De Haro Street
415-558-9493
www.pizzanostrasf.com

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EVENTS

March 17: Screening and Iyemon Cha Tea Reception as part of the Asian American Film Fest
Asian film screening and tea tasting sound good? Iyemon Cha is a one-of-a-kind organic bottled green tea made at the historic Fukujuen tea house in Kyoto, Japan. Only recently available in our city, the tea and complimentary appetizers will be served at an exclusive pre-screening reception you have to sign up for online. At the reception you’ll meet the director, Dave Boyle, and cast of that night’s film, “White on Rice.” Consider it a culturally fun education in tea and Asian film.
5:30pm reception at Bar Bistro; 6:45pm Film Screening
Free for pre-screening reception but must register on website ahead of time
Film screening, $10: www.festival.asianamericanmedia.org/2009.
Sundance Kabuki Theatre
1881 Post Street
www.iyemonchaevents.com
March 21: Spend your Saturday at the Third Annual SF International Chocolate Salon
The SF International Chocolate Salon is back for it’s annual showdown of over fifty gourmet chocolate vendors covering 30,000 square feet of ground. Let’s see, spending a Saturday sampling rich chocolates, velvety wines and all things chocolate? Can do. There’s chef and author talks, demos, chocolate fashion and body painting (?!) and wine pairings, so you won’t be bored. I would concur with the well-known adage, “I never met a piece of chocolate I didn’t like”, and this event will surely confirm it.
10am-6pm
$20 advance; $25 at the door
Fort Mason Center: Herbst Pavilion
99 Marina Boulevard
www.sfchocolatesalon.com

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DRINK NEWS

Adesso opens in Oakland – finally, a sports bar for cocktilians
Jon Smulewitz of longtime Piedmont Ave. Italian restaurant, Dopo, just opened an Italian-chic sports bar (yes… chic, Italian and sports). Adesso may have a Foosball table and flat screens, but it also has 15 drinks assembled by Jay Kosmas of New York City’s Employees Only, an industry insiders’ culinary cocktail hang-out. In a casual, mod space, imbibe cocktails or Italian wines while pulling up a seat at the bar… salumi bar that is. You heard right: salumi bar and foosball, all in one place.
4395 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
510-601-0305

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DEALS

sens031609a.jpg
Sens gets special

Sens: $19 lunch special with entree, dessert and a 12 oz. beer
Sens, Embarcadero’s Mediterranean Rustic Chic restaurant overlooks Embarcadero Plaza from big, picturesque windows. I enjoy the fresh dishes but find the place pricey in general, though I have a reason now to return for their new $19 lunch special, with soda or 12 oz. beer, entree and dessert. The menu rotates weekly with recent dishes including a lamb and feta meatball sandwich on rosemary ciabatta with sweet potato chips and mesclun greens and a lush chocolate bread pudding for dessert. Sounds like my kind of lunch hour.
Monday-Friday 11:30am-2:30pm Lunch; 3-7:30pm Happy Hour; 5:30-10pm Dinner
Saturday 5pm-11pm
4 Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level
415-362-0645
www.sens-sf.com

Masa’s makes fine dining affordable
Masa’s is one of SF’s most revered fine dining destinations for more than 25 years, but set menus run $105 for six courses or $155 for nine courses per person. Yeah… definitely a special occasion splurge at best. But Masa’s is feeling the economic times, too, responding with something they’ve never done before: offer a three course menu for $55 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for early bird diners. Exec chef, Gregory Short, serves dishes like roasted beets en terrine or potato agnolotti with fava beans and black trumpet mushrooms. Pastry chef, John McKee, won’t leave you hanging on dessert either, with delectables like a fleur de sel caramel bon bon or Winter citrus tart. An ideal chance to try out this upscale dining mecca at a “discount”.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays 5:30-6:30pm
$55 three-course menu; $30 for three wine pairings
648 Bush Street
415-989-7154
www.masasrestaurant.com

Drinking in the dark

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Text by Sarah Phelan.
Q. “How many Irish does it take to change a light bulb. “
A. “Never mind, we’ll drink in the dark.”

I was reminded of this (potentially racist, but I’m part Irish, so screw it) joke yesterday during a two-hour conversation about the Chronicle that took place, mostly between media people, in the basement of the library, on St Patrick’s Day.

The fact that any reporters showed up to talk about journalism on St Paddy’s Day is a good indicator of just how troubled they are feeling about the state of the news industry.

Normally, reporters would be writing about folks drinking too many Irish car bombs, or, if they weren’t working that night, drinking too many green beers themselves.

Instead, they sat and talked about the challenges facing San Francisco’s main daily newspaper, and the future of journalism in the Internet age.

Now, you’d think this would be easy for a bunch of folks who are used to digging into other people’s business and publishing what they find out, including the for-profit-driven doings of this or that evil corporation.

Only this time, the folks being bullied are the workers at the San Francisco Chronicle, which is owned by Hearst. a privately held corporation. This means the Chronicle won’t be publishing the findings of its own journalists’ findings on this matter. Instead, it’s been running reports that have no bylines and sound like Hearst press releases.

And then there’s the disquieting reality that Hearst has refused to open its books to the unions that represent the workers at the Chronicle. This means that all Hearst’s claims, including the statement that the Chronicle is losing $50 million a year, remain just that: claims, until proven otherwise.

No one is disputing the fact that newspapers have been losing advertising revenue to the Internet. Or that few of us have figured out ways to recapture that revenue. Or that many of us have been laid off, suffered pay cuts and/or seen an end to our careers, even as more people read our stuff than ever.

So, are we going to drink in the dark, or shine some light on the situation?

Personally, I don’t want the Chronicle to die. I want it to improve. And, as an investigative reporter, I want proof that Hearst’s financial claims are real.

Long time Chronicle reporter Carl Hall, the local representative of the California Media Workers Guild, confirmed last night that Hearst refused the Guild’s requests to open its books.

Hall also confirmed that Guild members voted to accept the loss of 150 jobs and the elimination of seniority rather than risking calling Hearst’s bluff over the corporation’s threats to close or sell the Chronicle.

Of course the workers did. They’re newspaper men and women. Like doctors and teachers, they love their jobs, no matter who is running the hospital, school or newspaper.

But I wonder if the rest of the media have fallen down on the job, by not challenging Hearst’s unsubstantiated claims, even as the entire nation is discovering that it has been Ponzi-schemed up the kazoo.

I was heartened to hear Chronicle forum panelist and social entrepreneur Tom Murphy point out that some of the industry’s current problems are related to the newspaper-buying binges that Hearst Corp. and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews indulged in during the past decade.

And it was interesting to hear Oakland Tribune editor Martin Reynolds, which itself got swallowed up by Singleton in recent years, admit that many newspapers chains are in a similar situation to the owners of foreclosed homes: “They are upside down on their mortgages, right now,” Reynolds said.

Connect those financial dots to the fact that readership of the Chronicle is growing online, and you begin to realize that there is a way forward through all this, even if we haven’t figured it all out yet.

As Center for Investigative Reporting cofounder and forum panelist David Weir put it last night, ‘Don’t blame the Internet for journalism’s demise. The Internet is not a choice, it is a fact. It is a technical and historical reality.”

Save the Chronicle!

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle story March 15 on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s frequent absence from the city drew comments from many who believe the mayor is out of touch, wandering the state seeking votes for governor at a time when the city is facing a historic financial crisis. The news was really nothing new — we’ve been reporting for months now that the mayor is disengaged in the business of running the city. But it appeared on the front page of the local daily newspaper, and that put the story right in the center of civic discourse.

We’ve been as critical of the Chron as anyone in town. For 42 years, we’ve been reporting on the failures of the daily newspapers in San Francisco, and we regularly blast the Hearst-owned near-monopoly daily for its failure to cover major stories and its biased slant on others.

And as the first alternative newspaper in the country founded specifically to provide an editorial and advertising alternative to the moribund dailies, we’re the first to agree that the Chron doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have the final word on what’s important in this city. We’re big supporters of all sorts of alternative media, and we’re glad to see that Web-based news publications, some of them daily, are appearing and offering different ways for people to find information.

But if the Chronicle dies, the city will lose an important, if often infuriating, civic institution. Hearst should not be allowed to turn San Francisco into the first major American city with no major daily newspaper — not without extensive oversight, hearings, and a chance for somebody else to take over the paper and try to make it work.

Hearst is complaining that the Chronicle is losing about $50 million a year. Of course, Hearst, a private corporation, won’t show anyone, even its own unions, its books.

We realize the newspaper business is rough right now, but we’re not convinced that running a daily paper in San Francisco is a doomed proposition. This is one of the wealthiest, best-educated markets in the world — and the fact that Hearst can’t sell enough newspapers and ads to float its operation is in significant part a sign of how miserable the paper’s management has failed. It tried to be a regional paper, which flopped. It’s become so politically conservative that progressives, particularly young progressives who make up the future of its demographic base, see little reason to subscribe.

And let’s not forget — Hearst has made a fortune in San Francisco. In 1965, the Hearst-owned Examiner and the family-owned Chronicle formed a joint operating agreement — a government-sanctioned monopoly, blessed by special legislation, that allowed two ostensibly competing companies to fix prices, share markets and pool profits. For the next 26 years, the JOA was a license to print money. Local advertisers paid billions in high rates to the newspaper combine, and those profits far, far eclipse anything the Chron has lost since Hearst bought it.

When the New York company bought out the deYoung Thieriot family in 2001, it sought to create a true monopoly by shutting down the Ex entirely. A local outcry, a lawsuit by Clint Reilly, and threats by federal regulators forced Hearst to sell the bones of the Ex to the Fang family, which essentially got the paper free and was given a $66 million subsidy to run it.

Now, after all this, Hearst is threatening to close shop and walk away, destroying hundreds of union jobs and wiping out a newspaper that is, by its nature, something of a public utility. And once again — ironically, just as the Chron reported — Mayor Newsom is missing in action. Newsom should be taking the lead on preventing the loss of a major local business. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is asking the Justice Department to relax anti-competitive rules on newspaper ownership (a bad idea), should instead push legislation barring a daily newspaper in a one-paper town from closing down unless and until the owners offer it for sale at a fair price and give someone else a chance to run it. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer should join her.

The Chron unions have talked of an interest in buying the paper. Financier Warren Hellman confirmed to us that he supports creating a nonprofit entity to take over Chronicle operations. Hearst Corp., which has almost certainly already written off its $600 million purchase as a tax loss, should be forced to work with potential buyers — and give them a deal no worse than what the Fangs got in 2001.

The future of the Chron has implications for the entire industry — and if Hearst is going to carry out the assassination of a newspaper, it should be done in a fishbowl. Congress, the state Legislature, and the San Francisco supervisors should hold hearings, subpoena the Hearst executives, and push alternatives. And Newsom needs to quit gallivanting around the state and start working on his own city’s problems. *

Appetite: Caffeinated Comics, Chocolate Salon, Masa’s at a discount, and more

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By Virginia Miller

chocolate0316a.jpg
Chocolate time! See “events” below

As long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this city and obsessed with finding and exploring its best food-and-drink spots, deals, events and news, in every neighborhood and cuisine. I started with my own service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot, and am thrilled to share up-to-the minute news with you from the endless goings-on in our fair city. View the last installment of Appetite here

————

NEW RESTAURANT & CAFE OPENINGS

Caffeinated Comics, the breakfast of champions
Four Barrel coffee, free wi-fi, comic books and donuts? Could this possibly all be in one place? It is now with Caffeinated Comics, SF’s first comic book/coffee shop rolled into one. The Outer Mission shop is a bright red, orange and yellow space where you can sift through superhero memorabilia or check out DC or Marvel’s latest comic books, all while sipping a high-quality espresso. (Note: there’s also affogatos using neighbor, Mitchell’s, legendary ice cream). CaffCom’s applied for green certification with green lighting, building materials and energy efficient freezers and fridges. Holy caffeinated geekdom, Batman.
Caffeinated Comics
Weekdays 7am-6pm
Weekends 9:30am-5pm
3188 Mission Street
415-829-7530
www.caffcom.com

Livin’ La Dolce Vita at Pizzanostra
Jocelyn Bulow of the Chez Papa and Chez Maman restaurant group and Italian chef, Giovanni Aginolfi (who was cooking pizzas in Nice, France, prior to coming to SF), join forces for a new pizzeria/osteria on Potrero Hill called Pizzanostra. Aginolfi placed sixth in the World Pizza Championship and now we can get ’em right here. There are two themes to this restaurant: a pizzeria serving Aginolfi’s famed pies, and an osteria with a menu of antipasti, foccacias, salumi, pastas, gelatos and Italian wines. The outdoor sidewalk terrace will be a huge hit on sunny days for filling up on bruschetta topped with eggplant, prosciutto, mozerella and tomato, a salad of celery hearts and fennel, or pizzas covered in lamb sausage and egg or clams and prawns. This is la dolce vita realized.
Pizzanostra
300 De Haro Street
415-558-9493
www.pizzanostrasf.com

———

EVENTS

March 17: Screening and Iyemon Cha Tea Reception as part of the Asian American Film Fest
Asian film screening and tea tasting sound good? Iyemon Cha is a one-of-a-kind organic bottled green tea made at the historic Fukujuen tea house in Kyoto, Japan. Only recently available in our city, the tea and complimentary appetizers will be served at an exclusive pre-screening reception you have to sign up for online. At the reception you’ll meet the director, Dave Boyle, and cast of that night’s film, “White on Rice.” Consider it a culturally fun education in tea and Asian film.
5:30pm reception at Bar Bistro; 6:45pm Film Screening
Free for pre-screening reception but must register on website ahead of time
Film screening, $10: www.festival.asianamericanmedia.org/2009.
Sundance Kabuki Theatre
1881 Post Street
www.iyemonchaevents.com

Why Chronicle workers need to see Hearst’s books

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Hearst and the Chronicle’s refusal to share its audited books should raise serious red flags for workers.

Text by Sarah Phelan.

We all know that the economy is in bad shape and that the newspaper industry is hurting. But before Guild members vote this Saturday at the Parc 55 Hotel on whether to accept a deal that cuts 150 jobs and eliminates seniority, they should demand to see the audited records of both the Hearst and the Chron.

Back in 2005-2006, Local 4, which represent pressmen at the Chronicle, hired Peter Donahue of PBI Associates to assess allegations that the Chron and/or Hearst could not meet its obligations to the pressmen and other Chronicle employees.

To assess these claims, Donahue suggested the union should request audited financial statements for Hearst for the past ten years, audited financial statements for the Chron, and detailed statements of non-operating and operating costs, “distinguishing clearly between actual expenditures, set-asides and inter-corporate transfers” for Hearst, the Chron, SFgate and the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, for the past 10 years.

“No such information was provided by Hearst,: Donahue advised Local 4’s then President Anthony Price. “Without such information, allegations that the newspaper or the Corporation are unable to meet their obligations are unfounded, only repeat claims that the company has been unwilling and unable to support with credible evidence.”

To see the full text of Donahue’s letter, click here.

What I’m not

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I never should have given away my chickens. I should have bonked their heads off and plucked them and cut them up and put them in the freezer. How unfarmerly of me to give them away! I knew I would regret it, but didn’t know it would hit me like this, right here, right now, in New York City.

Tomorrow night I’m doing a reading here. It’s so cold. I keep clicking my heels together and not going anywhere. It’s so, so, so, so cold, like, zero. I’m wearing everything I brought, including three pairs of panties under my tights and jeans and skirts and dresses, and two coats. And I’m still cold all the time. And then I go into a building and it’s 110 degrees, and I’m stripping down to just poetry.

People keep looking at me, outside and inside, and I want to be able to say, "I’m a chicken farmer."

But I’m not.

Tomorrow night I will stand up in front of a lot of people (I hope) in a place where a lot of great writers have stood and read, and I will want to take off my clothes and say, "I’m a chicken farmer."

But I’m not.

After my reading here I get to go to Pittsburgh and read and then Cleveland and read and then after that I get to be on a train again, to Chicago then Oakland, where there aren’t any chickens waiting in my freezer, because I couldn’t be bothered and gave them away.

My new favorite coffeehouse is in SoHo. It’s called City Girl Café, and it’s better than Joe or Joe’s or any of the other million places where I’ve thawed out over coffee in this cold, slushy city, last couple days.

My new favorite Thai restaurant, in spite of great red curry duck last night, is in Oakland, you’ll be happy to hear. Rockridge, of course. Sabuy Sabuy, a cozy, unpretentious hole-in-the-wall on the corner of College and Broadway. I ate there with Kiz on the night before I left, and it was raining and cold, come to think of it.

Kiz had just come back from St. Louis, where she’d helped her brother, who had had his nose changed by a sidewalk. I have walked on St. Louis sidewalks; they are not nurturing. As a result of which, it didn’t heal right and they had to re-break and reset it, in a slightly happier way.

I know Kiz’s brother, and I like him. His name is Kez. Kiz said he was doing well and wasn’t being all mentally bothered by all this. Which, I would of been. Sidewalks, noses … are you kidding me? But now that I am a city girl and not a chicken farmer, I suppose I should get used to such combinations.

Sabuy Sabuy’s signature "special duck" dish is double-cooked (I’m guessing roasted and fried), and served with spinach and pickled ginger ($11.95). Very, very good. The duck was crispy and juicy and just wonderful. And … pickled ginger! It’s about time people start plopping down pickled ginger next to something other than sushi.

I was even more taken by a soup I’d never seen before on a Thai menu. Soup woonsen, which was a clear broth with glass noodles, napa cabbage, and these great meatballs made out of an unlikely roll-up of marinated pork and chopped prawns ($7.95).

We ate something else too, but I can’t remember what it was.

Someone wrote to me, a fan, and asked how to butcher a chicken. At least I think that’s what they asked. After you sever the head, they said, what next?

OK. You let the blood drip (oh, and stop reading two sentences ago if you don’t want to know), but you dunk your feathered ex-friend into almost boiling water for a half a minute or so. Then, while it’s still pretty warm, you pull out all the feathers, and scald off with a flame what you can’t get with your fingers.

There is more than one way to outside the insides of a chicken. I like to use poultry shears. First I cut around the "vent" (or "butthole"), then … then …

Oh, look it up online, why don’t you. This is not my thing.

SABUY SABUY

Lunch: Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Dinner: Daily 5–9:30 p.m.

5231 College, Oakl.

(510) 653-8587

Beer & wine

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

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