Books Archives — Page 62 of 68 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Craig, list

August 14, 2007

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am in love with a girl a few years younger than me. She’s in her early 20s, and before me she had never had a sexual partner. The fact that I’ve been around the block over and over again made me reluctant to become "that guy." That said, our relationship has become very serious as well as emotionally rewarding.

The fact that I’ve been recruited as the lab segment for a human sexuality course has not been lost on me. I’ve done my best to exemplify a quality educational experience. We still have a couple of problems, though. First, I am an audiophile: besides having a good record collection, I’m physically aroused by sound. Even now I’m contemputf8g how I can turn my nonsqueaky bed into a squeaky bed. She’s pretty quiet (not letting go?), which leads to the second problem: the elusive orgasm. I know many women never have orgasms or don’t start having them until later, but I’m doing my best to make sure that she beats the odds. She has them when she masturbates but refuses or ducks the issue if I ask to watch. Currently she and I are separated by the vastness of the Midwest, and I’ve been devising different strategies to break through her mental block on her return. Any additions to the list would be welcome.

Stratagem one: convince her that I am not real. This would involve blindfolding, earplugs, tying her to my soon-to-be squeaky bed, and a very slow and imaginative seduction. This will end up happening in any case because it is just hot.

Stratagem two: make a symbolic charm, imbued with sexual voodoo.

Stratagem three: learn hypnosis, then subconsciously encourage her to let the fuck go. (Has any research been done in this area?)

Stratagem four: relax and just let it happen.

Stratagem five: get advice from a sex columnist.

Love,

Audio Science

Dear Science:

Oh my. You sure do use a lot of words, don’t you? Just like to hear yourself talk, is it?

It’s funny — I had your letter mentally filed under "physical problem solving: bed squeaks" and had you filed under "freaks: audio," but now that I read back over it, it’s really just the same old same old with a lot of extra words and a very small element of interesting freakiness. So let’s look at that first, in the interest of keeping me awake (sorry, late night). So: bed not noisy enough? Immediately I think, "Yay, engineering question — who do I know who might make a good consultant for that, and how do you reverse-engineer a squeak, and what sort of hardware would produce the desired degree of squeakiness … ?" and then I thought, "Good grief, let’s not get silly." (Or squeaky either: at a former job my husband used to have to attend meetings that tended toward the discursive, and at some point someone would interrupt the proceedings with a loud "Squeeeeak!" which meant "You’re going down a rat hole.") Most people, lacking your rarified sensibilities, find bed squeakiness annoying and distracting or even mood killing, as fear of being overheard by roommates or neighbors or, God forbid, parents can do that to a person, and these less-rarified people are dying to get rid of their squeaky beds, aren’t they? Wouldn’t someone be happy to trade? Not to go down a rat hole here myself, but I was walking down the street a few days ago and my friend said, "That guy looks familiar," and I said, "That was Craig Newmark. He’s Craig!" And why is Craig famous? He’s famous because people have beds they don’t want, and other people want those beds, and Craig makes it happen for them. Don’t fix or, rather, unfix your bed, and don’t buy a new one. Use Craig!

Now, your list. Your list, with the exception of stratagem five, is just not going to work. If indeed the young lady is not having orgasms (perhaps she isn’t, but all you really seem sure of is that she is not vocalizing them to your satisfaction, which is not at all the same thing), I would not advocate either doing anything weird or doing nothing. If she maybe knows what she likes but is reluctant to spell it out for you, I do advocate talking, books (Lonnie Barbach’s are the classics, although there are newer and more sciency ones out now) to clarify things and establish a vocabulary, and something like the "Do what I tell you" game, in which you, well, do what she tells you. This allows for giggling and admissions of shyness, plus, it is hot. So is your scenario with the blindfolds and whatnot, although that one does not make a whole lot of sense under the circumstances. You are hot for sound? You like to listen? You wear the blindfold, silly.

Love,

Andrea

PS As for hypnosis and orgasm, there is … stuff on this. A great deal of stuff. I wouldn’t call most of it research.

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Meds and mads

August 7, 2007

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Is there any hope for my husband, who is not able to launch since he’s on tons of meds (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.)? He’s too embarrassed to ask the doctor, and asking would mean yet another pill. Could he be depressed? Are you the one to speak to?

Love,

Nothing Happening Here

Dear Haps:

I can be spoken to, but your husband is going to have to speak up for himself. The doctors should ask, but they often don’t want to or just don’t. Specialists especially tend to be interested in the parts they’re assigned to and may not remember that your husband has a penis or a wife or anything unimportant like that. If you’re concerned about something that just isn’t that doctor’s pet thing, you may have to nag a bit or call them and ask if they’ve looked into that thing they said they’d look into. (Doctors enjoy looking into things.) You may have to get a new doctor.

There may be hope for your husband (and you! don’t forget you!), but it may take a while to unsnarl things. Diabetes can cause erectile dysfunction all by itself, as can blood pressure meds. There’s another intriguing possibility that may be worth at least a mention: both forms of diabetes, although they are otherwise dissimilar, can cause low testosterone in men. It can be hard to determine because they have to look for "free" — unbound by the protein that carries sex hormones around in the blood — testosterone, which requires a special test, and the whole issue is still a little controversial, but it’s worth a look, since it’s a pretty simple fix. I found about a zillion articles on this by looking up "diabetes testosterone," and so can he, if he ‘s so inclined.

And finally, you ask, could he be depressed? Oh, very likely, I say, but if it’s situational it’s at least worth a try to fix the situation, isn’t it? It’s possible that there is no combination of meds that will help, or it may be that there is help but it is irksome and invasive, like a penile implant or shots. One thing I know for sure, though, is that sitting around feeling broken and hopeless never gave anyone a hard-on. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Somebody, somewhere. Sigh.)

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

It was love at first sight for my husband, but not for me. I tried to dump him but realized that I couldn’t live without him — he was the most wonderful human I had ever met, period. I still wasn’t in love, and he was OK with that. Sex was great in the beginning but quickly became a chore. I meet other men to whom I am attracted but never have been tempted.

The sex is bad because (don’t scream!) he’s overweight, really has no clue about basic things like kissing, and comes after three minutes. We talk about feelings and dissatisfaction constantly. I give clear instructions, but he forgets them immediately (funnily, we have exactly the same problem with cleaning!). But in every other way, he is beautiful, kind, and the person I was looking for all my life.

I make no effort because he lacks skills and endurance and can’t or won’t fulfill my needs. He swears he will get fitter and will try harder to fulfill me psychologically and physically. I know I have become a bit castrating, but he expects me to pick up where his mom left off in other parts of our lives, which is not helping our sex life.

I’m not sure that I can rebuild a hot sex life that barely existed to begin with. Maybe he just isn’t right for me and I can’t accept it. We need a sex therapist but have no idea of how to find one who’s legitimate. How do we repair something like this when we both have already talked ourselves blue in the face for several years?

Love,

Bored by the Bay

Dear BBB:

Oh, ugh, you’re not bored, you’re seething with resentment. Both of you. If this were just about skills or duration of erection, I wouldn’t be hearing about how he expects you to be his mommy or how fat he is. Nor would you ever have had great sex to hold up against the current lackluster offerings. Apparently he doesn’t clean the bathroom? And then he doesn’t keep a hard-on? And you yell at him about both of them? Stop that! Sit down together and comb over your budget until you find enough free cash to hire a housecleaner and a licensed marriage and family therapist. (You find the name of someone convenient and affordable in a referral database and ask them some questions and hire them if you get good answers or call somebody else. It isn’t rocket surgery.) Neither cleaner nor therapist needs to be a sex specialist. Husband can learn technique from books, or from you, but you don’t seriously believe he forgets every time, do you? This isn’t one of those forgetting-stuff movies. He’s mad at you.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Kids safer online!

August 7, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION There’s a horrifying new menace to children that’s never existed before. Experts estimate that 75 to 90 percent of pornography winds up in the hands of children due to novel technologies and high-speed distribution networks. That means today’s youths are seeing more images of perversion than ever before in the history of the world.

What are the "new technologies" and "distribution networks" that display so much porno for up to 90 percent of kids? I’ll give you one guess. Nope, you’re wrong; it’s not the Internets. It’s print.

The year is 1964, and I’m getting my data from financier Charles Keating. He had just formed Citizens for Decent Literature, an antiporn group whose sole contribution to the world appears to have been an educational movie called Perversion for Profit. Narrated by TV anchor George Putnam, the flick is an exposé of the way "high-speed presses, rapid transit, and mass distribution" created a hitherto unknown situation in which kids could "accidentally" be exposed to porno at the local drugstore or bus station magazine rack. Among the dangers society had to confront as a result of this situation were "stimulated" youths running wild, thinking it was OK to rape women, and turning into homosexuals after just a few peeks at the goods in MANifique magazine.

A lot of the movie — which you can watch for yourself on YouTube — is devoted to exploring every form of depravity available in print at the time. We’re treated to images of lurid paperbacks, naughty magazines, and perverted pamphlets. At one point, Putnam even does a dramatic reading from one of the books to emphasize their violence. Then we get to see pictures of women in bondage from early BDSM zines.

But the basic point of this documentary isn’t to demonstrate that Keating and his buddies seem to have had an encyclopedic knowledge of smut. Nor is the point that smut has gotten worse. Putnam admits in the film that "there has always been perversion." Instead, the movie’s emphasis is on how new technologies enable the distribution of smut more widely, especially into the hands of children. In this way, Keating’s hysterical little film is nearly a perfect replica of the kinds of rhetoric we hear today about the dangers of the Web.

Consider, for example, a University of New Hampshire study that got a lot of play earlier this year by claiming that 42 percent of kids between the ages of 10 and 17 had been accidentally exposed to pornography on the Web during the previous year. The study also claimed that 4 percent of people in the same age group were asked to post erotic pictures of themselves online. News coverage of the study emphasized how these numbers were higher than before, and most implied that the Web itself was to blame.

But as Perversion for Profit attests, people have been freaking out about how new distribution networks bring pornography to children for nearly half a century. Today’s cyberteens aren’t the first to go hunting for naughty bits using the latest high-speed thingamajig either; back in the day, we had fast-printing presses instead of zoomy network connections.

It’s easy to forget history when you’re thinking about the brave new technologies of today. Yet if Keating’s statistics are to be believed, the number of children exposed to porn was far greater in 1964 than it is today. Perhaps the Web has actually made it harder for children to find pornography. After all, when their grandparents were growing up, anybody could just walk to the corner store and browse the paperbacks for smut. Now you have to know how to turn off Google’s safe search and probably steal your parents’ credit card to boot.

And yet Fox News is never going to run a story under the headline "Internet Means Kids See Less Pornography Than Ever Before." It may be the truth, but you can only sell ads if there’s more sex — not less. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who learned about sex before she learned about the Internet.

Countdown to Burning Man

August 2, 2007

New author Jess Bruder hooked up with the Flaming Lotus Girls on the playa in 2005 as they were building Angel of the Apocalypse, featuring the group prominently in her just-released “Burning Book.”
Photo by Caroline Miller, aka Mills
By Steven T. Jones
With only a few more weeks until thousands of Bay Area residents head out to Burning Man, the anticipation is palpable. Impossibly ambitious art projects are being pushed toward completion at a frenzied pace in myriad local warehouses and work spaces, people’s bicycles and hair are taking on a sassy and colorful flair, fencesitters are making the decision to attend or not, and burners can be seen buying googles, costumes, and dozens of gallons of waters at stores around town.
Into this excitement now comes “Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man” by Jessica Bruder, an engaging collection of words and images from everyone’s favorite countercultural blowout. The book will hit the streets Aug. 7, but you can catch Bruder — who logged time with lots on local burners, from Extra Action Marching Band to the Flaming Lotus Girls — tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Booksmith in SF or Aug. 6 at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books in Berkeley.
Or out on the playa at the end of the month. See you there.

San Francisco midnight movie memories (Extended mix)

July 24, 2007

We recently put together a cover package on midnight movies. The midnight movie scene is thriving right now, but it also has a long history — in fact some credit SF as a, if not the, birthplace of the phenom. Below you’ll find a mix of direct quotes from local cinema lovers and excerpts from books that outlines what has happened when the clock strikes twelve in the Bay Area. Go ahead and add your stories and sources to this account!

GARY MEYER The Pagoda Palace, known as the Milano in the 30s and early 40s showed Italian movies at midnight prior to World War II.
CHRISTIAN BRUNO In the mid-’60s the Presidio hosted Underground Cinema 12, a package of late-night movies that might incorporate a little [George] Kuchar, a little Busby Berkeley, and a lot of porn posing as art. It was a traveling package of films that was curated by Mike Getz out of LA, but the Presidio put its own SF (which usually meant gay) stamp on things.

GEORGE KUCHAR I remember one midnight show at a theater on upper Fillmore St. It started about 2 hours late because of projection problems. The audience didn’t seem to care and the 16mm feature didn’t care about cohesiveness of plot or theme, so it was a fun, flabby twilight zone of black & white sequences of an occult nature that suited the creatures of the night. The darkness inside and outside the theater was unable to still their noisy appreciation to the avalanche of imagery that descended from the screen like a caffeinated surge of STARBUCK sludge. The movie kept everyone awake so I guess you can consider it a HIT for that un-Godly hour and a half!

The ethics of Ethics

July 3, 2007

Part one in a Guardian series

› amanda@sfbg.com

Back in 2002, Carolyn Knee did what many other citizens of San Francisco were doing — she volunteered her time and energy campaigning for a ballot measure she hoped would pass.

Five years later the retiree living on a fixed income has found herself threatened with $26,700 in fines levied by the Ethics Commission enforcement staff, who turned up several alleged violations of campaign finance laws during a random audit of San Franciscans for Affordable Clean Energy, the committee for which Knee was a volunteer treasurer.

At a June 11 probable cause hearing before the Ethics Commission, investigator Richard Mo itemized several infractions, including failure to report $19,761 in contributions on time, in addition to another $9,500 that came in right before the election but wasn’t reported until afterward; failing to notify two organizations that they were major donors who needed to file as such (one of which was the Guardian); not providing all the required information about two donors; and disparities between bank account statements and campaign finance reports.

Mo alleged Knee had "cooked the books," saying she "takes no responsibility" and "claims she was ignorant of the law, passes the blame on to her personal accountant. She cites her inexperience as a treasurer when in fact she served as treasurer for one prior committee."

It sounds like a litany of campaign crime, with Knee as the linchpin, but she maintains that none of it was intentional and that many of the reporting mistakes were made by her accountant, Renita Lloyd-Smith of the Simon Group, a company she’d hired to handle the complicated ledger of campaign finance reports. "Perhaps I was wrong in placing confidence in someone I had to hire because I didn’t know the rules," Knee told the Ethics Commission. "It was all in good faith. It was all done in love of my city. But I’ll never do it again."

Those words have a dual meaning: Knee hopes never to make another financial mistake, and she’ll never again take on the risk of steering the financial helm of a grassroots campaign.

Ethics Commission hearings such as this are usually held in closed session, but this one was opened at Knee’s insistence because she suspected she’s not the only one who’s had difficulties handling campaign finance laws or negotiating fair settlements. It was the first publicly aired probable cause hearing in the commission’s 13-year history, and both commissioners and attendees walked away with questions after issues of perceived bias and a lack of timeliness in the investigation were raised, as well as the possibility that the fines being threatened are inflated and arbitrary.

"There’s only one department in the city and county of San Francisco with no oversight — Ethics," Joe Lynn told the Guardian. Lynn is a former Ethics commissioner and staffer who still watchdogs the agency and has been openly critical of the laxness he perceives there.

His question is one of many about the commission: How does the staff conduct its investigations? Should smaller campaigns staffed with volunteers be handled differently than larger, more professionally managed operations? If resources are tight, should Ethics be more focused on going after the big guys? If the commission had more resources, would the public benefit from both a greater understanding of campaign laws and a more open, honest, and just government?

SFACE raised a little more than $100,000 during the 2002 election season (including about $29,000 from the Guardian and editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann), but the measure it supported — Proposition D, which would have allowed the city to set up its own public power system and break ties with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — failed.

PG&E spent more than $2 million defeating Prop. D, $800,000 of it in the final days of the race, which campaign attorney James Sutton, the treasurer of the utility’s front group, San Franciscans Against the Blank Check, didn’t report until nearly a month after election day, a violation of campaign finance laws. That act likely scored SFACE’s opponents the win.

The Ethics Commission staff launched an investigation, and in 2004, Sutton’s old law firm was fined $100,000 — the largest amount ever levied by the city for breaking election laws. The state Fair Political Practices Commission also slapped Sutton with $140,000 in fines for vioutf8g the Political Reform Act (see "Repeat Offender," 10/27/04).

At Knee’s recent hearing, Lynn, who was once a finance officer for the Ethics Commission, pointed out she was being fined 14 times what Sutton was fined, and if the same formula had been applied, his fine would have been nearly $1.5 million. "You can’t change the standards arbitrarily," Lynn cautioned the five commissioners. "You need to establish standards for these fines, and you need to keep them across the board."

According to the governing law, which mirrors state mandates at the FPPC, commissioners may levy a fine of up to $5,000 or three times the amount of the violation, whichever is greater. Knee’s fine could be as much as $230,000, and Sutton’s could have been $2.4 million — about the same amount that it costs to run the Ethics office for a year.

The Ethics Commission has never imposed the maximum fine, and executive director John St. Croix doesn’t like to draw comparisons between campaigns. "They’re like snowflakes, very different," he said.

A review of the past three years of enforcement history, posted on the commission’s Web site, bears out this truth and shows fines ranging from a sliver to as much as half of the contested amount. In many cases, fines are dismissed completely for financial hardship reasons. The commission does not abide by a formula, fearing that would handicap it during negotiations, but a number of considerations are weighed, including the experience of the campaign treasurer, the appearance of intent, the overall outcome of the election, and a willingness to make right.

Eric Friedman, spokesperson for New York City’s Campaign Finance Board, considered by many good-government activists to be the national gold standard for ethics groups, said its members use similar tactics for settlements, but "the structure that they follow is precedent. They’ve seen pretty much everything at this point." New York’s board is about five years older than San Francisco’s and audits all campaigns.

According to investigator Mo, the $26,700 in fines pointed at Knee was an "opening salvo" designed to inspire negotiations, which have not been smooth. Knee and her pro bono lawyer, David Waggoner, initially offered $500 to settle. Ethics continued to press for more, but Knee didn’t flinch. "I don’t think I should have to pay anything," she said, pointing out that Oliver Luby, the commission’s current fines officer, recommended a complete waiver of all fines. St. Croix said Luby doesn’t work in the enforcement division and doesn’t know all the facts of the case. The current settlement offer from Ethics is $267, which Knee is willing to accept if the commissioners agree.

It’s unclear how often such hardball is played. "Frankly, we took that settlement because that’s what they were willing to pay," St. Croix said of the Sutton case. So too with a $17,000 fine imposed on Andrew Lee for a variety of campaign finance violations (see "Enforcing Equity," 5/2/07). St. Croix said that was what Lee was willing to pay on the spot.

"I’m not sure we could set a standard," said Commissioner Eileen Hansen, who thought both the Lee and the PG&E fines were too low and said if that’s the bar, it should be raised. She pointed out that the law does provide guidance, but read literally, it could mean exorbitant fines for the same slipup echoed through a whole season of paperwork. "I think it’s a good thing to have the law," she said, but "some should pay the maximum amount and some should pay less."

"I’m happy to pay $250 to get it out of the way," Knee said. "This has taken so much of my time and energy." When asked about her audit experience, she replied, "I would never do this again. It totally discourages grassroots" campaigns.

A legal assistant for 25 years, Knee was not a professional accountant but did have experience doing some bookkeeping. "The IRS is like kindergarten compared to the Ethics Commission," she said.

David Looman, a professional treasurer who’s currently managing about 10 campaign accounts and undergoing three audits by the Ethics Commission, agrees that the potential liability is a huge risk. "Twenty years ago when I started in politics in this town, nobody paid for a treasurer. Nobody had a lawyer. Nowadays you’d be crazy not to do both," he said.

The audits in Looman’s cases involve small grassroots campaigns similar to the one Knee oversaw. "There’s no good business principle for why these people should be audited," Looman said. "The fewer resources you have to employ, the more intelligent your decisions should be for how to employ them. Here they are auditing my $12,000 committee when there are clear miscreants running around."

Part of the Ethics Commission’s charter calls for mandatory audits of all publicly financed campaigns, and St. Croix said the agency does as many random audits as resources allow. Last year, he recalled, more than a dozen were completed. With full financial backing, St. Croix said, he would audit all campaigns. He said, "It’s funny. People know they’re going to get audited and they still try to get away with stuff."<\!s>*

Next: what does the Ethics Commission need to rein in the most frequent and flagrant violators?

Turning the tides

June 26, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

On June 19 the Board of Supervisors cast its final ayes in favor of San Francisco’s new plan for public power, Community Choice Aggregation, which allows the city to own or purchase as much as 51 percent of the electricity for its residents and businesses from renewable sources. The plan’s goal is to meet or beat the rates of the city’s current provider, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which draws 13 percent of its power from renewable sources. CCA has become the popular choice for public power fans, who have long pushed the city to get a divorce from PG&E’s monopoly.

But across town the same day, it looked as if Mayor Gavin Newsom was renewing nuptial vows with the $12 billion utility. In front of the charming backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, Newsom announced a partnership between the city and PG&E to look into tidal power. He promised "the most comprehensive study yet undertaken to assess the possibilities for harnessing the tides in San Francisco Bay."

PG&E committed as much as $1.5 million, which will bolster $146,000 from the city and a $200,000 grant from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

The news conference had public-power advocates wondering about Newsom’s real commitment to renewable, locally owned power. "I’ve asked all the members of the Board of Supervisors," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told the Guardian. "That press conference — nobody knew it was taking place." He said a mayoral aide later apologized that his office hadn’t been informed, but he added, "I don’t think it was a mistake that it occurred on the same day as the vote for CCA."

The Mayor’s Office said the scheduling was purely coincidental and had been on the books for at least three weeks, but it did not issue a news release about the news conference, and no media advisory was sent to us.

Parties involved in the deal say it will bring more money to researching a shaky, untested technology — even if it means that the power any project generates could be controlled by PG&E. "We’re always going to have that issue of ownership later, and I’d rather get the research data into the public domain," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment (SFE).

Blumenfeld insisted that the deal would give the public direct oversight of all research, including work done by the private utility. The memorandum of understanding between San Francisco, PG&E, and Golden Gate Energy, which holds the permit license for tidal energy in the bay, makes it clear that all information will be shared by all parties and open to public scrutiny.

Newsom made a similar announcement in September 2006, when he called for the creation of a Tidal Power Advisory Group and allocated $150,000 for a feasibility study through the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the SFE. But that program hasn’t gone far — and the little that has happened is secret.

A review of the agendas and minutes of SFPUC and SFE commission meetings shows only scant and passing mention of tidal power. The Tidal Power Advisory Group eventually came to fruition as one of five subcommittees of the Clean Tech Advisory Council, a 16-member board of local "green" business executives, entrepreneurs, and environmental experts that was formed at the call of the mayor in November 2005. Chaired by William K. Reilly, an Environmental Protection Agency administrator under George H.W. Bush, the council neither announces meetings or agendas nor makes public its minutes.

A special subcommittee devoted to tidal and wave energy has worked closely with the SFPUC to advance a feasibility study. The contract for that study went without bid to URS Corp. and will continue in conjunction with the new PG&E partnership.

URS, an international engineering, design, and construction firm based in San Francisco and formerly run by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, has a long history with the city. The tidal power study was not subject to competitive bids and was awarded to URS because the company had undertaken significant computer models of the entire Bay Area for a past proposal to fill in part of the waterway to extend runways at San Francisco International Airport, Blumenfeld said. That plan was shot down, but the environmental impact report it spawned contains information relevant to studying tidal power.

Additionally, URS has an as-needed work agreement with San Francisco, Blumenfeld said, "and everything moves glacially" in regard to contracting with the city.

The kind of tidal power being considered — called "in-stream" and analogous to a wind farm of water-pushed turbines — is such a new technology that there is only one deployment in the world that’s generating more than one megawatt of energy. One megawatt is enough to power about 1,000 average homes. The Electric Power Research Institute released a study in 2006 concluding that the Golden Gate has the potential to generate 237 megawatts but suggesting that only 15 percent of that — about 35 megawatts — would be available without negative environmental impact.

"I think that number’s made up, personally," said Mike Hoover, a partner at Golden Gate Energy. "We know the energy that’s coming in and out of the bay is more than that."

URS, which has conducted no other tidal power studies in the United States, may support those findings, but the outlook at this point doesn’t bode well. "It appears EPRI used optimistic assumptions on water velocities," the SFPUC’s Power Enterprise director, Barbara Hale, wrote to officials in the Mayor’s Office and at the SFPUC and the SFE. "Our feasibility study estimates around 10 MW extractable power, peak, and five MW on average with a commercial plant." Additionally, Hale wrote, the cost per kilowatt-hour could be closer to 20 cents than the 5.5 cents the EPRI predicted.

Hale told us it’s difficult to say how much power would make dropping a pilot project into the bay feasible, and the best-case scenario has a pilot project four or five years away. An actual grid connection of any significance would be several years in the future.

Then there’s the huge issue of who would own the power. San Francisco Bay is considered a public trust — and under any reasonable policy scenario, the power generated by its tides should belong to the public.

After hearing about the mayor’s handshake with PG&E, Mirkarimi introduced legislation at the June 19 board meeting that would require any power harnessed in the bay to be publicly owned. He said tidal technology is still at an "embryonic stage," but the memorandum of understanding "that was unilaterally devised by the mayor and the PUC at the exclusion of the Board of Supervisors demonstrates an early intention to give the new technology to the profiteers, and that alarms me."*

Rock ‘n’ read

June 26, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Anyone who’s thumbed through the oodles of zany organ, squealing chipmunk, and queasy-listening albums from the ’50s onwards knows this to be true: every generation has its version of Muzak, whether its members like it not — thanks to clueless parental units. And the class of 2025 will undoubtedly have vibe ‘n’ synth instrumental renditions of "About a Girl," "D’yer Mak’er," and "Cherub Rock" dancing in their heads — no thanks to the Rockabye Baby! series on Baby Rock Records that appears to be multiplying like bunnies monthly. What next — sleepy-time Mentors? But what would baby lend an ear to once he or she started dabbling in books, student-body politics, and witchcraft? In other words, WWHPLT — what would Harry Potter listen to?

Boston’s Harry and the Potters have been working off that premise for the past three years, touring the country’s finest libraries. After outgrowing San Francisco’s main library and drawing several hundred to their show at the Civic Center last year, they’ve decided to get booked, adult-style, at Slim’s, alongside Jurassic Park IV: The Musical, which dares to pick up where the last dino blockbuster left off.

So, I tease, you’re doing a real tour this time? "Why is playing libraries not a tour?" the older, seventh-year Harry, Paul DeGeorge, 28, retorts by phone as he hauls T-shirts into the cellar of the Tucson Public Library, the site of that night’s show. "It’s actually a lot more work, because we set up our sound system every day."

He may be playing in a basement, but DeGeorge and his brother Joe, who appears as fourth-year Harry, aren’t playing to our baser instincts. "I thought this would be a great way to play rock to a whole new audience that doesn’t experience that," he explains. "If Harry Potter had the cool effect of getting kids to read more, maybe we can get kids to rock more too!"

The proof is in his now-20-year-old sibling. DeGeorge started feeding his younger brother Pixies, Nirvana, They Might Be Giants, and Atom and His Package CDs when the latter was nine, and apparently the scientific experiment paid off. "I could see the effect immediately. By the time Joe was 12, DeGeorge says, "he was writing songs about sea monkeys that referenced the Pixies" — and popping up in the Guardian in a story about early MP3.com stars.

And what about the silly kid stuff on Baby Rock Records? "I’d rather hear the original songs," DeGeorge opines. "Instead of Nine Inch Nails for babies, I’d just make a good mixtape for my baby. You can do ‘Hurt’ and just lop off the ending. It’s supereasy — anyone can do it!" Read it and weep, Trent.

SERPENT SPIT "So the proctology jokes remain." Thus came the news from filmmaker Danny Plotnick that Nest of Vipers, his freewheeling podcast highlighting the wit and storytelling chops of such SF undergroundlings as Hank VI’s Tony Bedard, the Husbands’ Sadie Shaw, singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet, and Porchlight’s Beth Lisick, was now officially off the KQED site and fully independent (and available through iTunes). "I had a contract for six episodes to be distributed by KQED," Plotnick e-mailed. "Ultimately they released eight episodes. They didn’t renew the contract because the show was too edgy for them."

Unfortunately, that also means the customer-service episode that triggered those treasured proctology-convention yuks, which was supposed to go up on the public station’s Web site on June 15, has been delayed till July 1 as Plotnick figures out new hosting.

But at least the assembled vipers will continue to writhe unchecked. Inspired by Plotnick’s favorite sports talk shows, Nest of Vipers aims to issue a weekly breath of venomous, randomized air in an ever-constricting radio landscape. "So often on radio there’s a bunch of experts pontificating about whatever," he told me earlier. "This is more about real people talking about real experiences," or like hanging with the gritty raconteurs at your favorite dive bar. The next episode, for instance, sounds like a doozy: Bucky Sinister talks about working the phones at PlayStation on Christmas morning, and Bedard has a yarn about biting into a Ghirardelli chocolate bar and finding a maggot — thinking it’s his big payday, he returns it to the company. You have been served! *

HARRY AND THE POTTERS

With Jurassic Park IV: The Musical

Fri/29, 8 p.m., $12

Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF

(415) 522-0333

www.slims-sf.com

NEST OF VIPERS

www.nestofviperspodcast.typepad.com

www.myspace.com/nestofviperspodcast

GET INTO THE BAND

CAVE SINGERS

Seattle Matador starlets break out the rustic initial Invitation Songs. Wed/27, 9 p.m., $8–$10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

ORGANIZED GRIND

Jamin and J-Dubber combine protest gangsta with ye olde funk and minihyph on Grind Pays (Organized Grind). Thurs/28, 10 p.m., call for price. Fourth Street Tavern, 711 Fourth St., San Raphael. (415) 454-4044

BRIAN ENO’S 77 MILLION PAINTINGS

Partake in the Hot Jet’s imagescape of "visual music." Fri/29–Sun/1, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., $20–$25. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

ALBUM LEAF AND ARTHUR AND YU

Incoming Korg attack! James LaValle’s gorg dream orchestrations cavort with Lee and Nancy–esque vocals. With Under Byen. Sat/30, Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com

AUDRYE SESSIONS

The Oakland combo parties over its new CD — after vocalist Ryan Karazija spent a very unlucky Friday the 13th in April being brutally mugged and left in a pool of blood with a fractured skull after a Minipop show at Mezzanine. Sat/30, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

RACCOO-OO-OON

On Behold Secret Kingdom (Release the Bats), the night critters generate a fine squall of free jazz, noise, drone, and jungle psychedelia. Knocking over trash cans never sounded so intentional. Tues/3, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

The future of paper

June 26, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Twenty years from now, paper will no longer be a tool for mass communication. Instead it will be a substance akin to plastic, a mere fabricated building material with industrial and consumer applications. At least, those were the thoughts that ran through my mind when I received a strange news release last week from a Finnish company called VTT, which trumpeted a business model that included developing new products based on what it called "printing technology" and "paper products." VTT has developed a prototype for bioactive paper that responds to enzymes and biomolecules by changing color. One idea is to use it in food packaging or air filters to get an early warning about toxins.

Weird innovations are great, but the most interesting part of this news release was about markets: "The goal is … to create new business for the paper industry … to introduce new innovations and market initiatives between the traditional ICT [information communication technology] and paper industries by combining IT, electronics and printing technologies."

Let us parse the high-flown language of commerce. VTT is saying the paper industry needs new markets, and high-tech, bioactive paper will help create them. But why? Obviously, paper has its uses — there are newspapers, magazines, notepads, and books to be printed! Why worry about making the stuff bioactive when you can just sell it to Random House or Conde Nast? You already know the answer. Print communication is dying out, and with it goes the paper industry. Over the past few months, I’ve witnessed the two biggest daily papers in my area, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, announce budget cuts that will slash their staffs by one-quarter. What does that mean for the paper industry? Fewer orders for newsprint.

When Karl Marx wrote that every great historical event occurs twice — "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" — I doubt he had print media in mind. And yet the upset of the paper industry feels to me like the joke that comes after the tragedy of print media’s fast decline. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those people who think that barbarians are storming the gates because anyone can publish their ramblings on MySpace instead of having to get David Remnick’s permission to publish their ramblings in the New Yorker. Still, I cannot help but feel wrenchingly bad when I think about what it will be like in the Mercury newsroom after a quarter of the editorial staff has left the building.

I won’t miss the paper, but I will miss the journalists.

What’s tragic is that print journalism has not tried to diversify its market as methodically as the paper industry has. Right now, VTT is just one of many companies trying to figure out cool new ways to use paper. But who is trying to figure out cool new ways to employ smart, highly trained print journalists? Maybe Dan Gillmor and a few other people running small nonprofits. But mostly, print journalists are having to figure the future out on their own.

Some will do what I’ve done, gradually moving from print media to online. I’ve gone from a print zine to an online zine to a weekly newspaper to print magazines to running a blog. This column you’re reading is syndicated to both print newspapers and Web sites. Nobody gave me guidance. No slick marketing dude from Finland came in and said, "Hey, maybe you should diversify and start creating bioactive journalism." Instead, I fumbled along on my own, trying to find the most stable place where I could settle down and write for a living. Other journalists won’t be as lucky or as willing to change. They may stop writing; they may become shills for the companies they once investigated; they may feel bitter or liberated or panicked. None of them deserve it. Somebody should have helped them get ready for this transition five years ago.

I live in a world where corporations care more about the future of paper than the futures of people who have made their living turning paper into a massive network of vital, important communications. This is not how technological change should work. You cannot discard a person the way you discard a market niche. That’s because people revolt. Especially journalists. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd looking for a few good geek journalists to help her run a blog. Serious nerd experience needed. Inquire within!

Green City: A wiser Earth movement

June 19, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Have you ever wondered how many environmental and social justice nonprofits are really out there?

Noted local environmentalist Paul Hawken estimates there are at least one million and as many as 10 million do-gooder alliances throughout the world, toiling away at their local niche problems or tackling the grander crises of the day, staffed by volunteers sacrificing time and desperately trying to raise enough money and political will to rebuild from the ruins.

And while environmentalists often are derided — and even criticize themselves and their allies — for being too fractured, lacking focus and an overarching leadership, Hawken thinks that’s actually a good thing.

Hawken is the founder of the gardening and tool company Smith and Hawken and author of several books, including The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism (the latter with energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins). He runs the Sausalito research group Natural Capital Institute, and that is where the research began for his new book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.

Hawken attempted to quantify the entire environmental and social justice movement. He quickly realized its ever-shifting nature would make that impossible, and instead he’s qualified the movement into 414 taxonomies, from prison reform to chemical pollution, from ecopsychology to worker health and safety.

Blessed Unrest is both a history of environmental and social justice activism and an account of its modern efforts. Hawken traces the roots of the movement back to a meeting of a dozen abolitionists in 1787, identifying them as the first group of people who fought to better the lives of others they didn’t know. He lays bare the chilling truth that business owners then made the same economic arguments in support of slavery that corporations now make to justify the continued extraction of natural resources at the cost of human and planetary health.

Hawken contends that the environmental and social justice communities, despite their different objectives, actually function with the same core values. He thinks this plethora of small groups is a good thing and likens the overall movement to an immune system for the earth. The immunology of the human body became an even apter metaphor when he learned that the ability to heal doesn’t follow any top-down management but instead depends on cellular growth and change.

Now, rather than trying to count all the organizations, he’s invited them to account for themselves through WiserEarth (www.wiserearth.org), a Wikipedia-like database in which groups can post information and outreach.

"WiserEarth is a tool," Hawken told the Guardian. The "Wiser" part of the name is actually an acronym for World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility, and Hawken hopes activists use the site to pool scant resources and spread their rich loam of knowledge. It’s a place where philanthropists can find organizations of a similar ilk, and perhaps most important, the Web site reflects the real identity of a group that could never find a room big enough to host all its members.

"It brings more awareness of the scope and diversity of the movement," Hawken said. "You can see yourselves as part of a larger whole. That’s very assuring and helpful."

The Web site is only a couple of months old, but there are already 106,000 organizations listed, and it’s growing daily. At his public appearances, Hawken now stands in front of a large screen scrolling a list of all the names. "People cry when they see it," he said. "Repeatedly, everywhere I show it. And I don’t try to make it emotional. The reason, I think, is it’s a relief. The relief has to do with scale."

Fighting the good fight can feel like an exhausting, frustrating, and lonely battle, an overextended run of a play called David and Goliath that should have left the stage long ago. Hawken said he never imagines an audience for his books, and though this isn’t exactly a rallying cry, there is an affirmation coming across that flagging activists, freedom fighters, and friends of the earth need to hear: keep it up. And add your org to WiserEarth.*

Pay, pal

June 19, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "Fuck Lars Ulrich — he can play drums on my balls with his teeth!" Them’s fighting words from the beefy bruiser in a tinsel page-boy wig, perhaps provoked only by four wannabe skids’ burning need to cover Metallica’s "For Whom the Bell Tolls" at last week’s first but — fortunately for your inner and outer sketched-out Priest hooligan with a nonironic mullet, prematurely weather-beaten mien, and herbally truncated short-term memory — not last "Hesher" night at the Parkside, where it’s now semiofficially installed after starting its smokin’ life at Annie’s Social Club. Still headbang or nod out to "Sweet Child o’ Mine"? All is forgiven and even drunkenly applauded at "Hesher," a metal karaoke and air guitar contest. Yet as delightful as it is to rock out with your crock out to such unrepentant cock-rock versions of "Eye of the Tiger" and "Round and Round," I couldn’t help but think that all of us ruddy walleyes were just cruising upstream against a current zeitgeist hell-bent on nailing culpables caught with their greasy paws in the cookie jar. How else to explain the crowds crowing to punish Paris or throw the book at I. Lewis "Lemme Scoot" Libby? Why else were latently Catholic viewers so outraged that Tony Soprano didn’t go down in a hail of bullets rather than simply cutting to black? After years of the Bush and Cheney show, the hordes have become less hesher than harsher.

Maybe we’re waiting for justice, answers, something to believe in — and perhaps the once-wronged and now recognized and fully redeemed Spoon’s Britt Daniel is ready to give it to us, just as he and other indie savants like Feist turn in their subtlest, slowest-growing recordings to date. In fact, the opening track of Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge), "Don’t Make Me a Target," could serve as the theme song for a rockin’ version of Chicago starring the most hated Hilton in America: it soft-shoes the bristly snarl of "Waiting for the Kid to Come Out," off last year’s reissued Soft Effects EP. In spite or perhaps because of the troubles he saw when he was pushed off Elektra, griping loudly all the way, Daniel has always sounded like one of the angriest dogs on the lot, barely leashed to those leathery pop hooks.

With Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Daniel ventures into other textures and tempos, moduutf8g his bark and bite with plangent pings and drastic pressure drops, floating in an echoey "The Ghost of You Lingers" and snapping suavely to the hand-clapping "Don’t You Evah." Though the infectious brass, Daniel’s streetwise taunts, and the band’s pugilistic punch conjure up memories of a certain cheesy piano man, as Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker has pointed out, aligning "The Underdog" with Billy Joel’s "Only the Good Die Young," I’d venture that Daniel is less conjuring stereotypically cornball urban bluster pop straight out of some tourist fantasy of a Little Italy than continuing the same cranky conversation that began back around the hard-assed, grunge-era Soft Effects, now aged artfully into a modern-day Bobby Darrin–y hep cat. Much like the album’s cover girl, sculptor Lee Bontecou, Daniel’s finding new mettle — and much softer metals — with which to channel his rage.

FOLKLORE LURE Court and Spark and Hiss Golden Messenger honcho and teacher MC Taylor is answering the siren call of higher education and leaving the Mission digs he shares with his wife, Abby, to move to Chapel Hill, NC. "We both wanted a change of scenery, wanted to live in the country and have a garden. I got accepted to the grad program in folklore at UNC, so everything worked out perfectly," he e-mailed on the eve of a moving sale that promised "the craziest set of Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game books that you’ve probably ever seen — seriously." Taylor will continue the more improvisational HGM in his sweet home North Carolina, though sadly C&S will probably call it a day — but not before a finale July 6 at Cafe du Nord.

MICKI ON THE MEND? Many know Stork Club owner Micki Chittock as the Oaktown stalwart who moved the Stork from its cubby near the Tribune tower to its current Telegraph Avenue clubhouse. But how many, booker Joel Harmon wonders, have come through for Chittock since her serious van accident in April? Suffering from a broken femur, pelvis, back, and ribs, Chittock has three weeks left in intensive care before she’s transferred to a recovery room, Harmon e-mailed me, after doctors gave the club owner a 50 percent chance of recovery. Harmon has put together two benefit shows to ease the medical expenses, and he’s working on more because, he writes, "I’m thinking that in order for the Stork to survive, Micki has to survive." *

HEAR, YOU GO

SEX VID AND FUNEROT

Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll sweethearts sweat it out with kindred Northwestern miscreants. Wed/20, 9:30 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

SEAN HAYES

The SF singer-songwriter whoops it up in honor of Flowering Spade, which found him in a groove with Etienne de Rocher. Thurs/21, 9 p.m., $18. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.musichallsf.com

THE JOINT

Crown City Rocker Headnodic breaks out hip-hop, soul, and dancehall alongside Raashan Ahmad. Thursdays, 10 p.m., $5. Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 548-1159, www.shattuckdownlow.com

WHITE MICE

Load Records rodents bite headliner Skinny Puppy’s butt; don’t be surprised if they also gnaw their way onto a bill at the Bakery in Oakland. Thurs/21, 9 p.m., $27.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.thefillmore.com

SEA WOLF

Turn-of-the-century wolf moniker and contemplative songcraft. Fri/22, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

DEAD SCIENCE AND IMPLIED VIOLENCE

A Wu-Tang dance party ensues after the twisted pop eccentrics couple with the experimental-theater ensemble fixated on dance, politics, and illness. Fri/22, 9 p.m., sliding scale. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. (510) 444-7263, www.21grand.org

NOMO

Elliot Bergman’s free-funk, Afrobeat, and noise eight-piece fires up the mbira, gamelan, and glockenspiel. Tues/26, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

FEIST

The ex-Peaches sidekick issues a subdued, ambitious, and multitextured Reminder (Cherrytree/Interscope). June 26–27, 8 p.m., $25. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.thefillmore.com

There’s no business …

June 5, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

One of the most entertaining books ever written about the commercial theater is Ken Mandlebaum’s Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops (St. Martin’s, 1992). There’s something inherently fascinating about the backstories and eventual fates of big stage musicals. The egos involved and the radical revisions that take place during tryouts and previews (a process far more public than movie retweaking) make for high drama, even before you add the Russian roulette economic factor.

While Mandlebaum wrote from a dedicated fan’s orchestra-seat perspective, the absorbing new documentary ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway goes way backstage — director Dori Berinstein is a Tony-winning stage producer (her latest hit is Legally Blonde) and has privileged access. Her team reportedly shot more than 250 hours of footage, encompassing virtually every Broadway show of the 2003 to 2004 season, then narrowed the focus to the development and destinies of four high-profile musicals.

The quartet spotlighted here spans artistic ranges and commercial fates. The $14 million spectacular Wicked, a schlock-sentimental version of Gregory Maguire’s revisionist Oz fantasy, got no critical love during its closely observed San Francisco tryout — erstwhile Godspell composer Stephen Schwartz admits to making significant changes between that run and the Broadway opening. But while Wicked proved neither a reviewers’ nor a Tony favorite, it’s a rare case in which those factors don’t matter. It’s a massive million-dollar-a-week hit whose geek-empowerment message particularly resonates with younger girls. Those whose parents can afford Broadway prices, that is.

On a whole other plane, the Tony Kushner–Jeanine Tesori project Caroline, or Change was an emotionally complex, stirring, major high-culture event. Its producers, as New Yorker critic John Lahr puts it, "agreed to lose a little money so this very good thing which doesn’t fit the commercial formula [could] be seen." If only for a few months: with its more bitter than sweet emphasis on racial inequity and family dysfunction, no amount of acclaim could turn it into a tourist attraction.

While practically a Broadway bargain at merely $3.5 million in production costs, Avenue Q was considered the season’s longest shot — a Sesame Street parody whose relatively youthful target audience isn’t big on theatergoing. Wags anticipated an off-Broadway show that belonged off Broadway. Its triumphant critical reception and eventual clutch of Tony Awards turned such expectations upside down. Cocreators Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez are the giddiest protagonists here, their can’t-believe-our-luck exuberance offering a contrast to the sober insights delivered by such experienced hands as Schwartz and Caroline‘s director, George C. Wolfe.

Finally, there’s Taboo, a $10 million total loss for producer Rosie O’Donnell, who shepherded it to Broadway after loving a smaller-scale London staging of the gender-bending, Boy George–scored musical. Was it just too gay for Broadway? (No, that’s not an oxymoron.) Was it simply not very good? (A devoted cadre of mostly punk-goth fans would vehemently disagree.) Did negative press attention to O’Donnell and an apparently turbulent production process unfairly brand it a flop before the opening? We may never know — Taboo sure ain’t coming to a theater near you anytime soon. One of ShowBusiness‘s most poignant threads focuses on young unknown Euan Morton, who wins raves in a star part in the huge show. After its closure, his US work visa is revoked; he’ll have to restart his career back in England from square one.

ShowBusiness covers everything from playwriting to rehearsals to street buzz to critics, but one wishes it had more depth. Berinstein’s insiderdom gets her access but perhaps also limits her willingness to bare all. Clocking in at 102 minutes, her documentary is almost a dirt-free zone. It’s refreshing when Marx and book writer Jeff Whitty admit they could barely stand each other while collaborating on Avenue Q — though success certainly improves their rapport. And ultimately, their multiple Tony Award wins provide a dramatic highlight. At the ceremony, Carol Channing and LL Cool J copresent an award. It’s a showy moment whose mix of the sublime and the surreal encapsulates how unpredictable the business Berinstein examines can be. *

SHOWBUSINESS: THE ROAD
TO BROADWAY

Opens Fri/8 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

www.showbusiness-themovie.com“>www.showbusiness-themovie.com”>www.sfbg.com

Green libertarians

May 29, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION It sounds crazy, but it just might work: green libertarianism could become the new reformist movement in politics and cultural life.

In the 1980s, suggesting that green culture could be combined with libertarianism would have been worse than foolish. Those were the days when libertarians protested having to get their cars smog-checked because it represented government control of their personal property. But now that even staunch Republicans like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger are promoting ecofriendly policies and business leaders like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are hanging out at the Sierra Club, it seems that the times, they are a-changin’.

Over the past decade, experts have slowly and quietly been publishing studies on how to bring green sensibilities into line with the free-market agenda of libertarians. Natural Capitalism, published in 2000, was one of the first books to advance this idea. Last year two Yale environmental researchers, Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston, published Green to Gold, which explores ways that companies like Wal-Mart are attempting to bring sustainability into their business models. Though Esty and Winston conclude that there are no companies currently doing enough to be truly green, they acknowledge that some are on the right track.

They also explain quite succinctly why free-market leaders have joined what they call the Green Wave. No, it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts. "Behind the Green Wave are two interlocking sources of pressure," they write. "First the limits of the natural world could constrain business operations, realign markets, and perhaps even threaten the planet’s well-being. Second, companies face a growing spectrum of stakeholders who are concerned about the environment."

A lot of Green Wave entrepreneurs are probably disingenuous. One imagines they’re like the antihero of underrated movie I Heart Huckabees, a slimy corporate type who feigns interest in green development to sucker a community into signing over its land to condo and mall developers. But I believe some real-life Green Wavers are genuinely fascinated by strange new ideas that could encourage economic growth and sustainable development. These are people who are talking about carbon credits, emissions trading, and various financial incentives for entrepreneurs who limit their environmental impact, recycle, use alternative energy sources, or encourage their employees to carpool.

The question is why would anybody want to marry green and libertarian values? It sounds like a way of letting business do an end run around international bodies and governments, groups that have traditionally set limits on industry. There’s no doubt that states should have a role in setting policies for local corporations, but those corporations need rewards for their good behavior too. That’s where capitalism comes in. Combining libertarianism with green values might be a pragmatic way to convince some of the worst polluters to cut back by essentially bribing them with cash. The state can step in to punish bad actors who refuse to try for the carrot.

On a less cynical note, one might say that libertarians and greens go together because both are focused on maintaining economic development in the long term. They aren’t looking at next quarter: they’re looking at next century. A green libertarian has realized that the freedom of future markets depends on maintaining a healthy environment.

If green libertarianism prevails, I’m guessing the future will look nothing like ecotopia and nothing like capitalist Utopia either. Business will behave more like government, limiting its growth for the sake of sustainability. And ecology as we know it will probably be a lot more engineered and synthetic than ever before because communities will carefully plan their ecosystems to remain healthy and whole alongside cities and corporations. We will reach a stage in our technological development when we have to manage our natural environments as well as our economic ones. Perhaps one day the capitalism that results from green libertarianism will know itself to be only one piece of a healthy social ecology. That’s the kind of capitalism that even a grumpy old Marxist like myself can get behind. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks the next best thing to smashing capitalism is changing it entirely.

Nuclear greenwashing

May 29, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

Patrick Moore’s presentation isn’t as slick as Al Gore’s. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don’t compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Moore himself seems a little frumpy, particularly as he peers out across the audience recently gathered in the Warnors Theatre in Fresno.

But attendees paid $20 to hear the former Greenpeace leader extol the benefits of nuclear energy as a clean, safe, reliable, economic, and — perhaps most important to the current political and media focus on global warming — emissions-free source of power.

It’s hard to imagine Moore at the helm of an inflatable boat steering into the line of a whaling ship’s fire, but that iconic Greenpeace image is exactly what he wants you to associate with him. The Vancouver, British Columbia, native is quick to tell you he’s a former leader of one of the most effective international activist organizations ever. But he said he’s older now and wants to be for things instead of against them.

What’s Moore for? Warding off the warming of the world. What does he think will do it? More nuclear power plants.

If there’s any great and unifying issue thrumming through the national psyche, defying political party lines and flooding the media filters these days, it’s global warming. While leaders argue left and right about nearly every issue that comes before them, there is at least consensus that something must be done about climate change.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped on that bandwagon last September when he signed into law Assembly Bill 32, mandating a 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.

Thirty-one states recently agreed to join a voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry similar to California’s, 10 northeastern states are creating a cap-and-trade market, and already half the country has laws requiring that a certain percentage of local power portfolios come from renewable energy.

The alternative-energy troops who’ve long been waiting in the trenches have stepped up to fight, armed with the tools they’ve been honing for years: solar panels, wind turbines, tidal power, and biofuels. They say new options and innovations abound for weaning the country off its fossil fuel habit.

But there are already critics who say those approaches aren’t going to be enough — and that we need to go nuclear against this planetary threat. And now they have some unlikely new allies.

Maybe you’ve seen the headlines touting the new nuclear push, running in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and all the daily syndicates. They all claim the same questionable facts: Nuclear power is clean and emissions free. It’s safe, reliable, and cost-effective. It isn’t contributing to global warming — and these days even the environmentalists like it.

James Lovelock, the renowned Gaia theorist, thinks nuclear energy will be essential to power the developing world. On a Sept. 13, 2006, airing of KQED’s Forum, he told host Michael Krasny, "I would welcome high-level nuclear waste in my backyard."

During the hour-long program he said the dangers of radiation were exaggerated; there wasn’t that much waste generated; and in order to mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, we should "look at nuclear as a kind of medicine we have to take."

Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, thinks nothing is more doomsday than global warming and told the Guardian he advised Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to start touting nuclear power as a solution.

"The nuclear industry needs a new green generation," he told us. "My fellow environmentalists ought to be grateful to the nuclear industry for supplying 20 percent of our electricity."

And then there’s Moore, the 15-year Greenpeace veteran who once put his body in the way of a seal hunter’s club and wrote in an April 16, 2006, Washington Post op-ed, "My views have changed and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

"Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely."

The bio for the Post piece identifies Moore as cochair of "a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports the use of nuclear energy."

It’s one of the few articles that make such a disclosure, although more probably should. A survey by Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, came across 302 recent articles mentioning Moore and nuclear power as a possible option for mitigating the effects of global warming.

Only 37 — a mere 12 percent — said he’s being paid to support nuclear power by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a national organization of pro-nuke industries that’s hired Moore to front its nuclear renaissance.

Only the Columbia Journalism Review has drawn the further connection that Hill and Knowlton has been paid $8 million to help the NEI spread the word that the nukies have the silver bullet for solving global warming.

Hill and Knowlton knows a little something about pushing dangerous products. The company created the tobacco industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign about the effects of smoking. Veterans of that campaign then helped ExxonMobil try to bury the truth about global warming.

Before laughing these folks out of the reactor room, consider this: Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, who’ve been against nukes in the past, are now suggesting nuclear energy needs to be considered in light of global warming.

Al Gore and Hillary Clinton have also made similar recent murmurings. Of all the major 2008 presidential candidates, only Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards have offered up energy plans that don’t include more nukes.

Eight states are working on pro-nuclear legislation, and although a bill to lift the moratorium on new plants in California was shot down in the Assembly’s Committee on Natural Resources, its sponsor, Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), told us he intends to introduce it again and again until it passes.

In the meantime a private group of Fresno investors has signed a letter of intent with a nuclear power company to put a 1,600-megawatt nuclear plant in the San Joaquin Valley. So far the only thing stopping the group is the state’s 30-year-old moratorium, which says no new nuclear power plants may be built in California until a permanent solution to the waste is established. The investors are already working on a November 2008 ballot measure to end the ban and allow new nuclear plants.

A new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in the United States since 1978, when concerns about safety, cost, and the long-term waste management challenge (nuclear rods will still be deadly hundreds of thousands of years from now) overwhelmed the industry.

But if there were ever an opportunity for a nuclear renaissance, the threat of climate change has created one. And the poster child is Moore, a relatively innocuous Greenpeace exile who’s traveling around the country with a B-movie version of Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, speaking to communities and drumming up what he calls a grassroots coalition of mayors, business leaders, and community activists. He’s steadily convincing them we need more nuclear power by trading the classic doomsday scenario of a massive radioactive explosion for the creeping killer global warming.

"I’m aghast," Dr. Helen Caldicott, an Australian who helped found Physicians for Social Responsibility and is one of the most prominent international critics of the dangers of nuclear energy, told us.

Caldicott, who’s authored several books on the subject, most recently Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (2006), said, "I’ve never seen a propaganda exercise which is so fallacious. Both the politicians and the media are buying it."

She and other nuclear watchdogs who’ve been patrolling the industry for more than 30 years say it’s anything but a safe, reliable, economic, and emissions-free silver bullet.

Let’s look at the facts.

SAFETY

When it comes to safety, Moore told us, "US nuclear power plant employees enjoy the so-called healthy worker effect: people employed at the plants have lower mortality rates from cancer, heart disease, or other causes and are likely to live longer than the general population."

To support this claim, he cited a 2004 Radiation Research Society study of 53,000 workers. After reviewing it, Caldicott said, "I’m very suspect. There’s nothing here about people who are living with cancer."

Caldicott admits there’s a void of data about the health of nuclear workers and people who live near plants. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t mandate baseline studies of cancer rates in areas surrounding the sites of nuclear facilities.

But people living near Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania plant that came within minutes of a catastrophic meltdown in 1979, demanded studies, which found evidence of increases in thyroid cancer in the region. And Caldicott, in her recent book, pointed out that there are a number of things the government doesn’t want to admit. "To this day there is no available information about which specific isotopes escaped nor the actual quantity of radiation that was released," she wrote, going on to detail how, for lack of sufficient data about the distance the radiation may have spread, scientists studied the rates in the livestock of nearby fields and found supporting evidence that the plume of poison spread as far as 150 miles away.

And of course, there’s Chernobyl, where a 1986 nuclear-plant disaster caused lasting health problems and contaminated a huge swath of what was then the Soviet Union.

The unavoidable fact is that the industry thus far has had two terrible, nightmarish accidents, one of which was catastrophic and the other very nearly so.

And every part of the nuclear-power cycle involves serious health risks.

"You want to get really sad?" asked Molly Johnson, a lifelong environmental justice activist and San Luis Obispo County resident. "Go to New Mexico, go to Arizona, see the families that are dying because of the uranium mining. Their water is irradiated from the uranium tailings that are still there…. Why would we continue that?"

These days intentional attacks are even more of a concern. But Moore isn’t sweating. He said he thinks a plane colliding with a power plant is unlikely, even though the 9/11 Commission Report found that al-Qaeda operatives at one point considered aiming for the Indian Point reactor in New York.

Even if a jet hit a plant, Moore insists, the plant would be strong enough to withstand a collision. "If you drove an airplane into that, it would just be one messed-up airplane you’d have to deal with," he said.

Not exactly, say the critics.

"He is just dead wrong about reactor security. Breathtakingly misinformed," said Dan Hirsch of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a public interest group that’s been studying nuclear power and proliferation issues for nearly four decades. "Virtually no reactor containment in the US was designed to withstand a hit by a jumbo jet. Significant parts of the plant essential to preventing a meltdown are outside containment anyway."

Hirsch is speaking of power lines, which transmit electricity from the plant and also carry electricity to it — power that’s used to keep dangerous components cool and safe. If that power were cut off for any length of time, a meltdown could occur in the pools where explosive spent fuel is kept.

These spent-fuel storage areas — essentially big swimming pools where radioactive waste is kept underwater until a long-term storage facility is built — rely on a steady pumping of water to cool the superheated waste. All you’d have to do is stop that water pump, and there’d be a meltdown. And the storage areas don’t necessarily have the same fortified structures as the reactors.

Hirsch said, "A successful attack on a nuclear plant or, even worse, a spent-fuel pool would be the worst terrorist event to ever occur on earth by far, capable of killing over 100,000 people immediately and hundreds of thousands of latent cancers thereafter, contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania for generations."

There’s no immediate solution in sight for long-term storage, so these pools of deadly waste will likely remain on reactor sites for many years.

San Luis Obispo County’s Mothers for Peace recently sued the NRC over the newly established laws regarding protection against terrorist attacks, which only require plants to be able to ward off five potential external terrorists on the ground. It took 19 people to pull off the Sept. 11 attacks. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that power plant operators must also consider the possibility of an air attack when designing spent-fuel storage tanks.

Mothers for Peace is fond of noting that existing security measures aren’t what you’d call foolproof. During a recent earthquake, 56 of 131 sirens in the San Luis Obispo area — designed to alert residents of a possible accident at the plant — didn’t go off because the power was out and they aren’t backed up by generators or batteries.

When Mothers for Peace and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility brought the failure to the attention of the NRC, the agency said that nothing is perfect and that the sirens over the course of 1,000 hours worked 99 percent of the time.

"Except the five hours you’d actually want them to work," David Weisman of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility said.

Nuclear power is either a creeping killer or a sitting bomb. Wind farms and solar-panel arrays are not leaching poisons into the environment. They’re not direct targets for terrorist attacks, and if they were, the result wouldn’t be all that horrible. Imagine cleaning up a bombed wind farm versus a nuclear power plant.

"Wind farms are on nobody’s list of targets," Weisman added. "If a windmill falls and there’s no one there to hear it, do you need an emergency evacuation plan?"

RELIABILITY

A centerpiece of the pro-nuke argument is that nuclear power is a baseload source, meaning it can generate energy all day, every day. Solar and wind, of course, rely on the cruel (and unpredictable) forces of nature to generate power.

But one could argue the same about nuclear power plants. They’re run by people — and the record of those operators isn’t encouraging.

Moore expressed great confidence in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: "They have very, very stringent requirements and regulations. It’s all there for anybody to see. All of these reactors are inspected regularly. There is no reason in my estimation to suspect the NRC of anything other than being a responsible watchdog agency. If you want to take the time to dig into it, you can find out what’s going on."

David Lochbaum does take that time — and he’s found out a lot. After working for 17 years as a consultant to the NRC, he joined the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) as a nuclear-safety engineer. He spends his days combing NRC reports and documents and compiling studies on the safety of the industry. His experience and research have caused him to conclude that the commission can’t stay on top of the 103 plants in the country.

"We get a lot of calls from workers in the plants, and NRC employees that have safety issues they’re afraid to raise," he said. "We had three calls last week. That’s a little more than usual, but we usually get 50 to 60 whistleblower calls a year." He said sometimes the workers have already raised the issue internally but need an ally to force a remedy at the plant. Other times they’re afraid to speak about what they’ve seen without fear of retaliation.

Lochbaum authored a September 2006 study for the UCS titled "Walking the Nuclear Tightrope" on the issues of safety and reliability. It’s a chilling read; it carefully outlines how regulators have been complicit in allowing plants to operate far longer than they should and how these overstressed plants eventually have to be shut down for years to restore safety standards. He found that in the last 40 years plants have ground to a halt for a year or more on 51 occasions. In most cases it wasn’t a spontaneous incident but an overall decaying of conditions that compromised safety.

"Some observers have argued that the fact no US nuclear power reactor has experienced a meltdown since 1979 (during which time 45 year-plus outages have occurred) demonstrates the status quo is working successfully," Lochbaum wrote. "That’s as fallacious as arguing that the levees protecting New Orleans were fully adequate prior to Hurricane Katrina by pointing to the absence of similar disasters between 1980 and 2004."

One of the most recent and chilling examples is the 2002 outage of the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, where a hole the size of a football was discovered in the vessel reactor head. Only a half inch of steel remained to prevent a massive nuclear meltdown. The plant was overdue for a shutdown and an inspection and had been granted the extension by the NRC.

When asked what he thought about that close call, Moore said, "I didn’t think it was a close call. I thought it was a mechanical failure that should have been caught sooner. It was caught long before it became an accident or anything like that."

"When you say close call, that means that nothing actually happened," he concluded.

But when there’s a facility where an accident could lead to mass deaths, even close calls are grounds for concern. That’s why we have to hold nuclear plants to such high standards. And the fact that plants have to close so often to avoid disastrous accidents doesn’t say much for the reliability argument.

EMISSIONS

This may be the issue on which the pro-nukers make the most headway. Moore cites a number of international studies, posted on the NEI’s Web site, that show nuclear plants competing only with hydropower when it comes to emitting the lowest level of carbon dioxide. Even solar panels and wind turbines, when one factors in the entire energy process, emit more greenhouse gases, according to these studies, though all these power sources release significantly less than burning coal or natural gas.

The anti-nuke crowd says a true study has never been completed that quantifies the CO2 emissions from mining uranium and turning it into usable nuclear fuel. Both are heavily energy intensive. Additionally, they argue that transporting waste will incur even more CO2 emissions, whether it’s shipped across the sea for reprocessing in Europe or trucked across the country for burial in Yucca Mountain.

But the waste itself is also a huge issue. Although nuclear power plants don’t have bad breath, they do emit toxins — and it’s an unresolved issue as to where to put them. The current forecast for opening the Yucca Mountain repository is 2021. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada opposes building the facility, and he’s pushing a bill that would require plants to keep the crud in their backyards.

"They’ve had 50 years to work on the waste issue," Weisman said. "And the best solution they’ve come up with is, who do we not like enough to send it to?"

Either way, Moore thinks waste is not a problem. If anything, it should be reprocessed — he likes to call it "recycling." Under that process, spent fuel is bathed in acid to separate out the usable plutonium. That can be followed by vitrification — a complex, energy-intensive process of suspending the highly radioactive and corrosive acid in glass, which is then sealed in expensive trash cans of steel and concrete and buried underground for at least 300 years, after which point he predicts it should no longer be a problem.

"It makes more fuel," he said.

Actually, Hirsch said, "it makes more weapons-grade plutonium." He argues that the last thing the nation should do is allow nuclear-plant operators to separate the plutonium and put it on the market, where it can be leaked for bomb making.

Additionally, there are a number of waste sites around the country that are slowly emitting what they’ve been designed — or not designed in some cases — to contain.

The worst is probably in Hanford, Wash., where decades’ worth of reprocessed spent radioactive fuel pushed the area beyond Superfund status into a "national nuclear waste sacrifice zone.

"Hanford is the most contaminated site in North America and one of the most significant long-term threats facing the Columbia River," Greg deBruler, of Columbia Riverkeeper, wrote in the Fall 2006 issue of Waterkeeper, the group’s quarterly journal. "It’s difficult to comprehend the reality of Hanford’s 150 square miles of highly contaminated groundwater or its 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste sitting in 45-year-old rotting steel tanks."

Much of that waste includes leftover reprocessed spent uranium fuel, which ate through its casks and poisoned the community’s drinking water.

Moore said, "It’s not as if everyone is dead. The nuclear waste has been contained."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

ECONOMICS

"The economics of nuclear power are well proven around the world. It is one of the most cost-effective forms of energy," Moore said.

Just check the record. Of the 103 reactors that were built in the United States, 75 ran a total of $100 billion over budget. India more recently went 300 percent over budget on its 10 reactors. Finland is already 18 months behind and $1 billion over on a reactor.

Given this track record, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration "Annual Energy Outlook 2005" reported that "new plants are not expected to be economical." They’re so risky, in fact, that not a single plant could have been built without the 1957 Price-Anderson act, which moves the liability for a nuke plant off its owners and onto US taxpayers. "If they were really economical, they’d be able to get insurance," Weisman said. The bill was recently renewed.

The nuclear industry forges on unperturbed, claiming that new plants have been streamlined for easier construction. Additionally, the siting and licensing laws for plants have been changed to speed up the process by precluding public input. (Given the industry’s safety record so far, that’s not comforting.) Experts predict it will now take 10 years to build a new nuclear plant. Thirty-four licenses are currently pending at the NRC as utility companies race to secure the $8 billion the federal government set aside for subsidies.

"Imagine how many wind turbines that could buy," said Harvey Wasserman, a longtime anti-nuke activist who recently authored the book Solartopia, which outlines a plan for completely renewable energy by 2030. In fact, renewables are far cheaper. Building the facilities to create one gigawatt of wind power costs about $1.5 billion; about two gigawatts could replace the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In the end, it comes down to money, and that’s where nuclear power may be the most vulnerable.

Sam Blakeslee, a Republican Assembly member from San Luis Obispo, introduced a bill last year that calls on the California Energy Commission (CEC) to conduct an in-depth study of the true costs of nuclear power to assess its viability as part of California’s future energy plans. The bill passed unanimously, and Schwarzenegger signed it.

"This will be cradle to grave," said Weisman, of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, which has focused its scrutiny on the industry’s costs.

The group has long been suspicious of PG&E’s financial woes, which came to a head this past March when the California Public Utilities Commission allowed the company to use $16.8 million from ratepayers to fund its in-house study of relicensing its two nuclear plants. "The licenses won’t be up until 2023 and 2025, so why are they looking at relicensing now — and why does it cost $16.8 million when the state’s study is projected to cost $800,000?" Weisman asked.

Assemblymember Mark Leno (D–San Francisco) is introducing a bill this year that will undercut PG&E’s study before the CEC’s analysis is completed, which is expected to occur around November 2008.

"Our very simple idea here is that before any relicensing of our aging nuclear power plants can proceed, the CEC study be completed," Leno said. "Clearly, PG&E is very eager to move forward its relicensing process. They have many years to accomplish that task."

Leno said the stakes are too high and the inherent risks of the toxins already accumulated in seismic zones along the coast need to be carefully weighed against the prospects of generating even more waste. "We should proceed with absolute caution, forethought, and consideration."

NOWHERE TO RUN

Those risks, that caution, are something that never leaves the minds of the people who live in the plants’ fallout zones, areas as vast as a steady breeze or trickling flow of water can make them. That’s really the problem with nuclear power plants. After 50 years there are still too many unknowns. In Moore’s lectures and during interviews and debates, the former Greenpeace activist likes to say more people are killed by car accidents and machetes than by nuclear power plants, but that mocks the magnitude of a meltdown.

A car accident kills at most a few people. A machete attack might kill one person. A nuclear accident has the potential to inflict casualties in the tens of thousands, maybe even millions, and to render entire cities uninhabitable. And while most of the time, most of the plants may be perfectly problem free, it only takes one accident to wreak environmental havoc.

These days opposition to nuclear energy isn’t about mass protests in the streets. "When KQED calls and asks for the sounds of a protest, I say that’s not how it happens," Weisman said while showing a DVD of a Jan. 31 San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission meeting that droned on for more than 12 hours. The meeting ultimately resulted in what he’d hoped for: a continuing delay of PG&E’s permit to site new dry-cask storage tanks for thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumuutf8g at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. He and Rochelle Becker, the group’s director, sat through the whole thing. "That’s what protesting is now," he said.

Becker, a pert, soft-spoken woman with the aging visage of the youngest grandmother in the room, said correctness is crucial. "Never, ever exaggerate. When they want to talk about safety issues and isotopes, we refer them to someone else because we don’t have that expertise. All we have is our credibility, and if we lose our credibility, we don’t have anything."

THE PLUTONIUM PAYCHECK

Which makes what Moore is doing look like such a travesty.

"Maybe we should hire Hill and Knowlton," joked James Riccio, Greenpeace’s nuclear-policy analyst in Washington, DC, on thinking about gearing up for a new wave of anti-nuke activism.

To Riccio, Wasserman, Weisman, Hirsch, Caldicott, and many others who spoke with the Guardian, Moore is nothing but a dangerous distraction who’s getting the wrong kind of attention. Wasserman disputed Moore’s credentials as a Greenpeace founder in the Burlington Free Press article "The Sham of Patrick Moore."

When questioned by the Guardian, Moore called Wasserman a jerk. Moore said he’s still an activist — and in addition to parroting for the nuclear industry, he runs a sustainability consulting company, Greenspirit Strategies, which advises industries on controversial subjects like genetically modifying organisms, clear-cutting, and fish farming. His clients include hazardous waste, timber, biotech, aquaculture, and chemical companies, in addition to conventional utilities that process nuclear power and natural gas.

Moore insists he’s not hiding anything. "In every interview I do the reporter already knows that I’m cochair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and that I work for the nuclear industry," he told us.

But Moore did not identify himself as such during a lengthy interview with us until we asked. The disclosure was also missing during the long biographical presentation given to the folks in Fresno on Feb. 22, which did include pictures of his Rainbow Warrior days. Again, on May 24, Moore didn’t mention his plutonium paycheck during a radio debate on KZYX. Neither did the moderator, and it was only when Hirsch, his debating partner, got a moment to speak that it was revealed. "Let’s be clear here, Patrick," Hirsch said. "You’re being paid by the industry." *

Joseph Plaster, Andrew Oliver, and Sam Draisin helped research this story.

Sic Alps, cool art

May 21, 2007

Paradise – I gotta get me some of that!

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

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

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

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

Chasing the church

May 16, 2007

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

Image from Sunday’s New York Times Review of Books

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

Rave on, Anon.

May 16, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.1000journals.com

We can be heroes

May 15, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Imagine a world where your genome isn’t just the result of long-term natural selection and random mutation. Instead, its composition and expression actually mean something — not just about you, but also about the fate of the world.

No, I’m not talking about a genetic engineer’s utopia with humans made by design. I’m talking about the driving fantasy behind hit TV show Heroes, now heading into the homestretch of its first season on NBC. I was a doubter when I first started watching this X-Men homage, which is full of ordinary people who suddenly start manifesting mutant powers (flying, telekinesis, superhearing, time travel) due to some genetic whatsit. Created by Tim Kring, best known for the medical melodrama Crossing Jordan, the show was uneven and slow for the first handful of episodes. We got the boring origin story of each hero and learned that they all have a genetic destiny via an irritating voice-over from the nonsuperpowered (so far) Dr. Suresh, who studies these "special" people to find out what makes them tick.

But then things got interesting. Unlike the mutants of X-Men, none of the special people in Heroes has a visible mutation that makes him or her look strange — there are no giant blue cat professors or women made of pure diamond. Instead, there are, among others, a flying politician, a superhealing cheerleader, a time-traveling Japanese comic book otaku, a comic book artist who can paint the future, a psychic police officer, and a villain who absorbs mutant powers by extracting and possibly eating the brains of heroes. The plot is typical comic book fare: our future-painting artist has predicted that New York will be blown up by one of the heroes, eventually resulting in the election of the corrupt flying politician as president. Somehow, these events will destroy the world. The time-traveling otaku‘s future self warns his past self that the fate of the cheerleader is bound up with all this by using the show’s cult tagline, "Save the cheerleader, save the world."

I’ve gone from being a skeptical watcher to a rabid fan of this show for two reasons: one, the hero team that forms around the wacky time travel plot manages to capture what’s so seductive about comic books generally; and two, I think the TV show is an interesting fantasy about terrorism.

So: the seductions of the comic book. One of the benefits of comic books over, say, movies is that they last for decades and thus have plenty of time to evolve complicated relationships between characters whose powers are foils for their personal vulnerabilities. A superhero team is like a cast of characters in a speculative soap opera — they have bang-pow adventures, but the best writers and artists in the medium force them to grapple with the human cost of being a hero. The Hulk is a good example: over the years Bruce Banner and his green alter ego have fought, gone to therapy to reconcile their warring impulses, joined and then been expelled from superhero teams that couldn’t trust the Hulk, and generally played out the drama of what it means to be a high-functioning manic-depressive.

Heroes offers us the bizarro soap opera pleasures of comic books and at the same time sets up the collective power of the heroes as a foil for the problems of the world. There are no terrorists in Heroes — only heroes whose powers go wrong and destroy New York in the process. In other words, the only menace to the United States is its own citizens. In the show’s fantasy reenactment of 9/11, the al-Qaeda bombers are recast as misunderstood heroes who are hunted by shady pseudogovernment agencies and go mad, or as power-hungry politicians who see destruction as the best route to power. I’m intrigued by the implication, in this season’s plot arc, that the destruction of New York is a deliberate effort to ruin the world on the part of US politicians and businessmen. There’s a strong dose of social criticism in that simple idea. Our heroes aren’t trying to stop terrorists from outside the country — they’re trying to stop forces working on the inside.

Sure, you can watch Heroes just for the bang-pow, and I definitely recommend it for that. At its best the show is action packed and edge-of-your-seat thrilling. But it’s also, like great comic books, about the real world. Best of all, it’s about fixing the real world and making it safe for geeks, cheerleaders, and regular people. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks the Planet Hulk story line should be the basis for the next Hulk movie.

Magic stars

May 8, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"When we use magical in a positive sense," filmmaker Lawrence Jordan explains, parsing an adjective that is frequently brought up in discussions of his work, "it really means my eye is fresh at this moment and what I’m seeing is a discovery." Jordan’s films — in particular, the animated collages composed of Victorian magazine illustrations, Gustave Doré engravings, and flashing stars and orbs for which he is most famous — are the visual records of such moments of discovery.

The more than 40 experimental short (as well as three feature-length) films Jordan has made over his 40 years in the Bay Area are as much documents of the fanciful flight paths of his free associations — what he calls his "inner world" — as they are fleeting glimpses of a precinematic visual culture that has long since vanished. Thanks to an upcoming program put on by the San Francisco Cinematheque as part of its Bay Area Roots series, audiences will get the chance to discover — or perhaps rediscover with fresh eyes — the work of a filmmaker and advocate (Jordan helped found Canyon Cinema) who truly deserves to be called a Fog City maverick.

Like the cryptically beautiful boxes of Joseph Cornell, Jordan’s films exude a certain innocent surrealism. His poetic assemblages of fantastic fauna, romantic vistas, and hermetic symbols seem aimed at enchanting rather than disturbing the viewer through the kind of sexual shock tactics that were more the métier of Max Ernst. "That part of surrealism we don’t qualify for," Jordan says, referring to himself and Cornell, for whom he worked as an assistant in 1965, filming over the course of his stay at Utopia Parkway in Queens the only extant footage we have of the notoriously reclusive artist and his fabled workspace.

Jordan’s choice of the inclusive pronoun reveals both the slight reserve and matter-of-factness with which he speaks of his work and the strong sense of kinship he projects when talking about the artists — such as Cornell and collagist Jess Collins, who worked under his first name only — who became colleagues, served as inspiration, and, more often the case in a career filled with notable collaborators (Watts Tower sculptor Simon Rodia and Orson Welles), functioned in both capacities.

Following his high school friend and early collaborator Stan Brakhage to San Francisco from New York, Jordan moved into a basement flat below the poet Robert Duncan and his partner, Jess, whose baroque collages of finely crosshatched renderings of his source material shared affinities with Jordan’s then-still-developing aesthetic of assemblage. "[Jess] was the high priest of art magic in the time that I knew him," Jordan says.

Magic, as it turns out, keeps coming up in our conversation, whether in a passing reference to The Wizard of Oz (Jordan owns a complete set of the Oz books) or when Jordan cites that magician of silent cinema, Georges Méliès, as a major influence. Blue Skies beyond the Looking Glass, completed last year and one of the highlights of the cinematheque’s program, is very much an homage to the evocative power of early cinema.

A jubilant séance, Blue Skies resurrects silent-era stars such as Lon Chaney Sr., Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford via some amazing screen test footage and invites them to tango with intercut animated segments. The film offers a nice summary of Jordan’s cinema of attractions, in which old signs are transmuted into wonders once more, restoring some of their mystery. "I don’t know about alchemy academically," Jordan reflects, "but I am a practicing alchemist in my own way." *

WORKS OF LAWRENCE JORDAN

Sun/13, 7:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.sfcinematheque.org

Myth of the universal library

May 8, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION A lot of Web geeks believe that one day everything ever created by humans will be available online. Call it the myth of the universal library. Here’s how the myth goes: because there is unlimited real estate in cyberspace and because media can be digitized, we can fill cyberspace with all human knowledge and give everyone access to it. Without further ado, I present to you three arguments for the elimination of the myth of the universal library.

1. Cyberspace does not exist. The term cyberspace was invented in the late 1970s by a science fiction writer named William Gibson, who used it to describe a "consensual hallucination" experienced by people who were neurologically linked to computer networks. Even within Gibson’s novels, the author is careful to explain that the illuminated buildings, glowing roads, and avatars that his heroes meet in cyberspace are simply convenient representations of abstract data structures.

My point is that computer networks are not space and they are not real estate. They are data storage and manipulation devices connected together by wires and radio waves. They cost money and require massive amounts of power. They take up real-world space. And they break. In other words: no computer network is infinite. Storing all of human knowledge on a computer network would be expensive and intensely difficult to maintain. There is no infinite cyberspace — only finite computer networks subject to wear and tear.

2. Your human knowledge sucks. I was recently in a very interesting conversation with several smart librarians, all of whom are keen to use computers for preserving and disseminating information. Somebody pointed out that a good example of publicly accessible universal knowledge is the French Gaumont Pathé Archives, which makes hundreds of hours of searchable historic newsreel footage available online for free. The problem, as film archivist Rick Prelinger pointed out, is that the Gaumont Pathé project, like many of its kind, has had to pick and choose which films it can afford to archive. So the group focused heavily on politics and left the fashion and pop culture reels undigitized and therefore less accessible. The guy who’d brought up the archive thought this was just fine.

"No, it’s not," Prelinger replied. "If you want to know what everyday people cared about historically, fashion is going to tell you a lot more than newsreels about famous politicians."

The point is, people don’t agree on what "all of human knowledge" means. Is it great art and political history? Or is it xeroxed zines and fashion history? Who decides what gets digitized and what gets tossed in the ashtray of the unsearchable, the unnetworked? Do commercials go into our mythical universal library? What about hate speech and instruction manuals for hair dryers? Are those documents not also part of human knowledge? We will never reach an agreement on what all of human knowledge really is, and therefore we will never be able to preserve all of it.

3. Digitizing everything is impossible. Consumers can buy terabyte-size disk storage. The glorious Internet Archive buys petabyte storage devices by the bushel. You can fit your entire music collection in your pocket, and your book collection too. But even if we agreed on what all of human knowledge really is — which we never will — you couldn’t digitize all of it. Turning books into e-books takes time, as does turning film and television into digital video files. And what about rare scrolls, artworks, and machines? How do you put them online? Some medieval manuscripts and textiles are so delicate they can’t be exposed to light. Making something digital isn’t like waving a wand over it — poof, you’re digital! No matter how hard we work and no matter how much money we throw at this problem, there is simply no way to turn all physical media into digital formats.

The myth of the universal library is not only widespread, it’s also dangerous. Believing in the myth makes us forget that we need to be working hard right this second to preserve information in multiple formats and to make it available to the public any way that we can. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who has a very large collection of nondigital books.

Summer 2007 fairs and festivals guide

May 8, 2007

ONGOING

ArtSFest Various venues; www.artsfestsf.org. For its fourth year, ArtSFest presents a showcase of theater, dance, visual art, film, music, spoken word, and more. Through May 28.

Night Market Ferry Bldg Marketplace, along the Embarcadero at the foot of Market; 693-0996, www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com. Thurs, 4-8pm, through Oct 26. Marketplace merchants and farmers offer their freshest artisan foods and produce at this weekly sunset event.

United States of Asian America Arts Festival Various venues; 864-4120, www.apiculturalcenter.org. Through June 30. This festival, presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, showcases Asian Pacific Islander dance, music, visual art, theater, and multidisciplinary performance ensembles at many San Francisco venues.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Third St at Mission; 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct, free. Nearly 100 artistic and cultural events for all ages takes place at the gardens this summer including Moroccan percussionists, Hawaiian ukulele players, Yiddish klezmer violinists, Balinese dancers, Shakespearean actors, Cuban musicians, and Japanese shakuhachi players.

BAY AREA

Silicon Valley Open Studios www.svos.org. Sat-Sun, 11am-5pm, through May 20. Check out Silicon Valley artists’ works and the spaces they use to create them at this community art program.

MAY 8–20

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival: Bay Area 2007 Various venues; www.youthspeaks.org. Youth Speaks, La Peña Cultural Center, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, and San Francisco International Arts Festival present this showcase of new theater works that feature break dancing, MCing, graffiti, spoken word, and DJ sampling.

MAY 10-20

Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival Various venues; www.mcmf.org. The Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival features the best and brightest independent musicians and artists, including music by Vincent Gallo, Acid Mothers Temple, Edith Frost, and Gary Higgins. Literary and film events are also planned.

MAY 12

KFOG KaBoom! Piers 30-32; 817-KFOG, www.kfog.com. 4-10pm, free. Kick off the summer with this popular event featuring music, a spectacular fireworks show, food and drinks, and activities for kids. Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Guster, and Ozomatli perform.

BAY AREA

Arlen Ness Motorcycles Anniversary Party Arlen Ness, 6050 Dublin, Dublin; (925) 479-6300, www.arlenness.com. 10am-4:30pm, free. Celebrate the company’s fourth year in Dublin and 37th year in business with a display of the largest selection of Ness, Victory, American Iron Horse, and Big Dog Motorcycles in California, a walk through the museum, and a live music from Journey tribute band Evolution.

Beltane Pagan Festival Civic Center Park, 2151 MLK Jr. Way, Berk; www.thepaganalliance.org.10am-5:30pm, free. This year’s festival focuses on children and young adults and features a procession, performances, vendors, storytelling, an authors’ circle, and information booths.

Peralta in Bloom Spring Festival Carter Middle School, 4521 Webster, Oakl; (510) 655-1502, www.peraltaschool.org. Due to a fire, Peralta’s spring festival will be held at a temporary home this year. Expect the same great live entertainment, carnival games, old-fashioned high-steppin’ cakewalk, free arts and crafts, and delicious barbecue as always.

MAY 13

Hood Games VI "Tender Love" Turk between Mason and Taylor; 11am-4pm. This celebration of youth culture features live skating and music, art, a fashion show, contests, and a raffle. Bonus: every mom who shows up for this Mother’s Day event gets a free skateboard.

BAY AREA

Russian-American Fair Terman Middle School, 655 Arastradero, Palo Alto; (650) 852-3509, paloaltojcc.org. 10am-5pm, $3-5. The Palo Alto Jewish Community Center puts on this huge, colorful cultural extravaganza featuring ethnic food, entertainment, crafts and gift items, art exhibits, carnival games, and vodka tasting.

MAY 16–27

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues; (415) 439-2456, www.sfiaf.org. The theme for this year’s multidisciplinary festival is the Truth in Knowing/Now, a Conversation across the African Diaspora.

MAY 17–20

Carmel Art Festival Devendorf Park, Carmel; (831) 642-2503, www.carmelartfestival.org. Call for times, free. Enjoy viewing works by more than 60 visual artists at this four-day festival. In addition to the Plein Air and Sculpture-in-the-Park events, the CAF is host to the Carmel Youth Art Show, Quick Draw, and Kids Art Day.

MAY 18–20

Festival of Greece 4700 Lincoln, Oakl; (510) 531-3400, www.oaklandgreekfestival.com. Fri-Sat, 10am-11pm; Sun, 11am-9pm, $6. Free on Fri 10-4 and Sun 6-9. Let’s hear an "opa!" for Greek music, dance, food, and a stunning view at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension’s three-day festival.

MAY 19

A La Carte and Art Castro St, Mountain View; (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. A moveable feast of people and colorful tents offering two days of attractions, music, art, a farmers’ market, and a special appearance by TV star Delta Burke.

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Howard between Fifth and Seventh streets; 321-5865, www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. More than 200 organizations participate in this festival, which features Asian cooking demonstrations, beer and sake, arts and crafts, a variety of food, and live entertainment.

Family Fun Festival and Silent Auction 165 Grattan; 759-2815. 11am-5pm, free. Enjoy this second annual family event in Cole Valley, featuring a kids’ carnival with prizes, street theater, live music, refreshments, and a silent auction.

Oyster and Beer Fest Great Meadows, Fort Mason, Laguna at Bay; www.oreillysoysterfestival.com. 12-7pm, $15-19 ($50 reserved seating). O’Reilly’s Productions presents the 8th annual festival celebrating oysters and beer, featuring cooking demos, competitions, and live performance from Flogging Molly, Shantytown, The Hooks, and more.

Saints Kiril and Metody Bulgarian Cultural Festival Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga; (510) 649-0941, www.slavonicweb.org. 3pm-midnight, $15. Enjoy live music, dance, and traditional food and wine in celebration of Bulgarian culture. A concert features Nestinari, Zaedno, Brass Punks, and many more.

Taiwanese American Cultural Festival Union Square; (408) 268-5637, www.tafnc.org. 10am-7pm, free. Explore Taiwan by tasting delicious Taiwanese delicacies, viewing a puppet show and other performances, and browsing arts and crafts exhibits.

Uncorked! Public Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, 900 N Point; 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, event free, wine tasting $40-100. This second annual wine festival features wine tasting, five-star chef demonstrations, wine seminars, and a chocolate and wine pairing event.

BAY AREA

Cupertino Special Festival in the Park Cupertino Civic Center, 10300 Torre, Cupertino; (408) 996-0850, www.osfamilies.org. 10am-6pm, free. The Organization of Special Needs Families hosts its third annual festival for people of all walks or wheels of life. Featuring live music, food and beer, bouncy houses, arts and crafts, and other activities.

Pixie Park Spring Fair Marin Art and Garden Center, Sir Francis Drake Blvd at Lagunitas, Ross; www.pixiepark.org. 9am-4pm, free. This fair for preschoolers and kindergarteners features bathtub races, pony rides, a petting zoo, a puppet show, and much more.

MAY 19-20

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, San Pablo Dam Road near Castro Ranch, El Sobrante; (510) 644-2593, www.bayareastorytelling.org.

Sat, 9:30am-8pm; Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm, $8-65. Gather around and listen to stories told by storytellers from around the world at this outdoor festival. Sheila Kay Adams, Charlotte Blake Alston, Bill Harley and others are featured.

Castroville Artichoke Festival 10100 Merritt, Castroville; (831) 633-2465, www.artichoke-festival.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $3-6. Have a heart — eat an artichoke. This festival cooks up the vegetable in every way imaginable and features tons of fun activities for kids, music, a parade, a farmers’ market, and much more.

Day of Decadence Women’s Expo Sedusa Studios, 1300 Dell, Campbell; (408) 826-9087, www.sedusastudios.com. 1-4pm, $5. Twenty-five women-owned businesses exhibit their products and pamper their customers at this decadent event. Includes free services, champagne, refreshments, and a chocolate fountain.

French Flea Market Chateau Sonoma, 153 West Napa, Sonoma; (707) 935-8553, www.chateausonoma.com. 10:30am-5:30pm, call for price. Attention, Francophiles: this flea market is for you! Shop for antiques, garden furniture, and accessories from French importers.

Himalayan Fair Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 869-3995, www.himalayanfair.net. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-5:30pm, call for price. This benefit for humanitarian grassroots projects in the Himalayas features award-winning dancers and musicians representing Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mongolia. Check out the art and taste the delicious food.

Maker Faire San Mateo Fairgrounds, San Mateo; (415) 318-9067, www.makerfaire.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $5-15. A two-day, family-friendly event established by the creators of Make and Create magazines that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects, and the do-it-yourself mindset.

Muscle Car, Hot Rods, and Art Fair Bollinger Canyon Rd and Camino Ramon, San Ramon; (925) 855-1950, www.hatsoffamerica.us. 10am-5pm, free. Hats Off America presents this family event featuring muscle cars, classics and hot rods, art exhibits, children’s activities, live entertainment, and beer and wine.

Passport to Sonoma Valley Various venues; (707) 935-0803, www.sonomavalleywine.com. 11am-4pm, $55 (weekend, $65). This first of its kind, valleywide event will provide visitors rare access to the many hidden gems of California’s oldest wine region. More than 40 Sonoma wineries are participating, and the cost includes unlimited tasting.

Sunset Celebration Weekend Sunset headquarters, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park; 1-800-786-7375, www.sunset.com. 10am-5pm, $10-12, kids free. Sunset magazine presents a two-day outdoor festival featuring beer, wine, and food tasting; test-kitchen tours, celebrity chef demonstrations, live music, seminars, and more.

Spring Fling Open House Rosenblum Cellars, 2900 Main, Alameda; (510) 995-4100, www.rosenblumcellars.com. Noon-5pm, $30. Try new and current releases at Rosenblum’s Alameda winery while enjoying wine-friendly hors d’oeuvres and music from local musicians.

MAY 20

ING Bay to Breakers Begins at Howard and Spear, ends at the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, SF; www.baytobreakers.com. 8am, $33-40. See a gang of Elvis impersonators in running shorts and a gigantic balloon shaped like a tube of Crest floating above a crowd of scantily clad, and unclad, joggers at this annual race from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean.

BAY AREA

Jazz on Fourth Street Festival Fourth St, between Hearst and Virginia, Berk; (510) 526-6294, www.4thstreetshop.com. 11am-5pm, free. Local merchants present this annual outdoor music festival featuring Marcus Shelby Quartet, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group, two Berkeley High combos, and the award-winning Berkeley High Jazz ensemble.

Niles Wildflower Art and Garden Show Niles Blvd at Main, Fremont; www.niles.org. 10am-3pm, event free, garden tour $12-15. Take a self-guided tour of beautiful home gardens and enjoy the creative works of local artists.

MAY 24–27

Sonoma Jazz Plus Festival Field of Dreams, 179 First St W, Sonoma; 1-866-527-8499, www.sonomajazz.org. $45-95. Thurs-Sat, 6:30 and 9pm; Sun, 8:30pm, $45-110. Head on up to California’s wine country for Memorial Day weekend and soak in the sounds of LeAnn Rimes, Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, and Harry Connick Jr.

MAY 25–28

Memorial Day Folk Music Camp Out Waterman Creek Camp, Santa Cruz County; (510) 523-6533. www.sffmc.org. $7/night. Preregistration required. Camp and sing along with the San Francisco Folk Music Club. Everybody’s goin’!

MAY 26

Soul Jazz Festival Crown Canyon Park, 8000 Crow Canyon, Castro Valley; www.souljazzfestival.com. 12-8pm, $45-49. A one-day music event celebrating the worlds of jazz, funk, and soul. This year pays tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and features Johnny Holiday, Ladybug Mecca of Digable Planets, and Ella Fitzgerald’s son, Ray Brown Jr.

MAY 26–27

Carnaval San Francisco Harrison between 16th and 24th streets; (415) 920-0122, www.carnavalsf.com. 10am-6pm, free. The vibrant Mission District plays host to the best of Latin and Caribbean cultures and traditions with an array of food, music, dance, and art. The theme for this year’s carnaval is Love Happens, and it features speed dating at the Love Nest, a performance by Los Lonely Boys, and a parade on Sunday.

North American Cycle Courier Championship Speakeasy Brewery, 1195 Evans; 748-2941. Sat, 9am-2pm; Sun, 10am-1pm, free. This weekend-long celebration of bike culture features a race on a closed course that tests all areas of bike messenger skill.

BAY AREA

Santa Cruz Blues Festival 100 Aptos Creek, Aptos; (831) 479-9814, www.santacruzbluesfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $20-100. Rhythm and blues buffs beware. This annual festival, in its 15th year, showcases some of the most renowned acts of new and vintage R&B, soul, and blues rock, including Los Lonely Boys, Etta James and the Roots Band, and Little Feat. International food booths, juice bars, and beer make this event add to the appeal.

MAY 26–28

The San Francisco Cup International Youth Soccer Tournament and Festival Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field, SF; (415) 337-6630, www.sfcup.com. 8:30am. This 20th annual premier event brings together 128 national and international teams of both genders for great soccer excitement.

MAY 26–JUNE 30

Bay Area Summer Poetry Marathon Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org. 7-10pm,. $3-15 sliding scale. Various Bay Area and national poets read their work at this event held throughout the summer.

MAY 27

Antique Street Faire Main St, Pleasanton; (760) 724-9400, www.pleasantondowntown.net. 8am-4pm, free. This semiannual event sponsored by the Pleasanton Downtown Association provides more than a mile of antiques and collectibles displayed by about 300 professional dealers.

Art in the Vineyard Wente Vineyards Estate Winery, 5565 Tesla, Livermore; (925) 456-2305, www.livermoreartassociation.com. 11am-5pm, admission free, wine tasting $15. Mark your calendars for the 35th anniversary of this popular event, featuring 40 talented multimedia artists in addition to music by Vested Interest.

Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito; (415) 339-3900, www.baykidsmuseum.org.10am-5pm, free. Experience taiko drumming, the Marin Chinese Cultural Association’s Lion Dance Team, and other Polynesian and Pacific Islander arts groups, as well as traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino cuisine in honor of Asian Pacific Islander Month.

Caledonia Street Fair Caledonia St, Sausalito; (415) 289-4152, www.ci.sausalito.ca.us.10:30am-6pm, free. This fest boasts multicultural food, dance, music, and more than 120 arts and crafts vendors. Don’t miss out on the Taste of Sausalito luncheon and wine-tasting event featuring food and wine prepared by select Napa and Sonoma wineries and restaurants.

MAY 28

Stone Soul Picnic Cal State East Bay’s Pioneer Amphitheatre, 25800 Carlos Bee, Hayward; 1-800-225-2277, www.kblx.com. Doors at 10am, show at noon, $56-81.50 includes parking. KBLX Radio 102.9 FM presents its 10th annual R&B and soul music event, featuring performances by Isaac Hayes, the Whispers, the Dells, and Tower of Power.

MAY 29–30

BALLE Film Fest Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley, Berk; (415) 255-1108, ext 112, livingeconomies.org. 6 and 8:30pm, $10 for screening, $15 for night. Business Alliance for Local Living Economies presents a two-night film festival reutf8g to BALLE principles, including Everything’s Cool, a film about global warming, and Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary about China’s industrial revolution.

MAY 31–JUNE 3

Contra Costa County Fair Contra Costa County Fairgrounds,10th and L streets, Antioch; (925) 757-4400, www.ccfair.org. Thurs-Fri, noon-11pm.; Sat-Sun, 11am-11pm, $4-7, parking $3. Now 70 years old, this county fair has a little of everything. Daily sea lion shows, a man dressed as a giant tree, and, of course, clown acts, are just some of the events presented to fairgoers this year.

JUNE 1–10

East Bay Open Studios Various venues; (510) 763-4361, www.proartsgallery.org. Open studios: June 2-3, 9-10, 11am-6pm; formal artists’ reception May 31, 6-10pm, free. For more than 25 years, the East Bay Open Studios have drawn more than 50,000 visitors to Pro Arts Gallery and various artist workspaces to support the work of local artists. The public can view exhibits, purchase artwork, attend workshops, and go on an art bus tour.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Check Web site for ticket prices and venues in and around Healdsburg; (707) 433-4644, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com. This ninth annual week-and-a-half-long jazz festival will feature a range of artists, from the George Cables Project and Roy Hargrove Quintet to the funky Louisiana-style Rebirth Brass Band and first-rate vocalist Rhiannon.

JUNE 2

Berkeley Farmers Market’s Strawberry Family Fun Festival Civic Center Park, Center at MLK Jr, Berk; (510) 548-3333, www.ecologycenter.org. 10am-3pm, free. Living up to its name, this festival is a guaranteed good time for the whole family. Highlights include environmental information booths, hands-on activities, delectable strawberry shortcake, and live performances by Nigerian Brothers, EarthCapades Environmental Vaudeville, Big Tadoo Puppet Crew, and Young Fiddlers.

Heartland Festival Riverdance Farms, Livingston; (831) 763-2111, www.eco-farm.org. 10am-7pm, $10 advance, $12 at gate. Celebrate a summer weekend by picking berries, taking farm and garden workshops, buying fresh produce from a farmers’ market, and enjoying live music at this family event.

Sonoma Valley Vintage Race Car Festival Sonoma Plaza, Sonoma; (707) 996-1090, www.sonomavalleyvisitors.com. 5pm, free entrance. Wine and food $30 in advance, $35 at the door. A gigantic taste explosion filled with more than 30 vintage dragsters, gourmet food, and wine samples.

Springfest 2007 Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 North San Pedro, San Rafael; (415) 499-8891, www.mdt.org. 1 and 5pm, $14-22. Marin Dance Theatre presents this spring program featuring various performances directed by Margaret Swarthout.

JUNE 2–3

Art Deco and Modernism Sale Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St; (650) 599-DECO, www.artdecosale.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 11am-5pm, $7-9. An extravagant art sale featuring pottery, books, art, vintage clothing, glass, furniture, and other accessories dating from 1900 to 1980.

Art in the Avenues Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Ninth Ave and Lincoln; www.sunsetartists.com. 10am-5pm. This annual exhibition and sale presented by the Sunset Artists Society brings together artists and art lovers from all over the Bay Area.

Great San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna; 383-7837, www.crystalfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, $5. This year’s fair is sure to please anyone interested in mystical and healing arts. Check out the more than 40 vendors catering to all of your crystal, mineral, bead, and jewelry needs.

Union Street Festival Union between Gough and Steiner; 1-800-310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. This year marks the 31st anniversary of one of San Francisco’s largest free art festivals. In addition to more than 200 artists and 20 gourmet food booths, the event features activities that represent the history of the Union Street Festival, including a special photographic exhibit that shows Union Street as it was 100 years ago.

BAY AREA

Marin Home Show and Benefit Jazz Fest Marin Center Exhibit Hall and Fairgrounds, San Rafael; (415) 499-6900, www.marinhomeshow.com. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, $8 (Sat tix include free return on Sun). Not only will there be hundreds of experts in everything from renovation to landscaping on hand to answer all of your home and garden questions, but there will also be live jazz acts to entertain you throughout the weekend. Proceeds benefit Marin County public schools.

JUNE 3

Santa Cruz LGBT Pride March and Rally Starts at Pacific, ends at Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz; (831) 427-4009, www.santacruzpride.org. 11am-5pm, free. Join the largest gathering of queers and allies in Santa Cruz County. Stage lineup includes Frootie Flavors, Nedra Johnson, Twilight Vixen Revue, Horizontes, and Assemblymember John Laird. Valet bike parking provided.

JUNE 6

Strollin’ on Main Street Party Main between St John and Old Bernal, Pleasanton; (925) 484-2199, ext 4, www.pleasantondowntown.net. 6-9pm, free. Stroll down Main Street and visit vendor booths, a beer and wine garden, and a stage where featured band Drive will play.

JUNE 6–AUG 29

Summer Sounds Oakland City Center, adjacent to 12th St/City Center BART Station, Oakl; www.oaklandcitycenter.com. Wed, noon-1pm, free. The Oakland City Center presents a weekly spotlight on an array of diverse musical artists.

JUNE 7–17

San Francisco Black Film Festival Various venues; (415) 771-9271, www.sfbff.org. The festival celebrates African American cinema and the African cultural diaspora by showcasing films by black filmmakers and emphasizing the power of film to foster cultural understanding and initiate progressive social change.

JUNE 8–10

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds,1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa; www.harmonyfestival.com. Fri, 12pm-9pm; Sat, 10am-10pm; Sun, 10am-9pm, $20-149. This year’s theme is "promoting global cooling" boasts an ecovillage offering tips for living and consuming, a well-being pavilion featuring natural remedies, and a culinary showcase of dishes using natural ingredients. Festival-goers can camp onsite and musical highlights include Brian Wilson, Erykah Badu, the Roots, moe., and Rickie Lee Jones.

JUNE 9

Dia de Portugal Festival Kelley Park, San Jose; www.diadeportugal.com. 10am, free. The Portuguese Heritage Society of California presents this annual festival featuring a parade, live music, food and wine, a book and art sale, and more.

Temescal Street Fair Telegraph between 48th and 51st streets, Oakl; (510) 654-6346, ext 2, www.temescalmerchants.com. Noon-5pm, free. This fair will feature live music, crafts, martial arts demonstrations and food samplings from local restaurants, including an Italian beer and wine garden, a tribute to days when the district once flourished with beer gardens and canteens.

JUNE 9–10

Italian Street Painting Festival Fifth Ave at A St, San Rafael; (415) 457-4878, ext 15, www.youthinarts.org. 9am-7pm, free. Street painters paint beautiful and awe-inspiring chalk artwork on the streets of San Rafael.

Live Oak Park Fair Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 898-3282, www.liveoakparkfair.com.10am-6pm, free. Is there a better way to revel in the summertime than to enjoy original arts and crafts, delicious fresh food, and live jazz by Berkeley’s Jazzschool all weekend long in beautiful Live Oak Park? Didn’t think so.

San Jose Gay Pride Festival Discovery Meadow, Guadalupe River Park, San Jose; (408) 278-5563, www.sjgaypride.org. Sat, 10am-6pm, free; Sun, 10:30am, $15. This year’s San Jose pride celebration is two days’ worth of events, speakers, and music, including performances by the Cheeseballs, Average Dyke Band, and Smash-Up Derby. After the parade on Sunday, cruise vendor booths peddling their LGBT-friendly goods and services.

JUNE 9–24

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.worldartswest.org. Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm, $22-36. Performers from around the world converge at the Palace of Fine Arts to bring San Francisco a diverse selection of the world’s most talented dancers, including North Indian Kathak, Cantonese style Chinese lion dance, flamenco, and Middle Eastern belly dance.

JUNE 14–16

Transgender and Queer Performance Festival ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.freshmeatproductions.org. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm, $15. Fresh Meat Productions celebrates its sixth annual festival. This year’s artists perform traditional forms and path-blazing ones: hula, taiko, traditional Colombian dance, aerial dance, spoken word, rock ‘n’ roll, theater, hip-hop, and modern dance.

JUNE 14–17

CBA 32nd Annual Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival Nevada County Fairgrounds, McCourtney, Grass Valley; www.cbaontheweb.org. Ticket prices vary. Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, Cherryholmes, the Del McCoury Band, Dan Paisley and the Southern Grass, Country Current, the US Navy Band, the Dale Ann Bradley Band, and John Reischman and the Jay Birds perform at this California Bluegrass Association bluegrass jamboree.

JUNE 14–24

Frameline31: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival Various venues; (415) 703-8650. www.frameline.org. The 31st annual film festival by and about the LGBT community continues with a whole new program of innovative queer cinema.

JUNE 15–17

International Robogames Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, SF; www.RoboGames.net. Noon-10pm, $15-20. Engineers from around the world return for the fourth annual event listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest robot competition. Featuring 83 different competitions, including 18 just for walking humanoids.

JUNE 16–17

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, 1200-1500 blocks of Grant and adjacent streets; 989-2220, www.sfnorthbeach.org. 10am-6pm, free. Touted as the country’s original outdoor arts and crafts festival, the North Beach Festival celebrates its 53rd anniversary with juried arts and crafts exhibitions and sales, a celebrity pizza toss, live entertainment stages, a cooking stage with celebrity chefs, Assisi animal blessings (Vallejo/Columbus), Arte di Gesso (Italian street chalk art competition, 1500 block Stockton), indoor classical concerts (4 pm, at National Shrine of St Francis), a poetry stage, and more.

San Francisco Free Folk Festival San Francisco City College, North Gym, 50 Phelan, SF; www.sffreefolkfest.org. Noon-10pm, free. Folkies unite for the 31st anniversary of this festival that features local and national artists, dances, open mics, family events, and workshops.

San Francisco Juneteenth Celebration Art of the Fillmore Jazz Presentation District, Fillmore from Geary Blvd to Fulton; 931-2729, www.sfjuneteenth.org. 10am-7pm, free. This Bay Area-wide celebration celebrates African American freedom while encouraging self-development and respect for all cultures. Promoted through a community festival that celebrates and shares African American history and culture through music, the performing arts, living history, and other cultural activities. Seven full blocks of food, arts and crafts, and community and corporate information booths. Three stages of entertainment, educational speakers, and health and job fairs. All neighborhoods welcomed.

BAY AREA

Marin Art Festival Lagoon Park, Marin Center, Ave of the Flags at Civic Center, San Rafael; (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $8. More than 250 fine artists join in at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Center. Look out for the stilt walkers!

Russian River Blues Festival Johnson’s Beach, Guerneville; (952) 866-9599, www.russianriverbluesfest.com. 10am-6pm, $45-180. Head on down to the river for this annual affair featuring Buddy Guy, Little Richard, Koko Taylor, Roy Rogers and the Delta Kings, Lowrider Band, Elvin Bishop, and many others. Festival organizers also invite attendees to indulge in wine tasting for a nominal fee.

JUNE 17

Native Contemporary Arts Festival Esplanade at Yerba Buena Gardens, Fourth St and Mission, SF; (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. 12pm-3pm, free. This fest features amazing performances, plus kids can make their own dream catchers, baskets, and bracelets.

JUNE 17–AUG 19

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove, 19th Ave and Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. Sun 2pm, free. This beloved San Francisco festival celebrating community, nature, and the arts is in its 70th season.

JUNE 20–24

Sonoma-Marin Fair Petaluma Fairgrounds, Petaluma; www.sonoma-marinfair.org. $8-14. This fair promotes and showcases agriculture, while displaying the diverse talents, interests, and accomplishments of the citizens of California, especially the youth of Sonoma and Marin counties. Catch acts such as Cheap Trick, SHe DAISY, and Bowling for Soup on the main stage.

JUNE 22–24

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14480 Hwy 128, Boonville; www.snwmf.com. Three-day pass, $125; camping, $50-100. Camp for three days and listen to the international sounds of Bunny Wailer, Toots and the Maytals, Luciano, Ojos de Brujo, Les Nubian, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars, Junior Kelly, Sugar Minot, and many others.

JUNE 22–JULY 8

Alameda County Fair Alameda County Fairgrounds, 4501 Pleasanton, Pleasanton; (925) 426-7559, www.alamedacountyfair.com. $4-9. Enjoy opening night fireworks, carnival attractions, a wine competition, a karaoke contest, an interactive sports and fitness expo, concerts, and oh so much more.

JUNE 23

Dyke March Dolores Park between 18th and 20th streets, SF; (415) 241-8882, www.dykemarch.org. Rally at 3pm; march at 7pm, free. Head on out to march with the San Francisco chapter of this now internationally coordinated rally. A Dolores Park celebration and rally precedes the march.

JUNE 23–24

San Francisco Pride 2006 Civic Center, Larkin between Grove and McAllister; 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Celebration Sat-Sun, noon-6pm; parade Sun, 10:30am, free. A month of queer-empowering events culminates in this weekend celebration, a massive party with two days of music, food, dancing that continues to boost San Francisco’s rep as a gay mecca. Do not under any circumstances miss the parade!

BAY AREA

Danville Fine Arts Fair Hartz Ave, Danville; (831) 438-4751, www.danvillecachamber.com. 10am-6pm, free. The quintessential arts and crafts fair descends upon Danville each year, bringing with it fine food and drink, Italian-style street painting, and more.

JUNE 23–25

King of the Bay Third Ave, Foster City; www.kingofthebay.com. 1pm, free. See the world’s top kiteboarders and windsurfers compete at this event.

JUNE 23–30

Jazz Camp West 2006 (510) 287-8880, www.jazzcampwest.com. This eight-day jazz program for adults and older teens features more than 100 classes taught by more than 45 nationally and internationally known artists.

JUNE 23–AUG 4

Stanford Jazz Festival Various venues. (650) 736-0324, www.stanfordjazz.org. This acclaimed festival has been injecting Northern California with a healthy dose of both classic and modern jazz for more than three decades.

JUNE 23–SEPT 8

Concert in the Hills Series Cal State East Bay, Concord Campus, 4700 Ygnacio Valley Rd, Concord; (925) 602-8654, www.concord.csueastbay.edu/concertinthehills.htm. Free. This series celebrates its eighth season with performances by acts such as Dr. Loco and His Rockin’ Jalapeño Band, Aja Vu, Joni Morris, and Native Elements.

JUNE 29–JULY 1

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville; (707) 829-7067, www.katewolf.com/festival. Fri, 1pm-midnight; Sat, 10am-11:30pm; Sun, 11am-10pm, $55-160. This annual tribute to Northern California singer-songwriter Kate Wolf, who is credited with repopularizing folk music in the 1970s, features performances by Utah Phillips, Joe Craven and Sam Bevan, the Bills, and many others. Don’t miss the "Hobo Jungle Campfire," a nightly campfire on the creek shore with story swappin’ and song jammin’ aplenty.

JUNE 30–JULY 1

23rd Annual Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. 10am-6pm, free. Three stages of nonstop entertainment featuring top and emerging artists. Ten blocks of art booths and gourmet food.

JUNE 30–JULY 4

Marin County Fair Marin Center, Ave of the Flags at Civic Center, San Rafael; (415) 499-6400, www.marinfair.org. 11am-11pm, $11-13. This county fair stands above the rest with its promise of nightly fireworks, There will be many fun, new competitions to enter this year, including the Dancing Stars Competition, in which contestants may perform any style of dance — from tap to ballroom, salsa to boogie. Also not to be missed is the 18th annual "Creatures and Models" exhibit and the 37th annual "National Short Film and Video Festival," plus food and rides and other fun fair stuff.

JULY 1

Vans Warped Tour 2006 Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View; (650) 967-3000. www.warpedtour.com. 11am, $29.99. As Cities Burn, Bad Religion, Boys Like Girls, Coheed and Cambria, Escape the Fate, Pennywise, the Used, Funeral for a Friend, Revolution Mother, the Matches, and others perform at this annual punk music and culture event.

JULY 3–4

WorldOne Festival Cerrito Vista Park, El Cerrito; www.worldoneradio.org. Mon 5pm, Tue 10:30am, free. Worldoneradio hosts a world music and culture stage in the park. The eighth annual event is produced as a public service and fundraiser for area nonprofits.

JULY 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July Waterfront Celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach, SF; (415) 705-5500, www.pier39.com. 1-9:30pm, free. SF’s waterfront Independence Day celebration features live music, kids’ activities, and an exciting fireworks show.

JULY 5–8

International Working Class Film and Video Festival New College Roxie Media Center, 3117 16th St; www.laborfest.net. Held annually to commemorate the San Francisco general strike of 1934 brings together filmmakers and labor artists from around the United States and internationally.

BAY AREA

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas Fairgrounds, 204 Fairground Rd, Quincy; (510) 595-1115, www.highsierramusic.org. 11am-11pm, $35-156. Enjoy your favorite jam bands on five different stages and at five different late-night venues, a kid zone, arts and crafts, food and drinks, beer, yoga, dancing, camping, and more. The lineup features performances by Xavier Rudd, the Disco Biscuits, Yonder Mountain String Band, Martin Sexton, and Les Claypool.

JULY 6–SEPT 29

Marin Shakespeare Company Festival Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University of California, Grand Ave, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. Fri-Sun, varying times, $7-30. The Marin Shakespeare Company presents its outdoor festival featuring performances of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2.

JULY 10–21

Mendocino Music Festival Various venues; (707) 937-2044, www.mendocinomusic.com. $15-45. David Lindley, Mollie O’Brien, the Chris Cain Quartet, and others celebrate the 21st anniversary of this classical and contemporary music festival.

JULY 12–15

World California Fest Nevada County Fairgrounds, Grass Valley; (530) 891-4098. www.worldfest.net. $30-140. The 11th annual festival features eight stages and four days of music, with performances by everyone from Ani DiFranco to the Venezuelan Music Project. Camping is encouraged.

JULY 13–15

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 777-4908, www.silentfilm.org. Call for times and prices. The Golden Age of the silver screen comes to life, complete with a swelling Wurlitzer.

JULY 14-15

San Francisco International Chocolate Salon Fort Mason Conference Center; www.SFChocolateSalon.com. Sat, 11am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, $20. The first major chocolate show on the West Coast in two decades takes place this summer with the theme Chocolat, in honor of Bastille Day. Experience the finest in artisan, gourmet, and premium chocolate with tastings, demonstrations, chef and author talks, and wine pairings.

BAY AREA

Los Altos Arts and Wine Festival Main and State, Los Altos; (650) 917-9799. www.losaltos-downtown.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, free. Enjoy original art and free entertainment while indulging in gourmet food and fine wine.

San Anselmo Art and Design Festival San Anselmo between Tamalpais and Bolinas, San Anselmo; 1-800-310-6563, www.artanddesignfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. The San Anselmo Chamber of Commerce brings this buffet of cooking, home, and landscape design to the masses.

JULY 19–29

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various venues; (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org. $30-60. The Mozart-only music concert series features pianist Janina Fialkowska, the Haffner Serenades, and the Coronation Mass.

JULY 19–AUG 6

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Various venues; (415) 621-0556, www.sfjff.org. The world’s first and largest Jewish film festival has toured the Bay Area for 27 years.

JULY 21–22

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park; (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. This annual midsummer festival hosts live jazz, R&B, and rock ‘n’ roll as well as arts and crafts, chef demonstrations, international cuisine, and lots of fun for the kids.

JULY 27–29

Gilroy Garlic Festival Christmas Hill Park, Hwy 101, Gilroy; (408) 842-1625, www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $6-12. If 17,000 pounds of garlic bread isn’t enough of a reason to go, then all the other manifestations of this flavorful food are. Gourmet food and cook-offs, as well as free music and children’s activities, entertain you as you munch.

JULY 29

San Francisco Marathon Begins and ends at the Ferry Bldg, Embarcadero, SF; www.runsfm.com. $110 to compete. Tighten your laces for 26.2 miles around the Bay. The less enthusiastic can run a half marathon, 5K, or "progressive marathon," instead.

Up Your Alley Dore Alley between Folsom and Howard, Folsom between Ninth and 10th streets, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm. Hundreds of naughty and nice leather lovers sport their stuff in SoMa at this precursor to the Folsom Street Fair.

AUG 3–5

Reggae on the River Dimmick Ranch, French’s Camp, Hwy 101, Piercy, Humboldt County; (707) 923-4583, www.reggaeontheriver.com. $165-225. Further details pending. This year’s riverside roots and reggae fest features the Roots, Shaggy, Angelique Kidjo, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Mad Professor, the Itals, Eek-A-Mouse, Sierre Leone’s Refugee Allstars, and many others.

Reggae Rising Dimmick Ranch, French’s Camp, Hwy 101, Piercy, Humboldt County; www.reggaerising.com. $175 for a 3 day pass. Further details pending. This new summer festival will benefit various nonprofit groups in this southern Humboldt community and features Damian Marley, Sly and Robbie, Tanya Stephens, Fantan Mojah, and more.

AUG 4–5

Aloha Festival San Francisco Presidio Parade Grounds, near Lincoln at Graham, SF; www.pica-org.org/AlohaFest/index.html. 10am-5pm, free. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association presents its annual Polynesian cultural festival featuring music, dance, arts, crafts, island cuisine, exhibits, and more.

AUG 9–12

Redwood Empire Fair Redwood Empire Fairgrounds, 1055 N State, Ukiah; (707) 462-3884, www.redwoodempirefair.com. Noon-11pm, $3-6. Bring the family to this old-timey fair, complete with rides, food, and fun.

AUG 10–12

Comcast San Jose Jazz Festival Various venues; (408) 288-7557, www.sanjosejazz.org. $5. This three-day music festival hosts dozens of acclaimed musicians playing all flavors of jazz.

AUG 11

SEEN Festival 2006 People’s Park, Telegraph and Dwight, Berk; (510) 938-2463, www.maxpages.com/seen2000. 11:30am-5pm, $5 suggested donation. This year marks the 12th anniversary of this world music, reggae, and soul festival.

AUG 11–12

Nihonmachi Street Fair Japantown Center, Post and Webster, SF; (415) 771-9861, www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Japantown’s 34th annual celebration of the Bay Area’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities continues this year with educational booths and programs, local musicians and entertainers, exhibits, and artisans.

Pistahan Yerba Buena Gardens, 700 Howard, SF; www.ybgf.org. 11am-5pm, free. The Bay Area Filipino festival of culture and cuisine features arts and crafts, live entertainment, food, and more.

Vintage Paper Fair Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Ninth Ave at Lincoln, SF; (323) 883-1702, www.vintagepaperfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, free. Craft lovers will enjoy this fair, which presents works made from all kinds of paper — from photographs, postcards, and memorabilia to brochures and trade cards.

AUG 18–19

Solfest Solar Living Institute,13771 S Hwy 101, Hopland; (707)744-2017, www.solfest.org. "The greenest show on earth" is back for another year featuring exhibits about renewable energy, green building, ecodesign tools, organic agriculture, and much more.

SEPT 1–2

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae; (650) 697-7324, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-5pm, free. More than 100,000 visitors will gather for this festive Mardi Gras-style celebration featuring R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and soul music, as well as arts and crafts, food and beverages, live performance, and activities for kids.

SEPT 8–9

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival Castro between El Camino Real and Evelyn Ave, Mountain View; (650) 968-8378, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Known as one of America’s finest art festivals, this vibrant celebration featuring art, music, and a kids’ park draws more than 200,000 arts lovers to Silicon Valley’s epicenter.

SEPT 9

Solano Stroll Solano Ave, Berk and Albany; (510) 527-5358, www.SolanoStroll.org. 10am-6pm, free. The vibes are always mellow and the air filled with rhythm at the Solano Ave Stroll. In its 33rd year, the milelong block party will feature a pancake breakfast, booths, entertainers, a parade, and more, this year with the Going Green — It’s Easy! theme.

SEPT 15

Expo for the Artist and Musician SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 861-5302; artsandmedia.net. 11am-6pm. This eighth annual event, sponsored by Independent Arts and Media, is the Bay Area’s only grassroots connection fair for independent arts, music, and culture, featuring workshops, performances, and networking.

SEPT 22

California Poets Festival History Park San Jose, 1650 Center, San Jose; californiapoetsfestival.org. 10am-4:30pm, free. Celebrate California’s distinctive heritage of poets, poetry, and presses at this all-day outdoor festival. *

Compiled by Nathan Baker, Angela Bass, Sam Devine, Molly Freedenberg, and Chris Jasmin

MCMAF: Renewable source

May 1, 2007

Van Halen may have made it into the music record books for Most Ridiculous Tour Rider for their demand for M&Ms picked free of the turdlike brown numbers. But musician-director Vincent Gallo might make the rock hitmakers jump with his own Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival must-have. "I’m not going to show you his rider," festival founder Jeff Ray says wryly. "It’s a little crazy."

"Oh, c’mon," I say, perched on a couch in the red and yellow office in Ray’s Mission flat. Stringed instruments, an organ, books, artwork, and the other tools and artifacts of an active musician and artist compete with the stuff of the festival – a paper schedule that winds around one wall, MCMAF posters with artwork by Jo Jackson, Andrew Schoultz, and Cliff Hengst (Leslie Shows offered a collage for this year’s), and beer bottles and empties marking many busy, late nights – that has threatened to swallow Ray’s creative energies since it began 11 years ago. Ray’s cat Panther, which he describes as bipolar, dozes drooling on my jacket – if that feline can give it up, surely he can.

"You can say I’m trying to track down a coin-operated arcade horse," he admits.

Attempting to please and showcase the many, radically varied, wild, and woolly musicians and artists who participate in the festival is part of the MCMAF mission – along with presenting a lineup that’s made of 80 percent local emerging creators. And the creek runs uphill: this year’s event includes Nevada City artists such as Mariee Sioux and Cafe Beautierre, as well as a "folky-centric" slant focusing on solo artists such as Gary Higgins, who was initially discovered by Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire and is coming to California for the first time. Energized by volunteer and guest curators such as the Plug Research label, Ray and John Fellman, the festival’s main programmers, continue to compel ex-San Francisco music scenesters such as, say, Devendra Banhart, who will judge the music video awards, and introduce new streams: a dance mavericks program and a brass band parade through the Mission that will end with a festival celebrating sustainable energy and installation art in Dolores Park.

The faces of the volunteers may change, the groups may wander off or move on, but a few things remain. "It’s the same every year," Ray says. "Chaos, spontaneity, intuition, inspiration, mixed with pragmatic people who have stronger organizing skills than I do." And after more than a decade, he knows how he might define a successful event at this most grassroots of local music gatherings – with bands as varied as Comets on Fire and Kid 606, Lemonade and Petracovich, Acid Mothers Temple and Bran Pos, David Copperfuck and Subtle: a solid show has to have "mostly good vibes. And no one gets killed. No club catches on fire. And if we don’t go too much in debt, that’s a good thing." (Kimberly Chun)

For a complete schedule of the 11th annual Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival (May 10-20), go to www.mcmf.org. Check www.sfbg.com/blogs/music for more Mission Creek festival coverage.

Full of Zizek

May 1, 2007

Despite Sigmund Freud’s strong distrust of cinema ("I do not consider it possible to represent our abstractions graphically in any respectable manner," he firmly wrote in a letter to an inquiring film producer), Freudian psychoanalytic theory – primarily as reread by the French analyst Jacques Lacan – has come to form the bedrock of much academic film criticism and theory since the 1960s. Anyone who has had a brush with a film class in college has probably gotten an earful of 50-cent concepts such as scopohilia, suture, fantasy, and everyone’s favorite chew toy of power, the phallus.

If you didn’t take notes the first time around, you might want to while watching Sophie Fiennes’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, a veritable crash course on what film can tell us about psychoanalysis and what psychoanalysis can (and sometimes can’t) tell us about film. Fiennes may be listed as the director and producer, but this monster of a clip reel is really the baby of its host and our tour guide, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek.

Ursine in stature and always slightly disheveled, Zizek is no stranger to the camera. In Astra Taylor’s somewhat worshipful documentary, Zizek! (2005), he delivered his mile-a-minute thought trains, encompassing everything from ethnic jokes to Hegel, with a brusqueness befitting a football coach and the on-the-fly reflexes of a standup comic. Zizek is in similar form in Pervert’s Guide, which isn’t so much a guide as a meandering recapitulation of some of his major talking points, first laid down in books such as Looking Awry and Enjoy Your Sinthome!

Zizek’s central thesis is that film is our most perverted art form, since it doesn’t really tell us what to desire but rather how to desire. Using an array of snippets – from The Exorcist to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Charlie Chaplin films to vintage Disney cartoons – Zizek illustrates how cinema is the ultimate fantasy machine (which sometimes produces films about fantasy machines. See: Tarkovsky). We project our desires onto the events and characters we watch, Zizek explains, inasmuch as those desires are already psychically inscribed long before they are played out onscreen. Film often literalizes these psychic structures or, at the very least, sets them into relief.

As in his books, here Zizek will often take a basic question or proposition (such as "Why is the only good woman a dead woman?" – when discussing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo), and turn it inside out, revealing the hidden issue that was actually being addressed or occluded all along ("Because men contain the threat of desire by mortifying their objects of desire: women").

Hitchcock and Lacan make many appearances, being that they are two of Zizek’s favorite bedfellows – the man wrote a book about both. (Zizek has a go at David Lynch now and then, but his readings of Lynch’s "primal scenes" and "terrorizing, clownish father figures" are a little pat.) It is not surprising, then, that some of his most brilliant insights and close readings are delivered on his many return trips to Bodega Bay, the decrepit Bates’s manse, and Judy Barton’s neon-illuminated room at the York Hotel in Vertigo.

Fiennes’s one trick (and granted, it’s an effective one) is to do this literally, casually placing Zizek within mock-ups of the scenes that he has discussed. We see Zizek in Melanie Daniels’s skiff puttering across Bodega Bay; next he’s alongside Regan’s bed from The Exorcist; later he’s speaking from the fruit cellar of Norman Bates’s house, or Dorothy Vallens’s apartment in Blue Velvet, or the dimensionless white field where Neo instantaneously summons weapons in The Matrix. This playful technique helps cut through some of the density of Zizek’s more arcane points, and occasionally, we catch the man off guard, cracking cheesy Freudian one-liners about the inherent obscenity of tulips (while watering a garden a la the opening scene of Blue Velvet).

It is not just that Zizek is as well-versed in Lacan as he is in Hitchcock – or that he casts his critical eye toward topics both high and low – that has made him such a popular figure, even with nonacademics. (Zizek is, as far as I know, the only intellectual to be interviewed for Abercrombie and Fitch’s now-defunct Quarterly). This intellectually challenging, often entertaining, and at times draining lecture-posing-as-a-documentary proves at least one thing: Zizek’s combination of disarming charisma and utter seriousness makes him as entrancing as his arguments are compelling.

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA

Thurs/3-Fri/4, 7 p.m.; Sat/5, 2 and 7 p.m.; Sun/6, 2 p.m.; $6-$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

The four men in “The Iron Mask”

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April 25, 2007
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When The Iron Mask screens at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, four disparate cinematic personalities will merge – three in spirit and one in the flesh.

Now 68, Kevin Brownlow made his first feature film, 1966’s It Happened Here, while in his 20s and subsequently published two books, one (How It Happened Here) on the making of that movie and another (The Parade’s Gone By) featuring interviews with silent-era filmmakers and stars. At that time, the silent era was almost like a technical glitch to be overcome and forgotten. But Brownlow would soon help immortalize great early works through his interviews and his pioneering skills as a restorer.

At the Castro Theatre, Brownlow (the recipient of the SF Film Society’s Mel Novikoff Award, whose latest movie, Cecil B. DeMille: American Epic, also screens at this year’s festival) will present 1929’s The Iron Mask. That movie’s star, Douglas Fairbanks, had an effortlessly cheery, energetic onscreen persona, performing his own, Jackie Chan-like stunts. He also ran a tight ship offscreen, controlling nearly every aspect of his business empire. When Fairbanks began planning his extravagant 1922 film Robin Hood, with its record million-dollar budget, director Allan Dwan landed in the driver’s seat. A crackerjack action man, Dwan could keep up with Fairbanks and move things at a brisk pace; Dwan would go on to direct about 400 films, most of them considerably cheaper.

Fairbanks hired Dwan once again for The Iron Mask, a follow-up to 1921’s The Three Musketeers in which Fairbanks would reprise his role as D’Artagnan. The film is not without its breezy, exciting moments, but by this time Fairbanks was 46 and beginning to slow down. He seemed to understand that his antics no longer coincided with the times; his D’Artagnan is a bit long in the tooth and meets a less heroic ending than does the typical Fairbanks hero. Concurrently, talkies had begun to draw the curtain on silent pictures. Fairbanks recorded two talking interludes for the film, which only add to its heartbreaking, elegiac nature. When The Iron Mask was restored, the great modern composer Carl Davis, whose work currently graces a number of silent movies on DVD, recorded a 42-piece orchestral score worthy of the film’s energy and its melancholy. Fortunately, as Brownlow will no doubt demonstrate, it’s possible to see the film with new eyes. In that, there’s no reason to be sad. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

CECIL B. DEMILLE: AMERICAN EPIC Sat/28, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

THE IRON MASK: AN AFTERNOON WITH KEVIN BROWNLOW Sat/28, 2 p.m., Castro. $9-$12

KEVIN BROWNLOW: AN INTRODUCTION TO SILENTS Sun/29, 5:30 p.m., PFA

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