California

Editorial: CPMC’s stunning arrogance

Maria Poblet
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The San Francisco City Planning Commission hearing June 9 on California Pacific Medical Center’s expansion plans was remarkable — both in the comments that the commissioners had and in the mind-boggling arrogance of the giant hospital chain.

CPMC wants to build a massive new hospital and medical office building on Van Ness Avenue and rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission. The plans aren’t even close to complying with city planning codes — the Sutter Health affiliate will need city approval to exceed height limits on Van Ness (by more than 100 feet); a modification of the housing construction requirement for new offices; permission to demolish existing housing units; permission to take over a part of San Jose Avenue — and a lot more. In other words, CPMC is asking a lot from the city.

And since this nonprofit controls four major hospitals in the city, its future development decisions need to be considered in the context of San Francisco’s overall health care needs.

It’s entirely reasonable that the city ask CPMC for a development agreement that provides benefits to city residents. Mayor Ed Lee has made it clear that the approval of this project will depend on whether CPMC can address affordable housing, healthcare access for low-income people, a secure future for St. Luke’s, workforce development, and transportation impacts. Lee’s proposals are more than reasonable: he’s asking that CPMC pay the standard fee for affordable housing required of any major commercial developer; increase its level of charity care (now an abysmal 0.99 percent) to the average of other regional hospitals (2.3 percent); increase its Medical acceptance rate; and maintain St. Luke’s as an acute care facility with an emergency room. Union nurses are asking that Sutter deal with them in good faith.

But Dr. Warren Browner, CEO of CPMC, showed little interest in working with the city. The demands are way too high, he told the commissioners, insisting that it was unreasonable to ask the hospital to contribute that much to affordable housing. He acted as if CMPC was somehow entitled to move forward — at its own proposed schedule — and that all of these city demands were nonsense.

That’s not going to work.

A clear majority of the commissioners got the point. As Ron Miguel pointed out, Sutter is a nonprofit — and its tax-exempt status mandates a certain level of social responsibility. Every big commercial developer has to pay for housing and transit impacts. Gwyneth Borden and Bill Sugaya noted that hospital officials knew full well what the planning rules were when they bought the Van Ness site.

This is a $2.5 billion project. Community benefits need to be a significant part of the final plan. If anything, Lee’s proposals are too limited (Sutter should agree to protect St. Luke’s for 50 years, not 20). The planning commissioners should stick to their positions — this project is out of control, and if Browner wants to see it built, he needs to come back with a new set of numbers, and a new attitude.

 

Ten good bills for 2011

Zelda Bronstein
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Ten good bills for 2011

The news in Sacramento is mostly bad — Jerry Brown still can’t find the Republicans he needs to pass a budget, although maybe the redistricting process will help him. But it’s not all bad. Some important bills passed their houses of origin in the past week, and with Democrats controlling both the Senate and the Assembly and a Democratic governor, there’s actually a chance they could become law.


At the top of my list is the measure by Darrel Steinberg that could allow counties and school districts to raise a wide range of taxes. It is, as Sen. Mark Leno notes, a “game changer.” And it only requires a simple majority of both houses. (I wonder: Could the San Francisco supervisors put a tax measure on the ballot in November on the assumption that the Steinberg bill will be in effect by then?) If the GOP won’t budge on the budget, the Dems need to at least give local government the chance to find the resources to keep essential services running.


Assemblymember Tom Ammiano got AB 9, also known as Seth’s Law, approved on the Assembly floor. The measure, named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old gay student from Tehachipi who suffered years of harassment and abuse, gives school districts the tools (and the mandate) to address bullying.


The Assembly also approved Ammiano’s AB 889, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which gives domestic workers the same basic labor-law protections as other California workers, and AB 1081, the TRUST Act, which would allow California counties to opt out of S-Comm, the awful federal law that seeks to force local cops to become ICE agents.


Over at the state Senate, Mark Leno won approval for 11 bills, including SB 914, which would mandate that police get a warrant before searching the data on a person’s cell phone. It’s crazy that SB 914 is even necessary, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that, while you need a warrant to search a personal computer, you don’t need one to search a cell phone. SB 790 makes it easier for local agencies to form Community Choice Aggregation systems. SB 819 would give the state more authority to take firearms away from people who have committed felonies or have been institutionalized for mental illness. (The NRA’s going to hate this bill — felons have the right to guns, too …) SB 233 — another one I really like — gives local government the right to impose vehicle license fees.


Sen. Leland Yee won overwhelming support for SB 8, which mandates that foundations affiliated with the University of California, Cal State or community college campuses abide by the same public records laws as the schools themselves. (The Sarah Palin speaking fees bill.) SB 364, which requires corporations that get tax breaks for job creation to prove they’ve actually created jobs. SB 9 — another one that ought to be a no-brainer — ends the practice of giving juvenile offenders sentences of life without parole.


Seems likely all of these will emerge from the remaining house — and then we’ll see whether Brown is willing to sign progressive legislation.


 

Dick Meister: The battle of our generation

Maria Poblet
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President Bob King of the United Auto Workers union is proving again that he’s one of our most astute labor leaders, a worthy occupant of the position once held by the legendary Walter Reuther.

King’s latest column in Solidarity, the UAW’s official magazine, certainly proves that. King writes about the severe weakening of the union rights that are supposedly guaranteed all working people – the right to organize. King calls that “the first amendment for workers.”

That basic and essential right was granted U.S. workers by the National Labor Relations Act – the NLRA – that was enacted in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures that were designed in part to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

But now, says UAW President King, the NLRA’s basic process for determining whether workers want to organize – having them vote for or against unionization – is “fatally flawed.” King says the National Labor Relations Board ­–­ the NLRB – which is charged with enforcing the NLRA, does not do that – “does not protect workers’ right to organize.”

Workers’ lack of adequate legal protection is not a new development, as King notes. It’s been a serious problem for several decades. Since the 1970s, employers have been allowed to hire anti-union consultants “to design sophisticated ways to intimidate workers trying to organize.”

Boy, have they. Supervisors are trained to put pressure on individual workers to vote against unionizing. Workers are forced to attend meetings where they are warned of the dire consequences they’ll face if they vote for unionizing. Employers threaten to close down if their employees vote for a union. Union supporters are commonly disciplined, sometimes fired. And employer lawyers “find thousands of excuses for delaying elections. “

King needn’t look beyond his own union for examples of the NLRB’s ineffectiveness against the dictatorial actions of employers against unions. He could cite hundreds of cases involving the UAW.

For instance, last August, six years after the UAW lost a union election by just three votes at a facility in North Carolina, the NLRB finally ordered a new election “because the employer violated the law in more than a dozen ways.” The violations included threatening to do away with the jobs held by union supporters, spying on workers’ meetings and interrogating workers about union activity.

By now, however, all 25 members of the union’s organizing committee have left for other jobs, most union supporters have been fired, laid off or quit. And the new election still hasn’t been scheduled.

Another example involves a California facility. Seventy percent of the workers there signed union membership cards, but were so intimidated by management that only 19 workers out of 161 dared vote for UAW representation.

King says the union is “returning to its roots of direct action on behalf of workers rights.” Which is no small matter, given the UAW’s influential position within the labor movement.

The union is demanding that “all corporations, whether American or foreign-owned, allow their workers to freely decide whether to organize.”

King calls that “the battle of our generation,” as it surely is. He says “the battle for the First Amendment right to organize will determine the survival of the labor movement. It is the mission of our generation of trade unionists to secure these rights for future generations. We must win this fight for our children and grandchildren.”

King and other UAW officers are going to “call upon each and every member to give some time – perhaps two hours a week – to participate in public demonstrations for the First Amendment.”

The union also will be seeking the support of workers and their unions in other countries, since the UAW is dealing with companies whose owners are in Japan, Korea and Germany and whose products are sold worldwide. The UAW will in turn support the struggles of foreign workers for union rights in their countries, as part of “the global fight to force corporations to respect workers’ right to organize.”

It’s important to remember the UAW’s crucial role in helping establish a true middle class in this country through its organizing of the auto industry. That led workers in other industries to also demand – and get – decent wages, benefits and working conditions.

UAW President King thinks his union can lead the way again, this time to reforms that will protect and expand the union rights that the autoworkers and others won seven decades ago. Those are the rights that had so much to do with the rise of a true middle class, whose standing is now endangered by the anti-union onslaughts of employers and their government allies.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

Pelosi says S-Comm is a waste of taxpayer dollars

Mary Magee
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Pelosi says S-Comm is a waste of taxpayer dollars

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called the fed’s troubled “Secure Communities” program a waste of money, as members of Congress held a press conference in Los Angeles to call for a suspension of the program. Illinois, New York and Massachusetts have already announced their withdrawal from S-Comm, following numerous reports that the program has led to non-criminal immigrants and even victims of domestic violence being caught up in the fed’s deportation dragnet, resulting in a chilling effect on community-police relations. And then there are the accusations that the feds engaged in systematic lying and dishonesty when it came to the question of whether states and municipalities can opt-out of the program. So, today Gov. Jerry Brown is being asked to end California’s participation, too.

Or as Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, put it, “What started as an effort to uncover the truth about S-Comm has evolved into a consensus view that the program should be scrapped all together. S-Comm has come to symbolize the President’s broken promises on immigration reform. The fact is that it has not yet been frozen is now being viewed as a betrayal and places the urgent need to end the program on the desk of our local officials. Our local officials were misled into the program and now is the time to lead us out. The tide is turning on the dangerous and dishonest ‘Secure Communities’ program. ICE has gotten into the snake oil business. It sold S-Comm to the American public under false pretenses.  It makes communities less safe, it imperils civil rights, and it is poisoning political efforts to reform unjust immigration laws.  Today, Rep. Becerra and the other Congresspeople said very clearly that this program has no place in California or anywhere in our democracy. We must prevent the Arizonification of our community whether it comes in the form of SB 1070 or S-Comm. There is an urgent need for California to do better for its residents and to suspend S-Comm immediately.”

New album review! EMA!

Sue Vaughan
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New album review! EMA!

EMA

Past Life Martyred Saints

(Souterrain Transmissions)

 In a recent post on her blog – “lookit that came outta nowhere”, still humbly hosted on WordPress – Erika M. Anderson shares a letter she received from a soldier. “I want to live but i don’t mind dying at the same time / I feel like you and me are the same in that way / Two misfits like two submarines in the sky.” The lines possess some of the quiet force of Anderson’s music, though her lyrics are more firmly rooted in the body: mishaps with men, throw up, a butterfly knife. Anderson wears her initials on a big gold chain for the album art of Past Life Martyred Saints, and as an artist she goes by EMA.

That “misfit extending a hand” vibe is one that Anderson nurtures throughout her solo-debut and Internet presence. Online, she describes growing up “in the dive bars and rotten graveyards of South Dakota” and then fleeing to the West Coast. One song in, and she’s ready to proclaim: “Fuck California, you made me boring.” It’s the most memorable line on the album and one that introduces Anderson’s steady, chanting voice and droning electric guitar.

Listening to Past Life Martyred Saints is like taking that cross-country road trip with Anderson. Though most of the album’s songs run less than four minutes long, they roll with slow shifts in tone as a lamenting Anderson bumps into another stray voice, instrument, or clamoring industrial sound. Odd turns of phrase crop up like eerie landmarks among long stretches of repetition (“Mama’s in the bedroom, don’t you stop” eight times, followed by seven rounds of “you feel just like a breeze to me…”).

Anderson said she “wanted to make a piece that changes fidelity in the middle of the song, from lo-fi to hi-fi,” specifically on opener “Grey Ship.” These cycling crescendos and transitions yield the album’s best moments as she gracefully molds expanses of white space. It’s as if someone threw the xx off a cliff, and Erika M. Anderson got up, dusted herself off and picked up a guitar. (David Getman)

Terrible news from Rock Rapids, Iowa

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And so some terrible news went out yesterday and today  from Rock Rapids, Iowa.

I can’t remember such agitation and anguish  amongst the alumni of our little hometown in northwest Iowa.

The emails were hot and heavy and sad because the Sportsman’s Lounge, a landmark institution and the meeting place and local pub  for locals and alumni,  had burned down on Monday and the police were investigating possible arson. As Darryl Freed, class of 1953, ex backshop ace  at the Lyon County Reporter and helicopter pilot in Vietnam, put it in an email update: “This is a catastrophe of biblical proportions.”  It was particularly poignant because the alumni were coming back to town in a few days for Heritage Days, the town’s big annual celebration, and their favorite hangout would be a burned patch off of Main Street.

Here’s the story from Sioux Falls television  station KSFY:

http://www.ksfy.com/category/185294/video?clipId=5930074&autostart=true

Everyone went to the Sportsman’s Lounge, sooner or later.  I say sooner or later because some of the more proper young and older ladies  woiuldn’t set foot in the place, a bit  rowdy and lots of  drinking. Then their alumni friends came back to town and they had to go to the lounge if they wanted to see them.

Everyone had a favorite story about the lounge. My favorite involved Ted Fisch, class of 1952, scrappy center on the 195l football team, member in good standing of the fabled  Hermie Casjens gang. Ted  was back in town for  a class reunion and Heritage Days.   He ambled  up to the bar and asked for a glass of red wine.  The wine was promptly produced and Ted drank it down.  He then asked for another.  Sorry, the bartender said, we don’t have any more wine. So there was Ted Fisch, just in from Redondo Beach, Calif., unable to get more than one glass of wine at his hometown bar.

Next year, Ted showed up and asked for a glass of wine. This time, the lounge folk  were ready for him and they had a shelf  and backroom full of good California wines. Ted had two glasses. This was classic Rock Rapids humor and we told the story again and again through the years, always noting it happened in the bar at the Sportsman’s Lounge.

Losing the Sportsman’s Lounge is like losing an old friend you have known for years or that you played football or basketball with in high school.  This was the case with Doug Peterson, a retired naval officer  now living near Mount Shasta, California, when he got word that the lounge had burned to the ground.  He recalled that he was a halfback and Darrel (Tank) Wilken was the lineman who opened up holes for him back on late 1950s teams. Tank was the guy who founded the lounge, Doug said.   Tank went off to Alaska to work as a guide and rented out the lounge. Tank died when his  plane crashed on takeoff in Alaska. The lounge was sold and changed hands several times through the years.

Doug is bringing his fiancee, Kathryn Thornton, back to Rock Rapids for the first time for Heritage Days and his 50th class reunion. She told me in an email that she is “devastated” that the Sportsman’s Lounge will be gone. She said she’d heard all the stories for so long about the lounge from Doug and me (she was a longtime consultant to the Guardian). Now she feels cheated because she missed by a few days seeing what we were talklng about with such affection.

The good thing is that the lounge  never seemed to change. It always had a musty 1960s look and feel.  I swear that every time I came in through the years that the “Leave it to Beaver”  reruns were  playing on the television set above the  bar.This was a nice  local touch because the star of the show, Jerry Mathers, had been born in Rock Rapids in the late 1940s  when his father Norman Mathers coached high school  football and basketball, including my power house  junior high team.  The tv  scenes of the rambunctious Beaver could have been set in Rock Rapids and  Beaver could have fit in nicely with the  Hermie Casjens gang.   Local columnist Ken Barker has figured this all out and is leading the charge to bring Jerry Mathers back to town for Heritage Days next year.

My favorite  connection to the lounge  was Larry Raddle and basketball.    He and his wife Barb owned and managed the place for years (Larry at the bar and Barb doing fried chicken in the back,) Larry and I played basketball together through junior high and then on the famous high school  teams of l95l-53. We were the same size, 6 foot 4 inches. When  we came out of the locker room, with our band playing “On Rock Rapids,” and Larry would dunk the ball, we often had the game won before the opening whistle.   I couldn’t quite dunk the ball but I had a deadly left hand hook shot.

Whenever I was in town, I would show up at the lounge  for the special martini he would make for me. We would talk about our team and why we never made it to the state tournament.  I always made the same point,  Larry, you needed a jump shot. (Jump shots weren’t used in our day, alas.)

When I first asked if he could make me a good martini,  Larry said, how  about a Pete Appel special? Sure, I replied. I knew  Pete worked at the Rock Rapids State Bank down the street and so I figured I couldn’t go wrong.   The Pete Appel special turned out to be my first triple martini,  light on the vermouth.   Soon, I was staring at five triple martinis stacked up in front me at the bar.   I had became part of the lounge  tradition:  whenever a visiting  alumnus stood at the bar, drinking with gusto,  the locals would buy another of the same drink and send it quietly along the bar to the drinker. I was never quite sure who was buying me triple martinis, so I waved thanks and tried to get them to stop. 

Larry knew the town and he knew his customers.  In the summer, he would have the farmers bring in their sweet corn and pile the ears up on a table near the door.   On Christmas Eve, he would close the lounge at 6 p.m. sharp and kick everybody out.  “I couldn’t stand the wives calling up on Christmas Eve and asking for their husbands to come home,”  he told me. Larry’s customers always got home in time for Christmas Eve.

The Sportsman’s Lounge, RIP.

I hope Editor  Jodie Hoogeveen of  the Lyon County Reporter, the excellent small town weekly  just around the block from the lounge, will figure out how to do a proper obituary. Or maybe it’s a story for the lively newsletter of the Lyon County Historical Society.  I hope the obit will give us the ownership and historical lineage of the lounge and tell us about the life and good  times of this indispensable institution that may be gone for good.  My line is the same as always: You don’t have to go to England to enjoy a good neighborhood pub.  You can  go to the Sportsman’s Lounge in Rock Rapids, Iowa.  b3

Sing out, sister

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Sing out, sister

culture@sfbg.com

BAR CRAWLER Until last week, I’d never set foot in a karaoke lounge. It wasn’t exactly on purpose; it was just something — like using dryer sheets and eating those little lathed carrots prepackaged with swimming pools of ranch dressing — that never occurred to me.

This is not a story where, by the end, I uncover a newfound talent and become an instant rock star. Turns out, karaoke is hard — and commands a hardcore following of seriously legit singers. But after one whirlwind karaoke tour of the city, I found that it can be tons of fun for the rest of us too.

 

ENCORE KARAOKE LOUNGE

A friend enlisted for guidance and moral support assured me the first stop on our Friday night list would be mellow. So mellow, in fact, that when we entered from the still-light evening, about six people were watching a surprisingly spot-on rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miz. Next, a potbellied beer-in-hander stepped up for some Led Zeppelin. The patrons were singles and couples, none of the giggly groups of girls I expected. The lights, however, were just what I expected: over-the-top and outdated all at once. The tables were sticky and the drinks were predictably terrible (but cheap). The overall experience seemed like a cozily trashy movie-scene karaoke pastiche.

1150 California, SF. (415) 775-0442. www.encorekaraokesf.com

 

(Click here for larger Google map.)

THE MINT

Though this be-spangled Mid-Market spot reprised Encore’s small, watery drinks, there was nothing cozy about it. The Mint is on the tip of everyone’s karaoke tongue, so it was packed almost beyond maneuverability with fratty types and hipsters galore, who were too busy huddling in little beanie-topped clusters to pay attention to the stage: no fun for veteran singers of big booming anthems, but potentially good for first-timers.

I hadn’t yet worked up the courage to sing, but my friend joked that if nothing else, I could do “Bicycle Built for Two.” Well, no shit: 40,000 songs to pick from, and someone with mismatched thigh-highs and a fuzzy panda hat beat me to it. Galvanized, I submitted a slip for “American Pie,” which I figured might arouse the passion — or, at least, compassion — of even the most blasé in attendance. When I wasn’t called in 30 minutes, I took it as a signal to duck out with my dignity intact.

1942 Market, SF. (415) 626-4726. www.themint.net

 

FESTA WINE AND KARAOKE LOUNGE

Next, we headed to Japantown for a more authentic experience. Festa fit that bill, according to our one companion with bona fide Tokyo chops. It’s a surprise to walk into Festa — with its twinkling LED stars, cityscape wall motif, and lustrous dark décor — from the deserted second floor of Japantown’s mall-like Japan Center. With five bartenders for an intimate 30 seats, Festa definitely has an upscale vibe. Most of the women wore heels and cocktail dresses, and the cocktails were likewise elevated, both in price and quality. It took a Bellini, lychee martini, and sake-tini to precondition my vocal chords.

The song list was extensive but lacked my planned-on Don McLean classic — which seemed out-of-place anyway amid such a demure crowd. Billy Joel’s “Entertainer” popped into my head because it’s light and mercifully fast. With hardly a wait, I was twanging, left leg trembling, a good half-octave below where my voice stops sounding like a woman’s and starts sounding like the Marlboro Man’s. I got a rush of mercy applause and swept my friends out the door.

1825A Post, SF. (415) 567-5866. www.festalounge.com

 

500 CLUB

More than a week passed, and I was ready to go it alone. For a low-key bar with a neighborhood vibe, 500 Club is perfect. Karaoke Sundays start when the afternoon light is still streaming through large windows and a Tecate on the crowded benches feels just right. Audience participation — including some friendly heckling — is big here, and the singers heckle right back. Be warned: the front row, which is nearly every seat in the joint, is something akin to Sea World’s splash zone. You may be personally serenaded, implored to sing backup, or even humped a bit — all in good fun.

500 Guerrero, SF. (415) 861-2500. www.500clubsf.com

 

PANDORA

Pandora begs a reference to the overstuffed box, and it’s appropriate: this bar has it all — in a good way. Bins brim with cymbals, tambourines, silly hats, and other props. Candy Land and Jenga top a stack of board games. Flat-screen TVs flash the night’s basketball scores. A disco ball sprinkles light over sleek silver couches, low coffee tables, and a posh lit-up bar.

Cold comfort

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Cold comfort

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I write to you from Dot’s Diner in Jefferson Parish, La. Hedgehog is getting her knee looked at down the road, and I thought I would find me a place to sit that wasn’t the waiting room. Or a pool hall. Or bar. Or fast food joint or automotive shop. Or warehouse, thrift store, or — but only because it’s 9:30 a.m. and I ain’t the slightest bit hungry — a fried seafood shack or po-boy shop.

Jefferson’s got good eats in its own right. Crabby Jack’s is here, and at the French Canadian Quarter Festival this spring they fed me the best boudin I ever had, but at 9:30 a.m. the only way you can get a table, apparently, is if you’re an upside-down chair.

If it were 10 a.m. or even three hours later, I would have been in heaven. All’s I really required was a good strong cup a coffee and a seat, but this ain’t California or Seattle or even New Orleans. It’s the parish, as the locals call it, where you can’t exactly sit down without having a meal.

But how pretentious of them to refer to their parish as “the parish.” Don’t you think that’s pretty arrogant? Louisiana has a lot of parishes. They’re like counties everywhere else.

Whatever, I’m sure you’re more interested in what I’ve been eating San Franciscowise than Dot’s Diner’s biscuit with a fried egg on top, smothered in crawfish julie.

I will tell you: duck soup.

As always I have been on the prowl, trying to find the city’s best bowl of cold medicine and antidepressant.

It ain’t at Big Lantern here in the ‘hood, I can promise you that. Me and Hedgehog went there the last time we were in the city together, and I was fighting a cold. A fight, by the way, that I lost.

I’m human. I get sick. In fact, I get sick more than most people, being not only human but a hypochondriac. (Not that I’ve been diagnosed with hypochondria. I can just tell I have it.)

Anyway, I had wanted to show Hedgehog something special like Zuni, Delfina, or Slanted Door, but I felt too much like crap to eat anything but duck noodle soup, pea sprouts in garlic, and string beans with smoked pork.

There were dumplings, too. I forget what they were called on the dim sum menu. Some kind of “little buns,” I think. The ones that were soupy inside, they were great, but some weren’t so soupy. They had lost their juice. Not so great.

I can’t really complain about the duck soup because it wasn’t technically on the menu. Nor was it all that half bad. But the pea sprouts needed a lot of doctoring to taste like anything, and the beans with smoked pork were some of the worst things ever. About half of the beans were lifelessly old tough shriveled ones, overcooked. And the pork was like pork jerky. Very dry. Very tough. Which — granted — maybe that’s what smoked pork means in Chinese restaurants. I don’t often order it, and won’t often order it again, to be safe.

To their credit, the garlic pea sprouts and the beans and pork got better the next day for lunch, and better still the day after that, because I doctored and doctored them back to life.

The soup hit the spot, but as long as I’m healthy enough to get on BART and buses, I will be having my future duck soups in Chinatown, at Great Eastern Restaurant, thank you.

The legendary Jackson Street standby, it turns out, has a rich, flavorful dark broth with perfectly succulent roast duck and great homemade noodles. Or wontons. Or both. For $9, it’s the reigning duck noodle champion, in my book.

I would like to thank John’s Snack and Deli for being out of kimchi burritos again, or else I might never have found this out.

Oh, and Great Eastern also has crocodile soup and soft-shell turtle soup, by the way. In case you’re not sick when you go there. *

New favorite restaurant! *

GREAT EASTERN RESTAURANT

Daily: 10 a.m.–1 a.m.

649 Jackson, SF

(415) 986-5603

Beer and wine

MC/V

Stopping foreclosure secrecy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Stopping foreclosure secrecy

OPINION Thanks to a shadowy corporate mortgage recording system, millions of Californians have no idea who owns their home loans.

As we suffer through this recession triggered by reckless subprime lending and Wall Street speculation, our recovery is being held back in part because people are struggling with foreclosures and underwater home values — exacerbated by a lack of mortgage transparency.

The mess created by Wall Street is causing wrongful foreclosures and wreaking havoc. Real people — often lower-income families and communities of color — are enduring the devastation of foreclosure processes because of the excesses of bankers and investment firms.

In San Francisco, we’ve seen the highest number of foreclosures in the Ingleside-Excelsior, Bayview, Tenderloin, and Mission neighborhoods — many of the places where home values have fallen most. Whether or not you face foreclosure, we all pay for this crisis by losing vital tax revenue that could go to support our schools, protect our neighborhoods, or build our economy.

When Wall Street realized it could make billions by bundling mortgages and selling them to investors, banks and financial institutions needed a way around recording the ownership and assignment of home loans. What the banks and Wall Street came up with is a shadowy, industry-backed reporting system called MERS — mortgage electronic reporting system.

Simply stated, subprime and predatory lending allowed banks to create millions of questionable mortgages, Wall Street bundled these risky mortgages together to sell to investors, and MERS made it quicker and easier to conduct these risky transactions with impunity.

As San Francisco’s assessor-recorder and a financial advocate for low-income communities, we have seen harmful industry practices wreak havoc on families trying to stay in their homes — whether by use of MERS that clouds property titles, wrongful foreclosures, or denied loan modifications.

The state Legislature considered several good foreclosure bills this year. One proposal placed a $20,000 fee on financial institutions attempting a foreclosure. This would have discouraged foreclosure and helped defray costs to communities if the process went ahead.

State Sen. Mark Leno( D-SF) and Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) offered legislation stopping banks from proceeding with foreclosures when a homeowner is attempting to modify his or her mortgage.

Assessor-Recorder Ting is sponsoring a bill requiring that all mortgage assignments and transfers be recorded with counties, thus taking this process out of the murky MERS system.

Unfortunately, the banks and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists have been able to stymie these reforms.

We must continue to fight these wealthy, powerful lobbies so that the long road to recovery in our housing markets and communities can begin. We cannot let Sacramento forget it was financial institutions that fueled the housing bubble, crashed the stock market, and sent shockwaves throughout the economy with their reckless practices.

Few states have been ravaged by subprime lending and the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities the way California has, so we must continue reforming the practices of banks and Wall Street that have thrown our economy and communities into turmoil.

Phil Ting is San Francisco assessor-recorder. Kevin Stein works with the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Tour de tasting room

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tour de tasting room

virginia@sfbg.com

For establishing intimacy and focus, there’s nothing like sitting down to a meal and tasting with a vintner when you want to catch a glimpse of the vision and inspiration behind their wines. I recently had the chance to do just that with several local winemakers in Napa and Sonoma — and don’t worry, I took good notes.

KAPCSÁNDY WINES

Kapcsándy may not be the easiest name to pronounce, but take note if you love complex, balanced wines. Though there is a blessedly steady (if slow), trend toward lower alcohol, old world-style wines in the Wine Country lately, this Yountville vineyard — helmed by Lou Kapcsándy, his wife Roberta, and their son Louis Jr. — has been making these types of pours since 2000.

Lou, with winemaker Rob Lawson, lets Napa’s terroir fully express itself while staying close to old world principles — a philosophy that is apparent in his acclaimed State Lane Vineyard cabernet sauvignon. A Hungarian native, Lou’s roots manifest in his wines and his rustic tasting room centered around an 1800s wooden wine press from Hungary. I found the 2009 rosé (a cab-merlot blend with touch of petit verdot and cab franc) a unique beauty: more full and dense than many rosés yet managing to retain a crisp acidity. Roberta’s Reserve is a memorable wine, an homage to Pomerol and Bordeaux. The 2007 and 2008 are both understandably lauded vintages of Roberta’s, but I found the 2009, young as it is, to hold intriguing promise. It’s already drinking beautifully, with hints of cassis, blossoms, cherries, and earthy cocoa.

1001 State, Yountville. (707) 948-3100, www.kapcsandywines.com

RAYMOND VINEYARDS

The transformations at Raymond Vineyards have to be seen to be believed. Although it has been a historic St. Helena vineyard since 1970 known primarily for its cabernet, it’s not the vineyard’s rich heritage — or even its wines — that stand out most today: it’s the changes wrought to its grounds by Boisset Family Estates, a global company with Burgundy roots that now owns the vineyard.

Delightfully eccentric Jean-Charles Boisset is the spirit behind the new era at Raymond. “I love personally the word[s] sexy and voluptuous,” he tells me after we’ve descended into the Crystal Cellar (where cabernet tastings go for $25), a room that has been lined with steel to give the effect of being inside a wine vat. An explosion of Baccarat crystal shimmers off its walls, vats, and giant mirrors glinting around us. Encased vintage crystal decanters are inscribed with wine descriptors — in lipstick.

From the moment you glimpse the interactive art exhibits on the lawn, you know something unusual is afoot here. A “Theatre of Nature” self-guided tour of the grounds — which include a pool and midcentury house — is in the works, as is a fashion show on the Crystal Cellar’s catwalk.

We were the first to taste in the vineyard’s newly unveiled guest room (now available for group tastings and private parties). It housed gold and white leather couches covered in fur throws, a stuffed leopard standing guard in the corner, a dining table set with black and gold plates featuring each of the seven deadly sins (perhaps prophetically, I got “gluttony”). The pièce de résistance: a giant flat-screen rimmed in gold — of course! — playing Jackson 5 music videos.

I’ve never had another wine tasting experience like it. Boisset is currently working on a red room (in “all red — and velvet”) and releasing two bubblies, including a rosé, to taste there this summer.

All this flair naturally leaves one wondering: are the wines any good? In fact, the new French pours are far better than their predecessors, even if the new Raymond is about the one-of-a-kind tasting experience.

Boisset’s JCB wines do have their pleasures. They’re playful and more balanced than many Napa wines, the No. 81 Chardonnay and No. 7 pinot noir allowing for nice acidity. He and Raymond winemaker Stephanie Putnam teamed up to make the No. 1 cabernet, which reflects both Napa and French sensibilities.

Boisset clearly leads in innovation, and he has a passion to bring California wines to the world. The man’s on a mission to make wine hip, approachable, and, yes, sexy.

849 Zinfandel, St. Helena. (707) 963-3141, www.raymondvineyards.com

AMAPOLA CREEK

Richard Arrowood — a Sonoma winemaker for 45 years — and wife Alis are charmers. Over lunch at Wayfare Tavern, we spent hours talking and tasting wines from his young Glen Ellen boutique winery Amapola Creek.

This is Arrowood’s passion project. He produces wines typifying the robust grapes of the Mayacamas Mountains located near the town of Sonoma. After decades of creating wines for major players like Chateau St. Jean and his own Arrowood Winery, he’s having fun with small batches — his current operation produces a maximum of 3,000 cases annually.

Though lush, Arrowood’s 2008 zinfandel — and original 2005 zin — shows restraint, with enough tannins and acidity to keep it food-friendly (ideal paired with Wayfare’s medium-rare steak). The zin benefits from a rare asset: 115-year-old vines located in a tiny lot at neighboring Monte Rosso Vineyards. His 2007 syrah and cabernet sauvignon are bold and black, fruit-heavy yet balanced with tannins and delicate spice accents (the cab is CCOF certified organic). He’s also working on a grenache-syrah blend, so watch for more Amapola Creek wines on the way.

(707) 938-3783, www.amapolacreek.com 

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article was incorrectly edited to say Miller thought Raymond Vineyard’s current batch of wines were inferior to those produced when the vineyard was family-run; she actually thinks the reverse is true. The Guardian regrets the error, and promises to drink less wine while editing our contributing writers.

Around the bay, around the world

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Around the bay, around the world

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE “When one door closes, another opens” is the kind of cliché that drives you batty when you’ve been fired, or your lover has literally showed you the door. But once in a while even clichés prove their right to exist. Take the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, which last year faced homelessness when Caltrans requisitioned the Palace of Fine Arts’ parking lot for the duration of the Doyle Drive reconstruction. With poor access to MUNI and no parking lot, EDF had no choice but to start a frantic search for another venue. The crisis challenged them to rethink a format that has worked for them since 1989 — potentially very risky, because, to quote another cliché: “Don’t mess with success.”

With a need to move from one temporary shelter to another, EDF took the opportunity to reshape its offerings in a way that might yet prove beneficial to both audiences and performers.

For one group of dancers, however, this year’s EDF is a homecoming. For the first time in more than 200 years, dancers and musicians from the Rumsen Ohlone Tribe will perform on their own land. Decimated by disease and dispersed because of persecution and discrimination, most live in a diaspora in their own country. But they did not, as popular history and the federal government would have it, die out; the tribe is 2,000 members strong. Many, including tribal chief Tony Cerda have settled in the Pomona area. But their ancestors are buried below what is now Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

On Friday, June 3, in the presence of tribal dancers and musicians, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee presented Cerda with the EDF’s annual Malonga Casquelourd Lifetime Achievement Award. The homecoming festivities continue on June 18, when a half-dozen other California tribes join the Ohlones for an all-day “California Indian Big Time Gathering” at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Two other aspects of this year’s program deserve special attention. June 11 and 12, eight companies will perform at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley for the first time. For dancers used to showing their work in community halls, stepping onto a generous professional stage (and in front of a potential audience of 2,000) will be both a challenge and a delight. In January, EDF held its auditions at Zellerbach to an enthusiastic response from the primarily East Bay crowd. The word clearly had gotten out about how much fun these auditions are. In previous years at the Palace, the events regularly sold out.

The Zellerbach lineup aims to offer a similarly broad perspective of world dance. The eight companies will present taiko and Bharatanatyam contextualizing each other; African music and dance as practiced in Benin and Ghana; ancient belly dancing with a modern twist; and theatrically appropriate rituals from the Philippines and Bali. It also includes a barefoot version of flamenco, dances from a multicultural Veracruz, and, to top off the evening, a premiere for 100 celebrating Tahitian culture.

This year’s other innovation relates to performances June 19, 25, and 26 at YBCA’s Forum, where audience members will have the opportunity to enter the world of these dances. It makes sense. Culturally-rooted dance is integral to a community’s sense of well-being. It enhances milestones — courting, funerals, the changing of seasons, coming-of-age ceremonies, and thanksgiving practices.

These dances are not primarily meant to entertain — although of course they do — and many are participatory. When divorced from their contexts and put on a proscenium stage, something is inevitably lost. The Forum performances will restore some of the communal aspect of world dance. Each program offers a different quartet of companies that will perform a short piece, then invite the audience to join them in one aspect of their practice. You can choose among Balinese, Polish, square, Filipino, capoeira or African dance.

Or how about a piece of poppy seed cake served on a sword?

SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL

Through July 3, $18–$58

Various venues

www.sfethnicdancefestival.org

 

Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

Mary Magee
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Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

Mayoral candidate Tony Hall, who also happens to be a former executive director of the Treasure Island Development Authority, just blasted Mayor Ed Lee’s endorsement of the Treasure Island deal:

“This deal will never benefit San Franciscans because no banker will advance a billion dollars in pre-development costs that are necessary to shore up and detoxify a man-made island that sits in the middle of a bay on top of one of the strongest earthquake faults in Northern California,” Hall claimed in a June 7 press release. “The developers themselves are nearly bankrupt. I’m very disappointed in Mayor Lee for promoting this deal. As an administrator, he should know better and be strong enough to tell the people the truth.”

Hall went on to vent about the “City Family,” referring to a phrase that Mayor Ed Lee seems to be fond of using anytime he is trying to build consensus at City Hall.

“In the past few weeks, we have seen a trend developing from the so-called ‘City Family,’” Hall observed. “In May, they proposed a hasty pension deal that barely scratches the surface of the problem. Now in June they are ready to pass a phony Treasure Island deal that benefits the connected developers and their consultants, but will probably never benefit San Franciscans. All these celebrated agreements seem timed to paper over important issues with hasty solutions right before the Mayoral election.  What’s next for July? An agreement to build a permanent rainbow across the Bay? The ‘City Family’ might try to take these issues off the table, but my mayoral campaign is going to put these issues right back squarely in front of the voters.”

OPINION: The “people’s seat” on the Police Commission

Zelda Bronstein
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OPINION: The “people’s seat” on the Police Commission

Editor’s note: School Board member Kim-Shree Maufas submitted this opinion piece on the upcoming Police Commission appointment.


On Friday, October 11, 2002, what began as an early morning school fight turned into a uniformed police officer-driven melee against students and teachers at Thurgoom Marshall High School. A total of 126 cops (some in SWAT/Riot gear) and sheriff’s deputites (tactical training was nearby) with firefighter and helicopter air support occupied the campus into the late afternoon.


That was so awful — but the real crime and shame for San Francisco was the subsequent behavior of the then Police Commission, which ignored hundreds of requests (delivered in writing and in person at commission meetings) for accountability, transparency, and reform to address ongoing police misconduct and bad practices so that San Francisco and its youth could actually feel safe and secure – not just from the criminals but from the city’s police force. 


I recall that one woman, who lived in Pacific Heights, asking the commission to “deal with what happened at that high school across town because we all want to know what happened.” 


After attending Police Commission meeting after Police Commission meeting with staff from the Ella Baker Center, Coleman Advocates for Youth and their Families and the ACLU of Northern California, the only response that I ever heard from that commission about the incident was: “We handle things in our own time.” 


These painful memories had me in tears as I walked home after attending the recent Board of Supervisor’s Rules Committee meeting on June 2, 2011, where I watched the recommendation for the board’s appointment to the commission go forward.


Back in October 2002, I was the Parent Teacher Student Association president at Marshall, my daughter was a student, and I suddenly thrust forward to a public podium over and over again to demand justice for our families … goodbye fundraising and bake sales.


My social justice journey to the Board of Education is closely tied to the 2003 Proposition H, the police reform measure that gave people a voice for reform and accountability by expanding the  Police Commission from five to seven, three to be selected by the Board of Supervisors and four by the mayor.  San Franciscans slapped the old Police Commission squarely in the face, screaming that the people MUST have a VOICE.


Because of what my family and countless others have been through and died for, I will forever consider the seats appoinnted by the board as “the People’s Seats for the People’s Voice,” meaning that those seats are for people who openly fight on behalf of disenfranchised community members, for people who stand as unashamed/outspoken advocates for common sense police policies and practices — and as seats for those who don’t get mayoral appointments because they’re a part of the in crowd.


On June 14, 2011, the entire Board of Supervisors will vote for the Police Commission appointment — and it doesn’t have to be the recommendation from the Rules Committee. The supervisors can take a different position – they can stand with the people on this one.


With all due serious respect to the other applicants, this opening on the Police Commission belongs to David Waggoner, who represents that “People’s Voice for the People’s Seat” — and I believe all those voters who reformed the commission in 2003 would say so too.


 

Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Mary Magee
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Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Last year, when Sup. John Avalos introduced and eventually won passage of the city’s landmark local hiring ordinance, a number of battles broke out, as folks in neighboring municipalities began fretting that the new law could shut them out of construction jobs in San Francisco. Avalos worked hard to make sure their concerns were addressed, but he continued to encounter resistance from San Mateo County.
And in February Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) who is facing term limits and reapportionment, introduced a bill in Sacramento that was intended to limit the reach of the Avalos legislation, which aimed to put more San Francisco residents to work on city-funded construction projects.
Hill’s legislation, AB 356, sought to prohibit the use of state money on local-hire projects and prevent Avalos’ legislation from being applied to the city’s projects in counties within 70 miles of San Francisco, including upgrades to the Hetch Hetchy water system on the Peninsula.
“San Francisco can use its own money any way it wants,” Hill said at the time, “Taxpayers from San Mateo, Ventura, Solano and other California counties shouldn’t have to pay for the increased construction costs that will result from San Francisco’s local-hire ordinance.”
Plus, he said the city should be thinking regionally, not hyper-local.
But, as Avalos repeatedly pointed out, his local hire law doesn’t apply to projects funded with state money, and it only mandates 20 percent local hire this year, gradually increasing to 50 percent local hire over the next seven years.
At the time, the Guardian predicted that Hill’s bill would “probably go down the crapper because the San Francisco legislators, who have a fair amount of clout up in Sacramento these days, aren’t going to support it. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee have all signed a letter supporting the city’s local hire law.”
And sure enough, after the mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles, not to mention organizations from San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego, and the State Building Trades Council made their views known, Assemblymember Charles Calderon requested June 3 that Hill’s legislation by ordered to the inactive file.
Local supporters of Avalos’ legislation say Hill’s bill got pulled because there was no chance in hell that it would ever get out of the State Assembly.
But Hill’s office claims it was because San Francisco and San Mateo reached a deal last week, and that this outcome was Hill’s intention all along.
“What happened was that the Assemblymember Jerry Hill put together a bill and his intention was to get his constituents in San Mateo a memorandum of understanding with San Francisco—and that MOU was signed last Friday (June 3) by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and San Mateo County Board President Carole Groom,” Hill’s legislative aide Aurelio Rojos told the Guardian.
And according to a statement that Hill’s office released June 3, Hill welcomed the signing of a reciprocity agreement that “ends a dispute between the counties of San Mateo and San Francisco by creating a level playing field for San Mateo County residents working on construction  projects in the county funded by San Francisco.”
Hill’s press release claims the MOU was “forged following weeks of negotiations that began in February after Hill introduced legislation that would have limited San Francisco’s recently enacted local hire ordinance to its geographic boundaries. The agreement allows contractors working on San Francisco public works projects located in San Mateo County to hire an equal number of workers from the two counties.  As a result of the agreement, Hill has agreed not to move forward with his legislation, Assembly Bill 356.”
 “San Mateo County construction workers will no longer be penalized by San Francisco’s local hire ordinance as a result of the agreement,” Hill said.  “I applaud Mayor Lee and Supervisor Groom for creating a level playing field that will enable San Mateo residents to work on construction projects within their county.”
 Hill claims that  with San Francisco scheduled to award $27 billion in public contracts during the next decade, the city’s local hire  provision would have impacted the ability of San Mateo County residents to work on construction projects in their county, including the San Francisco International Airport, the jail in San Bruno, Hetch Hetchy waterworks and other facilities on the Peninsula.”
Either way, today, Avalos, who has long maintained that Hill either didn’t understand his legislation or was refusing to understand the legislation, and Mayor Ed Lee are introducing a resolution, “approving a local hiring agreement between San Francisco and San Mateo County,” and reinforcing equal opportunity guaranteed under San Francisco’s Local Hire Policy and community-labor partnerships
Avalos, who is running for mayor, apparently led the negotiations alongside Lee to forge the agreement which allows contractors performing San Francisco public works projects in San Mateo County to equally draw workers from San Francisco and San Mateo to meet required staffing levels under the local hiring ordinance.
The agreement covers San Francisco-funded projects located in San Mateo County, including the San Francisco airport.  Under the agreement, San Mateo workers are included by the local hiring requirement for projects  in San Mateo County, and will be able to fill up to half of the local hiring requirement.
“This is a win-win for workers in San Francisco and San Mateo. Whatever we can do to support job creation in the Bay Area region during this very long recession is going to be very meaningful to the families that are struggling to stay in this area,” Avalos said.
“The achievement in securing this resolution is really a testament to the strength of communities united,” said Brightline executive director Joshua Arce. “Sup. Avalos always intended that his legislation would expand, in terms of opportunities on city-funded projects, outside San Francisco. On San Francisco-funded work in San Mateo, San Francisco and San Mateo workers will be working side by side, taking advantage of the local and regional aspects of the legislation.”
Or as Avalos put it,  “The local hiring ordinance is about making sure we create job opportunities in San Francisco when the city invests taxpayer dollars in construction projects. We included the flexibility to craft reciprocal agreements with other cities and counties, and that’s exactly what was accomplished in the deal that was reached between San Francisco and San Mateo.”

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
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Schedules are for Wed/8–Tues/14 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $20. “Opera, Ballet, and Shakespeare in Cinema:” Coppelia, performed by Bolshoi Ballet, Sat-Sun, 10am; June 15, 7:30.

BRAVA 2989 24th St, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free. “Queer Women of Color Film Festival,” featuring five different screening programs, panel discussions, parties, and more, Fri, 7:30; Sat, 1; Sun, 2.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. Regular programming $7.50-10. “70mm Festival:” Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Wed-Fri, 2, 5, 8; Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962), Sat-Sun, 2, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. The Double Hour (Capotondi, 2010), call for dates and times. The First Grader (Chadwick, 2010), call for dates and times. Queen to Play (Bottaro, 2009), call for dates and times. 13 Assassins (Miike, 2010), call for dates and times.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness: Jet Li Now and Then” •Clash (Le, 2009), and Iron Fan and Magic Sword (Chan, 1971), Thurs, call for times.

LUMIERE 1572 California, SF; www.contractorsroutine.com. $8-10.50. Contractor’s Routine (Tsapayev, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Music and Nostalgia:” Roxie Hart (Wellman, 1942), Fri, 6.

MISSION CULTURAL CENTER FOR LATINO ARTS 2969 Mission, SF; www.answercoalition.org. $5-10. South of the Border (Stone, 2009), Thurs, 7. With a report back on Cuba by Gloria La Riva.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “The Cult of the Kuchars:” Sins of the Fleshapoids (Mike Kuchar, 1965), Fri, 7; The Devil’s Cleavage (George Kuchar, 1973), Sat, 6; Burlesk King (Chiongio, 1999), Sat, 8:35. “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping:” The Left Handed Gun (1958), Fri, 9; The Miracle Worker (1962), Sun, 5:30; Mickey One (1965), Sun, 7:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. Wayne’s World (Spheeris, 1992), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:20. House (Obayashi, 1977), Thurs, 7:15, 9:15. Kuroneko (Shindo, 1968), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat, 2, 4:15). Mars Attacks! (Burton, 1996), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:30. Live music with the California Jug Band Association, Sun, noon-5. This event, $5. The Cockettes (Weber and Weissman, 2002), June 14-15, 7:15, 9:30 (also June 15, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” through June 16. Horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films; visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.patagoniarising.com. $10. Patagonia Rising (Lilla, 2011), Wed, 8. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Dirty Diaries,” 12 short erotic films by Swedish women directors, Thurs and Sat, 7:30.

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

The eighth Another Hole in the Head Film Festival runs through June 17 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., SF. For tickets ($11) and complete schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

*Beginners See “Father’s Day.” (1:44) Embarcadero.

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) Clay, Shattuck. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer A girl has an adventurous summer in this live-action family film adapted from the best-selling book. (1:31) Shattuck.

My Heart is an Idiot Although My Heart is an Idiot is billed as a documentary about love, it fails to wade in at any depth. Instead, it focuses on the routine personal issues its subject, Davy Rothbart (editor-publisher of Found magazine), has with his own past and present romances. The only person mystified by his troubled relationships, though, is Davy. You want to palm your forehead and mumble “duh” throughout much of the film, but therein lies, perhaps, its one saving grace; Davy is almost miraculously endearing as a tragic romantic cast by himself as the protagonist of his own epic love story. Is this self-indulgent? Yes. Is he naive? Yes. Does he look kinda pathetic? Absolutely. Though it’s hard not to empathize with and even quietly champion someone who thoroughly wants to believe in true love (even if he doesn’t seem to know what that means), it’s also ultimately hard to really care. (1:34) Roxie. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Le Quattro Volte See “Wheel in the Sky Keeps on Turnin’.” (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck.

Submarine Coming-of-age tale about a 15-year-old who becomes a little too interested in the sex life of his parents. (1:37)

Super 8 They’re heeeere. (1:52) California, Four Star, Presidio.

ONGOING

*L’Amour Fou Pierre Thoretton’s documentary L’amour fou opens with two clips of men bidding farewell. The first, from 2002, is of the French-Algerian couturier Yves Saint Laurent announcing his retirement in a moving and emotional speech worthy of his favorite writer Marcel Proust. The second is of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s longtime business partner and former lover, eulogizing his departed friend at the designer’s memorial service six years later. Thoretton’s film is suffused with goodbyes, many tender and candid, some portentous and rehearsed. To be sure, L’amour fou is a touching portrait of the powerful and tempestuous bond between Saint Laurent and Bergé, a bond that lasted close to five decades and resulted in one of the great empires of 20th century fashion. But it is also, alongside David Teboud’s two 2002 YSL documentaries, another entry in the hagiography of Saint Laurent, one cannily steered by Bergé as much as by Thoretton. Well-spoken and charming, Bergé still comes off as the punchy entrepreneurial foil to Saint Laurent’s dazzling but fragile genius. He can be both hyperbolic (praising Saint Laurent’s gifts) but also forthcoming (discussing the designer’s demons). Former muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux are also interviewed, but this is clearly Bergé’s show. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

*Blank City “No one was doing what they were trained to do” — key to the explosion in Super-8 movie-making in late ’70s and mid-’80s New York City, according to John Lurie, star of 1984’s Stranger Than Paradise. Filling in the blanks of a burnt-out city-turned-artistic playground, musicians like Lurie and Jim Jarmusch made films, and artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Kern plopped themselves in front of the camera or behind it. Those grainy artifacts were populated by performers oozing with character and charisma, à la Steve Buscemi and Debbie Harry, while combos that ran the generational gamut, from Patti Smith to the Contortions to Sonic Youth, provided the soundtracks as well as the vivid onstage visuals. French filmmaker Celine Danhier does the noble work of trying to encapsulate and couple the disparate No Wave and Transgressive cinemas under the umbrella of shared geography — the squatter-friendly, pre-Times Square-cleanup New York — though organizationally and conceptually Blank City has a tough time surmounting flaws like choppy chronology and uneven allotments of screen time. The No Wave years get short shrift — you’re yearning to see more of the actual films. Should these two movements be paired in the first place — and where does the wildly successful 1983 hip-hop document Wild Style fall (and why isn’t the same year’s Style Wars included)? Danhier fails to make convincing connections, though the snippets of interviews with provocateurs like Amos Poe and Lydia Lunch almost make up for it (who knew, say, that late Dreamlander Cookie Mueller was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s dealer, as John Waters gossips?), and snippets of movies such as the vibrant Downtown 81 (1981) transmit the scene’s energy — loud, clear, and cacophonous. (1:35) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*The Double Hour Slovenian hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and security guard Guido (Filippo Timi) are two lonely people in the Italian city of Turin. They find one another (via a speed-dating service) and things are seriously looking up for the fledgling couple when calamity strikes. This first feature by music video director Giuseppe Capotondi takes a spare, somber approach to a screenplay (by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, and Stefano Sardo) that strikingly keeps raising, then resisting genre categorization. Suffice it to say their story goes from lonely-hearts romance to violent thriller, ghost story, criminal intrigue, and yet more. It doesn’t all work seamlessly, but such narrative unpredictability is so rare at the movies these days that The Double Hour is worth seeing simply for the satisfying feeling of never being sure where it’s headed. (1:35) Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Everything Must Go Just skirting the edge of sentimentality and banality, Everything Must Go aims to do justice by its source material: Raymond Carver’s rueful, characteristically spare short story, “Why Don’t You Dance?,” from the 1988 collection Where I’m Calling From. And it mostly succeeds with some restraint from its director-writer Dan Rush, who mainly helmed commercials in the past. Everything Must Go gropes toward a cinematic search for meaning for the Willy Lomans on both sides of the camera — it’s been a while since Will Ferrell attempted to stretch beyond selling a joke, albeit often extended ones about masculinity, and go further as an actor than 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction. The focus here turns to the despairing, voyeuristic whiskey drinker of Carver’s highly-charged short story, fills in the blanks that the writer always carefully threaded into his work, and essentially pushes him down a crevasse into the worst day of his life: Ferrell’s Nick has been fired and his wife has left him, changing the locks, putting a hold on all his bank accounts, and depositing his worldly possessions on the lawn of their house. Nick’s car has been reclaimed, his neighbors are miffed that he’s sleeping on his lawn, the cops are doing drive-bys, and he’s fallen off the wagon. His only reprieve, says his sponsor Frank (Michael Pena), is to pretend to hold a yard sale; his only help, a neighborhood boy Kenny who’s searching for a father figure (Christopher Jordan Wallace, who played his dad Notorious B.I.G. as a child in 2009’s Notorious) and the new neighbor across the street (Rebecca Hall). Though Rush expands the characters way beyond the narrow, brilliant scope of Carver’s original narrative, the urge to stay with those fallible people — as well as the details of their life and the way suburban detritus defines them, even as those possessions are forcibly stripped away — remains. It makes for an interesting animal of a dramedy, though in Everything Must Go‘s search for bright spots and moments of hope, it’s nowhere near as raw, uncompromising, and tautly loaded as Carver’s work can be. (1:36) Piedmont, SF Center. (Chun)

Fast Five There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in Fast Five, in addition to a much demolition derby-style crunch — instances that stretch credulity and simultaneously trigger a chuckle at the OTT fantasy of the entire enterprise. Two unarmed men chained to the ceiling kick their way out of a torture cell, jump favela rooftops to freedom with nary a bullet wound in sight, and, in the movie’s smash-’em-up tour de force, use a bank vault as a hulking pair of not-so-fuzzy dice to pulverize an unsuspecting Rio de Janeiro. Not for nothing is rapper Ludacris attached to this franchise — his name says it all (why not go further than his simple closing track, director Justin Lin, now designated the keeper of Fast flame, and have him providing the rap-eratic score/running commentary throughout?) In this installment, shady hero Dominic (Vin Diesel) needs busting out of jail — check, thanks to undercover-cop-turned-pal Brian (Paul Walker) and Dominic’s sis Mia (Jordana Brewster). Time to go on the lam in Brazil and to bring bossa nova culture down to level of thieving L.A. gearheads, as the gearhead threesome assemble their dream team of thieves to undertake a last big heist that will set ’em up for life. Still, despite the predictable pseudo-twists — can’t we all see the bromance-bonding between testosteroni boys Diesel and Dwayne Johnson coming from miles of blacktop away? — there’s enough genre fun, stunt driving marvels, and action choreography here (Lin, who made his name in ambitious indies like 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, has developed a knack for harnessing/shooting the seeming chaos) — to please fans looking for a bigger, louder kick. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The First Grader After a government announcement offering free elementary school educations to all Kenyans, an elderly man, Maruge (Oliver Litondo), shuffles to the nearest rural classroom in search of reading lessons. Though school officials (and parents, miffed that the man would take a child’s place in the already overcrowded system) protest, open-minded head teacher Jane (Naomie Harris) allows him to stay and study. Maruge’s freedom-fighter past, which cost him his family at the brutal hands of the British, is an important part of this true story, which otherwise would’ve felt a bit too heavy on the heartwarming tip. (His classmates, actual students at the school used for filming, are pretty unavoidably adorable.) As directed by Justin Chadwick (2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl ), Harris and Litondo turn in passionate performances, but the film unfolds like a heavy-handed TV movie. The facts of this story are inspiring enough — the film shouldn’t have to try so hard. (1:43) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Forks Over Knives Lee Fulkerson steps up as the latest filmmaker-turned-guinea-pig to appear in his own documentary about nutrition. As he makes progress on his 12-week plan to adopt a “whole foods, plant-based diet” (and curb his Red Bull addiction), he meets with other former junk food junkies, as well as health professionals who’ve made it their mission to prevent or even reverse diseases strictly through dietary changes. Along the way, Forks Over Knives dishes out scientific factoids both enlightening and alarming about the way people (mostly us fatty Americans, though the film investigates a groundbreaking cancer study in China) have steadily gotten unhealthier as a direct result of what they are (or in some cases, are not) eating. Fulkerson isn’t as entertaining as Morgan Spurlock (and it’s unlikely his movie will have the mainstream appeal of 2004’s Super Size Me), but the staunchly pro-vegan Forks Over Knives certainly offers some interesting, ahem, food for thought. (1:36) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Incendies When tightly wound émigré Nawal (Luba Azabal) dies, she leaves behind adult twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) — and leaves them documents that only compound their feelings of grief and anger, suggesting that what little they thought they knew about their background might have been a lie. While resentful Simon at first stays home in Montreal, Jeanne travels to fictive “Fuad” (a stand-in for source-material playwright Wajdi Mouawad’s native Lebanon), playing detective to piece together decades later the truth of why their mother fled her homeland at the height of its long, brutal civil war. Alternating between present-day and flashback sequences, this latest by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (2000’s Maelstrom) achieves an urgent sweep punctuated by moments of shocking violence. Resembling The Kite Runner in some respects as a portrait of the civilian victimization excused by war, it also resembles that work in arguably piling on more traumatic incidences and revelations than one story can bear — though so much here has great impact that a sense of over-contrivance toward the very end only slightly mars the whole. (2:10) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Kung Fu Panda 2 The affable affirmations of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda take a back seat to relentlessly elaborate, gag-filled action sequences in this DreamWorks Animation sequel, which ought to satisfy kids but not entertain their parents as much as its predecessor. Po (voiced by Jack Black), the overeating panda and ordained Dragon Warrior of the title, joins forces with a cavalcade of other sparring wildlife to battle Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), a petulant peacock whose arsenal of cannons threatens to overwhelm kung fu. But Shen is also part of Po’s hazy past, so the panda’s quest to save China is also a quest for self-fulfillment and “inner peace.” There’s less character development in this installment, though the growing friendship between Po and the “hardcore” Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is occasionally touching. The 3-D visuals are rarely more than a gimmick, save for a series of eye-catching flashbacks in the style of cel-shaded animation. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Nostalgia for the Light Chile’s Atacama Desert, the setting for Patricio Guzmán’s lyrically haunting and meditative documentary, is supposedly the driest place on earth. As a result, it’s also the most ideal place to study the stars. Here, in this most Mars-like of earthly landscapes, astronomers look to the heavens in an attempt to decode the origins of the universe. Guzmán superimposes images from the world’s most powerful telescopes — effluent, gaseous nebulas, clusters of constellations rendered in 3-D brilliance — over the night sky of Atacama for an even more otherworldly effect, but it’s the film’s terrestrial preoccupations that resonate most. For decades, a small, ever dwindling group of women have scoured the cracked clay of Atacama searching for loved ones who disappeared early in Augusto Pinochet’s regime. They take their tiny, toy-like spades and sift through the dirt, finding a partial jawbone here, an entire mummified corpse there. Guzmán’s attempt through voice-over to make these “architects of memory,” both astronomers and excavators alike, a metaphor for Chile’s reluctance to deal with its past atrocities is only marginally successful. Here, it’s the images that do all the talking — if “memory has a gravitational force,” their emotional weight is as inescapable as a black hole. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Devereaux)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides The last time we saw rascally Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), he was fighting his most formidable enemy yet: the potentially franchise-ending Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). The first Pirates movie (2003) was a surprise critical success, earning Depp his first-ever Oscar nomination; subsequent entries, though no less moneymaking, suffered from a detectable case of sequel-itis. Overseeing this reboot of sorts is director Rob Marshall (2002’s Chicago), who keeps the World’s End notion of sending Jack to find the Fountain of Youth, but adds in a raft of new faces, including Deadwood‘s Ian McShane (as Blackbeard) and lady pirate Penélope Cruz. The story is predictably over-the-top, with the expected supernatural elements mingling with sparring both sword-driven and verbal — as well as an underlying theme about faith that’s nowhere near as fun as the film’s lesser motifs (revenge, for one). It’s basically a big swirl of silly swashbuckling, nothing more or less. And speaking of Depp, the fact that the oft-ridiculous Sparrow is still an amusing character can only be chalked up to the actor’s own brand of untouchable cool. If it was anyone else, Sparrow’d be in Austin Powers territory by now. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Queen to Play From first-time feature director Caroline Bottaro comes this drama about … chess. Wait! Before your eyes glaze over, here are a few more fast facts: it’s set in idyllic Corsica and features, as an American expat, Kevin Kline in his first French-speaking role. (Side note: is there a Kline comeback afoot? First No Strings Attached, then The Conspirator, and now Queen to Play. All within a few short months.) Lovely French superstar Sandrine Bonnaire plays Héléne, a hotel maid who has more or less accepted her unremarkable life — until she happens to catch a couple (one half of which is played by Jennifer Beals, cast because Bottaro is a longtime fan of 1983’s Flashdance!) playing chess. An unlikely obsession soon follows, and she asks Kline’s character, a reclusive doctor who’s on her freelance house-cleaning route, to help her up her game. None too pleased with this new friendship are Héléne’s husband and nosy neighbors, who are both suspicious of the doctor and unsure of how to treat the formerly complacent Héléne’s newfound, chess-inspired confidence. Queen to Play can get a little corny (we’re reminded over and over that the queen is “the most powerful piece”), and chess is by nature not very cinematic (slightly more fascinating than watching someone type, say). But Bonnaire’s quietly powerful performance is worth sticking around for, even when the novelty of whiskery, cardigan-wearing, French-spouting Kline wears off. (1:36) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Thor When it comes to superhero movies, I’m not easily impressed. Couple that with my complete disinterest in the character of Thor, and I didn’t go into his big-screen debut with any level of excitement. Turns out Kenneth Branagh’s Thor is a genre standout — the best I’ve seen since 2008’s Iron Man. For those who don’t know the mythology, the film follows Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as he’s exiled from the realm of Asgard to Earth. Once there, he must reclaim his mighty hammer — along with his powers — in order to save the world and win the heart of astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Hemsworth is perfectly cast as the titular hero: he’s adept at bringing charm to a larger-than-life god. The script is a huge help, striking the ideal balance between action, drama, and humor. That’s right, Thor is seriously funny. On top of that, the effects are sensational. Sure, the 3D is once again unnecessary, but it’s admittedly kind of fun when you’re zooming through space. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) California, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Shattuck. (Eddy)

*X-Men: First Class Cynics might see this prequel as pandering to a more tweeny demographic, and certainly there are so many ways it could have gone terribly wrong, in an infantile, way-too-cute X-Babies kinda way. But despite some overly choppy edits that shortchange brief moments of narrative clarity, X-Men: First Class gets high marks for its fairly first-class, compelling acting — specifically from Michael Fassbender as the enraged, angst-ridden Magneto and James McAvoy as the idealistic, humanist Charles Xavier. Of course, the celebrated X-Men tale itself plays a major part: the origin story of Magneto, a.k.a. Erik Lehnsherr, a Holocaust survivor, is given added heft with a few tweaks: here, in an echo of Fassbender’s turn in Inglourious Basterds (2009), his master of metal draws on his bottomless rage to ruthlessly destroy the Nazis who used him as a lab rat in experiments to build a master race. The last on his list is the energy-wrangling Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who’s set up a sweet Bond-like scenario, protected by super-serious bikini-vixen Emma Frost (January Jones). The complications are that Erik doesn’t ultimately differ from his Frankensteins — he pushes mutant power to the detriment of those puny, bigoted humans — and his unexpected collaborator and friend is Xavier, the privileged, highly psychic scion who hopes to broker an understanding between mutants and human and use mutant talent to peaceful ends. Together, they can move mountains—or at least satellite dishes and submarines. Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast fill out the cast, voicing those eternal X-Men dualities — preserving difference vs. conformity, intoxicating power vs. reasoned discipline. All core superhero concerns, as well as teen identity issues — given a fresh charge. (2:20) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

 

Alerts

Maria Poblet
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0

ALERTS

By Jackie Andrews

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 9

Reporting back from Cuba

Gloria la Riva, recent winner of the Friendship Medal by the Cuban Council of State, will update the public on the new Cuban economic policies, their impact on the country’s economy, and the Latin American struggle for liberation — often called the Bolivarian Revolution. Afterward, check out a special screening of South of the Border, Oliver Stone’s investigative documentary that exposes the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of Latin America in its demonization of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

7–9 p.m., free

ANSWER Coalition

2969 Mission, SF

www.answersf.org

 

FRIDAY, JUNE 10

Protest nuclear power

It’s been almost three months since the earthquake in Japan and resulting Fukushima nuclear disaster, and many fear that California’s coast is similarly vulnerable. Rally against the corporations that influence the U.S. government in favor of nuclear industry despite its dangers to people and the environment. Demand that all U.S. power plants — funded by tax dollars — be shut down and help promote a cleaner public power.

3:30–5:30 p.m., free

The Consulate General of Japan

50 Fremont, SF

Facebook: No Nukes Action SF-Solidarity with 6.11 Action in Japan

 

SATURDAY, JUNE 11

World Naked Bike Ride

Ride your bike in the buff to express the public’s vulnerability to the social, economic, and environmental dangers caused by a global dependence on oil. A kind of naked Critical Mass, this fun, provocative bike ride will tour the city’s hot spots including Fisherman’s Wharf, the Marina, and Civic Center. All are welcome, so ride as you dare — bare or square — but don’t forget the sunscreen.

11 a.m., free

Justin Herman Plaza

Market and Embarcadero , SF

Facebook: World Naked Bike Ride-San Francisco

 

International Day of Solidarity

Enjoy an evening of solidarity and support for Marie Mason and Eric McDavid, two political prisoners sentenced for Earth Liberation Front-endorsed actions — what the feds call ecoterrorism. This event features a screening of If a Tree Falls: A Story Of the Earth Liberation Front, as well as information about the so-called “green scare,” or the recent wave of government repression meant to disrupt and discredit environmental activism.

7–9:30 p.m., $15

Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

www.june11.org 

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Treasure Island goes to the Board

Mary Magee
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37
Treasure Island goes to the Board

There’s three reasons I’ll always remember the Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein: he used to be married to Sharon Stone, he got bitten by a Komodo Dragon at the L.A. zoo, and he had the audacity to write a column in the Chronicle that was titled “Treasure Island eco-dream is bad choice for funds.”
Now it’s true that Bronstein was a 1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work in the Philippines. But that was 25 years ago, and I didn’t read what he wrote, so I can’t comment on the quality of his work  then. But now I live in the East Bay and drive past Treasure Island most days of the week—and I have been waiting for someone at the Chronicle to finally voice something other than their usual preppy praise for this increasingly large development in the middle of the Bay.
 
And Bronstein certainly did have plenty to say about Treasure Island. And it wasn’t the usual upbeat pap about “bold and robust visions” that the Chron usually serves up when it concerns anything that involves Lennar and public-private development. Instead,  Bronstein began by describing T.I.  as a “onetime secretive Navy base filled with deer, political patronage and who knows what buried in the ground.”

Now, part of Bronstein’s fire may have been a result of him writing his column in April, a few weeks after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, triggering a nuclear meltdown. Or two or three.

Bronstein’s infamous rant even mentioned some of the radiologically impacted things at Treasure Island that, as he put it, “leached into the soil from weaponry or other deadly items: radium and PCBs 100,000 times the acceptable levels.”
And then he compared Lennar and billionaire Ron Burkle to “contemporary development pirates.” Believe me, that was a surprise to read in the Chronicle.

“This year, they’re scheduled to break ground on a huge multibillion-dollar public-private ecotopia mini-city built upon toxic waste and landfill,” Bronstein wrote. “This glorious contradiction might become a triumph of super-green living and high-end dreams. But it also represents something else: bad choices about how to spend public money in ever tighter times.”

Bronstein noted that the Board has a brief panic in April when they considered whether a Japan-style disaster could wipe out the T.I. plan, but that Rich Hills of the Mayor’s Office said the “disaster potential has already been addressed.”
“Unless we have what Hills called ‘a freak disaster,’” Bronstein added with a cutting bite that his Komodo dragon would have been proud of, including Bronstein’s inclusion of the fact that Treasure Island is on the California Emergency Management Agency’s tsunami inundation map, and that while we are coughing up $105 million to developers who want to profit from high-density living on T. I, all of us are neglecting aging infrastructure that we already have.

“While T.I. developers are busy putting some kind of shower cap-like cover over the land so trees and foundations don’t touch toxic ground that can’t and won’t be cleaned up, our children stand a pretty good chance of being flattened like pancakes in existing structures while they’re learning math and history during the next, inevitable big quake,” Bronstein concluded.
Meanwhile, those of us who drive the seismically-compromised Bay Bridge each day can’t help wondering how folks who decide to move to the development that’s being planned for Treasure Island will ever get off the island—unless they have a pirate ship.

That’s because every morning, we get to see a long line of drivers waiting—without much success—for drivers on the Bay Bridge to slow down and let them into the traffic.

Those of us who sometimes commute by ferry also know how tricky it is try and catch the last ferry, which leaves the San Francisco Ferry Building at 8:25 p.m. That’s way earlier than most commission meetings end. And earlier than most nightlife begins.

And then there’s the question of what happens when you get back to Treasure Island–and realize you forgot to buy milk, collect the dog, or pick up the kids from day care.

Now, maybe the city and the developers believe they have thoroughly considered and answered all these questions. But have they done any outreach to East Bay commuters, whose journey will likely be further impacted by the T.I. plan? If so, I certainly haven’t heard about it. And what about the folks in Berkeley who likely won’t be able to see San Francisco once a bunch of high-rises pop up in the Bay? Have they been consulted?

This Tuesday (June 7) at 5 p.m., the Board will hear an appeal of the city’s Treasure Island environmental impact report and consider a huge batch of related documents. (And I’m willing to bet that most current supervisors don’t know too much about this plan, and probably have only flipped through the thousands of pages of documentation related to it)

The appeal was filed by the Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon Society, and Arc Ecology, who last year filed an appeal around the city’s EIR for Lennar’s massive Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Project. Only this time, this trio is being joined by a group of Treasure Island residents—and former Board President Aaron Peskin.

Which reminds me: Three weeks after Bronstein wrote his amazing Treasure Island hit, piece, his fellow columnists at the Chronicle, Phillip Matier and Andy Ross, were back, sounding much more like the Chronicle’s attack dogs usually do, when it comes to anyone who dares to find the city and Lennar’s massive plans less than perfect: “Peskin, who as a supervisor was notorious for his middle-of-night phone rants to department heads, called the proposed high-rise plan that just squeaked by the Planning Commission a ‘laughingstock mistake,’” M& R crowed.

But in the end, they quoted the very thought that Peskin wants M&R to print and Chronicle readers to consider about the city’s current Treasure Island plan:

“It will horrify San Francisco and the Bay Area for decades to come,” Peskin said.

Now, as the folks joining Peskin in opposing the city’s current plan note, they aren’t trying to stop the development of Treasure Island. They are simply fighting the latest plan.

“The developer and the city already have an approved EIR and project plan for a 6,000 unit smaller scale, more transit friendly project that was passed in 2006,” Arc Ecology states in a flier that it plans to distribute at the June 7 hearing. “Environmentalists and many of the appellants supported that plan. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric. It was the earlier plan that won all the awards for sustainability.”

And as Arc points out, the city’s latest EIR and the plan currently before the Board is an entirely different animal from the city’s 2006 plan.

“It’s 25 percent bigger than the 2006 plan, tipping the scales on its impacts,” Arc states. “It increases the housing by 25 percent to 8,000 units, decreases transit service and affordable housing and competes with hotels and businesses that already exist downtown.”

“What can you do? Tell the Board to go back to the 2006 plan,” Arc advises.

The flier also lists a bunch of bullet points that outline some of the coalition’s objections.

“It’s unsustainable,” the flier states, claiming that under the new plan, there will be, “too many cars, too much traffic, too much air pollution.”

Under the new plan, there is also a seven percent reduction on the affordable housing set aside and a 17 percent reduction in overall affordable housing units, Arc notes. That’s another way of saying, “There is not enough affordable housing.”

And Arc claims the island will remain contaminated (see Bronstein’s rant about radionuclides and PCBs at the beginning of this post) even after the Navy completes its toxic and radiological cleanup. That the 40-story high-rise towers will obstruct views of San Francisco from the East Bay, and vice versa. And that the project financing plan will drive the city further into debt for at least another 15 years.

Arc’s flier concludes by asserting that the whole plan is undemocratic.
“Once approved, there will be no further environmental review of project plans—ever!” Arc claims. “Once approved the project will be implemented by an unelected nonprofit corporation. There has been no outreach or involvement of East Bay residents despite traffic and view impacts. The plan repays $55 million in additional developer costs to purchase this island with hundreds of millions of dollars of impacts on Bay Area residents.”

Now, I’m sure officials for the City and the developer will have plenty of counter arguments–and possibly busloads of low-income T.I. residents/unemployed SF workers, who will be shipped into the Board’s Chambers to argue that they need the Board to approve this plan so they can have new homes and jobs. Because that’s what happened last year, when Arc and the Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon expressed their concerns about plans to carve up the Candlestick State Park Recreation Area and build a bridge over the Yosemite Slough. And suddenly found themselves cast as the big bad villains, when it came to the city and Lennar’s wish to ram through the Candlestick/Shipyard plan.

But regardless of whether you believe in the project, oppose it, or don’t know much about it, make sure you show up at 5pm in Room 250 at City Hall on June 7, if you want to hear what actually goes down. Especially if you work in San Francisco, and live in the East Bay, because much of the Treasure Island traffic will directly impact the East Bay. 

Or as Arc puts it, “This new project is 25 percent larger than the prior one and like the difference between a 75 degree day and a 100 degree day – this increase in size makes all the difference. The new project will overdrive bridge capacity, create too much traffic, not enough transit, reduced levels of affordable housing, and vests enormous public power in an unaccountable, unelected development authority.  Please tell the Board they don’t have to go back to the drawing board – just to the 2006 plan and recirculate the EIR.”
 

Dick Meister: Unions save lives

Maria Poblet
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A miner’s life is like a sailor’s

‘Board a ship to cross the waves

Every day his life’s in danger

Still he ventures being brave

—Traditional labor song

A new study shows that unionization is a sure way to dramatically lessen the many deaths and serious injuries that have been all too common in the nation’s coal mines.

That ‘s the unequivocal conclusion of the independent study of coal mining between 1993 and 2008 conducted by Stanford law professor Allson Morantz and funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

There’s no doubting it: Workers in unionized mines are far less likely to be killed or seriously injured than are workers in non-union mines.

The study indicates that the number of fatalities in individual non-union mines can decline by one-third up to nearly three-fourths and serious injuries decline by as much as one-third if the mines unionize.

It’s no coincidence, notes President Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers Union, that several major mine disasters recently were at non-union mines. That includes the explosion at Massey Energies’ Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners last year, the Crandell Canyon, Utah, blast that killed nine miners in 2007 and the Sago explosion in West Virginia in 2006 that killed 12.

“The simple truth,” Roberts concludes, “is that union mines are safer mines, and this study proves that.”

He gets ready agreement for that obvious truth from union leaders and members at all levels of the labor movement, right up to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. He was a coal miner himself, as were his father and grandfather.

Trumka says he learned firsthand “the vital importance of workers having a voice on the job through their union.”

Spreading unionization throughout the coal mining industry is a key mission of the United Mine Workers. But though that doubtlessly would lead to greater coal mine safety, the union’s Democratic Party allies must meanwhile continue pressing for stronger mine safety laws – and stronger enforcement of the laws.

Those steps and the labor-management cooperation in collective bargaining and otherwise that the steps would require would guarantee that coal mine job safety would continue to improve – perhaps at even a faster rate than shown by Professor Morantz’ study.

Labor, management and government would be in a far better position to do much more of what’s needed to continue lowering the still high number of mine worker fatalities.

That’s not just a daydream. Listen to the AFL-CIO’s Mike Hall. He knows. Says Hall: “With all we know today, and all the avenues of protection available, there is simply no need for even one life to be lost on the job.”

One of Congress’ most outspoken and effective safety advocates, veteran Democratic Rep. George Miller of California, sees the study as unassailable evidence that unionization leads to greater safety.

Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, is certain that “when workers have a voice in the mine through their union, they are safer. In union mines, workers are empowered to point out dangerous conditions to inspectors without fear of retaliation from management.”

It clearly demonstrates that “by giving miners the support they need to speak out, unions can save miners lives.”  So can the United Mine Workers’ stepped-up campaign to bring more workers under the direct protection of the union and the union’s expanding safety training programs for miners everywhere.

Saving lives. No union could have a greater purpose.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

Through the lens of hip-hop

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Through the lens of hip-hop

Photographer/filmmaker Brian Cross charts a musical map of the African diaspora in the Americas — and opens new Summit Peek Gallery show tonight (6/2), “If It Fits in the Backpack: 10 Years on the Road with Mochilla”

Last year, Los Angeles-based production group Mochilla released Timeless,a trilogy film series documenting three concerts performed in L.A., early 2009. For these concerts, the photographer/filmmaker/DJ duo behind Mochilla, Brian Cross and Eric Coleman, shined light on three composers who have helped influence and shape hip-hop in different ways: the originator of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke; leftfield Brazilian arranger, Arthur Verocai; and a gutsy rendition of J Dilla’s beats crafted by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson with 60-piece orchestra. The films paint intimate portraits of musical exchange and live performance while paying tribute to some of the overlooked giants of the sprawling African musical diaspora.

In many ways Timeless is a culmination of themes explored in Mochilla’s films from the past decade. Their first project, Keepintime: Talking Drums and Whispering Vinyl (2001), and the follow-up live recording and DVD release in 2004, captured improvisational collaboration between L.A. hiphop producers and DJs, such as Madlib and J.Rocc, among others, with some of the powerhouse session drummers who inspired their sample-based work. Brasilintime: Batucada Com Discos (2007) also navigated the dynamic tension between an older generation of drummers, this time including legendary Brazilian percussionists, and the new school of analog producer/turntablists.

 

But not only did Mochilla depict creative partnership between these two forms of percussionists, they also translated the cut-up aesthetic of the DJ and rhythmic momentum of the drummer to the inner workings of the films themselves. A pastiche of words, music, and imagery composed of still shots and footage drive forward the fragmented stories, and striking moments of reconciliation, which unfold on screen.

More recently, Cross (known more familiarly as B+) set off to Columbia to document the Petronio Alvarez music festival as well as collaborative work between Will Holland (a.k.a. Quantic) and Ernesto “Fruko” Estrada, who could be credited with forging the rootsy, Afro-Columbian take on salsa. Mochilla also shot a good deal of the footage for Banksy’s street art disaster film from last year, Exit Through the Gift Shop, caught wayward rapper Jay Electronica at the Pyramids in Egypt and recording in South Africa, and documented Nas and Damian Marley on tour. To put it short, the dudes put in work.

“I look more for the off-handed moments that can be sustained as photos in themselves,” Cross tells me over the phone, while working in the dark room basement of his home in Los Angeles. He says that he’s excited to see how the large hand-printed photos will look in the upcoming Mochilla showcase at the new Peek Gallery in the Mission, this Thursday. “I’m trying to be iconic, but at the same time I don’t want to make publicity photos for record companies,” Cross says. “The videos, in a way, can be much more interesting because the fluidity allows for a certain kind of candidness.”

Cross, 44, has quite a history with such candidness in his work. Born in Limerick, Ireland, Cross moved to San Francisco’s Mission district in 1990 before attending CalArts in Southern California to study photography. While still completing his degree, Cross started writing what would become a landmark book on the emergence and socio-political implications of hiphop in L.A., It’s Not About a Salary: Rap, Race, and Resistance in Los Angeles (Verso Books, 1993). He is responsible for a number of iconic album covers of underground hiphop acts, from Freestyle Fellowship to Ras Kass and Mos Def. And Cross also made headway with more than a few magazine photo spreads and music videos throughout the past couple decades, notably including an arresting multi-textured piece for DJ Shadow’s “Midnight in a Perfect World” off Entroducing….. (Mo’ Wax Records, 1996).

 

Looking over Cross’ ever-growing body of work, some primary themes consistently arise: Through the lens of hiphop, Cross orients a number of conversations, multi-generational interchanges, rhythmic confluences, and resistant divergences that weave through the diaspora of African musical traditions in the Americas. “There’s an anthropological side as well as an ethnomusicologist side to it—an attempt to make a map of the diaspora in terms of the music set by the present,” Cross explains. “The goal is ultimately to document in a way that is not strictly historical, but to let the past speak to now rather than the other way round.”

SFBG I find an interesting dynamic in your film work and the documented live performances. On the one hand, you’ll take hiphop producers and DJs and pair them with percussionists, so as to put the contemporary in tension with the recent past that informed those contemporaries. On the other hand, there’s another element of featuring the music of those composers themselves. In what way do you think the past speaks to the present, as you put it, in both those approaches?

Brian Cross The idea is that somehow you don’t want to frame it off. In other words, for Keepintime, we didn’t want to get Paul Humphrey or Earl Palmer involved in something and frame off the dialogue in terms of, ‘Ok Paul, we want you to play the classic break on “One Man Band (Plays all Alone),” and now we’re going to layer something on top of it and develop a routine.’ But that’s not what’s interesting about Paul Humphrey. Yeah, it’s amazing he did that, and that’s why we’re choosing to work with him. But Paul Humphrey is somebody living and breathing; he’s our past, but he’s also our present. We want to open up a space of dialogue that is open to this series of works but isn’t limited to it.

For the Brasilintime project, we could have gone to Brazil and found obscure musicians who made amazing recordings and complete the narrative in the way that normal Eurocentric or Western versions of the story go: We bring them to Carnegie Hall, we do a concert, venerate them, and show them that Carnegie Hall is in fact the best venue in the world and is the most important place to see music. Whoa whoa whoa, back it up, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to go to there and engage, and try to actually build a bridge to the music. Let’s not have this as a one-sided sentence that leads in a single direction. Generally, what we try to do is to de-center, to find ways in which we can open up, because, invariably, when you do these things, that’s when you make discoveries. Oh, Mamao and Wilson das Neves played on the Jose Mauro record, he died before the record came out, and then Dilla sampled it … that’s when you make these discoveries.

You know I don’t mind the Buena Vista Social Club [1997] record. Ry Cooder is a great producer and a great musician, but the film is fucking awful. It’s so fucking wrongheaded. And that director, Wim Wenders, is smarter than that, man. We’re people of the left, he knows better than that. Of course, everybody got involved and was super happy that these guys were finally discovered, and we can fully appreciate how beautiful their music is and the contributions they’ve made. But then Carnegie Hall is put into the equation; we don’t need to reaffirm the same set of cultural values. We don’t need that. Maybe that’s kind of a trite example, but I’m interested in trying to forge ways to talk about music, or to explore possibilities of music, that don’t fall into the same set of traps that most writing and television and documentaries about music fall into.

SFBG Yeah, there are standard methods for placing outsider music, or the marginal narratives of musical traditions and musicianship, into the mainstream narrative, one of validation internal to our own frameworks of understanding. As a photography and filmmaker, how do you approach a sense of the outsider, or the musician who is resistant, or peripheral to the grand narratives? What techniques do you take up in order to engage these musicians and traditions and make them visible for a broader audience?

BC Well, when it comes to Brazilian music, I’m pretty serious about my shit. I do my research thoroughly. I try to put my best foot into it. But other than that, it’s pure human relationships, man. For me, here’s my pet peeve: Too much of the stuff happening right now is done without real social engagement. It’s through the Internet, whether it’s digital digging, or people paying 800 dollars for an obscure record from Ethiopia or Angola, when you could buy a ticket to go there for the same amount. You should be going. That’s the responsibility. The responsibility is to go there, actually experience it, and see what works on the ground.

To go back to Ry Cooder, when he went to Cuba to make Buena Vista, that wasn’t the music people were listening to in Cuba. People were listening to Timba, and Timba is a completely different thing. I just think there’s a lot more to be gained from actually going to say, Baranquilla, and spending time there in the town—meeting people, buying records, meeting musicians—than there is from surfing the Internet and finding the latest hot cumbia re-groove from Argentina or whatever. If you’re serious about your shit you have to go there, engage on the ground, and see what makes sense. You like Wu-Tang? Go to Staten Island. Go for a walk around the projects. Go visit P.L.O. Liquors where all those songs came from. That’s the kind of compliment you need to be paying people. And there’s ways to do this that aren’t touristic. You can go and feel the vibe there. It might seem obvious, but it gets lost in these discussions.

SFBG Do you see that as your primary motivational force? That your projects are prefaced on this desire to travel, meet these musicians that inspire you where they live and make music; find out what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and be a part of it?

BC Well, the two things are kind of contingent. It’s cyclical somehow. I’m there, experiencing, helping to build bridges as best as I can, and I’m also thinking about photographs because that’s what I do.

SFBG How do you think this approach fits back into your earlier photo work in Los Angeles and your book, ‘It’s Not about a Salary?’

BC It’s an extension of it, really. You know the book is a very primitive thing, if you actually sit there and read it from cover to cover, which I did for a project a couple years ago, and I was highly embarrassed (laughs). But there was no model. It’s not like Can’t Stop Won’t Stop [Picador, 2005] existed, and someone had put that work down. I was 26, I had been into hiphop since I was 17, and I gave it a stab. And, of course, I put myself into a cultural debate that I didn’t know much about, for my own peril.

Ostensibly, the work isn’t much different. In that book, yeah, it’s about hiphop in Los Angeles, but I also managed to talk to Roy Porter, The Watts Prophets, Kamau Daaoood, Horace Tapscott, and a whole slew of other people who didn’t straightforwardly have anything to do with hiphop in Los Angeles. But in another way, they had everything to do with it. What has always been interesting for me with hiphop is that it has this historical reach. That’s what I tried to bring into the book. There’s definitely things which I don’t agree with now, and suppositions that I made or thought what would happen which didn’t. But it was a critical moment, right before The Chronic [Death Row, 1992], which I think was really a world changer.

The amazing thing about the golden era of hiphop, as they call it now, that era up to ‘95 or ’96, is that it was incredibly inclusive music. There was Japanese Koto, all sorts of rhythms from the Caribbean, rock, jazz, funk, you name it. That sourced people into record stores in different ways. The categories didn’t make sense as they did previously. That’s the magnetic lure of it. Somehow, hiphop allowed this extraordinary ability to look at previously recorded things and make them work in the present. For me, that was a critical modernist moment, or as the prevailing discourse has it a post-modernist moment—the collage and montage.

SFBG That brings up another interesting point in your work in the idea that when listening to hiphop not only is the origin of the break or the sample concealed, but also the artist’s background is concealed. The identity of the artist is mystified. Would you say that your projects aim towards making visible the musician as a person rooted in an environment or social setting?

BC The two-sided sword of the invention of youth culture is that it posits a kind of energy and dynamism to what we call youth. The problem is that the way it’s commodified is made contingent on the exclusion of anything outside youthful values or youthful thinking. I don’t agree with that. And if you look at the music of the diaspora, it’s not there. These kind of generational fishers don’t exist in other traditions of music: not in Latin, not in African-oriented music, and in my understanding of European folk traditions, they’re not there either.

While I find aspects of youth admirable, it shouldn’t ever be considered an exclusive category. For instance, David Axelrod is in his late 70s, and he has as much to contribute, and as many interesting things to say now as he did when he was 30. The thing is we’ve consigned him off to a category as if he doesn’t exist. And that seems ridiculous to me. I mean James Gadson still has fire now as a drummer just as he did when he played with Bill Withers. Why would we decide that he no longer has importance? It’s not like people have stopped listening to Bill Withers. But that’s how our music culture works. We fetishize the appearance of youth, but we’re not entirely clear on the implications of that. So, I like the idea of putting the person in the room if I can. For inclusivity, it has to be that.

And we have to get past the old ways of thinking, too. When I was first doing this, it was all super secretive. No one was supposed to know what your samples were or where your drums came from, because that was your tool kit, and if everyone had the same tool kit, it wouldn’t be interesting anymore. But I don’t buy that. In the end, there’s a deluge of information out there, it’s what you do with it that’s important. Your understanding and ability to manipulate the history is what’s important.

SFBG Even when you put out ‘Keepintime,’ I imagine that people worried that you would unveil the alchemic creative process, otherwise covered up, behind a hiphop record.

BC It goes back even before that. Take the video I did for DJ Shadow’s “Midnight In A Perfect World.” It plots out a series of concerns that I’m still interested in. You know, Earl Palmer is in there, and the sample is from a David Axelrod record. And they didn’t clear the sample. Shadow was terrified that Earl was going to recognize the song. But Earl didn’t even remember David Axelrod the person, let alone the record (laughs). They weren’t hits! Earl wasn’t sitting around listening to Axelrod records. But if you’re going to be too scared to talk to him, we’ll never learn anything from the guy. And then he shows up, and we’re transported to a whole different world: New Orleans before World War II.

You could say rock n’ roll came from the soles of Earl Palmer’s shoes. He was a child vaudeville performer, a tap dancer, and he battled against Sammy Davis Junior, and a lot of cats from that era. But he was never the best dude, and he was always interested in drums, so he taught himself how to play drums. So, that shuffle beat, that swamp beat as they call it, which became the foundation of rock n’ roll drumming, came from a guy who’s a tap dancer in black vaudeville as a child, who figured out a way to transform his tap dancing onto a drum kit. Think of the multi-billion dollar industry that rock n’ roll has become, and we still don’t know these things. We have to sit down and talk to these guys to find out these stories.

If It Fits in the Backpack: 10 Years on the Road with Mochilla
Opening photo exhibition w/ film screenings and Q&A
With Brian Cross and Eric Coleman
Thurs./02, 7p.m.-11p.m., free (thru 06/30)
Peek Gallery (Summit SF)
780 Valencia Ave. @19th St., SF
(415) 861-5330
www.thesummit-sf.com/peekgallery.html

Sacramento deadline: Some key bills

Zelda Bronstein
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Sacramento deadline: Some key bills

A bunch of key bills come up in the state Legislature this week — and some of them are going to be very close. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano is pushing hard to get AB 1017, which would eliminate mandatory felony charges for pot cultivation, throught the Assembly floor (in fact, when I called his press secretary, Quintin Mecke, today (June 1) at about 11 a.m., Ammiano was on the floor making his 1017 pitch.) Ammiano also has a key tenant bill, AB 265, which would allow tenants who are a few days late with the rent to avoid eviction.


Dean Preston, executive director of Tenants Together, has a great rundown on the major tenant bills here. Sen. Mark Leno’s bill, SB 184, which is critical to protecting the rights of cities to demand affordable housing as part of a development deal, is going to be very close. So is Assemblymember Mike Feuer’s AB 934 — a nobrainer that simply clarifies tenant protections that have been threatened by recent court cases. (Preston told me that San Francisco Assemblymember Fiona Ma is not among the bill’s supporters at this point; you can call her office at  557-2312 and let her know you want her to vote for it.)


Sen. Leland Yee has gotten two bills through, one that would allow pharmacies to sell sterile syringes without a prescription and one that mandates more sunshine in the courts. His bill forcing the University of California to open up its foundation records will almost certainly clear the Senate now that UC had dropped its opposition. Tougher going, I expect, for SB 9, which would end life without parole sentences for juveniles.


Leno’s bill legalizing infusion drinks at bars cleared the Senate. He’s also pushing a Community Choice Aggregation bill, SB 790, and  the long-awaited, much-fought-over cell phone, SB 932, which would require modest disclosure of cell-phone radiation.


The difference between this session and the last one is that a lot of these bills might actually get the governor’s signature.

Don’t undo ballot measures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Don’t undo ballot measures

EDITORIAL The California initiative process is broken. The state’s too big, and it costs too much to gather signatures and mount a media campaign for or against a ballot measure.

But in San Francisco, the initiative process has traditionally been, and for the most part continues to be, a check on corrupt or ineffective political leaders and a chance for progressive reforms that can’t make it through City Hall. That’s why Sup. Scott Wiener’s proposal to allow the supervisors to amend (or, in theory, abolish) laws passed by the voters is a bad idea.

Since 1968, the San Francisco voters have approved 96 ordinances; that’s an average of about two a year. Obviously the pace has picked up since the 1970s. In 2008, there were eight measures approved; in 2010 there were four. The length and complexity of the ballot makes it appear that the supervisors aren’t doing their work, Wiener says. He notes that when he was campaigning, one of the most common complaints was that the voters were being asked to decide too many things that should have been handled at City Hall.

Some of that is the result of an unwieldy City Charter. Benefits for police and firefighters, for example, are specified in the charter, and any change needs voter approval. Wiener’s measure, aimed only at initiatives and not charter amendments, wouldn’t change that situation.

But some of it relates to the political alignments in San Francisco. For much of the past decade, the supervisors and the mayor were at odds over major issues. The mayor couldn’t get his (bad) proposals, like a ban on sitting on the sidewalks, through the board, and the progressives couldn’t get their proposals past a mayoral veto. So both sides went directly to the voters.

That’s a lot better than the paralysis we’re seeing in Sacramento. At least the issues are getting decided.

And over the years, some of the most important legislation in San Francisco — growth controls, tenant protections, protections for children’s programs, the city’s landmark open-government law — has come through ballot initiatives. The only way public power advocates have been able to get the issue on the agenda has been through ballot initiatives.

Those were issues that generations of supervisors and mayors wouldn’t take on — the developers and landlords and secrecy lobbyists and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had too much power at City Hall. And those protections for the public, the environment, and the most vulnerable residents only survive today because they’re set in law and can’t easily be changed.

If Wiener’s measure has been in effect a decade ago, for example, Proposition M — the 1986 law that set neighborhood planning priorities and limits on office development, would have been summarily scrapped by Mayor Willie Brown and a pro-developer board. Key rent-control laws would have been repealed or amended to death. The ban on buildings that cast shadows on parks would be gone. Killing the Sunshine Ordinance would have been Brown’s first act.

Today’s district-elected board is far more accountable to the voters — but there’s hardly a reliable progressive majority. And the point of ballot initiatives is that you can’t predict who will control City Hall next year, or in 10 years.

We don’t think the initiative process in San Francisco is out of control. Sure, big money wins the day too often — but on balance, it’s a check that the Board of Supervisors should leave alone.

Vote your vote away

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Vote your vote away

The article has been changed from the print version to correct an error.

In a surprising move that is causing a strong backlash from progressives and other groups that have won important reforms at the ballot box, Sup. Scott Wiener is pushing a charter amendment that would allow the Board of Supervisors to change or repeal voter-approved ballot measures years after they become law.

If voters approve Wiener’s charter amendment, among the most vulnerable reforms may be tenant protections such as limitations on rent increases, relocation assistance for no-fault tenant removal, and owner move-in eviction limits, to name a few.

The Rules Committee heard concerned testimony about the proposal May 19 and opted to hold off on voting to send it to the full board for approval until the next meeting on June 2 to allow for more public comment.

If approved, the amendment will be on the November ballot, although the public may be confused about why such an amendment would be on the ballot in the first place. The measure covers ordinances and resolutions that were placed on the ballot by supervisors, and Wiener has said he plans to amend the measure to exempt those placed on the ballot by voter petition. Changes to taxes or bonds are not a part of the amendment because those are required by state law to go to the ballot box.

Paradoxically, Wiener’s reasoning for the proposal is that he believes voters are bogged down with too many ballot measures with complex issues that need changes, measures he claims the board could deal with more efficiently. But critics say it makes progressive reforms vulnerable to attack by a board that is heavily influenced by big-money interests.

At the committee meeting, about a dozen people spoke in opposition to the amendment, saying it seemed broad in scope and would be a more appropriate change at the state level.

Matthias Mormino, a legislative aide to Sup. Jane Kim, who chairs the Rules Committee, said that his boss is still on the fence. “She has concerns and hasn’t made up her mind yet.”

Currently California is one of the last states where a voter-approved initiative cannot be subject to veto, amendment, or repeal, except by the voters.

“It’s not a radical thing,” Wiener told the Guardian about the proposed amendment. “My thinking is that we should do our jobs. We elect public officials to make decisions every week. I wanted to strike a balance where the voters still have a strong say.”

But how strong of a say will the voting public have in cases where voter-approved initiatives are changed by the decisions of a board of politicians with their own influences and bias?

Wiener stated that he had no specific initiatives in mind when he decided to propose the amendment nor was he targeting any kind of legislation, except ones that are “outdated.” Wiener cited an example of updating campaign consultant reporting from quarterly to monthly as a change that needed to happen but could seemingly be a nuisance at the ballot box.

He is proposing a tiered system in which, for the first three years, an initiative is untouchable. In four years, a two-thirds majority vote by the board could make changes to initiatives; after seven years, a simple majority could do so. That means a raft of tenant measures approved in the 1990s could come under immediate attack.

“Does he not like our sick-leave policy?” Sup. John Avalos told us. “It’s so vague and unclear on what he is trying to do. I’m afraid that he is trying to change laws that are popular with the voters. It’s not a democratic way to resolve policy issues.”

Calvin Welch, a longtime progressive and housing activist, has his own theory on Wiener’s proposal. “Voters don’t have a big problem discerning which ones they agree with and which ones they don’t,” he said about voter-approved initiatives.

He did the number-crunching and concluded that of the 983 policy ordinances on the books, 207 (21 percent) were policy initiatives. Of those, 102 (about 10 percent) were approved by the voters.

“Not quite overwhelming the ballot,” Welch said. “The argument that what is promoting this — the inundation of the initiatives — is not borne of the facts.”

Welch believes Wiener is targeting certain landlord and tenant issues that date back to 1978, when San Francisco voters first started adopting rent control measures. “That is what the agenda is all about — roughly 30 measures that deal with rent control and growth control,” he said.

Wiener denies this is an attack on tenants, and claims he doesn’t have a specific agenda in mind. “This is long-term reform, not immediate gratification reform. To take the big, big step, we would have to change state law. This is just a modest first step.”

Welch also took issue with the idea of “election proportionality,” calling the measure an undemocratic power grab since many initiatives in San Francisco’s history were approved with more than 200,000 votes.

“Mayors don’t get 200,000 votes — these measures do,” Welch said. “That a body can overrule thousands of voters undermines the election process of San Francisco. Why not limit government actors instead of the people? It’s about what Sup. Wiener wants to change.”

Budget set-asides have long been a target for legislators, explained Chelsea Boilard, a budget analyst with Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. Historically in San Francisco, moderate politicians have mostly honed in on social service programs, not those with a lot of clout and political backing, like police and fire budgets. Although the Children’s Fund, which was set up by a charter amendment, would be exempt, other social program priorities set by voters could be eroded.

“The reality is that the police and fire departments don’t have to go to City Hall every year to defend their budgets, but health and human services do,” Boilard said.

While many on the left would love for the California Legislature to have the authority to make changes in the property-tax-limiting Proposition 13 — like by removing commercial property from being taxed at artificially low levels — activists see real danger in Wiener’s measure.

“I think this is bad policy. I know folks are frustrated with Prop. 13, for example, and wish it was easier to amend or repeal. But the way he’s going about this is odd to me,” political activist Karen Babbitt told us. “For one thing, it appears to apply to retroactively to existing ordinances and policy declarations.”

Babbitt also cites legal research indicating that Wiener’s proposal might contradict state law and be subject to legal challenge if it passes. Plus, that challenge could come from any direction since it would allow liberal and conservative reforms to be challenged by the board.

One proposition that would fall under Wiener’s amendment is Proposition L, the sit-lie ordinance approved last year that prohibits sitting or lying on public sidewalks between 7 am and 11 p.m. After a divisive campaign against the measure, police began enforcing it in April. In three years and with enough votes by the board, the board could repeal a law that Wiener supports.

“It’s really interesting,” said Bob-Offer Westort, a civil rights organizer with the San Francisco Coalition of Homelessness. “I have a lot of questions. I guess it cuts both ways. We’d like to see the aggressive panhandling law changed. We’d like to see the sit-lie repealed. There are definitely things, with the right composition of the board, we would benefit from. And there are things that we would not want to see changed.”

Either way, the measure could result in some divisive fights at the board. “One person presenting this as a way to get it done is not the answer,” Avalos said. “I worry that he will use the amendment to dismantle certain voter-approved laws.”

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