Castro

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 12


The Lion and the Lamb FIFTY24SF Gallery, 218 Fillmore, SF. www.fifty24sf.com. Through Feb 12. Opening reception: 6:30-10pm, free. Partnering with chic streetwear store Upper Playground, artist Sam Flores will be debuting his first solo presentation in more than three years entitled "The Lion and the Lamb." The work presented is a thorough exploration of the duality of the relationship between good and evil via the medium of oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, and sculptures.

THURSDAY 13


I See Beauty in this Life Curator’s Walkthrough California Historical Society, 678 Mission, SF. (415) 357-1848, iseebeautycurator.eventbrite.com. 5pm, 5:45pm, 6:30pm, free–$5. Jump into 100 years of pictures of rural California with writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton’s as your tour guide, in her new exhibit entitled "I See Beauty in this Life." For the last two years, Hamilton has been chronicling stories of rural communities as apart of work "Real Rural" and tonight some of that work will be on display at the California Historical Society.

Ditched a.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama, SF. (415) 279-6281, www.yourmusegallery.com. Through Jan 6. Opening reception: 6:30-9pm, free. Hap Leonard’s latest photo exhibit takes a humorous approach to our city’s urban landscape. "Ditched" is a series of photographs of colorful abandoned couches set in various San Franciscan allies and streets.

FRIDAY 14


Soldering, Lapidary, and Enameling Demonstration Silvera Jewelry School, 1105 Virginia, Berk. (510) 868-4908, www.silverajewelry.com. 1-8pm, free. Interested in learning to work with soldering, lapidary, enameling, and stone cutting? Then you won’t want to miss this event at the North Berkeley Silvera Jewelry School.

Animal Dance Party Harlot, 46 Minna, SF. wildkingdom-es2.eventbrite.com. 9pm-3am, $5-10. If the name of this event doesn’t immediately make you want to burst out of your seat and start dancing like nobody’s watching, then something must be wrong you. Just kidding: we’ll still love you either way. Experience DJs Traviswild and Girls and Boomboxes ignite electro mayhem at the Harlot Club. Oh, and nimal attire is strongly encouraged.

SATURDAY 15


Steppe Warriors Shooting Gallery, 839 Larkin, SF. www.shootinggallerysf.com. Through Jan 5. Opening reception: 7-11pm, free. Did you know that Genghis Khan’s real name is Chinggis Khan? Genghis Khan is the Persian version of the Mongolian King’s name. And the horsemen of this legendary historical player are the source of inspiration for Zaya’s upcoming solo show entitled "Steppe Warriors" which will feature 12 ink and watercolor paintings.

Fabricators Jack Fischer Gallery, 49 Geary Suite 418, SF. www.jackfischergallery.com. 3-5pm, free. This new show is the result of a collaboration among five Creativity Explored artists and students from the California College of the Arts’ Fabricators ENGAGE class which is taught by art critic, writer, educator and curator Glen Helfand. Holiday gifts, baked goods, and art pieces will also be on sale at this exhibit.

Mercado de Cambio 2940 16t St. #301, SF. (415) 863-6306, www.poormagazine.org. 3-7pm, free. POOR Magazine will throwing the fourth edition of its annual Mercado de Cambio/The Po Sto’ Holiday Art party, billed as a "powerful people-led collaboration of micro-business, art, performance, and community." Sounds like the perfect holiday party for the Mission.

Poetry Reading Vi Gallery, Embarcadero Center 4, Lobby Level, 100 Drumm, SF. www.vi-gallery.com. 4-6pm, free. The Embarcadero Center isn’t the first place most people think of when asked where’s the best place in SF for a poetry reading. Nevertheless this Saturday writers Richard Hack and Mel C. Thompson will be on hand to dish out some of their own poetry.

In One Hand a Ghost, the Other an Atom White Walls, 835 Larkin, SF. www.whitewallssf.com. Through Jan 5. Opening reception: 6-9pm. Australian artist New2’s curiously named exhibit will showcase between 16 and 24 pieces of large-scale artwork completely made from paper — specifically, hand-cut layered paper collages.

SUNDAY 16


Santa Skivvies Run The Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF. www.lookoutsf.com. 1pm, free to watch, $35 to run. The only thing better than running through the streets half-naked is running through the streets half-naked for a good cause. Come watch dozens of barely clothed Santas romp around the Castro for the 2012 Santa Skivvies run, whose proceeds will go to benefit the SF AIDS Foundation.

TUESDAY 18


Sketch Tuesdays 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com. 6pm, free. On the third Tuesday of every month about 20 artists gather at this swanky SOMA gallery to fabricate art on a small scale. And if you’re a patron of the arts you’ll be able to purchase these freshly made works.

San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

Sasha Cuttler
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San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

By Nato Green

This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a ban on public nudity on a party line vote. By “party line,” I mean the Supes voting against nudity are the ones who never go to parties with lines of coke or conga lines. I’m not saying every single one of the progressive supervisors could be found in the naked suntan lotion massage yurt at Burning Man, just that it’s conceivable.

The ban was proposed by District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, and supported by the “moderates,” who are Very Serious about sensible governance. First of all, anyone who ever made fun of Supervisor Eric Mar’s happy meal ban owes him an apology. Second, obviously all other problems in the City have been solved, which has freed up the Supes to kowtow to the whims of the gayeoisie.

People are worried about the effects of aggressive nudity on children, but fortunately we’ve gentrified all the families out of the City. Now we’ll have to export nudists to Solano County if we want kids subjected to them. At any rate, during a nippy San Francisco winter it’s vitally important for children to learn about shrinkage.

Nudity doesn’t necessarily harm children. I grew up in San Francisco. In the ’70s. Naked people were everywhere, bare and unshaven. I didn’t see a fully-clothed adult until I was nine. I didn’t see nakedness as sexual, so much as simply covered in naked. Partly because then, as now, the specific naked people were not easy on the eyes. Not to promote normative body images, but if Christina Hendricks and Ryan Gosling showed up naked, the ensuing celebration by all sexualities would make the Giants Victory Parade look like a tupperware party.

Worst of all, nudity was banned in the Castro. If there’s one neighborhood that arguably draws its spirit from the brandishing of genitalia, it’s the Castro. Harvey Milk did not march so his grandchildren could sequester the penis. It’s almost as if the City wanted to abolish hippies sitting on the sidewalk in the Haight-Ashbury. (Damn you, sit/lie.)

If we’re going to ban sitting on the sidewalk in the Haight and nudity in the Castro, here are more options for possible legislation to achieve the goal of draining our neighborhoods of their distinguishing features.

We should also ban:

  1. Bernal Heights—dykes with dogs.

  2. Mission—fixed-gear bicycles, ironic mustaches, and salvadoreños.

  3. Marina—entitlement.

  4. Richmond—Irish pubs with actual Irish people.

  5. Noe Valley—strollers and handmade baby food.

  6. Western Addition—Black people. Whoops. Too late.

Comedian Nato Green (writer for “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” on FX) headlines the San Francisco Punchline December 19 and 20. Tweet him @natogreen

Free the free

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Free the free

VISUAL ART It starts with the streets. Walls, the texture of walls, rough and colored in swirls of graffiti letters. Walls you feel you could reach out and touch their cold and grit. Establishing shots — the streets of San Francisco in the dot-com era. The photos are of their times: an unattended shopping cart in the streets appears as early as page three. Soon follows the spray-painted legend, “Don’t let the good times fool you.”

The pictures are inscrutable, their sequence seemingly random. Yet other than the gnomic title (Friendship Between Artists is an Equation of Love and Survival), the only text in Xara Thustra’s self-published new book’s 500 pages is a brief intro from the author insisting that the book is meant to be read from left to right, from top and bottom in the order the photos appear. There are no captions or prompts to lead the viewer. It is the mute gravity of the photos that pulls you in. What is happening here? It’s like finding a box of photos on a trash pile in the Mission — old furniture, clothes out on the curb, a pile of books and CDs. Why is all this stuff in the trash? Did the owners die? Or get evicted? Photos of strangers. You go from one photo to the next and the outline of a missing life starts to appear. What is happening here?

The action moves in and out of the streets, cinematic — the interiors dark, claustrophobic. The streets provide narration. Everything is spray painted. Demand Community Control. Everything bright, everything clean. Everything they build be like fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Familiar everyday locations have become enlisted as battlegrounds. At the Dolores Park tennis courts, someone has hung a screen on the fence, painted so that it reads “Sink the Ship” in shimmery, see-through letters. A subliminal message to the tennis players visible on the other side? Or a secret signal to an unseen underground army?

Cut to the interior. Some dim locations start to become recognizable: a performance crammed into a corner of Adobe Books, a crowd seen through a doorway at the old Needles and Pens. The images are at times grainy and low res, like bad cell phone photos or surveillance camera footage. Much is shot in indistinct rooms or hallways, tightly cropped. The people in the interiors model homemade clothing or stare back at us from unmade beds. They are dancing in high heels or fucking each other, holding whips and dildos. No one is smiling. Instead they stare defiantly into the camera as if to ask, “Who are you to watch? Which side are you on?” This is not the careless and fashionable hedonism of Ryan McGinley photos. Instead, like the subjects of Nan Goldin photos, the people in these images know how much their search for freedom costs, and who will have to pay.

Meanwhile, the battle in the streets continues. Scum bags dressed as imposter yuppies stand in front of the mall on Market Street, holding handmade signs reading, “The bombs are dropping, lets go shopping!” An effigy of Gavin Newsom burns at 18th and Castro. Back inside, homeless guys from Fifth and Market calmly eat free breakfast at the 949 Market Squat. More drab interiors, more surveillance footage, and then what is happening here? Scenes of naked people grimly carving designs into each other with razors, holding dripping, bleeding arms up to the camera. It must be 2005, I think, when we all started to give up on ever stopping the war and just started hurting each other.

Full disclosure: I am in this book. I might be too close to the people and events depicted to discern whether the images are strictly documentary or whether their arrangement is intended to create a new story. But the juxtapositions, eerie and dreamlike, pack a wallop. In one two page spread, my dead friend, Pete Lum, stairs from the left page into another photograph on the right of an unknown drag queen out front of Aunt Charlie’s on Turk Street. Their eyes seem to meet across the gutter of the book and across time and space, as if sharing a secret the rest of us cannot know.

Ultimately, perhaps the one indisputable narrative of the book is the tremendous progression in Xara Thustra’s artwork, as the early agitprop graffiti by “Heart 101” in support of street protests slowly morphs into a far more ambitious project, an ongoing collaboration with countless others through performance, print, and cinema to abandon protest and instead collectively embody through art the autonomy and ethics of a truly different world. Perhaps inevitably then, Friendship Between Artists is both a monumental achievement and something of an anti-climax. The protests, the willful art world obscurity, the dead friends — what did it all add up to?

I am certain, anyway, that nothing in the book was conceived with the idea that it would one day appear in an art book. Instead, the interventions, experiments, and protests detailed herein, while at times quite joyous, were, as the book’s title suggests, originally part of a deadly serious struggle to keep oppositional culture alive in San Francisco, and for many that struggle now feels lost. But life must go on, and this is no museum piece.

The book’s 500 pages positively overflow with life, salvaging from oblivion the raw, visceral feel of 15 years of ephemeral underground freedom. While some will be haunted by the suspicion that the answer to the above question is “not enough,” the people in these photos stare into the camera and demand we consider instead a hard-earned and far more redemptive possibility: that this isn’t an art project, it’s how we live. This isn’t representation of a different reality, but about being a different reality. And fuck you, anyway, because being free is its own reward.

For an interview with Xara Thustra, visit sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

XARA THUSTRA BOOK RELEASE AND SOLO SHOW

Thu/6, 7-9pm, free

Needles and Pens

3252 16th St., SF

www.needles-pens.com

 

Our Weekly Picks: December 5-11

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 5

Jill Tracy

Spooky chanteuse Jill Tracy describes her new holiday release, Silver Smoke, Star of Night, as “the Christmas album for those who prefer the October chill.” She celebrates its release with three festive events, starting with tonight’s “Fragrance: The Allure and Magical History of Perfumes,” an after-hours party at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. The evening is both concert and launch of her limited-edition fragrances (appropriately, devoted to “dark elegance”), created with local perfumers Nocturne Alchemy. Sat/8, the Hypnodrome (where Tracy has been known to perform with the Thrillpeddlers) hosts “Creepshow Christmas” — a family-friendly show mixing ghost stories with live accompaniment. Finally, Silver Smoke‘s official CD release shindig is Dec. 19 at the DNA Lounge. Spirits will be bright! (Cheryl Eddy)

Tonight, 6-10pm, $13

San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

Golden Gate Park, 100 John F. Kennedy Dr., SF

Sat/8, 8pm, $13–$25

Hypnodrome

575 10th St., SF

www.jilltracy.com

 

Blue Scholars

The young MCs in Seattle rap duo Blue Scholars met, quite appropriately, in a hip-hop club at the University of Washington. You can hear these academic roots clearly in DJs Sabzi and Geologic’s smart, searing rhymes. The heady lyrical content of their work tackles serious, political issues such as socioeconomic mobility, empowerment, and questioning authority. Even more impressively, these boys don’t just talk the talk. Geologic’s history of activism in the Filipino-American community and the duo’s headquarters in 98118, the country’s most ethnically diverse zip code, is the perfect recipe for the smart, relevant hip-hop that the scene most desperately needs (we’re looking at you, Chris Brown). (Haley Zaremba)

With The Physics, Brothers From Another

8pm, $19.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Get Carter and The Trip

Verrrry clever, Castro Theatre — programming back-to-back screenings of Get Carter (1971) and The Trip (2010). Gritty Get Carter follows a snarling Michael Caine as he prowls around Newcastle, punching his way through the local gangster contingent he holds responsible for his brother’s death. The Trip, a travelogue featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing exaggerated versions of themselves), contains some genius and quotable comedy — ABBA sing-offs, mock-epic speeches — but none more memorable than the two actors going head to head with their Caine impressions: “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” Truly, an inspired double feature. (Cheryl Eddy)

Get Carter 2:40 and 7pm; The Trip 4:50 and 9:10pm, $8.50–$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com


THURSDAY 6

“Drag Queens on Ice”

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … er, definitely something, flying at you with the unstoppable momentum of a two-story wig and a pair of birdseed-filled balloons. You already know what’s green and ice skates (Peggy Phlegm) now come find out what’s queen and ice wobbles — all those years in man-stilletos can’t help you out on the rink, honey. This cherished annual hoot features a wealth of San Francisco’s beloved gender clown personalities threading their way through bewildered tourist families in Union Square (who actually get really into it, and by the end it’s a heartwarming family affair, full of squeals of delight). You can even skate with these swanning lovelies! No money back if you end up with a weave in your face. The great Donna Sachet — she of the stunning, form-fitting, fake-fur-trimmed ravishing red holiday dress — mistresses the ceremonies. Grab a warming adult beverage from nearby Emporio Rulli Il Caffe and join in the fun. But don’t you dare judge, or you might get Nancy Kerrigan’d. Skates are blades, remember. (Marke B.)

8-9:30pm, $10 entrance, $5 rentals

Union Square Skating Rink

Post and Geary, SF

www.unionsquareicerink.com

 

The Family Stone

I’ve had some good times listening to San Francisco’s Sly and the Family Stone — both letting my mind wander the groove of their funky sound and feeling the sense of pride in one’s self that Sly Stone sings so well — and I’d venture a guess that you have too. Though that innovate teacher and leader has opted for life out of the spotlight, three of the original members, Jerry Martini (saxophone), Cynthia Robinson(trumpet), and Greg Errico (drums), are keeping the music alive with the help of a few younger talents. Mostly hailing from the Las Vegas area, these new members are all performers with rich experiences listening to Sly’s music. This new Family Stone recreates the old hits in a fresh show, hoping to bring the music to all generations. (Molly Champlin)

7-8pm, $40–$45

Rrazz Room

222 Mason, SF

(800) 380-3095

www.therrazzroom.com

 

Streetlight Manifesto

Streetlight Manifesto was pretty late to the ska game, releasing its first album in 2003, well over a decade after the genre’s revival heyday. Though in a way, the band’s timing was actually perfect. Born out of the ashes of previous Jersey ska-punk heroes Catch-22 and One Cool Guy, Streetlight’s catchy tunes and punk rock virility have been nearly single-handedly keeping third-wave ska alive in a world dominated by hip-hop, mainstream pop, and EDM. The band is ringing in the new year with the release of its fifth album, The Hands That Thieve. During this tour, Streetlight Manifesto promises to play new songs, old favorites, and everything in between; so put on your skanking shoes and lace ’em up tight. It’s gonna be a good night. (Zaremba)

With Hostage Calm, Lionize

8pm, $21

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

FRIDAY 7

Hope Beyond

Kim Gordon, artist and gallery director at Modern Eden, has curated the one-night-only art show, Hope Beyond, a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. The assembled line-up includes an impressive selection of artists representing a variety of pop-surreal and contemporary styles. The work ranges from the graffiti style sharpie drawings of Kidlew to intricate fusion of nature images and Hindi symbolism by Inge Vandormael. Personally, I’m excited to see what all of these artists will contribute to the show. Especially Serge Gay Jr. — an artist whose paintings collage and reproduce pop culture images to create dichotomies between what’s real and what’s fake and make you to take a second look at his subjects: beauty, violence, drugs, and race. With all art priced below $100 and the proceeds going to Hurricane Sandy victims, what’s not to love? (Champlin)

6pm, free

Modern Eden Gallery

403 Francisco, SF

(415) 956-3303

www.hope-beyond.com

 

SFBallet’s Nutcracker

The folks in Imperial Russia loved The Nutcracker and kept it alive during Soviet times. But the West never saw it until some White Russians, who had escaped to San Francisco, nagged then San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Willam Christensen to choreograph it in 1944. By now there are hundreds of versions all over the world; the oddest one I ever saw had Drosselmeyer arrive on a spaceship. SFB’s, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson in 2004, is set during the 1915 Panama International Exhibition. It lacks the cloying sweetness and sentimentality that infects so many others. Tomasson’s is a love letter to the City — cool, transparent, a little reserved and superbly elegant. (Rita Felciano)

Through Dec. 28, 7pm, 2pm matinees; $20–$270

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

(415) 865-2000

www.boxofficesanfrancisco.com


SATURDAY 8

Misfit Toy Factory II

Did you ever feel cheated as a kid when you would see cartoons and hear stories about elves making toys from scratch, then you got a Barbie doll or video game that obviously wasn’t cobbled at the North Pole? Well, now is your chance to watch the toys actually being made. Not by elves though, but by local artists. There will be over 35 of them at Root Division Art Space bringing creativity from their various fields (painting, sculpture, and illustration mostly) to the art of toy making. All the work will be sold for a flat rate of $40. Bring cash for some shopping, or just come to enjoy the atmosphere of creativity complete with music by DJ Yukon Cornelius. (Champlin)

6pm, free

Root Division Art Space

3175 17th, SF

(415) 863-7668

www.rootdivision.org

 

John Prine

I think I need to start with a disclaimer: I love John Prine. Yes, I’m completely biased when I say that he is one of the greatest living lyricists and you’d be lucky to go see him. But why take my word for it? His more than 40 years of successful songwriting can speak for themselves. Starting off as a Chicago-area postman doing open mics in his spare time, Prine eventually got noticed — by a young Roger Ebert. Now, almost 70 years after that glowing review, Prine is still an incredible songwriter and performer, and each song is a charming, witty, and poignant labor of love. In his time as a performer, many trends and genres have come and gone, but a great folk song never goes out of style. (Zaremba)

With Justin Townes Earle

8pm, $39–$59

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com


SUNDAY 9

San Francisco Crab Fest 2012

Continuing a long-running San Francisco tradition that takes advantage of the fact that the crab fishing season along the California coast coincides with the holiday season, the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District 2012 Crab Fest will offer up a tasty fete featuring the crustacean prepared in a variety of ways by local restaurants, along with exhibits, cooking demonstrations and more. A host of sustainably-produced regional wines will provide the perfect way to raise a toast to the annual event, which donates all proceeds to the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program and the San Francisco Police Department’s Youth Fishing Program. (Sean McCourt)

Noon-3pm, $25–$30

Waterfront Terraces, Fisherman’s Wharf

145 Jefferson St., Third Floor, SF

www.visitfishermanswharf.com

 

Queer Rebels Winter Shindig

Though the weather outside is frightful, the smolderingly creative queers performing tonight at El Rio are more than capable of keeping your toasty warm. The lineup alone is worth the sleigh ride to El Rio — burlesque from the bountiful Ms. Vagina Jenkins, jazzy moves courtesy East Bay punker Brontez Purnell, the release performance of drag king blueser K.B. TuffNStuff’s Trans of Venus album, and so much more hotness. But as if that wasn’t enough to draw you like a moth to flame, this: the evening is a benefit for Queer Rebels’ year-round lineup of genderbending, empowering art events like the Exploding Lineage! experimental film fest, two-day summit of Asian American activists, and the group’s annual eponymous production of queer takes on the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. (Caitlin Donohue)

8-11pm, $7-20 sliding scale

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.elriosf.com


SUNDAY 9

John Cale

Whereas Lou Reed was the primary source of the Velvet Underground’s swagger, and hard-bitten lyricism, John Cale took charge of the group’s more avant-garde leanings. Even 45 years after leaving the band, Cale continues to challenge and surprise his listeners, as evidenced by the title of his latest LP: Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood. Largely devoid of the splintering bursts of noise that defined his formative years, and the rootsy pastoralism of Paris 1919 and Vintage Violence, Cale’s latest is an art-rock record in the tradition of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush: affecting in its ability to experiment and take risks while working squarely within the pop template. Another gutsy effort from an aging icon whose renegade streak hasn’t gone anywhere. See him while you can. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Cass McCombs

8pm, $32–$48

Regency

1290 Sutter, SF

(888) 929-7849

www.theregencyballroom.com

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Wiener charges blogger with taking potty photo

Zelda Bronstein
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Wiener charges blogger with taking potty photo

I don’t even know what to do with this except report it and tell you some background. Because it’s just strange, all around.

Short story: Sup. Scott Wiener’s pressing criminal charges against a blogger who tried to take a photo of him peeing in the City Hall men’s room.

Michael Petrelis, the mad-man blogger who once called me for several days straight in the middle of the night to scream “your wife has syphillis!” into the phone, was at City Hall Oct. 26 with gay Honduran activist Erick Martinez. At some point, he decided to go into the public restroom on the second floor — and noticed that Sup. Scott Wiener was in there, using the urinal.

Petrelis has been fighting with Wiener over a lot of issues, including the nudity ban and Wiener’s efforts to remove benches from the plaza at 18th and Castro, and on the issues, he’s been right. He has a history of demanding accountability from the LGBT power structure, sometimes in ways that are not exactly polite — but he’s still a valuable gadfly, and I’ve gotten over the insanity of the late-night calls (more on that below).

But in this case, Wiener was just trying to take a piss — and Petrelis lifted his phone and tried to take a picture. Wiener’s wiener, I guess. Supervisor taking a leak. I don’t know exactly what he was going after, but the phone didn’t work right and he couldn’t get the photo until Wiener had buttoned up his pants and moved over to the sink, where he was going to brush his teeth.

Instead, he saw Petrelis and picked up the brush and toothpaste and left — but not before the intrepid blogger snapped a pic, which wound up on the Petrelis Files blog. It’s not a terribly attractive or terribly scandalous photo; guy with a toothbrush. Whatever.
But Wiener was, well, pissed — and I don’t blame him. We were always taught that you can take journalistic photos without the subject’s permission in a place where people have no expectation of privacy; if there’s any place in the world where a reasonable person would expect privacy, the bathroom would seem to quality.

Wiener called the cops — or in this case, the Sheriff’s Office, since that’s who patrols City Hall.

Wiener’s been complaining (for no reason, really) about the way the deputy sheriffs have responded to the protests over his nudity ban (come on — the nudists really aren’t a threat to anyone). But he asked for an investigation, filed a statement, and got the department to take it seriously enough to bring the matter to the district attorney for possible prosecution.

And the DA has filed charges.

Petrelis surrendered and was booked Nov. 29 on suspicion of violating Penal Code Section 647 (j) 1, which is typically used to prosecute peeping Toms: “Any person who looks through a hole or opening, into, or otherwise views, by means of any instrumentality, including, but not limited to, a periscope, telescope, binoculars, camera, motion picture camera, camcorder, or mobile phone, the interior of a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth, or the interior of any other area in which the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the intent to invade the privacy of a person or persons inside.”

Bail was initially set at $25,000, which is astonishingly high for this level of crime, but Petrelis and his lawyer, Derek St. Pierre, got it reduced and Petrelis was cited and released on his own recognizance.

Wiener’s not talking; his office sent over a statement detailing the facts of the case and stating that Petrelis … has political disagreements with me, has a history of inappropriate and harassing behavior.” Both of those facts are undeniably true.

St. Pierre, though, thinks this is a huge waste of criminal justice resources. “I’m surprised that the D.A.’s Office decided to charge this case,” he told me. “I don’t see this as illegal conduct.”

In fact, he said, “the most concerning part of the case is that Wiener references that face that they have political disagreements. That suggests to me that political differences are driving the supervisor’s concerns.”

Maybe — or maybe he thinks his privacy really was invaded, and that Petrelis needs to be held accountable, too. As I said, I can’t blame him; Petrelis was acting like a total asshole. You can fight with Wiener, as I often do, and you can make speeches and denounce and interrupt meetings at City Hall and do all manner of impolite protests, but Jesus — the guy deserves the right to take a pee in peace.

That said, I have to wonder: Is this really worth turning into a criminal case? Did Wiener really have to take it that far? Petrelis, who loves attention, isn’t going to back down. “We will be fighting this case,” St. Pierre told me, starting with an arraignment hearing Dec. 5, at which I can pretty much guarantee the plea will be “not guilty.”

So we might have a full-blown trial here, and (as a fan of restorative justice) I’m not so sure that the criminal courts are the best way to resolve this. You’d think they could go to Community Boards. Wiener could agree to personally lower the rainbow flag to half-staff every now and then and Petrelis could agree to clean pigeon shit off some newsracks. Or something.

Because I don’t imagine that even Wiener wants to take the stand in a public trial and face cross-examination by Petrelis. The only winners at that spectacle would be the reporters.

PS: I don’t even remember exactly why Petrelis started the late-night calls to my home phone; it was around the same time he was calling lots of other people. I think he was mad that the Guardian ran (or didn’t run) some kind of ad around the doctor who was in charge of STD control at the Department of Public Health. I think there was some report about syphillis among gay men in SF that Petrelis didn’t like. I just remember that my son was two years old and sick and we were having a hell of time getting him to sleep and just when he would finally nod off the phone would ring and Petrelis would yell at me about syphillis. I’d hang up and he’d call back ten seconds later and yell again. I finally paid the phone company $2 a month to block his calls.

I was not among those who sought a restraining order or went to the police; that’s not my style. I was furious, but I knew it would pass, and eventually it did.

So will this, Scott.

Likes the name

Andrew Lam
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0
Likes the name

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN “People were like, we wanna wear some clothing from you guys,” San Franpsycho owner Christian Routzen tells me from the behind the counter of his DIY brand’s newish (it’s seven months old) location on newly-trendy Divisadero Street. “But we didn’t make clothing.”

I guess sometimes the brand just comes first, and then the product. Or rather, the movie comes first. Routzen made a 2001 Ocean Beach surf film with cohort Andy Olive called, yes, San Franpsycho. Apparently the flick, along with its 2005 follow-up San Franpsycho: Wet and Wreckless, captured the imagination of certain sector of San Francisco. They wanted T-shirts, so Routzen and Olive located some silkscreening gear and a mail truck and became a presence at Indie Marts, bars, and street fairs, silkscreening clothing with their bon mot. I’ve seen them do it, they get slammed.

“We had people taking off their shirts. Men, women, and children,” concludes Routzen. People resonated with the name, he says.

A couple of bangin’ blonde girls interrupt our conversation to buy wristbands for the surf fashion show the brand is hosting at Public Works that night. Later, I see a shot on Instagram involving a runway, a lot of thigh-high American Apparel tube socks, and bikinis. That same weekend, San Franpsycho was hosting a surf tournament and a poker competition.

The girls recede into the distance, banded. And then a guy interrupts us asking about customizing an aqua sweatshirt, as if to complete the San Franpsycho milieu I’ve found myself in the middle of.

But I kind of want Routzen to spell it out. “Can I ask you a less tangible question? Why’d they want to wear clothes from a bunch of guys that don’t make clothes? It’s all the name, really?”

Routzen shrugs, and hands me a DVD copy of Wet and Wreckless ($20, buy a copy at the store.) I watch it with my roommate the next night. It is a Jackass-paced piece of San Francisco bro-moblia, featuring gentlemen named Simo, Doobie, and Brownie, guys bouncing their penises while frying hot dogs in the kitchen, claymation sex, girls making out, an Ocean Beach parking lot shooting, a broken surfboard montage, and an incoherent interview with Andy Dick. Also: barrel rolls.

Most of the SFP dudes are pretty hot, they surf gnarly OB waves, and they straight-boy don’t give a fuck. Ding ding ding! Well yeah, obvs everybody wants San Franpsycho to rub off on them.

Which is a totally unfair analysis, because Olive and Routzen have (in addition to being attractive) created a real cute, real-real, repurposed wood retail galaxy. The Golden Gate Bridge-San Franpsycho logo can now be found on man-tanks, lady tanks, dog sweatshirts, boy shorts, hoodies, aprons, duffel bags, water bottles. The machines they’re printed on are clearly visible in the shop’s workspace.

The boys also sell a host of products made by buddies who live in the immediate neighborhood. The ginger-Afroed Olive holds up an expanse of black Cordura nylon, excitedly gesturing at a bank on the wall of the classic roll-top, leather-strapped Motley Goods backpacks (also available on Etsy) that it will be made into. That brand’s based out of their friend’s apartment, Olive says. “Literally, two blocks away.” The shop also stocks Sea Pony Couture (sea-pony-couture.myshopify.com), a line of delicate gold-chained, be-charmed jewelry by San Franciscan Fatima Fleming.

505 Divisadero, SF. (415) 829-7874, www.sanfranpsycho.com

Far, far away from the San Franpsycho clubhouse sits a Noe Valley clothing store that has absolutely zero hot men in it, but managed to pull me in on the strength of its color palette alone (I am, at my heart, a primary shades kind of person. This is Atlantis and I’m like, nautical.)

Said shop was Mill, and it’s MILF territory — at least, such were the women audibly rhapsodizing over the shop’s stock while I was there, and who were subsequently drawn in by the incredibly informative employees for a conversation about respective kids’ ages, the pleasures of teaching one’s youngster how to give mommy a foot massage, etc.

I was back in the dressing room trying on my Japanese striped/solid BlueBlue boatneck dress, silk drawstring pants with daisy motif by Janezic (a line designed by Michele Janezic, Mill’s store manager whose drapey tank tops are a touch more club-ready and sexy than the rest of Mill’s offerings), and high-waisted, below-the-knee, A-line Levi’s denim skirt.

“I just can’t believe this! It’s amazing,” went the raptures. I should mention that Mill is the brand-new female wear offshoot of beloved Castro store Unionmade. Unionmade was recently dinged by Gawker because its clothes are not, sadly, union-made. Nonetheless, its collection has garnered an enthusiastic following among those who swoon for spendy, high quality denim and other rugged forms of fashion. These followers included females, leading to the birth of Mill, which carries some unisex items in addition to female items from the same brands as Unionmade.

“The philosophy of Mill is to offer classic, quality, and timeless products,” Janezic told me in an email after my visit (I didn’t cop any of the items I tried on, but that was more a question of insufficient funds than personal proclivity because I wanted them all very badly. Even the Barbour “Morris” waxed utility jacket that seemed like a must-have for the drippy SF winter was $379, so I guess I must not-have it sob.)

But I’ll tell you this: if Mill ever needs someone to watch the store at night, say curl up on a pile of goldenrod Levi’s wool trenches lined with poncho material next to its stacks of design mags, wake up in the morning and go out brand representing in some Imogene + Willie jeans (this is cute — manufactured in Tennessee by a twangy couple who started in a gas station basement and still get their fabric from one the country’s last and oldest denim factories) and Gitman Bros. gingham button-ups…

… well, at least now they know my name.

3751 24th St., SF. (415) 401-8920, www.millmercantile.com

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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0

Schedules are for Wed/21-Tue/27 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Other Cinema: McCormick’s Great Northwest,” an experimental travelogue, plus works by Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998), Wed, 2:30, 7, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Cimino, 1974), Wed, 4:45, 9:15. The Sound of Music (Wise, 1965), presented sing-along style, Nov 23-Dec 2, 7 (also Fri/23-Sun/25 and Dec 2, 1; no shows Dec 1).

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. A Late Quartet (Zilberman, 2012), call for dates and times. The Other Son (Lévy, 2012), call for dates and times. A Royal Affair (Arcel, 2012), call for dates and times. Sister (Meier, 2012), call for dates and times. “World Ballet on the Big Screen:” works by the Netherlands Dance Theater, Sun, 10am and Tue, 6:30. This event, $15. With “David Thomson Presents: The Big Screen:” The Third Man (Reed, 1949), Sun, 7.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928-1960:” Marius (Korda, 1931), Fri, 4; Fanny (Allégret, 1932), Fri, 7; César (Pagnol, 1936), Sat, 5; Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946), Sat, 7:20; Douce (Autant-Lara, 1943), Sun, 3; Such a Pretty Little Beach (Allégret, 1949), Sun, 4:50; Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949), Tue, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, through Wed/21. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule. “The JFK Assassination 49 Years Later:” JFK (Stone, 1991), Thu, 4:45. With panel discussion to follow. The Comedy (Alverson, 2012), Nov 23-29, 8 and 9:45. Daisies (Chytilová, 1966), Nov 23-29, 6:30 (also Sat-Sun, 1).

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.sfcult.org. $10. •Cannibal! The Musical (Parker, 1993), Tue, 7, and Parents (Balaban, 1989), Tue, 9.

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Be Grateful, Eleven Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $8.

Gold Fields, Electric Youth (DJ set), popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $13-$15.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 8pm, $28.50.

Hopie, DJ Ry Toast, DJ Cutso Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $5-$8.

J. Boog, Hot Rain, Bayonics Mezzanine. 9pm, $30.

Jeremy Jones Band, Chris James and the Showdowns, Jeff Campbell Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

John Lawton Trio Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

"Rockin Reggae Thanksgiving" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12, all ages. With Clear Conscience, Dewey and the Peoples, Thanks For Leaving, and more.

Solwave, Major Powers and the Lo-Fi Symphony, Resurrection Men Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Todd vs Charles Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm, free.

UFO, Points North Independent. 8pm, $25.

White Panda, 2AM Club Slim’s. 9pm, $16-$19.

Witchburn, All Hail the Yeti Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Sweater Funk Elbo Room. 9pm, $5-$10. Steppers night with two step soul on vinyl.

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free. With Vinyl Ambassador, DJ Silverback, DJs Green B and Daneekah.

Eats Everything, Ryan Crosson, Bill Patrick Public Works. 10pm, $10.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

THURSDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP.

Dark Sparkle Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $5.

Todd Dunnigan Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Twang! Honky Tonk Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm. Live country music.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $7. Thanksgiving edition with DJ-hosts Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz, DJ Small Change.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

FRIDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

As I Lay Dying, Asking Alexandria, Suicide Silence, Memphis Mayfire, Attila Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $30.

Body and Soul Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Charles, Rome Balestrieri, Todd Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Delicate Steve, Dana Buoy, Raleigh Moncrief Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

Quinn Deveaux and the Blue Beat Review, Brass Menazeri Independent. 9pm, $15.

English Beat, Impalers Bimbo’s. 9pm, $25.

Golden Void, Joel Robinow Band, Phil Manley Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 9pm, $28.50.

Katdelic, DJ Fillmore Wax Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $10.

Macarthur, R.O.D., Rossisings, Halley Washington, Skye Green Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Pi Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

RNDM feat. Jeff Ament, Joseph Arthur, Richard Stuverud, Line and Circle Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $22.

Wallpaper, Neon Hitch Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Baxtalo Drom Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10. Live music, gypsy punk, belly dancing.

Colonel Jimmy and the Blackfish, Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers, Blank Tapes Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $13-$15. "Turkey Trot 2012."

Sebastien Giniaux Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-$15.

DANCE CLUBS

Biscuits and Gravy Elbo Room. 10pm, free. With DJs Vinnie Esparza, Asti Spumanti, Johnny Deeper.

Distance, Tunnidge, District, Trap City Mighty. 10pm, $15.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

NO-ID Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20-$30.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Taboo DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20-$25, 18+. With Larry Tee, Brooke Candy, Manics.

SATURDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Professionals, Bobbleheads Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

B-Side Players, LoCura Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $9-$15.

"Complete Last Waltz" Warfield. 8pm, $32.50-$55. With members of Dr. Dog, Ween, Gomez, Nada Surf, and more.

Jackie Greene Fillmore. 9pm, $28.50.

Petty Theft, Stung Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, Project: Pimento Bimbo’s. 9pm, $45-$65.

New Riders of the Purple Sage, Moonalice Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $25.

Tamaryn, Tropic of Cancer, She’s Independent. 9pm, $15.

Top Secret Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Todd, Charles, Rome Balestrieri, Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Via Coma, Beta State, PK Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Vitamin X, Strung Up, Side Effects, Zero Progress Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

White Barons, Tiger Honey Pot, Winter Teeth Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Alexander Abreu and Havana D’Primera Yoshi’s SF. 8 and 10pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Post-Thanksgiving Madness DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$15. With Smash-Up Derby, Lucio K, DJ A Plus D, and more.

Church Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $10. With Rusty Lazer (DJ set), DaveO of Double Duchess (DJ set), Trixxie Carr, Dulce De Leche, Honey Mahogany.

Chris Garcia Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20-$30.

120 Minutes Elbo Room. 10pm.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Tiefschwarz, Roos and Bo Public Works. 10pm, $20.

SUNDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Action Bronson Independent. 9pm, $20.

Enrique Bunbury Fillmore. 8pm, $45.

Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, Acaro Slim’s. 8pm, $20-$25

Aaron Leese and the Panhandlers Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

Cass McCombs Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Nasty Christmas, Black Sparrow Press Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Donald Arquilla with Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s. 7pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Twang Sunday" Thee Parkside. 4pm, free. With Rocketship, Rocketship.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, free before 9:30pm; $6 after. With DJs Sep, Vinnie Esparza and DJ Mundi.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Creepers, Commissure, Loomers, Permanent Collection Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Earl Brothers, Kendl and Joe from Blackbetter Bushes Amnesia. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Uni and Her Ukelele Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-$5, 18+.

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

BAUS, Pleasure Gallows, Life Stinks Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Alice Cooper, Kill Devil Hill Warfield. 8pm, $37.50-$57.50.

Deep Sea Diver, Wild Belle, Showrunners Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Sufis Amnesia. 9:30pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Jacob Armen Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $22.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Stylus John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane.

Takin’ Back Tuesdays Double Dutch, 3192 16th St,SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 10pm. Hip-hop from the 1990s.

Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Sasha Cuttler
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139
Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Over the objections of progressive supervisors and under threats of a lawsuit from nudists and civil liberties advocates, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted 6-5 to outlaw public nudity in the city. Supervisors voting against the ban were David Campos, Christina Olague, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the measure, cast it as a last resort to deal with what has become daily displays of nudity in the Castro district he represents (and most recently around City Hall as his legislation was being considering in committees), noting that, “Public nudity is part of San Francisco and is appropriate in some circumstances.” His legislation makes exceptions for permitted events such as the Folsom Street Fair and Bay-to-Breakers.

But Wiener said that “public nudity can go too far,” as he says it has over the last two years in the Castro’s Jane Warner Plaza, and that “freedom of expression and acceptance does not mean you can do whatever you want.”

Campos echoed some of the legal concerns that critics of the legislation have raised, noting that, “As a lawyer, I do worry about when you ban specific conduct and then you have exceptions to that.” He also questioned whether Wiener has done enough to try to mediate the increasingly divisive conflict he’s been having with the nudist community and whether this was an appropriate use of scarce police resources.

“I don’t believe we’re at the point of saying this becomes a priority over violent crime,” Campos said, noting that he’s been unable to get more police foot patrols to deal with a recent spate of violent crimes in the Mission, which shares a police station with the Castro.

Avalos said it was absurd to focus city resources on this victimless issue when the city is wrestling with far more serious problems, such as poverty and violence, and he played a clip from the film Catch 22 where a soldier goes naked to a ceremony to highlight that absurdity. “I will refuse to put on this fig leaf, I just can’t do it,” Avalos said.

Mar said he sympathized with Wiener’s concerns, but agreed with Campos that Wiener could have done more to mediate this situation before both sides dug in: “I really don’t think we need citywide legislation, particularly overbroad legislation, to deal with a problem isolated to one neighborhood.”

Wiener seemed stung by the comments and said he could cite example of each supervisor pushing resolutions or ordinances that dealt with similarly trivial issues, comparing it to refusing to deal with a constituent’s pothole complaint until that supervisor fixed Muni and solved the city’s housing problem. But Campos pushed back, calling the comparison ridiculous and saying there was no reason for a citywide ban to deal with such an isolated issue.

Nudists at the hearing reacted angrily to the approval and started to disrobe before President David Chiu ordered deputies to intervene and abruptly recessed the hearing. Now, it will likely be up to the courts to decide whether Wiener’s concerns about weiners can withstand legal scrutiny.

The nudists file suit

Zelda Bronstein
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32
The nudists file suit

You all know the joke: What did the unsuccessful lawyer who joined a nudist colony never have? (A suit. LOL. Sort of.)

But a successful lawyer just filed a detailed suit trying to stop San Francisco from enforcing a ban on public nudity, and it makes a lot of interesting points. You can read the filing here (pdf). I’ll get beyond the fact that a legal argument over nudism uses the terms “prong” and “thrust” and “penal” all in a few short paragraphs, and get to the substance:

Attorney Christina DeEduoardo claims that her clients use nudity as a form of free speech and protest — and given who they are, it’s a pretty good argument. You’ve got a guy who ran as the nudist candidate for mayor and a woman who took her clothes off at a Board of Supervisors meeting for political reasons, and they contend that they have the right to appear naked in public.

The claim seeks a restraining order prohibiting the Board of Supervisors from enacting the law, but a federal judge already nixed that, according to City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey. Instead, all parties have to wait unitl the supes approve the law, at which point this will become a motion for an injunction against the law taking effect.

So banning a handful of people, mostly older guys, from hanging out naked on Castro Street is going to become a legal battle that will cost the city a bunch of money. Unless sanity prevails and Sup. Scott Wiener, the city attorney and the nudists can reach a deal, which might be pretty simple:

It’s cool to get all nekkid (although it won’t be happening much in the next few months, way too cold). But maybe the Castro Guys can agree not to wear cockrings that attract attention to their dicks (and seem to be the proximate cause of all the fuss). Just be natural when you go au naturel, and we can all stop fighting over this.

You think?

 

 

Howard Wallace, LGBT icon, dies at 76

Zelda Bronstein
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6
Howard Wallace, LGBT icon, dies at 76

Howard Wallace, a longtime organizer who played a key role in bringing the LGBT movement and labor together in San Francisco, died Nov. 14. He was 76 and had been struggling with Alzhiemer’s disease.

Wallace grew up in Denver, and according to a biography by Andrej Koymasky, was forced to drop out of college when his father saw some United World Federalist literatature he’d brought home and told him to drop of of “commie” politics:

“He put a couple of checks on the dining-room table – the checks for next year’s tuition – and said, ‘Get out [of activism] and you can have those checks.’ I tore them up in his face, and that was the end of my college education.” 

Instead, he began a series of blue-collar jobs that brought him into labor organizing.

By the early 1970s he was in San Francisco, part of a generation of activists that included the late Hank Wilson and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who together helped form a group called Bay Area Gay Liberation.

“He made bridges,” Ammiano told me. “He came to BAGL and told us we had to support Cesar Chavez, and some of us were reluctant — you know, it was the Catholic Church, homophobia, all of that. But he convinced us to go on that march, and we were all glad we did.”

Wallace was a founder of the Lesbian-Gay Labor Alliance and later Pride at Work, and he was instrumental in bringing LGBT workers into the labor movement — and also bringing labor support to LGBT causes.

In 1974, Wallace worked with members of the Teamsters Union — not a group always known in those days known for enlightened attitudes towards gay people — on a boycott of Coors beer.  The teamsters were fighting bad labor practices at Coors, including a mandate that all employees take a lie-detector test that incuded the question “are you a homosexual?”

Working with both sides, Wallace got the LGBT community to sign on to the boycott, got Coors out of many of the bars in the Castro — and made lasting connections between local labor leaders and the LGBT community.

“He’s the one who brought Harvey Milk into the Coors boycott,” Ammiano recalled. “And he was never afraid to call out labor leaders when they were being homophobic.”

Like all great organizers, he could be persistent to the point where he was sometimes infuriating — but always, always pure of heart. “He was a character,” Ammiano said. “I never knew what color his hair would be, but I always knew what color his politics would be.”

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a longtime activist and writer on LGBT history, said Wallace was “a giant among us. He was always there, for the rights of union members, the poor and working class, antiwar activists … you could always count on Howard to be there.”

Mecca noted that Wallace “saw the connections between the LBGT movement and disenfranchised people everywhere. He saw the queer struggle as part of a larger struggle for social and economic justice.”

He will be sorely missed, but as Mecca said, “we will always have his legacy; future generations can look back and understand what our movement was about.”

Said Ammiano: “I hope he and Hank Wilson are up there tipping a few back and talking about Lenin vs. Trotsky.”
 
A memorial is pending, and I’ll keep you posted as updates are available.

UPDATE NUMBER 1: State Sen. Mark Leno told me that Wallace “was not only a dear friend but a teacher. His values were strongly intact.” Leno recalled chairing the fundraising drive for the LGBT Center, a huge undertaking, and accepting a check from Coors for $5,000. “I though I had done due diligence, I knew the boycott was over, but Howard came to our board meeting and convinced us that the LGBT Center had to be above reproach.” 

(I’m sure Howard Wallace didn’t use those exact words).

“It was after that that we became good friends,” Leno said.

UPDATE NUMBER 2: From Gabriel Haaland, Pride at Work co-vice-president (SEIU< SF): I don’t know if most progressives know how much Howard gave to us all. I know there are so many who considered him a mentor and an inspiration. For those of you who don’t know him, Howard had a way of connecting the dots across so many issues. A legend and a hero for sure. A fearless warrior for justice, Howard was both passionate and gentle in his own way… He gave so much of himself and taught me so much in the rashness of my younger years. Even in death, he continues to inspire me to be better than I was before, more in integrity. I honor those who took such good care of him in the last year, like Kathy Lipscomb, Carl Finamore, Tab Buckner, Eileen Hansen, and Susan
Englander. I will miss him.

Popping up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Another new restaurant has sprung up at the corner of Castro and 18th St. across from Walgreens. Korean, this time.

CHEAP SPORTS

by Hedgehog

There are several problems inherent with writing a pirate sports column embedded within a “food” column in any free weekly paper, even when the “food” column isn’t written by your domesticated partner. Which mine is. And don’t think I haven’t suspected that’s how I landed the gig in the first place.

In the second place, local politics is what passes for sport in this paper. You all don’t really care about rec center racquetball, pickup soccer, baseball, or women’s flag football. And that list pretty near completes the length and breadth of my sports experience around here. It’s enough to make me want to hang up my cleats and walk out on Chicken Farmer’s strike. But enough about me. And you. And the Bay Area sports scene.

Last week, while I was in Los Angeles, Kristy Kreme told me about something I’d never heard of or ever even imagined possible:

Trampoline dodge ball.

For the uninitiated, I’ll elucidate: I’m talking about dodge ball, but played on a trampoline.

What?

Yes. It really happens! Kristy played it in the Valley but it can occur anywhere there is a trampoline park. These are giant rooms of interconnected trampolines, so that you have a basketball court-sized bouncing surface. On which to play dodge ball. How brilliant is that?

Here is where I leave the purview of underappreciated so-called sports writer and offer up my opinion in the civic arena, editorialist-style: Can we get some of that there Prop B money allocated to convert the now-dormant Mission playground swimming pool into a trampoline park? Now? It would be one sure way to silence your detractors who cried “fiscal irresponsibility” and so forth.

Trampoline dodgeball.

Pretty please?

Cheap Eats continued …

Yeah! A free one, because the House of Air in the Presidio costs like 15, 16 clams an hour. Per person! Most people I know can’t afford those kinds of clams-per-hour, not to mention per person.

But speaking of the metric system, my friend the Maze has moved to Palo Alto and I had the honor of helping him pack his kitchen. Not to mention pick up lunch.

And that is how I knew that there was a new Korean restaurant called Kpop at the corner of Castro and 18th, where that stupid soup place used to be, and before that I forget what.

Well, so I grabbed an order of kimchee fried rice and an order of bulgogi on my way to the Maze’s box-strewn mess of an ex-place, and we had us a little mid-afternoon lunch break.

OK.

The place wraps its takeout orders like microwave hospital cafeteria food: in plastic containers with plastic wrap stuck over the top, which is weird and hard to open.

And pointless.

What are you trying to prove, Kpop?

The sausage in the kimchi fried rice was pretty weak. It kind of seemed like little pieces of hot dogs, only not as yummy. And the fried egg on top of the fried rice … somehow it managed to be both overdone and underdone at the same time. There wasn’t hardly any juice at all left to the yolk, yet the sunny side was still slimy.

The bulgogi was alright. Nothing special.

Gasp, it’s not my new favorite restaurant; but I will give it another chance, because it’s only been open for a couple weeks. And I love the idea of Korean food a short walk from home.

I just wish this one had bigger portions, or at least better portions. Or, hell, the same size and quality of portions for a slightly smaller price. I would settle for that.

KPOP

Mon-Thu, Sun 11am-11pm; Fri-Sat 11am-2am

499 Castro St., SF

(415) 252-9500

MC,V

No alcohol

 

Presidents, secret agents, and true stories galore: new movies!

Sue Vaughan
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Presidents, secret agents, and true stories galore: new movies!

The election is over and, thank Zeus, good defeated evil. So you can stop making snarky Romney gifs and turn your attentions to more important matters — like seeing Lincoln (yeah, he was a Republican, but as Spielberg’s movie makes abundantly clear, Democrats were actually the bigger assholes back in the day). Or, you could see what ol’ James Bond is up to in his 4785th film, Skyfall (just kidding — it’s his 23rd, so Godzilla still has him beat). Reviews for both below the jump.

Elsewhere, DocFest opens tonight and runs through Nov. 21; check out my take on this year’s programming (spoiler alert: lots o’ good stuff) here; and read Dennis Harvey’s review of a very strange movie starring a very strangely coiffed Sean Penn, This Must Be the Place.

And … as if that would be everything going on in San Francisco’s film scene this week? Are you new in town? There’s also the San Francisco Film Society’s local showcase Cinema By the Bay (my overview here) and New Italian Cinema programs; the always-popular (and now 10th annual!) San Francisco Transgender Film Festival; and Marc Huestis’ multi-film tribute to the late, great Natalie Wood at the Castro.

PLUS more short takes, including the good word on Ursula Meier’s acclaimed Sister, below.

Dangerous Liaisons John Malkovich and Sarah Michelle Gellar may have already starred in pop culture’s favorite adaptations of this classic French novel, but since pretty people scheming never gets old, here’s a Chinese take on Les Liaisons dangereuses, complete with big-name cast and all the visual allure of 1930s Shanghai. “You are such a cad!” a woman shrieks at Xie Yifan (Jang Dong-gun) in the first scene, and indeed he is — though his heart belongs to “Miss Mo” (Cecilia Cheung). The malicious wager (if you seduce her and then horribly dump her, I’ll let you sleep with me … plus: incidental affairs along the way) is struck and things proceed on schedule, until Yifan finds himself actually falling for virtuous widow Fenyu (Zhang Ziyi). You know how it ends. Gorgeous costumes and mise-en-scène add visual interest to the familiar story, which also adds a little political flair in the form of Chinese students protesting the early days of Japanese occupation. (1:45) (Cheryl Eddy)

The Details One of the hardest hurdles to clear in watching Jacob Aaron Estes’s The Details might be the sight of Tobey Maguire, erstwhile boy-man and Spider-Man, inelegantly proposing to Elizabeth Banks (playing his character’s wife) that they put their small child to bed and F-U-C-K. On paper, or perhaps under the right mood lighting, that could work, but it’s not a sexy sight here, and it’s almost a relief when she turns him down. Far less appetizing intimacies lie ahead, though, as Maguire’s gynecologist and family man Jeffrey Lang triggers a sticky, unsalutary domino effect involving marauding raccoons, marital infidelity, enabling friends (Kerry Washington), unstable neighbors (Laura Linney), planning codes, pesticides, and kidney disease. Like Estes’s 2004 film Mean Creek, which he also wrote and directed, The Details shows us what can happen when baser human impulses meet unforeseen circumstances. There, it was children making painfully bad decisions. Here, we squeamishly watch Lang get caught, but the drama has a glossy, dark-comedy finish to it that prevents us from suffering too much as we witness his domestic life imploding. Dennis Haysbert plays a pickup basketball buddy/better human being drawn inexorably into the mess our protagonist has made; Ray Liotta, a husband made irate by Lang’s misjudgments. (1:31) (Lynn Rapoport)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) (Cheryl Eddy)

Sister Twelve-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) looks like any other kid vacationing with a family on the slopes of a Swiss ski resort. That’s a big plus, because he’s not one of them — he’s a local living “downhill” in an anonymous high-rise apartment block, sustaining himself and his pretty but irresponsible older sister Louise (Léa Seydoux) by stealing expensive sports equipment and clothes from the oblivious guests. He has no guilt about what he does, but then why should he? Those people are rich, he’s not, and sis’ short attention span toward jobs and boyfriends isn’t going to pay the rent. Ursula Meier’s French-language second feature isn’t heavily plot-driven, though it doesn’t feel like a second is wasted. The casual, somewhat furtive relationships that develop between Simon and stray adults who glean enough to worry about him — a seasonal restaurant worker (Martin Compston), a maternal resort guest (Gillian Anderson), Louise’s better-than-usual new beau (Yann Tregouet) — come and go but are toeholds on stability for him. It’s the contrast between Simon’s aggressively take-charge premature adulthood and his unaddressed needs as a child that ultimately make Sister rather devastating. It’s been aptly compared to the Dardenne Brothers’ similar dramas, but Meier lets her film’s heart beat a little more in open empathy with its protagonist while aping those Belgians’ brisk surface objectivity. (1:37) (Dennis Harvey)

Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about “firewalls” and “obfuscated code” never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bon mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying – the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) (Ben Richardson)

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/7-Tue/13 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Bruised Jewels: Films and Slide Works by Luther Price,” Thu, 7:30. With Price in person; presented by SF Cinematheque. “Bright Mirror: An Evening of Sound and Image,” with Jeff Surak, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and Paul Clipson, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” “Live A/V” with works by Lori Varga, Kerry Laitala, Anne McGuire, and more, Sat, 8:30. “Small Press Traffic: A Reading and Conversation with kathryn l. pringle, Erin Moure, and Andrea Rexilius,” Sun, 5. “Alain LeTourneau and Pam Minty: Empty Quarter,” Sun, 7:30. With LeTourneau and Minty in person; presented by SF Cinematheque.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.cinemasf.com. $10. The Doors: Live at the Bowl ’68, Thu, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •The Game (Fincher, 1997), Wed, 1:30, 7, and Zodiac (Fincher, 2007), Wed, 4, 9:25. “An Evening with Ken Burns:” The Dust Bowl (2012), Thu, 7:30. Advance tickets ($12-18) at www.cityboxoffice.com. “Forever Natalie Wood:” •Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), Fri, 2:30, 7, and This Property is Condemned (Pollack, 1966), Fri, 4:45, 9:15; •Gypsy (LeRoy, 1962), Sat, noon, and Love With the Proper Stranger (Mulligan, 1963), Sat, 3; Splendor in the Grass (Kazan, 1961), centerpiece event with Natalie Wood’s sister, Lana Wood, in person, Sat, 7:30; West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961), presented sing-along style (this event, $10-15), Sun, 2; •Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Mazursky, 1969), Sun, 7, and Inside Daisy Clover (Mulligan, 1965), Sun, 9:05. •Lawless (Hillcoat, 2012), Tue, 7, and Killer Joe (Friedkin, 2011), Tue, 9:10.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. All Together (Robelin, 2011), Wed-Thu, call for times. A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman (Jones, Simpson, and Timlett, 2012), call for dates and times. The Other Son (Lévy, 2012), call for dates and times. “Johnny Legend’s TV in Acidland, Thu, 7 and Sun, 2. A Late Quartet (Zilberman, 2012), Nov 9-15, call for times. Sister (Meier, 2012), Nov 9-15, call for times. The Welcome (McMillan, 2011), Sun, 7. With Bill McMillan in person.

COUNTERPULSE 1310 Mission, SF; www.sftff.org. $12-15. San Francisco Transgender Film Festival: “Performance Extravaganza,” Thu, 8; films, Fri-Sat, 8; Sun, 7.

EMBARCADERO One Embarcadero Center, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-25. “New Italian Cinema:” “An Evening with Valeria Golino,” Sun, 5:30; Texas (Paravidino, 2005), Sun, 9; A Tale of Love (Maselli, 1986), Mon, 6:15; Respiro (Crialese, 2002); The Greatest of Them All (Virzi, 2011), Tue, 6:15; Kryptonite! (Cotroneo, 2011), Tue, 9. Series continues through Nov. 18.

FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO 1187 Franklin, SF; www.billviola.com. $50-125. “Transformation from Within,” with video art pioneer Bill Viola and curator John Walsh, Fri, 7:30.

“NAPA VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL” Various North Bay venues; www.napavalleyfilmfest.org. First-run films and documentaries, plus tributes to Alan Cumming, James Marsden, and more, Wed-Sun.

NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-25. “Cinema By the Bay:” Trattoria (Wolos, 2012), Fri, 7 and 9:30; Casablanca mon amour (Slattery, 2012), Sat, 2:30; “Essential SF,” Sat, 5 (free admission); Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet (Vile, 2012), Sat, 7; Amity (Adams, 2012), Sat, 9:30; “Moving Image at the End of the World: Shorts from Headlands Center for the Arts,” Sun, 2; “A Conversation with Lucy Gray,” Sun, 4:15; The Revolutionary Optimists (Grainger-Monsen and Newnham, work in progress), Sun, 6; CXL (Gillane, 2011), Sun, 8:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “The Films of John Smith,” Wed, 7. “Afterimage: The Films of Kidlat Tahimik, Indigenous:” Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy? (1979), Thu, 7; Perfumed Nightmare (1977), Tue, 7. “Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928-1960:” Children of Paradise (Carné, 1945), Fri, 7; Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937), Sat, 6:30; The Story of a Cheat (Guitry, 1936), Sat, 8:45; Toni (Renoir, 1934), Sun, 2. “Art for Human Rights: Ai Weiwei:” Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Klayman, 2012), Sun, 4:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (Grant, 2012), Wed, 9:30; Thu, 9. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black, 2005), Wed, 7:15. The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow (Cerio, 2012), Wed, 7:15. Miami Connection (Kim, 1986), Wed, 6:45. The Waiting Room (Nicks, 2012), Thu, 7. “City College’s Second Annual Festival of the Moving Image,” Thu, 7 and 9. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, Nov 9-21. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.sfcult.org. $10. •Slaughter in San Francisco (Wei, 1974), Fri, 7, and The Warriors (Hill, 1979), Fri, 9.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $10. “Animating Dark Dreams: The Films of Jan Svankmajer:” Alice (1989), Thu, 7:30; Lunacy (2006), Sun, 2; Little Otik (2000), Sun, 4:30. “Constancy of Change: Films of John Smith,” Fri, 7:30.

Our Weekly Picks: November 7-13

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 7

Twin Sister

At times romantic and sultry but also plenty psychedelic, Twin Sister will bring its energetic, upbeat dream-pop back to San Francisco this week. Singer, Andrea Estella, an artist who also works in water color and sculpture, is decidedly nymph-like with her hypnotic voice and pixie features. And if that’s not entrancing enough, she’s backed by a collaboration of Brooklyn musicians who handle their instruments (keyboards, synths, and melodica to name a few) with thoughtful precision. If you’re lucky, they may throw in some acoustic versions, but you’ll have to come and find out for yourself. (Molly Champlin)

With Melted Toys, Some Ember, and Yalls (DJ set)

8pm, $10

Rickshaw Stop

115 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


THURSDAY 8

San Francisco Transgender Film Festival

With Cloud Atlas co-director Lana Wachowski (and her fab pink hair) all over pop culture media these days, trans filmmakers have never enjoyed a higher profile. But the artists who’ve participated in the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, now in its 11th year, don’t need Hollywood to assure them of their talent. The 2012 fest is the biggest ever, with three nights of globally-sourced short films (“enticing tales of defiance, bullying, relationships, sex, humor, enchantment, romance, and zombies”), plus a performance spectacular (with Sean Dorsey Dance, Eli Conley and the Transcendence Gospel Choir, and more). Previous fests have sold out lickety-split, so buy your tickets ASAP. (Cheryl Eddy)

Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm, $12–$15

CounterPulse

1310 Mission, SF

www.sftff.org

 

Wet Paint

Contrary to popular belief, the Beats were not just an old boys’ club. Bay Area painter Jay DeFeo stands as a contradiction to the flat female characters you’ll encounter in a Kerouac novel. She pushes boundaries alongside all persuasions of painters. Her work lays the paint thick, looking at light, nature, and the body to find the abstract in the real and vice versa. In conjunction with her retrospective at SFMOMA will be a performance of Wet Paint by Kevin Killian (maybe you know him as a poet, editor, and award-winning author of gay erotic fiction). The play about DeFeo’s life will be performed by the Poets’ Theater and should be a great way to learn the background of her art and ties with the beat movement. (Champlin)

7pm, $10

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

 

Maya Jane Coles

If London producer and DJ Maya Jane Coles has made a statement in her so far short and rapid ascension in the dance music world, it was with the title of her 2011 EP, Don’t Put Me in Your Box. Whether under her own name, dubstep alias Nocturnal Sunshine, or as part of dub duo She Is Danger, Coles has resisted the contrived hooks and familiar samples that promise EDM success, instead forging a path through deep house, delivering independent productions with her personal stamp on everything from vocals to visual design. Noted in the press for being both a breakthrough artist and still quite young, Coles is worth paying attention to as she prepares her eagerly awaited full-length album. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Moniker, Brian Bejarano

9pm, $20

Monarch

101 Sixth St., SF

(415) 284-9774

www.monarchsf.com


FRIDAY 9

“Flamenco en Movimiento”

The emphatic swirl of voluminous skirts, the pounding of heels against the floorboards, the mesmerizing stop-start rhythms, the rose gripped in the teeth, the ache of tight pants … Spanish flamenco dancing and music, bursting with full-throated emotion and thrilling restraint, can be addictive. The Bay Area certainly loves it: flamenco has been eliciting hearty “olé!”s in a new wave of wine bars, beer halls, and Spanish restaurants over the last few years. We’re also home to some incredible flamenco troupes, especially Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco, led by brilliant director Carolyn Zertuche and celebrating its 46th year. Her company’s annual show (this year called “Flamenco in Motion” in English) blew me away last year: the passion, technique, and gorgeous live music emanating from the stage were spellbinding. And I’m no drama queen! If you need a shot of strings-free emotional beauty in these trying times, here’s your best bet. (Marke B.)

8pm (also Sat/10 at 8pm and Sun/11 at 2pm), $20–$40

Cowell Theater, Fort Mason

Marina Blvd, SF.

(415) 826-1305

www.theatreflamenco.org

 

Christopher Owens

It was only in July that with a few tweets Christopher Owens announced the break up of his breezy, garage rock infused pop band Girls. Owens cited personal reasons — as if there were any other kind — but promised that he would continue to make music in some other form. Just as quickly as that news came, the songwriter has turned around and scheduled a solo date, premiering an entirely new road-trip themed album called Lysandre, at an intimate performance above the Regency Ballroom. A special peek at the album due for release in January, this show will also be filmed for a music video. (Prendiville)

9pm, $20

The Lodge at the Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

“Forever Natalie Wood”

Natalie Wood was a child star (1947’s Miracle on 34th Street) turned teenage Oscar nominee (1955’s Rebel Without a Cause) turned Hollywood legend (1961’s West Side Story; 1961’s Splendor in the Grass) turned celebrity tragedy (after her mysterious 1981 drowning death at age 43). Marc Huestis curates a special tribute to the gone-but-never-forgotten icon with three days of films (all of the above save Miracle, plus 1966’s This Property is Condemned; 1962’s Gypsy; 1963’s Love With the Proper Stranger; 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; and 1965’s Inside Daisy Clover), including an appearance by Natalie’s sister (and Bond girl) Lana Wood before the Saturday night centerpiece screening of Splendor. (Eddy)

Through Sun/11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com


SATURDAY 10

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Jon Spencer has been pushing the boundaries of modern rock for nearly 30 years now, first with Pussy Galore, which brought new meaning to the union of the words noise and art, and he has continued to light up stages with his electric live presence with several other projects, notably Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. With its first new record in eight years, Meat and Bone, dropping earlier this year, Blues Explosion — which also features Judah Bauer and Russell Simins — is hitting the road once again to testify to the power of rock’n’roll. (Sean McCourt)

With Quasi.

9pm $21–$23

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell St., SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

La Sera

These jangly, melancholic pop songs might sound a bit familiar to you. Brooklyn singer-songwriter Katy Goodman, the woman behind La Sera, is also “Kickball Katy,” one third of the indie rock band Vivian Girls. This year’s Sees the Light is Goodman’s second solo release under the La Sera moniker. It’s a rollicking break-up album that leaves you, after many powerfully emotional highs and lows, feeling not downtrodden, but empowered. Layers of distorted sound create a dreamy, escapist pop landscape, at times blurring the lines between pop and punk rock. La Sera is one of the first indie artists to perform at the Chapel, the Mission’s brand new music venue. (Haley Zaremba)

9:30pm, $10

Preservation Hall West at the Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

www.thechapelsf.com


SUNDAY 11

“Animating Dark Dreams: The Films of Jan Svankmajer”

Some of the creatures by Czech animator and puppeteer, Jan Svankmajer, seem like they were plucked out of David Bowie’s Labyrinth. If you were into the flying gremlins in Magic Dance and Escher-world ending, this double feature should be a no-brainer. Svankmajer’s films are a bit more gruesome than stealing someone’s baby, though, and are deepened with inspiration from classic stories. Lunacy (2000), based on several shorts by Edgar Allen Poe, goes for the philosophical horror while Little Otik (2005), based on a Czech folktale, shockingly captures the gore of child-rearing. A few things to look forward to: dancing slabs of meat, hair eating, and a devious tree-stump baby. (Champlin)

2pm, 4:30 p.m., $10 each

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org


MONDAY 12

Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus stunned everyone in 2010 when The Monitor, a ridiculously ambitious civil war-themed concept album, turned out not to be meandering celebration of its own complexity, but a powerful, masterfully written opus. Now, with 2012’s Local Business, Titus Andronicus is eschewing high-brow theatrics and multi-instrumental recordings for a simple, down-and-dirty rock album, intended as a marriage of its recorded work and its remarkably energetic, guitar-heavy live sound. In Local Business singer and driving force Patrick Stickles howls about stigmatized subjects relevant to his own life, like deteriorating mental health, and male eating disorders. 2012’s Titus Andronicus may not be grandiose, but it’s definitely badass. (Zaremba)

With Ceremony

8pm, $19

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

Napalm Death

Hailing from Birmingham, England — the same industrial city that gave birth to Black Sabbath — British grindcore pioneer Napalm Death has been pummeling listeners since the mid 1980s. Though the band has gone through a multitude of lineup changes over the years, key members, including Shane Embury and Mark Greenway, continue to lead the group to success. Returning to the US in support of its new album, Utilitarian, its 15th release, the quartet joins local rockers Municipal Waste, Exumed, Attitude Adjustment, and Impaled at what is guaranteed to be a most brutal night of extreme music.(McCourt)

7pm, $12–$16

Oakland Metro

630 Third St., Oakl.

www.oaklandmetro.org

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