Classes

The people’s election

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› news@sfbg.com

By midnight Nov. 4, the drama was long over: John McCain had conceded, Barack Obama had delivered his moving victory speech — declaring that “change has come to America” — and the long national nightmare of the Bush years was officially headed for the history books.

But in San Francisco, the party was just getting started.

Outside of Kilowatt, on 16th Street near Guerrero, the crowd of celebrants was dancing to the sounds of a street drummer. In the Castro District, a huge crowd was cheering and chanting Obama’s name. And on Valencia and 19th streets, a spontaneous outpouring of energy filled the intersection. Two police officers stood by watching, and when a reporter asked one if he was planning to try to shut down the celebration and clear the streets, he smiled. “Not now,” he said. “Not now.”

Then, out of nowhere, the crowd began to sing: O say can you see /By the dawn’s early light …

It was a stunning moment, as dramatic as anything we’ve seen in this city in years. In perhaps the most liberal, counterculture section of the nation’s most liberal, counterculture city, young people by the hundreds were proudly singing The Star Spangled Banner. “For the first time in my life,” one crooner announced, “I feel proud to be an American.”

Take that, Fox News. Take that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and the rest of the right-wing bigots who have tried to claim this country for themselves. On Nov. 4, 2008, progressives showed the world that we’re real Americans, too, proud of a country that has learned from its mistakes and corrected its course.

President Obama will let us down soon enough; he almost has to. The task at hand is so daunting, and our collective hopes are so high, that it’s hard to see how anyone could succeed without a few mistakes. In fact, Obama already admitted he won’t be “a perfect president.” And when you get past the rhetoric and the rock star excitement, he’s taken some pretty conservative positions on many of the big issues, from promoting “clean coal” and nuclear power to escautf8g the war in Afghanistan.

But make no mistake about it: electing Barack Obama was a progressive victory. Although he never followed the entire progressive line in his policy positions, he was, and is, the creature of a strong progressive movement that can rightly claim him as its standard-bearer. He was the candidate backed from the beginning by progressives like Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi (a Green). And only after his improbable nomination did moderates like Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sen. Dianne Feinstein jump on the bandwagon.

From the start, the young, activist, left wing of the Democratic Party was the driving force behind the Obama revolution. And while he has always talked to the Washington bigwigs — and will populate his administration with many of them — he would never have won without the rest of us. And that’s a fact of political life it will be hard for him to ignore, particularly if we don’t let him forget it.

For a few generations of Americans — everyone who turned 18 after 1964 — this was the first presidential election we’ve been able to get truly excited about. It was also the first presidential election that was won, to a significant extent, on the Internet, where progressive sites like dailykos.com raised millions of dollars, generated a small army of ground troops, and drove turnout in both the primaries and the general election. The movement that was built behind Obama can become a profound and powerful force in American politics.

So this was, by any reasonable measure, the People’s Election. And now it’s the job of the people to keep that hope — and that movement — alive, even when its standard-bearer doesn’t always live up to our dreams.

The evidence that this was the People’s Election wasn’t just at the national level. It showed up in the results of the San Francisco elections as well.

This was the election that would demonstrate, for the first time since the return of district elections, whether a concerted, well-funded downtown campaign could trump a progressive grassroots organizing effort. Sure, in 2000, downtown and then-Mayor Willie Brown had their candidates, and the progressives beat them in nearly every race. But that was a time when the mayor’s popularity was in the tank, and San Franciscans of all political stripes were furious at the corruption in City Hall.

“In 2000, I think a third of the votes that the left got came from Republicans,” GOP consultant Chris Bowman, who was only partially joking, told us on election night.

This time around, with the class of 2000 termed out, a popular mayor in office and poll numbers and conventional wisdom both arguing that San Franciscans weren’t happy with the current Board of Supervisors (particularly with some of its members, most notably Chris Daly), many observers believed that a powerful big-money campaign backing some likable supervisorial candidates (with little political baggage) could dislodge the progressive majority.

As late as the week before the election, polls showed that the three swings districts — 1, 3, and 11 — were too close to call, and that in District 1, Chamber of Commerce executive Sue Lee could be heading for a victory over progressive school board member Eric Mar.

And boy, did downtown try. The big business leaders, through groups including the Committee on Jobs, the Chamber, the Association of Realtors, Plan C, the newly-formed Coalition for Responsible Growth, and the Building Owners and Managers Association, poured more than $630,000 into independent expenditures smearing progressive candidates and promoting the downtown choices. Newsom campaigned with Joe Alioto, Jr. in District 3 and Ahsha Safai in District 11. Television ads sought to link Mar, John Avalos, and David Chiu with Daly.

Although the supervisors have no role in running the schools, the Republicans and downtown pushed hard to use a measure aimed at restoring JROTC to the city’s high schools as a wedge against the progressives in the three swing districts. They also went to great lengths — even misstating the candidates’ positions — to tar Mar, Chiu, and Avalos with supporting the legalization of prostitution.

And it didn’t work.

When the votes were counted election night, it became clear that two of the three progressives — Avalos and Chiu — were headed for decisive victories. And Mar was far enough ahead that it appeared he would emerge on top.

How did that happen? Old-fashioned shoe leather. The three campaigns worked the streets hard, knocking on doors, distributing literature, and phone banking.

“I’ve been feeling pretty confident for a week,” Avalos told us election night, noting his campaign’s strong field operation. As he knocked on doors, Avalos came to understand that downtown’s attacks were ineffective: “No one bought their horseshit.”

A few weeks earlier, he hadn’t been so confident. Avalos said that Safai ran a strong, well-funded campaign and personally knocked on lots of doors in the district. But ultimately, Avalos was the candidate with the deepest roots in the district and the longest history of progressive political activism.

“This is really about our neighborhood,” Avalos told us at his election night party at Club Bottom’s Up in the Excelsior District. “It was the people in this room that really turned it around.”

The San Francisco Labor Council and the tenants’ movement also put dozens of organizers on the ground, stepping up particularly strongly as the seemingly coordinated downtown attacks persisted. “It was, quite literally, money against people, and the people won,” Labor Council director Tim Paulson told us.

Robert Haaland, a staffer with the Service Employees International Union and one of the architects of the campaign, put it more colorfully: “We ran the fucking table,” he told us election night. “It’s amazing — we were up against the biggest downtown blitz since district elections.”

The evidence suggests that this election was no anomaly: the progressive movement has taken firm hold in San Francisco, despite the tendency of the old power-brokers — from Newsom to downtown to both of the city’s corporate-owned daily newspapers — to try to marginalize it.

Political analyst David Latterman of Fall Line Analytics began the Nov. 5 presentation at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association election wrap-up by displaying an ideologically-coded map of San Francisco, drawing off of data from the Progressive Voter Index that he developed with San Francisco State University political science professor Rich de Leon. The PVI is based on how San Francisco residents in different parts of the city vote on bellwether candidates and ballot measures.

“Several of the districts in San Francisco discernibly moved to the left over the last four to eight years,” Latterman told the large crowd, which was made up of many of San Francisco’s top political professionals.

The two supervisorial districts that have moved most strongly toward the progressive column in recent years were Districts 1 (the Richmond) and 11 (the Excelsior), which just happened to be two of the three swing districts (the other being District 3–North Beach and Chinatown) that were to decide the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors this election.

Latterman said Districts “1, 3, and 11 went straight progressive, and that’s just the way it is.”

In fact, in many ways, he said this was a status-quo election, with San Francisco validating the progressive-leaning board. “A lot of people in the city didn’t see it as a chance for a drastic change citywide.”

In other words, keeping progressives in City Hall has become a mainstream choice. Whatever downtown’s propaganda tried to say, most San Franciscans are happy with a district-elected board that has brought the city a living-wage law and moved it a step toward universal health insurance.

The fate of the local ballot measures was another indication that Newsom, popular as he might be, has little ability to convince the voters to accept his policy agenda.

Voters rejected efforts by Newsom to consolidate his power, rejecting his supervisorial candidates, his Community Justice Center (as presented in Measure L), and his proposed takeover of the Transportation Authority (soundly defeating Proposition P) while approving measures he opposed, including Propositions M (protecting tenants from harassment) and T (Daly’s guarantee of substance abuse treatment on demand).

Asked about it at a post-election press conference, Newsom tried to put a positive spin on the night. “Prop. A won, and I spent three years of my life on it,” he said. “Prop B. was defeated. Prop. O, I put on the ballot. I think it’s pretty small when you look at the totality of the ballot.” He pointed out that his two appointees — Carmen Chu in District 4 and Sean Elsbernd in District 7 — won handily but made no mention of his support for losing candidates Lee, Alicia Wang, Alioto, Claudine Cheng, and Safai.

“You’ve chosen two as opposed to the totality,” Newsom said of Props. L and P. “Prop. K needed to be defeated. Prop. B needed to be defeated.”

Yet Newsom personally did as little to defeat those measures as he did to support the measures he tried to claim credit for: Measures A (the General Hospital rebuild bond, which everyone supported) and revenue-producing Measures N, O, and Q. In fact, many labor and progressives leaders privately grumbled about Newsom’s absence during the campaign.

Prop. K, which would have decriminalized prostitution, was placed on the ballot by a libertarian-led signature gathering effort, not by the progressive movement. And Prop. B, the affordable housing set-aside measure sponsored by Daly, was only narrowly defeated — after a last-minute attack funded by the landlords.

All three revenue-producing measures won by wide margins. Prop. Q, the payroll tax measure, passed by one of the widest margins — 67-33.

Latterman and Alex Clemens, owner of Barbary Coast Consulting and the SF Usual Suspects Web site, were asked whether downtown might seek to repeal district elections, and both said it didn’t really matter because people seem to support the system. “I can’t imagine, short of a tragedy, district elections going anywhere,” Latterman said.

Clemens said that while downtown’s polling showed that people largely disapprove of the Board of Supervisors — just as they do most legislative bodies — people generally like their district supervisor (a reality supported by the fact that all the incumbents were reelected by sizable margins).

“It ain’t a Board of Supervisors, it is 11 supervisors,” Clemens said, noting how informed and sophisticated the San Francisco electorate is compared to many other cities. “When you try to do a broad-based attack, you frequently end up on the wrong end (of the election outcome).”

We had a bittersweet feeling watching the scene in the Castro on election night. While thousands swarmed into the streets to celebrate Obama’s election, there was no avoiding the fact that the civil-rights movement that has such deep roots in that neighborhood was facing a serious setback.

The Castro was where the late Sup. Harvey Milk started his ground-breaking campaign to stop the anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978. Defying the advice of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Milk took on Briggs directly, debating him all over the state and arguing against the measure that would have barred gay and lesbian people from teaching in California’s public schools.

The defeat of the Briggs Initiative was a turning point for the queer movement — and the defeat of Prop. 8, which seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, should have been another. Just as California was the most epic battle in a nationwide campaign by right-wing bigots 30 years ago, anti-gay marriage measures have been on the ballot all over America. And if California could have rejected that tide, it might have taken the wind out of the effort.

But that wasn’t to be. Although pre-election polls showed Prop. 8 narrowly losing, it was clear by the end of election night that it was headed for victory.

Part of the reason: two religious groups, the Catholics and the Mormons, raised and spent some $25 million to pass the measure. Church-based groups mobilized a reported 100,000 grassroots volunteers to knock on doors throughout California. Yes on 8 volunteers were as visible in cities throughout California as the No on 8 volunteers were on the streets of San Francisco, presenting a popular front that the No on 8 campaign’s $35 million in spending just couldn’t counter — particularly with so many progressive activists, who otherwise would have been walking precincts to defeat Prop. 8, fanned out across the country campaigning for Obama.

“While we knew the odds for success were not with us, we believed Californians could be the first in the nation to defeat the injustice of discriminatory measures like Proposition 8,” a statement on the No on Prop. 8 Web site said. “And while victory is not ours this day, we know that because of the work done here, freedom, fairness, and equality will be ours someday. Just look at how far we have come in a few decades.”

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, joined by Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Santa Clara County Counsel Ann C. Raven, filed a legal challenge to Prop. 8, arguing that a ballot initiative can’t be used to take away fundamental constitutional rights.

“Such a sweeping redefinition of equal protection would require a constitutional revision rather than a mere amendment,” the petition argued.

“The issue before the court today is of far greater consequence than marriage equality alone,” Herrera said. “Equal protection of the laws is not merely the cornerstone of the California Constitution, it is what separates constitutional democracy from mob rule tyranny. If allowed to stand, Prop. 8 so devastates the principle of equal protection that it endangers the fundamental rights of any potential electoral minority — even for protected classes based on race, religion, national origin, and gender.”

That may succeed. In fact, the state Supreme Court made quite clear in its analysis legalizing same-sex marriage that this was a matter of fundamental rights: “Although defendants maintain that this court has an obligation to defer to the statutory definition of marriage contained in [state law] because that statute — having been adopted through the initiative process — represents the expression of the ‘people’s will,’ this argument fails to take into account the very basic point that the provisions of the California Constitution itself constitute the ultimate expression of the people’s will, and that the fundamental rights embodied within that Constitution for the protection of all persons represent restraints that the people themselves have imposed upon the statutory enactments that may be adopted either by their elected representatives or by the voters through the initiative process.

As the United States Supreme Court explained in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943) 319 U.S. 624, 638: ‘The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.'”

As Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told the Guardian later that week: “Luckily, we have an independent judiciary, because the voters of California have mistakenly taken away a class of civil rights.”

But if that legal case fails, this will probably wind up on the state ballot again. And the next campaign will have to be different.

There already have been many discussions about what the No on 8 campaign did wrong and right, but it’s clear that the queer movement needs to reach out to African Americans, particularly black churches. African Americans voted heavily in favor of Prop. 8, and ministers in many congregations preached in favor of the measure.

But there are plenty of black religious leaders who took the other side. In San Francisco the Rev. Amos Brown, who leads the Third Baptist Church, one of the city’s largest African American congregations, spoke powerfully from the pulpit about the connections between the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the fight for same-sex marriage.

The next time this is on the ballot, progressive and queer leaders will need to build a more broad-based movement. That is not only possible, but almost inevitable.

The good news — and it’s very good news — is that (as Newsom famously proclaimed) same-sex marriage is coming, whether opponents like it or not. That’s because the demographics can’t be denied: the vast majority of voters under 30 support same-sex marriage. This train is going in only one direction, and the last remaining issue is how, and when, to make the next political move.

The progressives didn’t win everything in San Francisco. Proposition H, the Clean Energy Act, was taken down by one of the most high-priced and misleading campaigns in the city’s history. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent more than $10 million telling lies about Prop. H, and with the daily newspapers virtually ignoring the measure and never challenging the utility’s claims, the measure went down.

“This was a big, big, big money race,” Latterman said. “In San Francisco, you spend $10 million and you’re going to beat just about anything.”

But activists aren’t giving up on pushing the city in the direction of more renewable energy (see Editorial).

Latterman said the narrow passage of Prop. V, which asked the school board to consider reinstating JROTC, wasn’t really a victory. “I would not call this a mandate. I worked with the campaign, and they weren’t looking for 53 percent. They were looking for 60-plus percent,” Latterman said. “I think you’ll see this issue just go away.”

Neither Latterman nor Clemens would speculate on who the next president of the Board of Supervisors will be, noting that there are just too many variables and options, including the possibility that a newly elected supervisor could seek that position.

At this point the obvious front-runner is Ross Mirkarimi, who not only won re-election but received more votes than any other candidate in any district. Based on results at press time, more than 23,000 people voted for Mirkarimi; Sean Elsbernd, who also had two opponents, received only about 19,000.

Mirkarimi worked hard to get Avalos, Chiu, and Mar elected, sending his own volunteers off to those districts. And with four new progressives elected to the board, joining Mirkarimi and veteran progressive Chris Daly, the progressives ought to retain the top job.

Daly tells us he won’t be a candidate — but he and Mirkarimi are not exactly close, and Daly will probably back someone else — possibly one of the newly elected supervisors.

“It’s going to be the most fascinating election that none of us will participate in,” Clemens said.

The danger, of course, is that the progressives will be unable to agree on a candidate — and a more moderate supervisor will wind up controlling committee appointments and the board agenda.

One of the most important elements of this election — and one that isn’t being discussed much — is the passage of three revenue-generating measures. Voters easily approved a higher real-estate transfer tax and a measure that closed a loophole allowing law firms and other partnerships to avoid the payroll tax. Progressives have tried to raise the transfer tax several times in the past, and have lost hard-fought campaigns.

That may mean that the anti-tax sentiment in the city has been eclipsed by the reality of the city’s devastating budget problems. And while Newsom didn’t do much to push the new tax measures, they will make his life much easier: the cuts the city will face won’t be as deep thanks to the additional $50 million or so in revenue.

It will still be a tough year for the new board. The mayor will push for cuts that the unions who supported the newly elected progressives will resist. A pivotal battle over the city’s future — the eastern neighborhoods rezoning plan — will come before the new board in the spring, when the recent arrivals will barely have had time to move into their offices.

Obama, of course, will face an even tougher spring. But progressives can at least face the future knowing that not only could it have been a lot worse; for once things might be about to get much better.

Amanda Witherell and Sarah Phelan contributed to this report.

Going topless

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

(Andrea’s on vacation! Check out this oldie but goodie, originally published in the Guardian 7/5/06).

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend is really into BDSM. At first I tried and played a convincing (I think) top/dom, but it just wasn’t hot for me, so I looked some stuff up to get inspired. As I was reading/watching, I would really get off on it, but the sex with my girlfriend still wasn’t hot. Then I realized that when I was masturbating to all this, I was fantasizing about subbing. Oops. I am way in love with my girlfriend, but she is a bottom, period. She might switch it around if it meant a lot to me, but I would know that it wasn’t really making her happy. I don’t know what to do. Can I become a top? Can I teach myself to like it? I’m going to do it either way, but I really want to get into it, so please help! I want us to be good in bed together, but two bottoms don’t make a top. Help!

Love,

Topless

PS: We’re lesbians, if that matters.

Dear Tops:

It sure doesn’t, but thanks for the info!

I was just thinking about this last night when a friend was catching me up on her latest dating adventures. She was lamenting that some potential dates seem to come equipped with a set of kinks perfectly matching her own, and although that sounds good, it is, of course, no use at all.

As you have discovered to your frustration, one wants a date with a complementary set of kinks, not a matching one. It’s not an uncommon problem, and its most common manifestation is exactly the one that’s driving you nuts: there are too many bottoms in this world and nowhere near enough tops to keep them satisfied. Why this is (beyond the fact that topping is hard work), I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I bet any number of eager grad students are currently proposing theses on the subject to bored advisors who have read enough similar stuff already.

Here’s my theory. There are people for whom BDSM is a core part of their identity, running as deep as, say, homosexuality or monogamy. Some may always have recognized this element in themselves, even before they had the language to express it (these are the kids who always want to play pirates or whatever game involves somebody getting tied to something or the intentional infliction/receiving of pain, even when the other kids are long since ready to move on). Others don’t realize it until they’re exposed to S-M in some more adult context, but then it just clicks in, key into lock, and they know. Your girlfriend sounds like one of those BDSM lifers, who tend, in my experience, to be pretty set on their preferred role even if they do switch experimentally on occasion (a good idea, if only to find out how painful/exhausting it is to experience/produce any particular sensation).

Then there are the "anything goes" people who are happy to pick up a flogger or don a dog collar, what the heck, as long as it’s fun. This type of player may not identify as an S-M person per se, but may enjoy a little power exchange on the occasional Friday night, no biggie. You may fall more on this end of the spectrum, but even "what-the-heckers" usually discover some sort of preference, as you have. The perfect 50-50 switch is almost certainly as rare as the perfect 50-50 bisexual.

Plenty of people find something to like in either role, and I think you can develop an appreciation for topping and get some satisfaction out of a job well done (there are resources like The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, to help you). But you can enjoy and get good at it without ever really becoming a top the way both of you are currently bottoms. Be careful about taking on a role that isn’t really "you." Nobody loves a martyr, and you’re still going to want to bottom sometimes. I worry about you starting to resent your girlfriend for getting to have all the fun.

I have a suggestion that might save your relationship or might strike you as all sorts of wrong and make you hate me, but here goes: you two find a willing top, maybe somewhere in your social circle, maybe online or in a BDSM social organization, and bottom together sometimes. This kind of shared adventure can be hot, hot, hot and very bonding, sort of like getting lost in the woods together and surviving through mutual trust and inter-reliance — but a lot more fun. I think if you do that sometimes, and play top sometimes, and stick with the vanilla sometimes, you’ll probably be OK, provided you both take care of getting your itches scratched. Love conquers … much.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

A friend in need

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I don’t know if this is really considered a problem or just a modified version of a commitment issue. I recently have become very interested in having a G-spot orgasm. I feel the sensation and know the orgasm is literally and figuratively just outside my reach. I have found the toy that does the job (the Nubby G from Babeland) and I know I am on the verge. The only problem is that I need to be thrusting the toy in and out at a fast rate to really get me to the peak, and right before I am about the come, the sensation is so intense that I lose some strength and control in my arms. I know this could be rectified with a partner doing the heavy lifting, but is there a toy or a technique you could suggest for someone who is confined to solo play?

Sincerely,

G-spot Blue balls

Dear Blue:

Commitment issue how? Do you feel like your sex toy is somehow failing to fulfill a promise it made to you? (I can sort of see this, actually.) Have you told it that you Need To Talk?

It seems that your real problem is not that the vibrator cannot deliver, but that you literally can’t hold on long enough to give it a chance. It’s not it, it’s you. Maybe it’s just not the right toy for you at this time in your life. You need to let it down easy.

I think you need something that you can use hands-free, some kind of G-spot Bluetooth device. At first I looked on the few sex-toy guides specifically geared toward people with disabilities, figuring that even though your hands officially do work, they don’t work when it counts, so why not? There isn’t a lot out there, though. I pondered the many long-necked and flexible G-spotter devices, all of which look uncomfortably medical but most of which work pretty well — or so say the reviews — but eh, I couldn’t see how even adjusting the ergonomics was really going to do it for you. There’s still a smallish handle or base, and you’re still going to end up with the same old problem, or close enough. Same goes for the complicated in-and-out-and-round-and-round numbers (the Rabbit Pearl and its successors in faux-discretion, the oscilutf8g wombats and so on). They do some of the work for you, but you still have to hang on. No, the answer for you, I think, was available all along on the very same site where you found your well-meaning, if finally disappointing, current squeeze, Mr. G. They are dual stimulation devices with names like the Rock Chick (you insert it and you … rock) and the Snugglepuss. They stay in and leave your hands free to do whatever they need to do, whether it’s make shadow-puppets or do a Liza Minnelli impersonation or clutch your heart and go "Oh God oh God oh God." Whatever. The important part is, they do the G thing without your having to do any pumping. Of course it’s always possible that even as loyal and steadfast a companion as the Snugglofugus is, it might let you down — but there’s a good chance it won’t. Open your heart and let yourself love again.

Of course, should you have tons of money and no compunctions about tossing demi-tons of it at a matter of personal consequence but no world-shaking import, there are always ride-on sex machines like the original, the Sybian (look it up at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybian). There is something about these devices that always struck me as kind of ’70s, like something that would have had its own VIP room at Studio 54. Actually, the Sybian was invented by a very earnest guy named Dave, about whom little biographical information seems to exist, although it appears he really was just trying to help. It took considerably less earnest pioneers like Howard Stern, who seems to have regularly popped female guests onto the studio Sybian (which was hopefully sanitized between uses), to give it the unsavory aspect it has today. Well, that and the Sybian dealers currently accessible via the Web, like the one whose site makes this claim: "The female will learn how to have better and bigger orgasms. She will literally explode on it."

But I’m assuming you weren’t in that market anyway. No, what you need is either the hands-free insertable doohickeys described above, or something like what you’ve got already and a way to immobilize it so you can crouch on it, as with the Sybian, but less explodey. You could try one of those harnesses that attach a dildo to the partner’s knee or, in your case, to random household furnishings. Either way, be sure to tell any new sex toys how you really feel, and practice active listening. Communication is the key, you know. *
Love,
Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Anniversary Issue: Culture isn’t convenient

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› molly@sfbg.com

San Francisco is the playpen of countercultures.

— R.Z. Sheppard, Time (1986)

I live near Church and Market streets, which means I’m stumbling distance from an organic grocery store, my favorite bar, several Muni stops, and a 24-hour diner. It also means the street outside my apartment is usually loud, the gutters are disgusting, there are rarely parking spots, and transients sleep, smoke, panhandle, and play really bad music near my front doorstep.

Actually, until recently, they did a lot of this on my front doorstep. Then the landlords — without asking us first — installed a gate. And I hate it. Yes, my stairs are cleaner. I suppose my stuff is safer. But I’m no longer as connected to my community. I’m separated from the life that’s happening on the street — the very reason I moved to this neighborhood in the first place. I fear I’ve lost more than I’ve gained.

Lately our city’s approach to entertainment and nightlife has been like that fence. While protecting people from noise, mess, and potential safety concerns, we’re threatening the very things we love about this city. Thanks to dwindling city budgets and increasingly vocal NIMBYs, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to manage nightclubs, plan street fairs, and organize outdoor festivals. And as we continue to build million-dollar condos at a brisk place, the city is filling up with affluent residents who may not appreciate the inherent messiness of city living. We’re at risk of locking away (and therefore losing) the events that make this a vibrant place where we want to live.

The recent history of this issue can be traced to the 1990s, when dot-com gold brought live/work lofts to otherwise non-residential neighborhoods — and plenty of new residents to live in them. Those newcomers, perhaps used to the peace and quiet of the suburbs, or maybe expecting more comfort in exchange for their exorbitant monthly rent checks, didn’t want to hear the End Up’s late-night set or deal with riffraff from Folsom Street Fair peeing in their driveways. Conflicts escalated. The Police Department station in SoMa, responsible for issuing venue permits and for enforcing their conditions, embarked on a plan to shut down half the area’s nightclubs. Luckily, city government and citizens agreed to save the threatened venues and the police captain responsible for the proposal was transferred to the airport, the San Francisco equivalent of political exile. In 2003, the Entertainment Commission was formed, in part to take over the role of granting venue and event permits.

But as Guardian readers know, the problem was not solved. As we’ve covered in several stories ["The death of fun" (05/23/06), "Death of fun, the sequel," (04/25/07), "Fighting for the right to party" (07/02/08)], beloved events and venues are still at risk. How Weird Street Fair was forced to change locations. Halloween in the Castro District was cancelled altogether. Alcohol was banned at the Haight Ashbury Street Fair and restricted at the North Beach Jazz Festival. Fees are still increasing. Rules are getting more stringent. As we predicted, it’s getting harder and harder to have fun in San Francisco. And while it’s the job of the Entertainment Commission to prevent problems while protecting our right to party, it has never been given enough funding, staff or authority to properly do its job.

So why should we care? Our legendary nightlife, festivals, and parades bring international tourists to our city — where they stay in hotels, eat at restaurants, shop at stores, and otherwise pump money into our economy. Street fairs give us ways to connect to our neighbors and our neighborhoods. Free events (which, if permit fees increase and alcohol sales are prohibited, will be a thing of the past) give equal access to fun and frivolity to people in all income brackets — and most raise money for charities and nonprofits. Particular venues and happenings provide an important way for those in the counterculture — whether that’s LGBT youth or progressive artists — to meet, mingle, and support each other. And none of that captures the intangible quality of living in a city where freedom, tolerance, and the pursuit of a good time are supported. And all this is one of the reasons many of us moved here, where we pay taxes (and parking tickets), open businesses, start organizations, and contribute to our already diverse and vibrant population.

But if we don’t establish a way to protect our culture, personally and legally, we may lose it. Instead, we need an overarching policy that establishes our values as well as the legal ways we can go about supporting them. The Music and Culture Charter Amendment, in the works for more than three years and currently sitting before the Board of Supervisors, aims to do exactly this.

The most important part of the amendment, created by a coalition of artists, musicians, event planners, club owners, and concerned citizens who call themselves Save SF Culture, would be to revise San Francisco’s General Plan to include an entertainment and nightlife element, just as the current plan contains an entire section devoted to the protection of (presumably mainstream) dance, theater, music, and art, calling them "central to the essence and character of the city." Not only would this amendment mandate that future lawmakers try to preserve events and venues, it would give a roadmap on how to do this effectively — most notably by creating a streamlined, transparent, online permitting process for special events.

Yet even if this important amendment passes and wins the mayor’s signature (which is hardly a sure thing), that’s just the beginning of a process of figuring out how to sustain San Francisco’s culture in the face of potentially threatening socioeconomic changes. At the very least, the next step will be giving the Entertainment Commission the full funding and staff (it currently operates with five of the eight staffers required). And once our beloved clubs and events are out of immediate danger, it will be time to form a coalition of citizens, government officials, and city planners to decide how and where culture in our city should grow, asking questions like whether or not we want a large-scale amphitheater or if we need to designate an area as an entertainment district. Most important, the city needs to develop a framework for resolving the inevitable conflicts with NIMBYs in a way that promotes a vibrant culture.

Yet there’s also a role in this process for each citizen of San Francisco. We need to remind ourselves and our neighbors that tolerance is one of our core civic values, tolerance for different races, classes, genders, sexual identities, and for the potentially noisy, messy, chaotic ways our culture supports those differences. If we erect a gate — physical or metaphorical — every time we’re uncomfortable or inconvenienced, we’ll turn San Francisco into the sanitized, homogenous, boring suburbs that I moved to Church and Market to escape. *

Reality 1.1: Sara Kraft’s ‘HyperReal’ provokes with little analysis

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

The opening: a long-haired lady dressed in black – this is Sara Kraft – walks to the center of the stage and breathes. She breathes louder than one normally breathes, as if she’s attended an excess of yoga classes, and just huffs for several minutes. During this long introduction, Kraft has already bored me – and is beginning to annoy me. I could go to a yoga class if I wanted to hear this. The episode concludes as her arm slowly trembles upwards – rhythmically in step with her gasps.

In the next scene, I discovered Kraft’s voice to be as annoying as her breathing, sometimes more affected than other times, but always in a know-it-all tone that reveals the clearly scripted nature of the performance piece. The major motif of HyperReal – presented Oct. 10-12 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – revolves around “a formative experience I experienced at 4,” as Kraft puts it: the first ocean image she witnessed was in one of the first movies she ever saw: Jaws.

From here she explains the confusion between the real real ocean and the ocean she learns about from Jaws, which includes terrorizing, man-eating sharks. Scenes, like the first two, with Kraft sitting or standing alone onstage, often speaking into a microphone, explaining experiences such as going to Universal Studios and encountering the mechanical Jaws shark or reading the dictionary definition of “reality,” were juxtaposed with scenes performed behind a thin curtain.

A double dutch affair: SFC hops and skips into our hearts

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By Justin Juul

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Jill Herrera (Switchblade), Valerie Hurysz (Death Valley), and Erin Dougherty (Venom Miss) of SFC Double Dutch can do The Ludicrous, The Donkey Kong, and The Turducken all without breaking a sweat. Never heard of these tricks before? Don’t worry, after a six-week course at SFC, your vocabulary will be full of weird slang and you’ll be pushin’ more rope than an exhausted porn star. The Guardian caught up with The SFC Girls recently to find out what happens when journalists stop staring at their computers and start gettin’ down.

SFBG: So what’s your deal?

Switchblade: We are Switchblade, Death Valley, and Venom Miss, Otherwise known as SFC Double Dutch. We jump rope, perform, and teach classes in the Bay Area.

SFBG: How did you get into the Double Dutch thing? I mean, is there a scene? Do you battle other Double Dutch crews and stuff? Or did you sort of just pick the jump rope thing randomly?

Switchblade: We met in the summer of 2002 and we wanted something physical to do with our friends. We just sort of landed on this, really. As far as a scene goes, there’s not really a battle scene like you find in break dancing. The Double Dutch community is really organized and clean and it’s not what you imagine when you think of old New York street-style stuff.

SFBG: But that’s kind of what you guys are all about, right, the street stuff? Are you the first people take that sort of old-school New York aesthetic and apply it to your group?

Feast: 5 fierce cooking classes

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There’s something perfect about a cooking class for an adult — it’s a way to learn a new skill without making a huge commitment (Sure, I want to learn Italian — but who has time to spend a semester on it, only to know how to ask for directions?); it’s a way to get closer to existing friends or to meet new people (especially singles-themed events); and it has a practical application (One must eat. One mustn’t necessarily, say, do cross-stitch). So I’ve researched a selection of what the Bay Area has to offer, whether you’re looking to strengthen partnerships, find new ones, or just change your relationship with your kitchen (it is, apparently, more than a place to keep your beer). The most important thing I’ve learned is that many classes offer similar tips, skills, and seasonal menus. And all intend to demystify or intensify your relationship with food. So when choosing a class, consider what it is you really want to get from it. Do you want to know how to make a gourmet meal for a dinner party? Do you want to meet new people and have a good time? Do you want to put some food in your freezer? Or do you just want to figure out what your gas range-top is good for other than lighting cigarettes when your Bic’s out of fuel? Lucky for you, in a culinary-focused city like this one, there’s a class for all of you. Here are some of my favorites.

THE CULINARY SALON


The only thing more charming than Chef Joe Wittenbrook is his teaching space: a quaint street-level apartment with a picture window in Duboce Triangle. Wittenbrook’s focus is on the whole experience. This is not necessarily the class where you’ll perfect techniques, but you’ll learn more than you ever expected to — from the origin of the foods on your menu to special tips and tricks. His classes are small — a recent Saturday course had five students — and are therefore intimate and casual, made friendly and warm by Wittenbrook’s outgoing personality. Don’t forget the wine — you’re welcome to imbibe during class as well as the European family-style meal you’ll share together afterward. Or, get four or six friends together and you can have him to yourself.

16-B Sanchez, SF. (415) 626-4379, www.theculinarysalon.com

FIRST CLASS COOKING


The structure of these courses, hosted by Emily Dellas at her stunning SoMa loft, is similar to Wittenbrook’s: everyone gets a list of recipes, takes turns preparing dishes, and shares the resulting meal together. As a food-lover without much formal training, though, her approach is to pass on her love for cooking to those who might be intimidated by it, demystifying dishes like profiteroles (the pastry base of cream puffs and éclairs). She likes to create menus that people can not only prepare themselves, but can feel good about eating on a regular basis — light, healthy, and seasonal. Her courses have room for about 10 people apiece, which means less hands-on time for each person, but the potential for a more festive atmosphere. Bring a friend and a bottle of wine.

www.firstclasscooking.com

PARTIES THAT COOK


Though Parties That Cook does host public classes (in particular, one for singles at Sur La Table), its specialty is creating cooking-themed events for corporate team building or private gatherings. And the experience it provides is part class, part catered meal. PTC will come to your house or help you rent a space, bring ingredients and cooking utensils, organize staff to help with hands-on instruction, and, when the meal is done, serve you and your guests restaurant-style. As an ideal option when you want to create a special event according to your tastes, PTC can accommodate up to 600 people. PTC even offers a recipe deck, complete with illustrated instructions on 30 different small dishes, that you can purchase as party favors.

601 Minnesota, SF. (415) 441-3595, www.partiesthatcook.com

COOKS BOULEVARD


Though the independent kitchenware store hosts a variety of cooking classes, the cornerstone of its educational program is Essential Knife Skills, held monthly in the gorgeous, spacious teaching kitchen at the Katherine Michiels School. The concept of the course is to teach basic safety and techniques for wielding a cook’s most important weapon, with each of up to 10 people getting to practice at their own station (and getting one-on-one attention). A bit more formal than the private cooking classes, the course is divided in half by a lovely cheese-and-cracker break. Although it’s geared toward — and useful to — anyone, this seems like an ideal class for the intermediate cook who wants to develop the ability to cook more efficiently and beautifully. (Parents take note: the company Apron Strings [415-550-7976, www.apronstringssf.com] also hosts classes for kids at this lovely location.)

1335 Guerrero, SF. (415) 647-2665, www.cooksboulevard.com

FOOD WIZ


Like Dellas, chef Marcus Gordon wants to teach that cooking should be fun and "anybody can do it." The native New Yorker hosts small classes (limited to five people) in the remodeled kitchen of his Noe Valley home, offering hands-on experience, tips and tricks, a shared meal after the class (including a cocktail — but no drinking during class), and even food to take home. Most importantly, he wants his students to realize they can make better-than-restaurant cuisine at home and to enjoy his recipes of foods "that really jump around on your tongue."

29th St. (between Church and Dolores), SF. www.foodwizsf.com

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

All is well in the land of Pigeon Funk

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"This is the most we could come up with our small minds over a long period of time," says Joshua Kit Clayton, who often stops the phone conversation to ask what this author is wearing and whether he’s having a good day. Pigeon Funk’s second album, The Largest Bird in the History of the Planet … Ever! (Musique Risquée), took four years to make. For much of that time, Clayton was largely absent from the city’s techno scene after having once been one of its dominant figures. He finally reappeared this year with two 12-inches: "Grey Amber" and "I Left My Heart My Heart in San Francisco," the latter a double-A single with Sutekh.

"I don’t go to a lot of dance parties anymore, although I saw Seth [Horvitz, né Sutekh] at a rave the other night," Clayton muses. "I couldn’t even tell what kind of drugs people were on. But other than that, I haven’t been out to a dance music night in a very long time…. I have no idea what other people are doing today. I am sheltered."

"I almost feel like a strange outsider at this point," adds Sutekh, who says the aforementioned so-called rave gig was a rare occurrence. Musically, though, he’s stayed active, most recently dropping the "Influenza B" single earlier this spring.

When Pigeon Funk issued its self-titled EP in 2001, the group fit right in with the glitch/IDM/experimental wave cresting throughout the techno world. Years later it’s still about glitch, except house and hip-hop producers like Glitch Mob and Daedelus hijacked it. Meanwhile, the techno scene has moved on to minimal and — surprisingly — trance.

With few current trends to categorize it with, The Largest Bird sounds happily out of step. Abandoning the computer programming that has been a hallmark of their careers, Sutekh and Clayton turned to analog keyboard equipment, random vocally-generated noises, and disparate acoustic equipment. The eclectic beats range from wacky exotica lounge ("Alma Hueco" with vocalist Anna Machado) to funky bangers ("Bacchanal").

Touting The Largest Bird’s therapeutic qualities, Clayton says, "I think it would be really dope if people used this inside their yoga classes, their exercise classes, meditation classes, workforce training classes, any type of self-growth, whether it be erotic, financial, religious, or fitness. I think this album is something that would lift them up."

Project Censored

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› amanda@sfbg.com

The daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely discuss how the fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That’s the common thread of many unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

Since 1976, Sonoma State University has released an annual survey of the top 25 stories the mainstream media failed to report or reported poorly. Culled from worldwide alternative news sources, vetted by students and faculty, and ranked by judges, the stories were not necessarily overtly censored. But their controversial subjects, challenges to the status quo, or general under-the-radar subject matter might have kept them from the front pages. Project Censored recounts them, accompanied by media analysis, in a book of the same name published annually by Seven Stories Press.

"This year, war and civil liberties stood out," Peter Phillips, project director since 1996, said of the top stories. "They’re closely related and part of the War on Terror that has been the dominant theme of Project Censored for seven years, since 9/11."

Whether it’s preventing what one piece of legislation calls "homegrown terrorism" by federally funding the study of radicalism, using vague concerns about security to quietly expand NAFTA, or refusing to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, the threat of terrorism is being used to silence people and expand power.

"The war on terror is a sort of mind terror," said Nancy Snow, one of the project’s 24 judges and an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Snow — who has taught classes on war, media, and propaganda — elaborated: "You can’t declare war on terror. It’s a tactic used by groups to gain publicity and it will remain with us. But it’s unlikely that [the number of terrorist acts] will spike. It spikes in the minds of people."

She pointed out that the number of terrorist attacks has dropped worldwide since 2003. Some use the absence of fresh attacks as evidence that the so-called war on terror is working. But a RAND Corporation study for the Department of Defense released in August said the war on terror hasn’t effectively undermined Al Qaeda. It suggested the phrase be replaced with the less loaded term "counterterrorism."

Both Phillips and Snow agree that comprehensive, contextual reporting is missing from most of the coverage. "That’s one of my criticisms of the media," Snow said. "They spotlight issues and don’t look at the entire landscape."

This year the landscape of Project Censored itself is expanding. After talking with educators who bemoan the ongoing decline of news quality and want to help, Phillips launched the Truth Emergency Project, in which Sonoma State partners with 23 other universities. All will host classes for students to search out untold stories, vet them for accuracy, and submit them for consideration to Project Censored.

"There’s a renaissance of independent media," Phillips said. He thinks bloggers and citizen journalists are filling crucial roles left vacant by staff cutbacks throughout the mainstream media. And, he said, it’s time for universities, educators, and media experts to step in and help. "It’s not just reforming the media, but supporting them in as many ways as they need, like validating stories by fact-checking."

The Truth Emergency Project will also host a news service that aggregates the top 12 independent media sources and posts them on one page. "So you can get an RSS feed from all the major independent news sources we trust," he said. Discerning newshounds can find reporting from the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Inter Press Service (IPS) in one spot. "The whole criteria," he said, "is no corporate media."

Carl Jensen, who started Project Censored in 1976, said the expansion is a new and necessary phase. "It answers the question I was always challenged with: how do you know this is the truth? Having 24 campuses reviewing all the stories and raising questions really provides a good answer. These stories will be vetted more than Sarah Palin."

Phillips said he hopes to expand to 100 schools within the year, and would like the project to bring more attention to the dire need for public support for high quality news reporting. "I think it’s going to require government subsidies and nonprofit organizations doing community media projects," he said. "It’s more than just reforming at the FCC level. It’s building independent media from the ground up."

Phillips likens it to the boom in microbrewed beer and the spread of independently-owned pubs: "If we can have a renaissance in beer-making, following established purity standards, then we can do it with our media, too." But for now, we have Project Censored, whose top 10 underreported stories for 2008 are:

1. HOW MANY IRAQIS HAVE DIED?


Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Iraq War has claimed. But even more astounding is that so few journalists have mentioned the issue or cited the top estimate: 1.2 million.

During August and September 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling group, surveyed 2,414 adults in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces and found that more than 20 percent had experienced at least one war-related death since March 2003. Using common statistical study methods, it determined that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed since the war began.

The US military, claiming it keeps no count, still employs civilian death data as a marker of progress. For example, in a Sept. 10, 2007, report to Congress, Gen. David Petraeus said, "Civilian deaths of all categories, less natural causes, have also declined considerably, by over 45 percent Iraq-wide since the height of the sectarian violence in December."

But whose number was he using? Estimates range wildly and are based on a variety of sources, including hospital, morgue, and media reports, as well as in-person surveys.

In October 2006, the British medical journal Lancet published a Johns Hopkins University study vetted by four independent sources that counted 655,000 dead, based on interviews with 1,849 households. It updated a similar study from 2004 that counted 100,000 dead. The Associated Press called it "controversial."

The AP began its own count in 2005 and by 2006 said that at least 37,547 Iraqis had lost their lives due to war-related violence, but called it a minimum estimate at best and didn’t include insurgent deaths.

Iraq Body Count, a group of US and UK citizens who aggregate numbers from media reports on civilian deaths, puts the figure between 87,000 and 95,000. In January 2008, the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government did door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000 households and put the number of dead at 151,000.

The 1.2 million figure is out there, too, which is higher than the Rwandan genocide death toll and closing in on the 1.7 million who perished in Cambodia’s killing fields. It raises questions about the real number of deaths from US aerial bombings and house raids, and challenges the common assumption that this is a war in which Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

Justifying the higher number, Michael Schwartz, writing on the blog AfterDowningStreet.org, pointed to a fact reported by the Brookings Institute that US troops have, over the past four years, conducted about 100 house raids a day — a number that has recently increased with assistance from Iraqi soldiers.

Brutality during these house searches has been documented by returning soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and independent journalists (See #9 below). Schwartz suggests the aggressive "element of surprise" tactics employed by soldiers is likely resulting in several thousands of deaths a day that either go unreported or are categorized as insurgent casualties.

The spin is having its intended effect: a February 2007 AP poll showed Americans gave a median estimate of 9,890 Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, a number far below that cited in any credible study.

Sources: "Is the United States killing 10,000 Iraqis every month? Or is it more?" Michael Schwartz, After Downing Street.org, July 6, 2007; "Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian killing fields," Joshua Holland, AlterNet, Sept. 17, 2007; "Iraq conflict has killed a million: survey," Luke Baker, Reuters, Jan. 30, 2008; "Iraq: Not our country to return to," Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008.

2. NAFTA ON STEROIDS


Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations convened the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The White House–led initiative — launched at a March 23, 2005, meeting of President Bush, Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin — joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to promote what it calls "borderless unity."

Critics call it "NAFTA on steroids." However, unlike NAFTA, the SPP was formed in secret, without public input.

"The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement," Laura Carlsen wrote in a report for the Center for International Policy. "All these would require public debate and participation of Congress, both of which the SPP has scrupulously avoided."

Instead the SPP has a special workgroup: the North American Competitiveness Council. It’s a coalition of private companies that are, according to the SPP Web site, "adding high-level business input [that] will assist governments in enhancing North America’s competitive position and engage the private sector as partners in finding solutions."

The NACC includes the Chevron Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck & Co. Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., Procter & Gamble Co., and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

"Where are the environmental council, the labor council, and the citizen’s council in this process?" Carlsen asked.

A look at NAFTA’s unpopularity among citizens in all three nations is evidence of why its expansion would need to be disguised. "It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones," wrote Steven Lendman in Global Research. "It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada, water as well."

Sources: "Deep Integration," Laura Carlsen, Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007; "The Militarization and Annexation of North America," Stephen Lendman, Global Research, July 19, 2007; "The North American Union," Constance Fogal, Global Research, Aug. 2, 2007.

3. INFRAGARD GUARDS ITSELF


The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have effectively deputized 23,000 members of the business community, asking them to tip off the feds in exchange for preferential treatment in the event of a crisis. "The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials," Matthew Rothschild wrote in the March 2008 issue of The Progressive.

InfraGard was created in 1996 in Cleveland as part of an FBI probe into cyberthreats. Yet after 9/11, membership jumped from 1,700 to more than 23,000, and now includes 350 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Members typically have a stake in one of several crucial infrastructure industries, including agriculture, banking, defense, energy, food, telecommunications, law enforcement, and transportation. The group’s 86 chapters coordinate with 56 FBI field offices nationwide.

While FBI Director Robert Mueller has said he considers this segment of the private sector "the first line of defense," the American Civil Liberties Union issued a grave warning about the potential for abuse. "There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," it cautioned in an August 2004 report.

"The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment," Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, told Rothschild.

And they are privileged: a DHS spokesperson told Rothschild that InfraGard members receive special training and readiness exercises. They’re also privy to protected information that is usually shielded from disclosure under the trade secrets provision of the Freedom of Information Act.

The information they have may be of critical importance to the general public, but first it goes to the privileged membership — sometimes before it’s released to elected officials. As Rothschild related in his story, on Nov. 1, 2001, the FBI sent an alert to InfraGard members about a potential threat to bridges in California. Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley, received the information and relayed it to his brother Gray, then governor of California, who released it to the public.

Steve Maviglio, Davis’s press secretary at the time, told Rothschild, "The governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’<0x2009>"

Source: "The FBI deputizes business," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Feb. 7, 2008.

4. ILEA: TRAINING GROUND FOR ILLEGAL WARS?


The School of the Americas earned an unsavory reputation in Latin America after many graduates of the Fort Benning, Ga., facility turned into counterinsurgency death squad leaders. So the International Law Enforcement Academy recently installed by the Unites States in El Salvador — which looks, acts, and smells like the SOA — is also drawing scorn.

The school, which opened in June 2005 before the Salvadoran National Assembly approved it, has a satellite operation in Peru and is funded with $3.6 million from the US Treasury and staffed with instructors from the DEA, ICE, and FBI. It’s tasked with training 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement agents in counterterrorism techniques per year. It’s stated purpose is to make Latin America "safe for foreign investment" by "providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime."

ILEAs aren’t new, but past schools located in Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, and Roswell, N.M., haven’t been terribly controversial. Yet Salvadoran human rights organizers take issue with the fact that, in true SOA fashion, the ILEA releases neither information about its curriculum nor a list of students and graduates. Additionally, the way the school slipped into existence without public oversight has raised ire.

As Wes Enzinna noted in a North American Congress on Latin America report, when the US decided it wanted a training ground in Latin America, El Salvador was not the first choice. In 2002 US officials selected Costa Rica as host — a country that doesn’t even have an army. The local government signed on and the plan made headlines. But when citizens learned about it, they revolted and demanded the government change the agreement. The US bailed for a more discreet second attempt in El Salvador.

"Members of the US Congress were not briefed about the academy, nor was the main opposition party in El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí-National Liberation Front (FMLN)," Enzinna wrote. "But once the news media reported that the two countries had signed an official agreement in September, activists in El Salvador demanded to see the text of the document." Though they tried to garner enough opposition to kill the agreement, the National Assembly narrowly ratified it.

Now, after more than three years in operation, critics point out that Salvadoran police, who account for 25 percent of the graduates, have become more violent. A May 2007 report by Tutela Legal implicated Salvadoran National Police (PNC) officers in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006.

El Salvador’s ILEA recently received another $2 million in US funding through the congressionally approved Mérida Initiative — but still refuses to adopt a more transparent curriculum and administration, despite partnering with a well-known human rights leader. Enzinna’s FOIA requests for course materials were rejected by the government, so no one knows exactly what the school is teaching, or to whom.

Sources: "Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America," "Community in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador," Upside Down World, June 14, 2007; "Another SOA?" Wes Enzinna, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008; "ILEA funding approved by Salvadoran right wing legislators," CISPES, March 15, 2007; "Is George Bush restarting Latin America’s ‘dirty wars?’<0x2009>" Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet, Aug. 31, 2007.

5. SEIZING PROTEST


Protesting war could get you into big trouble, according to a critical read of two executive orders recently signed by President Bush. The first, issued July 17, 2007, and titled, "Blocking property of certain persons who threaten stabilization efforts in Iraq," allows the feds to seize assets from anyone who "directly or indirectly" poses a risk to the US war in Iraq. And, citing the modern technological ease of transferring funds and assets, the order states that no prior notice is necessary before the raid.

On Aug. 1, Bush signed another order, similar but directed toward anyone undermining the "sovereignty of Lebanon or its democratic processes and institutions." In this case, the Secretary of the Treasury can seize the assets of anyone perceived as posing a risk of violence, as well as the assets of their spouses and dependents, and bans them from receiving any humanitarian aid.

Critics say the orders bypass the right to due process and the vague language makes manipulation and abuse possible. Protesting the war could be perceived as undermining or threatening US efforts in Iraq. "This is so sweeping, it’s staggering," said Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Justice Department who editorialized against it in the Washington Times. "It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population."

Sources: "Bush executive order: Criminalizing the antiwar movement," Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 2007; "Bush’s executive order even worse than the one on Iraq," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Aug. 2007.

6. RADICALS = TERRORISTS


On Oct. 23, 2007, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed — by a vote of 404-6 — the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," designed to root out the causes of radicalization in Americans.

With an estimated four-year cost of $22 million, the act establishes a 10-member National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, as well as a university-based Center of Excellence "to examine the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of domestic terrorism," according to a press release from the bill’s author, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Los Angeles).

During debate on the bill, Harman said, "Free speech, espousing even very radical beliefs, is protected by our Constitution. But violent behavior is not."

Jessica Lee, writing in the Indypendent, a newspaper put out by the New York Independent Media Center, pointed out that in a later press release Harman stated: "the National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent."

Which could be when they’re speaking, writing, and organizing in ways that are protected by the First Amendment. This redefines civil disobedience as terrorism, say civil rights experts, and the wording is too vague. For example, the definition of "violent radicalization" is "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

"What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much…. It is criminalizing thought and ideology," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in Portland, Ore.

Though the ACLU recommended some changes that were adopted, it continued to criticize the bill. Harman, in a response letter, said free speech is still free and stood by the need to curb ideologically-based violence.

The story didn’t make it onto the CNN ticker, but enough independent sources reported on it that the equivalent Senate Bill 1959 has since stalled. After introducing the bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), later joined forces with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a report criticizing the Internet as a tool for violent Islamic extremism.

Despite an outcry from civil liberties groups, days after the report was released Lieberman demanded that YouTube remove a number of Islamist propaganda videos. YouTube canned some that broke their rules regarding violence and hate speech, but resisted censoring others. The ensuing battle caught the attention of the New York Times, and on May 25 it editorialized against Lieberman and S 1959.

Sources: "Bringing the war on terrorism home," Jessica Lee, Indypendent, Nov. 16, 2007; "Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," Lindsay Beyerstein, In These Times, Nov. 2007; "The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," Matt Renner, Truthout, Nov. 20, 2007

7. SLAVERY’S RUNNER-UP


Every year, about 121,000 people legally enter the United States to work with H-2 visas, a program legislators are touting as part of future immigration reform. But Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) called this guest worker program "the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery."

The Southern Poverty Law Center likened it to "modern day indentured servitude." They interviewed thousands of guest workers and reviewed legal cases for a report released in March 2007, in which authors Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds wrote, "Unlike US citizens, guest workers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who ‘import’ them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting, or other retaliation."

When visas expire, workers must leave the country, hardly making this the path to permanent citizenship legislators are looking for. The H-2 program mimics the controversial bracero program, established through a joint agreement between Mexico and the United States in 1942 that brought 4.5 million workers over the border during the 22 years it was in effect.

Many legal protections were written into the program, but in most cases they existed only on paper in a language unreadable to employees. In 1964 the program was shuttered amid scores of human rights abuses and complaints that it undermined petitions for higher wages from US workers. Soon after, United Farm Workers organized, which César Chávez said would have been impossible if the bracero program still existed.

Years later, it essentially still does. The H-2A program, which accounted for 32,000 agricultural workers in 2005, has many of the same protections — and many of the same abuses. Even worse is the H-2B program, used by 89,000 non-agricultural workers annually. Created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, none of the safeguards of the H-2A visa are legally required for H-2B workers.

Still, Mexicans are literally lining up for H-2B status, the stark details of which were reported by Felicia Mello in The Nation. Furthermore, thousands of illegal immigrants are employed throughout the country, providing cheap, unprotected labor and further undermining the scant provisions of the laws. Labor contractors who connect immigrants with employers are stuffing their pockets with cash, while the workers return home with very little money.

The Southern Poverty Law Center outlined a list of comprehensive changes needed in the program, concluding, "For too long, our country has benefited from the labor provided by guest workers but has failed to provide a fair system that respects their human rights and upholds the most basic values of our democracy. The time has come for Congress to overhaul our shamefully abusive guest worker system."

Sources: "Close to Slavery," Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007; "Coming to America," Felicia Mello, The Nation, June 25, 2007; "Trafficking racket," Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, March 10, 2008.

8. BUSH CHANGES THE RULES


The Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has been issuing classified legal opinions about surveillance for years. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) had access to the DOJ opinions on presidential power and had three declassified to show how the judicial branch has, in a bizarre and chilling way, assisted President Bush in circumventing its own power.

According to the three memos:

"There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it";

"The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II," and

"The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations."

Or, as Whitehouse rephrased in a Dec. 7, 2007, Senate speech: "I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is. I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

The issue arose within the context of the Protect America Act, which expands government surveillance powers and gives telecom companies legal immunity for helping. Whitehouse called it "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush administration."

He pointed out that the act does not prohibit spying on Americans overseas — with the exception of an executive order that permits surveillance only of Americans whom the Attorney General determines to be "agents of a foreign power."

"In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and government wiretap is an executive order," Whitehouse said in an April 12 speech. "An order this president, under the first legal theory I cited, claims he has no legal obligation to obey."

Whitehouse, a former US Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s governor, and Rhode Island Attorney General who took office in 2006, went on to point out that Marbury vs. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, established that it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

Sources: "In FISA Speech, Whitehouse sharply criticizes Bush Administration’s assertion of executive power," Sheldon Whitehouse, Dec. 7, 2007; "Down the Rabbit Hole," Marcy Wheeler, The Guardian (UK), Dec. 26, 2007.

9. SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT


Hearing soldiers recount their war experiences is the closest many people come to understanding the real horror, pain, and confusion of combat. One would think that might make compelling copy or powerful footage for a news outlet. But in March, when more than 300 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convened for four days of public testimony on the war, they were largely ignored by the media.

Winter Soldier was designed to give soldiers a public forum to air some of the atrocities they witnessed. Originally convened by Vietnam Vets Against the War in January 1971, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians described their war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities, and killing of non-combatants. The testimony was entered into the Congressional Record, filmed, and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iraq Veterans Against the War hosted the 2008 reprise of the 1971 hearings. Aaron Glantz, writing in One World, recalled testimony from former Marine Cpl. Jason Washburn, who said, "his commanders encouraged lawless behavior. ‘We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons,’ or shovels. In case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent.’<0x2009>"

An investigation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian in The Nation that included interviews with 50 Iraq war veterans also revealed an overwhelming lack of training and resources, and a general disregard for the traditional rules of war.

Though most major news outlets sent staff to cover New York’s Fashion Week, few made it to Silver Spring, Md. for the Winter Soldier hearings. Fortunately, KPFA and Pacifica Radio broadcast the testimonies live and, in an update to the story, said they were "deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and blog posts from service members, veterans, and military families thanking us for breaking a cultural norm of silence about the reality of war." Testimonies can still be heard at www.ivaw.org.

Sources: "Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan eyewitness accounts of the occupation," Iraq Veterans Against the War, March 13-16, 2008; "War comes home," Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla, Pacifica Radio, March 14-16, 2008; "US Soldiers testify about war crimes," Aaron Glantz, One World, March 19, 2008; "The Other War," Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, The Nation, July 30, 2007.

10. APA HELPS CIA TORTURE


Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and US military with interrogation and torture of Guantánamo detainees — which the American Psychological Association has said is fine, despite objections from many of its 148,000 members.

A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and the group deferred to US standards on torture over international human-rights organizations’ definitions.

The task force was criticized by APA members for deliberating in secret, and later it was revealed that six of the 10 participants had ties to the armed services. Not only that, but as Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair, "Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA."

In particular, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, neither of whom are APA members, honed a classified military training program known as SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] that teaches soldiers how to tough out torture if captured by enemies. "Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror," Eban wrote.

And, as Mark Benjamin noted in a Salon article, employing SERE training — which is designed to replicate torture tactics that don’t abide by Geneva Convention standards — refutes past administration assertions that current CIA torture techniques are safe and legal. "Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise, and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation," Benjamin wrote.

Eban’s story outlined how SERE tactics were spun as "science" despite a lack of data and the critique that building rapport works better than blows to the head. Specifically, he said, it’s been misreported that CIA torture techniques got Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to talk, when it was actually FBI rapport-building. In spite of this, SERE techniques became standards in interrogation manuals that eventually made their way to US officers guarding Abu Ghraib.

Ongoing uproar within the APA resulted in a petition to make an official policy limiting psychologists’ involvement in interrogations. On Sept. 17, a majority of 15,000 voting members approved a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where "persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

Sources: "The CIA’s torture teachers," Mark Benjamin, Salon, June 21, 2007; "Rorschach and awe," Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.

OTHER STORIES IN THE TOP 25


11. El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror

12. Bush Profiteers Collect Billions from No Child Left Behind

13. Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

14. Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste

15. Worldwide Slavery

16. Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights

17. UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights

18. Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers

19. Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction

20. Marijuana Arrests Set New Record

21. NATO Considers "First Strike" Nuclear Option

22. CARE Rejects US Food Aid

23. FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs

24. Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror

25. Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Read them all at projectcensored.org

———————————————————–

CENSORED IN SAN FRANCISCO

Good stories are going untold everywhere, but Project Censored can’t cover it all. The project focuses on national an international news, but in a place politically, environmentally, and socially charged as the Bay Area, there’s plenty going on that major media sources ignore, underplay, black out, or misreport.

We called local activists, politicians, freelance journalists, and media experts to come up with a list of a few Bay Area censored stories. Post a comment and add your own!

>> The truth about Prop. H: Pacific Gas and Electric Company has been spending millions to tell lies about the Clean Energy Act, Proposition H. But the mainstream press has done nothing to counter that misinformation.

>> The dirty secret of the secrecy law: Vioutf8g San Francisco’s local public records law, the Sunshine Ordinance, carries no penalty, so city agencies do it at will. The failure of the district attorney and Ethics Commission to enforce the law has undermined open-government efforts.

>> The military red herring: The real politics of the JROTC ballot measure have little to do with this particular program. Downtown and the Republican party are using the measure as a wedge issue against progressives

>> The mayor’s war on affordable housing: Mayor Gavin Newsom, who touts his record on homelessness, has actually opposed every major affordable-housing measure proposed by the Board of Supervisors in the last five years. And since Newsom became mayor the city homeless population has increased — but shelter closings have cost the city 400 beds.

>> The hidden cost of attacking immigrants: The San Francisco Chronicle and Mayor Gavin Newsom have been demanding a crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the name of law enforcement – but the move has made immigrants less likely to cooperate with the police and thus is hindering criminal-justice

Sunrise, sunset

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea,

My boyfriend is 30 years older than me. I am in my late 20s and he is in his late 50s. We are very much in love and the sex is pretty good. (We have both had many partners before each other.) I don’t have a father complex or anything like that. We both come from standard middle-class families. He has never been married and has no children.

We have been together a while and are thinking about getting married. But I have two concerns. How much longer will he be able to get it up? And, if we get married, we would want to have children some time in the future. I have heard that the father’s age counts too when calcuutf8g the risk of birth defects. He is very healthy and youthful. What do you think?

Thanks,

Older and wiser?

Dear Older:

I am far from a hopeless romantic, but I do believe in love, of course, and I cheer on the occasional blind leap of faith as long as I’m not the one who has to do the leaping. I have to admit that I’d tend to wonder why, exactly, a man in his late 50s has never been married, and I’d wonder just how many new tricks such an old dog is going to be willing to learn. Particularly about having children. He knows about the sleep deprivation and the postponement of personal gratification and the mess and the noise, right? And that’s just the baby years. I’m hoping you’ve also discussed the hard part, that is, the possibility that he will not be around or, if around, not up to participating much when your baby is contemputf8g grad school. I’m an older parent myself, and believe me, I have all the sympathy in the world. But 60 is hella older — too old for any of this blind leap of faith business. You’ve got to talk about this stuff.

Assuming you have, and that the built-in risks are A-OK with both of you — and that you’ve worked out your contingency plans — I wouldn’t let visions of future flaccidity stop you. Most men slow down a little as they age (this is probably already in evidence), and nearly all will require more stimulation. A lot of men are going to need some fairly aggressive physical interaction where once a peek or even a thought was enough. But so what? You want to touch him, right? Anyway, he isn’t a cyborg designed for planned obsolescence — i.e., he isn’t going to shut off at 65 and force you to buy the new model. Our declines tend toward the gradual.

I know the expected thing here would be a long discussion on how much better older men are, what with the increased patience and the focus shifting from themselves to you and the fingers and the tongues. And all that is true, but I figure if you were asking specifically about the hard-ons, you had a reason (beyond hoping he can knock you up) and you don’t necessarily want a future of patient, sophisticated fingers and tongues and no penis. Some women like the penis! The penis is good! If he’s in decent health and doesn’t have to take beta-blockers or anything, though, you shouldn’t have to worry about going without for a good long time. Sixty-ish is old for a new dad, but it’s extremely young for an old guy. How’s that?

But what if the inevitable slow down does turn into a total shut down? Luckily, there is really remarkably effective medical intervention available, but you might want to make sure he’d be on board for that. You should both remember that Viagra and friends don’t always work, and there are drugs he could be on that contraindicate them. None of this is pleasant to talk about, but I somehow doubt you’re the only one in this ménage who’s wondering what will happen if (when, really) he can’t get it up. He might like to know that you won’t turn him out to pasture the first time and take up with the next young stud who jumps your fence. You won’t, right?

The worry about the birth defects: well, that’s real. You’ll see different figures, but most articles from reputable sources say that there is a definite rise in the incidence of Down syndrome and other genetic disorders with older fathers, especially when the mothers are older as well, as is frequently the case. The overall incidence of genetic disorders is still really low though, which is easy to forget when you’re reading about the percentage increase in cases of such-and-such. I wouldn’t think it’s high enough to dissuade an otherwise determined couple from having a kid, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to do so. What you do need to do, though, is decide what you will do if you determine that you are carrying a fetus with a genetic disorder. A blind leap of faith is all well and good as long as all the participants are consenting adults. But a baby, even a potential baby, needs a plan.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Live through this

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REVIEW Hey, kids! Wake up and smell the freedom! Outside the RNC, for instance, where a phalanx of Taser-wielding storm troopers recently did their dirty work on citizens practicing what civics classes used to call free speech. One 19-year-old there was beaten unconscious, hooded, hauled away, and beaten some more — subjected to what any dropout in years past would have rightly called torture. "Freedom" is Francophobe for fries, or else it’s merely the liberty of the ruling class to plunder with impunity, slurping up every last drop of blood from the rest of us like it was Heinz 57.

Am I exaggerating? My diction may have a salty 19th-century flavor, but it’s only appropriate, given this nation’s inglorious march backward to the future. It’s also appropriate, in its own way, that Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (written in the 1890s) should be making a raucous but compromised comeback courtesy of Broadway. Deemed pornographic when it premiered in New York City in 1917, the German proto-expressionist work’s categorical attack on the deathly sexual repression and moral hypocrisy of the age becomes — after a lag time of roughly a century — a financially sound formula of faux teen empowerment and positive messaging. In its big show biz incarnation, the teeth of Wedekind’s restlessly outraged, poetical, funny, and morbid little play are filed down to dust, even as Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music) channel VH1 rebellion into some kinetic, tuneful, and exciting moments (heightened significantly by Bill T. Jones’ choreography). The talented young cast rocks unabashedly to the end. But that’s also where the schmaltz lies heaviest — all things wicked and corrupt being made tolerable again as characters dead and alive reunite for a throaty anthem to hope and purple summer and god knows what. Roll over, Wedekind. And tell Bertolt Brecht the news.


Through Oct. 12. Tues.–Sat., 8 p.m. (also Sat., 2 p.m.); Sun., 1 and 6 p.m., $30–$99. Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF. www.shnsf.com

Love and death

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my mid-to-late 30s. Most of my life, my sex drive has been pretty low. Fairly quickly (within a year) after beginning a relationship, it tapers off to almost nothing. I believe this significantly negatively affects my LTRs (my last one ended due to not enough sex; we’re trying to work on it in my current one).

I suspect this is pretty common (I’ve heard of "lesbian bed death," and some of my straight friends also admit to having a very low sex drive). What are the typical causes of low libido in women? I don’t really believe in aphrodisiacs, but are there any proven treatments, meds, or herbs for this?

Love,

No Mojo

Dear Mo:

If any of those worked, they would be aphrodisiacs, and you’d be stuck not believing in them. Not at all helpful. Luckily, they don’t, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Actually that’s not precisely true. There are things that work for some women, just not all, or even most. And since female sexuality seems to delight in confounding even the most dedicated researchers, there’s no telling what might turn out to be efficacious — some combination of hormones, set and setting, history and expectation, and circulation. But in which combinations and what order, nobody knows.

I’d be interested to know what "trying to work on it" means, and whether it’s working. If you really want to delve in, you could see if you can get a referral to an endocrinologist who knows what she’s doing; maybe a little testosterone boost would give you a, uh, leg up. Second, or first if that isn’t happening, you could get yourself assessed for depression or anxiety disorders and maybe do some cognitive-behavioral therapy and/or try Wellbutrin. And last (or first), I’d take a look at the sex you are having and determine whether maybe it’s just not what you want, and try to add in or subtract the elements that would improve things or are killing your buzz, respectively.

The bummer part is that some people really do just have a low libido and that makes them normal for them. Unfortunately, a clear declaration on the order of "that’s just the way I roll" is not going to satisfy a frustrated partner, and many people suffering from low desire really are suffering — they want to have high desire. Some combination of the suggestions above may get you somewhere, and I sincerely hope they do. Otherwise, well, I just listened to a fascinating program on the placebo effect on a BBC podcast, but I’m afraid none of the researchers on there could reasonably claim that taking a pill that you know has no physioactive ingredients would work. Otherwise I’d be all, "Here, take this."

Love,

Andrea

P.S. Oh — there’s an interesting entry on the neurochemistry of lesbian bed death at "Scientific Blogging," here: www.tinyurl.com/4vaxq9. She blames it on oxytocin and pheromones and — surprise! — too much cuddling.

Dear Andrea:

My husband has ED and likes sex in the morning after I give him oral sex, which seems to help. The problem is that he won’t give me oral back! He’s gotten oral millions of times — and me? Twice at the most. Years ago, he was giving oral and I came, which kinda flooded him, and he didn’t do it again for 20 years. Now I’m menopausal and kinda dry, so rubbing gets annoying and doesn’t do much for me. And now I don’t even want to give him oral because he won’t do it for me. He touches me and I pull away because I know he won’t return what he gets. This stinks for me, and I’m totally turned off!

Love,

Rubbed Wrong Way

Dear Way:

Oh, not good. You don’t want to go without forever, nor do you want to get into this sort of (I wish there were a better phrase for this) tit-for-tat system with your beloved. You’re going to have to tell him how you feel, then he’s going to have to, well, reciprocate. If the problem really is the once-upon-a time "flooding" incident, you can do what I urge men to do: warn your partner before flooding ensues, allowing her/him the chance to pull back if wanted. Then you have to tell him that you’re dry and don’t want to be rubbed so much, but here is some helpful, handy lube. Then you have to stop being so mad at him. It’s not that you don’t have cause — of course you do! — but the grouchy, aggrieved tone that comes across in your letter is not the sort that invites compromise and the "we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately" approach which is, frankly, your only hope. You really should not have let 20 years go by without saying anything. He really should not have let 20 years go by, period. So, OK, what now?

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Freaks of nature

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I suspect there is no solution to this problem, but it cannot hurt to ask. I recently met a wonderful woman and, while we have only been together a few weeks, we can envision being together the rest of our lives. The one fly in the ointment is that she is very tight and I am pretty big, and we have not been able to have sex that is pleasurable to her. We have tried it a couple of times, but it just hurt her — and if that continues to be the case, I don’t want to go there again. We are mature and experienced and know about lubricants, etc., but this is just not working. We enjoy toys and oral too, but — damn! We want to have sex.

Love,

Bad Fit

Dear Fit:

"I suspect there is no solution to this problem"? Way to get me interested in answering your question there, dude.

There are size-discordant couples who are just never, ever going to fit, but they are necessarily kind of freaky — and unless both halves reside on the extreme opposing sides of your basic human-variation bell curve, it’s really not that likely to occur.

You’ll need to figure out what exactly is happening here (we know what’s not happening) before you can craft a solution. Is she really too tight, or too short front-to-back, or capacious enough but not managing to seize control of her own semi-voluntary muscles? If she’s too tight or too clamped down, or if you are actually that great rarity among men, the Guy Who Is Too Big (no matter how many used to call the San Francisco Sex Information line claiming membership, that is one exclusive club), she may be able to accommodate you with a little work. Using fingers — her own or yours — or geeking out and acquiring a set of dilators or graduated dildos may produce results (the process can be variously entertaining, tedious, or traumatic, depending). If she is too short, well, there’s a finite amount of space to work with but adjustment of angle can move things around in there to a surprising degree (make sure you’re sliding under her cervix, not into it). And be sure her legs are as far apart as comfortably manageable — it’s amazing how much the internal topography can be altered with some external manipulation.

And finally, I need to point out that you are already having sex! I totally get that you want to have intercourse, and I would like you to have some too, but all that stuff you’re doing already? Sex. Do some fingers, some oral, some shallow intromission and some X-treme frottage (a lot of lube, a lot of careful positioning, and a lot of wet sliding). Have orgasms. Follow with cuddling. Do you really not feel (and look, and smell) like people who just had sex?

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’ve tried three different vibrators and, without exception, they left my labia and clitoral hood numb and swollen for a day afterward. In fact, if I rub my clit with my fingers (my preferred method for orgasm) too vigorously or too imprecisely — just a few millimeters off — or if my fingers aren’t wet enough, the same thing happens. And partners can’t suck on or even lick my clitoral hood for too long, to say nothing of rubbing me with their fingers. Is this a serious medical issue or just another prank of human physiology? Also, I hated coming with the vibrators: it felt like my body was just going ahead without me, and left me irritable and unsatisfied. Am I the only woman in the world who doesn’t like vibrators? Have I just not found the right one yet? (Experimentation in that regard has proven depressingly expensive.)

Love,

Ouchy Girl

Dear Girl:

You’re just a sensitive girl and, yes, the victim of a physiological prank. (Nicely put!) I suggest using barriers between yourself and any stimulation-producing member, human or otherwise. Since these are not safe-sex barriers as such, they can be sexier than your standard latex — silk underwear, for instance. You already know the other measures you have to take — if it hurts when done too this or too that, don’t do it that way, and don’t be shy about instructing others to take similar precautions. Also, have you tried a cool compress afterward?

As for the vibrators, there’s one that might work — this thing that’s supposed to simulate oral sex and has a whole bunch of intensity settings (not the fake-tongue thingies, which are kind of creepy, but the high-end British "smart" vibe called a SaSi) — but it’s crazy expensive and nobody will send me one to review. You could try one of the ones you’ve already got, with a towel (or many pairs of silk underwear) between you and it and see how that goes, or you could accept, with relief, the fact that you really don’t like vibrators anyway. And no, you’re not alone.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Here Today

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

What the heck is going on with the Today contraceptive sponge? My wife and I have always used condoms, but when we saw the sponges a few months back, we figured, "Let’s try ’em."

Oh … my … god. Going bareback after years of condom use was absotively amazing for both of us. We also discovered that what my wife calls her "special trick" — which involves sliding the condomless head of my cock over her clit — worked OK for her with a condom on, but she describes it as "exquisite" without one.

So now, Synova, the company that was making the sponge, has declared bankruptcy, and sponges are going for $8 a pop on eBay. Do you know if Synova is going to come out of its reorganization and start making the sponge again?

Love,

Spongelover

Dear Lover:

I hate to be the one to break your heart, or rather to rebreak it after Synova — cads that they are — already treated you and yours so callously, but you will survive. Your heart will go on.

There’s something about the sponge (beyond the spermicide itself) that just makes people go all gooey. This is the second time sponge fans have loved and lost, and I’m afraid I do not know when, if ever, your beloved will return. Back in the ’90s, Seinfeld‘s Elaine coined the term "sponge-worthy" when she discovered the first shortage and had to start gauging whether or not a boyfriend rated a precious, hoarded sponge. That model was pulled from the market for safety and manufacturing problems, and didn’t come back until last year, along with a media blitz that attracted hordes of new fans. And yes, Synova, the new owner, has declared bankruptcy. The manufacturing rights have passed to yet another company, but I don’t think it’s saying when — or if — it will begin exercising them.

So what’s the big deal? The sponge is nothing but a … sponge, filled to the brim with Nonoxynol-9, the soapy, controversial spermicide that has been around forever. The big advantages are ease of application (pop it in) and forgetability (you don’t have to pop in another one for a day or so). Nonoxynol-9, though, can be some nasty stuff. A number of studies have demonstrated that it causes enough irritation to let in pathogens, including HIV, and it tastes horrible. Plus, I will forever bear a grudge against it since it caused a boyfriend to develop a huge bright red clown-mouth — a scarlet letter "O" — around his lips, just in time for Passover at my mother’s house, and people kept asking him about it all night until he was ready to die. So, um, none for me. But I do understand your dismay at the loss of a dear contraceptive.

There are other forms of spermicide — film or pellets or whatever — but they don’t work well without a diaphragm-y thing to hold them in place. In fact, even with such a device, they work just as poorly as the beloved sponge, which is very poorly indeed in women who have had children and only sort of OK in women who haven’t. The sponge was never a great form of birth control; it just allowed for great sex. Is your wife absolutely sure she wouldn’t like a nice NuvaRing or an IUD? I know, it’s not fair — I’d like to be able to recommend some sort of device to insert — but they’ve got to be better than condoms and eternal sorrow.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’m on the pill and monogamous, so I’m not limited to water-based lubricants. Recently my partner and I got the idea to try vitamin E oil — it smells and tastes pretty good, it lasts longer than Astroglide, and if it’s edible, we figured, it must be safe. Well … a short while after we happily started lubing with E, I got a urinary tract infection and have since read numerous lists of suggestions for avoiding UTIs that all seemed to mention specifically using a water-based lubricant. I feel somewhat weird about asking my doctor this question, so I’m turning to you: are "natural" but non-water-based lubes such as vitamin E oil bad for one’s inner girly parts, or have I wrongly linked a few coincidental events?

Love,

Gimme an E?

Dear E:

You’re right that it could be a coincidence, but I’m betting it’s not. I don’t know what kind of carrier oil was used for the vitamin E, but whatever it is, your vagina probably doesn’t know how to get rid of it. I completely agree that water-based lubes are essentially unsatisfactory, but luckily one does not have to reach for weird, random substances off the supplement shelf. What you want is a nice silicone lube, of which there are many. You can get them flavored if that’s your scene, but most are taste- and scent-free, non-irritating, non-drying, and so slippery they are actually kind of dangerous — and you really want to watch where you prop the bottle between applications. You will love them and you will thank me.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

A yikely story

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am a 26-year-old good-looking male living in New Jersey. I am very fond of scat play with females. I used to play with my own scat, but I always wish some female would play with me. Can you help me with that, please?

Love,

Scatman Wannabe

Dear Man:

Yeah, probably not.

I was changing the baby this morning when she started to whimper and fuss. "What’s the matter," I asked her, "Don’t like poop?"

"No," she said firmly. "Don’ yike it."

Let’s be honest; I don’t yike it either. The truth is, hardly anybody does yike it, and of those who do, most appear to be men. So every six months I get some variant of your question and every year or so I answer it. Like this: "Chances are you’re S.O.L. Sorry!"

There are a few women who will actively seek out scat play. They are, in both the Rick James sense and the strictly demographic one, superfreaks. If you moved to a major metro area and became involved with the S-M community, behaved well, and got invited to parties you might hear of one such woman, or perhaps — if you approach very carefully and are vewwy vewwy quiet — glimpse one in the wild. I can’t even promise that you’d meet her, and I certainly cannot guarantee that anyone you did meet would want to do her thing with you. This is not the sort of thing people just indiscriminately do with anyone who comes along. It’s kind of — and it pains me to say this, or to think about it in too much detail — intimate.

As with many other very rare, widely despised subspecialties, this is the sort of thing you’re probably going to have to pay for. You could find yourself a Strict German Goddess or some such who might consent to shit on you. On her terms. That just might have to be good enough for you, and it is surely going to cost you. Like I said: sorry!

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend says his old girlfriend used to let him pee on her. I’m wondering why, and also if it’s safe. He says it’s sterile. Is it really? And what’s the deal with this? I can look it up, but I’m not sure I want to see what happens if I Google "pee on me."

Love,

Not Sure About This

Dear Sure:

Good thinking! Especially if it’s your work computer. Either way, Googling "piss play" or similar is probably a bad idea unless you’re quite sure you want to see what you’d see. Of course, it’s safer than "goatse" or "tub girl" or that guy who … never mind. Those sites kind of scarred me for life, and I wouldn’t wish similar on the unwary reader, so let’s just drop it.

I can’t answer "why" without knowing more about what the boyfriend and the ex were up to. You can piss on somebody with much sneering and attitude and be all dominant about it, but two people can also just play with pee because it’s there, with no greater meaning. You can splash it around, or aim it, or drink it, or make somebody else drink it — but there’s no way to tell which they were doing without more info. On the subject of drinking it, though, it really is pretty clean, although I hesitate to use the word "sterile" since I’m a stickler and anything that’s touched the outside of somebody’s body is going to pick up some "body ash" (is there a skeevier phrase?) or dust or something. Plus there are many reasons that a spare blood cell or so might be floating around in there. But basically, yes, pee is remarkably clean.

Poo, of course, is remarkably dirty — it defines "dirty," really — and right there is your difference. It’s extremely unlikely you’re going to catch anything from pee. It doesn’t stain. If you’re healthy and hydrated and have avoided certain obvious food groups, it barely even smells. Social taboos aside, it’s pretty innocuous. The taboos are there, though, so in a way pee is a cheap thrill: it feels really dirty without being any dirtier, really, than a glass of drinking water, and in many cases it’s cleaner. The big thrill/low actual disgustingness quotient explains its relative popularity among "weird sex" types. It’s weird but not that weird.

None of this means, of course, that you have to let him pee on you. I’m not at all comfortable with a system where if Andrea says it’s not going to hurt you, you have to do it! You’re going to want to ask exactly what he and the ex were up to, what he got out of it, and, if possible, what she got out of it. As long as he’s willing to drop it if you’re not into it, though, what the heck? Maybe you’ll yike it, maybe you won’t.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Reclaiming San Francisco — from cars

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY On Sunday, Aug. 31, the Mayor’s Office and several community groups join forces to bring San Francisco into an international movement to increase physical activity, break down invisible borders, and make scenic space available to all during the city’s first ciclovia.

More than 4.5 miles of streets will be closed to cars that day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for Sunday Streets, the first of two ciclovias scheduled this summer. The idea of the ciclovia — which is Spanish for "cycle way" or "bike path" — was conceived in Bogotá, Colombia, during the mid-1990s and has since spread throughout the world.

The concept is to take existing roads — the province of cars — and turn them into temporary paths for walking, jogging, cycling, and other physical activity.

"I think it really helps us re-imagine our city streets as places of safe, non-auto physical activity," said Wade Crowfoot, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of global climate change. "From an environmental perspective, it’s time we re-imagine our space and our streets, and to make streets accessible to everyone."

The route extends from Bayview Opera House, up Illinois Street to the Embarcadero, along the waterfront, and across Washington Street into Chinatown. Five activity pods will feature dance classes, yoga, hopscotch, jump rope, and more, and participants are encouraged to explore as much of the route as they can. The Giants’ stadium will be open to pedestrians and bikers who want to run the bases, and event facilitators say they hope this 4.5-mile stretch will grow into something bigger.

"We hope this is just the beginning, and that it succeeds all over the city," said Andy Thornley, program director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The man largely credited with starting the ciclovia is Gil Penalosa, who implemented the idea as Bogotá’s commissioner of parks and recreation in 1995. Penalosa now runs a nonprofit called Walk and Bike for Life that promotes the ciclovia and other forms of active living.

San Francisco’s event is modest: Bogotá closes off more than 80 miles of looping streets every Sunday and on holidays. More than 1.5 million people turn out each week, according to the Walk and Bike for Life Web site. Ottawa closes more than 30 miles of space on Sundays from May to September, and events have taken place all over Europe in addition to the American continents.

The ciclovia is also part of the car-free movement, an international effort to promote alternatives to car dependence and automobile-based planning.

Besides saving energy and promoting fitness, event planners at ciclovias in Bogotá noticed the events were causing a cultural shift. The Christian Science Monitor reported in an Aug. 18 article that residents from different neighborhoods began interacting as never before. Indian residents of poorer neighborhoods used to halt at the imaginary dividing lines of the more affluent European neighborhoods, and vice versa, but now people mingle freely.

San Francisco organizers hope to use Sunday Streets to create a similar effect here.

"We deliberately chose the route that connects the Bayview to Chinatown, two communities that are historically disconnected," said Susan King, the event’s organizer. "We want people to go to Hunters Point and Chinatown and see what’s out there, with the hope that people will see things they want to come back to."

King also noted that these two neighborhoods lack adequate open space. "We want people in those communities to experience what people who live adjacent to Golden Gate Park and the Presidio get to experience on a regular basis — an opportunity to exercise and not worry about getting hit by cars," King said.

Another international trend that Sunday Streets continues is the reclaiming of waterfront space. Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, said he recently visited Vancouver and experienced its 28 miles of bicycle and pedestrian paths along the water. Paris also has a ciclovia every summer that closes a major expressway and creates a beachfront and promenade along the Seine.

"[The Embarcadero] — that big, dangerous roadway — cuts the city off from the waterfront," Radulovich said. "We want to think about the possibility of reclaiming the water space more successfully for San Franciscans."

One of the few voices of opposition to Sunday Streets came from a group of Pier 39 merchants who worried about the economic impact.

The Board of Supervisors voted Aug. 5 not to delay the event until an economic impact report had been released, but Crowfoot said traffic impact analyses will be done this weekend so that there will be better understanding of the impact of any future events. But many ciclovias have actually increased business because people are more prone to stop and look in stores when they walk by instead of just driving past them.

International Youth Music Festival

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PREVIEW How brilliant my high school music career was: I got to travel around the world to impress international audiences with my mad piano skills, take master classes with professional musicians, and play and network with European wünderkinder whose gifts were equivalent to mine.

Oh wait, my high school music career actually consisted of taking weekly piano lessons from a 65-year-old German woman in a church basement, figuring out ways to make her believe I had actually practiced that week. But I guess more focused and, er, gifted students actually do get to join the jet set and showcase their talent in front of classical music lovers on different continents.

Youth Music International was formed in 2003 to facilitate a US-UK exchange program for talented youngsters specializing in chamber music, hoping to provide the adolescent musicians with superior technical instruction and a unique opportunity for cultural exchange amongst peers.

The group returns to San Francisco this year for a four-day stint after holding last summer’s concerts in Oxford, England. Wednesday’s performance is the festival’s finale, with orchestral masterworks as the concert’s theme. So if you can put your jealousy aside, come check these kids out at Grace Cathedral, an intimate and historic setting, before they’re touring with Yo-Yo Ma and you can’t afford the tickets.

INTERNATIONAL YOUTH MUSIC FESTIVAL Wed/13, 7:30 p.m., $10–$16. Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF. (415) 749-6300, www.gracecathedral.org, www.youthmusicinternational.com

On the pulse

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How does one particular sound manage to work its way into one’s earhole and lodge itself in the consciousness, cooling its warm jets in the frontal lobes before arranging for a cozier stay elsewhere in the gray matter? For San Francisco musician Jesse Reiner, late of Citay and lately of Jonas Reinhardt, the new age sounds of the latter project likely stemmed from dreamtime as an eight-year-old. "It’s funny — I was just thinking about this the other day," he says by phone. "It may have been nap time in third grade when the teacher would play a sound-of-the-seagulls record. Maybe it’s early childhood conditioning." Add in a fascination with analog synthesizers and Moogs around the end of high school; a love of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and tracks like Pink Floyd’s "On the Run"; and the collegiate discovery of composers such as Terry Riley and Morton Subotnik: now you have makings of the man behind the proudly faux persona of the Jonas Reinhardt project, portrayed on the band’s MySpace site as a suave, sandaled Euro artist, based in Monaco and dialed in for intense relaxation.

Yet there’s nothing fake or contrived about Reiner’s band: witness the instrumental combo’s recent, jaw-droppingly powerful prog assault at the Hemlock Tavern. I’d dare any school kid to doze through that blistering performance, with Reiner on synths, Reiner’s Crime in Choir cohort Kenny Hopper on bass, and Mi Ami’s Damon Palermo on drums. Initially unveiled this spring at a Cluster afterparty in Big Sur, Jonas Reinhart rummages through the more propulsive, hard-rockin’ aspects of both Can and Goblin with a transcendence-bent energy only hinted at — by way of the bass-borne, primal glimmers of "An Upright Fortune" and fiery, urgent synth squiggles of "Crept Idea for a Mom" — on the band’s nonetheless gorgeous, multitextured self-titled disc, which will be released in November on Kranky (an iTunes-only digital EP comes out at the end of this month). Dare one call this the dawning of a New Rage? This is beat music — pulsing like mirrored hearts on tracks like "Fast Blot Declining" and "Tentshow" — meant for contemplative spirits as well as jittery soles.

And Reiner — long an aficionado of analog synth music that falls under the dread rubric of easy listening or new age — has found plenty of kindred souls of late for this bedroom project turned band: "I used to be able to go to Amoeba a couple years ago and go through this really abandoned section, at the bottom where the overstock bins were, full of new age records, and you could get everything for $1. Now they’re all $10 and $15 records." He was approached by Kranky after giving his music to friend and fellow new age buff, Adam Forkner of White Rainbow, who’s also on the label.

Where did the audience come from for these ecstatic emanations? Reiner isn’t certain, though he theorizes, chuckling: "I think it’s because a lot of people have been getting older! For people who come from a punk or indie rock background, maybe this blissed-out new agey stuff is resonating with them." Yet the musician doesn’t aim to hit all the snooze buttons in his listeners. "One of the things I want to do with my music is to make it a little edgier than most," he explains. "I don’t want it to be too sleepy-naptime music. I want to make sure it gets pushed a little bit."

Jonas Reinhardt’s tough backbone comes along with the old-school technology its songs are built on: a Maestro Rhythm King drum machine from the early ’70s. "I like the way it’s kind of rough-sounding and pretty heavy in a way, whereas most drum machines aren’t," Reiner says. The trio runs live drums and keyboards through the machine, which Reiner describes as "this funny caveman way to sequence," creating a "really cool pulse."

From there, it isn’t too hard to imagine Reiner and other newer-age indie-rockers pushing from the margins to craft their own cerebrally challenging soundtracks for yoga classes or massage sessions. "I went to Calistoga a month ago, and they had the music playing in the spa," Reiner recalls. "I thought, ah, I’d love to make my own record for this."

JONAS REINHARDT

With Jeremy Jay and DJs Conor and Pickpocket

Mon/18, 10 p.m., $7

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

Also Aug. 28, check Web site for time, free

Apple Store

1 Stockton, SF

www.apple.com/retail/sanfrancisco

All or nothing

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

When my husband and I first married, he was into S-M. I was very inexperienced, while he … well … wasn’t. Things were interesting for a while until he repeatedly breached our full-disclosure agreement and saw other people behind my back, but came clean about it later. There was also an issue with anal sex (he’s hurt me too many times). We’ve been completely out of the scene for several years and are enjoying a much closer connection. However, three kids later sex is very boring, planned, and short.

I’d love to have fun with him again, but he’s so sex-crazy I’m afraid of re-opening the door to trouble. He still uses a lot of nasty porn and Web sites where he exchanges e-mails with subs. I don’t like this, but I understand that he’s got to have an outlet. He’s a pretty all-or-nothing kind of guy. Also, I think that he isn’t sure how to approach me anymore after having three children. Who feels sexy with baby puke on their sleeve and no shower? Is there any hope for us? Also, he refuses to go into therapy or ask for help because he doesn’t want to be judged.

Love,

Want Something

Dear Want:

You may be surprised to hear this, but for a couple who not only have such disparate experience levels and requirements but also three small children, you seem to be doing pretty well. Any number of issues casually glanced on in your letter could easily have doomed you — yet you persevere and even feel closer than when you were doing all that kinky stuff? You’re OK.

The S-M obscures things a bit, but the core issues here are no different from ones we discuss in classes (rather imprecisely titled "Is There Sex After Motherhood?") I’ve been teaching at a local nice-moms-and-their-babies education center. The baby puke, for instance. One of the most disheartening things I heard while awaiting my own babies was, "Oh, I didn’t change my clothes for six months. I just wore this ratty old T-shirt full of holes and spit-up." (This from a lovely friend who was only telling me the truth as she’d lived it.) "Forget it, then," I thought. "If it’s going to be like that, I’m not doing it."

And it wasn’t like that, of course, not for me — and it shouldn’t be for you. One needs to do whatever it takes not to sink to that barely human state where you figure, what the hell, why bother showering when you’re just going to get dirty again? Get enough T-shirts so there’s always a clean one! Drag everybody into the shower with you, get up at 5 a.m., pay a neighbor to watch the kids for half an hour, whatever works. Get enough time to look and feel decent. We’re not talking about a hot-stone massage, Yummy Mummy makeover here. Grooming enough to bear the sight and smell of oneself shouldn’t be too high a bar.

I would like to launch into some ways you two could get back to breaking out the whips and chains and stuff, but I worry. Does he really need to have it all? Is he really insisting on nothing if he can’t? I’m hoping a guy starved of all but virtual kink for a couple of years may be more amenable than he used to be to a scaled-down version of "hell-bent for leather." Maybe "leaning toward Naugahyde"?

I do believe he doesn’t know how to approach you anymore, so here’s the obvious suggestion: you approach him, but only after ensuring that you won’t end up with him holding the power, reins, flogger, modem, and lube again, which he didn’t use enough of anyway. Take this opportunity to decide which games you liked, which might do, and which are untenable. Given the scarcity conditions that follow the introduction of many small children into the marital equation, I would also suggest that the whole "other partners" thing is right out. In order to get beyond the dreary status quo (although I do have to put a good word in for the parents-of-small-children quickie while I’m here), you’ll need to plan. You’ll also need to throw some childcare money at the problem (what my husband and I refer to, just to annoy people, as "paying young women for sex"). This is all stressful and expensive enough already, so no way will you want to pay for babysitters for his nights out without you. Save your cash for kinky-sex dates.

Obviously, all this depends on him not being so crazy, sex- or otherwise, and that "some but not all" actually is an option. I’m hoping that after a few years of deprivation and with the added motivation of keeping a beloved family intact, he can embrace moderation. Tell him it’s like the French model of eating, you know? A little + a little + a little = plenty.

Love,

Andrea

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

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley.

Lit: Commie Girl rips OC, invades SF

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By Kat Renz

commiegirla.jpg

Commie Girl on the OC: “It took Senor Schwarzenegger’s propositions, overwhelmingly denied through the rest of the state and overwhelmingly approved here, to make me see just how willingly I’d blinded myself. It’s not the conservatism that bothers me: it’s the nastiness. The nattering classes I’d thought were fringey were in fact the decision makers.”

First off, what a great word: nattering. Second, really? I couldn’t believe Commie Girl — a.k.a. Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. “the black widow/queen bee of alternative journalism”(Orange Country Register) — claimed forced ignorance for nine years. “ ‘That’s a bad rap’,”she told me, describing her excuses over the phone from the porch of her new-as-of-eight-days home in LA. “ ‘We have a lot of Republicans, but we’re electing Democrats in central county and blah blah blah.’ But no, I was wrong. I was totally, totally wrong.”

It seems perfect timing: Schoenkopf’s inaugural book — Commie Girl in the OC (Verso Press, 2008), a compilation of scathing tales of Orange County high and low culture written under her leftie-chick moniker – was published just as she’s moved out of the OC. When I spoke with Commie Girl, she’d just finished whirlwindedly unpacking her boxes among the blue-violet jacaranda trees and 1930’s Spanish bungalows of Los Angeles’s Wilshire ‘hood. Her relocation effectively wrapped up a 12-year tenure at the Orange County Weekly and ushered in a new one as editor of Los Angeles City Beat.

But rewind a decade, when Commie Girl was born after taking over an OC Weekly nightlife column. Schoenkopf insisted her commentary be told through her unique filters: a 25-yr-old socialist, Catholic-Jewish, educated, single mother. About five years later, a little partied-out, her column evolved into pure politics.

Dirty girl!

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend is into degradation during sex. It turns me on too, so I’m not worried about damaging our great relationship. I would like to explore more but am not sure where/how to start. Is there somewhere I can learn to be more degrading to my girl?

Love,

Earnest Student

Dear Earnest:

Heh. It’s not easy being mean, is it? People who enjoy abusing the comparatively powerless require no instruction on how better to be beastly. There are no books, for instance, on being rude to your waiter, or dog-kicking for fun and profit. Sadly, though, while recreational malevolence may not come easily to the naturally nice, no one has yet noted and attempted to fill the obvious market niche. There are classes and books on dominance and submission (you should attend or buy some) and quite a few on how to talk dirty, but none dedicated to lists of synonyms for bitch and whore or handy degradation scripts you can print out and tape to the wall behind the bed.

If what you’re looking for is vocab homework, you could try some of the abundant movies and stories out there in which one person degrades the other viciously but all in good fun. Why not rent some DVDs or surf the Web for ideas? It does occur to me, though, that if your girlfriend has watched or read the same stuff, she may recognize your cribbed dialogue and end up laughing at you. Nothing breaks the mood like your sub helplessly giggling at your attempts to be brutal. All you really need, anyway, is to work on your attitude. It doesn’t much matter if you call her "squealing little slut-pig" or "daddy’s little cum bucket" or whatever; it’s all in the delivery. You will gain confidence with practice, and if it’s working for her, she won’t be rating you on the originality of your epithets.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’ve yet to come across something in your column similar to what I recently experienced (and was grossed out by), and I’m wondering what makes certain people desire what they do.

Several months ago I went out with a good-looking guy I’d met before. I was in the mood, so we ended up at his place for sex. The foreplay was great, and I was getting into it. While I was straddling his face as he performed cunnilingus, he suddenly asked me if I would defecate (not his word) on his face. He seemed to get excited after he said it but did not take note of my reaction and tried to put his mouth over my anal area. I had to get out of there right away.

I don’t remember what I said exactly, but I was dressed and gone in less than five minutes, I think. Have you heard of this desire, and how prevalent do you think it is? What could possibly cause someone to want that? Maybe I don’t want to know.

Love,

Don’t Tell Me!

Dear Don’t:

I don’t know where you’ve been looking (I most certainly have written about it before), but if you’d entered "scat" into Google (on second thought, do not enter "scat" into Google), you would’ve been deluged with information, far more information than you could possibly have wanted.

Oddly, the answer to the question why people "want that" won’t be found in the above-mentioned deluge, because nobody actually knows. Most attempted explanations will say something about flouting taboos or being dirty (there’s nothing dirtier, really, is there?) or perhaps rebellion against the tyranny of toilet-training. These sound good, but you don’t have to be very clever to imagine that the desire to play with shit has something to do with bad toilet-training, do you? Doesn’t mean it’s true.

All we know for sure is that there are (some, few) people who fantasize about playing with shit and (some, fewer) people who actually do it. Most of those who only fantasize have no wish to follow through, but I’ll also wager that inability to find a willing partner keeps some in the fantasy-only camp. If one of them wrote me (oh, they have, they have) wondering how to broach the subject with a would-be partner, I’d probably say, "Whatever you do, don’t do what Don’t Tell Me’s date did." It’s hard to imagine a clumsier approach than blurting out "Shit on me!" in the midst of passion, without so much as a "by your leave." Well, actually shitting on a person, all spontaneous-like, would be worse, but let’s not even speak of that.

I don’t think that someone having a disgusting desire is in and of itself so terrible. One can always say, "No, thank you" and no harm done, after all. Not realizing that most young ladies won’t take kindly to such a demand, however, demonstrates such a profound emotional tone deafness that I really must wonder about your new boyfriend. Or rather, your ex–new boyfriend. Spontaneity is nice, but some subjects require a more formal introduction.

Love,
Andrea

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

Editor’s note: This column originally ran on Dec. 28, 2004.

No depression

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m 30 and have been married for five years. I do all the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. My wife does a few things around the house, but not many. We do not have any sex at all; she doesn’t have the drive any more. The last time we did it was two years ago. My wife has even told me to find someone else and to stop wasting time on her. I just don’t know what to do.

Love,

Big Guy

Dear Big:

As much as I don’t feel like playing Quincy (the wrinkles!), I might be willing to declare your marriage dead for you, except for one thing: I think your wife is probably depressed, which means she can probably be treated. And if she can be treated, maybe your marriage can be helped too.

I had to check twice to make sure you’d really written "30," and not the 50 or 60 your sad, resigned little note put me more in mind of. If you’re really 30 and didn’t marry your gramma’s longtime mahjongg partner, then your wife, too, is presumably young and was, presumably, not like this when you married her. So something has happened in a mere five years to transform her from whatever vibrant young thing you married to this limp, tired, and rather bitter-sounding dishrag. Would you please sit down with her and talk about seeing someone? And listen: just leave the no-sex part out of it for starters. "I’m not getting laid and that means you’re broken" is not a recommended opening move.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my early 30s, single, and have never been with a professional sex worker. I have traveled to all kinds of poor third world countries, so I’ve had infinite opportunities, but I’ve never wanted to do it. I’m a relationships kind of guy.

However, my work has taken me to a new location where I am basically of no value in the dating market. I’m interesting, not bad looking, fit, tall, and have lots of other good qualities, but the women here are looking for a cool local guy with lots of free time on his hands. Dating is flat-out impossible for me while I’m here.

In my period of involuntary celibacy, I have learned something: men (and probably women too, but I can only speak as a man) are not designed for celibacy. It’s not just sex that I miss. It’s some indefinable part of the experience of being with a woman. The smile, the pheromones, the cuddling, the long hair …

I know that a pro’s smile is not the same thing as the smile of a woman who really likes me — which can never be bought — and I don’t like fake things. Should I suspend my disbelief for a few hours and just enjoy it? Would I feel rotten afterward? And, even more important, is this an ethical thing to do? Is there anything else I can do in my situation? I wish I could go somewhere where a woman would occasionally return my smile, but I am stuck here for now.

Love,

Lonely (without) Abroad

Dear Lonely:

You sent this letter quite some time ago, so let’s hope you’re out of No-Love-Land by now. Since you asked, though, I have no ethical qualms about people paying for sex as long as the person doing the selling is as fully empowered to not be a prostitute as she is to be one. Whether or not you believe that this condition can ever be met, especially for women, depends on your broader sexual-political viewpoint. I am rather a middle-of-the-roadish feminist these days and neither believe that all sex with men is prostitution (or rape) nor that prostitution is an especially empowering form of goddess-worship. I do believe that many women really are in a position to freely choose the sex trades and to leave them when they wish. Those are, of course, the lucky ones, though — the college girl stripper/hooker/performance artists, not the streetwalkers — and we haven’t even looked overseas, where poor young women may have fewer choices.

Is it ever ethical to pay such a "professional"? Many would say of course not. Others, including myself in some moods, would choose the practical over the ideal and point out that while such transactions may be distasteful, if nobody pays her she will starve, or be beaten, or both. This is one of those situations that has no perfect answer, the world in which it occurs being too imperfect to yield one.

I don’t think hiring a street prostitute in a poor country is really your cup of weak yak-butter tea anyway. A better idea, in your position, would be to cultivate a few pseudo-intimate online relationships and save your money for the occasional trip abroad to visit one of those (provided you’ve netted an actual woman) or, failing that, to pay a fancy freelancer a lot of euros.

Love,

Andrea

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

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley.

No free lunch

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

Have you ever read Geek Love (Random House, 1983) by Katherine Dunn? It’s a love it/hate it kind of thing that was very popular among a certain segment (now called "hipsters," I guess) and it begins, unforgettably, "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets … " Don’t ask me why, but I’m having an apparently irresistible urge to call you, the readers, "my dreamlets" today. So:

My Dreamlets:

This is not good news, but neither is it as dismal as it might first appear. Have you heard the latest about human papillomavirus (warts) and throat cancer? Did it disappear with unseemly haste from such headlines as it made, or am I just overly sensitive to the way news that interests us (for some value of "us") never seems to get as much play as news that interests them?

It ought to come as no surprise that HPV can cause throat cancers if you use your throat receptively for sex, same as it does with cervixes and anuses (did you know that "What is the plural of anus?" is quite a popular topic of Webular discussion?). But it’s only been in the past few years that researchers have established a clear link. What’s even newer is the epidemiology: who is getting it and how. What we now know is that there has been an upsurge in throat cancers (6,000 cases a year and an annual increase of up to 10 percent in men younger than 60), and that most of the cases in these younger patients can be ascribed to HPV. Cancers caused by HPV can hang around for decades before making themselves known, and these recent cases are thought to have been incubating since as far back as the late 1960s and ’70s. What else were people doing in the late ’60s and ’70s? What year did Deep Throat come out, again?

I have been known to roll my eyes at the idea that the boomers invented sex as we know it. "There are only so many possible combinations of body parts," I’ll say. "Do you really think nobody thought to put that in their mouths until sometime after World War II?" It’s actually true, though — as far as we can tell from what research we have — that oral sex became madly more common some time, yes, after World War II. Before that it was obviously well-known (and popularly blamed on the French), but it really wasn’t ubiquitous, as it is now. And those who did indulge probably did so with far fewer partners. Especially during that one brief shining moment between the dawn of the sexual revolution and the appearance first of herpes and then of course, AIDS, people really did put that in their mouths a whole lot more than they had previously. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

So OK, now what? Well, we have to admit that oral sex, especially on men, is not necessarily safe sex. And while this is not the first time that the blow job’s sacred status as the Safe Hot Thing has been challenged, it is probably the most serious. Not only does HIV really not pass readily through oral sex, it is itself quite rare. HPV is as common as dirt.

So — panic? I think not yet. These new cancers are nowhere near as common as you’d expect if HPV infections just automatically turned into cancers 30 years after your sluttiest year at college. It’s estimated that at least 50 percent of Americans have been infected at some point. The CDC itself uses that "at some point" to mean that many — indeed probably most — people infected at some point simply clear it from their systems at some other point. These people will not get cancer, and only a small percentage of the remaining, non-clearing cases will.

Meanwhile, you know that vaccine some people are agitating against giving to little girls — just in case the admission that one day they will be sexually active ends up making that day come sooner than they’d like? It doesn’t only work on little girls. That’s just the suggested target group right now, for a number of purely sociological reasons. It was extensively tested on young women and the maker, Merck, hopes to begin testing in males this year. If it works for men too, there’s no reason we can’t begin to eradicate the entire class: HPV-caused cancers of the throat, cervix, penis, anus, and other mucus-membraney places where people have been putting things.

Not that this is great news for people who have been infected, not cleared the infection, and could go on to develop cancer. We have no routine test yet. The pretty-good news seems to be that throat cancers caused by HPV are more curable than their non-HPV counterparts. And my advice, my dreamlets? Well, I really hate to say this, or even think it, but it may be time to start thinking about condoms, at least if we’re planning to become raging blow-job queens anytime in the near future. I know! I’m sorry!

Love,

Andrea


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

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley, and "Is There Sex After Motherhood?" at Day One Center in San Francisco and other venues.

Knock three times

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am a happily married man (16 years). My wife and I’s lives are pretty good. But I have a recurring fantasy about swapping with a couple who are our friends. We flirt and play around (no touching) but we have skinny-dipped, flashed our parts, etc. What I can’t figure out is why I want to do more. Thinking about it turns me on a lot. I have spoken to my wife about it in a general way — but never mentioned it to our friends — and she typically just laughs. What do you think?

Love,

Hopeful

Dear Full:

I think you have to go back and change, "My wife and I’s sex lives are pretty good" to "My wife and I have a pretty good sex life." Unless you:

A) want people to think you and your wife have two completely separate sex lives and

B) want people to think you’re a moron.

If no one else is going to take a stand against pronoun abuse, then by golly, it’s going to have to be me. I. Me.

Grammar aside, I don’t see what’s so terribly confusing about this situation. I assume all of you are semi-youngish, still cuteish and hornyish, and often quite drunkish, or at least that’s the picture I’m getting. There’s nothing wrong with being any of those things, of course. I do not judge! It turns you on because other naked cuteish drunkish bodies are meant to turn you on, and because while many men in particular (although this is not in any way limited to either the young or the male) may find themselves satisfied day-to-day with who and what they’ve got at home, they would jump at the chance for some free (that is, wife-approved) alternative nookie. Nobody will be shocked to hear this, I assume? Some fidelity, granted, is fueled by honest-to-God "I only have eyes for you"-ness. But another substantial chunk is inspired by the "I’d like to, but she’d kill me" sentiment. Swapping, presumably, removes imminent murder from the equation, hence its appeal — at least in theory.

Since you used the word "swap," I’m assuming that the lure here is the other wife. Of course it is possible that you, Mr. "My wife and I’s," do not so much value precision in language and really meant "all get together in a great heaving heap of miscellaneous body parts," in which case it’s even less surprising. Nothing like a nice old-fashioned orgy to get those unnamed, unconfessed itches scratched before pretending they never itched in the first place. But whatev. It doesn’t matter why you want to do this: you want to, that’s all. Too bad you’re not going to get to.

What? How do I know? Because, silly rabbit, you have asked your wife (and more than thrice, I suspect), and she just laughed. If she was interested and had been waiting for you to bring it up, she would have laughed, yes! and then gone on to say: "We should ask them (giggle)! I mean, just for a joke! And see what they say, you know, just for laughs (giggle)." She would have said that, and she didn’t. And now you have to drop it. You get three tries with most things like this. After that, it turns into pestering or, depending on the dynamic in a given household (no aspersions cast), bullying. There are always exceptions. It is acceptable, for instance, to mention more than three times that you think your partner ought to be getting more of the oral sex. Even that would wear thin pretty quickly, though, if not actually accompanied by more of the aforementioned oral sex.

When it comes to more controversial acts, though, like wife-swapping or bondage or anal play, I think most people say no when they seriously mean no. By the second offer, most people who might be a little — or even a lot — interested but don’t feel comfortable copping to that yet will whisper, "Let me think about it, OK?" And you have to back off and let them. By the third time, they should be ready to say yes or no. What’s to be gained by a fourth try, or a fifth?

There are, of course, subjects that can only be brought up once and then they must be banished forever. If you want to raise one of those, you have to bring it up the right way, which goes like this:

"Honey, come watch this video with me."

"What’s it about?"

"Um, pooping on people."

If you receive a resounding "EEEEEEEEEW! NO!", you will know to drop it. If you don’t drop it, there is no help for you. Compared with pooping on people, your fantasy is pretty tame. But you still only get three tries and then it’s back to the "flirting and flashing" for you. Be glad you’ve got that.

Love,

Andrea

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

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley, and "Is There Sex After Motherhood?" at Day One Center in San Francisco and other venues.

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