Cocktails

Straight shooter

-
0
Straight shooter

culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER I’ve never been hunting and I’ve only shot a gun on one occasion. OK, it was multiple guns on the same occasion in a shooting range in San Diego, but still I’ve only shot at things once in my life. I guess I did a good job of killing the piece of paper I was shooting at since my friend Josh told me I had good aim for a beginner. It was pretty easy considering the target just hung there and took the abuse.

Despite my lack of hunting prowess and experience, I’ve been to Bloodhound (1145 Folsom, SF. www.bloodhoundsf.com) lots of times. Even though it’s a hunting lodge theme bar, I’m pretty sure it would be frowned upon if you were to walk in there brandishing a hunting rifle. And by frowned upon, I mean people would flee from there as quickly as possible screaming horrible, terrified profanities about someone having a gun. They might do the same if you walked in there dressed like you were going on a hunting expedition, except instead of frightened running and yelling about firearms, it would be about your atrocious attire. Even San Francisco has standards when it comes to what you wear.

I went on a date there once with someone whose ex-boyfriend was employed by my ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend. It was some San Francisco shit to say the least. I went on another date there where a crazy lady yelled confusing obscenities at my date while also trying to woo her. That was also some San Francisco shit. Considering that Bloodhound is on Folsom between Seventh and Eighth, it is basically surrounded by San Francisco shit. And I mean this in a literal sense this time. People poop everywhere in SoMa.

I like Bloodhound. It’s got fancy drinks and lots of wood and light bulbs that look old timey but aren’t because actual old timey light bulbs probably wouldn’t light. I know a lot of SF bars have this look now but Bloodhound opened in 2009 so it was ahead of the curve. Plus it has stencils of birds on the ceiling, chandeliers made out of antlers, and dead animal parts on the walls. I think this is supposed to make you think about shooting stuff and since everyone knows shooting stuff makes you thirsty, your mind will get tricked into buying some fancy cocktails. I really like Bloodhound’s fancy cocktails, especially the one named the Bloodhound. This is great just in case you get so drunk you forget where you are. If you remember the name of your drink, you’ll also know where it is that you’re drinking. This also works in reverse.

In case you still had any doubts that Bloodhound is your local hunting lodge in the heart of San Francisco, you must visit the website. Once you get there, you will be serenaded by the sweet and twangy sounds of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood doing their rendition of “Jackson.” (No Ted Nugent, though.) I’ve never been to a hunting lodge or to Jackson, but I imagine this website feels exactly like a hunting lodge in Jackson would feel. The website even has a game you can play that lets you shoot stuff! I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it!

Hopefully one day soon you and me can go to Bloodhound together and plan our first hunting trip. And in case we just get too wasted to follow through on our plans, let’s just settle on playing Big Buck Hunter and call it a day.

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com.

 

Mezcal: Mexico In a Bottle fest sets high bar for mezcal lovers

-
0

When it comes to tasting mezcal, the experts have some generally accepted rules. Chief among them is that “you should never taste more than four together,” cautioned Oaxaca’s Graciela Carreño of Mezcal Real Minero at the Mezcal: Mexico In a Bottle event, held at Public Works, Sept. 14. It’s usually good advice: With the spirit’s alcohol content regularly topping 50 percent ABV, and its flavor components so nuanced yet so varied from one bottle to the next, it can be hard to distinguish mezcal’s finer points when your tastebuds are aflame with intense spice, smoke, and minerality.

But when you’re staring down nearly 20 of the world’s absolute best mezcal brands in one room, each of which has at least three or four different offerings on hand (if not plenty more), heeding that first caveat is a patent impossibility.

Events like Mexico In a Bottle are not everyday happenings in the US, so for mezcal aficionados and fans, this was something of a paradise. It wasn’t until the next day that I could even hazard a guess as to how many different mezcals I tasted over the course of those four hours, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 40. I, naturally, was not the only one on such a course.

At a table helmed by Arik Torren of Fidencio Mezcal and Esteban Morales, who was properly introducing La Venenosa Raicilla to the US for the first time that night, there were no fewer than 13 expressions to taste — from basic espadín to pechuga distilled with fruits and raw chicken breast to wild-grown madrecuixe to single-distilled Jaliscan raicilla that started off with an almost cheese-like scent before moving into sweeter flavors. All of them were sublime.

Another bit of advice? Mezcal should be “kissed,” rather than drank, but when one considers the blood, sweat, and centuries of callouses that mark these magical hand-made elixirs’ travels from Mexican hillsides to our mouths in a club off of Mission Street, spitting or pouring out your leftovers seems at least guilt-inducing, if not downright shameful. You can see where this is going: No matter how little you kiss, there’s a good chance you leave feeling pretty fucked up.

That wasn’t, of course, the first order of business. It was to simply explore the plentitude of offerings — the explosively tasty spirits from relative newcomers like Mezcal Tosba, La Niña Del Mezcal, and El Jolgorio to the more widely distributed Del Maguey and Mezcal Vago brands. Local restaurants such as Sabrosa, Tamarindo, Loló, and La Urbana also created special mezcal-based cocktails for the celebration, and paired them with small bites.

Upstairs, Max Garrone (who, along with his Mezcalistas.com co-author, Susan Coss, organized the event) hosted a panel discussion with Morales and Wahaka Mezcal’s Raza Zaidi on the history and culture of the spirit, and others like Carreño, Montelobos creator Iván Saldaña, and writer John McEvoy (aka the Mezcal PhD) walked guests through guided tastings. As the evening progressed, and more folks willfully discarded any recommendations of restraint, those informative tastings became less and less formal, to the point where the crowds’ attention was even a little hard to corral — which made for even livelier and more interactive samplings.

Of course, one of the most exciting elements of an event like this is getting your lips on super-unique bottlings heretofore unknown and unavailable in the US. Along with La Venenosa’s debut, Wahaka also premiered its soon-to-be-released line of vegan pechuga mezcals, which involves placing a bag of herbs (Espadín Botaniko) or heirloom apples (Espadín Manzanita) in the still during the spirit’s second distillation.

Mexico City’s Erick Rodriguez, who is known as the Indiana Jones of Mezcal, because of his extreme forays out into the mountains and pueblos in search of the rarest of the rare, also presented a few gems that he sourced for the Oaxaca-based brand/tasting room Mezcaloteca, along with some from his own Almamezcalera line. Due to their extremely small runs and primitive production methods — which can include wild-harvesting and hand-mashing the agave, and fermenting it in leather sacks or hollowed-out tree trunks — many of the mezcals he finds will forever remain in the collectors-only realm, but damn, they’ve got character.

While pondering the larger issues surrounding this oft-misunderstood and mistreated spirit was a big part of why people came to Mezcal: Mexico In a Bottle, it was also, of course, to celebrate its legacy, its cultural importance, and its vibrancy. Mezcal has inspired a cult-like following that only seems to be growing, and while it may be at a crossroads in terms of its sustainability, it’s clearly got a huge support network that has spread well beyond the borders of Oaxaca to points all around the world– one of the biggest of which is, without a doubt, San Francisco. As some of the brand reps echoed during one panel, with an increase in consumer awareness like we’re seeing, there is hope for mezcal despite its current socio-economic challenges. And events like this one can only help.

Folsom Special: Guerrilla Queer Bar returns as leather “Pop-Up”

-
0
Folsom Special: Guerrilla Queer Bar returns as leather “Pop-Up”

Picture it: the Marina, 2000, a club called Trap Door playing goofy throwback hip-hop, shirty dudes and “woo” girls playing the heter-mating game with hetero-abando.

In strut a gaggle of rough and ready queers, me included, part of Guerrilla Queer Bar, to shake things up and sprinkle a little unicorn rainbow dust (and wig hair) on the proceedings. Web 1.0 was in full effect, queers were losing their spaces, and so we wanted to “take it back” by invading “straight” neighborhoods and wreaking a little lavender havoc — you know, to even things out and have fun. It was kind of the original flashmob, spread only by the limited social media of the time (i.e. email listservs). 

And that’s when the shiny-cuffed bro pulled out a $20 and told me to make out with his male roommate so he and his friends could watch. “We’ve never seen two guys make out in real life!” he said. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted, but damn right I took his money stright up, and cultural experiences were shared all ’round.

Now, just in time for Folsom frolicking (most of it restricted to Soma), GQB is back, but in a much more global-reaching form called “Pop-Up Gay Bar,” still intending to challenge assumptions gay and straight in unexpected neighborhoods, while downing some yummy cocktails and making new friends. The next one will take place tomorrow, Fri/21 — sign up at the link above to get the details! Let’s take some queer leather and love to the normals.

I talked to Brian McConnell, Pop-Up Gay Bar organizer (along with Sister Selma Soul and a few others).

SFBG What prompted you to reactivate GQB  — and in this new form?

Brian Mcconnell A couple things prompted me.

One was going to eastern Tennessee a couple of months ago for my grandfather’s 95 birthday. This is in serious Appalachia (Smokey Mountains etc). Before I left, I stopped at a sports bar near the regional airport, and overheard the bartender talking with customers about his BF, etc. Twenty years ago you’d get beaten to a pulp, and then the cops would laugh at you for being a faggot. So obviously things have changed a lot, even in redneck country. It’s not the Castro, of course, but clearly things have improved, at least to the point people feel comfortable being more open now.

The other thing motivating me is I feel like the trend of everyone moving to the city is about played out. Yes, we’d all like to live in a cute house in a cute neighborhood, etc, but there’s only so much space, and the people who are already entrenched don’t want to move. So I think there are going to be a lot of people bypassing places like SF for other places. I moved here in 1994, partly because being gay and spending a lot of time in the South I was tired of that climate, and partly because I grew up around computers. At the time, it was really the only option professionally and personally. If it were today, I don’t know that I’d feel the same way about SF. It’s still a great place, but I don’t think the pull is as obvious now. What was a no-brain decision is less so now. (For context, I thought $800/month for a crappy 1 BR in the Tenderknob was expensive).

SFBG Who is all involved in the reboot, and have you launched in other cities yet?

BM In SF, it’s primarily me and Sister Selma Soul, who ran Pink Saturday for several years.

We’ve heard from people who are interested in organizing events in Marin/Sonoma, a guerrilla transgender event in East Bay, Baltimore and Harlem. The Pop Up Gay Bar system is set up so organizers can send email to people in their vicinity. It’s a location aware email listserv that I built. We’re letting it develop organically outside SF, since we noticed that GQB was different in each city it spread to.

SFBG What are some of your favorite GQB memories?

BM “Priscilla Queen of Walnut Creek” (Green Tortoise bus caravan to the East Bay). I remember Peaches Christ driving around a Safeway in one of the granny carts announcing “I need a price check for a rump roast.”

Saint Patricia’s Day. These two Irish tourists emailed us in advance of their trip to ask if we could organize something for them. At first we thought this a bit presumptuous, then realized they’d be here in March. So we organized a Saint Patrick’s Day parade two weeks early in Chinatown and made them the grand marshals.

“I’m Dreaming of a White Necklace.” We rented out (porn theater) The Campus Theatre for a Christmas party. Pro tip: if you are going to organize a completely illegal party across the street from a police precinct, rent searchlights and put out a red carpet (they’ll assume it’s legit).

SFBG Have you finalized this year’s location — and are you encouraging people to wear leather?

BM People can sign up at the site to get the information sent to them. On the record, we’re headed to Union Square, think of SantaCon with chaps. And yes, we are encouraging leather, or clowns, or whatever freak flag people want to fly.

SFBG What do you think the biggest challenges for queers are right now, both in the Bay Area and the country at large?

BM I think in general there has been a loss of LGBT space. Even in SF, gay bars have been disappearing (most recently Esta Noche), and there’s hardly anything here for lesbians. Outside SF, you’re lucky if there’s a place within an hour’s drive. So we’re hoping PUGB will spread, and that even the smallest towns will use it or something like it to create local space.

SFBG Should we bring our own girly drink to the pop up? Because what if there’s only beer.

BM You should always bring a flask.

While we definitely plan to have fun around SF, this time around its much more about getting this rolling everywhere, even places like Morristown, TN. That would be a good SF export in my opinion, and it is the kind of thing SF is good at starting.

Alerts: Sept 17-23, 2014

-
0

 

Leather and Feathers: AIDS Emergency Fund’s Annual Gala

Temple Nightclub, 540 Howard, SF. 7pm, $125. For the second year, the San Francisco AIDS Emergency Fund is hosting its annual gala, Leather and Feathers, to raise money for clients. This year, the organization is proud to debut Fantasy Runway, where community members will strut their finest leather, fetish gear, and drag.

FRIDAY 19

 

League of Women Voters’ District 6 Candidate Forum

Golden Gate University, Room 2201, 536 Mission, SF. 6-8pm, free. Incumbent Jane Kim, and challengers Michael Nulty, David Carlos Salaverry, and Jamie Whitaker are invited to take questions from the San Francisco League of Women Voters and audience members regarding the race for the District 6 supervisor position. The forum is free and open to the public, with seating on a first-come, first-serve basis.

 

Dan Choi: Fight for City College

Barry’s Bootcamp, 236 King Street, SF. pro-choi.com. 9:00pm-midnight, $25 pre-sale, $50 at door. Dan Choi, a candidate for the City College Board and a key player in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” repeal movement, will host this event and fundraiser for Fight for City College. That organization is fighting to save the threatened LGBT studies program at City College of San Francisco. Enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres by Skyy Cocktails, as well as musical entertainment, during the event.

SUNDAY 21

 

Transit History Bicycle Tour

Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, SF. noon-3pm, $15–$50 suggested donation. Chris Carlsson, of Shaping San Francisco, will lead this bicycle tour of San Francisco’s transit history. He’ll highlight locations linked to San Francisco transit history, such as the Freeway Revolt in Hayes Valley, the creation of The Wiggle, Critical Mass and bicycle activism in San Francisco, the United Railroads Strike, and nostalgic F-line cars. The tour will wrap up at Pier 36 with a look at San Francisco’s first Clipper ships. NorCal People’s Climate Rally Lake Merritt Amphitheater, Lake Merritt Blvd and 12th St., Oakl. peoplesclimatemarch.org. 2-5pm, free. Join activists and community members in a family-friendly settling for a rally in solidarity with the People’s Climate Rally in NYC, which will bring together environmental organizations, trade unions, and social justice groups nationwide for a gathering just before the Sept. 24th UN Climate Summit of world leaders. The Oakland demonstration, in support of the larger movement in NYC, will feature “Climate Fair” with a host of Bay Area environmental organizations that are focused on climate change.

Enter to win a pair of tickets to FallFest 2014 on October 11!

Natalia Robyns-Kresich
-
0
Enter to win a pair of tickets to FallFest 2014 on October 11!
Taste all the Bay Area has to offer at FallFest 2014 — a celebration of the Bay Area’s best in local food, wine, beer and cocktails! The leading restaurateurs, winemakers, mixologists and epicurean artisans will give you a day full of premier food and wine tasting, chef demonstrations, cocktail crafting, beer sampling and chef competitions that focus on eating and living local. It all takes place outdoors at Justin Herman Plaza, which is transformed for the day into an epicurian’s epic gourmet event, taking full advantage of the season’s gorgeous weather and the beautiful waterfront views. sffallfest2014.eventbrite.com

Starred, Striped

Michael Redmond
-
4
Starred, Striped

culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER Dave’s bar is America. I don’t mean that in the sense that you walk in the door and get the hairy eyeball, with a chaser of, “What the kind of hippie-communist-homo are you?” (Spoken in a drawl, of course). I mean it in the most basic sense — the mythic melting pot of equality and freedom. When you enter Dave’s (29 Third St, SF) you are entering a new world. It doesn’t matter how much you make (or don’t make), what you drive, or whether you work on construction sites or the human brain. All of that is left at the door. The only thing that matters is if you like to drink.

There are no mustachioed bartenders in suspenders playing with tinctures distilled from random Amazonian berries you’ve never heard of. Instead, you’re often greeted by an Irish lady who you can tell won’t take any shit, but who will also chat with you all day long. This is a fucking bar, man. Some days you show up and there’s free food put out. Other days you sit on a stool and somebody you’ve never met buys a round for the entire bar. It’s almost like Dave’s has some supernatural ability to give you whatever it is that you need on that particular day.

You sit at that bar long enough you’ll hear every kind of story imaginable, from every kind of person. You’ll walk in just to have a quick shot and a beer — and leave four hours later, having met, dunk, and talked shit with a car salesman from Oklahoma, a recently off-work janitor, a tech millionaire, and someone whose family has had 49ers season tickets since they played at Kezar Stadium. You will never see any of these people again in your life, unless you go back to Dave’s.

I’ve actually taken a few girls on first dates to Dave’s. I mean, we didn’t spend the entire time there, but used it more as a meeting place from which to embark on the rest of our activities. You’re probably saying, “Hey Stu, why would you take girl you’re trying to impress, and with whom you’re hoping to touch special places, to a dive bar like Dave’s?” Besides the fact that I’m broke and can actually afford the awesomely cheap drinks, Dave’s, in its own way, makes everyone feel comfortable. It was voted least pretentious bar in SF for this reason. Dave’s is the bar that everyone has had a good time at, even if they’ve never been there before.

These days I worry about places like Dave’s. Sure it’s been there for like 30 years or something, but it doesn’t have the shine and sheen that so many recently opened bars in SF have. For those of us who know better, this is exactly why it’s attractive. I just worry that the Robert Moseses of the world, the people who would plow a giant freeway through quaint Greenwich Village, have too much steam behind them right now. These are the people who don’t realize that having reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs and $13 cocktails doesn’t make a place special. In fact, it makes a place just like everywhere else. I’ll take a shot and a beer at Dave’s over all that fluff any day of the week. Hell, I’ll probably see you there.

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com 

 

Gorgeousness unbound

Michael Redmond
-
0

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER If you were milling around the Asian Art Museum last Thursday evening, you might have seen a woman tumble — ever so slowly — down the Beaux-Arts building’s elegant flight of central stairs. Ringed by a crowd of onlookers and the second floor’s imposing colonnade, her limber form caressed the marble steps luxuriously as she cascaded beneath the elegant arched ceiling, entirely at her own pace, leaving behind her the unraveling, impossibly long train of her white and lavender gown.

Bystanders ruminated silently or chatted quietly, sipping cocktails, for the duration of Fauxnique’s 20-minute high-art pratfall, Beautility, as house music reverberated from DJ Hoku Mama Swamp’s station in the nearby lobby. Passing through the lobby, you would have seen mercurial artist Dia Dear offering free makeovers, while members of TopCoat Nail Art Studio applied lacquer to willing hands, in designs inspired by pieces in the museum’s current show, Gorgeous, built from the permanent collections of both the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Having at last landed on the first floor, in front of the shiny red and white speed demon parked there — German designer Hartmut Esslinger’s Prototype for Frog 750 motorcycle (1985), from the SFMOMA collection — Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson) gathered up her enormous train and rushed up the stairs and out of sight.

Back in the lobby, you might also have caught sight of Nude Laughing, a peripatetic work by La Chica Boom (Xandra Ibarra), and followed the nude figure as she went by, dragging behind her a large nylon stocking filled with what appears to be hair and plastic breasts. You’d have ended up in an alcove on the first floor between several incongruent sculptures — including British artist Tracey Emin’s hot pink neon phrase-sculpture, Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again (1997); a voluptuous, powerful, and headless stone torso of a female deity from southern India (1400–1600); and American Dan Flavin’s horizontal row of fluorescent colored beams, untitled (in honor of Leo at the 50th anniversary of his gallery) (1987).

In the company of these disparate pieces, the performer slips inside the giant nylon pouch — a Marilyn Monroe wig over her dark hair and atop her painted face, fake furs and sundry toy boobs pressed against her brown body — as she stretches the sheer fabric enveloping her, writhing in coquettish spasms, emitting artificial squeals of pleasure. A puissant abstraction, seriously unsettling and completely mesmerizing in her vaguely menacing flirtation with her audience, the figure eventually sheds her gauzy cocoon and, with a confident stride, disappears down a hallway, leaving behind some flotsam of costume pearls, wigs, and fur.

Headlining this promiscuous night of performance making — part of the museum’s seasonal Thursday night programming, which also featured work from queer punk drag artist Phatima Rude and drag duo Mona G. Hawd and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE — was art-band collective Nicole Kidman Is Fucking Gorgeous (John Foster Cartwright, Maryam Rostami, and Mica Sigourney). At about 8pm, NKIFG took over the regal upstairs chamber with its show, Fuck Gorgeous, a 45-minute incantation, exultation, and rumination on the elusive properties of art, celebrity, fashion, and existence — Nicole Kidman, for short — by three Goth punks with microphones and boundless insouciance.

With enormous projections of full moons looming over a small stage, John, Mike, and Mary engaged in welcoming speeches, banter among themselves, victory laps with streamers, occasional howling, extended ferocious lip-synched roaring, and worshipful mouthing of one truly insipid Oscar acceptance speech. Sound rose and fell, a cacophony of noise gave way to mumbled quips, focus blurred and shifted, bodies went slack, writhed on the dance floor, or bounded around the room. At one point, Mike’s address from the podium slipped from a kind of self-actualization seminar into an outright stab at mass hypnosis as he charged us all to “be Nicole!”

Nicole Kidman, their vessel, “both everything and nothing,” was not quite an object and not quite a projection. Like the other performances enlivening the spaces of the museum and the strange harmony of the artworks on display, Fuck Gorgeous was deeply ambivalent but committed to being in-between, both a come-on and a refusal. *

GORGEOUS

Through Sept. 14, $10-$15

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF

www.asianart.org

 

I want to believe

Michael Redmond
-
0
I want to believe

THE WEEKNIGHTER I don’t know, man. Would I believe what, that cocktails exist? Yes absolutely, I have four in my belly right now. Is this an X-Files themed bar? I hope so! Why is the grammar so totally screwed up in the name of this bar? What is the goddamn question anyways?

These are all things I was thinking as Ashley and I walked into Would You Believe? Cocktails (4652 Geary Blvd., SF. 415-752-7444). We’d wandered down from Trad’r Sam on our little weeknight adventure in the Richmond and here we were. Walking in I surveyed the scene: sitting around the bar was a crowd of Asian folks of various ages. Some were drinking and talking, others flirting with each other, while still others were at the short end of the bar slamming down dice. One girl kept squealing very loudly every time the dice went down. I don’t think she quite understood the game.

“I know what the question is,” I told Ashley. “It’s ‘Would You Believe how cheap the drinks are here?!'” Well drinks were $4, a shot and a beer combo was $5, and Hennessey was also $5. I don’t drink Henny, but I spend enough time in bars to know that’s insanely cheap.

“Hey, wanna have an orgy?” Ashley smiled as she asked me. I’d been trying to get her to warm up to the idea of a threesome for a while, so I was surprised that, of all places, Would You Believe? was what finally got her in the mood. Then I looked where she was pointing and saw that I’d been had. An “Orgy” was just the name of one of the spot’s signature cocktails. Other drinks had names like “Wet Pussy” and “One Night Stand.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a drink called a “Long Slow Fisting Against a Wall.”

I stuck with my usual vodka soda, and we picked a place on a banquette to soak in the atmosphere. In this case the “atmosphere” was fake flowers, lots of mirrors, low lighting accented with some blues and purples, and songs by 2 Chainz. I fucking hate 2 Chainz.

My favorite part of Would You Believe was the sign outside that said “Forecast for Tonight: Alcohol. Low Standards and Bad Decisions.” I’m always a sucker for clever sidewalk signs. I was telling Ashley this when a group of five guys rolled in, none of which could’ve have been more than 22 years old. Considering they were all so clean cut and of pretty much every ethnicity but Asian, I said, “Those guys have to be hostel kids. There’s no way they are local.” I strained to hear what their accents were but dice kept banging on the bar and the damn woman kept squealing about it. Nobody likes dice that much. The whole scene was pretty weird.

The new boys flirted with the pretty bartenders and then played some pool and Ashley and I lost interest in figuring out what their accents were. The night was misty and cold and the thought of my warm bed was enough to draw us out of there and send us on our way. But we still never got the answer to the question “Would You Believe?”

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com

Gorgeousness unbound

Michael Redmond
-
0
Gorgeousness unbound

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER If you were milling around the Asian Art Museum last Thursday evening, you might have seen a woman tumble — ever so slowly — down the Beaux-Arts building’s elegant flight of central stairs. Ringed by a crowd of onlookers and the second floor’s imposing colonnade, her limber form caressed the marble steps luxuriously as she cascaded beneath the elegant arched ceiling, entirely at her own pace, leaving behind her the unraveling, impossibly long train of her white and lavender gown.

Bystanders ruminated silently or chatted quietly, sipping cocktails, for the duration of Fauxnique’s 20-minute high-art pratfall, Beautility, as house music reverberated from DJ Hoku Mama Swamp’s station in the nearby lobby. Passing through the lobby, you would have seen mercurial artist Dia Dear offering free makeovers, while members of TopCoat Nail Art Studio applied lacquer to willing hands, in designs inspired by pieces in the museum’s current show, Gorgeous, built from the permanent collections of both the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Having at last landed on the first floor, in front of the shiny red and white speed demon parked there — German designer Hartmut Esslinger’s Prototype for Frog 750 motorcycle (1985), from the SFMOMA collection — Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson) gathered up her enormous train and rushed up the stairs and out of sight.

Back in the lobby, you might also have caught sight of Nude Laughing, a peripatetic work by La Chica Boom (Xandra Ibarra), and followed the nude figure as she went by, dragging behind her a large nylon stocking filled with what appears to be hair and plastic breasts. You’d have ended up in an alcove on the first floor between several incongruent sculptures — including British artist Tracey Emin’s hot pink neon phrase-sculpture, Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again (1997); a voluptuous, powerful, and headless stone torso of a female deity from southern India (1400–1600); and American Dan Flavin’s horizontal row of fluorescent colored beams, untitled (in honor of Leo at the 50th anniversary of his gallery) (1987).

In the company of these disparate pieces, the performer slips inside the giant nylon pouch — a Marilyn Monroe wig over her dark hair and atop her painted face, fake furs and sundry toy boobs pressed against her brown body — as she stretches the sheer fabric enveloping her, writhing in coquettish spasms, emitting artificial squeals of pleasure. A puissant abstraction, seriously unsettling and completely mesmerizing in her vaguely menacing flirtation with her audience, the figure eventually sheds her gauzy cocoon and, with a confident stride, disappears down a hallway, leaving behind some flotsam of costume pearls, wigs, and fur.

Headlining this promiscuous night of performance making — part of the museum’s seasonal Thursday night programming, which also featured work from queer punk drag artist Phatima Rude and drag duo Mona G. Hawd and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE — was art-band collective Nicole Kidman Is Fucking Gorgeous (John Foster Cartwright, Maryam Rostami, and Mica Sigourney). At about 8pm, NKIFG took over the regal upstairs chamber with its show, Fuck Gorgeous, a 45-minute incantation, exultation, and rumination on the elusive properties of art, celebrity, fashion, and existence — Nicole Kidman, for short — by three Goth punks with microphones and boundless insouciance.

With enormous projections of full moons looming over a small stage, John, Mike, and Mary engaged in welcoming speeches, banter among themselves, victory laps with streamers, occasional howling, extended ferocious lip-synched roaring, and worshipful mouthing of one truly insipid Oscar acceptance speech. Sound rose and fell, a cacophony of noise gave way to mumbled quips, focus blurred and shifted, bodies went slack, writhed on the dance floor, or bounded around the room. At one point, Mike’s address from the podium slipped from a kind of self-actualization seminar into an outright stab at mass hypnosis as he charged us all to “be Nicole!”

Nicole Kidman, their vessel, “both everything and nothing,” was not quite an object and not quite a projection. Like the other performances enlivening the spaces of the museum and the strange harmony of the artworks on display, Fuck Gorgeous was deeply ambivalent but committed to being in-between, both a come-on and a refusal. *

GORGEOUS

Through Sept. 14, $10-$15

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF

www.asianart.org

 

123...28Page 1 of 28

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org