Dogs

About that dog Charlie

Zelda Bronstein
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91
About that dog Charlie

Nothing like a dog story to captivate a city that has so much else going on. And while there are (sadly) dogs euthanized in this city fairly often, mostly because they’re unadoptable or found to be dangerous, the particulars of Charlie’s story — and the press attention it’s gotten — has turned this one incident into a world-wide campaign against the Canine Death Penalty.

You can’t call the City Attorney’s Office about it; the voice mail is full. You can’t call Animal Control and Welfare — the lines direct you to an email address. There are so many callers demanding a reprieve for the American Staffordshire Terrier (aka St. Francis Terrier, aka pit bull) that nobody at City Hall can handle them all.

Supporters have gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition to save him. He made the front page of the Examiner. And now, insiders tell me, the folks who run San Francisco are trying to find a clean way out.

Let’s face it: If the execution date goes forward, there will be TV trucks lined up all over, a doggie-death countdown, animal-rights protests — basically, a clusterfuck that will make the City of St. Francis look horrible.

In other words: If you kill the dog, it’s going to be a public-relations disaster.

But here’s the thing: City law gives Police Officer John Denny, of the department’s Vicious and Dangerous Dog Unit, full authority to order a critter euthanized. There is no appeal; his call is final. And he’s made his decision: Death for Charlie.

So Charlie’s owner, David Gizzarelli, has hired a lawyer and is fighting in court. The latest stay expires at the end of December. It’s a long shot that a judge will overrule Denny — but it’s entirely possible that somebody at City Hall will try to find a solution short of the Ultimate Penalty. There are all kinds of options — the dog could be taken away from Denny and adopted somewhere else. Denny could order that the dog be kept on leash at all times (an excellent idea anyway). It could be sent to a behavior-modification trainer.

Look: I’m not a big fan of pit bulls. They’re powerful animals who were bred to be dangerous. They can make fine pets, but I don’t think they should be allowed (in general) to run off leash in crowded areas. The city’s mandatory neuter law is a good thing, and helps, but still: Treat these often-adorable creatures as constant potential — potential — threats, and you’re going to be better off.

Yeah, the dog attacked a police horse. Lots of dogs who have never seen horses freak out around them; a good reason why the cops shouldn’t ride horses into an off-leash dog park.

I’m not a dog trainer or behaviorist, and I haven’t met this dog, but I’m generally against the death penalty, including for animals, if there’s any other feasible option. And whatever the outcome, I can tell you there are lot of other people in official SF who are sick of hearing about Charlie and would really, really like to find a way for it all to go away.

Meet your weiner: Sammy Davis reps the Bay in national dachshund races

Andrew Lam
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5

December 27th, friends. That is the day that Sammy Davis competes for our honor. Davis is a weiner dog, winner of this year’s regional Wienerschnitzel Wiener Nationals (which took place during half-time of a Warriors game on November 24th, in case you missed it.) We scored an interview with his owner Sabrina Seiden, who along with partner Patrick Major is currently rubbing Davis’ tiny shoulders in preparation for December 27th’s Holiday Bowl in San Diego, where their pup — the 2007 national champ, fancy! — will expend every drop of energy in his wirey little body in pursuit of bringing home the top honor for the Bay. 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What kind of wiener is Sammy Davis? How did you know he was a winner?

Sabrina Seiden: Sammy Davis is a Double Dapple black and tan Tweenie. Tweenie means he is in between a standard and mini size. We knew he was a winner when we picked him because of his determination and alpha personality.

SFBG: How did you guys prepare for the race? Give me your game day routine.

SS: Certain secrets cannot be revealed, but we’re willing to let you in on a few tips. To train for the Wienerschnitzel Wiener Nationals, Patrick does a series of conditioning activities with Sammy Davis, which includes practicing running out of his kennel using his favorite squeaky ball as bait. The week of the race, we stop training to build up his energy and eagerness to see his toy ball again. On game day we make sure he eats two hours before the race and we have motivational talks with Sammy Davis to get him pumped up. As soon as we dress him in his Wienerschnitzel Wiener Nationals race vest he’s ready to go!

SFBG: Narrate the race itself for us.

SS: I hold Sammy Davis while Patrick waits at the finish line with the squeaky ball. Now remember, it’s been a week since Sammy Davis has seen his favorite toy so he’s more than eager to dash down the race track. During the qualifying heat, Sammy Davis was really squirmy and focused on Patrick and his ball. I could barely hold him and thought he would jump out of my arms. When I placed him in the Wienerschnitzel Wiener National starting gates, he was determined to get to his ball once again. I leaned down and told him “go, go, go!” and he shot out and won his heat. Patrick noticed that the other dogs hadn’t even left the box and Sammy Davis was already three quarters of the way down the track.

Winning form: Sammy Davis on his November 30th gameday

During the final race we were both worried he wouldn’t run because it was so loud in the stadium, and he was shaking. Sammy Davis doesn’t like loud noises and tends to want to run and hide. We gave him our pep talk to keep him focused. I put him in the Wienerschnitzel starting gates earlier than usual to make him feel more secure and help settle his nerves. When Patrick watched him down at the other end of the track Sammy Davis had a determined look, which gave Patrick reassurance that he was going to be the champion!

Now it’s times to train for the Wienerschnitzel Wiener National Finals in San Diego! This is Sammy Davis’ second trip to Southern California. Warm weather and the $1,000 grand prize will be the perfect way to ring in the New Year.

SFBG: Where does Sammy hope to go with his career? What does success look like for him?

SS: Success to Sammy Davis is making people happy. Sammy Davis is an example of how dogs can help their owners overcome tough times with the comfort of their unconditional love. Patrick was sick for a long time and Sammy Davis’ companionship was key to his recovery. Sammy Davis and Patrick are a winning team on and off the Wienerschnitzel race tracks.

Patrick Major and Sabrina Seiden (right) with a boatload of cash and their intrepid canine Sammy Davis

SFBG: Does Sammy Davis eat wieners?

SS: Sammy Davis is on a strict dog food-only diet, but he does love to steal bagels with cream cheese when he can.

SFBG: What does he think of Scott Weiner’s recent nudity ban?

SS: We’re so proud of Sammy Davis’ accomplishments at the Wienerschnitzel Wiener Nationals and think a little exposure of our winning wiener doesn’t hurt anybody.

The awful truth

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The awful truth

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM Early last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 15-film shortlist from which the five Best Documentary nominees will be culled. There are some strong contenders — including The Waiting Room, set at Oakland’s Highland Hospital — but two of 2012’s highest-profile docs were oddly absent: Amy Berg’s West of Memphis (which opens locally Feb. 8) and Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five, which opens Friday. It might be ironic that both films are about injustice.

The exclusion of Memphis could simply be due to thematic fatigue. No amount of producer Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth millions could massage away the fact that 2011’s Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory — the final entry in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s series of West Memphis Three docs going back to 1996 — was nominated, and lost to a feel-good flick about high school football. (Atom Egoyan’s narrative film based on the case is due in 2013.) The only chance for a WM3 doc to win an Oscar, it seems, will be if the real killers are ever discovered — in which case, place your bets on which movie will be made first: Paradise Lost 4 or West of Memphis 2.

The case at the heart of The Central Park Five is different from the West Memphis ordeal in several notable ways: it was a rape and beating, not a triple murder; there were five teens convicted of the crime, not three; instead of “Satanic Panic,” it had racial overtones (the victim was white; the accused were African American and Latino) inflamed by NYC’s screaming-headline press; and no celebrities bothered to take up the Central Park Five’s cause, unless you count veteran documentarian Ken Burns (who co-directed with his daughter, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, Sarah’s husband). Also, the real rapist has been found — his confession, corroborated by DNA evidence, is played at the beginning of the film — though he came forward after most of the accused had finished serving their time.

The filmmakers do well to contextualize the case, using news footage and interviews to reconstruct the mood of 1989 New York City. It hardly resembled its glittering present incarnation: there was a crack epidemic, rampant street crime, and an average of six murders a day. Even still, the Central Park jogger attack was sensational enough to spark intense, racially-biased media coverage; the fact that Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam had confessed to the crime just exacerbated the public hysteria.

But as The Central Park Five makes clear, those confessions were coerced from scared young men who’d already been interrogated for several hours. As the accused recall in present-day interviews, they all had been in the park that night, as part of a larger group whose misdeeds included rock-throwing and harassing passers-by. There was no physical evidence tying them to the jogger (who had no memory of being brutalized), and the timeline of her assault and their movements in the park didn’t quite line up. But “the confessions seemed genuine,” remembers a juror. “It was hard to understand why anyone would make that kind of thing up.”

None of the NYC police or prosecutors involved in the case are interviewed in The Central Park Five. Two reasons: an ongoing civil rights lawsuit filed by the wrongfully convicted men (which now involves the filmmakers — in September, they were subpoenaed for footage of the accused discussing their confessions); and really, who wants to go on record admitting that they failed, and ruined multiple lives as a result? Unlike the WM3, the Central Park Five’s “innocence never got the attention that their guilt did,” historian Craig Steven Wilder points out. Academy Award nomination or not, The Central Park Five may help change that.

Like the injustice doc, another late 2012 trend is the presidential biopic. Weeks after the release of Lincoln, Hyde Park on Hudson arrives with a lighthearted (-ish) take on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1939 meeting with King George VI (of stuttering fame) and Queen Elizabeth at FDR’s rural New York estate. Casting Bill Murray as FDR is Hyde Park‘s main attraction, though Olivia Williams makes for a surprisingly effective Eleanor.

But the thrust of the film concerns FDR’s relationship with his cousin, Daisy — played by Laura Linney, who’s relegated to a series of dowdy outfits, pouting reaction shots, and far too many voice-overs. The affair has zero heat, and the film is disappointingly shallow — how many times can one be urged to giggle at someone saying “Hot dogs!” in an English accent? — not to mention a waste of a perfectly fine Bill Murray performance. As that sideburned Democrat bellows in Lincoln, “Howwww dare you!” *

 

THE CENTRAL PARK 5 opens Fri/14 in the Bay Area; HYDE PARK ON HUDSON opens Fri/14 in San Francisco.

Art Basel diary: The other side of the causeway, street art, Art Asia

Andrew Lam
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0

Read part one of Caitlin Donohue’s Art Basel diary: South Beach here

It would be a mistake to characterize the Art-Basel-that’s-not-in-South-Beach parts of Miami as containing more DIY/indie/anti-consumerist detritus than Art Deco land during the arty wheeling and dealing that occured last week (transactions worth, the Miami New Times helpfully noted, approximately the GDP of Guyana.)

Not-South-Beach, after all, included the Design District, where my camera memorably died for the last time during our Florida adventure as I was photographing an exhibit entitled “Architecture For Dogs.” 

So maybe lumping in all the art and murals I saw in the Not-South-Beach neighborhoods is a bit confusing. I hope this helps clarify: Wynwood is the area that has been designated as hipster city clusterfuck, centering on the murals bankrolled by the recently-deceased Tony Goldman and a handful of actually-indie art fairs. It hosts many parties featuring free beer and Chromeo.

The Design District is home to “Architecture for Dogs”, the Louis Vuitton store whose facade has been refurbished by last year’s Art Basel week darling, street artist Retna, and copious amounts of fancy bathtubs on display in local businesses (a must for your post-Basel recuperation.)

Between them, Mid-Town is bisected by a street that becomes absolutly jampacked with art and design fairs (and the patrons who love them), including SCOPE, Context, Red Dot, and more. Also, a fountain accented with brightly-colored butterfly, etc. statues by Brazilian artist Romero Britto, who my companion helpfully clarified, is “the worst.”

Snarkiness aside, should you find yourself in Miami next year Baseling, you’ll want to make the trip away from the Convention Center, fashion, high-falutin’ nightlife, and beach beauties of South Beach, because the art on the mainland can be refreshing, and freakish, and gorgeous. Here’s what we saw:  

HELLA MURALS: Street art was pretty much the reason why I went to Art Basel last year, and it continues to blow my mind, even if the crushing crowds of gawkers on Wynwood’s main drag tend to dull the shine for you after awhile. Fountain Art Fair sponsored some dope pieces, and had the only formal (indoor) showing of Miami street artists I caught at the fair. Miami graff pioneer Hec 1 had a room at Fountain he’d curated, with model trains and canvases sprayed with work by some of the city’s most iconic letter artists.

I’d never seen a pro-Israel artist collective until we wandered into the Bomb Shelter Museum‘s street art complex, where Asturian street artist Belin had done one of the most technicaly proficient murals I’ve ever seen of a stretched-out, insect-proportioned young woman. 

One of the best parts of the week was just wandering the back roads, where some super-talented street artists had taken refuge from the crush. We found Molly Rose Freeman and Danielle Brutto putting up a gorgeous pair of cats on a shack in an abandoned lot, that had been informally transmorgified into an aerosol gallery. 

ART ASIA: This year I was once again blown away by the mini-fair within SCOPE that brings Asian-run galleries from Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, Taiwan, in addition to New York and Miami. 

I’d seen its near-identical showings at Art Asia last year, but even so Miami’s Art Lexing gallery was probably my favorite gallery showing of the week, including Ye Hongxing‘s intricate Buddhist collages, shining rainbows revealed to be made of stickers you’d find on a schoolkid’s notebook when you shove your nose up close to them. Lexing showed them alongside washed-out blow-ups of Quentin Shih‘s photos for the somewhat controversial Dior “Shanghai Dreams” ad campaign. Models in Dior gowns come boxed in glass, unaffected indicators of Western glamour in the middle of prosaic scenes from Chinese country life: a market, a basketball court. 

Also in Art Asia: Buhan, Korea’s Kim Jae Sun gallery brought Sehan Kim‘s dotted homage to Keith Haring and other pop artists, the legends’ work rendered on a Asian skyscaper in a busy nightscape. Seung Yong Kwak‘s “Old Future” geisha remix of Mona Lisa sat a few booths down from Tokyo’s Gallery Tomura, whose entire showing was dedicated to Kazuki Takamatsu‘s eerie depth mapping of ringleted little girls. 

For SCOPE, Context, and more on Fountain Art Fair stay tuned for my final blogstallation

San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

Sasha Cuttler
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71
San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

By Nato Green

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

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

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

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

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

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

We should also ban:

  1. Bernal Heights—dykes with dogs.

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

  3. Marina—entitlement.

  4. Richmond—Irish pubs with actual Irish people.

  5. Noe Valley—strollers and handmade baby food.

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

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

London diary

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London diary

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Tom Cruise, clad in military drag, descended last week by RAF helicopter into Trafalgar Square in what is best described as forced entertainment but was in fact a time-wasting scene from his upcoming blockbuster All You Need Is Kill. Not quite simultaneously but with considerably more stealth, I advanced into South London’s Battersea area, in a completely uncoordinated foray, to see the latest from famed Sheffield-based pomo theater artists Forced Entertainment.

Battersea Arts Centre, a bright red and white 1893 former town hall, is midway through a restoration process called “playgrounding” (putting artists and audiences at the center of the architectural redesign), and its many arches, rococo balustrades, and mosaic tile floors thrive amid an attractive combination of new paint and weathered surfaces. The place is an enviable model for an arts organization: a warm and bustling hub of community activity that is also a serious arts incubator and presenter, boasting 72 performance-tested spaces and a live-in residency program geared to the truly experimental and exceptional.

A nice place for Forced Entertainment to land, enthused artistic director Tim Etchells in a short interview before the evening’s program. He said FE was in fact lucky to find itself there, space in London being at a premium. This is apparently true for even so internationally successful and storied a group as Forced Entertainment.

And speaking of stories, audiences would be up to their ears and eyes in them that night — or rather the loose ends of stories, volleys, and nose-dives from a meta-narrative barrage that manifested itself across a series of readings, performances, and neon. The sign aglow in the Café Bar, where I spoke with Etchells, said simply, “end of story.” Another one said, “Shouting Your Demands from the Rooftop Should Be Considered a Last Resort.”

(All the variously colored neon phrases spread throughout the foyer and adjoining bar were by Etchells, whose many projects outside FE include visual art and writing. The evening kicked off with a book launch of his Vacuum Days, a large hospital-green compendium of daily headlines and announcements — the result of a 2011 internet-based project in which Etchells riffed on the news of the moment in dada-esque fashion. Flipping through the pages was an instant reminder of two things: it had been a hell of a year, and headlines are always loaded.)

The centerpiece of the evening was The Coming Storm. Forced Entertainment’s latest piece (in an unbroken line of group-devised work going back to the company’s founding in 1984) begins unassumingly, with the six performers in their street clothes lined up onstage facing the audience. One of them holds a microphone, and begins by slowly articulating the necessary ingredients of a “good story.” Soon the other performers grow visibly dubious and restless, until one snatches the microphone away and weighs in with a whopper of a tale, never completed, because also interrupted by another greedy storyteller.

And so on through aggressive, sly, and puerile mic-swipings and gradual, unexpected permutations — as those without the microphone do any manner of things to create their own counter-narratives or merely sabotage the one dominating at the moment. It’s a confluence of fractured accounts arranged like a 20-car pile-up, or a game of keep away, or a gentle dance of despair, with occasional live score, random costume changes, and a cluster of branches embraced (and debunked) as a soothing shelter of forest.

The Coming Storm ends up an exercise in failure and resilience at once, since even if no one completes a tale, the audience rushes to fill the void —our minds trained to shape every squiggle into a recognizable human form, however personal or outlandish the starting point. In that rowdy mutual tangle comes quiet reflection from the interstices of language and history.

It left one in just the right frame of mind to receive the last performance of the night, Sight Is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First, Etchells’ monologue for New York actor Jim Fletcher (lately of the title role in Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed production, Gatz).

Sight proved no return to narrative but rather a concatenation of eccentric observations and pronouncements, undertaken by a nameless po-faced character standing center stage and meeting the audience’s gaze in a free-associative unburdening of “meaning,” desultory definitions that went along the lines of “Socks are gloves for the feet. Snow is cold. Water is the same thing as ice. In America things are bigger. America is a country. Korea is also a country.” Then, some time later, “Cats are afraid of dogs. Dogs like to chase cats. Some dogs like to bite the tire of a passing car.” Throughout this eccentric cataloguing and its naïve reverie, the audience again acts to complete the work wordlessly. Subtle suggestions come, vistas briefly open, demurring exceptions and musings flicker by, as the audience is tossed one wry bone after another, and a slow vague pathos accumulates.

10 winter essentials

Andrew Lam
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2

culture@sfbg.com

MARINE LAYER HI-LO CROPPED SWEATER, $88

American Apparel’s appeal fades when we discovered this line of comfy basics made right here in the city. Marine Layer (2209 Chestnut, SF; 498 Hayes, SF. www.marinelayer.com) specializes in men’s and women’s tees, but we love its warm-yet-trendy cropped sweater, whose hemline dips low in the back.

OTTER WAX BAR, $13

Ditch the wet look and feel: wax your sneakers, jeans, and canvas or denim clothing. Seal in that fresh feeling — also available in heat-activated dressing form — at Voyager (365 Valencia, SF. www.thevoyagershop.com). Just rub it on and you’ll be fly and dry.

VAUTE COUTURE EMILY COAT, $356.25

We swoon for this online brand’s (www.vautecouture.com) animal product-free — no itchy woolens or dead cow here! — fashion. Thanks to the Emily’s tie-front belt, winter-time no longer means you have to look like a shapeless sack of spuds.

PAUL MADONNA CANVAS SHOULDER BAG, $23

Local cartoonist Madonna’s “All Over Coffee” comic and books are essential — his illustration of the Golden Gate Bridge one Crissy Field on this kicky bag is a sparkling example of his art, available at one of our favorite bookstores ever, Green Arcade (1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com)

JENNIFER BAIR JACKET, $124

These one-of-a-kind faux suede coats with vintage-inspired print lining make great cover-ups on milder winter days. Residents Apparel Gallery‘s (541 Octavia, SF. www.ragsf.com) selection of made-in-the-city pieces is a great one-stop shop for Bay Area gear.

SAN FRANPSYCHO BEANIE, $20

We found you an everyday hat straight from the surfer-bros of San Franpsycho, whose shop (505 Divisadero, SF. www.sanfranpsycho.com) sells the makings of insta-cred among sporty, hip types in town.

BENEDUCI HANK BOOTS, INQUIRE FOR PRICE

These brass tack soles will power you down winter-wet sidewalks but honestly, you could rock Beneduci‘s (www.beneduci.com) Italian leather kicks year-round in style. Local cred: the brand makes everything right here in SF. The boots will be available at Firehouse 8 (1648 Pacific, SF) on Sat/15 and Sun/16 and on Dec. 21-22.

KURABO BLACK 13 OUNCE MENS DENIM PANTS, $128

The perfect pair of pants, proudly produced in SF by Taylor Stitch (383 Valencia, SF. www.taylorstitch.com) for stylish gents? Possibly. Dig the local provenance — Taylor Stitch is bursting with hometown-made style. And the deep black will hide unsightly rain splashes.

RAINSHIELD O2 UNISEX CYCLING JACKET, $25

Ultralightweight, breathable, packable, and insanely cute, these zip-ups, available at Market Street Cyclery (1592 Market, SF. www.marketstreetcyclescom) will keep the drops off your pop-a-wheelie while helping up your mist-shrouded visibility factor.

CAT WALKING STICK UMBRELLA, $30

Yes, yes, we get the raining cats and dogs joke, but this is the purrfect shield against the storm: a sky-blue kitty cavorting on a midnight blue canvas, protecting you on this seriously sturdy yet lightweight piece from the San Francisco Umbrella Company (www.sfumbrella .com). Cats!

Likes the name

Andrew Lam
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0
Likes the name

caitlin@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… well, at least now they know my name.

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

Sattdown strike

Andrew Lam
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0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dang it, my sports writer has gone on strike. Over something really stupid, too. Really really stupid. How stupid? A couple columns ago, I changed her spelling of youse to yous. Why?

Oh, you escape my meaning entirely, don’t you?

Youse. Yous. The former preferred by Hedgehog, whereas I like the latter.

Understand, dear reader, if you dare (for it’s bad luck, allegedly, to stand under latters): either word, according to expert wordstress Miriam Webster, is an acceptable misspelling of y’all. But before you leap to inclusions, let me tell you for a Cheap Eats fact that yous is better.

“No!” insisteth Hedgehog. “You don’t understand. I researched this. In Central Pennsylvania, where ‘yous’ is said, I asked a lot of people how to spell yous, and they all said yous: y-o-u-s-e.”

“That’s great, but wait’ll you read how I write what you just said!” I said. “Besides, this isn’t Central Pennsylvania. It’s Cheap Eats. And Cheap Eats has its own Manual of Style, just like Chicago.”

“Then I’m going on strike.”

“You can’t!” I screamed. I kicked, bucked, clucked, and sputtered to this end and that one — the crux of my argument being that Cheap Eats was already on strike, and that, Cheap Sports being my sophisticatedly subversive and top-secret way of being on strike and still getting paid, going on strike from the very strike of which she was, in effect, the expression, would create a profoundly dense expressionlessness on this page, which blank hole, if it fell into the wrong hands, could (for example) wipe Austin, Texas off the map.

And do you know what she said?

“Mwa-ha-ha,” she said, the evil and cuddly animal, “ha!”

And she walked out. Just like that. Over one lousy letter, albeit a pretty popular one, Cheap Sports walked out on my walkout, engendering an all-out word stoppage the likes of which this column has never known.

Thus the ramble. Because I can’t exactly bring you a relevant restaurant, can I? Under the circumstances.

Lucky thing, I am in Los Angeles. Eating hot dogs and hot dogs at Pink’s, and other things at other Bay Irrelevant places.

Tomorrow night a short film which I catered is up for an award down here. Oh, and I’ll bet Hedgehog would have loved to have written that last sentence instead of me, since she was also peripherally involved in the project — writing, directing, videographing, editing, mixing, and just generally producing it.

If we win (as I understand it) we will be awarded $60,000 worth of whisks, pans, and Brillo and things, so please keep your fingers crossed for me. Us, technically. Or “use,” as Hedgehog would have it.

In fact, had she not walked out on my walkout, over e, my everloving life partner and future ex-sportswriter (if she doesn’t come off strike soon) would have by now told you all about her first ever real live baseball game. That she played in, I mean.

Since there’s no sports section this week, however, how will you know whether she ripped her first fastball down the right field line for a triple or dribbled a grounder back to the pitcher? How will you know whether she made diving catches in the outfield or merely got the ball back into the infield in a timely and generally athletic manner?

I wish I could just publish a picture I took instead of all this gobble-de-gravy, Happy Thanksgiving, but if you want to see how friggin’ hot Hedgehog looked in her baseball uniform, stepping up to the plate for her first time ever, with a cheekful of sunflower spits, you will just have to ax/axe. (Hint: pretty friggin’ hot.)

My knee was monked, or I’d of been out there on the field with her — maybe even throwing her big slow curves — instead of standing behind the fence with her camera, photographering.

BTW, my new favorite restaurant in Los Angeles is not Pink’s famous hot dog stand, which I loved, but the Jamaican joint on Ventura where I had curry goat with roti for the first time in a long time and it was awesome.

Does anybody know? Where is Penny? She could end this madness. She could.

SATTDOWN

Tue.-Thu., 11am-8pm; Fri.-Sat., 11am-9pm; Sun. 4-8pm; Closed Mon.

11320 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City

(818) 766-3696

AE,MC,V

No alcohol

www.sattdownjamaicangrill.com

 

Popping up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

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

CHEAP SPORTS

by Hedgehog

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

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

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

Trampoline dodge ball.

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

What?

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

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

Trampoline dodgeball.

Pretty please?

Cheap Eats continued …

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

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

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

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

OK.

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

And pointless.

What are you trying to prove, Kpop?

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

The bulgogi was alright. Nothing special.

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

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

KPOP

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

499 Castro St., SF

(415) 252-9500

MC,V

No alcohol

 

Wedge issues

Andrew Lam
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0

caitlin@sfbg.com

FEAST 2012 It is a trip ill-suited for vegans and anyone with a phobia of fossil fuel. But no one said that the Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail was an endeavor for everyone. Certainly not the faint of belly — even our truncated voyage of five cheesemakers and 61 miles in a day is a lot, lactophilia notwithstanding.

To navigate the trail, we cut off a slice off the map of 27 cheeseries put together by kindly Marin and Sonoma curdmakers. (Check out www.cheesetrail.org for a SMCT map of your own.) Cheese trailing is the perfect excuse to traverse the backroads up north of the Bay Area. And with many producers within forty five minutes of the Golden Gate Bridge, it wasn’t long until we were filling our bellies with goat, sheep, cow, even water buffalo-made wheels.

Cheaply, too! Most producers on the map do tastings, and buying directly from the farm means you cut out the middle man price (Monterey) jack.

Tips before you begin: split samples with your co-pilots. Yes, that generous slice of pesto jack will look sensible when the day is young, but by the road’s end you won’t be able to countenance another slab — devastating.

Truck along a cooler for the ride. We will never forget the 80-degree day that saw us refusing Marin French Cheese Company’s two pounds of brie for $5 deal, for fear of curdle-skunk wafting from our Zipcar’s trunk.

And please: multiple cheeseheads told us that trail pioneers have the tendency to be free food hounds. Settle children, and ask nicely to be fed if samples aren’t forthcoming.

You may well arrive on a foggy morning at this easy-to-miss, munch-sized tasting room in the rolling hills of Marin County. All the better — Nicasio Valley Cheese Company (5300 Nicasio Valley Road, Nicasio. (415) 662-6200, www.nicasiocheese.com) earns rave reviews for its the spreadable, fresh Foggy Morning cheese. It is blessed with versatility (suggested serving methodologies include balsamic-dressed salads, sandwiches, even a baking pan full of pasta shells) and tang. The Swiss family’s cheeses are made from the organic milk of its organic Holsteins, whose herd it has been cultivating for 30 years.

The side yard at Marin French Cheese Company (7500 Red Hill Road, Petaluma. (707) 762-6001, www.marinfrenchcheese.com) is archetypal picnic territory. In the middle of yellowed fields of Marin farmland, its patch of green oasis has a lake, a lush lawn dotted with wooden tables, squawking Canadian geese.

Luckily, inside MFCC’s charming country store you have all the makings of a ur-nosh. Of course, there’s cheese — triple cream bries made on premise (although tours were paused for renovations when we visited, we could still peep hairnetted workers stacking and packing wheels through glass windows at the back of the store.) There are pre-made sandwiches, breads, and a wall of preserves from pineapple to jalapeño and back again. It is here we first learned of the magic of quark, or fresh, soft cheese made from curds that this shop stocks in flavors like strawberry

After sampling a pungent schloss cheese (made on-site since 1901), we were intrigued by the air-pocketed breakfast cheese, one of the first quesos to make its way to the City By the Bay. Marin French’s small wine cellar provides another glimpse into history, its glass case filled with sexy cheesemaker photos from the company’s 147-years.

Drive to Spring Hill Cheese (711 Western, Petaluma. (707) 762-9038, www.springhillcheese.com) and you will see lots of cows. This is a given on the cheese trail — between every sentence in this article there should be one that says “and then we saw cows,” for accuracy’s sake. The road also stocks a glimpse of downtown Petaluma, one of the Main Street-type towns that dot Sonoma County, and is blessed with big, tall trees lining quiet residential streets.

Spring Hill caters to wholesome tastes — in addition to a block of its veggie or pesto jack cheeses or a bag of the spicy Mike’s Firehouse curd, you can grab a slice of Spring Hill-topped pizza, or an icecream cone. We went for a vanilla blend studded with pink Mother’s animal cookies, which we’ve had as a fixin’ before, but mixed in the icecream itself? Revolutionary! And cheap. Our kid’s cup and a bottle of water ran a cool $2.50.

We sat outside the creamery contemplating Spring Hill’s grim-looking mascot cow suspended over its factory across the street, before making a quick stop at Alphabet Shop Thrift Store (217 Western, Petaluma) on our way out of town.

Don’t get to used to Americana simplicity on the trail, because after Petaluma — we go past more cows and a little bit of prefab homeland and — arrive in the town of Sonoma, upper class wine country hub anchored by historic barracks and Spanish mission on a graceful, green center square. Sonoma’s also home to a bakery that caters exclusively to dogs (www.threedog.com).

Here, Vella Cheese (315 Second St. East, Sonoma. (707) 938-3232, www.vellacheese.com) sits in a stone building, tucked away on a block that also hosts familial Sonoma houses and a dashing pair of Clydesdale horses. The edifice was built in 1904 to house a brewery that was unable to withstand Prohibition, for all its sturdy design. Gaetano “Tom” Vella moved in circa 1931. Today, Vella Cheese will sample you a flight of progressively-aged jack cheeses, proof that Gaetano’s cheesemaking spirit still infuses the place.

We flipped for Vella’s mezzo secco jack, pocketing a triangle while visions of red wine in the Sonoma heat traipsed through our dairy-crazed minds. Special kudos to the wink-cute design of the California Daisy cheddar for having the most adorable cheese packaging, ever.

Vella no longer offers tours of the cheesemaking floor, but cheery store staff will instruct you to spy on factory workers through the screen door off the parking lot.

We walked through Sonoma’s shady plaza park to our last stop on the cheese trail: Epicurean Connection (122 West Napa, Sonoma. (707) 935-7960, www.sheanadavis.com). Proprietor Sheana Davis has created a general store worthy of her gourmand town, with cheesemaking classes on second Saturdays and Saturday morning bacon waffle breakfasts. Though the walls are lined with (mostly) locally-made foodstuffs like Rancho Gordo beans, you’ll gravitate towards the refrigerator cases full of cheese and microbrews.

Davis herself makes a soft Delice de la Vallee spread made of goat’s milk and triple cream cow milk. She also coordinated a stellar beer-cheese pairing dinner we attended at this year’s SF Beer Week, so it came as no surprise that the suds offerings at her shop were superb.

What is also superlative is the lunchy dine-in menu at EC. To beat the heat, we made a perfect meal of a watermelon tomato gazpacho (served in a cute lil’ jar) and a tomato-greens salad with a burrata cheese that made us crazy. In a good way.

Bonus points for the doorside stack of Culture magazines (“the word on cheese”) we were able to browse as we ate, contemplating the end of the day’s trail — and the ample dinner options that lay in every direction from Epicurean Connection’s front door.

Daly’s Buck Tavern, a progressive hangout, is closing

Sasha Cuttler
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72
Daly’s Buck Tavern, a progressive hangout, is closing

When leftist firebrand Chris Daly left the Board of Supervisors two years ago, amid political treachery that effectively ended a decade of progressive control over the body, the bar that he took over and operated – the Buck Tavern – became a gathering place for progressive activists. It was almost like a government in exile following a coup d’etat.

That changed a bit over the last year as Daly became the full-time political director of SEIU Local 1021 and dropped his regular bartending gigs, although the Buck still showcased community events. But as their lease was set to expire on Oct. 31, Daly and co-owner Ted Strawser were unable to negotiate a new one on terms they could afford, to find a new space, or to find a buyer that would keep the Buck running.

So the Buck Tavern, under the helm of a politico that the SF Weekly once-dubbed Captain Outrageous – in an article recognizing his role in getting a better deal for the city hosting the America’s Cup (and, of course, denying ours) – is set to sink at the witching hour on Halloween. That’s right, the Buck is going under.

“We’ve been able to do some really cool things with the space in terms of housing a community of people,” Daly told us. “We had a good run.”

That community is invited for a last hurrah at the Buck on Oct. 31, with nautical-themed costumes requested. So, ye scurvy dogs, come grab some grog and toast the motley crew that proudly sailed these stormy seas before they descend to Davy Jones locker. Arghhh!

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bob Dylan Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.apeconconcerts.com. 7:30pm, $59.50-$125.50.

First Aid Kit, Dylan LeBlance Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Scott Holt Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Lee Huff vs JC Rockit Johnny Foley’s. 9:30pm.

Imperative Reaction, Everything goes Cold, Ludovico Technique, Witch Was Right DNA Lounge. 9pm, $18.

Sonny Landreth, Danny Click Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $22.

Sarah McQuaid Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $10.

Minus Gravity, Headlines, James Cavern Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9:30pm, $10-$12.

Moral Crux, Deadones, Antizocial Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Rocket Queens, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Seatraffic, Real Numbers, American Professionals Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Soul Train Revival Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Orlando Cela Frankenart Mall, 515 Balboa, SF; www.orlandocela.com. 8pm, $10.

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

Frisky Frolics Rite Spote Cafe. 9pm, free.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Radney Foster, Misisipi Mike Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

Obey the Kitty: Justin Milla Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsanfrancisco.com. 10pm, $5.

THURSDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP.

Adam Ant, Brothers of Brazil Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

Emily Bonn and the Vivants, Howell Devine, Stephanie Nilles Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Chris Cohen, Ashley Eriksson, Coconut Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $10.

Bob Dylan Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.apeconconcerts.com. 7:30pm, $59.50-$125.50.

Freelance Whales, Geographer Mezzanine. 9pm, $20.

Generators, Sore Thumbs, Shell Corporation, Bastards of Young Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Jon Gonzalez 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Iron Lung, Process, Effluxus, Hunting Party Knockout. 10pm, $8.

Jane’s Addiction, Thenewno2 Warfield. 8pm, $52.50-$62.50.

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

Mansfield Aviator, Butterfly Knives, Capkins El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Meters Experience, Dredgetown Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$20.

Minibosses, Crashfast, Gnarboots Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Poi Dog Pondering Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Rudy Columbini Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Soft Pack, Crocodiles, Heavy Hawaii Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Tift Merrit, Amy Cook Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $16-$18.

Rags Tuttle vs Lee Huff Johnny Foley’s. 9:30pm.

Van She, popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $13-$15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cheryl Bentyne Rrazz Room. 8pm, $35.

Science Fiction Jazz 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 10pm.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Emily Anne Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm, free.

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

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-$7. With DJ-host Pleasuremaker.

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

Base: Sasha Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsanfrancisco.com. 10pm, $5-$10.

Hubba Hubba Revue: Asylum DNA Lounge. 9pm, $12-$15.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bleached Palms, Radishes Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 9pm, $5.

Bombay Bicycle Club, Vacationer Fillmore. 9pm, $22.50.

Coo Coo Birds, Electric Shepherd, Electric Magpie Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Aaron Freeman Independent. 9pm, $25.

Lee Huff, Rome Balestrieri, Nathan Temby Johnny Foley’s. 9pm.

John Brown’s Body, Kyle Hollingsworth Band Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Kids on a Crime Spree, GRMLN, Manatee Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Jason Lytle, Sea of Bees Swedish American Hall. 8pm, $18-$20.

Meters Experience, Tracorum, Swoop Unit Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$20.

Mixers Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Mustache Harbor, Sean Tabor Bimbo’s. 9pm, $22.

Night Hikes, Correspondence School, Houses of Light Amnesia. 7pm.

Bill Ortiz Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Beth Orton, Sam Amidon Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

Stolen Babies, Fuxedos, Darling Freakhead Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Tiger Army, Goddamn Gallows, Death March Slim’s. 8:30pm, $23.

Whigs, Record Company, Fake Your Own Death Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12-$15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes Rrazz Room. 8pm, $30-$37.50.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-$10. With Roseman Creek.

Kaweh Monroe, 473 Broadway, SF; www.kaweh.com. 9:30pm, $15. Flamenco rumba salsa.

Lee Vilensky Trio Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Albino! Fela Kuti Birthday Celebration Show Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

DJ What’s His Fuck Riptide Tavern. 9pm.

Fedorable Queer Dance Party El Rio. 9pm, free.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs.

Odyssey with Neon Leon Public Works. 10pm, $10.

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

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

Peaches (DJ set) 103 Harriet, SF; www.1015.com. 9pm.

Rage By the Pound DNA Lounge. 9pm, $25. With Funtcase, High Rankin, Schoolboy, Nerd Rage.

Toolroom Knights: Paul Thomas, David Gregory Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF; www.vesselsanfrancisco.com. 10Pm, $20-$30.

SATURDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bassnectar, Ghostland Observatory, Gramatik, Gladkill Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.apeconconcerts.com. 8pm, $40.

Rome Balestrieri, Nathan Temby, Lee Huff Johnny Foley’s. 9pm.

Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $38.

Bottle Kids, Loose Cuts 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Cheap Time, Unnatural Helpers, Warm Soda, Krells Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $10.

Zach Deputy Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $15.

Willis Earl Beal, Terese Taylor, Sean Smith Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Foreign Exchange Mezzanine. 9pm.

GoKart Mozart Biscuits and Blues. 8:30 and 10:15pm, $10.

Jorma Kaukonen Swedish American Hall. 7 and 10pm, $32-$35.

Love Songs, Bar Feeders, Cyclops Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Oak Creek Band Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Pre Legendary, Chingadero Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Skin Divers Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Lavay Smith Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Stars, Diamond Rings, California Wives Fillmore. 8pm, $29.50.

Rodger Stella, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, Jencks Hemlock Tavern. 5pm, $6.

Tea Leaf Green, Mahgeetah Independent. 9pm, $20.

Tiger Army, Suedehead, God Module Slim’s. 8:30pm, $23.

Nick Waterhouse, Allah-Las Bimbo’s. 9pm, $18.

Michael Ward with Dogs and Fishes Riptide Tavern. 9:30pm, free.

Wax Idols, Wymond Miles, Evil Eyes Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $7-$10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes Rrazz Room. 7 and 9:30pm, $30-$37.50.

"UP: San Francisco Street Festival and Exposition" 5M, Fifth and Mission, SF; sf.urbanprototyping.org. With Mark Fell, Aaron David Ross, Afrikan Sciences, Brian Hock, Loric, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Go Van Gogh Revolution Cafe, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Tony Ybarra Red Poppy Art House. 7:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: More Cowbell DNA Lounge. 9pm, $15.

Dancing Ghosts Hot Spot, 1414 Market St., SF; www.dancingghosts.com, 9:30 pm, $5, free before 10. DJs Xander and Le Perv host this darkwave dance party.

"DSF Clothing Co. and Art Gallery Anniversary" Public Works. 9pm, free with RSVP. With Motown on Monday DJs, Nickodemus, Afrolicious.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Indie music video dance party with DJ Blondie K and subOctave.

Masquerotica Concourse Exhibition Center, 636 Eighth St, SF; masquerotica2012.eventbrite. 8:30pm. With Stanton Warriors, Ron Kat’s Katdelic, Action Jackson, Hubba Hubba Revue, and more.

Nickodemus and Afrolicious Public Works Loft. 10pm, $5.

OK Hole Amnesia. 9pm.

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

Radio Franco Bissap, 3372 19th St, SF; (415) 826 9287. 6 pm. Rock, Chanson Francaise, Blues. Senegalese food and live music.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10. With DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, Phengren Oswald.

Smiths Party Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, $5. Sounds of the Smiths, Morrissey, the Cure, and New Order.

Wild Nights Kok BarSF, 1225 Folsom, SF; www.kokbarsf.com. 9pm, $3. With DJ Frank Wild.

SUNDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Babmu Station, Inna Vision Independent. 9pm, $18.

Craig Horton Biscuits and Blues. 7 and 9pm, $15.

Tony Lucca, Justin Hopkins Cafe Du Nord. 8:30pm, $15.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Dee-1 Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Mako Sica, Brandon Nickel, Jeff Zittrain Band Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Socionic Rockit Room. 8pm, $8.

Allen Stone, Yuna, Tingsek Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.50.

Mike Stud Slim’s. 8:30pm, $13-$16.

Taking Back Sunday, Man Overboard Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $27.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Kaki King Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $20; 9pm, $15.

Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes Rrazz Room. 7pm, $30-$37.50.

Rob Reich Trio Bliss Bar, 4026 24 St, SF; .www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Hillbilly Swing, B Stars Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Sofia Talvik Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Daytime Realness El Rio. 3pm, $8-$10. With Heklina, Stanley Frank, and DJ Carnita.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6 after 9:30pm. With DJs Sep, Ludichris, Silver Back.

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

MONDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Shiny Toy Guns, MNDR, Of Verona Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $17.

Allen Stone, Yuna, Tingsek Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.50.

Ultraista, Astronauts, etc. Independent. 8pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bossa Nova Tunnel Top, 601 Bush, SF; (415) 722-6620. 8-11:30pm, free. Live acoustic Bossa Nova.

Gregg Marx Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Philippe Petit, Xambuca Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $16.

Reuben Rye Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bitch Magnet, Life Coach, Gold Medalists, Imperils Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $15.

Calexico, Dodos Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Tim Cohen, Jessica Pratt, Dylan Shearer Amnesia. 9:15pm.

Dan Deacon, Height with Friends, Chester Endersby Gwazda, Alan Resnick Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Nick Halstead Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $16.

Moonbell, Golden Awesome, Indian Summer Knockout. 9:30pm.

Mt Hammer, Ash Thursday, Manzanita Falls El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Room of Voices, Broun Fellinis Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Rusted Root Independent. 8pm, $25.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Qumran Orphics, Bill Orcutt, Marissa Anderson Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Darker than dark

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Darker than dark

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It is one of those hard truths one must learn to live with: Quentin Tarantino will always have seen more obscure exploitation movies than you. His new Django Unchained will arrive just in time for Christmas like a gift wrapped severed limb, leaving dedicated fanboy/fangirl types just weeks yet to immerse themselves in the world of spaghetti westerns to which it pays homage.

That makes two features in a row he’s made inspired by 1960s and 70s Euro trash cinema, following 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, which tipped hat to the era’s myriad international-coproduction war flicks. If you saw the obscure 1978 Italian film that was based on (and named after), you also probably already know who and what a Django is, how to pronounce him, and maybe even the factoid that countless (seriously, no one knows how many) ersatz Django “sequels” were made to cash in on the 1966 original’s success.

If not, join the more innocent multitudes at the multiplex come December, many of whom will no doubt be asking for one ticket to “Duh-jango,” please. There’s no shame in knowing nothing about such cultural marginalia. But what even faintly hipster-identifying person would admit to not knowing everything there is to know — even being bored with that knowledge — behind Reservoir Dogs (1992), the now 20-year-old Citizen Kane of indie meta guy flicks? How many people can not only quote its every line, but quote the every line of at least a few amongst its own umpteen mostly lousy imitations (yep, that includes you, 1999’s Boondock Saints)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvoKT481EmU

In the gradual groundswell of attention that greeted Dogs back then, viewers confidently cited Tarantino’s inspirations (as did he himself), noting the imprint of everything from classic noir titles to Kurosawa. Yet one movie that had a very direct influence was almost completely absent from those discussions, failing to rise from its prior two decades of complete obscurity even in the two decades post-Dogs.

Together at last in one canine-throwdown double bill is Day of the Wolves, that forgotten 1971 thriller — thanks of course to the Roxie Cinema and Elliot Lavine, themselves reunited for the latest installment in “Not Necessarily Noir,” that catch-all occasional series encompassing all things cool and (mostly) celluloid which don’t fit the loose strictures of their long-running actual noir retrospectives. Wolves and Dogs tussle to kick off the two-week schedule this weekend.

Day of the Wolves‘ low profile is somewhat explicable: it was never released theatrically in the US, and for years withheld from legal exhibition due to copyright issues. Still, one marvels how such a flamboyant relic of pure Seventies-ness could have remained under the radar for so long. TV and Vegas comedian Jan Murray is improbably cast as the mastermind who orchestrates the assembly of six career criminals in a secret desert location. All strangers, they’re instructed to call one another only by assigned number, wear identical outfits, and sport full facial hair (some obviously glued-on). Their mission is to “hit a whole town and peel it like an orange” — sealing off a “model community” in the Southwest, emptying every till, then scramming via private plane.

It’s an ingenious plan that counts on the complacent vulnerability of such burgs. In fact, Wellerton’s city council has just demonstrated ideal small-mindedness by firing its police chief (late, SF-born Richard Egan, a second tier 1950s star gone to flab) for the crime of actually enforcing laws on some of its more irresponsible A-list citizens. Thus the population of 7,000 or so is woefully under prepared when they find the power cut off, exit routes blocked, and seven armed desperados in charge.

The early going bears closest resemblance to Reservoir Dogs, and is the most inspired. (Later when the film gets to its prolonged actual climax, it devolves into a more ordinary Western-style shoot-’em-up between the raiders and Egan’s cop-turned vigilante, though there’s a doozy of a final twist.) Writer-director Ferde Grofe Jr., whose career in features sprawled sparsely from the early 60s to the late 80s, demonstrates a real flair for memorable idiosyncrasy, if less so for action. In style and content, Wolves is a perfect time capsule: groovy rock score (with “acid” guitar, bongos, and flute), very wide lapels, and a dune buggy chase. This near-classic B movie will be shown in one mightily color-faded, “pinked-out” 35mm print, an ostensible flaw that plays more like a finishing touch.

“Not Necessarily Noir III” mixes more such rediscoveries with fairly well known cult faves of the last decades, from neo-noirs to Hong Kong action to 70s New Hollywood questing (exceptional 1978 drama Who’ll Stop the Rain with Nick Nolte and Tuesday Weld; the seldom-seen ’71 Cisco Pike with Kris Kristofferson, Gene Hackman, and Warhol superstar Viva). Among its more rarefied titles are two Me Decade Franco-noirs with Jean-Paul Belmondo (who performs some amazing stunts himself in 1971’s The Burglars); 1968’s very disturbing crime thriller Night of the Following Day (wherein white-blond Marlon Brando is the good guy), and a supernatural blaxploitation double bill of very odd, arty 1973 vampire tale Ganja and Hess and the next year’s wacky, tacky voodoo revenge saga Sugar Hill.

Particularly worth checking out is Darker Than Amber, an attempt to launch a James Bond-style series featuring John D. MacDonald’s best-selling Florida sleuth Travis McGee. Unfortunately this 1970 maiden effort flopped, and the film has seldom been seen — especially without cuts — since. Admittedly it has pedestrian TV-style direction from Robert Clouse (who’d hit his sole career peak later with Bruce Lee’s 1973 Enter the Dragon), and the production values are just B-plus. But it’s an ideal vehicle for Rod Taylor, the brawny, wry, relaxed Aussie who should have been a huge star in the 60s and 70s, but despite a couple memorable films (1963’s The Birds, 1960’s The Time Machine) never got the right break. He’s surrounded by a memorable gallery of MacDonald characters, with two body-builder villains (William Smith, Robert Philips) in addition to the frequently shirtless star making this an notably homoerotic entry for the era in a macho action genre.

“NOT NECESSARILY NOIR III”

Oct. 19-31, $6.50-$10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

 

Dick Meister: Stalking and killing for sport

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister is a San Francisco writer. You can contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns

Imagine leading a snarling hound – or a pack of them – to chase a badly frightened bear or bobcat up a tree for you to shoot to death. There are lots of hunters – “sportsmen,” as they’re called – who think that to be great fun.

Boy, are they mad at Gov. Jerry Brown for recently signing a bill that will outlaw the practice in California beginning next year.  As the bill’s author, State Senator Ted Lieu, noted, “There is nothing sporting in shooting an exhausted bear clinging to a tree limb, or a cornered bobcat.”

California legislators thankfully are not the only ones who agree with that. The barbaric practice of using dogs to hunt bears has been banned in two-thirds of the other states. But why not ban it everywhere, along with all other hunters’ cruelties?

Why? Because, say hunting advocates such as Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, that would infringe on hallowed traditions of hunters that date back hundreds of years. Not to mention that it would deprive states of the thousands of dollars they collect for hunting tags. In California, the state’s take amounts to $278,000 a year for bear and bobcat tags alone.

Nielsen said he has received thousands of phone calls and letters protesting Brown’s bill signing.  That, sadly, should be no surprise. Many people, if not most people, seem to approve of stalking and killing our fellow creatures for sport.

Every year, more than 20 million hunters are out searching America’s countryside for winged and four-legged victims. And manufacturers of guns and other hunting equipment, and state fish and game departments, including California’s, are trying hard to increase their incomes by increasing the number of “sportsmen” who are chasing innocent animals. They’re urging more Americans, including youngsters, to go out and kill for sport.

Think especially of the message that’s being delivered to the young. As opponents of hunting have long argued, it tells impressionable youngsters that it’s all right to violently take an innocent life for the fun of it.

Certainly we still kill animals for food. But that is not the same as killing them for amusement. You can argue that killing animals is still necessary for survival, at least unless you’re a vegetarian. But killing them for sport in today’s circumstances is cruel and unnecessary.

In a fully civilized society, the money and energy spent by government agencies and others to promote hunting would instead be devoted to protecting our fellow creatures from human killers, and expanding and protecting their habitats, too many of which are now game preserves open to hunters.

We could at least deny hunters and their bloody practices the respect and approval of society and its leaders that they now enjoy. This is the 21st century, is it not?

Dick Meister is a San Francisco writer. You can contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Zombie dogs! Neeson! Southern-fried jail tales! And more, in this week’s new movies

Sue Vaughan
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It’s finally Halloweentime! (Though Walgreens would have you believe that season started in August.) Hollywood prepares appropriately with a few spookier picks (for kids, Frankenweenie, reviewed below; for older crowds, found-footage anthology V/H/S, discussed in my interview with some of the filmmakers here.) For good measure, you can check out my interview with Dee Wallace, star of some horror classics but making the press rounds for the 30th anniversary Blu-ray release of E.T. The Extraterrestrial.

Of local interest, the Mill Valley Film Festival is up and running, with some stellar picks noted here (HOLY MOTORS!) and an interview with indie pioneer Allison Anders, who debuts her new Strutter at the fest, here.

And, as always, there’s more. Read on for takes on films like The Paperboy and Taken 2, which each define “trashy entertainment” in their own special ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZtKB_KuASc

Bitter Seeds Just what we all needed: more incontrovertible evidence of the bald-faced evil of Monsanto. This documentary on destitute Indian cotton farmers follows an 18-year-old girl named Manjusha, a budding journalist who investigates the vast numbers of farmer suicides since the introduction (and market stranglehold) of “BT” cotton — which uses the corporation’s proprietary GMO technology — in the region of Vidarbha. Before BT took over in 2004, these cotton farmers relied on cheap heritage seed fertilized only by cow dung, but the largely illiterate population fell prey to Monsanto’s marketing blitz and false claims, purchasing biotech seed that resulted in pesticide reliance, failing crops, and spiraling debt. It’s a truly heartbreaking and infuriating story, but much of the action feels stagy and false. Should Indian formality be blamed? Considering the same fate befell Micha X. Peled’s 2005 documentary China Blue, probably not. Still, eff Monsanto. (1:28) Roxie. (Michelle Devereaux)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qngB0vCmZV4

Frankenweenie Tim Burton’s feature-length Frankenweenie expands his 1984 short of the same name (canned by Disney back in the day for being too scary), and is the first black and white film to receive the 3D IMAX treatment. A stop-motion homage to every monster movie Burton ever loved, Frankenweenie is also a revival of the Frankenstein story cute-ified for kids; it takes the showy elements of Mary Shelley’s novel and morphs them to fit Burton’s hyperbolic aesthetic. Elementary-school science wiz Victor takes his disinterred dog from bull terrier to gentle abomination (when the thirsty Sparky drinks, he shoots water out of the seams holding his body parts together). Victor’s competitor in the school science fair, Edgar E. Gore, finds out about Sparky and ropes in classmates to scrape up their dead pets from the town’s eerily utilized pet cemetery and harness the town’s lightning surplus. The film’s answer to Boris Karloff (lisp intact) resurrects a mummified hamster, while a surrogate for Japanese Godzilla maker Ishiro Honda, revives his pet turtle Shelley (get it?) into Gamera. As these experiments aren’t borne of love, they don’t go as well at Victor’s. If you love Burton, Frankenweenie feels like the at-last presentation of a story he’s been dying to tell for years. If you don’t love him, you might wonder why it took him so long to get it out. When Victor’s science teacher leaves the school, he tells Victor an experiment conducted without love is different from one conducted with it: love, he implies, is a variable. If that’s the variable that separates 2003’s Big Fish (heartbreaking) from 2010’s Alice In Wonderland (atrocious), it’s a large one indeed. The love was there for 29 minutes in 1984, but I can’t say it endures when stretched to 87 minutes 22 years later. (1:27) Presidio. (Sara Vizcarrondo)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHoxzRt9yBI

The Mystical Laws As The Master gathers Oscar buzz for its Scientology-inspired tale, another movie based on the teachings of a similarly-named religion, Japanese fringe sect Happy Science, opens this weekend. But that analogy is incorrect, for The Mystical Laws way more resembles 2000’s Battlefield Earth, demonstrating and preaching its source material’s tenants rather than questioning them. Visit Happy Science’s website and you’ll find a New Age mix of Christianity and Buddhism, with woo-woo about truth and love. Its founder, Ryuho Okawa, claims to the reincarnation of “El Cantare,” sort of an über-god who controls all spiritual activity on Earth. Anyway, now there’s an anime flick based on one of Okawa’s hundreds of books; it’s about an evil overlord with planet-ruling aspirations who gets smacked down by the powerful combo of aliens, a guy who realizes he’s humanity’s “light of hope” (basically a Jesus-Buddha combo, with psychic powers to boot), and an eight-headed flying dragon. There is Nazi iconography; there are Star Wars-inspired plot points. At one point, the hero preaches directly to the camera. It’s all very heavy-handed. A far more amusing use of your time would be to go to Happy Science’s website and click the tab marked “Astonishing Facts” to learn the spiritual fates of historical figures: “Currently Beethoven lives in the lower area of the Bodhisattva Realm of the 7th dimension in the Spirit world, and aims to transcend the sadness evident in parts of his music and become an expert in the music of joy,” while proponent o’ evolution Darwin “is now serving a penance in Abysmal Hell.” Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t science supposed to be “happy?” (2:00) New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEBknhHTe_I

The Oranges In director Julian Farino’s tale of two families, the Wallings and the Ostroffs are neighbors and close friends living in the affluent New Jersey township of West Orange. We meet David Walling (Hugh Laurie), his wife Paige (Catherine Keener), his best friend Terry Ostroff (Oliver Platt), and Terry’s wife, Carol (Allison Janney), during a period of domestic malaise for both couples — four unhappy people who enjoy spending time together — that is destined to be exponentially magnified over the Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. We learn much of this in voice-over courtesy of stalled-out 24-year-old design school grad Vanessa (Alia Shawkat), a second-generation Walling whose narrative subjectivity the film makes plain. No one will fault Vanessa for editorializing, however, when her Ostroff counterpart, onetime BFF and present-day nemesis Nina (Leighton Meester), returns home after a five-year absence and, amid maternal pressure to date Vanessa’s visiting brother, Toby (Adam Brody), instead embarks on an affair with their father. The ick factor is large, particularly because it takes a while to keep straight all the spouses, offspring, and houses they belong in. But Farino works to convince us that the romantic spark between David and Nina should be judged on its merits rather than with a gut-level revulsion, a reaction we can leave to the film’s principals. To the extent that this is possible, it’s possible to enjoy The Oranges’ intelligent writing and fine cast, whose sympathetic characters (perhaps excluding Nina, whose heedlessness regarding the feelings of others verges on sociopathic) we wish the best of luck in surviving the holidays. (1:30) (Lynn Rapoport)

The Paperboy Lee Daniels scored big with Precious (2009), but this follow-up is so off-kilter in tone and story it will likely polarize critics and confuse audiences, despite its A-list cast. I happened to enjoy the hell out of this tacky, sweat-drenched, gator-gutting, and generally overwrought adaptation of Peter Dexter’s novel (Dexter and Daniels co-wrote the screenplay); it’s kind of a Wild Things–The Help–A Time to Kill mash-up, with the ubiquitous Matthew McConaughey starring as Ward Jansen, a Florida newspaper reporter investigating what he thinks is the wrongful murder conviction of Hillary Van Wetter (a repulsively greasy John Cusack). But the movie’s not really about that. Set in 1969 and narrated by Macy Gray, who plays the veteran housekeeper for the Jansens — a clan that also includes college dropout Jack (Zac Efron) — The Paperboy is neither mystery nor thriller. It’s more of a swamp cocktail, with some odd directorial choices (random split-screen here, random zoom there) that maybe seem like exploitation movie homages. As a Southern floozy turned on by “prison cock” (but not, to his chagrin, by the oft-shirtless Jack), Nicole Kidman turns in her trashiest performance since 1995’s To Die For. (1:46) (Cheryl Eddy)

Taken 2 Surprise hit Taken (2008) was a soap opera produced by French action master Luc Besson and designed for export. The divorced-dad-saves-daughter-from-sex-slavery plot may have nagged at some universal parenting anxieties, but it was a Movie of the Week melodrama made on a major movie budget. Taken 2 begins immediately after the last, with sweet teen Kim (Maggie Grace) talking about normalizing after she was drugged and bought for booty. Papa Neeson sees Kim’s mom (Famke Janssen) losing her grip on husband number two and invites them both to holiday in Istanbul following one of his high-stakes security gigs. When the assistant with the money slinks him a fat envelope, Neeson chuckles at his haul. This is the point when women in the audience choose which Neeson they’re watching: the understated super-provider or the warrior-dad whose sense of duty can meet no match. For family men, this is the breeziest bit of vicarious living available; Neeson’s character is a tireless daddy duelist, a man as diligent as he is organized. (This is guy who screams “Victory loves preparation!”) As head-splitting, disorienting, and generally exhausting as the action direction is, Neeson saves his ex-wife and the show in a stream of unclear shootouts. Taken 2 is best suited for the small screen, but whatever the size, no one can stop an international slave trade (or wolves, or Batman) like 21st century Liam. Swoon. (1:31) (Sara Vizcarrondo)

Our Weekly Picks: September 26-October 2

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 26

Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra

Massachusetts singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer has had a busy year. Well, actually she’s had a busy career. Palmer is a previous high school thespian, street performer, co-founder of the Dresden Dolls, subject of a coffee table book, half of musical duo Evelyn Evelyn, and a prolific blogger — and she’s just getting started. This year alone she’s written a song and produced a music video in defense of pubic hair, starred in a Flaming Lips video, released a new solo album, and now she’s back on the road. When Palmer decided to fund her second solo album Theater is Evil on Kickstarter earlier this year, few would have guessed over $1 million would pour in, shattering the site’s record with more than 24,000 individual donations. It looks like she won’t be slowing down any time soon. (Haley Zaremba)

With The Simple Pleasure, Jherek Bischoff, Ronald Reagan

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Ghost Parade

Over the past six months, San Francisco-based progressive rock band Ghost Parade has steadily revealed its inaugural tracks, including the particularly catchy “Reach,” whose chorus features the group’s tagline: “we are fast and real.” Intense at times and always poetic, Ghost Parade encourages you to get lost in its hard and fast wall of sound while, simultaneously, inviting you into its stories. These musicians are no strangers to Bottom of the Hill, but this time around they’re headlining. Come for the energy, come for the nascent artistic merriment and, if that’s not enough, come for vocalist-guitarist Justin Bonifacio’s hair. It ranks among the best in San Francisco. Hands down. (Mia Sullivan)

With Stomacher, Soonest

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

Obituary

It may be hard to believe, but pioneering death metal titan Obituary has been grinding out tracks such as “Chopped In Half” and “Turned Inside Out” for more than 25 years now. The Florida based quartet just wrapped up a series of festival shows in Europe, and is now back for its first tour of the US in several years, part of the epic Carnival of Death tour, slaying stages alongside Broken Hope, Decrepit Birth, Jungle Rot, Encrust, and Feast. The band is promising a fan-favorite set, comprised largely of songs off of its first three classic albums, Slowly We Rot, Cause of Death, and The End Complete. (Sean McCourt)

With DJ Rob Metal

6:30pm, $14–$18

DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF.

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com


THURSDAY 27

“Shocktoberfest 13: The Bride of Death”

The Thrillpeddlers have been killing it lately, with endlessly extended runs of Cockettes revivals and a recent hit production of Marat/Sade. Now the company is poised to kill it again — live! Onstage! With gruesome gore! — in its annual “Shocktoberfest” production. This year’s lucky 13th incarnation includes a classic Grand Guignol one-act (Coals of Fire by Fredrick Whitney, which caused a scandal in 1922 Britain); two contemporary world premieres about mad scientists (The Bride of Death by Michael Phillis and The Twisted Pair by Rob Keefe); and Scrumbly Koldewyn’s “musical spectacle” Those Beautiful Ghouls. And if you think you’re safe just sitting in the audience, wait until the uniquely terrifying spook-show finale — if you’re not afraid of the dark, you will be! (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Nov. 17

Opens Thu/27, 8pm; runs Thu-Sat, 8pm, $25-35

Hypnodrome

575 10th St., SF

www.thrillpeddlers.com


FRIDAY 28

“Animate Your Night: Where It’s AT-AT”

As part of the Walt Disney Family Museum’s new “Animate Your Night” series of after-hours events, tonight’s “Where It’s AT-AT” party celebrates the opening of a new exhibit, Between Frames: The Magic Behind Stop Motion Animation, which looks at the innovative ideas and technical wizardry of the art form that has brought life to a host of magical characters and creations. Among the items party-goers will be able to get a first look at is a classic Gumby figure, the armature of the “Robot Chicken” mascot, and a model of the awesome AT-AT Imperial Walker made by Phil Tippett, as seen in The Empire Strikes Back. (McCourt)

7-10pm, $5–$10

Walt Disney Family Museum

104 Montgomery, SF

(415) 345-6800

www.waltdisney.org

 

Vir

While “on” Vir, I can’t decide if I’d rather take mass quantities of psychedelics and, well, gaze at my shoes, or embark on an epic, intergalactic quest with a few of my closest tribesmen. Luckily, these options aren’t mutually exclusive. This Oakland-based experimental noise pop trio originally hails from New Zealand and cites Kiwi post-punk groups Gordons, Bailter Space, and HDU as chief influences. Characterized by driving, tribal beats, sardonic, echoing lyrics, and ample fuzz pedal, Vir’s music is, at times, like marching through a lush jungle-like space field and, at other times, like My Bloody Valentine. Could it get much better? (Sullivan)

With Here Come the Saviours, Erik Blood

9:30pm, $7

Hemlock

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com


SATURDAY 29

Balboa Skatepark opening ceremony

Shredding (on a skateboard) and shredding (with a guitar) go together like pizza and hot dogs — which, incidentally, there will be a whole lot of at the Balboa skateboard park opening this week. While skaters grind their newly opened park behind, local thrasher act Haunted By Heroes — a.k.a. the world’s youngest rock band — along with the Nerv, and Big Shadows will perform out front. Plus, the free event includes the aforementioned ultimate snack foods, skateboard accessory giveaways, and the Youth DJ Collective with DJ/MC Ace, of Reality Check TV. Make like the ramp locals of Thrashin’ (1986) and bring your board, check out frenetic live music, munch cheesy pizza, and relive youth, glorious youth. (Emily Savage)

Noon-5pm, free

Balboa Skatepark

San Jose Avenue and Ocean Avenue, SF

Facebook: BalboaSkateparkOpening2012

 

Vintage Couture Ball

Let’s hear it for the grown and sexy. While the rest of us drink beer and chug from flasks in the bathroom, they drink Manhattans (up) and sip from nicer flasks, out in the open because unlike some, the motion only serves to make their surroundings more G&S. Class it up and join their ranks for this weekend’s openair fashion gala in the Fillmore — the Vintage Couture Ball (once called the Black Couture Ball) brings Chicago step dancing, a vintage car show, burlesque and swing dancing to SF’s jazz district. Most importantly, heed the dress code — everyone’s fancy black gowns and suits should make the evening pop. (Caitlin Donohue)

7pm-1am, $20

Fillmore between Eddy and Geary, SF

(800) 352-4315

www.vintagecoutureball.com


SUNDAY 30

Hot Water Music

It’s been an exciting year for post-hardcore. It marks the release of industry pioneer Hot Water Music’s first album in nearly a decade and the 19th anniversary since the band’s foundation in 1993. In these two decades, the band has broken up and reunited three different times, taking years off to explore side projects and family life. Though it has been touring sporadically since 2008, the Gainseville band’s eighth album Exister truly marks its triumphant return to the rock scene. The first single off the album, “State of Grace,” tackles the issue of the additives that we ingest every day in our over-processed foods. Whether you care about GMOs or not, you’ll want to catch this tour before Hot Water Music disbands again. (Zaremba)

With Dead To Me, Heartsounds

8pm, $21

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

Bebel Gilberto

New York City and Rio de Janeiro are a potent combination. As proof, we offer you Bebel Gilberto, daughter of famed bossanova boss João Gilberto and international star in her own right. Bebel’s 2009 release All in One relies less heavily on the electronic bends and flourishes of her past, its mainly acoustic, gentle guitar strums and chimes behind Brazilian coos. In other words, go to this concert to lower your blood pressure, it will smooth you out. In fact, we’d be hard pressed a better soundtrack to your weekend comedown, or swayfest with that new boo you picked up on last night’s dancefloor. (Donohue)

7pm, $35-70

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

Maria Minerva

Like a ’90s TRL countdown as envisioned by Peaking Lights, Maria Minerva’s fuzzed-out hypnagogia is the stuff of bygone pop anthems, filtered experimentally and relentlessly through Macbooks, cheap software, and a boatload of filters and effects. Commended by The Wire for her contribution to the blossoming meta-pop movement, the elusive Estonian producer strikes a captivating balance between high art and radio trash, traditional top-40 conventions and anarchic nonconformity. Minerva’s newly released Will Happiness Find Me? might be her most accessibly structured statement yet, but that doesn’t stop her dubby sonic fog from enshrouding everything in its path. Fans of electronic hooliganism everywhere: meet your new pop diva. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Father Finger, Bobby Browser, EpicSauce DJs

8pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


MONDAY 1

Garbage

When it first arrived on the alternative rock scene back in the mid ’90s, Garbage could have been some sort of pre-fabricated hit machine, considering its members consisted of some of the biggest producers of the time — Butch Vig, Steve Marker, and Duke Erikson — with ex-Angelfish singer Shirley Manson joining the fold. As fans know, however, it quickly became evident that they were much more than that, a band that coalesced as one and produced some of the most memorable tunes of the era. After a series of hiatuses, the quartet is back with an excellent new album, Not Your Kind of People, and a welcome return to the live stage. (McCourt)

With Screaming Females

8pm, $38–$48

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheater.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

Listings compiled by Caitlin Donohue and George McIntire. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 26

"National Anthem" Ratio 3.1, 1447 Stevenson, SF. www.ginateichart.com. 6-10pm, free. Like most artists, Gina Teichart has had significant problems paying off medical bills. Only difference is, she’s translated her frustrations with the system into her creative output. Teichart uses her actual healthcare bills to artfully document our country’s widespread medical-related anxieties and discontents.

THURSDAY 27

"Anatomy like a Woman; Parts like a Man" 1703 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 891-0199, www.feelmore510.com. 8pm-9:30pm. Come on down to Feelmore 510, Oakland’s downtown sex shop that wants to enlighten you on matters you would never learn about in high school sex-ed. Tonight, learn how to use harnesses and dildos with sexy skill.

"Awkward and Acned: Stories about High School and Woe" Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF. (415) 626-2787 www.theintersection.org. 7pm, $5. Presented by the Litup Writers humor reading series, eight local comedians will reminisce and lament about their own stressed times in high schoo. They’ll touch on first kisses, drama club, and drinking in one’s parents’ basement.

"What Ever Happened to Darfur?" Jewish Community Relations Council, 121 Steuart, SF. (415) 957-1551, www.darfursf.org. 6-8pm, free. Believe it or not, but the Darfur genocide wasn’t solved by George Clooney. The local Darfur Coalition would like to remind you that there is still an on-going crisis. It will be premiering the new film Across The Frontlines, which details the atrocities being perpetrated on the Nuba people who inhabit the newly-named South Sudan.

FRIDAY 28

Oktoberfest by the Bay Pier 48, 297 Terry A Francois, SF. www.oktoberfestbythebay.com. Fri/28 5pm-midnight; Sat/29 11am-5pm, 6pm-midnight; Sun/30 11am-6pm, $25–$75. I hope you didn’t buy your plane ticket to Germany already for this year’s Oktoberfest — one of the country’s best Oktoberfests will be happening in our backyard, right next to AT&T Park. This year’s fest will cover all the bases from authentic German beer (duh!) and an assortment of succulent sausages, and will feature a 21-piece Chico Bavarian band. Because a 20-piece band just doesn’t cut it.

Inner Sunset Fourth Fridays Inner Sunset neighborhood, SF. www.innersunsetmerchants.org. 6-9pm, free. Hop the N-Judah line to the Inner Sunset to check out this burgeoning street festival. Put on by local businesses such as the Urban Bazaar, Pearl Gallery and Park Smile, this month’s installment of Inner Sunset Fourth Fridays will have handcrafted jewelry, free pizza at a secret location, and a community chanting.

SATURDAY 29

Polk Street Blues Festival Polk and California, SF. www.polkstreetbluesfestival.com 10am-6pm, free. Two stages of live tunes will rock Polk Street all the day long — check out acts like zydeco artist Andre Thierry (Sat/23, 11am, California Street stage), Buckaroo Bonet (Sat/23, 4pm, Jackson and Polk stage), and Bird School of Music (Sun/24, noon, Jackson and Polk stage).

Nomadsight Jack Kerouac Alley, SF. www.nomadsight.com. Sat/29 11am-7pm; Sun/30 11am-5pm, free. Veteran world traveler and photographer Allen Myers has chosen North Beach’s most famous Beat alley to display his latest exhibit. Myers’ temporary street art installment showcases his travels in places like Barcelona, Berlin, and Zagreb. Here’s hoping Myers will feature our city in his next exhibit, wherever in the world that may be.

Party on Block 18 18th St. between Dolores and Guerrero. Noon-5pm, free. Join this neighborhood block party, happening a literal stone’s throw away from Dolores. Your taste buds won’t be the only beneficiaries of the party’s scrumptious offerings, because all proceeds from the event will be going to such awesome organizations as 826 Valencia, 18 Reasons, and the Women’s Building.

Awesome Foundation Presents: Cardboard Castles Dolores Park, SF. www.awesomefoundation.com. noon, free. If you miss playing with Legos, the Awesome Foundation is there to indulge your childish desires by providing you with the materials to build a super-sweet fortress in whatever way such things look in your dreams.

Family Day Celebration 14th Ave East Picnic Area Golden Gate Park, JFK at 14th Ave., SF. (415) 431-2453, www.sfbike.org. Round the family up and hop on your fixie, mountain bike, road bike, cruiser, or trike and bike on over to Golden Gate Park for all sorts of fun bike-related activities like a parade the whole familial unit can ride out in, bike care classes, and biker Jeopardy games.

SUNDAY 30

Dogma Hayes Valley neighborhood, Octavia and Hayes, SF. www.sfspca.org. In a city where dogs outnumber children, it makes sense to have a woof-centric festival. For those of you without dogs, this fest will host on-site adoptions and for best friend-ed up, you are cordially invited to enter your beloved canine. Give ’em a chance to put on their fancy paws.

TUESDAY 2

Burning Books showcase The Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. (415) 431-6800 www.thegreenarcade.com. This sustainability-focused bookstore will play host to publisher Burning Books’ Quandrants reading series, which today features writers Thomas Frick, L.K. Larsen, and Melody Sumner Carnahan.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

Listings compiled by Caitlin Donohue and George McIntire. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 26

"National Anthem" Ratio 3.1, 1447 Stevenson, SF. www.ginateichart.com. 6-10pm, free. Like most artists, Gina Teichart has had significant problems paying off medical bills. Only difference is, she’s translated her frustrations with the system into her creative output. Teichart uses her actual healthcare bills to artfully document our country’s widespread medical-related anxieties and discontents.

THURSDAY 27

"Anatomy like a Woman; Parts like a Man" 1703 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 891-0199, www.feelmore510.com. 8pm-9:30pm. Come on down to Feelmore 510, Oakland’s downtown sex shop that wants to enlighten you on matters you would never learn about in high school sex-ed. Tonight, learn how to use harnesses and dildos with sexy skill.

"Awkward and Acned: Stories about High School and Woe" Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF. (415) 626-2787 www.theintersection.org. 7pm, $5. Presented by the Litup Writers humor reading series, eight local comedians will reminisce and lament about their own stressed times in high schoo. They’ll touch on first kisses, drama club, and drinking in one’s parents’ basement.

"What Ever Happened to Darfur?" Jewish Community Relations Council, 121 Steuart, SF. (415) 957-1551, www.darfursf.org. 6-8pm, free. Believe it or not, but the Darfur genocide wasn’t solved by George Clooney. The local Darfur Coalition would like to remind you that there is still an on-going crisis. It will be premiering the new film Across The Frontlines, which details the atrocities being perpetrated on the Nuba people who inhabit the newly-named South Sudan.

FRIDAY 28

Oktoberfest by the Bay Pier 48, 297 Terry A Francois, SF. www.oktoberfestbythebay.com. Fri/28 5pm-midnight; Sat/29 11am-5pm, 6pm-midnight; Sun/30 11am-6pm, $25–$75. I hope you didn’t buy your plane ticket to Germany already for this year’s Oktoberfest — one of the country’s best Oktoberfests will be happening in our backyard, right next to AT&T Park. This year’s fest will cover all the bases from authentic German beer (duh!) and an assortment of succulent sausages, and will feature a 21-piece Chico Bavarian band. Because a 20-piece band just doesn’t cut it.

Inner Sunset Fourth Fridays Inner Sunset neighborhood, SF. www.innersunsetmerchants.org. 6-9pm, free. Hop the N-Judah line to the Inner Sunset to check out this burgeoning street festival. Put on by local businesses such as the Urban Bazaar, Pearl Gallery and Park Smile, this month’s installment of Inner Sunset Fourth Fridays will have handcrafted jewelry, free pizza at a secret location, and a community chanting.

SATURDAY 29

Polk Street Blues Festival Polk and California, SF. www.polkstreetbluesfestival.com 10am-6pm, free. Two stages of live tunes will rock Polk Street all the day long — check out acts like zydeco artist Andre Thierry (Sat/23, 11am, California Street stage), Buckaroo Bonet (Sat/23, 4pm, Jackson and Polk stage), and Bird School of Music (Sun/24, noon, Jackson and Polk stage).

Nomadsight Jack Kerouac Alley, SF. www.nomadsight.com. Sat/29 11am-7pm; Sun/30 11am-5pm, free. Veteran world traveler and photographer Allen Myers has chosen North Beach’s most famous Beat alley to display his latest exhibit. Myers’ temporary street art installment showcases his travels in places like Barcelona, Berlin, and Zagreb. Here’s hoping Myers will feature our city in his next exhibit, wherever in the world that may be.

Party on Block 18 18th St. between Dolores and Guerrero. Noon-5pm, free. Join this neighborhood block party, happening a literal stone’s throw away from Dolores. Your taste buds won’t be the only beneficiaries of the party’s scrumptious offerings, because all proceeds from the event will be going to such awesome organizations as 826 Valencia, 18 Reasons, and the Women’s Building.

Awesome Foundation Presents: Cardboard Castles Dolores Park, SF. www.awesomefoundation.com. noon, free. If you miss playing with Legos, the Awesome Foundation is there to indulge your childish desires by providing you with the materials to build a super-sweet fortress in whatever way such things look in your dreams.

Family Day Celebration 14th Ave East Picnic Area Golden Gate Park, JFK at 14th Ave., SF. (415) 431-2453, www.sfbike.org. Round the family up and hop on your fixie, mountain bike, road bike, cruiser, or trike and bike on over to Golden Gate Park for all sorts of fun bike-related activities like a parade the whole familial unit can ride out in, bike care classes, and biker Jeopardy games.

SUNDAY 30

Dogma Hayes Valley neighborhood, Octavia and Hayes, SF. www.sfspca.org. In a city where dogs outnumber children, it makes sense to have a woof-centric festival. For those of you without dogs, this fest will host on-site adoptions and for best friend-ed up, you are cordially invited to enter your beloved canine. Give ’em a chance to put on their fancy paws.

TUESDAY 2

Burning Books showcase The Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. (415) 431-6800 www.thegreenarcade.com. This sustainability-focused bookstore will play host to publisher Burning Books’ Quandrants reading series, which today features writers Thomas Frick, L.K. Larsen, and Melody Sumner Carnahan.

Narc fetish

Andrew Lam
-
0
Narc fetish

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE I’ll be honest with you, after last week’s Herbwise interview with Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate/everything to everyone person Roseanne Barr, I feel like anything I write this week is going to be a sad, sorry after party. Kind of like me in my cubicle right now, nursing Folsom Street Fair-inflicted wounds. Even my last-minute plans to get picked up for blowing smoke in public — purely for the benefit of this column, of course — were foiled when I couldn’t figure out who the real pigs were at the Fair. Damn you, accurate latex replicas!

Thank goodness there is plenty of stupid celebrity cannabis news to tide us over.

BLAZED THIS WAY

Lady Gaga rifled through a pile of presents tossed onstage at her September 18 concert at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome, sniffed a bunch of tobacco cigarettes, finally found a cellophane-wrapped, bread stick-sized joint, and sparked it in front of the crowd.

She’s already on record about smoking weed to aide her songwriting creativity, which may explain the surfeit of 420-themed presents in the mountain of swag that had been flung at her by fans. She took a high-shine to a white belly shirt with two cannabis leaves printed over the breasts, and ditched her studded black mini-dress to change into the shirt, baring some awkwardly rolled-down fishnets.

Yes folks, she’s smoking openly, a move unfortunately timed simultaneously with a rather impressive pre-tour weight gain. Awkward “munchies” jokes, deploy.

A BRIEF BREAK FROM THE TABLOIDS

But perhaps Gaga was just trying to bring attention to a recent mega-breakthrough in the world of medical research. Scientists at our very own California Pacific Medical Center have found evidence in lab and animal tests that the cannabis chemical compound cannabidol can effectively impair ID-1, the gene that causes cancer to spread.

The pair of docs that made the discovery want to make it clear that the amount of cannabidol needed for these positive effects are so vast they can’t be effectively obtained by smoking, but nevertheless, the discovery does bode well for more weed research in oncology.

… AND WE’RE BACK

Fiona Apple faces up to 10 years in jail on a felony charge after her tour bus was pulled over in the famously-anti-drug town of Sierra Blanca, Texas and drug dogs reportedly found four grams of hashish in her possession. Sierra Blanca cops have also caught Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson holding.

The “Criminal” singer had to spend the night in jail and postpone her Austin concert, saving her somewhat abstract tirade against the cops that locked her up until Houston. She said she has “encoded” some information about potentially illegal actions performed by her arresting officers, which she’ll hold to herself unless they want to get “fucking famous”

Classily, one of said officers has responded in a letter sent to TMZ. Gary “Rusty” Fleming, jowly information officer for the Hudspeth County sheriff’s office (and creator of a grisly, fear-mongering drug war documentary Silver or Lead, the website of which proudly lists kudos from Department of Homeland Security deportation officers) called Apple “honey,” before the insults began: “I’m already more famous than you, I don’t need your help. However, it would appear that you need mine.” He concluded that she should just “shut up and sing.”

Which brings to mind a man I saw at the fair this weekend dressed as a narcotic agent. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a less arousing thing to base sexual fantasies on, but now I totally get it: being a narc might just be the most perverted thing ever.

East Bay buzz

Andrew Lam
-
0
East Bay buzz

caitlin@sfbg.com

BEER I will not re-enter the one-sided debate of whether the East Bay is cooler than San Francisco (we covered that in our much hullabalooed April 11 cover story, helpfully titled “San Francisco’s loss”) But I will tell you this: one side of the Bay Bridge has less hills. Less hills being a boon for the drunk biker in us all.

If that is not enough motivation to embark upon a self-guided cycling tour of the East Bay beer scene, then I don’t know what is. Let me tell you about a recent, successfully-completed jaunt from which my team and I emerged with double IPA paunches, and a newfound appreciation for the San Francisco Bay Trail (of which you can find maps here: baytrail.abag.ca.gov).

EL CERRITO

Hook up your handlebars for a pleasant BART ride out to this north-of-Berkeley, family-friendly area, where a cruise of mere blocks will take you to the airy brewpub of Elevation 66 (10082 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 525-4800, www.elevation66.com). Stainless steel fermentation tanks make for tasty eye candy from the bar, where we wound up setting our messenger bags and ordering a sampler flight of seven beers. For such a tiny operation, Elevation 66 offers a swath of pours: on tap the day we visited were seven of its in-house brews, including a heavenly Contra Costa kölsch, the perfect light beverage with which to begin a day of exercising and drinking, and five guest pours, of which we tried a bubbly, sweet Two Rivers blood orange cider. Important matters settled, we tackled the extensive food menu, which stocks homemade potato chips, a Peruvian causa made with poached prawns, avocados, Yukon potatoes, and habanero, and more.

Now, leave the brewery (I know, but there’s lots to see.) Take the beautiful, wetlands-lined Bay Trail south, feeling free to jump off at the overpass when you see the Golden Gate Fields (1100 Eastshore Frontage Road, Berk. (510) 559-7300, www.goldengatefields.com). If it’s Sunday, all the better — $1 entry, $1 beers, $1 hot dogs.

BERKELEY

Note the USDA community garden that will zip by on your right (at 800 Buchanan, Berk.) as you emerge from the Bay Trail into the Albany-Berkeley area, home to some of the largest breweries in the East Bay, besides of course the mega-fermenters at the Budweiser factory in Fairfield.

Your first stop will be at Pyramid Alehouse (91 Gillman, Berk. (510) 528-9880, www.pyramidbrew.com), and though you may find the quality of some of the beers at this Seattle-born chain brewery to be just about what you’d expect from a space tinged with notes of T.G.I. Friday’s, you can make a game of counting the pyramids incorporated into the décor for extra stimulation. If you dare, embark upon a 40-minute free tour given every day at 4pm by a bartender who may or may not include gems like: “if you like metaphors, you’ll love this one.” At any rate, it’s a good primer for people who have no idea how beer is made and it includes tons of free booze at the end. Check out Trumer Pils Braueri (1404 Fourth St., Berk. (510) 526-1160, www.trumer-international.com) a few blocks away for another free tour that runs daily at 3:45pm.

Head back to the Bay Trail, unless you feel like a trip further inland to Berkeley’s two fun brewpubs Jupiter (2181 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-8277, www.jupiterbeer.com) and Triple Rock Brewery (1920 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-2739, www.triplerock.com). Between Berkeley and Oakland you have three lovely miles of trail ride, and if I’m not mistaken we are in the thick of blackberry season, which means the indigo clumps you’ll see on your right just past Sea Breeze Market and Deli (598 University, Berk.) are ripe for picking.

OAKLAND

You could while away a day within just a few blocks in downtown Oakland, such a prime sitting-out-with-a-microbrew kinda neighborhood it is.

In terms of places that make their own brew, there is none better than the 1890s warehouse building that houses Linden Street Brewery (95 Linden, SF. (510) 812-1264, www.lindenbeer.com), the little brewery that could. There’s only a few meters in between tank and tap here, and on weekdays you can sit in the joint’s tap room and suck down golden pints of its Urban Peoples’ Common Lager, while hearing the story from the bartender of how it came to the forefront of Oakland’s craft beer scene.

You may not even guess, right off the bat, that Pacific Coast Brewing Company (906 Washington, Oakl. (510) 836-2739, www.pacificcoastbrewing.com) is brewing the suds that wind up in your $9/five beer sampler — but it is. The charming brick pub has all the fried pickles one has come to expect from a solid bar menu, and a latticed patio that provides a little privacy from the Oakland cityscape. Out front, you can park your steed and walk it out — the rest of your stops are within stumbling distance, unless you’re trying to really make a day of it and head south to Drake’s Brewing (1933 Davis, San Leandro. (510) 568-2739, www.drinkdrakes.com) and its tucked-away pint parlor.

You may just have saved the best for last. The Trappist (460 Eighth St., Oakl. (510) 238-8900, www.thetrappist.com) and Beer Revolution (464 Third St., SF. (510) 452-2337, www.beer-revolution.com) are two of my favorite Bay beer bars, regardless of area code. Both have superlative selection and cute, sunny patios, but considerably different vibes.

The Trappist is a classy, under-lit place with two bars and an elegant rotating list of beers at each, some local and some from far-flung locales. On our visit, we tried a trio of superb sour beers, including the transcendent red-brown Belgian Rodenbach Grand Cru. Trappist’s food menu is full of elegantly spare, small plates packed with big flavors, like a recent Mahon Reserva cheese platter with truffled almonds and shisito peppers. I’m no meat eater, but I heard rave reviews of the comparatively proletarian Trappist dog, which was studded with bacon and seemed an apt pairing for a beer that may out-class you.

Beer Revolution, as the name would imply, is a populist place — local brewers regularly roll through to share their fermentation philosophies. Though their draft menu is impressively large, the beauty of this place is variety. Inside the bar there is a vast refrigerator land where bottles await for your to-go/for-here fancy. We vote for-here, because you’ll want to savor every drop of your East Bay booze cruise.

East Bay buzz

-
0
East Bay buzz

caitlin@sfbg.com

BEER I will not re-enter the one-sided debate of whether the East Bay is cooler than San Francisco (we covered that in our much hullabalooed April 11 cover story, helpfully titled “San Francisco’s loss”) But I will tell you this: one side of the Bay Bridge has less hills. Less hills being a boon for the drunk biker in us all.

If that is not enough motivation to embark upon a self-guided cycling tour of the East Bay beer scene, then I don’t know what is. Let me tell you about a recent, successfully-completed jaunt from which my team and I emerged with double IPA paunches, and a newfound appreciation for the San Francisco Bay Trail (of which you can find maps here: baytrail.abag.ca.gov).

 

EL CERRITO

Hook up your handlebars for a pleasant BART ride out to this north-of-Berkeley, family-friendly area, where a cruise of mere blocks will take you to the airy brewpub of Elevation 66 (10082 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 525-4800, www.elevation66.com). Stainless steel fermentation tanks make for tasty eye candy from the bar, where we wound up setting our messenger bags and ordering a sampler flight of seven beers. For such a tiny operation, Elevation 66 offers a swath of pours: on tap the day we visited were seven of its in-house brews, including a heavenly Contra Costa kölsch, the perfect light beverage with which to begin a day of exercising and drinking, and five guest pours, of which we tried a bubbly, sweet Two Rivers blood orange cider. Important matters settled, we tackled the extensive food menu, which stocks homemade potato chips, a Peruvian causa made with poached prawns, avocados, Yukon potatoes, and habanero, and more.

Now, leave the brewery (I know, but there’s lots to see.) Take the beautiful, wetlands-lined Bay Trail south, feeling free to jump off at the overpass when you see the Golden Gate Fields (1100 Eastshore Frontage Road, Berk. (510) 559-7300, www.goldengatefields.com). If it’s Sunday, all the better — $1 entry, $1 beers, $1 hot dogs.

 

BERKELEY

Note the USDA community garden that will zip by on your right (at 800 Buchanan, Berk.) as you emerge from the Bay Trail into the Albany-Berkeley area, home to some of the largest breweries in the East Bay, besides of course the mega-fermenters at the Budweiser factory in Fairfield.

Your first stop will be at Pyramid Alehouse (91 Gillman, Berk. (510) 528-9880, www.pyramidbrew.com), and though you may find the quality of some of the beers at this Seattle-born chain brewery to be just about what you’d expect from a space tinged with notes of T.G.I. Friday’s, you can make a game of counting the pyramids incorporated into the décor for extra stimulation. If you dare, embark upon a 40-minute free tour given every day at 4pm by a bartender who may or may not include gems like: “if you like metaphors, you’ll love this one.” At any rate, it’s a good primer for people who have no idea how beer is made and it includes tons of free booze at the end. Check out Trumer Pils Braueri (1404 Fourth St., Berk. (510) 526-1160, www.trumer-international.com) a few blocks away for another free tour that runs daily at 3:45pm.

Head back to the Bay Trail, unless you feel like a trip further inland to Berkeley’s two fun brewpubs Jupiter (2181 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-8277, www.jupiterbeer.com) and Triple Rock Brewery (1920 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-2739, www.triplerock.com). Between Berkeley and Oakland you have three lovely miles of trail ride, and if I’m not mistaken we are in the thick of blackberry season, which means the indigo clumps you’ll see on your right just past Sea Breeze Market and Deli (598 University, Berk.) are ripe for picking.

 

OAKLAND

You could while away a day within just a few blocks in downtown Oakland, such a prime sitting-out-with-a-microbrew kinda neighborhood it is.

In terms of places that make their own brew, there is none better than the 1890s warehouse building that houses Linden Street Brewery (95 Linden, SF. (510) 812-1264, www.lindenbeer.com), the little brewery that could. There’s only a few meters in between tank and tap here, and on weekdays you can sit in the joint’s tap room and suck down golden pints of its Urban Peoples’ Common Lager, while hearing the story from the bartender of how it came to the forefront of Oakland’s craft beer scene.

You may not even guess, right off the bat, that Pacific Coast Brewing Company (906 Washington, Oakl. (510) 836-2739, www.pacificcoastbrewing.com) is brewing the suds that wind up in your $9/five beer sampler — but it is. The charming brick pub has all the fried pickles one has come to expect from a solid bar menu, and a latticed patio that provides a little privacy from the Oakland cityscape. Out front, you can park your steed and walk it out — the rest of your stops are within stumbling distance, unless you’re trying to really make a day of it and head south to Drake’s Brewing (1933 Davis, San Leandro. (510) 568-2739, www.drinkdrakes.com) and its tucked-away pint parlor.

You may just have saved the best for last. The Trappist (460 Eighth St., Oakl. (510) 238-8900, www.thetrappist.com) and Beer Revolution (464 Third St., SF. (510) 452-2337, www.beer-revolution.com) are two of my favorite Bay beer bars, regardless of area code. Both have superlative selection and cute, sunny patios, but considerably different vibes.

The Trappist is a classy, under-lit place with two bars and an elegant rotating list of beers at each, some local and some from far-flung locales. On our visit, we tried a trio of superb sour beers, including the transcendent red-brown Belgian Rodenbach Grand Cru. Trappist’s food menu is full of elegantly spare, small plates packed with big flavors, like a recent Mahon Reserva cheese platter with truffled almonds and shisito peppers. I’m no meat eater, but I heard rave reviews of the comparatively proletarian Trappist dog, which was studded with bacon and seemed an apt pairing for a beer that may out-class you.

Beer Revolution, as the name would imply, is a populist place — local brewers regularly roll through to share their fermentation philosophies. Though their draft menu is impressively large, the beauty of this place is variety. Inside the bar there is a vast refrigerator land where bottles await for your to-go/for-here fancy. We vote for-here, because you’ll want to savor every drop of your East Bay booze cruise.

 

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